The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society Part 2

[9] _Marine Gazette_, May 30, 1865.

[10] _Weekly Astorian_, December 18, 1876.

[11] Interview with Mrs. Young.

[12] Interview with Mrs. C. J. Trenchard, _nee_ Miss VanDusen.

[13] Interview with Miss Warren.

[14] County Superintendent's Record Book No. 1, 1853-1874.

[15] Interview with J. M. Welch, and others.

[16] Deed Book No. 1, Clatsop County.

[17] Interview with J. W. Welch.

[18] Interview with F. J. Taylor, and others.

[19] History of Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton, Northwest Publis.h.i.+ng Company, Vol. II, pp. 502-506.

[20] Letter of Mrs. W. W. Parker, December 12, 1902.

[21] County Superintendent's Record Book No. 1, 1853-1874.

[22] _Marine Gazette_, May 30, 1865.

[23] Report of County Superintendent W. B. Gray, 1866.

[24] Report of State Superintendent to Governor Geo. L. Woods.

[25] _Astorian_, July 1, 1873.

[26] Letter of Mrs. W. W. Parker, December 12, 1902.

[27] _Weekly Astorian_, February 5, 1876.

[28] _Weekly Astorian_, December 31, 1878.

[29] County Superintendent's Record Book No. 1, 1853-1874.

[30] _Weekly Astorian_, April 8, 1876.

[31] _Daily Astorian_, April 4, 1882.

[32] _Daily Astorian_, April 25, 1882.

[33] _Marine Gazette_, May 30, 1865.

[34] An eleven-mill tax was levied at the last school meeting.

AN OBJECT LESSON IN PATERNALISM

Even among those who have devoted their lives to the study of sociological problems, there is much difference of opinion as to the quant.i.tative and qualitative influence of certain social conditions in producing the generally admitted bad or adverse phases of human society.

At one time we read that poverty degrades men morally, and we peruse carefully prepared and apparently veracious tables showing that in the older countries there is an unfailing correspondence between criminal statistics and the price of bread; the per cent of offenses against persons and property increasing with the cost of the necessaries of life and diminis.h.i.+ng with the amount of human exertion required to obtain them. Such is the generally received opinion of the common people, and we hear from the political platform and see in the publications of reform parties the a.s.sertion that it is useless to preach morals to those whose minds are mainly occupied in devising means to keep the wolf from the door.

Those of our citizens who have given special attention to the debauching effects of the drink habit, call upon all to come to the rescue of American homes and American inst.i.tutions, by banis.h.i.+ng the American saloon, to which comes the response that poverty is the princ.i.p.al cause of intemperance and its incidents, and that the first duty of patriots is to remove poverty.

Equally certain and circ.u.mstantial, on the other hand, are those who affirm that there is no necessary connection between poverty and criminality, and that, as a general rule, debauchery and consequent decadence of moral faculty go hand in hand with material prosperity; and if mixed coincidence can establish casual connection, they are not at fault, for long before Goldsmith wrote of the time "When wealth acc.u.mulates and men decay," keen eyed observers had connected a general laxity of morals with the abundance and diffusion of wealth.

The failure of intertropical countries to furnish high grade men of morals and intellect, Doctor Draper attributes, not more to the enervating influence of heat, than to the ease with which human beings supply themselves with the necessaries of life. Coming down to the present period, it is common knowledge--the expanding profligacy and criminality of the mining camps where men could obtain extravagant wages in gold for services which in other pursuits would yield them a scanty living.

Probably from such lump comparisons and crude observations, under complex conditions, have arisen two schools of social economists, one whose princ.i.p.al and primary aim is to abolish poverty as the chief obstacle in the way of human progress, and the other whose purpose is not definitely stated, but which conservatively clings to the _laissez faire_ doctrine of letting every man's condition depend upon his individual exertion; and as so far, in the world's history, poverty has been the condition of the great ma.s.s of mankind, in spite of individual exertion, the anti-poverty school of necessity, must resort to collective or state control of the industries of men, and thus relieve them from want and the fear of want, which are thought to be so depressing upon their energies.

Just how or to what extent the state is to interfere with the individual's management of himself, or to what extent or in what manner he shall be relieved when he has failed to provide for his own wants and the wants of those depending upon him, are at present outside of any satisfactorily practical programme, and hence collectivism may be held to include all socialistic schemes from Bellamy up or down.

In fact, collectivism is entered upon the moment the state is organized, for in the rudest criminal code there is a manifest attempt to relieve the individual from the otherwise caution and care necessary to defend his person and property; and in truth, as government has advanced, so has collectivism advanced, until now in the United States of America the commonwealth is giving children primary education, supporting and caring for the deaf, blind, idiotic, insane, and criminal cla.s.ses, beside stimulating certain industries with bounties upon production or relieving them from the disastrous effects of free compet.i.tion, by levying taxes upon competing products.

It does much more. Commerce and agriculture have been relieved of their old time dread of the elements, for government now keeps watch and ward over the wind and waves, and gives timely notice of approaching disaster by land and sea. In the endeavor to pa.s.s benefits around, hatcheries for fish, experiment stations, laboratories, and various commissions have been organized and conducted at public expense; likewise the mails are carried, the public lands distributed to actual settlers or given to railroad companies, patents issued to inventors, bounties paid for the destruction of wild animals, noxious weeds exterminated, public officers appointed to examine food products, to conduct experiments upon flocks and herds, and to destroy those infected with contagious diseases.

