Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/64

54 research of the compiler that are with fine art used to articulate these elements and round out the story, do achieve an effect, different from that of a connected narrative, but probably equal to the highest.

The last volume is wholly taken up with an exhaustive index and bibliography. The contents of each of the first five include a main portion—averaging about two-thirds of the volume—the output of the pen of the elder Scott, functioning as editor and publicist. This main body of each volume is followed by an "appendix" by the son in which we have a most effective exhibit of the historian's art of enabling the reader to get a complete mental picture of the course of events, with references to the sources of pretty much all extant records for the account given. There are thus two positive historical contrbutions fused in the work, the nucleal or textual, that originated during the period from 1865 to 1910, excepting a gap of five years from 1872 to 1877; the second, designated as the "appendix" in each volume, applied to the bringing of additional light from other sources and to the factual setting of each situation discussed by the editorial or address.

No assurance bearing on the character of this work need be offered to the great majority of those who were as adults living in the Pacific Northwest prior to 1910. 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.

This institutionalizing of the editorial sanctum of the Oregonian with Harvey W. Scott in charge came about naturally. As a boy of fourteen he participated in the