Harvey Whitefield Scott

“ Yet the old principles of industry and of prudence never with safety can be abandoned.
Oregon now is feeling the rush of new tides of life. There has been progress always, indeed, but the current at times has been checked ; even at times there has seemed to be almost a refluent movement Prudence sometimes outdoes itself on one side, as ambition often overleaps itself on the other. But it is apparent that Oregon is making greater progress in these ten years than in any other two decades of its history. ”

“ We have now at the end of the century a very different Oregon from the Oregon of the "fifties"; but it has been wrought out by evolution, not by revolution. The Oregon of today is the true child of the earlier Oregon, with the family likeness strong, with the family traits predominating. The pioneer makes, now as ever, the spirit of the country. Others have prospered, in a material sense, more largely than the pioneer. ”

“ The Oregonian is broadly condemning the valley population and indulging a wicked venom of malice and contempt, but poorly conceive either facts or motives. In its whole spirit and character The Oregonian is, itself, of the pioneer world. Its roots lie deep in the pioneer life. ”

“ The only immediate hope of such a wake-up and shake-up of the Willamette Valley as will stir its latent forces and bring the country into line with modern industrial life and spirit, lies in the possibility of effort from the outside. The valley will do little for itself. The power of adaptation to new ways and new uses lies not within the present population. If the successors of the pioneer had his push and hardihood something might be expected from them ”

“ At the very threshold of our organic social life, while the criminal element and the vigilance committee in turn controlled the affairs of neighboring communities, there was created for Oregon, by the morality, the intelligence and the force of its pioneer population, a provisional system embodying everything which modern statecraft deems essential to the welfare of the people. ”

“ There is land to be had in the Willamette Valley in great bodies and at small price. It would be worth the while of the Southern Pacific Railroad, since it has a great invested stake in the valley, to buy up a whole district and repeople it with a view to an experiment in industrial regeneration. It would be interesting and, we believe, vastly profitable, if there could be set in the heart of this dormant country a community of strictly modern farmers, large enough to organize the industries and to maintain the coöperative spirit of systematic agriculture. ”

“ The people of early Oregon had come out of the pioneer conditions in the then pioneer states of the Mississippi Valley, had been forgotten by their old friends there, forgotten even by their own relatives, had not kept up with the new develop- ment, and indeed had no means of doing so. On the other hand, in Washington a new people had come, out of the newer development of the Eastern States, in new and quick touch with the people from whence they came. ”

“ It cannot, we think, be denied that the pioneer spirit makes a slow country in a material sense; but there are other interests in community life far above increase of commodities and multiplication of towns; and it is in its relation to these higher interests that the pioneer spirit is seen in its best character. If it be asked what has the pioneer spirit done for Oregon, it is only necessary to point to the conditions which differentiate Oregon from the other Pacific states. ”

“ Joint occupation of the country by British subjects, and by people from the United States, each party hoping to hold the great Pacific Northwest for its own country, hastened action while the inhabitants were yet very few. Such, however, was the vigor and activity of the Americans that, though they were at first inferior in numbers, they soon gained the ascendant, and, rapidly reinforced during the years that followed, they had fully established civil government in Oregon long before the question of national jurisdiction was finally settled between the United States and Great Britain. ”

“ They decline the enterprise that calls for coöperative effort, and will not yield to the steady grind of systematic industry. They are not a lazy people, for they are capable of prodigies of energy when it suits their mood; but they are an undisciplined people. The country stagnates in their hands because they will not do the things essential to its thrift and progress. This is not said in the spirit of fault-finding. The Oregonian is not among those who sneer at the pioneer spirit. ”

“ The bulk of Washington's population came recently from the East. The bulk of Oregon's population came here in early times, or was born here. Coming recently from the East, the population of Washington has retained its touch with the East. Every newcomer into Washington left friends behind him who took interest in him, who was anxious for his welfare, to whom he wrote accounts of the country, to whom he sent Washington newspapers. Persons who came to Washington wrote back to their "home paper," giving an account of the country, always a glowing one. ”

“ From Oregon, even in that early day, we could get a view, through commerce, of the wide world. In the first and last analysis all progress of mankind depends upon the sea, for the sea is the medium of universal communication. And, probably, all life on our planet began in the sea.
Native life in this country at the time when the pioneers came was adjusted strictly to the environment. The Indian probably had reached his limit of progress. Without assistance from outside sources, man in America could have got on no further. ”

“ Man, centered on himself, always looks with suspicion, usually with disdain, upon the larger outward world.
In the middle of the Upper Mississippi Valley, in the states of Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois, the people, at the time my observations began, were just beginning their change from the first pioneer conditions to the more varied life that resulted from growth of population, and from partial subjugation of the original forces of nature to the slow advance of town life. ”

“ Familiar as I am and, during a long period, have been, with the growth and progress of the Oregon country, and, indeed, of all our Pacific Coast states, I am yet, upon review of this growth and progress, astonished at what has been accomplished, within the period of my own observation. We who observed the slowness of the growth, during a long period of time, could not imagine we should live to see what we have seen ”

