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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 29, 1890)
242 WEST SHORE. An llluitrated Journal publiihed every Saturday by the West Shore Publiihing Company, Portland, Oregon, and Spokane Fall), Washington. U SAMUIL, 0nral Manager, Sukcription Price, flW per Year. Single Copy, 10 Centl. Tha Wiit 8Hom offer the Best Medium for Advertisers of any publication on the Paolflo Coast. tnttrtd in tht Foil Offlet in Portland, Ortgmjor tranmluim through tht mailt at Hconi clou rata. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1800. Wibt Siiobi (or December 13, will be the holiday number, double the regular size and beautifully illuminated in colors. It will be the handsom est publication of any kind ever Issued on the Pacific coast, and will rival the Christmas edition of any Illustrated paper in the country. The usual price of holiday Issues, twenty-five cento, will be charged, and those desir ing extra copies should order them at once. All regular subscribers will re ceive this number free, also all new subscribers for 1891 until the issue is exhausted. If the lungs contain 75,000,000 cells, as a contemporary informs us, why not use them for a penitentiary? to be an effort to treat highly developed forms of a disease and ignore it in its incipient stages. The malignsnt cancer is to be cut out, but the cause of the disease is to be overlooked. There is no question that these milder and more " respectable" forms of hazard instill into the young the spirit of gambling that makes them later voteries of the vice in its grosser forms. When the idea of obtaining by chance something valuable for practically nothing once takes possession of the mind it grows like a spreading fungus that can never be destroyed. What we need is a Professor Koch to discover something with which to inoculate the human mind and exterminate the deadly bacillus of gambling before it has become too strong. Let Jay Gould, Standard Oil Rockafeller, sly old Eussell Sage and others who have mounted to the throne of the railroad king over the ruin of thous ands of their fellowmen ; who have wrecked railroads that they might con trol them; who have precipitated financial panics that they might buy for almost nothing the stocks they required; who have lied and schemed and done everything save get into the penitentiary let them form a gigantic railroad trust, if they will. They will find the people the biggest trust in this country, so big that it will swallow them and their railroads up and all other trusts with them. No matter how tight a grip they may secure upon the railroads and telegraphs of the country, they will find that the people have a still stronger grip. Upon the heels of such trust as Gould, et al., are seeking to form will come a popular sentiment in this country that will sweep irredeemably from power any political party that is in the least Iden tified with them. Trusts are rapidly approaching the dead line, and when they reach it something will happen. Things look black on the Pacific coast-that is, on political maps where the republican states are printed black. Home of our national agricultural statistics suggest the thought that the clerks in the department think spades of little account unless there are five of them in one hand. Porter's financial statistics are even worse and more ridiculous than his census tables. Half a doien good Yankee guessers could arrive at better results than his whole bureau of 2,000 clerks. The republican party will never win another national election on the platform of a rigid high tariff or political hostility to the south. Some more popular and noble principles must be adopted in 1802 if the party desire success at the polls. There are the vital questions of immigration, natural liatlon, trusts, etc., that call for immediate attention and are worthy of any party's best efforts. The breach between Gladstone as the leader of the liberal party, and Parnell as the leader of the Irish nationalists, is the severest blow the Irish home rule cause has ever received. Tin hot beaded, obstinate and thought less adherents of Parnell Insist upon retaining him as a leader, notwith standing that he hu lost that personal respect that a successful leader must command. It will prove a costly error. The report of the grand jury upon the Portland Woman's Refuge Home, is doubtless too severe upon that institution. No individuals could have purer motives than those of the ladles who have founded and sustain this Institution, and while It Is probable that serious mistakes have been made, It is unquestionable that the finding of the jury Is too severe. It Is produc tive of good, no doubt, for an institution to receive a general overhauling occasionally from some such body as the grand jury, since it puts all other Institutions on their metal, but it is a little hard upon the particular one in question. Those newsper mathematicians who endeavor to figure out the crop of wheat in Whitman county by multiplying the number of Improved acres of land shown by the assessment roll by thirty, the average yield per acre, would arrive at more reliable results If they would take Into consideration tin fact that proltably one-half of the land in wheat this year does not figure In the assessment at all. llomeeteaded and pre-empted government land Is not taxed until title has been received. It is a fact, amateur mathema ticians to the contrary notwithstanding, that the Palouae country, embrac ing Whitman and a portion of Kpokane county in Washington, and Latah In Idaho, produced this year nearly 12,000,000 bushels of wheat. It seems that, according to th attorney general, it Is proper to guess the number of vote a candidate will receive, th number of beans in a jar or which plec of church fair cake hu a ring In it, while It Is wrong to guess whether the jack of clah will turn up first or second, or a certain number will be drawn from a lottery wheel. In other words, the law Is construed The most antiquated thing in the United States is the army. Not in Its spirit, but in its equipment and instruction. It would be but a play thing in the hands of any enemy of equal strength equipped with modern weapons and operating with modem tactics. The navy Is making great progress, and, so far as it goes, is superior to that of any other country; but the army has been practically at a standstill for a generation. Changes, however, are in contemplation, which, it is to be hoped, the grannies at the bead of the war department and army will adopt before some war catches us wholly unprepared. It is proposed to equip the regular army and nation al guard with a thirty-calibre magazine rifle, to use smokeless powder and to adopt an entirely new system of tactics based upon the change in condi tions made by modern weapons. These have been prepared but have not yet been approved and published. It will take two years to effect this change, and a commencement ought to be made at once, so that In 1893 our foreign visitors will not think the army came over with Columbus. Subscribers to Bancroft's History of the Pacific Coast learn with a sigh of relief that this long-drawn-out literary effort has at last been completed. Though revealing Its patch work character, Bince It Is the joint product of many brains, and though not taking a high place as a literary production, It is, and doubtleis will always be, the standard authority on the subject. But if we sigh with relief upon the completion of this valuable work, how we would shout for joy If the crack brained and thoroughly Irresponsible Joaquin Miller would cease to write his utterly nonsensical letters about him self and his connection with the creation, discovery and christening of th Pacific coast. His latest contribution to our nomenclature, is to assert that " Walla Walla ' is a corruption of the French " Voila, Voila," although he offers no prorf except the Blight similarity of sound. When Lewis A Clarke visited the Walla Walla Indians In the spring of 1806, they found them bearing that name, and in their report spelled It " Wollawollah." This is a pure Indian word, and Lewis and Clarke's visit was prior to the arrival of the Canadian French voyageurs who bestowed so many names upon locali ties in this region. This fact is so plain and so easily learned, that one Is surprised that even Joaquin Miller would have the hardihood to ignore It for something of his own Invention. Everything he writes Is equally unre liable, and those papers who copy his letters with the idea that they are printing Interesting and valuable historical reminiscence, are simply aiding the perpetration of literary fraud. The history of pioneer times is both in teresting and instructive, but it Bhould come from some one more reliable aud with a better record than this long-haired romancer. THE O HOST DANCE. About a year ago the Indians of the Rocky mountains and the great plains to the east of them, comprising chiefly the great tribes of Sioux, Arapahoes and Cheyennes, began to hear rumors of a great Indian prophet who wu preaching a new religion. Inquiry developed the fact that this prophet lived further west, and a few intelligent and curious ones under took a pilgrimage westward to find the prophet and learn about his religion. At lut they succeeded in reaching him, the preacher proving to be a rah-