​

FIRST PRESIDENT OF OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

1898-1901 ​ ​ ​

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THE editorial page of The Oregonian throughout the decades the paper was in charge of Harvey W. Scott, bore constant witness of an unremitting labor of love in the course of Pacific Northwest history, on the part of its editor. All future generations ot Oregonians will owe a large measure of indebtedness to him for the light his pen threw on the part of Oregon and for the insight he gave into the significance of the unique beginnings of this western outlying community.

When conditions were ripe for the organization of the Oregon Historical Society, he was among the first to cooperate to effect the founding of it and was made its first president. For nearly half a century historical activity here received from him the kindliest fostering and there is thus peculiar fitness in the use of the Quarterly to convey to the world the memorials of him incorporated in this issue.

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THIS NUMBER IN INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF Harvey W. Scott Editor, pioneer, scholar, commonwealth-builder, exponent of national authority, leader of thought in the formative period of the Oregon Country, distinguished figure in American Journalism. His breadth and resource of mind, his grasp of abiding principles, his teachings of sturdy moralities, his powers of exposition, made him widely admired. His life labor as helper of men in the Pacific West made him widely beloved

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

HARVEY W. SCOTT at 62 years of age. (Frontispiece.) At Bingham Springs, Umatilla County, in 1900.

JOHN TUCKER SCOTT (1809-80), Harvey W. Scott's father. ANNE ROELOFSON SCOTT (1811-52), Harvey W. Scott's mother. HARVEY W. SCOTT at 19 years of age at Lafayette in 1857.

HARVEY W. SCOTT at 27 years of age; at Portland in 1865 on becoming editor of the Oregonian.

HARVEY W. SCOTT at 37 years of age, at Portland in 1875.

UAKSEX W. Scuu dl 50 yuuiu uf age, At ruilLtiid in 1QOQ. ^frU^-Mt

HARVEY W. SCOTT at his Editorial desk in 1898.

HARVEY W. SCOTT at 62 years of age, at Bingham Springs in 1900.

HARVEY W. SCOTT at 66 years of age, near Washington, D. C, in 1804.

HARVEY W. SCOTT at 70 years of age.

HARVEY W. SCOTT at Seaside, Oregon, in 1905.

HAHVBV Wrfcicow at TU-yuuimf a&i, at Puillui'id Hi 1UU8V W*^**-

Facsimile of writing of Harvey W. Scott.

HARVEY W. SCOTT and GEORGE H. WILLIAMS at Portland in 104.

HARVEY W. SCOTT'S library in his home at Portland.

HARVEY W. SCOTT'S home at Portland. ​ ​

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It was given to the generation of Mr. Scott's youth and to the succeeding generation of his maturer years to take a wilderness in the rough and mold it through steadily advancing forms to the uses of modern life At the beginning of Mr. Scott's career Oregon was a country whose very name was best known to the world as a poet's synonym for solitude and mystery; at the end it was a country which might challenge the world as an exemplar of the worthiest things in social development. Thus the background of Mr. Scott's career ​was a shifting quantity, presenting each year—almost each month—new conditions and fresh problems, and calling to the man who for forty-five years was the pre-eminent leader of its thought for hew adjustments, oftentimes for compromises. If it must be said of Mr. Scott that the essential values of his character were individual, it still remains to be said that they were profoundly related to the conditions and times in which his work was done. The great figures of any era are those who, sustaining the relationships of practical understanding and sympathy, are still in vision and purpose in advance of the popular mind and of the common activities. So it was with Mr. Scott. There was never a day of the many years of his long-sustained ascendancy in the life of Oregon in which he did not stahd somewhat apart and somewhat in advance of his immediate world. In this there was an element of power; but there was in it, too, an element of pathos. For closely and sympathetically identified; as Mr. Scott was at all times with the life of Oregon he was, nevertheless, one doomed by the tendencies of his character arid duties to a life measurably solitary.

The fewest number of men are pre-eminently successful in more than a single ensemble of conditions. Any radical change is likely first to disconcert and ultimately to destroy adjustments of individual powers to working situations. The qualities which match one condition are not always or often adjustable in relation to others. It was an especial merit of Mr. Scott's genius that it fitted alike into the old Oregon of small things and into the new Oregon of large things. Yet there was that in the constitution of old Oregon which relieved it of the sense of limitation and narrowness, for be it remembered that the old Oregon—the Oregon of Mr. Scott's earlier years—stretched away to the British possessions at the north and to the Rocky Mountains at the east. Geographically it was a wide region, and some sense of the vastness of it and of the responsibilities connected with its potentialities, early seized upon and possessed the minds alike of Mr. Scott and of the more thoughtful among his contemporaries. If we ​

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. SCOTT 89

regard this primitive country with attention only to the num- bers of its people, it appears a small and even an insignificant outpost of the world; but if, with a truer sense of values, we study it under its necessities for social and political organiza- tion, there opens to the mind's eye a field vast, practically, as the scheme of civilization itself. Thus even in the old Oregon of small things, the man who sat at the fountain of community intelligence the editorship of the one and only newspaper of the country lived and worked for large pur- poses and under high aspirations. In a mind of common mold, taking its tone from the life around about it, there would have developed a sense of power leading to the exhilarations of ah individual conceit. Upon the mind of Mr. Scott the effect was far different. In him and upon him there grew a noble development of moral responsibility. And this he car- ried through the vicissitudes of changing times. It was this which gave to him, firmly rooted as he was, the power which, in conjunction with his individual gifts, sustained him

as a continuing force through all the years of his life.

The external record of Mr. Scott's life is quickly told. He was born February 1, 1838, near Peoria, 111., in the pioneer county of Tazewell, to which his grandfather, James Scott, a native of North Carolina, after a career of twenty-six years in Kentucky, came in 1824, the first settler in Groveland town- ship. In 1852,, at the age of fourteen, he crossed the plains to Oregon as a member of his father's family, arriving at Oregon City October 2 of that year. After something less than two years in the Willamette Valley, he went as a member of a still migratory family to Puget Sound, where a pioneer home was established in what is now Mason County, three miles north- west of the present town of Shelton, on la'nd still known as Scott's Prairie. Immediately following the settlement of the Scotts at Puget Sound, came the Indian war of 1855-6, and in connection with this war Mr. Scott began the career of public service which ended with his death in 1910. Mr. Scott's part in the Indian War was that of a volunteer soldier in the ​

90 ALFRED HOLMAN

ranks, and it is of record that he endured the hardships and hazards of the campaign with the cheerful hardihood which marked every other phase of his life, public and private. In 1856, at the age of eighteen, we find Mr. Scott a laborer for wages in the Willamette Valley, dividing his small earnings between contributions in aid of his family and a small hoard for purposes of education. He entered Pacific University at Forest Grove, a small pioneer institution for all its resound- ing name, in December, 1856, but was compelled under neces- sities, domestic and individual, to abandon its classes four months later to become again a manual laborer. From the late Thomas Charman 2 of Oregon City, in April, 1857 at that time just nineteen years of age he bought an axe on credit and part of the time alone and part in association with the late David P. Thompson, 3 he worked as a woodcutter, liv- ing meanwhile in a shack of boughs and finding his own food, supplied only with a sack of flour and a side of bacon from Charman's store. While so working and so living he took from his labors time to attend the Oregon City Academy dur- ing the winter of 1858-9. In the Fall of the latter year he re- entered Pacific University at Forest Grove, and supporting himself by alternating periods of team-driving, woodcutting and school teaching during vacations and what we now call week-ends, he graduated in 1863 a first graduate of the school. After another period of school-teaching and study Mr. Scott came to Portland and entered as a student in the law office of the late Judge E. D. Shattuck, sustaining himself by serv- ing as librarian of the Portland Library, then, as fitting the day of small things, a small and struggling institution. Mr. Scott's first regular contribution to The Oregonian appeared

2 Thomas Charman was born in Surrey, England, September 8, 1829, and came to the United States in 1848, first to New York and afterwards to Indiana. He left Indiana in February, 1853, and came to Oregon via the Isthmus, and arrived at Oregon City March 30. He began the bakery business first and in a few years went into general merchandising. He was mayor of Oregon City several terms, beginning in 1871. Was treasurer of Clackamas county during the civil war. Was appointed major of the State Militia by Gov. Addison C. Gibbs in 1862, and served four years. Was one of the organizers of the Republican party in Oregon, beginning in 1855. He was married to Miss Sophia Diller on September 27, 1854. He died at Oregon City February 27, 1907. (George H. Himes.)

3 David P. Thompson (1834-1901) crossed plains to Oregon in 1853; many years a leading citizen and banker of Portland; mayor, 1879-82; territorial governor of Idaho, 1875-6. ​

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. SCOTT 91

April 17, 1865, as an editorial on the assassination of Abra- ham Lincoln. 4 He was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court in September, 1865.

By this time Mr. Scott had become established in the editor- ship of The Oregonian, and excepting for a period of five years from 1872 to 1877, in which he held the post of Collector of Customs at Portland, busying himself in the meantime iri various activities, public and private, he held this place, made great by his industry, his talents and his character, to his death, August 7th, 1910. In his earlier career in The Oregonian he was an employed editor. He returned to it in 1877 as part owner as well as editor, holding this relation to the e'nd. His definite editorship of the paper, with the interregnum above set forth, covered the period between April, 1865, and August, 1910 forty-five years.

We have seen something of the external conditions and in- fluences which went into the shaping of Mr. Scott's individual character, but behind these there lies a wide field. Whence came the essential spirit of this extraordinary man? What were the sources of the hardihood, the tenacity of purpose, the hunger for knowledge and the thirst for culture, the impulses and motives which inspired and vitalized his career? There is a suggestion in Mr. Scott's name sustained by many physical and mental characteristics of a remote ancestry, but the family records prior to the migration from the old world to the new have been lost. John Scott, great-grandfather, came to North Carolina shortly before the Revolutionary War, supposedly from England. John Scott's wife, great-grandmother, was Chloe Riggs, of North Carolina, obviously of British descent. Of her family it is known only that her father was killed by Indians. John Tucker Scott, 5 father, was born in what was then Washington County, Kentucky. Anne Roelofson, 6 wife of John Tucker Scott and mother of Harvey Scott, was, like

4 Mr. Scott was first recognized as editor of The Oregonian May 15, 1865, although he wrote numerous editorial articles prior to that date. (George H. Himes.)

5 Died at Forest Grove September i, 1880; born February 18, 1809.

6 Died on river Platte, 30 miles west of Fort Laramie, en route across the

plains June 20, 1852; born July 26, 1811. ​

ALFRED HOLMAN

her husband, a product of the pioneer life. The first Roelofson in America was a Hessian soldier who arrived about 1755 and presumably took part in the French and Indian Wars which preceded the Revolution. The so-called Roelofson Clan is widely scattered over the United States.

John Tucker Scott, founder of the Scott family in Oregon, knew no other life than that of the frontier. He was born, as we have seen, in Kentucky, and within eighteen miles of the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln and six days before that event. His early boyhood was passed amid the tragic excitements of Kentucky, and at the age of fifteen he followed his father, James Scott, into the wilds of Illinois. The spirit of the man is illustrated by the fact that in 1852, at the age of forty-three, he ventured upon the great trek which brought him and his family of nine sons and daughters to the then Oregon wilder- ness.

I can speak from personal recollection of this typical pio- neer. In physical aspect he was very much the counter- part of his distinguished son, although framed in even larger mold. There was in his face and eye a certain eagle-like qual- ity, not often seen in these days of gentler living and softer motives. Of native mind John Tucker Scott had much; of knowledge he had, through some inscrutable process, a good deal; of conventional culture comparatively little. Yet he was essentially a man of civilized ideas and standards. So little resentful was he against the Indian race from which his family had suffered grievously that prior to the migration to Oregon his name was enrolled in the membership of a society for mitigating the sorrows and cruelties of Indian life. There was m the man an element of humanitarian feeling, with a ten- dency to sympathy with movements not always wisely con- sidered for the betterment of social and moral conditions. I think I am not going too far in saying that there were in him tendencies which might easily have made him an habitual agi- tator ; yet I suspect that the soundness of his mmd would under any circumstances have checked any temperamental disposi- tion toward utopianism. He had grown old when I knew ​

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. SCOTT 93

him, and in his bearing there was something of the arbitrari- ness of a resolute character developed under the conditions of pioneer life. He held very definite notions of things not always carefully considered, and 'not infrequently there was collision of opinions between father and son, in which the former, despite the developments of time and the enlarged dignities of the latter, never lost the sense of patriarchal au- thority. However others might defer to the knowledge and judgment of the son, the father in leonine spirit would often- times seek to bear him down. Yet there was between the two men a singularly deep affection, in the father taking the form of a glowing pride, and in the son of a respect amounting almost to veneration.

Mr. Scott I speak now of the son was subject always to moods of dejection. There were times when it was difficult to arouse in him any sense of the pleasant and hopeful side of life. I have seen him m these moods unnumbered times and can recall but one other that of the death of a promising son 7 in which he showed such intense feeling as upon the death of his father. For days as he sat in his office or tramped the hillsides and to this he was much given at all times he would pour forth from the storehouse of his memory floods of elegaic poetry with sombre phrases from the literature of the ages. I know of nothing within the range of human passion more painful than the grief of a strong man; and there is impressed upon my memory in connection with the death of John Tucker Scott a most pathetic picture. In one sense it was mute, for no direct word was spoken, yet it colored Mr. Scott's thoughts for many weeks and stimulated in him that sehse of the mystery of life which was always at the back- ground of his serious thinking.

Of Mr. Scott's mother, Anne Roelofson, I can only speak from the basis of family tradition and in respect of the sus- tained affection in which long after her death she was held by her children. I do not remember ever to have heard Mr.

7 Kenneth Nicklin Scott, born May 4. 1878; died February j, 1881, at Portland. ​Scott speak of her directly, albeit there has always been in my mind a feeling that his deep and abiding respect for womankind found its first inspiration in the memory of his mother. It was the opinion of Mr. Scott's sister, Mrs. Coburn^[2]—the one among his several sisters whom I knew well—that the mother left perhaps a deeper impress on the son than did the father. It was from her that he gained the elements of tenderness and sympathy which often tempered his more aggressive tendencies. I came to understand Mr. Scott's reserve respecting his mother when, after his death, I was told by his son Leslie that his father had once remarked that he could hardly think of her without tears. And indeed those of us who know how the conditions of pioneer life pressed upon womanhood, can easily conceive his motives. Whatever of hardihood and endurance was demanded of the pioneer, the requirement was multiplied as related to the pioneer's wife. For the gentler sort of womankind—and to this type by all accounts Anne Roelofson belonged—life in the wilderness was a long agony of self-sacrifice. With none of the exhilarations of the conflict with crude conditions, so powerful in their appeal to men, there had still to be suffered the same obstacles plus denial of a thousand tender impulses and a thousand deep ambitions which masculine character may never feel. To the end of his life Mr. Scott remembered—this I have from his son—that when he was fourteen years of age, and just before her death, his mother called him to a private talk and gave him admonitions for the guidance of his life which took form as the very foundation stones of his character. Anne Roelofson, as we have seen, was of German extraction, and her family still living prosperously in Illinois are worthy folk industrious, progressive, self-respecting. These qualities the mother of Mr. Scott had in eminent development. And by due inheritance they became the possession of her son. ​

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. SCOTT 95

From heredity and through the experiences of his younger life, Mr. Scott gained the bent of individual character which ruled all his years. He never ceased to be a pioneer. The vision of the pioneer,, the temper of the pioneer, the spirit of the pioneer these were the dominating tendencies of his life. Knowledge with reflection gave him philosophy, culture re- fined his mind, mental training gave him orderliness of meth- od, discipline self-imposed but absolute gave him power. All these regarded as forces, as time moved on, were augmented by the assurances of approved capability, of an established pro- fessional ascendancy and ultimately of a notable fame. But with all and back of all there was the temper and mental atti- tude of the pioneer. In all his thoughts, in all his ways of doing things, in every phase of his many-sided attitude toward life, there appeared the mental bias if I may so name it of the pioneer.

Self-reliance was the resounding motif in Mr. Scott's sym- phony of life. His dependence in all things was upon himself. He never thought to be "boosted" by society or government. He had little patience with those who looked outside of them- selves or beyond their own efforts for advantages or benefits. With none of the vices of surface knowledge, of improvised and makeshift method, of the self-satisfied emotionalism char- acteristic of the self-made man, Mr. Scott was yet a self-made man. He was self-educated, self-disciplined, self-reliant. Above all of the men I have ever known he was self-centered, not in the sense that he thought overmuch of self or was devoted to the things which pertained, to self, but in the rarer and finer sense of self-dependence in the motives and usages of life. - :. : j,ui'j

The pioneer is necessarily an individualist, and never was there a man more imbued with the spirit of individualism than Mr. Scott. He and his kind had worked their way under and through the hardest conditions. They had fought and had achieved against multiplied resistant forces. In later times to those about him who declaimed against conditions he was wont to exclaim with impatience, not untouched with as​

96 ALFRED HOLMAN

perity, "You," he would say, "you who talk of hardships or of 'oppressive conditions' and of the 'grinding forces of life,' are absurd. If all the things you and your kind complain of as oppressive and burdensome were massed together they would not equal one-tenth part of the obstacles which had to be met in the settlement and organization of this country, and about which we never thought to complain." And if in this attitude there was something of the pride of a man of con- spicuous achievement, who perhaps regarded too lightly the changed atmospheres of new times compared with old, the fact none-the-less explained and perhaps none-the-less justi- fied a sovereign contempt for socialization projects, for senti- mental declamation, for the whole range of pretenses and vanities which mark the man or the community which waits and complains as contrasted with the man or the community which girds its loins and bravely goes forward.

It was a day of small things when Mr. Scott came to the editorship of The Oregonian. Prior to that event the office staff had consisted of Mr. H. L. Pittock, 9 the publisher, who also served as mechanical foreman, with one outside assistant, who helped with the bookkeeping, collected bills and brought in details of such local happenings as came to his attention. There was a local reporter upon whom the whole burden of preparing the news features of the paper fell. Editorial dis- cussion, when it was required, was supplied by one or another of several public-spirited citizens, among them Judge Shat- tuck. 10 And it was in response to a call made upon Judge Shattuck for "copy" that Mr. Scott, a student in his office, wrote his first paragraph for the paper. The result so com- mended itself to the publisher that he promptly asked for more, and as the intelligence and sincerity of the young writer were further demonstrated, he was asked to attach himself regu- larly to the paper. His compensation, made up in part by the

9 Managing owner of The Oregonian.

10 Erasmus D. Shattuck, noted Oregon jurist, born at Bakersfield, Vt., Decem- ber 31, 1824; died at Portland July 26, 1900. ​

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JOHN TUCKER SCOTT

HARVEY W. SCOTT'S FATHER. CROSSED PLAINS TO OREGON IN 1852 FROM ILLINOIS

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. S ​ ​97

paper and in part by the Library Association, for he continued to act as librarian, was fifteen dollars per week. Upon these terms Mr. Scott's professional life began ; all that followed was of his own creation. Even this small beginning was won by his own merit without assistance or promotion.

In the making of Mr. Scott's professional character of the spirit in which he worked and of the methods of his work times and conditions had much to do. It was before the day when news-gathering and reporting had become a science, before these activities had come to engross the purpose and the energy of newspaper-makers. The points of competition were not those of lavish expense in news-collecting and of lurid processes of presentment, but rather those of individual industry and close economy. The business of the editor was not that of organizing, drilling and disciplining a force of re- porters, copy-readers and headline makers, but the study and presentment of facts, explanations and opinions. The machinery of social organization in a new country was in the forging ; and the interest of the community was naturally and wholesomely related to serious matters. Not so much a fever to search out and present what is now called the news, as a sense of social responsibility, possessed the. minds of publisher and of editor.

In its demands the situation was directly to the hand of a youth temperamentally addicted to serious things, disposed by propensity and habit to refer every incident and every ques- tion to underlying principles. I think it questionable if Mr. Scott even in his youth could have adapted himself to present- day standards and methods of journalism. Journalist, pre- eminent journalist, though he was, for nearly half a century, his interest was never in the things which present-day journal- ism holds paramount. Events, unless they were related to economic or moral fundamentals, had no fascination for him, and little hold upon his attention. At the bottom of his mind there was ever a sovereign contempt for the trivialities which make up the stock in trade of the news room. No editor was ever more solicitous for the efficiency of his journal in its news pages, but never was there one who personally cared less than ​

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Mr. Scott about what was happening in incidental and incon- sequential ways. He comprehended the necessity for encour- aging and inspiring his assistants in all departments of The Oregonian as it grew to greatness as a disseminator of news, and he would upon occasion give himself the labor of going in detail through every column of the paper. But it was a per- functory labor, and oftentimes I have suspected that it was a duty more frequently honored in the breach than in the observance. In reports of proceedings of congress or state legislature, of utterances of important men the world over, of the larger movements of international politics in these matters Mr. Scott was interested profoundly. But he cared nothing about the ordinary range of insignificant occurrences and events.

Mr. Scott's interest in his own paper centered in the edi- torial page. All the rest he knew to be essential. But if there had been a way to get it done without demands upon his per- sonal attention, he would, I think, have felt a distinct sense of relief. He regarded the news department of his paper, in the sense of its appeal to his own personal interest, as subordinate to the department of criticism and opinion. And in the daily making of the editorial page, the fundamental conception was that of social responsibility. Expediency, en- tertainment, showy writing these he valued perhaps for not less than their real worth, but for infinitely less than the esti- mate in which they are held by the ordinary editor. Never at any moment of Mr. Scott's professional life was there any concession on his part to the vice of careless and perfunctory work. Scrupulousness with respect to small as well as large matters, commonly the product only of necessity enforced by competition, was in the case of Mr. Scott sustained upon in- stinct and principle. During the greater part of his editorial career he labored wholly free from any sort of professional rivalry, and never in relation to anything approaching effec- tive competition. He might have made easy work of it; he chose rather to work hard. ​

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As the only publicist and pre-eminent man of opinion in the country, Mr. Scott spoke with authority. The habit of regard- ing his public counsels as authoritative reacted upon his own mind in the sense of creating and sustaining a feeling of in- tense individual responsibility. Ultimately he became some- thing of an autocrat, but never was there an autocrat in whom the spirit of authority dwelt so impersonally and in such subordination to conditions and principles of which he was ever a devoted student. I recall, as illustrating this aspect of Mr. Scott's character an incident among many his retort to a shallow and pretentious man who had ventured to discuss a financial issue with him. Overwhelmed by the fulness of Mr. Scott's knowledge, driven from every point of his as- sumption, he doggedly remarked, "Well, Mr. Scott, I have as good a right to my opinion as you have to yours." "You have not," said Mr. Scott, as he rose in warm irritation. "You speak from the standpoint of mere presumption and emotion, without knowledge, without judgment. You speak after the manner of the foolish. I speak from the basis of painstaking and laborious study. You have no right to an opinion on this subject; you have not given yourself the labors which alone can justify opinion. You do not even understand the fundamental facts upon which an opinion should be based. You say your opinion is as good as mine. It will be time enough for this boast when you have brought to the subject a teachable mind and when you have mastered some of its elementary facts. But I fear even then you will be but a souriding brass and a tinkling cymbal, for the very lack of judgment which permits you now to assume judg- ment without knowledge is but a poor guaranty of your char- acter. I bid you good-day, sir!" 11 I promised a single in- stance, but here is another : An editor of small calibre, com- menting upon what he characterized "Scott's arrogance," de- clared that he had as good a title to consideration as Mr. Scott himself. "Tell him," said Mr. Scott, to the friend who had

1 1 This incident relates to the contest over fiat money, against which Mr. Scott fought from 1866 until its culmination in the election of November, 1896. ​

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brought a message, "tell him that it is not for me to judge of his merits or of his title to speak, but say to him for me that when he shall have borne the burden and carried such honors as are attached to the leadership of journalism in this country for forty years, I will be disposed to concede to him a certain equality of privilege."

Again : There had come to Portland a man of some experi- ence in minor journalism in a middle western town of the third class, making noisy announcement of his intention to establish a newspaper in rivalry with The Oregonian. It happened that I fell in with the newcomer and had a free talk with him Somewhere in the course of our conversation I said: "Mr. Blank, they tell me you are a Democrat; and may I ask to which wing of the party you belong? Are you a goldbug or a Bryanite?" 12 "Well," he replied, "I never cross bridges until I come to them." A few hours later I reported this conver- sation to Mr. Scott with emphasis upon the significant reply. "Well," he said, as he strode up and down the room with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and in the deliberate manner which marked moods of amused satisfaction. "Well, so that's the measure of Brother Blank, is it? Well, I do suspect that this community has been fed on too strong meat to prove very hospitable to a journalistic dodger!"

Circumstances tended in multitudinous ways and for many years to exhibit and emphasize the importance of Mr. Scott's relations to the public. There was scarcely a day in which there did not come to him, either in the form of compliment or opposition, some tribute to his powers and to his place in the life of the state. A man of trivial mind, open to the besetments of vanity, would under these recurring in- fluences have become a colossus of self-esteem. Mr. Scott indeed knew himself a factor in affairs, but he never lost him- self in a fog of self-admiration. Oftentimes, when some visitor had paid extravagant compliments upon his work in general

12 William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, was candidate for President in 1896, of the free silver Democratic party. Supporters of the single gold standard were com- monly called "gold bugs." ​

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. SCOTT 101

or with respect to the character of The Oregonian, he would say, "Oh, he means well, but I suspect that if I had slammed his interest or had bumped one of his favorite prejudices his tune would have been pitched in another key. If he had read widely he would know better than to estimate extrav- agantly an article which merely applies in a timely way prin- ciples as old as civilization." Then if there was a moment of leisure or if the mood was upon him and when the mood was upon him there was always leisure he would, commonly rising from his chair and pacing the floor, recite in a sort of measured sing-song which never failed to bring out the full meaning, some classic passage pertinent to the matter im- mediately under consideration.

