Much that seems favorable, and not a little that is clearly
unfavorable, has come to the Lewis and Clark Centennial because its
date is just a year later than that of the Louisiana Purchase
Centennial. A striking advantage in this close succession is, however,
still to be used. It is the idea of a centennial at Portland in the
Columbia Valley in the very next year following one at Saint Louis on
the Mississippi that needs to be exploited. In this close succession
of these two centennials of the access of the American nationality to
regions of which one lies far beyond the other we have the key to the
fullest interpretation of the national significance of the anniversary
of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Nothing else could so tellingly
exhibit the basis for a peculiar national interest in our anniversary
as the fact that it is virtually contemporary with that to be observed
at Saint Louis. The purchase of Louisiana bears practically the same
natal relation to the western half of the Mississippi Valley that the
Lewis and Clark expedition does to the Pacific Northwest. This the
average American citizen no doubt finds it hard to realize. Oregon,
however, can boast age over the other commonwealths west of the
Mississippi, excepting only Missouri and Iowa and they are barely
older.
The western half of the Mississippi Valley has far outstripped us in
material development. Nevertheless, considering the conditions of
isolation under which the people of Oregon have labored they can be
justly proud of the progress that has been made here in all lines of
endeavor. Saint Louis will be justified in vaunting in 1904 the
achievements and results of a century of development in the region of
which she is the metropolis; but Portland, as the metropolis of the
Pacific Northwest, would have been culpably derelict if she had not
undertaken an observance of the centennial of the Lewis and Clark
expedition that shall emphasize to the nation and to the world the
significance of the occupation of the Pacific coast by the American
people, and to foster the aspirations of one of the most favored
sections on the face of the earth. The basis of our claim to a
national recognition of our anniversary is something more solid than
the fact that we have added what we have to the material strength of
the nation. The secret of the unparalleled effort that Oregon proposes
to make for the observance of the Lewis and Clark centennial lies
deeper than a mere feeling of exultation over material development and
the hope of advertising our resources to the world.
The Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition has clearly two unique and
complementary missions. It should bring fully into the national
consciousness the historic services through which this nation attained
an outlook upon the Pacific comparable with that on the Atlantic, and
the significance of this to the future of the American people. It
should address itself to the peculiar problems of progress on this
coast and thus mark an epoch in the added impetus, the better
organization, and the higher aims it gives us as a people; rightly
planned it would be an exposition of patriotic national services and
of the problems of largest social progress--an exposition of western
history and western problems.
The Lewis and Clark expedition and the Oregon movement, or the
American movement to the Pacific, which the Lewis and Clark expedition
initiated, have not yet had anything like an adequate interpretation
in American history. Oregon represents the greatest opportunity in our
national life--an opportunity that the fathers of Oregon made as well
as seized. A sequel to the Oregon opportunity, or rather a part of it,
were the immense gains south of the forty-second parallel on the
Pacific Slope. Through the Oregon opportunity realized this American
democracy has a territorial basis for supremacy among the nations of
the world, and this nation and all mankind will profit from it to the
end of time. The Louisiana Purchase was not an opportunity made, but
only one accepted when it was tossed into the nation's lap. The Oregon
opportunity, as it stands in history and in promise for the future--in
what is realized and in what is only potential--is in its import only
second to the American opportunity. It had to do with the winning of a
domain that made our nation four-square and continental, with a
national territory commensurate with the spirit and possibilities of
the American people.
The development of the situation on this coast, which the Lewis and
Clark expedition converted into America's opportunity, was something
like this: Four hundred years ago this continent lay unoccupied save
by a race destined to melt away before the onslaughts of the sturdier
European. The Spaniard, schooled by eight centuries of crusading
against the Moor, whom he had finally driven from Spanish soil, was in
the moment of victory, when his hands were free and spirit exultant,
pointed by Columbus the supposed way to the Indies, long-famed for
unparalleled riches. Spanish hopes were high and the cavaliers came
on.
They passed by the West Indies in quest of gold. Cortes and Pizarro
found something of their hearts' desire in Mexico and Peru. So on they
pressed down the west coast of South America and up the west coast of
North America and across the Pacific; but the vigor of the Spaniard
was about wasted. He hung helplessly to his outposts on the flanks of
the Pacific Northwest. At the beginning of the last quarter of the
eighteenth century he rallied and sent vessels up and down the coast
of Oregon; but his explorations were not determinate, and they were
not followed by occupation. Early in the eighteenth century the
Muscovite, advancing eastward across Siberia, had reached the shores
of the Pacific, and soon gained a foothold on our northern shores,
with designs on all this coast. England, too, was ready to have a hand
in the contest for this last great territorial prize on the North
American continent. Elated by her decisive victories over her mortal
enemy, France, and, by the treaty of Paris, 1763, the proud possessor
of all of the eastern half of this continent, of India, mistress of
the seas, conscious also of the great advantages that the invention of
the steam engine, the power loom and other machinery gave her, she
dispatched explorers to scan the different quarters of the globe for
new possessions. Captain Cook outlined the shores of Australia and of
many other lands of the south seas, and in 1778 was off the Oregon
coast. At the same time enterprising Britons were pressing westward
along the Great Lakes and overland toward this still available portion
of the continent. Thus, the progressive nations of the world were
closing in on this last choice imperial domain of the temperate zone
awaiting a pre-emptor--the possessor of which would be the natural
master of the Pacific. At this critical juncture the then young
American nation was fortunate in the spirit of maritime enterprise
among the merchants of Boston. Seeking the profits of trade in furs
which the voyage of Cook had revealed, they sent Captains Gray and
Kendrick to the North Pacific coast, and in 1792 Gray, in the ship
Columbia, performed the feat that secured to this country priority of
right to the basin of the Columbia. Still more fortunate was this
country at this time in having the prescient mind of Thomas Jefferson
devoted to its interests. While Gray's vessel was lying in the
Columbia he was getting up a subscription for sending explorers
overland to the Pacific. Even ten years before this he had proposed an
expedition to the Pacific under the leadership of George Rogers Clark.
