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THE WEST SHORE.
THE WEST SHORE,
ILLUSTRATED,
PUBLISHED KVKMY SATUklJAY, AT THE CORNER Ot COLUMBIA ANU WATEK STKEETS,
PORTLAND, ORKUON.
New Yovk OmtK, No. 48 Tkihune Blii.oisg.
Subscription Price, Four Dollars per Year. Single Copy, Ten Cents.
AOCMIM ALL OOMMUMCATIONfl MO Mwl AU RlWITTAMMI PAVAhl TO
THE WEST SHORE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
PORTLAND, ORECKJN.
INTIIID AT Tf WtT OTTlM AT KMTLANO. OMOON. FM TRAMMIWOM THMUOM TM MAIL AT M00MO OLAH HATIT).
SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 1891.
While other cities have been busily engaged in organizing prize fighting
clubs and seeking an uneviable notoriety by offering large purses for noted
bruisers to make chopping blocks of each other within their precincts, Portland
has cast her influence on the side of decency and decreed in favor of genuine
athletics, devoid of degrading brutality, More than 200 of the best young
men of the city have organized an amateur athletic club upon a solid and per
manent basis, from which the professional slugger will be as rigidly excluded
as a case of smallpox.
One by one those Oregon cities tliat in the past made records for moss.
backism tliat bid fair to endure till the end of lime have shaken off the cere
ments of the grave and risen to a new life. Astoria is the last addition to the
list. Her failure to support the railroad scheme and other movements designed
to increase her commercial imiortance seemed to mark her as hopelessly
inert, but when a city can rustle around and in a few hours raise $17,000 for
a prize fight there is at least a reasonable hope of resurrectioa Nearly ever)'
city except Asturia has a railroad, but few of them have the enterprise to bid
so high for a prize fight, and Astoria is to be congratulated upon her unique
position.
Foreign newsiapcr corresondents are again plunging Europe into war,
in accordance with the usual spring custom that has prevailed for years. That
at any lime there is ample foundation in the large armaments and numerous
international complications for the scribblers to work Uon is what lends plaus
ibility to their theories and gravity to the situation. When men constantly go
" heeled " for a fight there is every prosiect that a fight will not be long de
layed, and this is as true of nations as of individuals. But there is a deeply
moled aversion to war among the people of all nations upon whom the suf
fering and misery it would create must full, and this sentiment would be so
intensified by the actual resort to arms by some agrieved or ambitious poten
tate, that consequences not taken into the calculation might be the result.
Upheavals from within might produce a greater and more lasting change in
the present political condition of Europe than any possible success in arms,
and il is doubtless through such a source that (his change, so desirable for
the progress of the human race, will come.
It has been finally determined that the Pacific coast will have the pleasure
of entertaining President Harrison, who will leave Washington on his western
trip two weeks hence. He should be welcomed and entertained as the presi
dent of the United States, rather than an individual, and all political sentiment
should he hud one side. It is for the interest of the west tliat the nation's
public men should visit k and Ireeome conversant with its needs and the con
ditions under which it is making such wonderful progress. Ignorance on the
part of memliers of congress and cabinet and departmental officers has de
prived the west of much th.it is needed to promote its development, ami the
only cure for (he evil is education. If the journey shall ocn the president's
eyes sufficiently to make him see the advisability of having the Pacific coast
represented in his cabinet, it will he of great advantage to us in (he more
intelligent treatment western interest will receive at the hands of the ad minis
Iratkm, Aside, however, from any consider.11 ions of this kind, the presence
of the chief magistrate of the nation should lie considered an honor calling
for a pniier testimony of our respect.