It would be too much to say that Mr. Scott did not relish commendation. What I wish to make clear is he never al- lowed his pleasure in the approval of others to unhorse his judgment, least of all to magnify to himself the merit of his own performances. His standards in the matter of estimating the value of any piece of work were wholly apart from his own relation to it, and the only fault I could ever discover in his judgment of his own work and the work of others was that he was infinitely more considerate of the latter than of the former. Yet there was one curious exception to this rule. Somehow Mr. Scott could never feel that the work of any pen other than his own could pledge The Oregonian to any- thing. In later years that is, within the latter half of his editorial life the editorial page was the work of various hands. Scrupulous as he was in respect to his own articles, he could never, unless the subject chanced to be important, be brought to give more than perfunctory attention in manu- script or proofs to the work of anybody else. "Oh, let it go in," he would say, if asked to pass upon an article, "and take its chance for whatever it may be worth." And so four times out of five Mr. Scott's first reading of the articles of his associates was when they appeared in printed form. Then, perhaps, if there was anything which he seriously disapproved he would soon thereafter bring the paper round with one ​

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of his own thunderbolts to his own line of thought. Often- times when he was absent, or even when at home, articles would appear quite outside the range of his ways of thinking but it seemed never to occur to him that the paper could be committed in its policies by such expressions ; and he invariably treated a question, no matter what had been said about it by others in the editorial columns, as if it were discussed for the first time. That this curious tendency and habit should lead to some inconsistencies and to occasional serious misunderstandings, was inevitable. They might disturb others but they rarely disturbed Mr. Scott himself. He felt himself to be The Oregonian ; arid he never could feel that the paper stood committed to anything unless he himself by his own pen had written it out. 13

The thought to seek out the tendencies of current opinion, to follow or to lead it, and so flatter and cajole the public this which has come to be almost a fundamental rule of con- temporary journalism had no place in Mr. Scott's philos- ophy. Of what is called policy he had none at all, and he held in sovereign contempt the very word policy. "Policy ! Policy !" he would say, "is the device by which small and dishonest men seek to make traffic in lies. When a newspaper gets a 'policy' it throws over its conscience and its judgment and becomes a pander. There is but one policy for a newspaper and it is comprehended in the commandment, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness.' " And by this principle Mr. Scott guided his news- paper. I never knew him to give an order to "color" the news. His rule with respect to the news pages was to present

13 On February 22, 1906, Mr. Scott said in The Oregonian: "At every stage of its history the charge of 'inconsistency' has been thrown at it (The Oregonian) by minds too petty to understand even one side of the question under discussion.

• The files of the carpers and critics never will be searched, for they contain

nothing. 'Inconsistency 1 is the perpetual terror of little minds. It was the worn weapon used against Burke, and against Webster, and against Hamilton, and against Lincoln, and against Gladstone, and against Carlyle, and against Herbert Spencer; for whom, however, it had no terrors. In the arsenal of all petty and shallow and malignant accusers it has been the chief weapon. It always will be. The most 'inconsistent' books in the world are Shakespeare and the Holy Bible, most inconsistent because they say and contain more than all other books what- soever; and you can pick them to pieces everywhere and prove their inconsistencies throughout. * It is not necessary to say much in this matter. The work The

Oregonian has done on the mind of the country, the effects of that work, the

feneral achievement, are known. What has been done may tell the story." L. M. S.) ​

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. SCOTT 103

the facts as clearly and as briefly as possible. His judg- ments and opinions, his preferences and resentments, his loves and his hates if they were exploited, and candor re- quires me to say that they were all exploited at times, the place was in the editorial page. The integrity of the news Mr. Scott always scrupulously respected. The reports of The Oregonian were commonly as fair to those whose ambitions or courses it opposed as those it wished to promote. I recall in this connection the publication in full made from shorthand notes an exceptional thing in those days of Senator Mitch- ell's address to the legislature upon the occasion of his second election. 14 The Oregonian had fought Mitchell with all its powers, but when he was elected his address of thanks to the legislature and through the legislature to the public was given verbatim. Mr. Mitchell himself was greatly surprised by it indeed, so much surprised that when I met him in the lobby of the old Chemeketa Hotel the following morning he forgot that we were not on speaking terms. Addressing me abruptly in the presence of half a roomful he said : "I want to say that while I abate nothing with respect to differences between Mr. Scott and myself I do respect his integrity as an editor. I was ashamed this morning to find myself surprised at the com- pleteness of the report of yesterday's doings at the Capitol. Yes, I ought to have known that as a journalist no matter about other things Mr. Scott is a man of strict integrity."

In the many controversies in which The Oregonian engaged with individuals, much was said that was severe. Much per- haps was said that would have been left unsaid upon reflec- tion. But invariably the man assailed was given opportunity to present his side of the issue, even to the length of open disrespect and downright denunciation. Only in one respect can I discover any just criticism of Mr. Scott's practice in such matters. This exception was upon calculation under the no- tion that it was justified a notion in which I could never quite coincide. Mr. Scott would always print an opponent's letter, but occasionally he would damn it with a "smashing"

14 Elected November 18, 1885; died December 8, 1905. ​

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headline. If protest were made on any account by a member of his own staff he would reply, "Oh, well, it saves the bother of answering." None the less, for he dearly loved a personal "scrap," he was more than likely to "answer" in a manner ex- hibiting the fact that he had not exhausted the vials of his

mind in- the making of a headline.

I have said that Mr. Scott never sought to hunt out and pander to immediate phases of popular opinion; and this per- haps was the strongest point in his character as an editor. Certainly it is a point which profoundly differentiates him from the more modern editor whose main occupation appears to be an imitation of the office of the weathercock to the wind. Looking back over his long career and upon its amazing out- put of individual work in some ninety volumes of half-year files of The Oregonian, it now seems that he was almost al- ways in opposition. "It seems forever my fate to be con- tending with today, and to be justified by tomorrow," he would say. And it was literal truth. I cannot now think of any vital principle or of any great issue in all the years of Mr. Scott's editorial career in which he was not fundamentally right. I cannot recall an instance where he conceded a vital principle to mere expediency; nor can I recall an instance in which he permitted himself to play upon the public caprice or the public credulity.

This is said with full remembrance of the fact that a con- stant charge against Mr. Scott was that he lacked consistency. Upon this charge the changes were rung and re-rung through- out his whole career and by those who thought they found innumerable proofs in the columns of The Oregonian. I have already set forth one habit which formed a certain basis for this charge, but the statement does not cover the whole case. A larger explanation lies in the difference of vision between the man whose sense of obligation was to principles and to those who could never see anything higher than inci- dents and expedients. For example, Mr. Scott was intellec-

tually a believer in un trammeled trade. He saw that the ideal ​
​ ​

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principle in the relations of men and nations was the rule of freedom from artificial barriers. When opportunity served, as it did frequently, in connection with the discussion of abstract considerations, he wrote under inspiration of the faith that was in him. I suspect that a careful study of the files, with the massing together of many detached articles, would exhibit a practically complete exposition of all that may be said on behalf of the abstract theory of free trade. At the same time Mr. Scott was among those who saw advantages in a scheme of protective tariff, regarded purely as an expedient. To himself there was a clear line of distinction between the ab- stract and the practical presentment. His position to himself was clear. But to the rough-riding "protectionist" who knew and cared nothing of fundamentals and who under motives of self-interest or under the inspirations of partisan feeling made a fetish of "protection" there appeared neither logic nor honesty in Mr. Scott's position. He was persistently assailed by those who did not, and perhaps could not, understand him because they lacked intellectual and moral vision to dis- tinguish between the tariff scheme regarded fundamentally on the one hand, and upon the other as an economic and political expedient. 15 Again, in connection with abstract studies Mr. Scott frequently declared judgments concerning minor mat- ters, only to pass over these same considerations as they were related to current politics ; and here again he was assailed as a man who held one set of opinions in offyears and another set of opinions when it came to the years of practical conten- tion. These critics did not see what was clearly in the mind of the editor, namely, that politics in its practical aspects can only approximate the standards of the fundamental thinker. They could not understand indeed they can never under- stand that one may hold definitely to certain abstract ideals, yet in his working relations shape his course subject to the

15 Mr. Scott, though a free 'trader, acted throughout his life with the pro- tective tariff Republican party, because of larger and more vital issues, such as anti-slavery, preservation of the union, anti-greenbackism, gold standard, territorial expansion after the Spanish war. He was radically opposed to the Democratic party in these questions and considered them far more important than protective tariff. If he quitted the Republican party he knew he would lose effective political associations. ​

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demands of time and circumstance. There are two kinds of truth. But many minds are so constituted that they can see but one. Mr. Scott saw both.

The truth of the matter is that in his professional character Mr. Scott represented two types of men. He was a scholar and he was a journalist. He loved to study and to preach the fundamental and the ideal. As a man of practical affairs he knew that the fundamental and the ideal are rarely attainable, that they call for conditions and for states of society non- existent. Scholarship and philosophy gave him a vision of an airline ; but as a leader in the affairs of practical life he real- ized that in the working world, including human progress, the forward march is not by the airline, but by a winding road. He was an idealist but no dreamer, still less a tilter at wind- mills. He would, perhaps, have enjoyed a purely scholarly life or might have done so if opportunity had come to him before the strenuous and combative elements of his nature were attuned to action but his professional responsibilities and labors had led him far afield from the cloister. He never lost his taste for abstract studies, and his studies were more or less reflected in his daily outgivings. But he had that qual- ity of mind which led him to comprehend the necessity for concession to conditions as he found them in the workaday world.

In the long course of Mr. Scott's editorial career he was again and again compelled to make compromises. Exigencies of time and circumstance found in him such response as be- comes a leader in practical thought, but he never lost sight of any principle which had come to possess his mind and con- science. While circumstances might compel him to swerve from the ideal line,, he could never be brought to be faithless to it. Necessity might compel a change of course, but it could never obscure in him a clear vision of the guiding star.

Under the necessity Mr. Scott could temporize, but he never made the slightest concession from sinister motives. In an association which gave me the closest possible insight into the processes of his mind in relation to his professional labors, I ​

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never once saw or heard the slightest suggestion of the cloven foot. It became oftentimes an office of friendship as well as a matter of duty to point out to Mr. Scott the practical haz- ards of one line of action or another. He was always openly receptive to suggestions from any source. But it would have been a bold man who, knowing Mr. Scott's tendencies of mind, would have pressed a point based upon financial, social or other personal considerations. His concern, with a not undue regard for what was expedient, and therefore practi- cally wise, was with what was fundamentally right.

Somewhere in my youth perhaps in the correspondence of Mr. George W. Smalley, who for so many years wrote both entertainingly and wisely of Europe and European affairs in a New York paper I read an, explanation of the rather curi- ous fact that English provincial journalism has always been abler than the journalism of London. Newspapers like the Leeds Mercury and the Manchester Guardian have always had a clearer vision than the journals of the metropolis. The explanation was to this effect, namely, that the provincial editor, sitting a little upon one side, so to speak, apart from the suggestions and influences of London life, sees things in a truer perspective. This remark has long stuck in my mind and has seemed to explain in part an exceptional quality in Mr. Scott's editorial writing. Oregon for thirty years of Mr. Scott's professional career was a country detached and apart, and even to this day it is far removed from the greater centers of political and material life. The telegraph brings daily re- ports of leading events, but it brings only essentials. The ten thousand side lights which illuminate the atmosphere of New York, Washington or London are lacking. The man who deals at such range with the current doings of the world has no aid through daily contact with the agents of great events and can have small knowledge of the incidental and oftentimes significant gossip which attends upon important movements. His resource must be a broad view of things. He must measure events not as they stand related to incidents, but by the gauge of fixed principles. The conditions under ​

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which Mr. Scott worked accorded perfectly with the propensities of his mind. He had a contempt for what he termed "outward flourishes" ; his mind went to the core of every issue. If the subject were reconstruction or finance or the tariff or civil service or foreign policy or whatnot, he dealt with it not after the fashion of the mere journalistic recorder, but in the profounder spirit of the philosophic his- torian. Your average journalist is a mere popularizer of ap- propriated materials. He applies to current events conclu- sions pretty much always obvious and for the most temporary. Mr. Scott, sitting apart from all but the essential facts and exercising a true philosophic instinct, sought out the subtle links through which, in history and in logic, facts stand related to facts. He saw the essential always. He wore upon himself like an ample garment a splendid erudition under which he moved with entire ease; and it so possessed his mind that he could bring to bear upon any contemporary event all the lights of history and philosophy with a judgment unbiased by trivial incidents and petty considerations.

It is not within the purpose of this writing to consider the specific judgments of Mr. Scott in relation to public policies, still less to recite the story of the many battles of opinion in which he stood in the forefront. These phases of Mr. Scott's career form a separate theme which will be treated by another hand in this publication. But I hope that without invasion of that aspect of Mr. Scott's life which is to engage the pen of another, I may speak of his championship of one great cause a championship which ran through many years, developing in their fullest power the ample resources of the man and which must, I think, in the final summing up of Mr. Scott's professional life, stand as the most imposing of his many pub- lic services. I refer to his advocacy of sound money as against recurrent attempts to inflate the currency of the country by issues of "fiat" paper and to debase the monetary standard by giving, or attempting to give, to silver an arbitrary parity with the world's standard of value, gold. Careful study of history had impressed upon Mr. Scott's mind the vital importance of ​

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. SCOTT 109

a sound and stable currency. He was among the first to rec- ognize the hazard involved in any and all schemes of inflation. He foresaw clearly the dangers involved in the earlier efforts of the inflationists and long before the silver menace was real- ized elsewhere, he spoke in Prophesy and in protest. During many years his was a lone voice crying in the wilderness ; and as the silver movement developed and waxed strong his pro- test became more earnest and vehement. And as he stood in the front of the fight at its beginning so he stood in the mighty struggle of 1906 in which it culminated. No other man in the country, in public life or out of it, carried on so long and so able a campaign as did Mr. Scott. 16 I chance to know that it is the opinion of those best qualified for judgment that Mr. Scott's earnestness and strength in this great contest was from first to last the most powerful individual force in it. And to my mind his early insight into this subject with his subsequent presentments of fact and reason with respect to it form perhaps the best exposition of the powers of his mind exercised in relation to a purely practical matter.

I am loath to pass on from the professional phase of Mr. Scott's career, for though my reverence is more for the man than for the editor, there was that in his purely professional character which sustained very exceptional standards of jour- nalism standards which under the amazing prosperity which recent years have brought to the business of newspaper pub- lishing have been well nigh overborne. A fine sense of social responsibility, an intense respect for fundamental considera- tions, the disposition to get from himself the best that was in him in matters small and large, the quick conscience with re- spect to fact no matter how grievous the labor required to develop it, an integrity of mind which would not descend to the smallest public deception, a mental intrepidity which reck- oned not at all upon consequences, the ability to work and the

1 6 Mr. Scott began his fight against free coinage of silver in 1877; the contest culminated in the November election of 1896. It was universally admitted that Republicans then carried the gold standard issue in Oregon through efforts of Mr. Scott. Fourteen years later, shortly before his death, Mr. Scott said that that issue was the grayest that had confronted the nation since the civil war, on account of the industrial and political danger threatened by debased standard of value. ​

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propensity to work in season and out of season these quali- ties, supplemented by broad resources of knowledge and the powers of a mind which instinctively rejected non-essentials to seize upon the essence of things these make up a profes- sional character which in my judgment has not been matched in the journalism of this country or any other. And when I reflect that Mr. Scott passed almost half a century with noth- ing of the stimulus which comes from intellectual rivalry, with few of the legitimate helps of intellectual association, un- spurred by any species of competition, working wholly under the promptings of his own impulses and his own fine sense of manly obligation, I marvel at the record.

• • • • • *

Generations of clean-blooded, wholesome-living, right- minded forbears gave Mr. Scott a towering frame and a con- stitution of mighty vitality. A youth of manual labor and untouched by vices had toughened every fibre of the physical man. Never was there a sounder mind in a sounder body. He had an eye which could gaze unshrinking into the face of the sun at meridian and which no stress of study ever wearied. "I have never been conscious of having any eyes," he once remarked when after many hours of severe work he was cau- tioned to be careful of his vision. Labors which would ex- haust the vitality of an ordinary man he could in the early and middle years of his life sustain day after day with no sense of fatigue. At one period about the year 1875, as I recall it he devoted no less than eighteen hours per day to his studies and his office duties. He was temperamentally disposed to industry and he had never cultivated habits which idly dissi- pate time. Many men of fine minds are subject to atmos- pheres and dependent for their moods upon surroundings. Something of this disability, if it may be so called, came to Mr. Scott in his later years, but during the greater part of his life he cared nothing at all about these matters. He could have sat amid the clamor of a boiler factory and pursued un- disturbed the most abstruse studies. In later years his powers of abstraction declined, but in the first twenty years of my ​

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acquaintance with him they were absolute. It was his habit in these more acquisitive years to turn every moment to ac- count. Once in, reply to an inquiry as to his habits of reading he answered jocosely, "I read in the morning in bed as soon as it is light enough; then I read before breakfast and after breakfast; then after I get to the office, before lunch and a while after lunch, and, of course, before dinner. Then I read a while before I start to my office for the evening and after I have read my proofs and trudged home, before I go to bed and after I am in bed." And this was hardly an exaggeration. More amazing still, he remembered everything he read. He never ceased to possess anything he had once made his own, and before his thirty-fifth year he had made his own pretty much the whole range of the world's serious literature.

Mr. Scott's classical culture was so thorough and so sus- tained that much which the ordinary classicist gropes through painfully he could read without a lexicon. It was his daily practice and one of his chief diversions to turn passages from one language into another. "That's the trick/' he would say, "which gave me such poor ability to write as I have. I could never have done anything without it." Most authors of classic renown he had read in the original, and all of what may be called the greater works of antiquity he knew practically by heart. The late Edward Failing, 17 himself a man of fine culture, once told me that his first meeting with Mr. Scott was in the reading room of the old Portland Library prior to his coming to The Oregonian. It was the practice of a group of studious young men to pass their evenings in the library and not infrequently conversation, with mutual com- parison of their acquirements, was substituted for reading. Upon one such occasion somebody brought out a whimsical book in which as a literary curiosity Paradise Lost was ren- dered in its prose equivalent. As passage after passage of this fantastic production was read Mr. Scott gave the versified form from memory. The story is characteristic of Mr. Scott's

1 7 Born in New York City Dec. 18, 1840; died Portland, Jan. 29, 1900. Cam* to Portland in 1853. ​

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habit through life. His feats of memory indeed were mar- velous. Open a book of the Shaksperian plays anywhere and read a line and he would almost surely give you the next, and upon the instant. Recite to him any passage from the Homeric poems, and from memory he would give you the varying English translations. Any phrase or any idea having its roots or resemblances in standard literature would bring from him a perfect flood of recitation, all from memory. I recall once, in describing to him the method of a certain orator that I re- membered him as a schoolboy rendering heavily one of Web- ster's orations beginning : "Unborn ages and visions of glory crowd upon my soul," etc., etc. "Ah !" said Mr. Scott, "That's an old friend." And he proceeded to reel off from a poet I had never heard of, the original expression of which Webster's resounding exordium was a paraphrase. What- ever form of literature found in him especial apprecia- tion became a fixed furniture of his mind. The plays of the earlier British dramatists in all their finer passages were as definitely in his mind and as available for immediate use as the worn maxims are familiar to most of us. He was an ad- mirer of Burke and whole passages of his speeches he would recite offhand. In the course of every day in his office he would illustrate perhaps twenty situations by recalling some classic or standard utterance, always reciting it letter perfect. If he looked from his office window upon the moving crowd below, there would arise to his lips some quaint or wise passage apt to the circumstance. If anyone asked after his health he was more than likely to reply with a couplet. The writings of the great religious teachers of antiquity, even the jargon of the modern religious schools, were at his tongue's end. In his own writings he was not given to quotation, but one fa- miliar with the world's literature might easily trace the gen- esis of many a thought and of a thousand turns of expression to the amazing storehouse of his memory.

Mr. Scott gave his mind to many subjects, but perhaps his most exhaustive study was within a sphere singularly removed from the range of his daily activities. I fancy that it will sur​

FROM TINTYPE TAKEN AT LAFAYETTE, OREGON, AT AGE OF NINETEEN YEARS ​ ​

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prise many to know that the subject which claimed his deepest interest was that of theology. Here he really touched bottom. His researches left unexplored no source of knowledge and no scheme of philosophy as related to the spiritual side of human nature or as exhibited in the history of the races of men and in the writings of prophets and sages. As time wore on and as the responsibilities of life pressed upon him he grew away somewhat from this enthusiasm, but he never lost interest in matters theological. Upon no theme could he be more easily drawn out and upon none was the wealth of his knowl- edge and the play of his thought more fully displayed. He came ultimately to a philosophy all his own, very simple, yet sufficient to the repose of a mind deeply inclined to spiritual contemplation, yet rejecting absolutely the claims of any dog- matic creed as the content of absolute truth. In his own words: "That mystery, 'where God in man is one with man in God,' is sacred to every soul." His ultimate philosophy of life was finely expressed in a remark, with respect to "Jerry Cold well, 18 a long time reporter of The Oregonian, when called upon to speak at his funereal : "Everything perishes but the sweet and pure influences that proceed from an honor- able life. They are immortal, extending in ever widening circles, we may believe through time and eternity."

In the earlier years of my association with Mr. Scott it was his habit to expound to me, for the want of a more intelligent audience none could have been more sympathetic his plan to write a book of moral and religious philosophy; and I re- proach myself in the thought that while the memory of his earnestness of purpose and of the obvious profundity of his learning and reflection abide with me,, the matter which per- haps I never really understood, has passed from my mind. Among his literary remains, if it be not lost, there should be found a fairly complete scheme of headings and notations presenting in outline a work which at one time it was in his mind to present as a contribution to the permanent religious

18 Edward Lothrop Coldwell died at Portland March 15, 1908, age 68 years; twenty-five years reporter on The Oregonian and in daily touch with Mr. Scott. ​

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literature of the world. Time changed his purpose but it never altered, I am sure, a philosophy which was the founda- tion of his religious thought and the mechanism of what I may

presume to call his conscious moral reflections.

Writing was not to Mr. Scott a natural gift. His propen- sity was to thought rather than to expression. He had noth- ing of the light and easy grace in the making of phrases which with many renders the operation of writing little more than pastime. Literally he forged his matter into form and if the form was always fine it was made so less by instinctive art than by unremitting labors. With many writers, especially those who combine experience with propensity, the very pro- cess of expression oftentimes inspires and shapes the thought. With Mr. Scott the thought always dominated the expression. I question if he ever wrote a careless sentence in his life. Every utterance was first considered carefully then often very slowly hammered into shape. He wrote always with his own hand and could never with satisfaction to himself em- ploy the aid of an amanuensis. His style was a reflection of his mind. It was considered, clear, logical, complete and always pure. Of a certain species of whimsical slang he was a master in conversation; it made the substance of a playful humor, which was unfailing in all his freer talks. But when he set himself to write, his scholar's sense of propriety, his clean- minded regard for pure forms overcame the tendency to ver- bal flippancy so frequently and happily illustrated in his speech. In my own judgment Mr. Scott's written style lost something from this scrupulousness, from its unfailing dignity of phrase. I think his work would have gained buoyancy a certain winged power if he had been a less severe critic of himself, if his touch had been lighter and his critical instinct less exact- ing. When, as rarely happened, he could be induced to de- part from his customary formality of expression, he had in it a kind of delight akin to the exhilaration of a naughty child over some pleasing smartness. I recall once when some rather ridiculous man had made a grandiloquent public declara- tion of heroic views, Mr. Scott remarked, "I don't know just ​

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. SCOTT 115

how to treat that/' Mr. Ernest Bross, 19 a long-time and very able editorial assistant, suggested : "Just print what he says and put under it as your sole comment, 'Wouldn't that jar you!' " Mr. Scott pooh-poohed the suggestion ; but half an hour later he came into my room, which adjoined his own, and read to me a paragraph in which in modified form he had used the suggested expression. He gurgled over it with the keenest delight, and later when his proofs came he walked through the editorial rooms reading it to others of the staff. The following morning, with the paper spread before him, he ran over the particular paragraph with boisterous satisfaction in a literary prank.

Competent as his judgment was with respect to his own work as well as to the work of others, it was nevertheless Mr. Scott's practice to read over his prepared articles to his as- sistants. "Trying it on the dog" was his familiar phrase for this form of experimentation. He always invited criticism though I do not recall many instances in which any of us were wise enough to help him unless it were at the point of restraint. But if there came to him from any source a really good sug- gestion he had no vanities leading to its rejection. I think the office boy, if he had had a point to make, would have been listened to as respectfully as his most trusted assistant.

Although a constant and profound reader, Mr. Scott spent little time upon light literature. Newspapers interested him in so far as they gave him information or suggested reflections upon current events, but he cared little for magazines and would oftener cast them aside after running over the table of contents than read them. He lived I use his own phrase with books; and the books he lived with were books which presented to him new facts or old facts in new relations and which dealt with broad views of things. Books of mere en- tertainment he valued not at all. Of really good fiction he read all there was. Of poetry he was a constant reader and re-reader. I think he was familiar with every great poem in

19 Managing editor The Oregonian 1897-1904; now editor Indianapolis Star. ​

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literature and I doubt if there is anywhere a high imaginative figure or a great poetic image that was unknown to him. Pas- sages from the standard poets came to him upon the slightest suggestion, and oftentimes he would recite them from memory and at great length. No man more quickly or more surely discriminated the good from the bad. Mr. Lucius Bigelow, long a brilliant contributor to the Oregonian's editorial page, once remarked that Mr. Scott's mind was "a refinery of metals, taking in all kinds of ore and with an almost mechanical discrimination selecting the fine from the base." The most trivial incident would draw from him the loftiest selections from the storehouse of his reading.

Mr. Levinson, 20 another lobg time member of the Ore- gonian family, recently told me of a characteristic incident. One evening he came upon Mr. Scott in the hall with his key in his office door, when apropos of nothing he looked up and began to recite a passage from White's Mysterious Night "When our first parent knew thee from report divine," etc. Having finished the passage, his face wreathed itself in a smile and he remarked : "No, Joe ; / didn't write that" and open- ing his office door, walked in and sat down to his labors. Thus at unexpected times and in whimsical ways he illuminated the daily life of the Oregonian office, making it of all the work- shops I have ever known the most delightful and inspiring.

