Luella Clay Carson

“ What peculiar responsibility is given into the keeping of the women of our day and region? It is this: It is an opportunity to aid in establishing standards of social character and attainment in the making of a great State from its infancy to its maturity. A woman in Massachusetts or Ohio to-day touches a fractional part of State history; a woman in Oregon to-day is herself part of a transfiguration. Whenever in history has there been so rapid and so vast a growth as will take place in the Northwest in the next fifty years? ”

“ In contemplating the ways and means at command through which to aid permanently in the building of a State a peculiarly congenial field offers a plan that must come in early in previsions for the welfare of any community, and that is a plan to develop definite, feasible methods of fostering industry, manufacture of something, the love of labor and the productive spirit. Whatever we wish to put into Oregon's life we must put into Oregon's homes and Oregon's schools. Not the idle whittling of many whistles and the noisy blowing of them is the best thing for a boy. ”

“ Slowly from precedent to precedent, law is broadening in its recognition of inalienable rights of men, women, and children. "Men's rights" is a term that is sacred. Battles have been fought to secure those rights, documents wrought out to define them, and democracy is ready to defend them. "Women's rights" will outgrow being a term of reproach. Whether suffrage shall become a possession and responsibility of woman or not, her rights shall become more and more understood and protected by the race. ”

“ It seems most fitting that every club select, in its community, some young woman of promise who could not hope unaided to secure a higher education, and through some annual fund, small though it be, help her to help herself. Let each woman's club in the State thus foster the true college education of some high-minded girl, and there will come to Oregon added strength in the forces that make for grace and charity and reverence and beauty of holiness. ”

“ Labor and sacrifice and responsibility make manhood and nations.
Emancipation of women—so-called—must not contribute toward putting the shackles of indolence, irresponsibility, aimlessness upon men. The work of women must coöperate with the work of men and inspire it, else women would better forever remain in the home, and leave man to wrestle with the outside world as his sphere to subdue unaided and alone. In the transformation now going on here is a problem for woman to work out: How to burgeon out of herself, not encroaching upon the rights of others, not minimizing the powers of others. ”

“ Ought not our people to cultivate in our boys and girls, young men and maidens, during the four college years, love of home and loyalty to State, and a sense of responsibility for its welfare? What of the wisdom in having large numbers go abroad for undergraduate work? Our home institutions need to be developed to be worthy of the best that Oregon can do for its youth.
It is indeed enriching to our State-life that from year to year students return bringing home something of the wealth of thought and culture from the great colleges. ”

“ The courses in domestic science at the Agricultural College in Corvallis are demonstrating to many homes not only the health and economy in foods scientifically prepared, but what is of hardly less importance, something of the grace and beauty in the drudgery of everyday life. The association of everyday work on the farm,—for the men in the fields, for the women in the homes,—with the processes of science is uplifting and enlightening. It dignifies toil, brings reproach upon prodigality and neglect, and magnifies the relation of order and beauty of surroundings to good health. ”

“ If so, then will not, in the long run, the civilization be saner and more philanthropic if woman help to build it? As woman enters the daily toil she will learn of the travail under which the world struggles. She will learn how man has to strive to maintain himself and those dependent upon him and how he has sometimes to agonize. And if they mutually find that their cause is mutual may not the world grow? It is not woman's rivalry and man's defeat that labor wants, but woman's faith and patience and spirit and man's persistence and conquest. ”

“ There are daughters everywhere in Oregon who are longing for a glimpse into the beauties of art, the heavenly fields of larger thought. One earnest, devoted woman who has secured efficiency through higher education is of untold value to a community in her influence for character and for all that refines and purifies. There is no surer way for the clubs to contribute to the welfare and steadiness and loftiness of our larger State life than by aiding our women to secure increased powers and deepened spirituality. ”

“ What soul of womanhood pent up in the child-mother Sacajawea! As she heard the cooing of the baby she carried she never forgot that she was a guide, a lamp unto the feet of valiant men; a lover of baby Baptiste, her husband Charboneau, her people the Shoshones, she never relinquished her mission: to lead men to the land they sought for. ”

“ Far be it from our federation to think that they shall enter into the race for wealth and dominion! It is a time for thoughtful working out of plans that will keep alive and foster the finer issues of mind and heart and soul and spirit. There must be inculcated the supreme belief in goodness as the one law of life. If we would secure honesty in public service we must have honesty and unquestioning obedience in childhood. At the root of civic integrity is childhood in the home and school. ”

“ Modern methods of home keeping and school keeping can not supplant the influence of the sterling virtues on the growing child. Ever should plans for the improvement of any enterprise in a community point like the needle to the north pole of integrity in all that enters into the character and habits of the youth. It goes without saying that the home is the first source of honesty and righteousness. Constancy there, pride in the home and an enduring love of it will engender a sentiment that will make impossible the growing idea that a decree of court absolves all responsibility. ”

“ It has been the faith, the hope, the enthusiasm of strong men and women that have made possible the steady climb of manhood and womanhood; they rise together. And it is indeed a lofty height to which our nation has arisen at the beginning of this century. ”

