F. G. Young

“ The latter years during which the law for the exemption for indebtedness was in force witnessed most heinous procedures in tax-dodging. The language of the constitution did not impose upon the legislature the enactment of exemption laws and yet avoidance of double taxation and exemption for indebtedness were aims wholly in harmony with the constitutional injunction to tax all property at a uniform and equal rate. ”

“ Instead of proceeding in a business-like way by inspecting the areas available from which selections could be made, and conserving the interests of the people as a whole by making a selection of the best, the state assumed a passive attitude that played into the hands of the speculative exploiter. Under such a policy the hard-working creator of wealth doing a real service to the community was placed at a great disadvantage, and the speculative schemer with parasitic inclinations was given every opportunity. ”

“ Every one must admit that the preference is with us. And why? It is with us simply for the reason that we yet retain our individual independence, and have not become absorbed by these institutions which dwarf the energies of the body and the soul. I am not in favor of encouraging a fungus growth of improvement in this country."
While provisions for the unlimited liability of the individual stockholder was not incorporated in the constitution a very strong array of inhibitions to prevent the use of public funds for corporations for internal improvement was put in. ”

“ The facts so far marshalled on the origin of the pioneer movement to Oregon disclose the existence of a people in the Mississippi Valley competent for the undertaking, and on general principles not disinclined towards it, whose thought, moreover, had been arrested by some unique advantages claimed for the Oregon country. But the Oregon movement, like most migrations, has most light thrown on its origin and motive by an inquiry into the conditions that made the old home undesirable, and in some cases even unbearable. ”

“ Deady, president of the convention and mover of the motion under discussion, said, great deal has been said about bringing capital into the country and encouraging enterprise. How much better will we be off then than now? Contrast your own condition with the countries that have manufactories scattered over them. They have millions of wealth, and millions of poor human beings degraded into the condition of mere servants of machinery, overtasked and overworked, and seething in misery and crime from the age of puberty to the grave. ”

“ The members of the convention were clear on what not to do and on what not to have in a financial system ; but the absence of all discussion of financial topics, except those of the salaries and of the use of public credit, seems to indicate a pretty complete lack of constructive ideas pertaining to finance. Nevertheless, with the starting of the machinery of state government taxation and public expenditure must begin. To live the state government had to have support. Some financial system had to be evolved having conformity to the constitutional restrictions. ”

“ Not a few came from Missouri, Kentucky and other border slave states because they were not in sympathy with the institution of slavery. Their aversion to slave owning placed them at a great disadvantage in those states. Their families were not recognized as socially the equals of the more influential portion of society. They were accustomed to labor, and slavery brought a stigma upon labor. In the cultivation of tobacco and hemp, the main articles of export, the owner of slave labor had a decided advantage. The employer of free labor found it exceedingly difficult to make ends meet. ”

“ The early American settlers in Oregon had, however, become entitled to more than an average measure of liberality on the part of Congress in its disposition of these lands. These Oregon pioneers by their long, hazardous and wearisome journey across the plains and occupation of this remote region, had largely won the Pacific slope to the Union. The Donation Act of 1850, securing to each man and wife a tract of 640 acres, was but a fair acknowledgment of this national service of the early Oregon pioneer. ”

“ A distinctively primitive form of the general property tax has characterized Oregon's revenue system down to date. Rigid constitutional prescriptions have called for the uniform and equal assessment and taxation of all property except certain enumerated properties applied to public uses. In the matter of exemption alone, the legislature has consistently stretched its scant measure of freedom. It provided exemptions of a certain minimum to householders. It also attempted to eliminate the double taxation incident to the taxation of credits, and, from the nature of things, failed. ”

“ We are going back the long, sad trail to our people. When we tell them, after one more snow, in the big council that we did not bring the Book, no word will be spoken by our old men, nor by our young braves. ”

“ A train of pioneers with sensible outfit emerging into the valley of the Platte in a season free from the cholera affliction could almost make it for a time a grand pleasure excursion. The heat was not yet oppressive, the roads good, the air exhilarating, the boundless expanse of green undulating prairie under crystal skies filled them with a sense of freedom. ”

“ When the grass had grown abundant enough to furnish subsistence for their stock and draft animals, those who were ready with their outfit would begin to file out on the prairie trails converging upon the main Oregon road. After having traveled a day or two a halt was called by those in advance to await the coming up of others who proposed to undertake the same trip with themselves. The American instinct for organization would then assert itself, and there was occasion for its activity. They were in an Indian country. ”

“ The flow of this stream of wealth to Oregon would be arrested as soon as they passed out of the status of a territory into that of a commonwealth, and another volvolume of funds — one of ever growing proportions — must then originate from their own pockets. They alone would be responsible; for the pay of their state officials and the maintenances of their state institutions. ”

“ Louis, could not fail to bring forth a missionary movement towards Oregon. The spirit that materialized in the Oregon pioneer movement was not kindled by any special spark like that which called forth the missionary enterprises. Nor was it aroused by anything like the cry of gold that brought on the mad rush to California in '49 and the early fifties. The Oregon migrations were the outcome of cool, calm, reasoned determination. ”