Nature in all its aspects had for Mr. Scott a tremendous fascination. He luxuriated in the mere weather good or bad. He would stand at his window and look out upon the dreariest day with a certain joy in it. Fine weather with him was an infinite delight. He was singularly uplifted by fine views, and perhaps of the multitudes who have gazed upon Mt. Hood no one ever so intensely enjoyed in it. From the east windows of his office on the eighth floor of the "Tower" for so his office came to be known to the public Mt. Hood was, before the period of the sky-scraper, in full view. He kept

20 N. T. Levinson now-publishes Fresno Herald; many years city editor and Sunday editor Th Oregonian. ​

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a pair of field glasses on his desk and it was his habit every day many times to gaze at the beautiful picture athwart the eastern sky. "I suppose," he remarked one day, "that I keep as close tab on Mt. Hood as anybody, but I have to tell you that in the tens of thousands of times that I have looked at it I have never failed to find in it some new charm." Once in the early evening he burst into my room, next his own, in what was to him a state of positive agitation. "Look! Look!" he exclaimed. My first thought was that some terrible tragedy had stirred him ; but the scene was the full summer moon emerg- ing as if from the body of the mountain. "You will probably/' he said, "never in your life behold that amazing conjunction again." So with every other aspect of this ever changing mountain. It was his singular love for it, I think, that with all of us certainly with me has given to Mt. Hood a certain identification with Mr. Scott. I never look upon it without seeing not alone the mountain, but the rugged figure of the "Old Man" for so in affection we always styled him when his back was turned in his peculiar pose standing at his win- dow, glass in hand, gazing, gazing, gazing!

I have said that Mr. Scott was not by nature a writer ; and truth to tell he was a bit contemptuous of those who were. He had a sneering phrase which he often applied to easy, grace- ful, purposeless work. "Feeble elegance" was his character- ization of all such. He not only wrote with his own hand, but perhaps for every column of finished matter which he pro- duced he made a column and a half of manuscript. Often- times not only his desk but the floor about him would be lit- tered with sheets of paper written over but rejected. He de- tested slovenliness in the form of a manuscript and would laboriously erase words, phrases and whole sentences and re- write over the space thus regained. His thought was definite but he made serious work of getting it into form ; and he never shirked any labor to this end, although to the end of his life it was always a labor. He had one curious habit which bears a certain relationship to the quality of his work. Oftentimes while pondering over the form of a sentence, he would write ​

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and rewrite on another sheet of paper the word "solidity." I have seen this word in his characteristic script duplicated a hundred times in a single evening. Whence came this whim- sical habit I know not. He had it when I first knew him ; he persisted in it to the end. And somehow the word "solidity" as he wrote it a million times to no obvious purpose seems to me to bear in it a kind of symbol of his literary method. Solid- ity of thought, solidity of expression this was his character- istic quality.

Upon many occasions I have heard remarks suggesting the idea of Mr. Scott as a severe man as if he were a hard task- master. Never was there a greater misconception. He was not indeed much given to the conventioned amenities. He would come or go often without a sign of recognition, but it was merely the mark of a mind absorbed. In all essential ways he was the most considerate of employers I have sometimes thought too considerate for his own profit or for our best discipline. His assumption was that every man was, of course, doing his duty. There was never anything like critical observa- tion of the occupations or the absences of his assistants. He never looked at the clock. In his attitude toward his assistants there was no direct oversight, no pettiness. And all who served him will bear me witness that in the crises of personal distress or domestic affliction he was the very soul of con- sideration. A man called from his work by any domestic emergency was never made to suffer in the thought that his absence from duty would discredit him or that it would be re- flected in a diminished pay check. Nor was any man ever expected in respect of the course of the paper to write against his own convictions or in disloyalty to his own judgment. "Do you feel like writing so and so?" he would say. And if there was any indication of dissent from views which he evidently wished presented he would say : "Oh, well, I will do it myself. I don't want in this paper any perfunctory work. No man ever wrote anything that he didn't believe, that was worth anybody's reading." And so he would set himself to labors ​

CAREER AND WORK OF HARVEY W. SCOTT 119

which a man of less delicacy or of more arbitrary spirit would

have imposed upon others.

In the sense that he held in profound contempt many things which men in general delight in, Mr. Scott may be described as unsocial. He abominated ordinary frivolities in which many persons find mental refreshment. Social life in the usual inter- pretation of the phrase he regarded as waste of time even worse, as tending to mental flabbiness. He had not been brought up to understand that even a wise man may frivol not unwisely; and though at periods of his life he mixed more or less in social companies he got little out of it but weariness. So with ordinary amusements. He caied little for the theatre unless by some happy chance there was intellectual merit in the play or power in the per- formance. Sports he held in contempt. But he liked walking and at one period of his life he got a good deal of pleasure out of horseback riding. Driving was more or less a pleasure to him if he found congenial company, but other- wise it was a bore. Perhaps the keenest pleasure in his life in the sense of occupation, apart from his studies and profes- sional labors, was the clearing of a forest tract at Mount Scott. 31 Here he felt that he was doing constructive work redeeming the wilderness and preparing it for production. It recalled to him, too, the labors of his youth and a thousand memories connected with them. He once remarked as we stood on the side of Mt. Scott that the odors of burning stumps and brush piles carried him back to his boyhood as nothing else did. "I suppose" he said, "that where it costs me a hundred dollars to clear an acre of this land, its productive value will be less than a mere fraction of that sum. But somehow I like to do it. First or last it's got to be done by somebody and I might just as well get the fun out of it."

The theory that Mr. Scott was unsocial in his nature was one of his own pet self-deceptions perhaps I would better say affectations. "Yes," he would often remark, "I am by nature

a i Seven miles southeast center of Portland; named for Mr. Scott in 1889 by W. P. Ready. ​

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solitary !" Then he would sit down on the top of Mr. Bross's table or my own and declaim for an hour upon arts and letters, or politics or philosophy with the keenest zest. Upon such .occasions, and they were almost of daily occurrence, all the ordinary bars of conventional relationship between senior and junior were down. More than once I have said: "Mr. Scott, this is mighty interesting and I wish I had nothing to do but sit here the rest of the night, but if you expect anything from me in tomorrow's paper you have got to get out." "Yes/' he would answer, "I suppose I am something of a nuisance but as you know I am a solitary man and perhaps I don't realize when I impose upon others." The truth is that he was of an intensely social disposition, delighting in companionship and delightful as a companion, Like every other man of rare mind he demanded as an essential condition of pleasurable inter- course, understanding and sympathy; and of the former he found too little. The range and the gravity of his thought was far too wide and too deep for the average man ; therefore, the average man bored him. But when the companionship was upon even or sympathetic terms, no man could enter into it with higher zest. No member of The Oregonian staff of the period of the 'eighties will ever forget the occasions when Judge Deady 22 or Mr. William Lair Hill, 23 Judge Williams 24 or Mr. Asahel Bush 25 would look in upon him. These were men of his own stamp, worthy of his steel, and in their company the very best of Mn, Scott's mind and the best of his vast

knowledge was brought into play.

• * * * * *

But quite apart from men of hi& own intellectual rank, Mr. Scott had a considerable group of close personal friends. They were without exception men of some native and genuine

22 Matthew P. Deady, eminent Oregon jurist, born in Talbot county, Md., May 12, 1824; died at Portland March 24, 1893. Came to Oregon in 1849.

23 Mr. Hill is now a resident of Oakland, Cal., was editor The Oregonian 1872-77.

24 George H. Williams, jurist, attorney-general under President Grant, fore- most in reconstruction after civil war, born in, New Lebanon, Columbus county, N. Y., March 26, 1823; died at Portland April 4, 1910. Came to Oregon in 1853.

25 Mr. Bush, of Salem, during many years has been one of the striking figures in Oregon affairs and is now one of its venerable citizens. Came to Oregon in

1850; born at Westfield, Mass., June 4, 1824. ​

HARVEY W. SCOTT

AT 27 YEARS OF AGE ON BECOMING EDITOR OF THE OREGONIAN ​ ​quality. John Ward,^[3] a famous politician of his day, a man representative in many ways of things Mr. Scott disliked, was nevertheless a close friend. He valued Ward not for profundity of knowledge or for graces of character, but for his unfailing common sense and for a certain rock-ribbed honesty. "I don't like Ward's business," he said to me one day, "as you must know. Nevertheless it takes very much of a man to be a political boss. Just consider a moment what the elementary qualities of his character must be. First of all he must have honesty. No man who tells lies can find support in other men. No man who is careless about his word can have the respect of other men. No man who lacks loyalty can command loyalty. I am pretty much of the opinion that it takes more of a man to be a good political boss than it does to be a bishop. Now your bishop must either be a bit of a blank fool or something of a hypocrite. Either would be fatal to a political boss. Now, there is Ward; I have known him for thirty years. I would accept his word as final with respect to any matter upon which he presumes to have knowledge. I would leave uncounted money in his possession. I would rather have his judgment upon a question within his range than that of any man I know. When it comes to sterling qualities combined with working common sense I don't know John Ward's equal. And I guess, when it comes to the sentimental side, our bishop hasn't got much on Ward. I would as soon leave my estate in his hands as any man I know; and I would about as lief he would counsel my boys as any clerical brother of our acquaintance. He would teach them to tell the truth and to keep faith and to be honest in all dealings. Now if there be any better fundamentals for the business of life I don't know what they are. Yes, and I do flatter myself that I know something about fundamentals—a few of the simpler sort."

There were other men for whom Mr. Scott cherished warm ​

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sentiments. The late Judge Struve 27 of Seattle was especially a friend of his and there was always an evening of wise and hilarious talk when the two came together. Then there was the late Sam Coulter, 28 a man of quite another type, who inter ested Mr. Scott chiefly by a certain receptivity of mind. The late F. N. Shurtleff 29 was still another to whom Mr. Scott gave his friendship on the score of a certain fundamental honesty of character. And still another friend was the late Medorem Crawford 30 who could command Mr. Scott's time even upon his busiest day although to no better purpose than to retell the familiar stories of his experience as Captain of the Guards which accompanied wagon trains across the plains in 1861-63.

27 Henry G. Struve was born in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, Germany, November 17, 1836. He received a thorough academic education prior to coming to America, at the age of sixteen. A few months later he came to California, and for six years engaged in mining, studying law and newspaper work, most of this time in Amador county. In 1859 he was admitted to the bar. In February, 1860, he came to Vancouver, Washington territory ,and bought the Chronicle, which he conducted for about one year. He then began the practice of law, which he continued in Seattle until a short time before his death. He made Vancouver his home for about eleven years and during that time was elected to several different offices prosecuting attorney, probate judge, both branches of the legislative assembly, etc. In 1871 he went to Olympia, and the next year was in charge of the Puget Sound Courier for a time, and then was appointed secretary of the territory. In 1879 h removed to Seattle and formed a law partnership with John Leary, and from time to time J. C. Haines, Joseph McNaught, Maurice McMicken, John B. Allen, E. C. Hughes and other strong men made a part of the firm, others having been separated from it by death, resignation, etc. There he took an active part in public life, politically and in municipal and educational affairs for many years and became one of the foremost citizens of the place. He was married in Van- couver October 29, 1863, to Lassie F. Knighton, and four children were born to them, two sons and two daughters. He retired from active business early in 1904. After a brief illness he died in New York City, June 13, 1905. (C. B. Bagley.)

28 Samuel Coulter was born in Ohio in 1832. Came across the plains to Oregon in 1850, arriving in Oregon City September 12, with $2.00 in his pocket. Some time in 1852 he went to Thurston county, Oregon, and took up a donation land claim. In 1871 he was appointed collector of internal revenue by President Grant for Washington territory. In 1873 he went into the steamboat business on Puget Sound; in 1878, in company with C. P. Church, he built the Esmond Hotel, Portland; in 1879 he was one of a company to build a part of the Northern Pacific railroad from Cheney to Spokane; a little later, in company with two men, Messrs. Davids and Buckley, he laid out the town of Bucoda, Washington, and opened up a coal mine near that place. The name of the town was derived as follows:

Bu ckley. Co ulter. Da vids. Bu-co^da. Mr. Coulter died in Seattle July i, 1907. leaving a wife and two sons. (Geo.

29 Ferdinand N. Shurtleff came from Washington, D. C., to Iowa. Was mar- ried there in 1858, and crossed the plains to Oregon in 1862, locating in Polk county. He died in Portland April 6, 1903. He was a Republican politically, and was in the Indian service for a number of years. He was collector of customs under President Arthur, 1881; in 1891 he was the manager of the Gettysburg Cyclorama at Portland. '(Geo. H. Himes.)

30 Medorem Crawford was born in Orange county, N. Y., June 24, 1819; died Dec. 26, 1891. Came to Oregon in 1842 with Dr. Elijah White. He was several times member of the Oregon Legislature. In 1861-3 he was captain of a company of soldiers that protected the Oregon trail. He was collector of internal revenue at Portland 1865-70; appraiser at Portland 1871-6. ​

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Each of these men had some quality of nature or some association with past times which made him companionable to Mr. Scott. If in any one of them there was some whimsical quality or habit Mr. Scott saw it clearly enough. He had an amusing way of hitting off their foibles. For example, one day he came into my room and remarked : "I have got to find some way to keep 'Cap' Crawford occupied for about two hours. Can't you go out to Chinatown and buy some of the very worst cigars that are to be had for money remember, the very worst I wouldn't run the risk of reforming Crawford's taste in cigars." But in spite of this disposition to play upon whimsicalities, his tendency was to discover whatever was fine in a friend and to pass over with amused tolerance things which he would have condemned in others. Where understanding was not available he could be content with sympathy and ap- preciation.

I cannot pass from this phase of Mr. Scott's character with- out reference to an incident which curiously exhibited the senti- mental side of his nature. Between himself and the late Ed- ward Failing there was much in common in connection with much that was diverse. They were friends on and off for forty years, chiefly on the intellectual side of things, for they stood upon a common plane of mentality. At one time there had been a lapse of relations so profound that for years they passed and repassed without recognition. But an incident brought them together when both were well past fifty and they saw much of each other, easily renewing the bond of early youth. I knew Mr. Scott was fond of Mr. Failing but how fond I did not realize until the latter's death. Going into Mr. Scott's office I said, "I have a sad message, Mr. Scott ; Edward Failing died an hour ago." 31 He sat with fixed gaze as if upon noth- ing for a full minute, then rose and walked to the window, took up his field glass and carefully studied the glowing moun- tain. He turned toward me with his hands raised. "The last," he said "the last of the friends of my youth the last to call me Harvey!"

31 Jan. 29, 1900; see supra. ​

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In the later years of his life Mr. Scott went much to the East. These visits he greatly enjoyed. His reputation, long an estab- lished quantity in the professional world, had expanded into fame. He stood among the leaders in his profession a tower- ing survival of the older and better fashion in journalism. He found too an appreciation among statesmen and men of affairs which was gratifying to him. No man of discriminating power to whom Mr. Scott ever gave ten minutes time failed to discover the qualities of the man. Men like Henry Watterson 32 and Whitelaw Reid, 33 with whom he fell i'nto cordial associa- tion, quickly saw that here was a mind of high powers. After a lifetime of isolation he thus came in his later years familiarly into association with leaders in the world of national affairs. To the new relationship he brought the zest of one who had known little of the gracious phases of life outside his local circle. Without his being in the least conscious of it, it opened up to him something approaching a new career. Every man of laborious habit is more or less exhilarated under detachment from his customary tasks and by association with new people, and none more than Mr. Scott. With a pleasure not unmixed with pride I recall an evening or two passed with him in New York and in distinguished company where in a conversational sense he held the center of the stage, bearing himself in it with a power and a charm which seemed almost like an effect of intoxication. Only a few months before his death the late Whitelaw Reid told me of an occasion where Mr. Scott with himself and others dined as the guests of Archbishop Corrigan. 34 "Scott," said Mr. Reid, "came late and was obviously embar- rassed by the fact that he had kept the company waiting for nearly an hour. His annoyance reacted in a kind of mental exhilaration. We were about twenty at dinner, Mr. Scott sit- ting at the left of His Grace. Almost immediately when the time for general talk began a question addressed to him by the host brought from Mr. Scott a reply which ex- hibited his acquaintance with theological scholarship. The

32 Editor Louisville Courier- Journal ; long-time friend of Mr. Scott's.

33 Editor New York Tribune and later Ambassador to Great Britain.

34 Michael Augustine Corrigan (1839-1902), Archbishop of New York. ​

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Archbishop, obviously surprised, pursued the subject. Then with absolute unconsciousness, Mr. Scott on the one hand and the Archbishop on the other entered into the most extra- ordinary discussion I have ever heard. It began about nine o'clock and did not end u'ntil near midnight. Hardly another man than the host and Mr. Scott spoke a word. Indeed, it was practically a monologue on the part of Mr Scott, but in perfect taste and surprisingly eloquent. Such a flood of knowledge, such a wealth of reflection, such freshness and earnestness of mind I have never seen matched in connection with a subject so outside the sphere of ordinary interests. For months after, if I chanced to meet anybody who was present at that dinner there was sure to be reference to the extraordinary talk. The powers of the man and his familiarity with theological matters, surprised all of us. We could but marvel that such a man could be a product of a pioneer country, living all his life remote from the centers of scholarship and of abstract thought."

It was no doubt due to the conditions of Mr. Scott's early life as they have already been outlined that he had, or always assumed to have, little sympathy with personal incapacity or its consequences. I often thought him too much disposed to see the individual deficiencies which lay behind personal distress rather than the distress itself. If self-indulgence or wasted energies had brought a man to want, Mr. Scott's impulse was less to relieve the need than to define the cause of it. He de- spised inefficiency with the whole brood of its causes. Yet he was much kinder in deed than in sentiment. More than once when applied to for help in the name of charity he would declaim with tremendous emphasis against the vices of incompetence and end by yielding a donation. But broadly speaking, his attitude towards grown-up men and women who had neglected or dissipated their opportunities in life was severely critical. "He has thrown away his chances, laughed in the face of counsel, sneered at the lessons of experience let him take the consequences." Something like this was not in- frequently heard from Mr. Scott. But he had the tenderest ​

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feeling for childhood. Nothing so aroused him as reports of suffering on the part of children, especially if caused by some- body's cruelty

There was a citizen of Portland, now dead;, whom Mr. Scott had known in the days when he was cutting wood for Tom Charman in Clackamas County. In this man, although they had little in common, Mr. Scott always cherished a profound interest. " What," I once asked him, "do you find in that man ?" He replied : "One day forty years ago up Molalla way as I was passing a farm house, I was attracted by the screams of a child manifestly in pain. I rushed into the barnyard and there found a boy of perhaps fourteen triced up and under the merci- less lash of a beast of a father. This man was that boy. I have never been able to get the incident out of my mind. To this day my pulse quickens and my gorge heaves when I think of it. To me he is always the little boy who was being cruelly flogged. I did at the time what the God of righteous ven- geance required, then helped the lad to get away from home, and my interest has followed him from that day until now."

Some thirty years ago there appeared one morning in the Oregonian a pitiful story of a child abused by a brutal step- father on a squalid scow-house up the river near the old pump- ing station. The little chap had been whipped with a strap to which a buckle was attached and it had cut into his flesh until he was gashed from head to foot. Mr. Baltimore 35 of the local staff had personally visited the scene and had helped rescue the victim of this cruelty, and he had made the account painfully graphic. Mr. Scott having read the report at home, came to the office in hot wrath. He was furiously im- patient for Baltimore's arrival to have the story over again and with fuller details. Then he stalked forth in search of the man. What he would have done I do not know I can only guess

35 John M. Baltimore crossed the plains in 1863 and grew to manhood near Salem. In the early yos he became reporter on The Oregonian. Later he went to San Francisco where he became correspondent of the Western Associated Press. In 1883-5 he was reporter on The Oregonian and Evening Telegram and in 1888 became city editor of The Oregonian, succeeding Sam R. Fraser. In 1891 he quit The Oregonian and became special writer on the Evening Telegram. In i8g6 he went to Spokan* and later to Oakland, Gal. He died at San Francisco in January, 191*, ​

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but I think it was well for the beast that he had slunk from sight. For days after, Mr. Scott could hardly speak of any- thing else. In the midst of his work he would leave his desk saying, "I cannot get that terrible picture out of my mind. Curses, curses on the base creature !" And out he would stalk to regain composure by tramping the hillsides. In multiplied other instances Mr. Scott's sympathies for childhood were prompt and vehemently declared. He had nothing of mock sentiment; indeed he never seemed particularly fond of chil- dren other thah his own. Yet the distresses of childhood from

wherever they came, aroused him as nothing else ever did.

Statesman Mr. Scott was in the truest possible sense; but he was never, excepting for a time when he held an admin- istrative office, an official factor in governmental affairs. He had little respect for ordinary officialism, and none at all for the type of man who contrives by hook or by crook to get himself elected to something, or who makes a trade of public office. Yet there was always in the background of his mind a certain yearning for the opportunities which only official station can give. "There is," he was wont to say, "but one platform from which a man may speak to the whole American people. A senator of the United States, if he have mind with knowledge and powers of expression, may have a great audience." But while Mr. Scott might again and again have been a senator if he had been willing to arrange for it, he could never bring himself to do so. In truth, he regarded with supreme con- tempt the concessions commonly necessary under our political system on the part of one who would take an active part in the responsible work of national legislation. I am sure that in the latter years of Mr. Scott's life if he had been invited, under conditions calling for no compromises, that he would have been very glad to have represented Oregon in the Senate. He would have eh joyed the associations and he would like- wise have been glad to bear a part in the discussions of great questions. But he could never have yielded to the political game the pledges which it demands. Nor would he have given ​

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attention to the multitudinous trivialities with which senators, particularly from the newer states, are forever pestered. Within two or three years of his death, Mr. Scott was brought to the test through a tender on the part of the President of the United States of the Ambassadorship to Mexico. 36 And at another time he was informally tendered a similarly dignified post in o'ne of the European countries. 37 In each instance he declined the honor with thanks. When it came to abandonment of his customary relationships and responsibilities and his familiar ways of life he was not willing to make the sacrifice. I suspect it would have bee'n the same in connection with any other office. Among Mr. Scott's intimates among those of us who knew him in all the phases of his character it has always been a subject of speculation as to how he would have carried himself as a senator. I am frank to say that in my judgment he would have failed to satisfy any constituency, like that of Oregon, accustomed to a species of more or less eager subserviency on the part of officialism. If he could have represented a state like New York or Massachusetts where the demands upo'n a senator are of a large intellectual kind, he would have made a noble record. But where every man capable of making his cross feels at liberty to write to "my senator" for any service at Washington from the purveying of garden seeds to the secur- ing of a contract for army supplies or the getting of a dissolute son out of jail, Mr. Scott would have been a disappointment. He simply would riot have done the things required; and not doing them he would have been thought neglectful of senatorial duties. Beyond a doubt Mr. Scott would have distinguished himself in discussion. While no orator in the conventional sense, he could still express himself with mighty force upon his feet ; and in prepared argument there has perhaps not bee'n a man in the senate during this generation whom he did not more than match. But at the point of getting things done and unhappily senators are expected to get things done he would hardly have been what is called efficient. His habits of mind

36 Tendered by President Taft in 1909.

37 Tendered by President Roosevelt in 1904; MinUter to Belgium. ​ ​ ​

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and action were under the inspiration of independence. He could never have subordinated himself to the severely partisan method of doing things and he would 'never have made com- promises or have entered into bargains. In the senate I think he would have been strong, brilliant, forceful but eccentric and I fear, as regards what are called working results, an impotent figure. Success in the senate is attained by methods wholly outside the lines of his genius and propensity of his habit and his sense of propriety. Mr. Scott often remarked when efforts were made to stimulate in him the spirit of political ambition that he would not "step down" from the editorship of The Oregonian into the United States senate. And this was no boast ; for the editorship of The Oregonian as it was carried by Mr. Scott was truly a higher place, a place of wider re- sponsibilities andi of larger powers than any official place pos- sibly attainable by a man geographically placed as Mr. Scott was.

All who, like myself, shared in the advantages of close asso- ciation with Mr. Scott are fond of recalling a thousand trivial- ities which, small though they are, illustrate certain aspects of his character. No man was ever more scrupulous in all the essentials of personal habit ; yet he had always a certain indifference to appearances. When free from domestic discipline that is, during the absences of his family from home he was wont to be exceedingly careless about his dress. Now and again one of us would remind him that he ought to get a fresh suit of clothes. Once in response to this kind of suggestion he appeared brand new from crown to sole and obviously conscious of the quite radical change. "How does this suit you ?" he asked as he paused in my doorway. It hap- pened to be at a time when waistcoats were cut high, barely exhibiting the collar and an inch of necktie. But the waistcoat of this new suit was extremely low. "Why," I replied, "hasn't your tailor cut that vest a little low?" "Well," he replied as he sought with a characteristic movement to get it into its proper place, "I thought it seemed a bit low, and I remarked it to the man, but he insisted, and this is what I got. I sup​

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pose one must make some concession to the style." I once re- minded him that the braid had wholly disappeared from the rim of his hat. "You say the braid is gone ?" he said. "Now, don't you see that that hat has reached a perfect development? It has got where nothing more can happen to it." Nobody can know better than I that these be trivialities ; but they linger in memory with a certain sweetness and I venture to set them down for what they may be worth as illustrating a certain engaging simplicity in one who, the more I see of life, looms heroic in my firmament of men.

I cannot feel that it would be in place to speak particularly of the domestic side of Mr. Scott's life. He was singularly and devotedly a family man fond of his home, the devoted lover of the sweet woman who was his wife, and a father to whom no labor or sacrifice was ever a weariness. He was not one to find entertainment at clubs, at theatres or at other assemblages; his personal interest outside of his office was within the four walls of home abd there he spent practically every hour that was not given to his labors or to out-of-doors recreation of which he was fond. Formidable figure that he was in most relationships, he shed his austerities when he hung his hat on the hall rack. Many years ago with practically the first considerable fund that was available for other than business necessities, he built the spacious and dignified house in which he lived to his death. He loved to adorn it with art and to enrich it with treasures. Yet his taste for other things never overbore certain cherished sentiments. In the great library in which he passed the larger part of his time, the portrait of his father had the place of honor. The shelves which held his most valued volumes were made of boards re- trieved many years ago from the pioneer house in Tazewell County in Illinois built by his father's hands and in which himself and his brothers abd sisters were born. I hardly need to add that the man whose propensities to domestic life and whose family sentiment was so marked a feature of his char​

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acter suffered nothing neither his duties nor his studies ever to interfere with the fondest of human obligations.

