Horace Sumner Lyman

“ The problem of industrial legislation is to give labor equitable rights in the resources of nature, and not permit private, or exclusive ownership, in the materials and natural energies that are required to carry on industry.
If the cannerymen had been legally allowed—and this is not to say a word against them—to own the river itself, and all the fish in it, the fishermen would have had no recourse but strikes and violence to prevent reduction of wages. Where labor is shut up to violence to preserve its part in reward of industry, it will use violence. ”

“ After the above seven items, a word should follow as to the need of an Oregon literature. Without its literature a people is lost; they can not think; they lose power to feel. Sympathy is withered. There is no civic consciousness. No vital or manly people have been without their literature. Atlantic States' literature can not take the place of our own, any more than the last year's leaves can nourish this year's fruit. ”

“ The fishermen are co-operating among themselves, but competing with the capitalistic canners, and thereby have earned their respect.
Competition is no evil, but a necessary element of industry. It seeks only to supply the market with articles made increasingly desirable at a decreasing cost. It does thereby constantly shut off and crowd out inferior or expensive goods, but for these, substitutes better; giving better service at less expense. It is only when the laborer is not able to compete, and has no alternative but starvation, that labor is oppressed. ”

“ However, not to amplify this point or justify the fine old name of Oregon, whose origin and meaning we do not know, but wait for the future to discover, there are several things that we already have which point to the growth of a native Oregon literature, which will fill out and complete American literature,—and American literature just at present seems trailing her Psyche wings in the dust. ”

“ Indeed, it is not too much to say that in both of the above the student of science not only will find herein ample field, but that no science can be completed without recourse to northwestern states. Already the science of the age, in the person of Professor Huxley, has been indebted to Oregon, in the person of Professor Condon, for the most complete demonstration yet made in paleontology of the law of evolution; a debt, however, not yet acknowledged. If literature is to be the mirror of nature, in the field of either poetry or science our states are the place for it. ”

“ If every laborer, like these Columbia river fishermen, could proceed to work on his own account, and put out a product on the market, and reap his own reward, if wages did not suit him, there could be no oppression.
The industrial sin of the time is the shutting of labor away, mostly through legislative action, or neglect, from opportunity to make use of natural advantages. ”

“ Nevertheless, we believe that nothing would be more for the permanent advantage and culture of the people of Washington than a definite, intelligent, sympathetic study of our historical descent. While giving so much as they have done, there is yet much, perhaps quite as much, for them to gain.
This applies as much, and perhaps even more, to the people of Oregon. We are comparatively torpid; we have but the faintest conception of our historical wealth. A superficial familiarity only adds to our real density on the subject. ”

“ On account of operating an independent business of their own, they are enabled to stand upon a par with the other canners, who have to some extent regarded the business as simply a temporary investment to be made the most of while it lasted, and after it was "played out" to invest their capital elsewhere. It is to be said, however, that the canners now operating are men of much breadth of mind and ideas. An excellent fish law, prepared by the State Fish Commissioner, and having the fullest approval of both fishermen and canners, has just passed the Oregon Legislature. ”

“ Of Nez Perces folk lore I had heard only detached bits, but enough to learn that Coyote—"Old Coyote"—was the medium through which their flights of imagination found vent. Old Coyote was all that the subject of imaginative tales should be; at one time endowed with power almost godlike, at other times, the butt for some merry jest, or even ridicule. ”

“ Then he speak up and say, 'See, here is all this beautiful Clearwater Valley and you have made no people to inhabit it.' Coyote look around and see monster all gone; then he sees his hands all blood from dividing up the monster (and from its heart) , and he say, 'Bring me some water.' They bring water and Coyote wash hand, and as he wash he sprinkle blood on earth, saying, 'Here on this ground I make the Nez Perces, a tribe few in number, but strong and pure. "Here the Nez Perces have lived since that time, and by Kamiah is still the heart of Iltswowich, the monster." ”

“ Our Oregon youth are sometimes hastily spoken of as vapid and vicious. There is too often a disconcerting unconventionality about them, and a disappointing fondness for trifling amusements. A precocious development giving place all too speedily to premature decrepitude, is a still more disagreeable symptom. But with all that may be said, we have our proportion of steady boys and serious girls, whose ambitions, are high and whose strength is sufficient. In every school there are boys and girls who can already compose a letter or an article that would do credit to their elders. ”

“ They look upon salmon fishing as their permanent business. Many of the fishermen are well-to-do, owning comfortable homes in the city, and perhaps a "ranch" in the country, and look upon salmon fishing as the chief means of livelihood for themselves and children. They desire, therefore, to build up the business, provide salmon hatcheries in order to maintain the supply of fish, secure proper laws for protection of young salmon, and regulate the methods of fishing so as to enable all the fishermen to have a measurably equal chance at taking fish. ”

“ But Coyote calls to them, 'Come back all together for last wonder. For now, my friends, from present time through all the years to come, there shall be a new race of people on this earth—called Human Beings; so I cut up this dead Iltswowich, and from head I make the Flatheads; from feet, the Blackfeet; from other parts I make the other tribes of men.' So he cut up the monster into pieces, and cast the pieces to the north and east and south and west, and from the pieces came all the tribes on the earth. ”

