Frederic George Young

“ A small community dwelling in a wilderness, and separated by a two-thousand-mile stretch of it from their kin and the nearest people who would have any disposition to come to their aid, would naturally be supposed to make the means of defense their chief concern and the support of these establishments the chief item in their budget. But the native tribes of the Willamette and the lower Columbia had suffered repeated visitations of a very destructive pestilence. This had made room for a white settlement without any necessary intrenchment upon the possessions of others. ”

“ The aims of the Lewis arid Clark expedition were scientific and commercial, rather than political and imperial. Jefferson did not have it in mind to establish a claim for the United States to the Oregon country; neither, for that matter, did Columbus set out to discover a new continent, nor was his vessel the first to touch the mainland. Nevertheless, Columbus is accounted the discoverer of America, and his voyage is held to have initiated that mighty train of consequences involved in the opening of a new continent to civilization. ”

“ But for an adequate supply of such fundamental needs as those of meat and milk for the table, and sawed lumber for capacious living quarters the early Oregon settler was beholden to the untiring efforts of Ewing Young. With his death in February, 1841, this personal influence towards unifying this settlement and transforming the conditions of its existence came to a close and the waning of his strength through the preceding year is painfully evident in his accounting records. The responsibility of administering the estate then devolved upon the settlers. ”

“ Definite opinions of Harvey W. Scott's intellectual leadership are held by virtually all of these, either from a confirmed habit of reading the editorial page of the Oregonian or through an acquaintance with the ideas there set forth gained in their community center discussions. That editorial page through the thought and discussion it provoked constituted essentially a folk school, for by it the people of all of the "Old Oregon Country" communities, accessible from Portland, were stimulated and guided towards grappling with their community problems. ”

“ The immediate co-operation of all in the creation of social advantages, best accomplished through farm improvement and cultivation, was the great desideratum. Only when land of the best quality has all been taken up is any emphasis upon a land tax in place. [74]
While the general revenue law made the taxes delinquent on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in October and ordered the collectors to proceed to collect them the same as debts due on execution, the reports show that as a rule the taxes were not in great part paid in until several months later. ”

“ But for two long years and more Young had occasion to remain embittered. He tended his bands of horses on the Chehalem hills with no prospect that he with his powers and resources could ever join in a co-operative up-building of Oregon. Should he desert, as Kelley had de- serted, his interests in Oregon and take passage back to the states defeated and discomfited?
He was conscious of being an American on American soil. From his association with Kelley, Young could no doubt give account of this faith that was in him. ”

“ The motive of the exposition is fundamentally an historical one. The best results, processes, and tendencies of modern industry and commerce are to be exhibited, and these are to-day based on science; so, if the central ideas of the fair the historical and scientific are to be upheld, and if the fair is to have unity of purpose, it would seem that the Historical Society must assume a most important part in its further development. ”

“ The occasion, with its inspiration, is our richest heritage as the Pacific Northwest, and should not be sold for a mess of pottage.
Victory goes to-day to those who can combine and apply the principles of science. Those win who get the largest margins through application of the principles of the division of labor, who drive in harness the strongest forces, and who market the largest annual product. ”

“ He must renounce all his hopes. But he would not have been a valiant American if he had. He naturally felt that he represented Americanism in the middle thirties in Oregon. The missionaries did not as they knuckled to the Hudson's Bay Company authorities.
Suppose we enter into the intent and course of Ewing Young as in the autumn of 1834 he approaches the Willamette valley settlement with his band of some eighty horses and mules. He was bringing to the settlers an available horse power supply for the cultivation of their fields and the transportation of their produce. ”

“ Then those taking the Oregon trail branch penetrated a wilderness year by year to a more and more remote objective until early in the thirties Wyeth pressed on in a continuous journey to meet the tidal waves of the Pacific. The Oregon trail was thus fully opened and reached the Oregon shore of the Pacific. On the other hand the Santa Fe trail as its name indicates led to a long established community the inhabitants of which, however, were of a quite contrasted type of the white race to that of those who were opening this trade route to them. ”

“ Their law providing for the appointment of the assessor made it his duty "to take every man's name who shall refuse to pay a tax and return the list of all such persons refusing to the clerk and recorder, whose duty it shall be to preserve the same." [66] Section 4 of the revenue law provided "that any person refusing to pay a tax as in this act required shall have no benefit of the laws of Oregon and shall be disqualified from voting at any election in this country." The collector's report for the same year refers to "the unsettled state of the public mind relative to the subject of taxation. ”