It was not Mr. Scott's way to talk much about the sentiments which were the spiritual guides of his life and the sources of his power. But now and again quite unconsciously there would come from him that which revealed the inner springs of the man. Of many such utterances I think perhaps that in which he set forth the character of the late Judge Williams most clearly summarized Mr. Scott's own standards of intellectual and moral worth. Of Judge Williams Mr. Scott wrote :

"In him personal integrity, intellectual sincerity, intuitive perception of the leading facts of every important situation, quick discernment and faculty of separation of the important features of any subject from its incidental and accidental cir- cumstances, with clearness of statement and power of argu- ment unsurpassed, marked the outlines of his personal char- acter. He was a man who never lost his equipoise, nor ever studied or posed to produce sensational or startling effects. I"n his private life and demeanor there was the same simplicity of character, evenness of judgment and temper andunaffectedness of action. His immense powers, of which he himself never seemed unaware, were always at his command." 38

Here we have not more Mr. Scott's view of Judge Williams than a presentment of his own ideals his own measure of a man.

I come with reluctance to the end of a recital for I have attempted only a recital of things tending to illustrate the character and life of a very extraordinary and very helpful man. He came, as we have seen, into leadership of public thought i'n Oregon at a time when the character of the country was in the making. His work in journalism lay at the sources of a stream of life which grew large under his hand

38 From an editorial in The Oregonian April 5, 1910, the last important article written by Mr. Scott. Reprinted in Oregon Historical Quarterly, XI, 223-6. Judge Williams died April 4, 1910. ​

132 ALFRED HOLM AN

from small beginnings and must now go on expanding through indefinite years. It was at a time when great events were in the germ. The adjustments which followed the Civil War, the relations of the government to the Pacific world, the ar- rangements for commerce in this hew world these early pressed upon his attention to find in him a conscientious stu- dent and an intelligent and practical counselor. Then came the period of western development with the momentous issues connected with it. Following this came financial issues in many phases and forms, questions of alien immigration, ques- tions growing out of the populistic movement, of labor organ- ization, or socialistic agitation and of ten thousand subjects of high public import. To each of these in turn, and to all of them recurrently, the mind and hand of Mr. Scott were ad- dressed. He shirked no labors, he avoided no issues. He felt himself under a high mandate and he carried himself with the resolution which responsibility inspires in large minds. To changing fashions in journalism, he made almost no conces- sion. He could no more have purveyed poisons to the mind than he could have fed poisons to the body. For the practices 2n journalism which we nominate "yellow" he had a profound detestation. He would have none of it. Whoever might wish for a paper reeking with uncleanliness and pandering, vicious or flabby trivialities for the light-minded, might seek else- where. Mr. Scott's purposes were serious, his journalism always dominated by high purposes and limited by a taste which rejected and rebuked all tendencies to carelessness or vulgarity. If there were scandalous incidents which must be reported, details were minimized and relegated to least conspicuous pages. If unpleasant things had to be dealt with it was done, but with frankness and decency in the gentleman's spirit. So by the tendencies of his mind, by the gravity of his character, by the guides of wisdom, dignity, courage ahd taste Mr. Scott planted on high ground and sustained for nearly half a century standards of journalism which must for all time be a pattern for the worthy and rebuke to the vicious.

​For myself whose fortune it was to live long in association with this rare man, to share in many of the influences and in a sense to inherit the inspirations of his life, there seems now a mighty void in the immediate world in which he lived. Lover of my motherland as I am, let me confess a certain sadness when I revisit the home from whence the light of a great character has departed. It is as if Mt. Hood were blotted from the landscape. Verily, a great force has gone out of the world.

​

H. W. Scott's intellectual interests were extremely varied. His wide reading and habit of deep thought were shown most, of course, in his editorials, which touched on every theme and were always illuminative; but his conversation also betrayed an almost exhaustless knowledge of books, and constant meditation upon their contents. Throughout the course of his long life he was a persistent reader and collector of books. Like most men of mark, he began to form his library in early life, at a time when every volume represented more or less sacrifice.^[5] It is from the books which are thus purchased by a young man more perhaps than from the acquisitions of later years, that his genuine literary predispositions may be ascertained. When he has attained to fortune and wide acquaintance with public characters, a man buys books because they are making a noise in the world, or because the author has a great scientific reputation or for a thousand other reasons but in his struggling youth he buys them only because he wishes to read them. Some of Mr. Scott's earliest acquisitions were histories and volumes of the classics.

His preference for these branches of literature never diminished. The catalogue of his library shows that he came into possession sooner or later of almost every important historical work that has ever been written, not the narrow technical essays certainly, but the productions of wide international interest. He read Greek with the ordinary collegiate skill and Latin with much facility so that the great classical historians ​

SCHOLARSHIP AND LITERARY ACTIVITY OF H. W. SCOTT 135

will be found among his books in the original. But in his college days the modern languages were less studied than they are now, and being a man of his time, he was less versed in them than in the ancient tongues. Hence he collected the modern histories for the most part in translations. He was one of the comparatively small number of present day public men who liked to read Gibbon. This most profound of the historians Mr. Scott knew familiarly and quoted liberally. Gibbon's ac- count of the early church particularly struck his fancy, since, as everybody understands, the great Editor inclined to take the same views of theology as the philosophical historian did.

His familiarity with the classics was revealed by everything he wrote. He could quote long passages from Vergil m the original and had dozens of lines from Catullus at his tongue's end. Not long before he passed away, Mr. Scott began to renew his acquaintance with Ovid whom he had read at college but somewhat neglected since. It was interesting to see the skill with which he rendered the Metamorphoses into English and the ease with which he construed lines that have puzzled the commentators. He may not always have been correct but he never failed to have an opinion and a well grounded one at that. Mr. Scott's extraordinarily vigorous English style was founded oh his Latin reading. He wrote with all the pre- cision of the classical authors and often with more than their incisiveness. His Latin taught him to shun that diffusive wordiness which is the bane of so much common writing and gave him the model for those condensed and forceful sentences which never failed to go straight to the mark, and pierce it when they struck. We may thank Mr. Scott's classical tastes for a great deal of the power over Oregon politics which he wielded up to the day of his death. Naturally, mere study of the classics would not have accomplished anything if his mind had not been of a caliber to benefit by them, but in his case the instrument was admirably adapted to its use and needed nothing but sharpening. This the Greek and Latin authors gave it as nothing else could have done. ​

136 CHARLES H. CHAPMAN

With the classics Mr. Scott cherished a great fondness for ancient history, not only that of Greece and Rome but par- ticularly of the older nations. He followed assiduously every- thing that was written about Egypt and the works of the great modern Egyptologists will be found among his books. Like many superior readers, he was keenly interested in the progress of Assyriology. The decipherment of the cuneiform inscrip- tions filled him with wonder and he eagerly followed every new discovery in that cryptic field. Closely allied to this was his fondness for Biblical studies. Very little has ever been brought to light by the Higher Criticism which Mr. Scott did not master. Naturally of an investigative turn of mind, he found endless delight in those marvelous interpretations of the Old Testament tales which criticism has provided. The mir- aculous in itself made but a slight appeal to him but the scien- tific explanation of a reported miracle gave him unqualified pleasure. Among his books will be found the best critical works of his time both upon the Old Testament and the New. The Life of Paul was one of the subjects which interested him deeply. In one of his best editorials he explained elaborately the use which Paul made of the Roman principle of adoption in propagating early Christianity. Referring to the famous text, "If children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ," he showed how the apostle bent the concept of the Roman law to his purpose and made his religion acceptable to the rulers of the world by assimilating it to their legal pre- conceptions. The purport of the editorial was that Paul had most skilfully applied his own theory that a good propagandist ought to be all things to all men.

Mr. Scott's editorials betray everywhere his wide reading in the publicists. The abstract theory of law and speculations on the basis of government occupied his mind a great deal. Burke was his favorite author in this field but he read many others. Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" was one of the many books which he seemed to have by heart and its doctrines pervaded all he wrote. Next to Burke, Mr.

Scott probably revered the political authority of Alexander ​ ​ ​

SCHOLARSHIP AND LITERARY ACTIVITY OF H. W. SCOTT 137

Hamilton whom he constantly exalted above Thomas Jefferson. He was in sympathy with the Hamiltonian theory of nation- alized governmental powers and checks upon the popular will. His acquaintance with the American revolutionary authors was profound. Their political views were attractive to him as a matter of course but he lound a great deal of other matter in them with which to sympathize. Madison's love of religious liberty, for example, found a ready echo in Mr. Scott's heart. No man ever detested theological tyranny more than he while at the same time he deeply revered the fundamental principles of religion. In his writings the distinction between theology and religion is constantly brought forward,

Most of the great books on free thought will be found in his library. Milton's prose works, Richard Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding and books of that caliber he had read attentively and made their contents part of his mental possessions. Voltaire was not among his particular favorites. He inclined to Carlyle's judgment of the great French freethinker, that he was somewhat shallow and more disposed to tear down than build up. But upon the whole his views coincided with those of the British liberals in theology and the skeptics of all ages fou'nd him a sympathetic reader of their books. Naturally with tastes like these Mr. Scott could not escape the fascination of metaphysics. Among his books the famous philosophers all find a place. As has been intimated already, his personal views were inclined to those of Locke and the "common sense" school in general but his sympathies, included all sorts of speculation. He uhder- stood Berkeley's theory and liked to trace its history through its many devious forms until it finally appeared transformed into Christian Science. He was familiar with William James's Psychology and thoroughly understood its religious and polit- ical consequences, but Pragmatism appeared a little too late to win his interest. His health began to fail at about the time when James introduced Bergson to American readers.

From what has been said it will appear that Mr. Scott was fond of "solid reading." This is true but not exclusively. A ​

138 CHARLES H. CHAPMAN

person who did not understand the breadth of his sympathies and the catholicity of his taste would be surprised to see the number of novels in his library. The "best sellers" of his later years are missing but most of the fiction that has stood the test of time is on his shelves. His favorite was Thackeray. Very likely there was no novelist that he cared for so much as he did for Burke or Shakespeare, but he had read the best of them, as he had the best of everything. He k'new the Biblical stories better than any others. Mr. Scott's knowledge of the Bible was exhibited at every turn. He could hardly write a column without half a dozen allusions to the sacred text. The Bible and Shakespeare always lay on his desk and he used both of them constantly. Much of the vigor of his English style was due to his memory of Scriptural expres- sions. Perhaps he owed more to that source than he did to the classics. He was always pleased to have Biblical subjects touched upon in The Oregonian and frequently discussed them himself. When he did so his knowledge made what he said final.

His memory of poetry was astonishing. He could quote page after page of Paradise Lost. Burns's songs were at his tongue's end. He knew the finest passages in Faust and loved Tennyson. The English and classical poets were equally familiar to him, but it was Shakespeare that he read most and quoted constantly. He was never at a loss for a line from the great dramatist to illustrate a point or clinch a witticism. His library contains all the celebrated editions of Shakespeare down to the Furness set with its voluminous notes and readings. Mr. Scott found a mild pleasure in the vagaries of the Baconians, as they style themselves, but their arguments never made any impression upon his mind. He always maintained that Shake- speare "wrote his own plays" and never conceded that any other hypothesis was tenable. He was as conscious as any- body could be that there was a great mystery surrounding the production of poetry so marvellous by a man with opportunities in life so slender but that consideration never weakened his faith in the Bard of Avon.

​In the course of his life Mr. Scott collected one of the largest private libraries in the Western United States. It was the result of wide and varied culture, catholic tastes and rare opportunities to discover and acquire what was best. From his youth he was an omnivorous reader and his memory was equal to his hunger for books. He seldom forgot a passage. Whatever he had seen in print he could quote, often years afterward. He always knew precisely what books contained the information he needed at any moment and usually they were in his own collection. To one who understands and loves books Mr. Scott's library gives a better account of his life and thought than any biographer could write.

Dallas, Oregon. ​

{{c|OUTLINE

I. Pioneer Influence on the Writings.

II. Intellectual Range of Mr. Scott.

III. Literary and Historical Essays.

IV. Religious and Theological Topics.

V. Sound Money:

(a) Long Fight Against Fiatism.

(b) Greenbackism.

(c) Free Coinage of Silver. VI. Reconstruction After Civil War.

VII. Negro and South. VIII. National Idea:

(a) Its Progress After Civil War.

(b) Rival Doctrines of Hamilton and Jefferson. IX. Expansion of National Territory.

X. Tariff, Revenue and "Protection."

XI. Chinese Exclusion.

XII. Coxey Armies.

XIII. Individualism:

(a) In Morals.

(b) In Industry.

XIV. Socialism:

(a) Analysis of Its Doctrines.

(b) Spread of Governmental Function.

(c) Single Tax on Land. XV. Evils of Large Wealth.

XVI. The "Oregon System." XVII. Local Controversies:

(a) Railroad Disputes.

(b) Mortgage Tax.

(c) High Cost Living. XVIII. Ethics of Journalism.

XIX. His Devotion to the Public Interest. ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 141

This review of Mr. Scott's work is based on a collection of some ten thousand articles written by him in the course of his long and busy life. Yet even this seemingly large number is small in comparison with the author's great output. It is no easy task to summarize the collection in the space here allotted ; quite impossible to detail it minutely. Therefore we shall treat only most important general subjects, or rather, favorite ones of the Editor's writing. And first let us note the pre- dominating idea of his editorial productions his devotion to individual function and duty. This motive of the pioneer era he bespoke probably more forcefully than any other writer of his generation.

I PIONEER CHARACTER

As each man's character is formed by ancestral and youthful environment, it may be interesting to note the conditions which molded the life of Mr. Scott. From his pioneer heritage of the Western frontier he derived his vigor of utterance and per- sonality. From this same experience he found his democratic sympathies; perceived bational tendencies; gained breadth of view, which he extended by reading; learned humble toils and frugalities; brought himself close to feelings of Western folk and acquired the principles of self-dependence and individual responsibility which mark all his work. He was a self-made man, had made his way as a youth, unaided, and gained rudi- ments of an education through his own energies. It was but natural, therefore, that he continually urged habits of self-help on the later generation.

Mr. Scott was an individualist in personal habit, in precept, in lessons of industry, sobriety, economy in all that works for personal thrift; an individualist in parental discipline of the home; an individualist in face of growing demands for "community help" and government paternalism. This ever- present idea in his writings will afford basis of understanding for his readers who may think back on what he published day by day or who may examine his articles hereafter. ​

142 LESLIE M. SCOTT

Let it be remembered that the American frontiersman and pioneer expected to overcome obstacles in their path, alone. In time of savage warfare, they united, but this necessity was only occasional. When a barn was to be "raised" they met together, but this was quite in the nature of a "social function." For mutual protection, they sometimes "crossed the plains" in organized companies, but with danger absent, they chose to travel in small parties or alone. They supported community schools, but it is testimony of survivors that children learned rudiments of education chiefly at home. The whole mode of life of the Pioneer West taught each person and each married couple to work out their own fortune and to be responsible for their own spiritual salvation. It never occurred to them that the community owed anybody a living. Government was not depended upon to give a "lift" nor to create a "job" nor to regulate health or morals or wages, nor to pension the un- fortunate.

That this mode of life developed a hardy race needs but bare mention here. It brought out resourcefulness, initiative, self- reliance. It fostered the democratic spirit, raised high the level of public and private morals. It barred caste and discontent of older communities. It is manifest that best traits have come out of the West. Mr. Bryce has said "The West is the most American part of America." And a remark of another writer is equally true : "America was bred in a cabin" a dwelling of logs, symbolizing the rough strength of the people.

Out of such life came the later Editor, Mr. Scott, in Taze- well County, central Illinois. His grandfather, James Scott, was the first settler in Groveland Township in 1824, from Ken- tucky. Mr. Scott's father, John Tucker Scott, twenty years later thought of moving to Texas, as James had moved to Illi- nois, but instead came to Oregon, in 1852. The six or seven- year-old son the editor-to-be wondered if Texas was a less chilly abode and asked: "Father, is Texas a tight house?" This question indicates the simplicity of the pioneer dwelling. With the family of John Tucker Scott came to Oregon sturdy principles of morality and industry, which invigorated the ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 143

career of the editor. Mr. Scott always took sentimental interest in matters of Oregon history. His writings on these subjects make a valuable collection. At some future time it is the pur- pose of the present writer to give them publication. These subjects held him with the filial attachments of a son toward his forebears. Mr. Scott delighted to lay aside even most pressing tasks to "talk over" old times or to greet companions or con- temporaries of his youth. His sanctum door was open to such visitors oftentimes when others could not gain entrance and when his newspaper work suffered for the interruption. Once, George H. Himes, meeting Mr. Scott when the latter was under heavy pressure of business, hastened to say that John Forbes, 1 of Olympia, a companion of Mr. Scott's in Captain Swindall's company in the Indian war of 1855-6, was in Portland. "John Forbes !" "John Forbes !" exclaimed Mr. Scott. "Bring him to see me!" "But," hesitated Mr. Himes, "you're so busy." "Never mind, never mind ! Bring him up !" A similar inter- view preceded an appointment for Bill Ruddell. 2 On each occasion Mr. Scott abandoned his editorial tasks and gave up a long period to the interview.

II INTELLECTUAL RANGE

Mr. Scott was conspicuously a reader as well as a writer. His library was his place of recreation; to companionship of

i John Butchard Forbes, born in Dundee, Scotland, May 14, 1833. Came to the United States in 1834, settled in New Jersey, moved to Illinois in 1844. Started with his brother David across the plains on April 13, 1853, arriving at The Dalles Sept. 25. Soon afterwards went to Olympia. Followed lumbering, farming and steamboating. Was in Indian war of 1855-56, under Captain Calvin

to Monticello by steamer, then knocked it down and shipped it piecemeal in canoes to Cowlitz Landing, and threshed for Cowlitz farmers. In June-July, 1857, this machine was taken to Puget Sound. This was the first thresher and sep- arator north of the Columbia river. Capacity, under the most favorable circum- stances, 500 bushels in 12 hours. Mr. Forbes was married to Lydia Croghan in August, 1856, but she died within a year or two. He died several years ago. (George H. Himes.)

2 William Hendry Ruddell, born near Quincy, Adams county, 111., Nov. 7, 1839. Went to Missouri in 1842, settling in Schuyler county. Crossed the plains to Oregon in 1851, and spent the winter near the present town of Catlin, Cowlitz county. In the summer of 1852 the Ruddell family removed to Thurston county, then in Oregon, and settled on a D. L. C. six miles east of Chambers prairie, six miles south of east of Olympia. He was married to Miss Helen Z. Himes Feb. 21, 1864. His occupation was that of a farmer and stock raiser. Moved to Elma, Chehalis county, Washington, in the spring of 1870. Died March 13, 1903. Served during the Yakima Indian war of 1855-56 in the Pioneer company commanded by Capt. Joseph White, and afterwards by Capt. U. E. Hicks. Was a member of the Elma town council for several years. ​

144 LESLIE M. SCOTT

his books he devoted large part of his daily life. His reading was constant and unflagging to his last days. Never for long did he engage in conversation, except during after-dinner periods, when surrounded by friends or members of his family. That was his social intercourse. These intellectual after-feasts covered widest range of religion, history and literature, nature and spirit, matter and mind. The great storehouse of his memory yielded allusions and quotations which charmed his auditors with their versatility. At such times, the Editor truly unfolded the greatness of his mind, the universality of his talents, the accuracy of his memory, the maturity of his scholar- ship. Many were his philosophical and theological disquisi- tions ; his narratives of great men and great events ; his dis- courses on Shakespeare and Milton and Homer and Goethe and Dante and others too numerous for mention here. His touches on the moral and the spiritual delighted his hearers. He could talk on most intricate doctrinal subjects; none could speak more precisely on Fall of Man or Resurrection or Atone- ment. But he preferred reflections on daily good conduct and non-dogmatized deity. In these conversations his sincerity, humility and docility of spirit would have surprised the ortho- dox who, perhaps, that very day had stirred his resistance by their dogmatic efforts to repress him. Along with his fine literary, historical and religious perceptions, he possessed much practical sense for every-day affairs in these discourses. Never did he soar away with dreams or ideals that he forgot life's earthly matters.

These periods of his relaxation lasted an hour or two hours ; then back he went to his desk or his books. The chief lesson of his daily life was his economy of time and effort. He enter- tained rarely and joined social gatherings seldom. Many per- sons thought him unsociable, reticent, taciturn, severe ; whereas his were the direct opposite of all those traits. Without such habits he could not have covered the vast areas where his studies took him. His singleness of aim and unity of pursuit were to equip his mind with copious supply for his daily writings. These matters are mentioned here to show that Mr. Scott's ​

HARVEY W. SCOTT

AT 62 YEARS OF AGE. PHOTOGRAPH BY LEE MOORHOUSE AT

BINGHAM SPRINGS, UMAflLLA COUNTY, IN THE

SUMMER OF 19OO

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 145

writings, admirable ​ ​though they are in the collection, omit much of his intellectual output.

Ill LITERARY AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS

Most delightful of Mr. Scott's productions were his frequent writings on subjects of literature, history, and theology. These marked him as one of the ablest essayists of his day. Seldom does a scholar become a powerful editor. Scarcely any of the great editors have been great scholars. The editor of practical affairs, idealistic sense and scholarly attainment is the rarest combination. But such a combination was Mr. Scott. Amid his busiest work, dealing with current affairs, he would insert a frequent article on some phase of the genius of Shakes- peare or on a theme of Milton, or Tennyson, or Cervantes, or one of a host of others. These commentaries on literary mat- ters, so remote from centers of scholarship, were objects of surprise and admiration the country over. No man could have afforded his community wider variety of reading than did Mr. Scott. His favorite books were the Bible and Shakes- peare, Milton and Burke. He re-read these constantly and had their contents always at command. Napoleon and Crom- well were special objects of his study and frequent subjects of his pen. British and French history were as familiar to him as that of his native country. His comments on foreign politics he spiced with historical references. The rivalry of European peoples gave scope for favorite themes of "Race Rivalry a Force of Progress," and "Potent Agency of War in Human Progress." For in Mr. Scott's view, strong and aggressive nations are the ones that arm and take and grow ; war is the nursery of national strength ; as injustice is always armed, so must justice be; without war despotism would be permanent and evil inveterate ; the way to peace is not through non-resistance but through preparedness for war; they who can't fight can't live except in subordination; no morality, no ideals, not backed with arms, can be worth anything ; "so it has always been, and so it will be always, and forevermore" (Jan. 5, 1905). ​

146 LESLIE M. SCOTT

IV RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL TOPICS

The favorite branch of his historical study was theology. To this study he brought a reverent, tolerant mind; also a rational interpretation that would not be deterred by protest of theologians who resented "invasion" of their sphere. His reading was so wide, his acquaintance with greatest scholars on historical religion was so extensive, that he could wage the- ological polemics to discomfiture of any orthodox. 3 He only defended his views, however, never attacked belief or dogma or creed, unless his inquiries were assailed. He never sought to "upset" any religion nor to dissuade from any belief ; toward persons who found comfort in any church he was always con- siderate and sympathetic. But he thought that historical and rational study was not responsible for error or superstition that it revealed. Those persons who knew him well, knew his sincerity, his reverence for the universal idea of men toward deity. Among his friends and admirers were theologians of many divergent sects. Archbishops Gross 4 and Christie 5 , the third and fourth heads of the Catholic faith in Oregon, re- garded his writings with tolerant and admiring view. The Rev. Arthur J. Brown, 6 pastor of the leading Presbyterian Church in Portland, himself a clergyman of scholarship, made frequent friendly calls at Mr. Scott's editorial rooms. Many leaders of Methodism held him in high regard and on October 10, 1908, he delivered an address in their leading church in Portland, at its semi-centennial celebration. At one period he was a regular contributor to the Pacific Christian Advocate (Methodist) and was on intimate terms with most of its suc- cessive editors. On June 15, 1906, he delivered an address at Salem on Jason Lee and early Method- ism in Oregon. Many years before, Methodists had chosen him President of Portland University. Rabbi J. Bloch 7

3 These subjects made up the most extensive department of Mr. Scott's large library.

4 Most Rev. W. H. Gross, Archbishop of Oregon City, 1885-98.

5 Most Rev. Alexander Christie, Archbishop of Oregon City, 1899

6 Rev. Dr. A. J. Brown, installed pastor, First Presbyterian church, Portland, May 9, 1888; resigned March 14, 1895, to become secretary of Board of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., New York City.

7 Rabbi J. Bloch, head of Congregation Beth-I*rael, Portland, 1884-14)01. ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 147

and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise 8 of Portland, noted leaders of Jew- ish thought, found much satisfaction in his writings. Rev. Roland D. Grant, 9 of the Baptists, opened his pulpit to Mr. Scott on Thanksgiving Day, 1895, for the best utterance Mr. Scott ever made on the subject of religion. In Congregational circles Mr. Scott found congenial association and with that church maintained a nominal affiliation. His friendly relations with Rev. T. L. Eliot, 10 Unitarian, began with the ar- rival of the latter in Portland in 1867 and lasted until Mr. Scott's death. The Christian Science following liked the tolerant spirit of Mr. Scott, and extended to him the privilege of their platform for an address, 11 on November 15, 1903. Al- though these several sects represented diverging doctrines and his historical and rational studies startled the theologians of each in turn, yet most of them perceived him an exponent of modern scholarship in its inevitable trend toward a truer and fuller expression of religious faith. Ever present in his thought was the motto, "The form of religion passes ; the substance is eternal." Men's battles of opinion were over the forms. "The religious nature of man continually struggles for expression," he said in his Thanksgiving day address in 1895, "and its man- ner of expression changes from age to age. Yet we call each formulated, transitory expression a creed, as if it were to be permanent, and often contend for that creed as if it were the absolute truth; but it passes into something else in the next ages. Yet the religious feeling is the permanent force in the nature of man."

Occasionally there was protest from a clergyman who feared the Editor's inquiries were sapping the strength of belief in particular sects. In 1909 the head of one of the largest church denominations wrote Mr. Scott a letter saying that his articles were "cutting the ground from under the feet" of his church.

8 Rabbi S. S. Wise, head of same congregation, 1901-6; now officiates at Free Synagogue, New York City.

9 Rev. R. D. Grant, pastor First Baptist church, Portland.

10 Dr. Thomas Lamb Eliot (1841 ) was pastor First Unitarian church in Port- land until 1891 and has since been pastor emeritus. He has been active in public benevolent enterprises.

11 In this address Mr. Scott introduced Septimu* J. Hann, of Chicago. ​

148 LESLIE M. SCOTT

The Editor's response, by private letter, dated August 3, 1909, was the last comprehensive statement of his life study on this subject. As it epitomizes his opinions so completely, it is offered here in part:

"The Oregonian 'assails' no religion nor religious belief. It does not, however, deem itself forbidden to inquire into the concepts of religion or of theological systems especially of such as most persistently urge their 'claims' on public atten- tion. The Oregonian under my hand, has dealt with these sub- jects, as an incident of its work, these many, many years; very inadequately, I know yet not to the dissatisfaction of the great multitude of its readers.

