Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/83



COMAN'S ECONOMIC BEGINNINGS OF THE FAR WEST 75

highest requisite for survival and that which has given best guaranty of possession here has not been power to conquer other men, but ability to utilize nature most largely and for highest and largest human good. A work that purports to be the story of the "Economic Beginnings" naturally passes in review the long procession of exploiters the seekers for treas- ures already accumulated and heaped in supposed cities and, after a long interval, the forty-niners who were eager to hunt for gold, though hid in beds of placer and veins of quartz ; the trappers of the beavers or traders for it and the hunters for the buffalo, animals that nature had led into this region; others who introduced horses and cattle to roam as wild; and finally those who introduced and husbanded both plants and animals and established more humane systems of relationship among themselves as husbandmen. Since economic efficiency and fair- ness seems to be the test determining destiny, and most certainly so in this region unencumbered by any established ogres of the past, it is well that a beginning should have been made in setting forth and emphasizing the economic principle in its shaping of the past. Such a narrative as Miss Coman's in sug- gesting to the people of the different commonwealths of this "Far West'' the central motive in the history they are making should aid them in utilizing all their past toward giving unity, strength and effectiveness in their collective aspirations and thus greatly accelerate their pace of social progress.

I will let Miss Comah herself state the means and method she relied upon. I quote from the preface of the work : "A goodly number of men who bore an influential part in this long and complex contest left .diaries, letters or journals re- counting what they saw and did. I have endeavored to tell the story as they understood it without bias or elaboration." This plan of handling i'nvolves much shifting of the scenes as one source is laid down and another is taken up. In fact, the presentation as a whole strongly suggests the effect of an his- torical panorama, with breaks such as would be occasioned by instantaneous flights from one region to another far distant