Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/356

 one to make passes for public officials compulsory, another to beat a sheriff's graft. But U'Ren was still after the tools.

But will this tool-making never be over? "Yes," said U'Ren; and he added very definitely, "Reform begins in 1910." And one proposition in the list for 1908 showed what we may expect. This was a bill "to exempt from taxation factory buildings and machinery; homes and home improvements, but not the lots nor the farms. Quietly worded though this was, the reform involved is economic, and economic reforms are, as we have seen, what U'Ren is after. And he will get them, he and the people of Oregon. I believe that that state will appear before long as the leader of reform in the United States, and if it is, W. S. U'Ren will rank in history as the greatest lawgiver of his day and country.

But what about the man? What about reforms got as he has got his? It must be remembered, before passing judgment, that Oregon was in that stage of corruption where the methods were loose, crude and spontaneous. Perhaps the condition I mean can best be brought home by citing an agreement written by Harvey W. Scott, the really great editor of that really great newspaper, the Oregonian (and of its afternoon edition, the Telegram), one night in 1903. There