Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/904



"I expect that many blessings will be attributed to our new government, which are now taking their rise in that industry, and frugality, into the practice of which the people have been forced by necessity."

As many persons are prone to expect from the forms of government those benefits and blessings in life which can only come from industry, frugality and morality, it seems necessary to point to this eminently wise and good man, very properly named "The Father of His Country," as a teacher of that which is true, sound and safe on the subject of our municipal as well as national prosperity. No code of laws, form of government, or manner of its administration, can con- fer happiness and prosperity upon any people burdened with paupers, misled by ignorance or demoralized with vice or dissipation. Eminent for industry, frugality and all the virtues of private life, Washington had, more than any other man of his time, taken note of the things that made men strong, useful and successful, and clearly saw that while the new constitution and government was a necessity to bind the people together and found a nation, yet it was the virtues of the in- dividual man that must bring happiness and prosperity to all the people.

And with this index to the prosperity and happiness of our forefathers, we can see in the lives and acts of the pioneers of Oregon and Portland, the setting of the tide towards the prosperity and happiness of their descendants. Satisfied with the old fashioned simple ways of life, they devoted their energies to the development and cultivation of those qualities and virtues which promote the per- manent welfare of all men. They devoted their resources, economized their sav- ings, and freely gave of their substance to lay the foundations broad and deep to maintain the institutions of education, morality and religion. The pioneers clung to the never-failing all-conquering virtues of industry and frugality. Their lives would not adorn a modern novel. They may seem hard and uninteresting to their gregarious joy-riding, happy-go-lucky successors. But they had no need for a penitentiary, and nobody to lock up in an insane asylum ; no state wide convul- sions to restrain the demoralization of saloons, and no prosecutions of the un- speakable "white slave traffic." They wrought for the real, the enduring good of their fellow-men and women. Great wealth and vulgar display had no attrac- tions for them. They would fight for what they considered righteousness and jus- tice; and would not compromise for temporary gain. They professed a religion of fixed and unyielding dogmas, and lived up to its tenets as necessary to salva- tion. They established schools to teach what they believed, and that enforced a discipline that produced vigorous self-respecting men, and supported them with their own money and not that of the state. Football sluggers, college yells, and hazing ruffianism had no place in their curriculum.

In any comparison with present day conditions and people, the old pioneers will rest in honored graves and enjoy for all time an immortality of fame.

It would be interesting to inquire how far the pioneer spirit influenced present day conditions. The three questions that provoked the most discussion in the pro- visional government legslature (leaving out the national question) were those of education, temperance and morality. The impress of the pioneers in education comes down to the present in the three successful colleges they established — the Willamette, the Forest Grove, and the McMinnville; and the St. Paul's and St. Mary's seminaries. And these schools substantially hold to pioneer ideals in thor- oughness, high moral aims, and utilitarian results. The foot-ball craze does not in these schools overawe all other forms of training. From one of these schools graduated an editor of national reputation, and without a superior in the nation. From the same school graduated the state's most efficient member of congress in the past ; from another of these schools went the state's most efficient member of congress of today, and the third school sent forth a president of the American Medical Association, a United States senator, another congressman and a supreme judge; and a long list of other men of equal fame and honorable public service — all sons of pioneers. A long list of other men and women in addition to many names already noticed in this book might be made, showing the fiber and persis-