Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/569

Rh "________ $112,532.50"

And John Wilson bequeathed his great private library to the pubHc library; and it is now housed in the "Wilson room."

The elegant stone building in which the library is housed is also a gift from Ella M. Smith.

An object lesson of information, and a very great means of arousing interest in the pioneer history of the state, in the habits and character of the native Indians, and in the animal life that abounded in this region unknown ages ago, is the museum at the city hall. A trip through the museum galleries is a veritable trip through wonderland; and the thousands of visitors, both young and old attest the interest that these relics of a bygone age of the world and of our own fore-runners, always arouse in beholding them. The money spent on the subjects has given more pleasure to many thousands of people, and aroused in them, and especially in the young, a more abiding interest than any other equal amount of money expended on educational facilities in this city.

And for these benefits, and for the museum at all, the people of Portland and Oregon, and thousands of visitors from distant states, are indebted to Mr. L. L. Hawkins; who alone and almost wholly unsupported by others or by public aid, commenced collecting the materials for the museum a quarter of a century ago, and kept up his work for the pure love of it, and his interest in children, to the day of his death. L. L. Hawkins, is the founder and father of the Portland Oregon museum.

And after all is said, and after all is done, and all our boasting as a people, there is still left to confront the thoughtful observer, the raw head and bloody bones of wilful ignorance and unthinking iliteracy.

Mrs. Preston, superintendent of schools of Walla Walla County, Washington, notes the facts of the decline of the masculine elements in the teaching force of that county. Each year, she says, the applications of men for teachers positions grow fewer. Out of forty-two recent applicants for teachers' places the present season in that county, but two were young men.

The same may be said of many counties of the state of Oregon. And of a vast population of the city of Portland, and of all cities. And while many thousands are able to read and write a little, their brains have not had the cultivation, nor do they care to seek such cultivation, as will enable them to think. And they don't think.

The teachers' vocation has been one of the very slowest to rise to the requirements of prosperity's wage. This is held to be due to the pressure made upon it by an army of women who are forced by modern industrial conditions to make their own living, and perhaps contribute to the support of others, thus making supply outrun demand. The rapid elimination of men from the teachers' ranks is probably due to this cause. There is, moreover, a growing belief, due to custom in part, that teaching school is a woman's vocation, and that manly men do not seek it. This view does not apply to high school and college work, wherein