"You, of course, it would not expect to please, since one who deems his own creed or formula the last word on religion can scarcely be expected to open his mind to other or dis- sentient views. Your position requires you to profess an in- fallibility. The Oregonian makes no such pretension. It simply wishes to apply the tests of reason, of experience, of judgment, and of such knowledge as history affords from the manifestations of the religious principle in man, to some of the phases of the thought and inquiry of our time.

"Christianity is a fact and it is to be accounted for. You account for it in one way, I in another. You rest on the miraculous and supernatural; I do not nor do I think there is wickedness in any inquiry into the origin of theological or ecclesiastical concepts, or in comparison of religions with each other, with a view to discovery of a common principle in all.

"Your assumption that it is not a proper province of a newspaper to touch a subject which clergymen (or some of them) claim as their exclusive field, I cannot admit; more especially since, as a newspaper man, in active touch with the public mind during more than forty years, I have found no feature of the Oregonian's work more sought or approved than in the field from which you would bar it. I am old enough and have had experience enough to tender advice also ; and I must assure you that you ought to begin to know, even if you can't acknowledge, that the greater part of mankind, even of the so-called Christian world, has a profound tendency to- wards a rational, historical and comparative view and inter- pretation of religions in their various forms the Christian religion included with the rest. Dogma can no more support ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 149

the mythical element in one religion than in another. The time is coming when Christianity will abandon the effort alto- gether; but its last stronghold will be the Roman Catholic Church.

V SOUND MONEY EFFORTS: LONG FIGHT AGAINST FIATISM

Most persistent and successful of his many editorial efforts, was his perennial fight for "sound money." In this work he bespoke the intensity of the nationalizing purpose of the coun- try. The contest for fiat money began as one of state sover- eignty,, involving local issues of note currency; with state rights conquered in the Civil War, the idea endured in ques- tions involving payment of the war debt ; surviving that strug- gle came "Repudiation" of 1866-70, that is, payment in de- preciated greenbacks and then free silverism, which meant payment in debased silver coinage. Also surviving the war came demand for abolition of national bank currency, which had supplanted state bank notes. And breeding out of the mania was a train of numerous delusions about need of "more money."

Not yet thirty years of age, when the "sound money" ques- tion sprang up after the Civil War, possessing no experience in banking or finance, new in his profession of Editor, and far distant from the centers of the country's discussion, Mr. Scott yet applied principles and judged current issues with remarkable precision. His articles reveal wonderful acumen for an author so young. On every financial issue he "started" right and subsequent events vindicated his views.

Throughout his newspaper life Mr. Scott was writing on currency and coin ; almost daily he treated some matter of financial policy with application to Western life. His writings on these topics are models of directness, clearness and resource- fulness. The fruitage of his long struggle was the victory of the gold standard in the Oregon elections of 1896, in the face of tremendous popular prejudice and seeming defeat. This victory in Oregon was attributed to Mr. Scott by friend and foe and broadened his national fame. ​

150 LESLIE M. SCOTT

The American people have always been harassed with the "more money" fiat delusion. Among no other people has there been more absurd governmental interference with currency, affecting values, promoting speculation and upsetting confi- dence. Bitter lessons have been theirs with fiat currency, in colonial times, revolutionary and confederation periods, early years of national life and during and after the Civil War. The delusion has possessed one generation after another that currency is capital; that citizens can be made prosperous with cheap substitutes for gold money. Even yet, the insidious fiat notion persists, though in lesser degree, than heretofore. Silver and paper currency was of doubtful redeemability until the gold standard was secured in 1896 and 1900. Only strong, re- cuperative powers of the Nation have prevented overthrow of the gold standard of value and the good faith of the gov- ernment.

However much of the greatness of the American Nation has come out of the progressive spirit of the pioneer West, however puny or different the American State would have been without the stimulus coming out of the land toward the setting sun, it is fair to say that out of this expanding land came also the financial and monetary heresies that have afflicted its politics, business and industry. The virile race of the West, restive under its poverty, confused capital with money, falsely thinking that, if currency be multiplied, capital could be multi- plied also.

Himself, a son of the West, Mr. Scott knew its mind as to money and capital as intimately as any man could know it. This knowledge equipped him to cope with it in his skillful way. Perhaps no other writer of the day equalled him in this perception and in ability to meet it. His struggle through 45 years was laborious, distasteful to himself, creative of personal animosities. He estranged his closest friends by sharp criti- cisms of their advocacy of silver coinage. But he regarded that issue the most critical in the country's industrial history and he could not be deterred from, his duty by matters of friend- ship. His appeals reached the sober thought of the Common​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 151

wealth and Oregon finally surprised the Nation by supporting the gold standard and rejecting Bryan after its politicians and office holders during many years had been committing the State to silver.

Money is to be gained from work, he used to repeat in his newspaper, not from the government's printi'ng presses nor from the stamping machine of the mint. Best money will be abundant enough if not driven out by cheap "money" de- preciated paper or debased silver. "Reasonable men do not expect to obtain money," he said, "unless they have something to give for it, either labor or goods. If money is to be easily had without effort, it will have little value. If best money is hard to earn, the people will not be benefited by cheap money. The only real money is gold. They cannot improve by issuing doubtful substitutes for it and declaring by law the substitutes just as good. To be just as good as gold they must be payable in gold."

GREENBACKISM

Right after the Civil War came the contest over payment of the war debt, then amounting to nearly three billion dollars. "Contraction" of the greenback debt, $433,000,000 retire- ment of legal tender notes made the first controversy. But these debt notes have continued from that day to this, an ever- present menace to stability of the nation's credit and currency. The ablest financiers of both political parties have urged their retirement. The young Editor took solid ground, therefore, when he insisted that these notes were not "money" but evi- dences of debt; that their withdrawal would not diminish the "circulating medium" but increase it and promote confidence; that their continuance necessitated heavy gold reserve for re- demption and was a costly menace to government credit. Their use, he pointed out, tempted to evils of inflation. These evils he displayed clearly and often, both when greenbacks were at discount, prior to the year 1879, and later when this credit cur- rency and silver coinage were shaking the monetary stability of the government. ​

152 LESLIE M. SCOTT

Resisting "contraction" of greenbacks, Democrats also op- posed redemption of such notes, or any of the nation's debt, in gold. They likewise fought conversion of greenbacks into bonds. Led by George H. Pendleton and sustained by Presi- dent Johnson, they 'wished to pay bonds and other debt paper in more greenbacks, especially printed for the purpose, then much below par. They also wished to tax government bonds despite a direct pledge of law that they should be tax free. Pendleton was defeated on these issues.

The policy of "repudiation" of the public debt by payment in depreciated currency, instead of in full-value gold, was hotly contested. Mr. Scott insisted that the government should pay its obligations in full in gold both principal and interest for thus only could the government keep faith ; that the debt exchanged for notes, would not be paid, because the notes must still be paid; and that the notes could not be made as good as gold coin unless redeemable in gold coin. The young Editor had the satisfaction of seeing advocates of repudiation defeated in 1868-9.

It was no argument to the Editor that large part of the government debt was owing speculators who had bought the claims at discount. Against numerous schemes for scaling down the debt he used the vigor of his pen, with constant ap- peals to national honor. He cited that the same sophisms were then used against full payment of government obligations as after the Revolutionary War. "The scheme at that time was called 'scaling down the debt/ " he wrote December 6, 1867, "and though it was pressed with vigor and importunacy, it signally failed. Our fathers refused to sanction any such dis- reputable plan of virtual repudiation. Cannot the repudiators of today learn honesty as well as wisdom from the fathers of our government?" And again November 18, 1867: "The proposition to pay the national debt in greenbacks is simply a proposition to take away an interest-bearing security from those who purchased in good faith the bonds of the national government, and substitute for it a security that bears no interest. It would be equivalent to the act of a debtor taking ​

HARVEY W. SCOTT AT AGE OF 66 YEARS. THIS WAS A CHARACTERISTIC ATTITUDE ​ ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 153

away from his creditor a mortgage note bearing interest, and giving in its stead a due bill bearing no interest."

Against greenbackism, he was continually referring to pay- day or redemption. The integrity of currency notes, he was always saying, depends on purpose and ability of the govern- ment to redeem them in gold coin not in depreciated paper promises. Of the plan to print enough greenbacks to take up the national debt this was the programme of "greenbackism," he wrote :

February 18, 1878 "This would be a thorough and logical method of carrying out the greenback scheme. It would simply be repudiation of the entire debt ; for there would be no hope that so great an amount of greenbacks would be redeemed; no tirrte for redemption would or could be specified and as holder*' Would receive no interest the greenbacks would not possess ra single quality of value."

August 31, 1892 "While it is true that government may issue paper and call it money, yet it is with government as with the individual that which costs nothing is worth nothing. There is no juggle in values. Many who see the paper bill, forget that there is value behind it, stored up in gold or silver ; but the value is there, and this is what gives the paper note the function and character of money. Increase the paper notes beyond redeemability and their value is gone or impaired alto- gether. Among all nations and in all ages where this has been tried, the result has been the same."

April 8, 1898 "The truth is, we buy only with gold coin, to which alone the name of money ought to be applied. No bank note, treasury note or paper certificate, in any form or by whomsoever issued, is more than an instrument of credit. It is an order and a security (so long as the party issuing it is solvent) for a sum of money and is good for the sum it calls for, orrity $o long as gold can be obtained for it .... We have more of the notes now than formerly, because we have more gold to stand for them ; and we have more gold because we have ceased to expel gold from the country or to drive it into hiding at home by ceasing the threat of free coinage of silver and by stopping the purchase of silver for issue of paper upon it." ​

154 LESLIE M. SCOTT

The right system of currency, he said, would be patterned after those of the great nations of Europe, which employ the medium of a great central bank. But Mr. Scott knew full well the popular prejudice in the United States against the central bank system and did not hope for restoration of the Hamilton plan of government credit, which he always defended. Per- ceiving the futility of overcoming this prejudice he had little hope that the American currency system soon could be brought to needed efficiency. The "fundamental error" of our currency he pointed out as follows (March 8, 1908) : "There is a fun- damental error in our monetary system. It is the parent of all other errors that beset the system. This error is the fiat notion of money . . . But these notes are not money. They are merely substitutes for money whose value depends on their redeemability in gold or the prospect of it . . . This, it is asserted, is cheap money, for it costs nobody anything. But the government's fiat money is dearest of all forms of currency. It requires gold to be banked up in enormous sums for its protection . . . It is an impeachment of the intelligence that tolerates such a financial or monetary system. . . The Treasury is simply warehousing gold against its own obliga- tions. . . . With the enormous sum of one billion dol- lars in gold held by the Treasury under our inelastic and im- movable system, we are unable to keep circulation afoot. Every now and then it congeals, freezes up, simply stops. But the Bank of France and the Bank of Germany make their gold support a paper currency twice in excess of the proportion of our own."

The great need, he said, in order to give control and steadi- ness to financial affairs and the currency system, is a central bank and branches modeled after the United States Bank founded by Hamilton in 1791, and after government banks of Europe. On November 23, 1909, he wrote:

"Our people, believing they can regulate by their votes, the value of money, and calling notes issued by authority of the government, money, will not permit any rational currency or rational banking system to be established in the United States. ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 155

. . . It is useless, therefore, to attempt a remedy now for the defects of our banking and currency system. We shall be compelled to blunder along with the system as it is, and ^to accept the consequences of such financial collapses as it will, at intervals, necessarily produce. Sometime we may become wise enough to have a great central bank, with branches all over the country, like the Bank of France, whose strength was so great that even the Commune of Paris, in the ascendant in 1871, dared not touch it."

FREE COINAGE OF SILVER

Greenbackism waned in strength after 1880, for then a new fiat doctrine was spreading free coinage of silver at ratio of 16 to 1 which largely supplanted the idea of fiat paper. The same arguments, in the main, were used against the silver heresy as earlier against the paper delusion ; with the important difference that silver coins possessed bullion value whereas paper currency had no intrinsic value whatever. Free coinage of silver could not be redeemable in gold money nor could un- limited issue of paper currency. Both would make inflation, and debasement of silver would make depreciation of paper worse, because then the remote expectation of redemption in gold would be gone. Silver coins would fall to their bullion value of between 76 and 46 cents (1891-1901) ; paper currency would fall to whatever level credit confidence would give it (in 1864, 39 cents gold). Following the popular project of paying the national debt in greenbacks, came the scheme to pay it in debased silver dollars. Mr. Scott fought these later phases of fiat money as he did the earlier. When frequently asked late in life how he placed himself right on subtle ques- tions of finance, even in their hazy beginnings, and kept con- sistent course through years of polemics, he was wont to answer: "By study of history I learned fundamental prin- ciples. By adhering to the principles of universal human ex- perience, I pursued the right and logical course; I could not go wrong."

For versatility and force, the Oregon editor's treatment of free silver is one of the most notable feats in journalism. It ​

156 LESLIE M. SCOTT

was the longest and hardest work of his career. He began in 1877, when silver advocates were first growing aggressive and when few conservative persons were aware of the danger of silver inflation. He ransacked his library for argument and example. He used his full literary skill to present the subject from all possible angles. Dealing with what he called "funda- mental principles" he would tolerate no mere "opinion" from adversaries. He considered such opinion unread, untaught and ignorant. It was not a question, he said, on which men could differ or compromise, as on tariff. He gave large space in his columns to silver advocates, but made replies which ex- cited them to charges of arbitrary and dogmatic intolerance.

Mr. Scott answered that ignorance was not entitled to opin- ion on principles as absolute as those of mathematics or money. "Somebody," he wrote (December 10, 1907), "asks if there can't be 'an honest difference of opinion about the gold stand- ard/ There can be no honest difference of opinion where one of the parties knows nothing of what he is talking about. There may be honest ignorance. But it is entitled to no opin- ion." And on April 26, 1904 : "The silver craze was the great- est menace the country ever knew. It has completely passed away. It was no ordinary question, on which difference of opinion was to be expected, but the standard was a matter of economics as certain as the truths of mathematics or of astron- omy. Hence the notion, that some hold to this day, that there ever could have been any difference of opinion or question whatever, among men of honest intelligence, whether the gold standard should be maintained or the silver standard substi- tuted for it, through free coinage of silver, is impossible. It was not a matter of opinion at all, and no more open to debate than the multiplication table."

In the midst of debate preceding the election of 1896, the strong words of the editor denouncing the silver fallacy were termed by an opponent "abusive." To which Mr. Scott re- plied (August 8, 1896) : "It is not so; but when a man sets himself up to fight the book of arithmetic and to insist that something can be made out of nothing, it is necessary to answer ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 157

him plainly." But toward open-minded ignorance, Mr. Scott was always kind. Challenged in 1896 as "abusive," he re- torted that plain statement of "fundamental principles" ought not to be termed abusive and he then proceeded to state the "principles" :

"The Oregonian does not use abuse as a weapon against anybody. Persons have the habit of using the words 'abuse' and 'abusive' too freely. Plain statement of unpalatable facts, clear presentation of fundamental laws which contradict pop- ular prejudice or excite popular passion, are resented as "abus- ive.' The Oregonian pleads guilty to a certain dogmatism in discussing the silver question. There is no other method than the dogmatic in dealing with fixed and unchangeable principles. . . . . That the purchasing power of money is exactly equal to the commercial value of the material of which it is made; that when two kinds of money of different value are given free coinage and unlimited circulation, the cheaper being preferred in payment of debts, drives the dearer out of use these are laws as absolute and inexpugnable as those of gravity and chemical affinity As well indict the fairness and temper of the teacher of mathematics who declines to discuss patiently the proposition that with support of a government fiat, two and two might make five. . . The Oregonian has no orig- inal knowledge on these subjects. Its wisdom is all second- hand. It has no information not accessible to every student. It knows that the fundamental principles of monetary science are absolute, because human experience for 2500 years so teaches. . . . They are the property of the human race. Only ignorance, presumptuous folly or selfish interest ignore or defy them."

Popular resistance to "inexorable laws" of money and value he declared futile, no matter what election majorities might be and disaster's that would come to a people from such resistance are inevitable (August 27, 1893) :

"In every country and in every age there have been attempts to introduce cheap substitutes for money and the results have always been the same failure and disaster. Yet there is an instinctive popular feeling, and often a popular revolt, against the inexorable law of values, and multitudes, instead of con- forming to it and working in accord with it, try in vain to get ​

158 LESLIE M. SCOTT

away from what they regard as its tyrannies. A people may thus bring disaster on themselves and ruin to their fortunes, but the law remains. . . . The co-ordination of knowledge gathered from the experience of many centuries is by no means an easy thing. Dependence therefore, on great thinkers and writers becomes necessary for the masses/'

Mr. Scott lived to see the silver fallacy completely aban- doned and his resistance to it lauded from one end of the nation to the other. His success may be better appreciated when it is noted that his own party Republican in several state platforms, in Oregon, sustained the silver propaganda and other times "straddled" it. Oregon had been represented in Congress by men who supported free silver, but in 1896 they and numerous other politicians, who long had fought Mr. Scott's money "principles," were converted to the gold standard.

It need not be said that each advance of the silver propaganda was opposed by the Oregon Editor at big personal sacrifice. Circulation and earnings of the newspaper which he edited were greatly depleted. Silver adherents were numerous and aggressive and probably a big majority of the population of the State in the early contest. He attacked the Bland Silver Act of 1878 and the Sherman Silver Act of 1890; pointed out that the government was unable to circulate the silver currency provided in those acts because business would not retain it; showed that each act was depleting the gold redemption re- serve; predicted disaster, collapse, and silver basis of values. These writings, covering a period of twenty years, are a marvel of literary force and reasoning power. From the first appear- ance of the silver delusion in 1877 he predicted the financial crisis that culminated in 1885 and 1893. On November 7, 1877, when silver advocates were pressing the issue that re- sulted in the Bland law, he said : "A debased and unstable silver currency will take the place of gold as fast as silver can be coined. All the talk about a double standard is merest moonshine. Gold and silver, everyone should know, will not circulate together when the former is so much more valuable. ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 159

We shall load ourselves with silver coin and the benefit will fall to other nations, to which our gold will be exported as fast as it comes from the mints or the mines." Yet so elastic was the resource of the country that the collapse was deferred much longer than he thought possible. The force that saved the Nation was President Cleveland, who drove repeal of the silver purchase law in 1893, and maintained the gold re- demption fund of the government. These acts, said Mr. Scott, earned Cleveland the lasting gratitude of the country. On the death of Cleveland in 1908, he wrote (June 25) :

"A man who performed services to his country at a critical time scarcely excelled by more than two or three of our Presi- dents, was Grover Cleveland. He was the man for a crisis and he had at once the intelligence, the purpose and the firm- ness to do his work. . . . No man of clearer vision, in a peculiar crisis, or more resolute to meet the demands of an occasion, has ever appeared in our affairs. His second election was one of the fortunate incidents of the history of the United States. ... In all our history the act of no statesman has been more completely vindicated by results, and by the recog- nition of his countrymen, than that of Grover Cleveland in rid- ding the country of the financial fallacies that attended the silver fiat-money propaganda."

In contrast with Cleveland's firmness, said the Editor, was the vacillating policy of McKinley, who during years in Con- gress paltered with the silver question, failed to see it a divid- ing and uncompromising issue and, with reluctance, allied him- self finally with the gold standard in 1896. 'The President's course," said the Editor December 10, 1899, "has been one of indecision and hesitation. It has been the course of a politician fearful of the effect on his own political fortunes of any open and strong utterance or decided policy." And again, Septem- ber 26, 1908: "McKinley tried sorely the patience of many, who understood perfectly that gold and silver had long since and forever parted company on the old ratio."

"International bimetallism" free silver coinage by agree- ment of the great nations Mr. Scott declared as impossible as the scheme for the United States alone, because laws of value ​

1'60 JLfesiaE:.M. SCOTT

themselves just! as iiievitably against internation- al fiat ; moreover, the great nations: of Europe did not heed free coinage of silver and did not wish it. While international (inferences were held in 1867, 1878, 1881 and 1892, he kept arway ad His ^fiociplesf andiscored the conferences <;an>d; deliisioits abd "bait for gudgeons." On July 15, 1890, hdmf<^:; "tffae\[faiite& 1 States might as well invite the -fDf [Eitropento.jiDfin in > giving practical effect to the of,I^-ward)iBellarriyv : as to ask them to join in an agree- ment for f ree: coinagK: of silver."

When one considers ,that the gold standard idea made slow ublican Party sought to evade it as an s late as 1899, the perseverance of Mr. Scott appears the ialudiaMe.:; Aiffiitmatiibrt 1 of the gold standard in 1896 was ilfftnediate re<*c>very of confidence and credit and by 1 prosperity. Immense stores of gold were released.

"

ly referred to the vindication of sound subsequent writings. On November 3, the prophecies of the silver propaganda by recovery of business and credit. But pi^opa^andists of silver ever since have been trying to cover up their confusion by the declaration that the recovery has been &m td'trifc increased production of gold. It is as shallow an assertion as any other pretense of the silver craze. There was ^old" enough, had it not been driven to foreign countries and mi^'hiding places at home by continual injection of over-valued Silver into the circulation of the country. . . . Foreign countries, free from fiat money demagogues, had money enough."

Again, on April 8, 1908: "Of this illusion it may be said that not the wildest dreams of the alchemist or of those adven- turers who sailed in quest of the Eldorado, were more extraor- dinary instances of the human power of self-deception. This prodigious fallacy had its origin in the equivocal use of a word." (Dollar.)

Gravest crisis in the industrial history of America, in Mr. Scott's view, was presented by the silver issue in 1896. Both ​

IIP

HARVEY W. SCOTT

AT 66 YEARS OF AGE. PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN NEAR WASHINGTON, D. C. IN OCTOBER, 19O4

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W ​ ​SCOTT 161

before and after the event he held that opinion. Early in 1896 he went to Mexico, so as to learn conditions in that silver- standard country, for information of his Oregon readers. Writ- ing from Mexico City, February 20, 1896, to the Oregonian, he said : "Here in Mexico is the place to observe the workings of cheap money, of money based on the market value of silver. Such money gives but a pittance to labor and debases human- ity." Similar debasement of United States silver coins, he de- clared, would shake the nation terribly. On November 6, 1894, he wrote editorially : "The plunge to a debased standard of money would produce disorders in finance, industry and general business, more frightful than this country has yet known, or the world has ever seen, except perhaps the French Revolution of a century ago." On August 9, 1896, he de- scribed the danger thus forcefully: "Never was any question contested between parties, of so mighty import to the people of the United States. It involves a tremendous responsibility, not merely for the present, but for all future time; for, if we go wrong on this subject, we shall have done an act that will pro- duce conditions under which the whole character of the people will be changed. Here, indeed, is the test of success or failure of popular government. If we take the silver standard, it will gradually produce conditions under which the masses of the people will sink to lower levels, because labor, paid in inferior money, will not get its accustomed rewards. Continuance of these conditions will within a few generations effect a trans- formation of the national character and a national reduction in our scale of civilization." In the evening of his life the Editor was wont to laud the "unselfish patriotism" of "gold standard" Democrats who quit Bryan and voted for McKinley in 1896, in numbers sufficient to turn the election the popular vote being: McKinley 7,164,000, Bryan 6,562,000. On January 23, 1908, he referred to them thus appreciatively: "In every community to this day the names of these men are remembered. They saved the country from a financial and industrial disaster greater than it has ever known." ​

162 LESLIE M. SCOTT

VI RECONSTRUCTION AFTER CIVIL WAR

Mr. Scott was called to the editorship of the Oregonian just after the assassination of Lincoln. His article, "The Great Atrocity," was published April 17, 1865. Here was a tragedy in the greatest of all political contests in America. Broadly stated, the issue of the contest was between nationalism and state sovereignty, between ideas of Hamilton and Jefferson, between negro slavery and freedom, between North and South. During the whole period of his career, Mr. Scott was called upon to discuss this issue in its many collateral aspects, as the persistent one separating the two great parties. Almost his last article, April 14, 1910, related to the tragedy of Lincoln. His long-matured opinion he thus expressed:

"On this night, April 14, forty-five years ago, Abraham Lincoln was shot by an assassin. A crime as foolish as horrible. It changed (not for the better) the whole course of American political life, from that day to this, and it may be doubted whether we shall ever escape from the consequences of that horribly mad and criminal act.

"The irrational division of political parties today is a con- sequence of this crime ; and no one can see far enough into the future to imagine when the course of our history, set awry by this act of an assassin, will resume rational or normal line of

The young Editor was confronted, after the Civil War, with large questions of Reconstruction. Opposed to slavery and disunion, he had to meet a hostile and bitter element. As a son of the Frontier West, he was born a nationalist and the nationalist idea grew with his manhood. Always in his edi- torial life that idea spurred him on. But there were many Democrats in Oregon before the War and more of them after- ward. On the secession and slavery issues they lost to the Republicans, but in 1865-7 they won the State back. Issues of Reconstruction made acrimonious politics. A leading figure in the national policy was George H. Williams, Senator from Ore​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 163

gon, who originated many measures, including the Fourteenth Amendment. Senator Williams found Mr. Scott his ablest supporter. Friendship between the two, then begun, continued as long as they lived, and on the death of the Senator, the Editor wrote a beautiful tribute and farewell. It was his last large work, for soon afterward sickness stopped his further writing. Articles of Mr. Scott's, during the Reconstruction period, display moderate and lenient spirit toward the South, yet un- yielding demand for extinction of state sovereignty and slavery and for the establishment of national sovereignty and negro freedom. Sovereignty, he insisted, then lay in the victorious North, yet not for vindictive nor despotic purpose. He never reconciled himself to negro suffrage and in his later life, when partisanship disappeared, he felt free to say that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments "made a mess of it" (Oregonian, December 25, 1905), and that "it is not to be denied that the evils of indiscriminate negro suffrage in our Southern States are too great to be permitted/' (Oregonian, August 8, 1907.)