All this and much more are the results of collectivism, and there seems to be a constant tendency, as well as a constant demand, for more in the same direction. Individualism is alarmed and socialism hopeful; the former, at the encroachments upon personal liberty and the discouragement of personal exertion, and the latter, from the prospect of a complete disappearance of the compet.i.tive principle from social life.

Here are two violent antagonisms, while there is no line of demarcation between them, as well defined as the most tortuous isothermal crossing the American continent. There is no scientific boundary of government. As between the two disputants it is a blind push and pull, in which neither party is satisfied with the result.

There are gradations upon either side, and long ago Herbert Spencer became alarmed at the coming slavery, and that good man Gerritt Smith thought government should have nothing to do with the education of children; that it is altogether a private function and can not be usurped by the state without serious injury to those most nearly interested.

While, however, doctrinaires have been groping for the scientific boundary, government has gone forward experimentally, with no chart but experience, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, no doubt, in its endeavors to follow the line of least resistance and do that which seemed likely to promote the general welfare.

Granting the evident natural law that development is the result of activity of faculty, and, as a consequence, that individual improvement must come from individual exertion, it may be safe to say that the scope of government should be such as to give or permit the greatest normal and harmonious activity to the units of population, in order to bring about the greatest amount of aggregate excellence and happiness; and still it appears to be a matter of experience and experiment, in which science and altruism play but a subordinate part.

Nevertheless, there should be investigation of governmental experiments, and the great and ever recurring question is, What do these show?

Has government help promoted individual competence, and has it promoted the general welfare? In answering this question it will not do to look at it as a whole; each experiment must be taken by itself, and there must be an elimination, so far as may be, of complicating and conflicting elements. Of course there will be no attempt in this paper to do more than report upon a single phase of government help, and one, too, which to my knowledge has never been utilized for throwing light upon the great economic question. I refer to the settlement of Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton under government auspices. It would seem as though there never existed more favorable conditions for a successful experiment in planting a model colony than were found here upon this Northwest coast. Certainly nature was lavish and the government munificent, and if these are chiefly instrumental in putting a community on its feet to stay, here should be found the living proof. Let us see; and first as to the country.

The Cascade range of mountains, a high ridge bearing north and south, nearly parallel to the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Pacific Ocean and about one hundred miles therefrom, divides the states of Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton into two unequal parts, popularly known as Eastern and Western Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton. Bordering the coast of both states is another ridge, much lower, and between these two mountain ridges, are cross mountains connecting them, and forming valleys with independent river systems. These western valleys are but little above the sea level, have moist, equable climates, abundant timber, and rich soils; while the country east of the Cascades is an elevated table-land, spa.r.s.ely wooded, quite arid, is subject to greater extremes of heat and cold and possessed of a strongly alkaline soil.

It is to the western valleys I wish to refer in this connection, as in these the donation land law chiefly operated until its expiration in the year 1855. Under that law every adult male citizen and his wife, immigrating to this coast before the year 1851, were ent.i.tled to six hundred and forty acres of land selected by the donees in such shape as they chose, and those coming after that time, were ent.i.tled to three hundred and twenty acres taken by legal subdivisions. Never before or since have such magnificent inducements been offered to settlers, and by the close of the year 1855 nearly all of the good lands in the Willamette, Umpqua, and Rogue River valleys were occupied by the donees who came from every State in the Union, but chiefly from the Mississippi Valley.

Saying that these lands were taken by families, in section and half-section tracts, gives but a faint idea of what was acquired.

Doctor Johnson's description of the happy valley in Ra.s.selas would be rather too poetical to adopt for this country, as this is too far north for people to depend upon the spontaneous productions of the earth, but in many respects there is much similarity. The great Doctor's fancy had not been expanded and enlightened by the vast accomplishments of modern science and invention, whereby the forces of nature have been utilized, and, as a consequence, his happy valley was constructed more to gratify an indolent and dreamy aestheticism than to promote economic industry.

In these western valleys, however, is everything that should stimulate men to the use of all their faculties, if steady and sure returns for exertion are better than unearned gratification of human wants and desires. Let the reader picture to himself an evergreen valley one hundred and fifty miles long and forty miles wide, a navigable river running the whole length, through its middle, with numerous branches on each side, the smaller rising in the foothills, the larger emerging from the forest covered mountains, the rich agricultural surface of the valley interspersed with timber and prairie in profitable proportions, and rising in gentle hills, among which are innumerable springs of pure, soft water, or subsiding into lowlands, here and there dotted by b.u.t.tes, and he has the Willamette Valley, said by Saxe of Vermont to be the best poor man's country on the globe. This picture does not represent all its advantages by any means.

Probably no farming country known has water power so abundant and diffused as here. Niagara is unrivaled for power, but the princ.i.p.al question there is one of distribution. Here the problem of distribution is reduced to small proportions, for no village or city is far away from water power.

The Cascade Mountains, through their whole extent, are resonant with the clamorings of unused force, and likely, in their dark fir forests will first be realized Edison's dreams of the application of electric power,--trees felled, cut into saw logs and conveyed to the mill, with little of man's help except intelligent superintendence.