It seems only necessary for one individual to deliver an historical lecture
on the subject ol the settlement of the country for forty others to start a bom
bardment of it in die press. The " Whitman Myth," as the anti-missionary
historiant call it, is as hard to lay as the gtust of llanquo, while the other
party find as much difficulty in making the people look upon it as genuine
flesh and blood. Apparently it has never occurred to these controversialists
that there is a middle ground of truth lying somewhere between them upon
which they all could stand if they would but give up the prejudices engen
dered through years of dispute and make a dispassionate review of the evi
dence. Such an investigation would doubtless result in a majority report that
the extravagant claims of the missionary party have little, else than leal and
the product of a lively imagination tor support, resting, however, upon a foun
dation of fact s and that the absolute negation of the other side requires
material modification. It would reveal the fact that while the cod fishing tail,
the Fort Walla Walla wings, and the long ears of the dramatic incidents said
to have occurred in Washington, could be shaved off, and with them the legs
and feet of the story about raising a train of immigrants, there would be still
left a respectable body to the missionary animal, which the other side might
see if they would remove their smoked glasses.
Under the caption of " A Noble Boy," a contemporary presents the fol
lowing : .
George Hunn, of Emigrant Springs, in Wasco, Oregon, has a son, Peter, eleven years
old, who began plowing al the age of eight, when he plowed aoo acres with three horses.
Iletwmt the age of eight and (en he ran a gang plow with five horses, and during his
eleventh year he ran a four-horse drill and drove a four-horse header wagon all through
harvest. Few boys of the same age can beat thai record. If there are any who can, we
don't know of them. Such boys are w orth raising, and are a blessing to a mother and a
joy to a father, which last forever. Strange, all our boys can't come up to the Wasco
fellow.
The boy is all right, but what can be said of a father who will require a
boy of such tender years to exhaust his vitality in doing a man's hard labor?
This habit, so common among farmers, of making slaves and pack horses out
of their children, checking the proper development of both mind and body, is
more indicative of an undue regard for economy than a desire to provide for
their welfare. It explains why those who are reared in such a school are
behind the rest of the world in mental endowment and opportunity to enjoy
the blessings of life, and also why those who are able to break away in youth
from such an environment never willingly place themselves within it again
why, in fact,'the " boy leaves the farm." If farmers would pay a little more
attention to the education of their children and a little less to getting a man's
work out of a boy of ten years of age, it would not be many years before the
condition of the farmer would be so much better than it now is that it would
not be necessary to resort (0 the questionable measures proposed by the
farmers' alliance to improve it.
It is a matter ol congratulation that a western man has been selected for
land commissioner, a man who is sufficiently well acquainted with the needs
and methods of settlers to construe the law according to its spirit in their
interests, and not harrass them by absurd, technical decisions and regulations,
as has been the custom of the past. Under the Cleveland administration the
land office was conducted on the theory that every man who entered a tract
of government land did so with the purpose of defrauding the government.
Thousands of cases where settlers had complied with the law in every particu
lar were held suspended in the general land office because the commissioner
had not time to give them a careful investigation to see if there was not some
possible technical defect upon which the refusal of a patent could be based.
Meanwhile, without patent, settlers could not borrow any money upon their
claims for the purpose of improving them. A cry of protest went up from
all over the west, but was unheeded, while the suspended cases continued to
pile up in the land office. With the Harrison administration there came a
change, and the good, old, common law rule that a man must be considered
innocent until proved guilty was substituted for the theory of total depravity,
and settlers began to receive their patents. But even then the interests of
settlers were made a secondary consideration, and the affairs of the department
were not ordered in sympathy with them. The appointment of Hon. Thomas
II. Carter, of Montana, to this position is a final recognition thai the west
itself has a greater interest in the honest and judicious settlement and cultiva
tion of its own lands than any oilier section of the country, and that a western
man is consequently the most competent and serviceable person to have at the
head of the general land office. It is conceded that ignorance of the condi- .
lam and needs of settlers upon public lands has had more to do with (he
apparently hostile position assumed by the officials at Washington titan any
desire 10 retard the settlement of public lands or to make a record, and the
apK..ntment of Mr. Carter removes this great source of trouble. An intelli
gent construction of the land law, and revision of departmental regulations
may be confidently anticipated.