“ In taking the measure of Ewing Young as he was advanced so quickly to leadership in the Oregon community it should be noted that it was without the aid of a subsidy of missionary funds and organization, and also without the backing of the well-knit, privileged and strongly capitalized old-world fur company. He relied only on democratic influence. ”

“ The kinds of property selected as subjects of taxation exhibit a conspicuous departure from the benefit theory of taxation. The original property tax in Oregon was thoroughly unique in exempting farms, farm improvements and the products of the fields while subjecting "town lots and improvements" and the live stock of the farm to territorial and county taxes. The statutes did not make farm lands taxable in Oregon until 1854, and even then the practice of taxing farm lands was resisted. ”

“ There are many features about the plan which would appeal to the people of the country very generally. Naturally, I am especially interested in your idea of a congress of commerce and industry in connection with the fair. I am sure such a congress would be attended by many men of national repute, and would be helpful in the development of the Pacific Northwest, both scientifically and practically. It ought to serve as a stimulus to your university and to the development of an interest in history and economics, showing the peculiar opportunities for scientific work along these lines. ”

“ The isolation which called for the exercise of sovereign powers by the Provisional Government had its influence upon the scope of public activity—and consequently upon the financial system—in Oregon not only after it attained the status of a Territory, but even after it had become a State. The precipitant movements of population to remoter outlying district under the influence of gold-mining excitement naturally led to clashes with Indian tribes. ”

“ Another petition spoke of the "combined monopolizers of the wheat and gold dust trade." A "sure method of curing disease," it said, "is to remove the cause, the cause being scarcity of coined money in the hands of the people, establish a mint for the coinage of gold equal in fineness to the gold coin of the United States and place such safeguards and restrictions around it as they in their wisdom may think necessary." ”

“ There is evidence to show that this unique legal tender legislation and particularly the special form it took was as much due to the general indebtedness of the people to their few merchants as it was to the scarcity of specie. The Legislature "fearing a general effort to force payment would be made by the merchants, and knowing there was not a sufficiency of the precious metals to pay the debts of the country, thought it their duty to do something to save the debtor from a ruinous sacrifice of property." ”

“ But, in a more profound sense, the people of the Columbia and Puget Sound basins are one, and with a natural development will not only remain united, but will have relations increasingly intimate. Nature has so ordained it. ”

“ Those who had remained at home were doing almost if not quite as well financially because of the high prices that lumber and all products of the farm, needed in California, brought. The people of Oregon were thus supplied abundantly with a money metal. But it was in the form of dust. In this state it was not only inconvenient to handle, but the farmers were being imposed upon in traffic in which it was used as the medium of exchange. Early in 1849 at least two petitions, with numerous signatures, were presented to the Legislature asking for its coinage. ”

“ In these two fields of economic history and science, and of the world's trade relations with the Pacific Northwest, lies the work that this society can do. First, it should organize what would virtually constitute an academy devoted to the preparation of accounts of the development of the economic, institutional, and social elements of our civilization, and of scientific expositions of our natural resources, with the recommendation of policies from which will result their utilization to the highest public welfare. ”

“ But the projects instigated by these would all have been retarded, they would have languished and possibly have been defeated, had not provision been made to make life worth living in Oregon for the American settler. Ewing Young's leadership and activities prevented a partial relapse to the privations of barbarism in this isolated community and gave the impulse to an advancing standard of living in matters of food, shelter and power to utilize the natural resources. ”

“ The fundamental legal tender act of early Oregon was passed at this session. It provided that, "in addition to gold and silver, treasury drafts, approved orders on solvent merchants, and good merchantable wheat at the market price, delivered at such places as is customary for merchants to receive wheat at, shall be a lawful tender for the payment of taxes and judgments rendered in the courts of Oregon Territory, where no special contracts have been made to the contrary." Treasury certificates or scrip were already receivable for dues to the Government. ”

“ Only methods that are effective and pure will suffice us. American talent and genius will be inspired by unlimited opportunities, not only for economic gain and political influence, but also by conditions that favor creations of beauty and the attainment of Greek poise of intellect. The Pacific Coast, philosophers say, furnishes the physical basis for the development of Grecian traits of civilization.
The Lewis and Clark exploration that was fraught with as much of this glorious outcome as any single event can be should have its centennial anniversary appropriately celebrated ”

“ It meant, and was intended to mean, eventual exclusion from Oregon. Young had become desperate. If he could not get into relations of mutual advantage and co-operation with his fellowmen and neighbors through exchange of his surplus of beaver skins, horses or wheat for the vital necessities of a civilized life he proposed to erect a distillery and offer a commodity for which white man and Indian would risk the danger of the displeasure of the Hudson's Bay Company and their own destruction as well. ”