VII NEGRO AND SOUTH

The Editor's paternal forebears were loyalists of South Caro- lina; then pioneers of Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois. In Kentucky, the birthplace of his father was near those of Jeffer- son Davis and Abraham Lincoln. Currents of westward expan- sion merged from South and North in the Ohio Valley, thence diverged northward, westward and southward. Mr. Scott's people abhorred state rights and slavery ; in other matters thr.y felt sympathy with the South. After these two issues were eradicated, Mr. Scott felt that sympathy recurring. The negro question in the South he knew a natural one in the white popu- lation and not to be argued away. In his later life he often said that disfranchisement or submission of the negro was in- evitable. He foresaw that northern sentiment would not strongly resist disfranchisement; commented often on its grow- ing acceptance in the North and on the baseless fear in the South that the North would uphold the negro. ​

164 LESLIE M. SCOTT

"The negro in every state where the race is very numerous," he wrote on January 7, 1909, "has been almost wholly disfran- chised; and the disfranchisement is based on conditions and regulations not likely to be shaken for a long time, if ever. Negro domination, therefore, is no longer a bugbear or terror. . . . The experience of forty years has shown the greater North that the South must be left to manage this great matter for itself." Seven years earlier, when Republicans appointed a partisan committee to inquire into disfranchisement of South- ern negroes, he condemned the plan as "useless and silly." "On this subject," he added, "there has been a mighty lot of experi- ence during the past thirty-five years, and it is useless to chal- lenge repetition of it" (March 23, 1902).

Not less useless and silly he deemed the negro question in the South. He called Southern fear of the negro and of North- ern prejudice, "a strange nightmare" (November 11, 1904), and an antiquated prejudice. "Why should not the Southern people think of other things than the everlasting negro ?" ( No- vember 11, 1904.) He pointed out repeatedly that the "night- mare" or "prejudice" was harmful to Southern progress; that it allied the South with repugnant notions of the Democratic Party of the North, such as free silver coinage, opposition to territorial expansion in 1898-1900, and socialistic hostility to private business and property. He could perceive in his last years the slow drift of the conservative South away from the radical Democratic Party of the North. But the change was so slow he would risk no prophesy as to proximity of the outcome. "The negro question," he wrote February 4, 1909, "was the source of the Civil War ; it has been the main division of parties since ; yet now that the Southern States are finding out they are no longer to be interfered with, in this most important of all matters that concern them, their natural conservatism on other matters asserts itself and takes a new course." ​

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VIII NATIONAL IDEA ITS PROGRESS AFTER CIVIL WAR

Between the two chief political parties, the main line of de- marcation continued to be the national idea, Mr. Scott fre- quently wrote, when others complained, as in 1904-8, that they could see party distinctions no longer. "The influence of na- tionalism is the mainspring of party action/' he said February 2, 1908, "and must continue to be such. In this national aspect of parties and politics lies the reason why Th'e Oregonian, throughout its whole life, has acted in politics with a view to efficiency in national government. The best exponent of this principle has been the Republican Party." "During fifty years (November 15, 1909) the Republican Party, depending on au- thority and insisting on the use of it, has done everything. It has been strong, because it is the party of national ideas. In many things the Democratic Party has been a helper, doubtless ; but a helper chiefly by its opposition. . . . Most conspicu- ous display of this fact was when it elected Grover Cleveland to the Presidency in 1892. Cleveland was an asserter of high central authority; and, discovering this, his party exclaimed that it had been 'betrayed' and it repudiated him. Ever since it has followed the Bryan standard."

Party was to Mr. Scott a means to an end, not the end itself. He was too broad-minded to think virtue in a mere party name or to follow party as a fetish. The Republican Party was for him the exponent the only one of concentrated and central- ized power, in resistance to local authority and disintegration, and in transformation from a federal to a national republic. "During fifty years (May 30, 1904) the Democratic Party has stood for nothing that the country has desired or could deem useful to it. If anything of constructive policy has come out of the Democratic Party these forty years, one would like to be told what it is. This party of opposition has not been use- less. Its use has been to force the Republican Party at inter- vals to justify its aims and claims."

While the Editor had the statesman's lofty view, he was yet an indifferent politician. He cared little about the "offices" nor would the controlling bosses have permitted him to participate ​

166 LESLIE M. SCOTT

in the spoils which his efforts so often put in their hands. His influence with them in party organization was always little or nothing. But his power with the voters, on an issue such as free silver, was to be reckoned with. Often when unable to sway politicians on matters of party policy his appeal to the public brought result. He never permitted petty questions of an hour or a day or a locality to blind him to the main issue ever confronting the country. Right up to the last of his life he continued to reassert the issue. "On trifling events men fre- quently scatter in considerable numbers from the parties they commonly act with ; but any event or proposition of real im- portance will bring them back" (November 15, 1909).

The long struggle for national unity was symbolic., the Editor used to say, of all democratic progress. A democracy, in find- ing its way, gropes in darkness of passion and ignorance, but finally by its own force, is sure to take the best way, yet most of the time because it exhausts all possible ways of going wrong. So with the unifying process in the Nation. "It takes a long time to teach a democracy anything that is, any import- ant principle. Tendency of democracy is to sub-divide. It is driven together only by large industrial and national forces, which it resists as long as it can. It took a great while to bring a scattered American democracy, planted in separate colonies, together in national unity; and the process required a bloody civil war perhaps the bloodiest in all history. It took a long time and strenuous effort and a financial catastrophe, among the worst the world ever has known, to cure the American democracy of the fallacy of trying to maintain a fictitious money standard. ... It will solve the tariff question rightly after a while that is, after it has tried every possible experiment of going wrong."

The reader should not infer that there was hostile spirit in Mr. Scott toward democracy ; it was critical and philosophical, merely. No person could have been more intensely democratic in mind or habit. The professions of aristocracy, in politics or elsewhere, were to him abomination. Only in democracy did the sentiment of justice have full sway. "The spark of justice ​

REVIEW or WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 167

and the fires of human freedom are kept alive in the hearts of the common people, 'the plain people/ as Abraham Lincoln called them" (April 2, 1884). And "the most potent of all forces is democracy in its fighting mood" (December 20, 1905). Popular self-government was worth all its effort, how- ever strenuous. It was the only security for freedom. Mr. Scott regarded as an urgent national need the great isthmian canal. Its unifying influence, he foresaw, would stimulate growth of the national spirit. He began writing on "The Dar- ien Canal" in 1867. His discussions of the Panama and the Nicaragua and other routes were frequent. He believed that this waterway would consolidate the country and eradicate local narrowness even further than railroads have done. It would uplift America's world influence and upbuild America's sea power. The opportunity grasped by President Roosevelt for making this waterway American he commended as a grand stroke of statesmanship.

RIVAL DOCTRINES OF HAMILTON AND JEFFERSON

When the young Editor entered the post-bellum controversy, the leading Democratic organ in Portland was the Herald, whose editor in 1866 was Beriah Brown. 12 This veteran of jour- nalism undertook to discipline the "boy editor." But the "boy" proved himself more than a match for the "veteran." Their disputes brought out a subject on which Mr. Scott wrote with growing power the Jeffersonian origin of secession. Editor Brown, after the style of good Democrats, exalted the mem- ory of Jefferson. Editor Scott dug up history to show Jeffer- son the architect of state sovereignty and rebellion ; hostile to constitution and nationality; assertive of "Federal League"; author of Kentucky resolutions ; sympathizer with the Whisky Insurrection and Shay's Rebellion; distrustful of courts and judiciary; covertly hostile to Washington. All this the young Editor suported with such array of reading as to spread wide his reputation. One of his terse and direct remarks (Novem- ber 1, 1869) was the following: "It is now an accepted national and historical fact that the doctrines promulgated by Jefferson

12 Beriah Brown came to Portland from San Francisco. He spent his later life at Puget Sound. ​

168 LESLIE M. SCOTT

for partisan purposes, in opposition to the administration of Washington and the Elder Adams, were the fundamental cause of the Great Rebellion. In none has the maxim that the evil that men do lives after them been more fully illustrated than in the case of Thomas Jefferson." And near the end of his life the Editor outlined the same view as follows (February 23, 1909) : "Jefferson was the man who, after the formation of the Con- stitution and the making of the nation under it, for partisan purposes, set up the claim that there was in fact no nation, no national government, but only a league of states, that might be abandoned or broken up by any of the members at will. This was the Great Rebellion. This was the Civil War. He was the evil genius of our national and political life."

Progress of the Hamilton idea, after its triumph in civil war, was often a theme of Mr. Scott's comments on current events. "The course of history during twenty years past (December 18, 1880) has vindicated Hamilton, demonstrated his marvel- ous prescience and discovered to the country the immense ex- tent of its obligations to him. To Hamilton the country is chiefly indebted to him it is indebted more than to all others for the creation of a national government with sufficient power to maintain the national authority. He it was who, foreseeing the conflict between pretensions of state supremacy and the necessary powers of national authority, succeeded, in spite of tremendous opposition, in putting into the Constitution the vital forces which have sustained it. Appomattox was his vic- tory. . . . The glory of Hamilton is the greatness of America." And on February 12, 1908, the same thought moved him to say : "The idea is growing that the Government of the United States is no longer a Government of limited powers but may cover all local conditions. This is a vindication of the principles of Hamilton against those of Jefferson." The fame of the Virginian, said Mr. Scott, will rest, in future history, on his acquisition of Louisiana and Oregon ; this greatest of his works will fix him in history as the nation's chief expansionist. Acquisition of Louisiana was "the most important of all the facts of our history because it created the conditions necessary ​

HARVEY W. SCOTT

AT SEASIDE, OREGON, IN THE SUMMER OF 19O5. HE WAS VERY FOND OF THE OCEAN

BEACH AND IN LATER LIFE SPENT BRIEF PERIODS THERE. HE RECEIVED HIS

NEWSPAPER FROM PORTLAND IN THE AFTERNOON

AND READ IT EAGERLY ​ ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 169

to our national expansion and consolidation." And after Louisiana came the United States claims to Oregon. "Philos- ophy of History" was a favorite pastime of Mr. Scott and he applied it in his later life to the main currents of United States history Northern and Southern. On July 11, 1902, when in- troducing Henry Watterson 13 at Gladstone, near Oregon City, he reviewed these two strains of national life in an address which awakened Mr. Watterson's admiration.

IX EXPANSION OF NATIONAL TERRITORY

The hew expansion across the Pacific following the Spanish War was, in Mr. Scott's opinion, a logical pursuit of national ends. It opened a new destiny for the American republic. It meant great national power at sea, and expansion of ocean commerce, leading to American dominion of the Pacific; "the nation's wider horizon is seaward" (July 12, 1898). It fol- lowed a law of constant expansion of territory a law of na- tional progress which had united the country and ever extend- ed its frontier. It would prove anew the assimilating power of the American State ; would broaden the country's spirit and its outlook on the world, because intercourse with other nations gives the most powerful stimulus to progress and no nation liveth unto itself alone. It would banish from home politics fallacies which would be generated otherwise out of American isolation ; among such had been fiat money and absurdities of socialism. It would promote the growing leadership of Amer- ica among the great powers. The Democratic Party was then fighting the changed policy, calling it "imperialism" and "mili- tarism" and "government without consent of governed" issues of Bryan from 1898 to 1904. Mr. Scott scored the opposition as an affront to American intelligence. These issues were false and unworthy of a political party which for generations had negatived them in domination of negroes in the South. Fili- pinos would not be "dnslaved," as the Democratic Party assert- ed would be their fate under American rule, but would be accorded larger measure of political and personal freedom than they ever had before or could have under any other govern-

13 Henry Watterson, editor Louisville Courier- Journal. ​

170 LESLIE M. SCOTT

ment. Even before the war with Spain, the Editor frequently told his readers that expansion was the rule of national life. "Neither races nor individuals change their 'nature and the laws of history cannot have fallen in sudden impotence in the nine- teenth century (April 22, 1893). ... We shall go on ex- tending our limits, so long as the vital impulse of our nation- ality is not exhausted. When we lose the impulse to expand, it will be time for some other people to take the primacy of the Western Hemisphere out of our failing hands. " On October 8, 1898, when the war with Spain had delivered the Philippines to the United States, he wrote: "Men and ideas now leap oceans easier than they then (Washington's time) crossed rivers ; and the notion that American ideas cannot pass beyond this continent is a strange short-sightedness, reserved fortunate- ly, as we believe, to a small proportion of our people." The new destiny inspired him to appeal to the sentiment and fancy of his readers. When the National Editorial Association assem- bled in Portland in 1899, he welcomed the members in an address which outlined his conception of the new expansion as follows (July 6) :

"The East has been treading on the heels of the West, yet never has overtaken it. Latterly, the West has taken ship on the Pacific, and, through one of the movements of history, has overtaken the East. America has put a new girdle around the earth ; arid the West has moved on, till it has reached the gate- way of the morning, over by the Orient where the men of the United States are planting the banners of a free civilization. . . . We are now making distant excursions, led thereto by a march of events, whose direction we could not foresee. But wherever we go we shall carry our great national idea, push it to realization and accomplish the great work of organizing into institutions the inalienable rights of man. . . . Realization that our country faces the Pacific as well as the Atlantic starts a new era of our national history, and, indeed, a hew epoch in the history of the world."

A decade after acquisition of the trans-Pacific islands the Editor was as ardent an expansionist as his forebears had been in spreading to Kentucky, Illinois and Oregon. On January 1, 1908, at the time of the round-the-world voyage of the Ameri​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 171

can fleet, he said: "Every modern philosophical writer de- clares that the first grand discovery of modern times is the immense extension of the universe in space. The idea shows man where he is a'nd what he is. And the second great discov- ery is the immense and perhaps limitless extension of the uni- verse in time. . . . It is with political geography that we are now immediately concerned. The Pacific Ocean is becom- ing more and more the theater of new interest for mankind. Here, on the American shore of this greatest of oceans, we face new movements and new destinies . . . Commercial move- ment and industrial forces depend always in great degree on political influences. With due regard for the rights of others, we want our just share which is to be a large share of the sovereignty of the Pacific."

X TARIFF, REVENUE AND "PROTECTION"

An ever-recurring questio'n, vexing the country during most of Mr. Scott's period, even yet unsolved, was tariff. Nor could Mr. Scott see solution of the complicated matter in the near future. It may be fit here to outline his views on this subject, for he was consistently opposed to the long protective policy of the Republican Party, and the present protective policy of the Democratic Party. "Free trade" or "tariff for revenue only" belonged to his stock of "first principles" ; "protection" was not a principle, at all ; only a temporary policy and a deluded one. Never would the tariff be settled for any length of time until "protection" should be eliminated. The system is main- tained, he said, because many localities, including Oregon, seek special advantages for themselves, aVid combine their forces to impose import tax for benefit of their own products Oregon's being chiefly wool. All localities together are hostile to each neighbor's part of the spoil so that no protective tariff law can long exist. Such tariff, he used to say, will wreck the fortunes of any political party. As proofs we see the wreck of the Democratic Party after the Wilson bill of 1893 and recently the wreck of the Republican Party after the Payne-Aldrich act of 1909. He averred it is impossible to unite men long oh any ​

172 LESLIE M. SCOTT

protective tariff scheme because high moral enthusiasm, senti- mental idea, are lacking. "The difficulty of uniting many men in permanent alliance for a common object," he asserted Sep- tember 27, 1909, "increases as that object appeals less and less to any disinterested affection or high inspiration, and rapidly proves itself insuperable when it sinks into a mere scramble of greediness and vanity." A week earlier (September 20) he re- marked: "It involves no contest of lofty opinions about jus- tice or righteousness, the rights of democracy or the mainte- nance of the dignity or authority of the nation. It is trade and dicker, barter and swap."

The policy, declared Mr. Scott, takes wrongfully from one man to bestow upon another; thus confers special privilege. All cannot enjoy the benefits ; a few do, and for those few the many, who have no products to "protect," are taxed. The ra- tional tariff duty would be imposed on articles of universal con- sumption food, drink and clothing such as tea, coffee, to- bacco, wine, spices, sugar and luxuries in high class textile, leather and metal goods and special luxuries of the rich. "The general principle of 'tariff for revenue only/ " he wrote, Sep- tember 2, 1892, "is that we should admit free of duty, such com- modities, except luxuries, as we produce in our own country and lay duties on such commodities of foreign production as we largely consume yet cannot, or do not, produce ourselves." Such settlement would put an end to the continuous brawl in Congress and throughout the country over the protection of one set of interests at the expense of others or at the expense of consumers. Anything short of it would leave the subject open to perpetual contention and strife; for protection was not an equal policy ; never could be. Its most direct consequence were creation of monopolies and enrichment of a few at expense of the many. "Protection" conferred on manufactured goods yet denied to raw products, he said, was discrimination to which Western and agricultural communities would not submit. "Pro- tection" had for its primary defense higher resultant wages for labor; but labor enters into production of raw materials just as into their manufacture. ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 173

It may be remembered that the Editor never was at peace with the Republican Party on tariff. Yet he could not quit the party on this issue, first because there was no other party whose policies he could accept and second, because more serious mat- ters than tariff confronted the country arid in those matters only the Republican Party afforded him lodgment. Chief of them was the money question.

The Editor never regarded protective tariff as an enduring policy of the national Republican Party. He considered it a more natural one for the Democratic party, with its local habits. He believed, therefore, that the parties eventually would shift on this question, the Republican to champion tariff for revenue, the Democratic to advocate tariff for protection. "Tariff for revenue only/' he said August 8, 1909, "will become the demand of the North sooner than of the South. But there will be no result, these many years." Again: "As a party of national authority, the Republican Party will find the ideas of the local protectionists less and less suited to the policies for which it stands and must stand."

In the early '80's a common argument used for protective du- ties was that tariff would help maintain a "favorable balance of trade." This was too flimsy to withstand the editorial broad- sides of Mr. Scott's writings. Thirty years later a fresh idea sprang up in defense of "protection" an adjustment of rates "based ori difference in cost of production at home and abroad," so as to afford "protection" only to industries that really "need- ed" it. This was the last phase of tariff that Mr. Scott lived to attack. On April 6, 1910, he said : "It is impossible to ascer- tain the differences between the cost of production here and abroad. Variations of opinion on this subject will be irrecon- cilable and endless. . . . The differences will shift and vary cdntinually. None of these differences is or ever will be, a fixed quantity or a steady quantity for any length of time. . . . New factors are continually entering into all processes of manufacture ; and cost of materials varies from year to year. Cost of production, being extremely unstable abroad, how can it ever become a basis on which protective tariff laws can be ​

174 LESLIE M. SCOTT

framed for our country?" Begirining in 1880 "reciprocity" was a frequent subject of discussion and legislation. By this policy, the United States was to admit certain goods of certain other nations, if such nations would admit certain goods of the United States. The scheme never attained much success, owing largely to American Unwillingness to lift tariff on favored ar- ticles. Mr. Scott said that reciprocity was incompatible with protection. "You never suspect that reciprocity is sincere, when you look at its advocates. They never reciprocate except for their own gain at somebody else's loss." (January 19, 1902.)

XI CHINESE EXCLUSION

At two periods, Mr. Scott's firm stand for law and order and his unsparing denunciation of disturbers of peace evoked bitter resentment and even mob excitement in 1880-86, when Chi- nese suffered violent attacks, and in 1894, when "Coxey Armies" were "mustering" and "marching" on Washington City. In each case the Editor's English denounced the exciters and the doers of violence, in his most vigorous style. Threats were often heard against his life atid he deemed it prudent to guard his newspaper office against any possible assault. Labor agitators were foremost in these crises and they were greatly exercised by the Editor's criticism of their doctrines of labor; for Mr. Scott, through his long experience as a laborer, had learned lessons of industry which enabled him to put up effec- tual arguments against their claims and theories and to drive home his arguments by his own example.

Mr. Scott always held the Chinese a'n undesirable infusion into American population, yet useful for menial labor. He op- posed forceful ejectment of them from the United States, but supported the plan of exclusion, which in 1882 was enacted into law. Under treaty of 1868 with China, immigrants from that country were guaranteed free ingress into the United States. This treaty held until 1880, when a new one gave this country the privilege of regulating this immigration. An exclu- sion act of Congress in 1879 was vetoed by President Hayes, ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 175

because violating the treaty of 1868. Finally in 1882 exclusioh was effected by an act which has been continued up to the present time.

There is little doubt that refusal of the United States to admit hordes of Chinese laborers has been best for the internal peace of the nation, although the Pacific Coast region has suf- fered thereby for lack of efficient laborers. Mr. Scott clearly foresaw both the social need of exclusion and the industrial need of Chinese labor on the Pacific Coast. The former need he regarded as the determining one. The immediate theme of his writings during the critical time of anti-Chinese agitation was the treaty rights of Chinese in this country to protection against mob violence. He condemned in unsparing terms the cruel attacks made upon them by agitators and mobs, whose cry was "The Chinese must go !" He pointed out that attacks upon the persons of the alien residents would involve the United States in international complications with China and bring dis- credit upon this country among foreign nations. He declared that industrious Americans had nothing to fear from the labor competition of Chinese. The crusade against Chinese was gen- eral in the Pacific Coast in 1880-90, and in several places the aliens suffered sorely, as in San Francisco and Tacoma. Port- land had less disturbance than other cities of the Coast in which Mr. Scott both bespoke and guided the temper of his city.

During more than thirty years and from his first to his last utterances on the Chinese question, Mr. Scott insisted that the problem was not one of labor, but of race. It was neither true nor important that Chinese were doing work that white men otherwise would do, or taking "jobs" away from American citizens. The real objection to them was that they were not an assimilable element; could not fuse with the white popula- tion; in other words, race antipathy existed which was not to be overcome by argument and which would cause discord and continual upset in the political and social body. In 1869, the Editor pointed out that labor wages here then about fifty per cent higher than east of the Mississippi would be reduced not by Chinese at that time few in number, but by influx of workers from our own denser populated part of the country. ​

176 LESLIE M. SCOTT

White immigration was thereafter agumented in California by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads, that year completed, and i'n Oregon by large expenditure of money for railroads by Ben Holladay. In that same year politicians in Oregon, as well as in California, were making campaign against "Chinese cheap labor," among them Grover, 14 then running first time for Governor. Against their assertion that Chinese "add nothing to the wealth of the country," Mr. Scott showed that the aliens had cleared large land areas for crops and were building railroads for use of the white population. Their number on the Pacific Coast less than forty thousand, and few in Oregon was, as yet, no menace to the white race and was contributing large capital, by its labor, to the uses of the country. "Every Chinaman leaves the products of his labor, a full equivalent for the wages paid him. He leaves more ; he leaves the profit which his employer has made in the cheap labor he has furnished" (July 7, 1869). Often Mr. Scott told the white people that the Pacific Coast was slow in industrial progress because there were not enough workers ; that Chinese were not snatching places from white men because they were doing work white men would not do; that the surfeit of white laborers in San Francisco, the center of agitation, did not exist elsewhere and that most of the work to be performed was out- side the cities ; that the aliens had done much to make Oregon and Washingtob habitable for white men, especially in clearing land a work too hard and cheap for white laborers ; that they had been employed in this and other activities also because of scarcity and indolence of the whites.

But the Editor was prompt also to say that while Chinese were useful for labor, they could not be received in large num- bers into American citizenship ; that the two races were antag- ohistic, ethnically, politically, industrially. He asserted that however much Chinese industry would stimulate growth of the country, it was better to have peace. "They are not an assimil- able element and they come in contact with our people in a way which cannot in the large run be favorable either to morals or prosperity. . . . Under this view we have believed it well

i4LaFayette Grover, Governor of Oregon 1870-77; U. S. Senator it7f-fj; bora

at Bethel, Maine, Nov. 24, 1823; died at Portland May 10, 1911. . ​ ​ ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 177

to pass a bill to restrict Chinese immigration" (March 21, 1879). On enactment of the exclusion law in 1882, he said (April 29) : 'The Pacific States have made a great fight and have won a great victory."

In 1905 Chinese in the Orient boycotted American goods because of the exclusion law and many exporters in the United States urged suspension of the exclusion law. The Chamber of Commerce of Portland recommended admissiori of a limited number of Chinese annually. This plan Mr. Scott opposed with citations from experience of twenty-five years before. Other matters were to be taken into account, he said, than exports and need of laborers. "We can never expect (August 18, 1905) that our laboring classes will assume any position except of unconquerable antagonism toward the Chinese. The history of every community on the Pacific Coast for the past thirty years proves it."

(July 5, 1905) : "No conflict is so cruel as that between an- tagonistic races. ... No doubt Chinese laborers in this country would quicken Industries now dormant for want of hands to stir them. But how about politics? How about the race conflict? Do you want it? The Oregonian has a mem- ory and it does not."

(July 22, 1905) : "The commotion would be so great that it may be doubted whether, on the whole, the progress of the country would not be checked, rather than accelerated, even in ah industrial way."

(July 6, 1905) : "The Chinese could do a lot of work here, of course and work a lot of trouble. We want industrial de- velopment, but we want peace and must not have race war."

Inasmuch as Mr. Scott's opposition to Chinese expulsion has led some persons to suppose that he also resisted Chinese exclu- sion, it has seemed to the present writer appropriate to set forth Mr. Scott's attitude on this subject in some detail. The Editor understood the problem as many others did not its native antipathies, its basic race hatreds. Therefore, he was equipped to deal with the subject according to "first princi- ples" and moral precepts. His course was humane, rational ​

178 LESLIE M. SCOTT

and consistent and vindicated by subsequent events. It was a very difficult question to handle in the then heated condition of the public mind, especially in 1886 when expulsion was de- manded. All are now ready to deprecate assaults upon Chinese but denunciation of such acts twenty-five years ago excited bitterest animosities, with attacks of malignity and folly. The spirit of riot and outrage, of incendiarism, robbery and mid- night assault assailed the Chinese during a decade.