“ The transaction of the business of assuming risks and of paying losses does not demand the use and ownership by these foreign concerns of local property. The profits secured through these different forms of the insurance business would thus, under a state revenue system, made up of a bare general property tax, wholly escape taxation. The problem of securing tribute from these foreign corporations for the people of Oregon was early taken up by the Officials whose duty it was to recommend improvements in financial system of the state. ”

“ But the disposition of vacant lands for the nominal sum of $1.25 per acre under conditions which resulted in their being massed into larger holdings, in their being largely exempt from taxation, and in bringing communities under the blighting disadvantage of sparse settlement and long continued isolation, while the land speculator was amassing a fortune through unearned increments — such a policy of quick sale of public domain has none of the redeeming features of the normal working of the homestead law. ”

“ The phraseology though specific of this enduring constitution does not, however, alone suifice as the cue for ascertaining the characteristics of Oregon's financial system. The genius of the people needs also to be taken into account as it exhibits itself in progressive legislative enactment, in trative devices and in the decisions of her supreme court as they do or do not yield in their constructions to the changing demands of social welfare. ”

“ The Ohio and the Missouri, with a short stretch of the Mississippi, had furnished the line of least resistance to the westward movement.
Each recurring spring tide from 1842 on witnessed the gathering of hosts at points on the Missouri, from Independence, near the confluence of the Kansas with the Missouri, north to what is now Council Bluffs. They were enamored with one idea, that of making homes in far away Oregon. This part of the border was also the starting line for the California and the Mormon migrations. ”

“ For engaging and vivid detail of experiences in this movement, recourse must be had .to the transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association, and to journals kept on the way across the plains. These will ever have an interest for the heart of man as they show life under heroic impulse and in trying conditions long sustained. The whole movement Oregonward has an epic unity, and when its significance has become fully manifest will challenge the powers of the national poet. But the movement has not yet, even in its outward aspects, been viewed as a whole. ”

“ In a state in which the extension of the government survey has been so gradual and not yet completed, the swamp land selection must go on apace. Oregon's geological formations do not include those giving rise to any considerable areas of swamp lands, except in its southeastern counties. The swampy areas of that section were exploited in the seventies and eighties. Even there large areas were, through the connivance of state and national agents, adjudged swamp lands simply because they were overflowed during brief periods at certain seasons. ”

“ For what transpired in connection with the grants made by Congress of public lands lying within the borders of Oregon to railroads and wagon road companies this state has not been largely responsible. In connection with these the most that devolved upon the state legislature, aside from memorializing Congress for the different grants, was to designate the corporation that should be the beneficiary of the grant, or upon the executive to pass upon the construction work as to whether or not it fulfilled the conditions under which the title to the lands was to pass to the corporation. ”

“ The traditions of each family led through the Cumberland Gap or west to Pittsburg and down the Ohio, or along the line of the Great Lakes. Hon. W. Lair Hill, in his "Annual Address" before the Pioneer Association in 1883, fitly characterizes the people among whom the Oregon movement took its rise. "The greater number of them were pioneers by nature and occupation, as their fathers had been before them. In childhood the story of their ancestors' migrations from the east to the west, and then to the newer west was their handbook of history. ”

“ Conditions would grow worse with larger use of credit in business unless effective means were interposed. The way out of this injustice incident to such partial assessment, through exemption of money and credits and reliance on the compensating force of competition, was barred by the constitutional requirement of the uniform taxation of all property. Legislative effort was made to secure full returns of recorded instruments and bank deposits. The practical effect of this legislation is inextricably interwoven with Oregon's long continued policy of exemption of indebtedness. ”

“ In counties where property is assessed at one-third its real value, as is the case in most counties, a person being in debt one thousand dollars would pay no tax; for his property, worth three thousand dollars, would be valued at one thousand by the assessor, which would be balanced by his indebtedness of one thousand dollars. But a prudent neighbor, worth the two thousand dollars or any other sum, and not in debt, would be required to pay taxes on the full amount of his assessment. ”

“ As the American people come to realize that their distinctively national achievement so far, next to that of maintaining a national integrity, has been that of preempting and subduing an adequate dominion and home for a civilization they will revere the services of those who made the transcontinental migrations in the thirties, forties and fifties. ”

“ Knowledge of a "new country" was sure to create in them an almost irrepressible longing to move on. Such natures as these furnished the best culture conditions in which to develop an Oregon movement with the reports explorers and travelers brought from the far Pacific Coast region. Such Oregon material had early been disseminated among these susceptible people. The journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition was published in 1814 and distributed far and wide as a government document. Pioneers speak of reading it as boys and of becoming permanently interested in the Oregon Country. ”

“ Smaller companies would cross the river wherever there was a ferry. Steamboating on the treacherous Missouri during those spring seasons while the tide of emigration was strongly westward set is given a lurid hue in the journals of the emigrants. The river route was the natural one for all coming from Ohio and the states to the east, also for many coming from Indiana. ”