“ Industry is the mother of invention; invention is the forerunner of art. France is first in art because the people are trained as to the hand. Germany is first in industry because the teaching is of the man, the citizen. The master of Germany is the schoolmaster. Nothing promotes honest labor more surely than power to labor effectively. Nothing promotes art more surely than power to labor constructively. Nothing promotes a home-building nation more surely than steady habits of self-reliance and self-support. ”

“ One prodigious undertaking alone is their work as teachers in the secondary-schools and the colleges. The purpose of all education is to develop character and the chief test of character is to render service. Service is the end; education only the means. A French writer has said "The test of civilization is the place which it affords to women." Is it not true that the test of an educated woman is some sort of service to her day and generation?
We are as thoroughly committed to higher education of women as to universal education of the masses. ”

“ The doors of our State are open to the world and a vast procession is tending thitherward. Time and the race have so decreed. We can not call a halt if we would. In the next ten years towns will grow into cities; farms into towns; remote settlements into neighborhoods.
Hence it is that the women of Oregon, inheriting the best attained by the womanhood of time, possessing this beautiful home and standing on the threshold to greet the incoming civilization,—are facing a new opportunity that in magnitude, in possibilities, exceeds any before placed in the keeping of a company of women. ”

“ Homes must be kept sweet, wholesome, and attractive if their inmates would be kept loyal, and surely there is no nobler work for woman than to conserve inviolability in the home-spirit through all the means possible. Health, cheerfulness, comfort inside and nature outside make a home dear. May the day never come when a large population of Oregon will dwell in apartment houses with window gardens for nature! ”

“ Oregon is too choice and has too great a future to build to be encumbered with other than good raw material out of which to make a State. If the thoughtful sociologist and the beneficent railways will only combine to protect our cities from worthless migratory classes; to fill our verdant country lands with home-building immigrants there will be indeed, for altruistic women, an opportunity to aid in building a commonwealth. ”

“ The women of the State of Oregon come of a long line of mothers who with fearless eye, lit by deep love's truth, looked steadfastly into the unknown with faith and fortitude. There were mothers, who with their courageous husbands and sons, advanced into the solitudes beyond the Alleghanies on to the lonely fastnesses along the Ohio. ”

“ Woman is making ready to respond to a double realization of responsibility: a realization that there is strength in union and even a deeper realization that there can be no permanent union without units. Union of many ideas and many ideals for some common purpose is one of the characteristics of our generation. Union of diversity is the highest principle of art, of democracy, and of the modern State.
So must it be the principle governing the work and influence of womanhood in this Northwest. It is essential that there be common bonds ”

“ Womankind also must persistently work out its own salvation with gradual aid from the powers, seen and unseen, that prepare for that consummation toward which the whole world moves.
Since those faint pleadings were published in the land of the Magna Charta, no more remarkable change has taken place in civilization than the change in the status and consequent ambitions of woman. Christianity, freedom, education, and organization have worked together side by side. Christianity prepared the way for her to become a partaker in the thoughts and deeds making for human destiny. ”

“ Economic dependence is the basis of all slavery. To-day in any large city scores of women are enjoying the health and independence that come from labor and the approval of public opinion.
The growing complexity of life during the last seventy years, the growing demands from women in the working world, the increase of art and refinements,—these have brought new ambitions and necessities that can only be met through higher education. ”

“ In our own country, where education is the safeguard and labor is honorable, the richness of learning is hers if she can but ask for it and the right to make her own living, if need be, and so she may be prepared for a life of usefulness, goodness, health, and self-respect.
Our day of organization for effectiveness invites her to ally herself with other women for the closer study of needs and for the surer planning to fit herself to relieve those needs and so to ameliorate the sufferings of the sick and helpless to enlarge the hopes of the well and strong. ”

“ It is also just as essential that every woman in this new West be given to the utmost every opportunity to develop her best self in her own best way.
If this two-sided principle be accepted, then it follows that all associations of women can have no surer influence upon the future than by reaching out everywhere for individuals and setting them in paths leading to larger life. The womanhood of our State suggests not artificial distinctions made by wealth, position or geographical situation, but daughters fit to be the corner stones of the temple ”

“ Our Oregon colleges have thus far written no mean records. You may find on any campus in the State a pure democracy. The standard is merit, not wealth or influence. What a man is establishes his position. Large members of the students are self-supporting and from humble homes. The idle spending of money is rare. It sounds strange indeed to say, in these days of college extravagance, that at our State University $350 will provide all the needs for a college year, for a man or woman, comfortably. ”

“ A civilization now in its beginnings will pass through youth to middle age in a lifetime and the young men and women about us will guide it to its maturity. No ruins are here. The work is one of construction. It is a responsibility to tear down errors of the past and to put in their places new ideals. ”

“ We have faith to believe that such education not only imparts information, but lessens wrong and crime, lessens temptation, increases content and happiness, increases the earning power of the working woman, increases the influence of mother and daughter and sister in the home, increases the refined qualities and graces of womanhood, and the effective forces of the nation. ”

“ Language is inadequate to express crises in history; words are weak to reveal a supreme moment in the development of a noble epic. And so now how shall I utter the thoughts that arise as I try to define this crisis, this supreme historical moment? ”