XII "COXEY ARMIES"

The other period of turbulence was that of "Coxey Armies" in March and April, 1894. "Hard times" and the worst stag- nation in business the cou'ntry ever knew, followed the collapse of 1893. Loud clamor went up from the unemployed for work. The noise was heightened by a large element of the thriftless, who having saved nothing from "good times," turned agitators and even vagabonds and called upon government for the means of livelihood. They organized "armies" which set out for Washington, D. C, to lay their "grievances" before Congress and to demand "aid." The movement was started by Jacob S. Coxey, of Massillon, Ohio, and was encouraged by the Populist political party and by many followers of fiat money. Chief of the Coxey demands were free silver coinage and immediate issue of $500,000,000 greenbacks, unsecured, wherewith to em- ploy the "army" on road building which, if done, would have plunged the nation into the lowest depths of currency degrada- tion and industrial chaos. The commonweal parties started from many directions and but few reached the National Capital. Coxey himself was arrested there for breaking the rule, "Keep off the grass." The travelers had no means to pay for food, clothing or passage and the mania made them hostile to work ; therefore they first imposed themselves on charity and then re- sorted to thievery and even to capture of railroad trai'ns. Gov- ernor Pennoyer of Oregon afforded them sympathy, thereby increasing the local tension. Oregon became a hotbed of Coxey propaganda, and United States officers were called upon to pro- tect railroad traffic from interference. ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 179

If the reader has followed the outlfne of Mr. Scott's personal character and editorial style, as hitherto given, he can foresee, before reaching these lines, the war which the Editor waged upon the Coxey movement. He told the "armies" that their resources were not in government but in their own labors ; that they would have to take what employment they could get and at whatever wages a'nd that the government did not owe them better nor any at all; that in Oregon and Washington was place for every efficient man on farm, in garden and orchard and dairy, in mine and forest, on terms that would enable him both to live and to convert the tattered prodigal and aimless vagrant into useful, prosperous and honored citizens; that it was the business of every person to strive to make place for himself instead of to complain, "No man hath hired us" ; that the Coxey leaders were professional agitators and the followers deadbeats and prodigals. The "armies" were similar to the "I. W. W." groups of the present day, which have been defying law, order and industry, and laying their grievances to capital- ism. Mr. Scott viewed the "Coxeyites" as belonging to the ultra-radical forces of socialism. His disbelief in "community help" for the individual and his faith in personal industry and prudence fired his utterances with a fervor which angered the "Oregon army." A mob of Coxeyites in May, 1894, surround- ed The Orego'nian building for several hour's calling for ven- geance. In answer to their plaint, "We are starving in the midst of plenty. Why?" Mr. Scott had answered (April 21, 1894) :

"It is easy to tell why. For years there had been plenty of work and high wages. But these men did not make the most of their opportunities. Some of them did not use their oppor- tunities at all. Those who did work worked but fitfully or irregularly and did not save their money. They 'blew it in.' They refused the maxims and the practice of prudence, sobriety and economy. They were careless, pleasure-seeking, improvi- dent. And though they were getting the best wages ever paid, they were dissatisfied and wanted more. Through their unions they forced their demands for wages to a point beyond the power of employers to pay. Their political demagogues told ​

180 LESLIE M. SCOTT

them they ought to get still more, that they were cheated out of all the benefits of 'protection/ which were intended for them, but had been swallowed up by the bosses. So the 'change' was voted. This produced increased caution and timidity on the part of employers, who feared to continue their business on the old scale, and, in fact, were unable to do so. Then, when em- ployment could ho longer be had, great numbers of these men, who had saved nothing, found themselves destitute and forth- with began to accuse and denounce society and government for conditions resulting from their own imprudence. ... It is not Jn the power of the national authorities to find remedies for the evils which men bring on themselves through want of forethought and steady industry, through dissipation of time, opportunity and money, through the common modern habit of pushing the demand for wages beyond what employers can possibly afford to pay and compelling establishments to close or greatly reduce their force. . . . They who spend their money in one way or another as fast as they make it, who never postpone present gratification to the expectation and purpose of future advantage, who live in and for the passing day, with little thought of the morrow, and none at all of next year, or of the necessary provision for later life; who have been accus- tomed to work, when they worked at all, only at such employ- ments and such hours and wages as they could select or dictate ; whose lives in many instances have been as profligate as that of the prodigal son, but who have not yet reached the better resolve of repentance and amendment all such are stranded, of course. These are fit recruits for the armies of vagrancy now pointed toward Washington by the demagogue folly which has long been proclaiming it to be the duty and within the power of Congress to help men by legislation who can be helped only by themselves."

As this quotation describes Mr. Scott's ideas of individual thrift, it has been included here at some le'ngth. While there might be an occasional exception to the general rule that a man's success or failure in life is what he himself makes it, Mr. Scott averred that the exceptions could not disprove the rule. With men as a class and with individuals who failed to build a foun- dation of personal prosperity, he had little or no sympathy. He did feel, however, and most deeply, for children in destitution. Their helplessness was always a source of sadness to him. ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 181

In June, 1894, a railroad strike halted Mr. Scott's return from an Eastern trip, at Tacoma, and he had to quit the North- ern Pacific Railroad there, and make his way as best he could to Portland. This amused a number of Populist editors and they directed jibes at Mr. Scott, which he answered with the following in The Oregoniah of July 24:

"Several Populist papers are chuckli'ng and cackling over the fact that some two weeks ago the Editor of The Oregonian, then at Puget Sound on business, was stopped at Tacoma by the strike and had to make his way as he could across the country to the Columbia River. Of course the poor milksops do not know how little such an incident disturbs a man who all his life has been accustomed to obstacles, and yet never to allow them to stand in his way. The Editor of The Oregohian in pioneer times was accustomed to foot it between Puget Sound and the Columbia and carry his grub and blankets on his back, and to think nothing of it. He and all others at that day went through without complaint conditions a thousand-fold more laborious and difficult than those against which our Populists and anarchists and 'cultus' people generally now protest as intol- erable hardship and grinding slavery. Trifling as this particu- lar incident is, it illustrates right well the difference between purposeful energy and poor, pitiful inefficiency. The one does things, the other whines and complains, says it can't, and wants somebody to help, or government to give it a lift."

In December of the same year, when "soup kitchens" were abundant, Mr. Scott had said in his paper: "It is their duty to put their wits and energies at work, to make employment for themselves, not to stand all the day idle offering the excuse that no man has hired us." A critical editor replied that he would like to see what Mr. Scott would do, "out of money and out of work and without friends." To which Mr. Scott an- swered in The Oregonian, December 23, 1894 :

"He was in exactly that position m Portland over 40 years ago. But he didn't stand round and whine, nor look for re- sources in political agitation or bogus money nor join Coxey's army. He struck out for the country, dug a farmer's potatoes, milked the cows and built fences for his food and slept in a shed ; got a job of rail-splitting abd took his pay in an order for ​

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a pair of cowhide boots; in these boots he trudged afoot to Puget Sound; "rustled" there for three years and raked to- gether $70, with which he came back to Oregon afoot, to go to school, and managed by close economy to live six months, till, his last dollar having vanished, he bought an ax of Tom Charman, of Oregon City, on credit, made himself a camp on the hill above Oregon City and cut cordwood till he got a little money to pay debts he owed for books arid clothes. The next years were spent very much the same way hard work and hard study, but nothing for beer and tobacco, and no time fooled away listening to political demagogues. All this is very com- monplace, but it is recited to show that when the editor of this newspaper talks about hard times, self-help and what men can do, he knows what he is talking about."

XIII INDIVIDUALISM

None knew better than Mr. Scott the irresistible drift toward substitution of collective function for personal duty. He stemmed the drift as ohly his strong personality could do, yet not nearly so often as his conscience urged. He insisted that citizens should supply, as far as society could compel them, their own facilities and luxuries for selves and children, with- out leaning on government. Otherwise character would be impaired and the many would be burdened dn the thrifty few, with the former quota fast growing. Always he was urging his readers to employ energies of the self-reliant aforetime and apply themselves to creative labor, instead of to seek the created wealth of others. Pioneer conditions, he used to say, were a thousand times harder than the later conditions that were called "oppressive" and "grinding" by matiy a poor man. The contrast between the pioneer era of self-help and the new era of leaning on society he portrayed in the subjoined article, March 1, 1884:

"Our fathers, who settled and subdued the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, pursued the rational and successful way. Each family pushed out for itself, without theories to hamper it. All worked with intelligence and industry, but no one leaned upon another. The theories of modern social sci- ence, so-called, fortunately for them and for the country, were unknown. Its jargon had not yet been evolved to mystify the ​

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mind, to darken counsel, to suggest falsely that men might look for resources where no resources are to be found. Our fathers knew that the secret lay in independent energy, in intelligent labor, in the rules of thrift, economy and virtue. They knew that the thing for each family to do was to make a selection of land and establish upon it an independent home. There were no writings of Herbert Spencer or Henry George to per- plex them with vain notioris of co-operative association or other transcendental nonsense. Enough for each of them to mind his own business, without bothering with co-operation, colony or commonwealth. On those principles of common sense our own state was settled."

INDIVIDUALISM IN MORALS

It is convenient to discuss the general attitude of Mr. Scott on the large questions involved i'n "individual responsibility" under two main heads moral and economic. Under the for- mer are classed his articles on reform, liquor prohibition, temp- tation and the like ; under the latter his varied discussion nowa- days presented by "socialization" projects. No subjects re- ceived more frequent treatment at his pen than these and none other were challenged more hotly by champions of opposing ideas. They cover the whole period of his activity. They were widely read and applauded; also widely misunderstood and misrepresented.

Starting with the idea that each individual should be held accountable for his own evil conduct and should suffer its con- sequences, Mr. Scott declared this method the only one fit to fortify the resistant forces of personal character. Only moral strength would withstand temptation and such strength is ac- quired from resistance. Temptation, therefore, was not to be taken away. "It is poor and impotent method of reforming the world," he remarked September 30, 1887, "to try to put away means of evil from men, instead of teaching men to put evil away from themselves. Temptation exists in forms innum- erable and will ever exist, so long as man is man; and our Maker himself appears to have seen no other way to develop a moral nature in man but by setting temptation before him and ​

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bidding him, as he valued life, to triumph over it. ... The text is, 'Deliver us from evil.' It is a mistaken method of moral work when the text is reversed and men think, by putting temptation out of the way, or by trying to remove from sight things that may be perverted, to make moral character." Again on December 28, 1909 : "If any philosopher or if the philos- opher is to be ruled out if any charlatan or quack can discover a way by which temptation can be resisted or character can be formed except in the presence of temptation, he will be a world's wonder. The problem was beyond Omniscience and Omnipo- tence."

Drunkards are to blame for their excess, not the person sell- ing the liquor ; nor the law which fails to suppress it ; drinkers create the saloon by their demand for it. The one way to dimin- ish the liquor traffic is to diminish the demand. Intemperance is in the man, not in the whisky. It is not the fallen woman who is responsible for the social evil, but the men who seek her. It is not the "keeper of the game" who is responsible for the evils of gambling but the persons whose demand cre- ates the game and supports it. It is not the "loan shark" who is responsible for usury but the persons who seek to pay exces- sive interest. Those who stray from the strict moral code of sex are not to blame other influences than their own weakness. Parents whose children go wrong are to hold responsible noth- ing else than their own neglect or failure of training. Morally weak persons who fail to hold themselves erect should pay the penalty, either in punishment or elimination. This poor fellow can't resist the seductions of drink (October 7, 1887) ; that poor fellow can't resist the seductions of the painted woman; the other poor fellow can't resist the seductions of the gaming table. And all of these poor fellows are a cheap lot, none of them worth saving and the world would be better without them." All this was a grim rule of conduct, yet it accorded, he said, with the world's experience. It did not mean that society was to fail to protect its weak members against the aggressions of the strong. "But it cannot protect the weak against them- selves without trenching on the rights of free action (May 24, ​

Facsimile of writing of Harvey W. Scott. From manuscript of an address delivered by Mr. Scott at Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, N. Y., Sept. 25, 1901 (Oregon Day). "The Oregon Country, when my father removed his family to it, forty-nine years ago, embraced the country from the summit of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, between the 426 and 4gth parallels of latitude. It included the whole of three" states of the present day and large parts- of two ​ ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 185

1904), through which the strong grow stronger and find a freedom that makes life worth living. ... It remai'ns as heretofore and will be the law of the life of man to the last ages, that those who cannot stand the strain and pressure of moral requirements will perish."

Legislation, he averred, has little effect on morals or charac- ter. Rum, brandy, whisky, for example, always will exist. They belong to the domain of human knowledge. To try to suppress the knowledge is absurd. "All that can be done ra- tionally is to teach, or try to teach, the error of misuse of them (May 2, 1909). Restraint of sale is well. Still, however, there must be left some quantity of choice in the use of them even in the abuse of them. This is absolute. It gives the rea- son why prohibition never can be enforced." Indians of Ore- gon, before whites came to the country, knew nothing of alco- holic liquors. "But had they the virtue of 'temperance ?' Not at all. Though they never got drunk, temperance was a virtue they did not know. . . . Those who think that by prohibit- ing liquor they can make men temperate are as absurd as those who suppose that they can make men honest by never trusting them with anything they can steal. Moral strength is created only by allowing liberty of choice between right and wrong; by marking the difference between right use of a thing and actual abuse of it. All other miseries in the world are insignifi- cant as compared with those that attend abuse of the sexual function. But does the genuine reformer endeavor to abolish the sexual relation ? Rather does he not insist that one of the chief duties of life is to refrain from abuse of it?" (September 2, 1889.)

Often the critics of Mr. Scott urged that since the law for- bids theft and murder, makes their acts crimes and punishes them with severity, the law can also forbid liquor selling, make it a crime, and enforce penalties for its violation. Mr. Scott replied that murder and theft are crimes per se and so regarded the world over ; but liquor selling is sanctioned by public opinion because men recognize a proper and sober use of liquors. Re- form of vice, in the Editor's view, rests with those who have ​

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the training of youth ; with those who can exert personal and social influence to put vice under the ban. Virtue must have its growth from within; cannot be enforced from without. Training, if not in the home, is impossible. Mr. Scott depre- cated the modern habit of shifting this duty to the state. "All the duties of society (December 11, 1907), all the duties of the State as the authoritative expression of the means and meas- ures necessary for the regulation of society are of little import- ance in proportion to the duties of parenthood ; for everything depends on the watchfulness of parents and on their right care and direction of the children for whom they are responsible." He always resented ecclesiastical control or discipline of pri- vate conduct, resisted the pratings of "pharasaic and charlatan proprietors of civic virtue" and of revivalist reformers, drew distinctions between innocent pleasures (as on Sunday) a'nd theocratic condemnation of such pleasures as vices ; decried the efforts of Pinchbeck or Puritan moralists, rebuffed "shrieky preachers" who sought to force their sensational ideas on him or on the public. His was a middle course between the ex- tremes of vice and the extremes of reform, a course which he deemed practicable and therefore sensible.

INDIVIDUALISM IN INDUSTRY

Most important of all parental teaching for the youth is that of work and concentration, wrote the Editor often. Industry is first among the influences of right living. Constant labor, ap- plied to intelligent purpose, opens the way to good practices and closes the paths of evil; also it trains to self-denial and self-control. "This self-denial of which so many are impatient (April 7, 1899) is no new doctrine; it contains a universal principle that can never be suspended; the exercise of it is, always has been, always must be, a fundamental condition of success in human life."

Mr. Scott was ever driving home the lesson that there is no considerable success without great labor and they who decline the labor have no right to expect the results that come only through labor. Young people are not to shun even drudgery, ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 187

for it is the price of success and worth the price. "Voluntary hard labor has always had a hard name among those not willing to undergo it (April 7, 1899). 'Improbus' it was called far back an expression not translatable as applied to labor, in accord with the ideas of the modern world. It is common enough to say that success is not worth such extreme effort; which would be true enough, if only material objects were con- sidered, but the full exercise of every man's powers is due to himself and due to the world, subordinate always to the rule of right. The one thing that needs iteration is that no success can rightfully be effected without payment of the price for it in labor and conduct." Moreover, "the young man who is to get on in the world (September 6, 1904) 'needs to work the most days and the most hours he can not the fewest. There never will be reversal nor suspension of this rule. The few who observe it will get on, will get ahead. The many who neglect it will be servants while they live." Men's duty seldom permits them to choose their occupations. If every man could have the work he delights in doing, much work would go un- done. Labor is the only means to happiness ; efforts to escape it end miserably ; physical comfort does not always lead to vir- tue ; there is no reward for idlers ; economy is a very great revenue ; government can do little to "help" its people or pro- vide them work; no man need suffer poverty in the bountiful opportunities Oregon affords ; self-help is the only means of escape from the wages system such were frequent themes in Mr. Scott's editorial discussions.

No rules for getting on in the world are worth much, beyond the rules that inculcate the homely and steady virtues. "All else will be controlled largely by circumstance (January 28, 1910). A man of fair abilities, good judgment and powers of unceas- ing application, may become moderately successful in any line of effort to which he turns his attention. But sobriety, pru- dence, industry and judgment must attend him every day of his life." A year earlier, January 7, 1909 : "Attention to business, whether it be sweeping out and making fires in a little store or shop or helping to load coal on a freight engine, will land one ​

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at the top but the three simple words at the beginning of the sentence cover a multitude of things that the average boy slights as not worth bothering himself about." As for college education: "Everything is in the man; little in the school (July 5, 1909). If it is in the mah it will work its way out school or no school. Talent is irrepressible. It will find its way. If it hasn't energy to find its way, it will accomplish little from all the boosting it may receive." Thus the Editor summarized his slight faith in "easy" education. Again : "Boys and girls ! You've got to work, and your school will help mighty little. The less help you have the stronger you'll be if there's any- thing in you. If there's nothing in you, the game isn't worth the candle. But you must try."

Mr. Scott's own rule of life, his own self-examination and fortitude of character are indicated in this analysis of what true worth is, as distinguished from wealth or station or intellectual capacity (April 7, 1899) :

"A man's greatness lies not in wealth or station, as the vul- gar believe, nor yet in intellectual capacity, which often is asso- ciated with the meanest character, the most abject servility to those in high places and arrogance to the poor and lowly ; but a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest pur- pose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and every- thing else, oh frequent self-examination for Socrates has not been superseded on this topic nor ever will be and on a steady obedience to the rule that he knows to be right, without troub- ling himself very much about what others may think or say or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does. The prime principle in man's constitution is the social ; but independent character is the rational check upon its ten- dency to deception, error and success."

Devotion to truth was a vital corollary to his moral theorem of industry. "The straight path," he often said, "is the old and only way." On March 25, 1905 : "The only security one has, or can have, when he enters the world of activity and of strife and struggles with it, is in keeping faith with his ideals. Star- vation, with virtue, after all, is not likely to happen. But shame, failure, vexation, disappointment, remorse and death ​are the proper consequences of life, without ideals of virtue and duty. There are resources in decency and virtue and right living, that are sure. To these resources, loose, vicious and idle lives never can pretend. If the straight way is not the primrose path, it certainly is the only safe one."

The motives spurring the Editor against the oncoming hosts of paternalism already have been outlined in this article. He thought the rising power of collectivism and communism, unless checked by later forces, ultimately would submerge the energetic, the thrifty members of society. Immediately it was bringing vastly extended functions of government, multiplied office-holders and "free" enjoyments for the masses that pay little or no part of the expense in taxes and that control taxation through non-propertied suffrage. Socialism, he defined as the negation of all private property, since equality is the essence of all its doctrines; as "the growing disposition to substitute communism for individualism, an increasing desire to use the State as a vehicle for support of the thriftless, by levying upon the accumulation of the thrifty; an increasing antagonism to the man who through patience, energy and self-denial, accumulates, and an increasing encouragement to the incompetent to rely upon society as a whole for sustenance and even entertainment" (April 15, 1901). Again: "It implies that industry, prudence, temperance and thrift should divide their earnings with indolence, stupidity, imprudence, intemperance and consequent poverty" (March 10, 1892). Once more: "It means that the state, or the community in general, is to be the collective owner of all the instruments of production and transport—by instruments meaning all things requisite, including land, to produce and to circulate commodities. That is to say, the state is to own all things which economists call capital—all the land, all factories, workshops, warehouses, machinery, plant, appliances, railways, rolling stock, ships, etc." (July 9, 1895).

This definition excited hostile criticism of varied degree from socialists, who would flood the editorial table with copious ​letters defining socialism each for himself. "Every writer," replied Mr. Scott (April 15, 1901), "has his own definition. Some go no farther than general opposition to private ownership of land and productive plants. Some go so far as the platform of the Social Democratic Party in 1900, which demands public ownership not only of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, water works, gas and electric plants and public utilities generally, but also of all mines, oil and gas wells. Some advocate community ownership of all desirable things, including women." Mr. Scott admitted that the negation of the idea of private property is not the intent of socialism, but averred that such would be the logical and inevitable result, because no property could be used as a private source of income and because personal goods would soon wear out and could not be renewed, since the state would possess the means of production. Hence, there would be no way to acquire property beyond the barest means and needs of living and no person could have more or better things than his neighbor. "It is astonishing that this scheme to narrow human life to one type, and that the poorest, should have any support at all. It would be useless for anyone to make effort, for he would have nothing to gain for himself and nothing to leave to descendants" (November 22, 1904). Once when a socialist writer called civilization a "monstrous disease," Mr. Scott retorted (December 17, 1907): "It may be supposed the writer never saw uncivilized conditions, such, for example, as those in which the tribes of Clatsop and Puget Sound lived, in the former day. That state of life seemed to be a real disease."

We cannot epitomize the whole range of argument which Mr. Scott employed against socialism, nor does space permit. His articles on this ramified subject cover more than thirty years. He knew he could stop the then forward march of the idea not at all nor retard it even slightly. It would have to run its course, he said. In concrete practice, Mr. Scott resisted the idea in its continuous enlargement of governmental function. He declared that public ownership of complicated utilities, such as lighting ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 191

plants, street car lines, would prove more costly than in private hands under government regulation; that extension of higher education to make it "free" and "easy" injured the recipients of its so-called benefits, absolved parents from their due obliga- tions and youth from helpful striving ; that "free" libraries, hos- pitals and many other "free" luxuries fostered official extrava- gance bred officials and taxed the most energetic citizens for benefit of those of lesser merit ; that worst of all it taught the habit of "lying down on the government" and making the state pay." "Government cannot compel the energetic few to do very much for the improvident many" (June 7, 1909). "If pushed very far, the result will be continual and rapid diminu- tion of the energetic few and increase of the improvident many." Again on June 20, 1904: "The dream of 'social justice' never will do anything for him who depends on it. He should quit that dream, take the first job he can get and stick to it till he can make it the stepping stone to another and better. Then he will find no theory of 'social justice' of any interest to him." An earlier article, November 18, 1889, remarked: "No man has ever yet risen to prosperity by croaking and grumbling and spending his time in trying to discover reasons for the supposi- tion that society is organized to keep him down." As for spread of governmental function (February 1, 1901) : "Nobody can look out for himself any more. He is no longer able to cut his beard without superintendence by the state or to buy butter for his table or to protect his fruit from winged or creeping pests or his flocks from wild beasts. No one now thinks of doing anything for his own education ; and the citizen puts up an incessant demand for enlargement of the functions of the state in all conceivable ways, so he may 'get a job,' in which the duty is but nominal and the salary secure." The great source of trouble was too much ignorant and irresponsible vot- ing of taxes and governmental extravagance by citizens who did not feel the burdens thereby imposed on property. For this reason and this reason chiefly Mr. Scott stood opposed to woman suffrage which would double, or more than double, he said, this sort of voters. Government and property, he as- serted, were too much harassed by such voters already. ​

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SINGLE TAX ON LAND

Land socialism "single tax" Mr. Scott treated in ways similar to other doctrines of communism, as a scheme of its ad- vocates to prey upon propertied neighbors through authority of government. His writings on this subject extended over twenty-four years. They contain the full argument against the theories of Henry George and his later followers. A char- acteristic excerpt of his criticism is the following (July 20, 1909):

"Our Henry George aspostles or disciples, the single-taxers, who call themselves the landless poor, will not rush off into any of the new districts, where land is offered practically free and settle down and work in solitude and contentment, as others did aforetime to establish themselves and their families. No, indeed ! They wish to seize the fruits of the labor and privation and waiting and life-long effort and industry of others by throwing all taxes on land values and making the land ob- tained by the pioneers, through their early efforts and life-long constancy valueless to them. Here, in the new aspect are the modern Huns and Vandals. * * * These people don't wish to work, are unwilling to work, as others have done aforetime. They think it easier and therefore preferable to prey on society and rob others covering their operations with assertions of justice and forms of law."

XV EVILS OF LARGE WEALTH

Evils of excessive wealth, glaring as they were and intol- erable, were not to be remedied, said Mr. Scott, by the social- istic regime. He considered the propaganda formidable chiefly as "part of the attack on vast evils that must be cured or abated" (November 12, 1906). Not forever would the people allow themselves to be plundered by trust combinations. "Such transactions in themselves and in their results, are all immoral. They are on a level with the transactions of the slave trade; and their fortunes have the same basis (April 7, 1905)." It was a lazy complacency which assumed that the masses of the ​

/ft

GEORGE H. WILLIAMS AND HARVEY W. SCOTT

AT LEWIS AND CLARK FAIR GROUNDsjAT PORTLAND IN MAY, 19O4. JUDGE WILLIAMS WAS 81 YEARS OF AGE, MR. SCOTT 66 YEARS ​ ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 193

people should submit to these exactions and yield to the "stream of tendency." Colossal combinations organized for such busi- ness are inconsistent with principles of social and individual freedom. "Our people will not believe that the long upward struggle of the civilized world for centuries, tending ever to greater freedom of the individual, larger sense of personal dignity and independence, is to be arrested now or to end now in the economic overlordship of a few and the contented ac- ceptance by all the rest, of such favors in the form of char- ities or educational endowments as these few may see fit to bestow." July 18, 1903.) And the system of perpetuating vast fortunes by inheritance made the evils worse. These estates should be broken up, he said, not be permitted to solidify into permanent institutions. The power of transmitting such estates was sure to be limited. And there should be abolition of protective tariff greatest agency of special privilege; also close regulation of avenues of transport and carriage. Social- ism or social democracy was unthinkable, as a remedy. It would be inconsistent with individual freedom and personal dignity ; an economic impossibility ; a despotism. "Great wealth" could be regulated under existing institutions and forms of law. The whole system of private property should not be destroyed in the effort to eradicate the parasite.

XVI THE "OREGON SYSTEM"

In 1904 the initiative and referendum became operative in Oregon and in 1905 the direct primary. The method of direct legislation and direct nomination became known as the "Oregon system." In successive elections the "system" was actively employed. Mr. Scott was its boldest critic. He was widely urged to turn the system to his own use to elect himself United States Senator in 1906-08. These urgings were so numerous and came from such substantial sources that they convinced his friends he could make a successful contest for the office. But they could not move him to approve the system ; it was destructive of party and of the representative and cohesive forces of government. He would not pose as a seeker of any ​

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office, however high, against his convictions. He predicted that the system would break up the Republican party then dominant in registration by large majority and would elect Democrats to the chief offices. His predictions were amply verified, for Oregon has two Democratic Senators at the Na- tional Capitol and a Democratic Governor, whereas Republican registered voters have outnumbered Democratic in the state during eight years past by more than three to one. He asserted that the "Oregon system" was reversion to pure democracy and destructive of the centralizing and nationalizing institu- tions of representative government.