“ As American influence increased, our pioneers became constantly more active and urgent for the formation of a government. Most of the subjects of Great Britain naturally held aloof from a movement in which American influence was likely to be paramount. We had three classes of Americans in the Oregon country: First, American trappers or mountain men, who were hostile to the Hudson's Bay Company and strongly attached to the United States; second, the American missionaries, who were ardently attached to the institutions of their own country, which are bound up with religious freedom ”

“ On the seventh of February, 1841, a meeting of some of the inhabitants was held at Champoeg, then the center or seat of the principal settlement, "for the purpose of consulting upon the steps necessary to be taken for the formation of laws, and the election of officers to execute them.' The call was cautiously worded, so as to avoid the troublesome question of national sovereignty; for the Americans, who were making this initiatory movement, thought it prudent not to go too fast, realizing that the population of the country, though divided in their allegiance, yet had to live together. ”

“ Under the constitution reported by the committee the legislative power was to be vested in nine persons to be chosen by the qualified electors; each district to have representation in proportion to its population, excluding Indians. No discrimination as to suffrage was made against persons not citizens of the United States, but "every free male descendant of a white man of the age of twenty-one years and upward, an inhabitant of this territory at the time of its organization," was declared a qualified elector. ”

“ There, three-score years ago, the people were just beginning to emerge from the conditions of pioneer life. The chief agency that affected this change was improved methods of communication. On these all progress depends. People in isolation adapt themselves to their circumstances. They make themselves content with what they are and with what they have. They become very serious, they are tied to a deep religiosity, yet become extremely narrow and provincial. They come to think they "know it all." Oregon got this notion in the days of its long isolation. ”

“ The timber of Oregon is still almost untouched, and, within a few years, will become the basis of an immense activity; while a large part of the timber of Washington is gone already. Oregon, therefore, has an industry coming which in Washington within a few 3rears will be practically exhausted. There is a probability that, within a period not exceeding twenty-five years, the population of Oregon may again exceed that of Washington, since relatively in this state so little has been done upon the resources which nature has offered to industry and enterprise. ”

“ No delegate to congress was elected by the people during the existence of the Provisional Government. After the settlement of the boundary dispute with Great Britain, it was hoped and expected that the jurisdiction and laws of the United States would be extended speedily over the Oregon territory. Yet congress at the next ensuing session took no action, and the people of Oregon were greatly disappointed. The cost of maintaining the Provisional Government and of upholding the sovereignty of the United States over this vast territory was weighing heavily on them. ”

“ It is the misfortune of Oregon that it has some stupid people who, without this plain presenta- tion, are unable to understand them. Some even blame The Oregonian for a general condition, which, of course, it has been unable to change or control. It has worked, however, at all times to the utmost of its power, and it believes that it may without immodesty say that its voice has ever been the main factor, as it today is the main factor, in keeping the name of Oregon before the world. ”

“ The instinct for making states, an instinct that so strongly characterizes that portion of the human race that has created the United States of America, never had clearer manifestation or more vigorous assertion. On the spot where this work was done we dedicate this monument this day. May every inhabitant of the Oregon country, through all ages, take pride in this spot, and an interest in preservation of this monument, as a memento of what was done here! ”

“ We are in touch, then, with a movement that includes more than one-half the human race. We are in the Philippine Islands ourselves, an incomparable station for observation and commerce. Participation in the results that are to come from the transformation of the Orient will be had through the ports of our Pacific states—the way stations en route to lands across the Pacific. ”

“ It is, too, the pioneer spirit that makes the fine social austerity which so pervades the moral atmosphere. It frowns upon a sensational and unclean press; it banishes gambling, even in its minor forms, from respectable circles ”

“ In pioneer days in Oregon, as elsewhere in America, the beginning of settlement was followed almost immediately by organization of government. The instinct of the race to which we belong to establish civil institutions and to organize government under regular forms of law was manifest here before there were so many as one hundred persons of American nativity in the whole country west of the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ Such a community would be very useful to the country as an object lesson; and of especial service in assisting the organization of other and similar communities. We know of no better locality for such an effort than that of Southern Yamhill and Northern Polk, named in a recent writing in these columns, where a syndicate operator finds that 40,000 acres of choice and improved farm lands can be bought for a price averaging less than twenty dollars an acre.
Exploitation is what the Willamette Valley needs. It lacks no gift of nature fitting it for the home of thrift and fortune. ”

“ Society is in a perpetual flux, and though we look back to the past for instruction, we accept the present without regret, and look forward to the future with an eager but undefined expectation. We talk of successive generations of men, but, looking at society in a mass, the generations do not come and go. ”

“ Nature requires us to work, but has ways of punishing excesses in that direction, too. If she does it in no other way, she makes success itself useless, for her wreath often covers hair that has grown gray, and fame comes when the hearts it should have thrilled are numb. ”