102
WEST SHORE.
UlLltHID IVIRY SATURDAY.
WEST SHORE PUBLISHING COMPANY, PUBLISHER,
L. lAMUIL, General Managtr,
PORTLAND, OR., AND SPOKANE FALL8, WA8H.
tnttrtd In tKt Pott Oflct In Portland, Or tan, far tranmluUm throw "
Mcmd clod ralu.
iUiSCKIPTION RATIt Strlotlr In Advane.
OhTh, I Thrw Mootlu, .... i.S
Hi Month. I llCopiM.
Tha Wiit Bhori offera the Best Medium for Advertleere of any
publication on the Paelflo Coaet.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2B, 1800.
Warn Biiobi'i motto la, " Organize."
Read about tlie great exposition at Spokane Falls.
Disappearing guns have been Invented. This is evidently an effort to
create a closer sympathy between the soldier and bis weapon.
The latest advices from the census bureau are to the effect that the
clerks threw more beer bottles out the back window than they did names
out the Portland schedules.
Wsht Biioks will Issue a large and beautifully Illustrated holiday num
hit. Adversers should take advantage of the opportunity to reach so
great a number of the most prosperous and Intelligent people as will receive
that elegant Issue.
Grand larceny of 50,000 people la what Oregon charges against Super
intendent Porter and bis beer gutiling subordinates, while the indictment
from the country at large calls for 8,000,000 of people either feloniously ab
stracted or lost by criminal carelessness.
Those congressmen who emulated In silver and find their wind-earned
salaries slipping away from them, will receive little sympathy from the
people, who are, somehow, Impressed with the Idea that a legislator should
not base his speculations upon his vote In congress.
11 l)o men gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles? " is a question
that receives a complete answer In the following editorial comment in an
Idaho er Immediately after the late election : "That this county Is
democratic Is proved by the small republican majority."
That the laws of the state when passed by the legislature should be pub
lished for the Information of the people In the columns of the newspapers,
the only place where they will be seen, requires no argument. The legis
lature at its next session ought to provide for this being done.
Some of the Chicago papers still give vent to their spleen at the director
general of the fair. The enemy In the household is the most harmful, and
the evil results of tills course will surely be felt. The commonest Instincts
of patriotism should make such reprehensible conduct Impossible.
According to the oltlcial returns promulgated by the census bureau,
Oregon contains 2M.M9 people west of the Cascade mountains, and ?J,881
east of that range, a total of 81S.440, being fully 50,000 lees than the true
population, the loss ol which can be charged to the contaminating Influences
of poUU
The Columbia Waterway Association met In its sixth annual convention
at Oregon City Wednesday last, and passed its usual resolutions. It la going
to take something more than resolutions to open the Columbia river, an
achievement Wist Siioai deems of the most vital Importance to the people
of the northwest,
New Orleans has Jiut had a little experience with un-Amerlcaniied for
elgners. When congress shall conslJer the Itn migration question, and It
must do so very soon, the movement for restriction ought to receive warm
support from the Pelican state ; but as politics is stronger than principles, it
may be otherwise.
little sympathy will be felt for the census officials who have been
charged with a deliberate attempt to falsify the returns for political ends.
Tbey have shown such ignorance, incapacity and spitefulness in the Oregon
matter, as well as in others, that one can but believe them morally capable
of such an effort, however mentally unfitted to accomplish it they might be.
It is now just four weeks since West Shobs, with an eye single to prac
tical accomplishment, called for a representative organization to handle the
world's fair question. Now that the free discussion called out by its vig
orous cartoons and comments has somewhat cleared away the mists sur
rounding the question, other papers are recognizing the strength of its posi
tion and are adding their voices to the call for an organization. Practical
action without further loss of time is what it needed.
Six months ago a wedding ceremony was performed in Portland, and
last week the circuit court issued a decree of divorce on the ground of ex
treme cruelty on the part of the husband. It does not require a long essay
to show the weakness of our divorce laws as Illustrated by this Incident.
Here is a man whom the court bas officially declared unfit to continue in
the matrimonial state, one who has demonstrated his incapacity in the brief
period of six months, and yet there is no bar to his entering it again. When
either a man or woman so behaves that it becomes necessary for the courts
to dissolve the marriage bond, the decree of dissolution should also be a
decree of perpetual debarment from matrimony of the guilty party. If such
were the law we wonld not see such difgusting and debasing matrimonial
careers as that of a recent resident of Portland, who has been married seven
times and divorced five times. Society should protect itself against the de
moralizing example of such brutes, as well as against the possible trans
mlseion of these instincts to an undesired posterity. The trouble is not bo
much that divorce Is loo easy to obtain, but that it is too easy to gel
married.
Probably nothing will have a greater effect in causing an increase in
prices of various merchandise than the campaign speeches of free traders
and the editorial assertion of free trade papers that prices are compelled to
go up In consequence of the McKinley bill. Merchants will not be slow to
follow the suggestion and mark up goods and keep them np as long as the
deluded public will stand It. But the law of competition and the sober com
mon sense of the people will soon begin the work of scaling the prices down
again, and It will not be long before the markets will be adjusted to the real
conditions of trade, when it will be learned that only certain lines of import
ed goods have actually been affected, and those are chiefly such as may be
classed as luxuries. Under the stimulus of a better market caused by the
natural tendency to use home made goods In preference to the Imported
article, the former will be made in greater quantity and of better quality, and
will, ere long, under the well known laws of competition and increase in
quantity of manufacture, decrease In price. The experiment to be tried in
the manufacture of tin is the only doubtful feature, and If this shall be a
success it will prove well worth all it will cost.
The argument against such a censorship of the press as will deny the
use of the mails to harmful books and papers, that boys who want blood
and thunder literature will " get it somehow," is purile. Admitting that
Its circulation can not be entirely stopped, the throwing of so serious an ob
stacle in the course of the muddy stream must seriously retard its flow and
to that extent lessen its destructive power. These publications are issued
for profit, and if the profits be lessened, the number of publications will
naturally be less. The reading of flash and demoralizing literature has not
obtained the hold upon the people that the drinking of liquor has, nor is it
Intrenched in ages of education, nor does it wear the buckler of social
custom. The demoralizing Influence of a certain class of literature upon
the young is unquestioned, and its effect in the increase of crime is very
marked. If such publications can be denied the use of the mails, their
numbers would be materially lessened and the evil reduced In quantity.
This is not a prohibition of reading. Other less harmful, and, possibly, even
elevating, literature would take its place, and there would be little incent
ive to surreptitious purchase or supply of the proscribed publications. They
would simply be eliminated by the substitution of a sufficiently higher class
of literature to remove the greater portion of the evil all thoughtlul people
recognise and deplore. Nor would there be any complaint from the body
of the people, whose literary appetite would be easily satisfied with the
belter mental pabulum. Even the publishers themselves would have little
ground (or objection to the law, since they could make just as much money
publishing the better class of literature, the total demand for reading matter
being not In the least diminished.