Mr. Scott directed his heaviest batteries against "Statement One" a pledge required of candidates for the Legislature, binding them to elect the "people's choice" for United States Senator, of the general election. The Editor scored this pledge as disruptive of party, as an instrument of petty factionalism, and false pretenses, as a "trap" to force Republican Legislators to elect Democratic Senators against their own political convic- tions and agamst heavy Republican majorities on national issues. By this "trap" Mr. Chamberlain was elected Senator in 1909 and Mr. Lane in 1913, both Democrats. "Statement One" is now eliminated by amendment to the national constitu- tion for electioh of Senators by popular vote which Mr. Scott often urged both as an escape from Oregon's troublesome method and from the evil methods in other states. "The election should be placed by the constitution directly in the hands of the people of each of the states, without intervention of the Legislature thereof (January 27, 1908). It is one of the absolute needs of our government." Statement One certainly proved itself a destructive instrument to Republican unity and a boon to Democrats.

As for direct primaries, Mr. Scott conceded their benefits in eradicating the "boss" and the "machine" convention, but held up the evils such as, loss of leadership of strongest meto, plurality rule of parties and their resultant disintegration; elimination of purposeful party effort; false registration of members of party; spites and revenges of factionalism; bold ​

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self-seeking of candidates for office. Mr. Scott's remedy was an adjustment between the old and the new systems party conventions prior to primaries, the platform and candidates of the former to be submitted to the latter. This plan he was urging at the time of his death. It was rejected in the sub- sequent election by defeat of the convention candidates. It may be remarked in passing that even the original advocates of direct primaries in Oregon are not all favorable to continu- ance of the system. They admit the unsatisfactory results and now urge "preference voting," whereby primaries would be abolished and nominations and elections consolidated.

Mr. Scott objected not so much to the referendum as to the initiative. Both,, he pointed out, were designed for occasional or emergency use, but the initiative had opened the way to innovators, faddists and agitators, who took the opportunity to inflict their notions upon legislation at every election. The initiative, open as in Oregon to such small percentage of electors, was leading to visionary extremes and what was most serious to unequal taxation. It was a menace to political peace and security which could not be long tolerated by con- servative elements of the people. It was supplanting repre- sentative government the best known method of democratic cohesion and safest means of protection for property. It was superseding the old Oregon constitution a wisely framed instrument. It was reverting to "pure democracy" which his- tory had proved inferior to republican form of government. "Representative government is the only barrier between an- archy and despotic monarchy. The whole people cannot take the time nor give themselves the trouble to examine every subject or every question. The Polish Diet or Parliament consisted of 70,000 Knights on horseback. There was no sufficient concentration of authority. The consequence, need- less to say, is that Poland as a nation, long ago ceased to exist. It was the same in Ireland. There was no concentration, no centralization of authority, under representative government. There was too much 'primary law/ Ireland, therefore, is not a nation, except in aspiration, forever unrealizable." An​

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other excerpt, June 5, 1908 : "The popular initiative, so-called, is not a proceeding of representative government. On the contrary, its distinct purpose is to substitute direct government by democracy, for representative or republican government. One of its evils is that it affords no opportunity for discussion, amendment, or modification of its propositions before their final adoption." Party, in the Editor's view, was the most perfect method of carrying out the popular will. "No man, in a democracy, ever yet succeeded in any wide field of political endeavor except through the agency of party. . . . It is common with young persons to lay claim to non-partisan in- dependence. The notion seldom, perhaps never, holds them through life. Experience in the long run, dissipates the view arid judgment prescribes a more effective course of action." (June 29, 1907.) At this time it was a political fad of many to decry party and assert "independence." The large revolt from the Republican party was made even more disastrous by the scattering influence of direct primaries. The "Oregon system," the Editor thought, might have protracted duration, but he felt certain that experience with it would convince the public of need of modification so as to preserve the repre- sentative system of lawmaking and of party organization.

"Though The Oregonian does not expect the initiative and referendum to be abandoned wholly, it does expect considerable modification of them in time, because such modification will become absolutely necessary to relieve the strain put on our system of government by this fantastical method." (July 21, 1909.)

Ought citizens, he asked, who would defend the orderly prog- ress of society, be thus compelled to stand guard to prevent ravishment of the constitution and the laws by groups of hobby- ists and utopists who have nothing to do but sharpen their knives against society and its rational peace?

"Democracy nowhere yet has ever succeeded except through representative methods. In this way only ca'n it bring its best men forward. Democracy makes the greatest of its mistakes when it sets aside the representative principle. It deprives itself ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 197

of its most potent method of action. It cuts off deliberation. It makes democracy merely a turbulent mob." (October 24, 1909.) "Radical and revolutionary methods, reversing first prin- ciples of government and opposed to human experience through methods of innovation, are not methods of reform." (July 6, 1909.) 'The whole of this modern scheme of setting aside con- stitution and laws and of forcing legislation without debate or opportunity of amendment, turns out badly because it gives the cranks of the country an opportunity which they have not self- restraint to forego." (Feb. 18, 1908.) "To say this is not to dispute nor to question the right of the people to self-gov- ernment. But all cannot study all questions. Modern life depends o'n adjustment of the results of experience, or science, in innumerable departments, to new and growing needs. Here now is the opportunity, here is the need of representative gov- ernment as never before. The people are to rule but they should delegate their power to those whom they deem the most com- petent to do the things wanted. O'nly thus can they get results. Representatives betray the people less than many suppose. There is danger of such betrayal, undoubtedly, for the repre- sentative may not be much wiser than his constituency nor always honest. But the people ought to be able to protect them- selves by exercise of care in the selection of their representa- tives." (May 16, 1909.) "In all this there is bo distrust of the people. On the contrary, it is simple insistence that the people have the right to the best service that their deliberation and their suffrage can command." (Sept. 10, 1909.)

Direct primaries, said the Editor, negatived the representa- tive method in party and election, just as the initiative and ref- erendum did in legislation. Though hot so fundamentally dan- gerous they made their evil seen in destruction of rational political effort and of deliberation ; in spites and revenges of factionalism ; in elimination of men of character, independence, distinction, and: ability ; in election of men of ambitious medioc- rity, who never could obtain consideration under any system that was representative. "Under restraints of the party system, there never could have been such profligagcy in the Legisla​

198 LESLIE M. SCOTT

ture, such excesses in the appropriation bills, such creation of additional and useless offices and increase of salaries as are witnessed now." (Feb. 20, 1909.) The new system repudiated leadership, threw leadership to the winds. "It suppresses every man who occupies a place of influence in parties especially in the majority party. The object is to get rid of all men of energy and talents; and it succeeds; to cast out and trample down every man who has superior powers of persuasion and combination/' (April 6, 1909.) "The attempt to make party nominations without some guide to representative party action always will be a blunder/' (Sept. 14, 1909.)

Mr. Scott fought the onward rush of the "system" with the old-time courage that had nerved him against many another movement. But this was a struggle which he knew he would not live to see won. His life span was too short. But with the vision of a prophet he looked forward to a time when, after the strife's fury and passion had spent, the foundation principle of republican government would again prove itself triumphant.

XVII LOCAL CONTROVERSIES: RAILROAD DISPUTES

As aggressive editor and leader of public opinion, Mr. Scott found himself forced into many local political con- tests in the course of his long life. He entered these struggles hot at all with belligerent desires, but because he had to uphold principles and policies, many of them of national scope, against persons who were setting up local opposition. His attitude on home political issues was always conditioned by the nation- wide interest, when he thought that interest involved. This method of his was often misconstrued and falsely represented. On the issue of sound money, for example, he attacked friend and foe without quarter, unceasingly and everywhere, in local and general elections, who advocated "fiat money." And it is probable that many of his enemies took up the silver idea in personal antagonism to Mr. Scott.

Early railroad projects in Oregon engendered political feuds of very bitter intensity. First of these was the fight between ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 199

the East Side and the West Side companies (Willamette Valley) in 1869-70. Mr. Scott took no part in the political fight, urged both projects as needed by the public, but recog- nised the East Side company (Ben Holladay's 15 ) as equipped with funds to build, whereas, the West Side company (Joseph Gaston's) had little or no financial backing. In 1870 occurred the fight to determine whether the southern connections of Holladay's road should be via Rogue River or via Eastern and Southern Oregon from Eugene. On account of the large interests of Rogue River, which otherwise would have no rail- road connection, the line was routed that way through influ- ence of Senator George H. Williams. Mr. Scott supported the policy of Senator Williams. The Oregon Legislature, by joint resolution in September, 1870, demanded the Rogue River route. 16

A longer contest was that over the Northern Pacific land grant in Washington Territory, lasting a decade after 1877. The Northern Pacific had located its route to Puget Sound and claimed, under act of Congress, its land grant thither, to be earned by construction of its line. Financial difficulties delayed construction ; meanwhile enemies of the road, supposed to be prompted by rival Union Pacific interests, were clamoring for completion of the Northern Pacific, otherwise, they demanded that its land grant be forfeited and a substitute grant be allowed for a rival route connecting the Columbia River with the Union Pacific at Salt Lake. This competing effort was headed by Senator Mitchell and W. W. Chapman. 17 But the Northern Pacific was too strong m Congress to be dislodged. Mr. Scott contended that the Northern Pacific should be afforded every advantage to complete its road (at one time the company agreed to build the Columbia River route) ; that the people of Oregon should not quarrel over two

15 Ben Holladay opened the first period of railroad construction in Oregon in 1869. He was succeeded in 1876 by Henry Villard. Holladay came to Oregon in 1868; died at Portland July 8, 1887. "Holladay's Addition," in Portland, was named for him.

16 Session laws for 1870, pp. 179-80.

17 William Williams Chapman, born at Clarksburg, Va., Aug. n, 1808; died at Portland Oct. 18, 1892. Came to Oregon 1847, to Portland 1849, in which year he became one of the proprietors of Portland townsite and one of its most ener- getic citizens. ​

200 LESLIE M. SCOTT

railroads when they had neither, but should help the one offer- ing them the more practicable and the earlier connections ; that the Northern Pacific was that one ; that, moreover, its interests were those of the North, as Oregon's were ; that while Oregon needed the Union Pacific, too, it should not play the uncertainty of that route against the certainty offered by the Northern line. Subsequent events sustained this view ; the Northern Pacific was opened to Portla'nd in 1883, and the rival Union Pacific the next year.

MORTGAGE TAX

Taxation of credits was an active issue in Oregon during the decade 1883-93. During most of the period the state was struggling with a law taxing mortgages. This law (enacted 1882; repealed 1893) attempted to tax land mortgages at the same rate as the land, in their proportions of value. It had disastrous effect on credit, made high rates of interest, with- held capital from the state and imposed undue taxes ori debt- free land owners. These evils were foretold by Mr. Scott before enactment of the law and he finally saw public senti- ment change to hostility toward such tax. Of similar sort was the popular fallacy after the Civil War, of demanding taxa- tion of government bonds. Mr. Scott combatted this idea frequently.

HIGH COST LIVING

It also fell to his lot, in the last five years of his life, to combat popular fallacies of "high prices." "Cost of living" greatly increased, following high tide of prosperity in 1900-05. Among the causes ascribed was large gold production. In Mr. Scott's view, the chief cause was enlargement or excess of credit ; with credit reformed, after the inflation period, prices would fall. A second influence making high prices, he said, was extravagance in government, following socialistic demands for wider governmental activities. A third was shortage of food-production, due to overplus of population outside such

duties, chiefly in cities. "Let those who complain about high ​

A GLIMPSE OF HARVEY W. SCOTT'S LARGE LIBRARY IN HIS HOME AT PORTLAND. HE BEGAN GATHERING BOOKS IN HIS YOUTH AND CONTINUED THE HABIT THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE HE ACQUIRED BOOKS NOT FOR MERE COLLECTION BUT FOR READING AND REFERENCE IN HIS WRITING ​ ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 201

prices of the necessaries of life get into the country and raise wheat and pigs and potatoes. Then they, too, will want high prices for everything that grows out of the soil." (June 6, 1909.) A fourth was general organization of means of dis- tribution yielding excessive profits. A fifth was the general extravagance of living, use of costly food and clothing and luxurious habits. "They say the times are changed, and we can get all these things and must have them. Very well, then ; but don't complain about the increased cost of living." (De- cember 20, 1909.) The Editor took such occasions to recall his readers to economical ways of life, telling them simplicity would reduce the high cost of living. "Population has outrun the proportional production of food. Food comes from the land and men and women don't like to work on the farm." (De- cember 2, 1909.)

XVIII ETHICS OF JOURNALISM

Mr. Scott wrote on the ethical and moral side of many activ- ities ; nor did he neglect that side of his profession. And in an exposition of his opinions, it may be in keeping to note his cardinal ideas on the work of an editor or newspaper publisher. He called himself editor rather than journalist, for the latter name affected refinements that were alien to his char- acter. His conception of an editor or publisher was one who was free from all alliances, political and commercial, that might trammel his service to the public as purveyor of intelligence. With such alliances, the publisher or editor could not command the public confidence nor exercise the influence on public opinion that a newspaper must have to be a virile force in a community. Independence, he said, is required of a news- paper, by the public, probably more than any other business. In 1909, when Mr. Scott declined the Mexican ambassadorship, tendered by President Taft, he was asked his reasons by a newspaper reporter in an Eastern city. He replied :

"I did not wish to tangle my newspaper with politics. . . . I am convinced that the ownership or editorship of a news​

202 LESLIE M. SCOTT

paper is incompatible with political ambition. The people will not tolerate the idea of a man's pushing himself through his own paper, and they are right about that. The publisher who would produce a newspaper which has lasting character and in- fluence must have an absolutely free hand. His independence must be maintained. He must stay out of associations that take from his newspaper interest. . . . The object and purpose of a newspaper is full and independent publicity and a person interested in other lines of business, in railroads, banks, manu- facturing or anything of an industrial character, would better stay out of the newspaper business. If a man is engaged in the industries I have named, and also owns a newspaper, he is constantly beset by his associates to keep out of print this or that article of news or to shade news so it will not be unfavor- able to the particular business in which friendly parties or associates are interested. They will ask that the matter which might be annoying or unfavorable, be suppressed or that it be presented in a way that will not carry the whole truth. . . . The long and short of it is that the newspaper publisher must not have friends who have such a hold on him that his inde- pendence is endangered."

A newspaper that sells its support or favor to a candidate for ah issue for money, Mr. Scott declared, corruptly bargains away its independence, lowers the tone of journalism, and injures the public service. A successful newspaper must be independent of political party, yet use a political party, on occasion, for carrying an important issue. As an auxiliary to schemes of capitalists a newspaper becomes disreputable and never succeeds. "Money may be at command in abundance, but invariably it is found that money can't make such a news- paper 'go' (April 22, 1905)." And on December 27, 1897: "The true newspaper, that earns its support in a legitimate way, whose business is conducted for its own sake alone, that never hires itself out to anybody for any purpose, accepts no subsidies, gratuities or bribes, but holds fast at all times to the principles and practices of honorable journalism, can alone command confidence." Once more, March 15, 1879: "A great journal is a universal news gatherer, a universal truth teller. It cannot afford to have any aims which are inconsistent with its telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, let the truth wound or help whom it may." ​

REVIEW OF WRITINGS OF H. W. SCOTT 203

Guided by these ideas, it may be seen that Mr. Scott was devoted wholly to the newspaper business and to none other even in slightest measure. This policy was the source of his influence. He was able to fight silver coinage in 1896 with success because he and the newspaper of which he was editor were free; otherwise he could not have made the fight, for it diminished greatly the business of the newspaper and made heavy losses. "It is an organ of intelligence (September 20, 1883), rather than of personal opinion that it is of the greatest importance that the press should be free." Mr. Scott realized fully that "old style" journalism was passing opinion jour- nalism, of Greeley's, Dana's, Watterson's and that the "neu- tral" was taking its place ; the kind that informs and entertains and lets the reader draw his own conclusions. The "fighting newspaper" was disappearing, he said. Mr. Scott made the confession although his was the "fighting" kind. "Journalism is a progressive science that must adapt itself to form and fashiori and spirit, like everything else" (January 13, 1908.)

Ideals should not blind an editor or a publisher to practical needs of journalism as a business ; in fact, the ideal newspaper was not practicable nor attainable. "It would be high-priced; it would have, therefore, but few readers; it would not have money enough to get the news, pay its writers and do its work. Advertisements are the basis of all modern journalism and the best newspapers are those which have greatest income from advertisements." (October 24, 1906.) Therefore money- making must be the first object yet legitimate money-making. Such revenue must come from advertisements and they should be of the right kind. A newspaper cannot be run for senti- merital or theoretical purpose, yet cannot wholly ignore require- ments of the public in that direction. A judicious newspaper- man continually adjusts his course between the two necessities. And in matter of news, the editor is dependent dn public de- sires ; he cannot follow his own volitions iri publishing daily events. A strong newspaper must cover all news, within decent limits, that varied classes of readers demand, even including prize fight "stories." That is to say, the press is ​controlled by public taste and can influence public taste dnly in small degree. "It is not wholly a missionary enterprise nor a pursuit of martyrdom. The editor cannot afford to make up a paper solely for his own reading or to be read in heaven, and he is subject to the influence of the commo'n observation that the mass of readers have not the habit of thought or of mental application to read of those things that tax the powers of the mind, or that bring any real benefit." (January 14, 1881.)

Newspaper work is, therefore, a business of complications and adjustments. The editor or publisher who abides by his ideals as closely as possible, and yet conducts a strong newspaper is very rare. The success of Mr. Scott was a measure of his greatness of mind and purpose. It was his fortune to have the co-operation of two able partners, Henry W. Corbett,^[6] who during many years was a large shareholder in the business, and Henry L. Pittock, who later acquired Mr. Corbett's share and became controlling owner. Without this support Mr. Scott knew his long success as editor of The Oregonian would have been impossible; and he valued above all other energies in the upbuilding of The Oregonian those of Mr. Pittock as publisher and manager of the business, without whom, as he often said, The Oregonian would have been insignificant or would have succumbed.

This brings to the conclusion of this article, but by no means to the end of the subject. For the topics that could be discussed here, of the newspaper work of Mr. Scott, would expand to any length. He gave his writing all the energies of his life and the output was extremely varied in its subject matter, large in its aggregate. Much of importance has been omitted from mention here, yet the foregoing outline follows the main currents of his editorial activity. It was Mr. Scott's lifelong desire and the wish was one of pioneer sentiment to serve the people of the Pacific Northwest always with the best thought that was his to give and to have a place, after he was gone, in the appreciation of his readers. ​

Salem, Oregon, August 12, 1910.

​

Newspaper editors, throughout the United States, after Mr. Scott's death, August 7, 1910, published tributes to his career in journalism. These appreciations show the universal admiration with which fellow members of the craft regarded him. So numerous were these expressions that their reprint would require a publication of large dimensions. A few of them are subjoined to show the widespread sentiment as to the Oregon Editor.

New York Tribune: Mr. Scott was an editor who put his personality into the journal which he directed and made it a force to be reckoned with in Oregon life. He was a builder and a counsellor whose services will be greatly missed.

American Review of Reviews: In the death of Harvey W. Scott, American journalism lost one of its ablest and most virile leaders.

Brooklyn Eagle: The journalism of the Pacific Coast has had no superior and probably no equal to him. The journalism of the United States has had few who were more successful and none who were more respected.

New York Editor and Publisher: He left a splendid legacy of ideals to the profession of journalism. He made the Portland Oregonian one of the great newspapers of the nation.

Indianapolis Star: The newspaper profession never had a finer, braver, truer toiler in its ranks. To its duties he brought full knowledge of the lore of antiquity, profound mastery of history, intimate acquaintance with the best literature of all ages and a style whose simplicity, sublimity and cogency are matched only in the highest models.

Baltimore News: He was one of the big men of the West. The esteem in which he was held, the character of the paper he built up, amply testify to the fact that he fully measured up to the occasion.

Chicago Record-Herald: A real and vigorous personality has disappeared from the stage of independent courageous journalism and national thought.

​

TRIBUTES TO H. W. SCOTT'S ACHIEVEMENTS 207

Indianapolis News : Mr. Scott made his city known by rea- son of the force, intelligence and political sense which he put into his paper.

Minneapolis Tribune: To the Oregon country Mr. Scott consecrated his life. All the states and cities he saw grow up in it owe a debt to his labors and his ideals. He built up a giant newspaper to be its servant in all honest service.

Providence Journal: Harvey W. Scott was one of Amer- ica's great editors and one of its leading citizens. By sheer force of his personality and his powerful pen he made himself the leading figure of the Pacific Coast.

Rochester (N. Y.) Democrat-Chronicle: His force of char- acter, independence of opinion and courage as the director of a great journal made him a power in the public affairs of the country.

Boston Transcript : The death of Harvey W. Scott removes one of the vigorous personalities of Pacific Coast journalism.

Hartford Courant : Harvey W. Scott was one of the strong men of the Pacific Slope. His paper was built up by him to be a mighty power and the reason for its influence was the belief the readers had in the sincerity and wisdom of its managing spirit.

Detroit News : To the newspaper readers of Oregon, Wash- ington and northern California, Mr. Scott was what Greeley and Dana were to Easterners a generation ago.

Omaha Bee : He was a virile, vigorous, dominant personal- ity. In the national councils of newspaperdom he stood high and he leaves a clean, enduring monument in his personal ex- ample as well as public service.

St. Paul Pioneer Press : He left his personal impress upon every feature of his paper long after the complex system of modern newspaper work had made it impossible for any one man to supervise personally all the details of the daily work.

Springfield (Mass.) Union: His paper has been represen- tative of the highest ideals of the Pacific Coastland clean, able and independent.

Minneapolis Journal : His battle against free silver in 1896 was typical. It was the greatest tribute ever paid to the educa- tional power of a free newspaper. ​

208 TRIBUTES TO H. W. SCOTT'S ACHIEVEMENTS

Peoria (111.) Transcript: He made his newspaper the most powerful on the Pacific Coast.

Peoria (111.) Journal: Te fully deserves the honors that Oregon will give him.

Atlanta Constitution : His death removes one of the greatest American journalists, belonging to the school of Greeley, Ray- mond and the elder Bennett.

Buffalo Express : Perhaps his most notable achievement of politics was the holding of Oregon to the gold standard when all the remainder of the West was crazy for free silver.

Philadelphia Ledger: The death of the venerable Harvey W. Scott removes one of the most picturesque and by all odds the most forceful figure in Pacific Coast journalism.

Boston Herald: The ablest, most independent and most widely quoted of Pacific Coast journals, for many years, has been the Portland Oregonian. The man, Harvey W. Scott, who has been responsible for this supremacy, has just died.

Pacific Christian Advocate (Methodist) : Oregon has lost its most noted and influential citizen. His influence must continue to be one of the most potent forces ever exercised on this Coast.

Portland Journal: In intellect, journalism has known few men of equal mould.

Portland Catholic Sentinel : The Northwest loses one of its most commanding figures. Mr. Scott was one of the last sur- vivors of the old guard that worked arid protested against the commercializing process in the daily press.

Melville E. Stone, General Manager Associated Press : The most efficient American editor of the last quarter of a century.

Tacoma Tribune : He enforced respect for his paper a'nd its policies by the sincere and dignified manner in which his enunci- ations were put forth.

Tacoma Ledger: No other man has exerted an influence equal to that of Harvey W. Scott in upbuilding of the Pacific Northwest. His many years of service as editor of a great newspaper have left a lasting impression on our institutions.

Bellingham American: Mr. Scott was a great man in all

the senses of greatness. ​

HARVEY W. SCOTT S HOME AT PORTLAND, CORNER TWELFTH AND MORRISON STREETS.
HE LIVED ON THIS CORNER NEARLY 40 YEARS ​

​Tacoma Herald: Few men have swayed the public mind over as large an area as did Harvey Scott and none has maintained a dominance through so long a period by the exercise of purely intellectual force.

Tacoma News: For some thirty years he was the unquestioned oracle of a domain that embraced all of Oregon with numerous outposts extending as far north as British Columbia, deep into California, and into the Rocky Mountain region.

Portland Spectator: Oregon has lost its greatest citizen.

Pasadena Star: The Pacific Coast has lost its most conspicuous journalistic figure. He gave his paper a national reputation.

Sacramento Bee: He was one of the most remarkable men of the Pacific Coast. His newspaper became known all over the Union as a leading journal.

Spokane Herald: The Northwest has lost one of the most powerful editors whom American journalism has known.

Spokane Chronicle: He earned a place among the most honored and most useful pioneers of the great Northwest.

Spokane Spokesman-Review: He was a mighty pioneer in molding the thought, the institutions, the career of the Pacific Northwest in its plastic time.

Seattle Times: Mr. Scott was one of the greatest editors America has ever produced.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: The country has lost the last of its great personal editors.

Seattle Patriarch: His spirit will remain with us as a beacon light, solacing the old with fond memories and stimulating the youth by the inspiration of his worthy example.

Seattle Coast: A forceful, honest, fearless pen he wielded. Beloved by friends and feared by foes he lived. Honored and respected by all he died.

Seattle Register: The immense influence of his newspaper over a large section of the country was due to Mr. Scott's wonderful command of language and the forceful and incisive logic of his editorials. ​

210 TRIBUTES TO H. W. SCOTT'S ACHIEVEMENTS

Boise Statesman : He was one of those rugged natures that are typical of the West. He was a soldier in the army of the common good and was always found i'n the smoke and grime of battle.

Butte News: If the history of American journalism is ever written, Harvey Scott will form the subject of a most interest- ing chapter.

Los Angeles Times : When Harvey W. Scott passed away one of the great lights of journalism went out. He was a great editor in every sense of the word.

San Francisco Argonaut: Mr. Scott woh and held leader- ship in the intellectual and moral life of Oregon by a fortified wisdom and by an unshrinking courage. His was the journal- ism of social responsibility, and of the spirit of statecraft.

Idaho Falls Register : He rose to the top as one of the ablest and foremost journalists of the world.

Salt Lake Republican : No other editorial writer in the West, and few, indeed, in the whole country, have been read so closely as Harvey Scott.

Salt Lake News: American journalism has lost one of its most brilliant lights. The Oregonian is a monument to his character.

Salt Lake Telegram : His voice has been the most potent ever raised within her (Oregon's) borders. He has done more to shape the character of the state thah any other man.

Salt Lake Tribune : Mr. Scott made himself a power on the West Coast. The whole country will feel poorer b ​