Page Six
JANUARY 1926
THE UNITED AMERICAN
work in Crockett, is giving a very interesting little
close-up of many citizens whom she discusses as “The
Unfortunate Native Born.” We know some people
in Oregon and elsewhere who could profit greatly by
reading this article.
*
*
*
The thinking citizens of California — and they are
evidently in the majority—are finding intelligent
adult education and Americanization a profitable en
terprise, an investment returning large dividends in
citizenship of the kind that builds the commonwealth
bigger and better. The immigrants who have had
faith enough in the people of California to cast their
lot among them will understand how to show their
appreciation when civic unity for better things is
needed; Teaching the foreign born the true prin
ciples of citizenship, exemplifying them and granting
them their constitutional rights without any signs
of evasion and reservation, as they are doing in Cali
fornia, is an investment in the future security of
state and nation that is worth emulating in every
state through the length and breadth of our land.
Some of the people in high places in Oregon, in
Washington and in other states would do well if
they commenced throwing overboard their prejudices,
quit their secret trading with foreign group politi
cians and started lining up for the common interests
that constitute the common good.
♦
»
*
Oregon is as rich in latent talents for virile, fair
and impartial citizenship as it is in natural resources.
Those who have been in the habit of capitalizing
American birth, racial and religious issues for polit
ical preferment in Oregon, have all but wrecked the
common faith, the essential virtue in political govern
ment. The present standard in state and (in many
sections) in community government in Oregon, is a
natural sequence, with little to explain how those
elected to executive positions come to sit in council
with and follow the suggestions of people who are
conducting a secret warfare against those of foreign
birth, of another race or of a different religious be
lief. The citizen of a fair and tolerant mind who is
interested in restoring constitutional conduct of gov
ernment in Oregon can put things right again in this
state if he does his duty as a citizen this year — reg
isters and casts his ballot in the interest of PRIN
CIPLES in government.
More elementary training for citizenship in
Oregon, along the lines pursued in California, will in
no time furnish a new outlook, a more intelligent con
cept of civic obligations, which after all — when
everything else has been tried — is the only remedy
that will restore lost faith and common unity. It is.
essential to the foreign born who doesn’t know, and
necessary to the native born who either learned his
citizenship lesson only in part, or, went out in life
and — forgot.
*
*
♦
The eyes of America are upon the West. There is
more than one reason why California, in the eyes of
the East, represents what back there is called the West.
Let us displace some of our citizens who by trad
ing principles for prejudices of the most destructive
kind have gained high positions of public trust in
these northwestern states, particularly in Oregon,
and the chief obstructions on the road to civic
achievements will have been removed and the broader,
fairer and more tolerant spirit that reigns in Cad-
fornia will develop in Oregon and obtain for this fair
state its just share of the high standards in citizen
ship, which — as the Easterner sees it — reflects
the West, through California.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS IN RETROSPECT
By H. J. LANGOE
LIOW swift the pace of time. Ere we realize it the
subte and agile youth has passed the demarka-
tion point of decrepitude. By recklessness some people
pass that point earlier than others and are prema
turely associating themselves with old age.
While those who make up the present generation are
speeding up the pace of Father Time, wearing them
selves out long before they reach the natural season of
life’s evening and leave their unfinished task to the less
matured, the monuments to progress that have been
erected stand as mute evidence of an active con
structive and inventive age.
Going back one hundred years, we hardly find
a trace of Portland, the present metropolis of Oregon,
the youngest state in the union as regards development.
Where the great buildings of a modern city now stand
towering, giant trees, outposts of a mighty forest,
sentinels with centuries resting lightly on their spread
ing crowns, stood as silent witnesses to the glory of
the creative genius—God.
America, one hundred years ago, was still un-
The
Welding Together
of Two Great
Financial Houses
(
Mntteb Staten
Nathntal Sattk
combining by purchase the
LADD & TILTON BANK
i
"One of the Northwest’s Great Banks.”
Broadway and Sixth
Street
Place Your Orders With The United American Advertisers—and Tell Them Why