“ Ole B. Olsen, secretary of the Union, reports that since their organization, and their business enterprise, there has been a marked improvement in the habits of the fishermen, who are now mainly temperate, thrifty, and ambitious to improve their condition. The most of them now, also, are married men, and are raising families and acquiring property. These men have found no serious difficulty in conducting a business worth about $200,000 a year. They employ the best legal advice regularly, and do not find the brains of other employers superior to their own. ”

“ If Oregon is to have a worthy future, it will first appear as a literary consciousness, uniting all elements of society that we have here, and charging the youth with an ideal to which they shall devote their lives. No one is going to make this for us; others are too busy in their own lot. ”

“ Well, when just little bit more to cut, Coyote says, 'Push all bones of our people to openings of monster's body, and when comes last stroke I push all out, and then they come to life again.' So when comes last stroke, and heart fall, Coyote push, and all bones and all animals rush out, except muskrat. ”

“ Wherever it has the alternative of inaugurating competition on its own account, and engaging its own energies, it will infallibly resort in the end only to industrial methods of obtaining; its share in proceeds. ”

“ We want something that will last at least a generation, as a vehicle of popular thought.
How to meet the want is the problem. We are accustomed to look upon truly vital literature as an inspiration, and not to be produced except by the chances of genius. ”

“ Our people of the present day have fallen to a lower level of aspiration, and we are morally degenerate sons; but it is to be remembered that in their intent and true purpose trade and production are also benevolent. Freed from the personal rewards that obscure their true nature these great utilities of industrial life, which we are now seeking to establish here, will also yield peace and good will. The paeans of peace are yet to be composed. Nowhere is there a soil more consecrated to such literature than here. ”

“ No people has been distinguished by a higher level of purpose from the beginning than have we. The famous history of the Atlantic States is dark with contention and superstition compared with our own. ”

“ Besides this, Washington and Idaho can not develop their own historical and traditional origins without going into Oregon territory; a broader and truer local spirit will enable them to see that it is a source of congratulation and even of pride for them to trace their descent through Oregon and the Oregon Trail. While not doubting that a certain contraction of aim adds to the intensity of energy, it is still important that local ambition and enterprise should not be allowed to efface historical truthfulness, or limit breadth of mind. ”

“ These impressions of sublimity and beauty, which touch us everywhere here, and are influential in forming early character, yield to older minds the invitations of science, as at every fissue and erosion the earth's history is disclosed ”

“ The rewards of industry and commerce and the professions are now too great for that. Literature as a vocation, provided one really writes his heart and tells the truth, is too nearly a whole burnt offering to claim any but the elect ”

“ The versatility and progressiveness of the people of Washington must be conceded, and their rapid increase in numbers, wealth, and commerce is leaving Oregon behind. This is due largely to the influx of eastern people and eastern capital who have seen opportunities open in the undeveloped resources of Washington which they could not so easily find in the older and slower Oregon. ”

“ The Coyote's medicine, however, was nothing more than a grass rope, by which he had tied himself to the mountain. But by it the monster was nonplussed and still gazed abroad to see what thing so small could still exert such force to resist his breath. The story goes on: "He (Iltswowich) rise up like any animal who hears challenge and look. Has eyes just like telescope,—see long way,—but no see Coyote yet. Coyote calls out again, 'Wako keape-wast-komahliksit, Iltswowich,' and shake just one stalk of grass (looks no larger than one stalk of grass) . ”

“ It is to be hoped that the attention of the authorities will be fittingly called to the desirability of speedy publication, as the Nez Perce is a living language, and is extending to nearly all the Rocky Mountain Indian tribes, and is doubtless a much better medium of civilization and religious thought to a people still accustomed to think in images rather than by definitions, than our English. ”

“ Our literature as it reaches its larger development will realize the high conceptions and reflect the intense consciousness of the native races.
4. The history of our old Oregon is the history of freemen. Our soil has never been stained with slavery. Upon close examination it will be seen that not one important act of pioneer history was not determined at last by the consciousness of personal liberty—freedom of the body as well as of the mind. ”

“ The brains of the men who came to Oregon were teeming with ideas of social and religious improvements for the race, and so far from being selfish in their aim were rather open to the charge of Utopianism. ”

“ Bradbury's narrative. His way of coming illustrates the manner in which Oregon gained some of her best people—the restless sailor element to which she has owed so much in a commercial way. Without the pioneer seamen, the farming people from the interior, remarkable as they were on land, would probably have remained comparatively torpid so far as trade and navigation were concerned, and thus been unable to develop a truly progressive industrial community. ”

“ Geographically, the basin of the Columbia and its sea coast is a unit. Commercially, it must also be so. Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana will flourish in a business way as they co-operate for mutual interest. There is a solidarity here much greater than that of New England. Local rivalries will continue, but general union must be effected before our states take the part they should either in local development or in the national destiny. ”

“ At the two thousand or five thousand foot level it becomes sylvan and pastoral, as at the ten thousand foot level it becomes universal. We can extend our vision and unfold our sympathies almost anywhere here by simply going up—for we have the mountain peaks to go up on. ”