He then had it in mind to head off an English enterprise of which he
had heard; but it was not until 1803, twenty years after his first
effort in this direction, that Jefferson succeeded in getting the
means for the first and by far the most important of our national
exploring expeditions--the Lewis and Clark.
But this was not simply an exploring expedition. It represents better
than any other one event the expansion of this nation from the
Mississippi to the Pacific. The expedition was great not merely even
in what it symbolizes. It was grandly great in itself, in its
inception, and in execution. It was the herald of the American
democracy making its way across the continent to the Pacific, but it
was more. There was the highest nobility of purpose in its inception,
and matchless skill and fortitude in its execution. Not only in the
train of its consequences, but in every aspect was it glorious and
worthy of a national celebration. The burden of the special message of
January 18, 1803, through which President Jefferson secured an
appropriation for it, was the maintenance of the factory system, or
the trading posts, among the Indian tribes of the west. Jefferson
took keenest delight in a project to extend the bounds of knowledge
and which he hoped would open a water route of commerce across the
continent with Asia. Yet on the face of it the Lewis and Clark
expedition had primarily its inception as a means for promoting the
success of these government trading posts among the Indians. This
governmental policy, connected with the administration of the factory
system, was the one comprehensive, wise, and humane national effort to
raise a lower race to the plane of civilization. The idea was to
supply the Indian at cost, in exchange for his furs and other
products, the implements of husbandry and the comforts of civilized
life, at the same time to protect him from the demoralizing influences
of the vicious among the white men. The Lewis and Clark expedition was
thus in its origin associated with a work of the largest philanthropy,
"a system," says Captain Chittenden, author of "The American Fur Trade
in the Far West," "which, if followed out as it should have been,
would have led the Indian to his new destiny by easy stages, and would
have averted the long and bloody wars, corruption, and bad faith,
which have gained for a hundred years of our dealings with the Indians
the unenviable distinction of a 'Century of Dishonor.'"
In his instructions to the leaders of the expedition Jefferson showed
the tenderest solicitude for the welfare of the red man. The
expedition could not have been in better hands. Captain Chittenden
says of it: "This celebrated performance stands as incomparably the
most perfect achievement of its kind in the history of the world." Dr.
Elliott Coues has this about it: "The story of this adventure stands
easily first and alone. This is our national epic of exploration." To
appreciate the unique skill of leadership in this expedition we need
but compare its success with the wretched failure of the "Yellowstone
Expedition" of 1820, which was to have gone over but a part of the
route of Lewis and Clark. This had an outfit many times more expensive
than that of Lewis and Clark and ten times as many men; but it went to
pieces before it got beyond what is now Omaha.
Unique as the Lewis and Clark expedition was in its original purposes
and in its execution, the Oregon people are sponsors for the
celebration of its coming centennial anniversary mainly because of the
consequences with which it was fraught. Theodore Roosevelt, in his
"Winning of the West," speaks of it as opening "the door into the
heart of the West." His book has the date mark "1896." It was written
before the battle of Manila, and the treaty closing the
Spanish-American war which placed the Philippines permanently under
our care, before America's determining part in preserving the
integrity of China after the quelling of the Boxer insurrection. It
was written before President Roosevelt had set his eyes upon the
Pacific Northwest. If, after the latter days of this month (May), he
ever again has occasion to characterize the import of the Lewis and
Clark expedition, his dictum will be more like this: "It led to the
acquisition of the whole Pacific Coast, containing the fairest and
richest regions under the American flag, and made inevitable the
American mastery of the Pacific and American supremacy among the
nations of the world." It is, surely, not preposterous to expect a
revision of the verdict of history on the significance of the Lewis
and Clark expedition. Henry Adams, than whom no scholar has done
better work on the history of the United States, in volume IV of his
history, with date mark, 1890, speaks of the Lewis and Clark
expedition in this wise: "The crossing of the continent was a great
feat, but it was nothing more. * * Great gains to civilization could
be made only on the Atlantic coast under the protection of civilized
life." Mr. Adams in this estimate seems wholly blind to the fact that
nations like individuals have opportunities presented to them which
seized may not give immediate results but which have an ever
increasing influence upon their destiny. In the Lewis and Clark
expedition this nation took the flood tide to world supremacy. Three
years ago, when American arms and diplomacy were exercising such a
determining influence on the problem of mankind in China, I heard
Prof. F. J. Turner of the University of Wisconsin, the highest
authority on western history, who writes so forcibly on the Louisiana
Purchase in the current number of the _Review of Reviews_, say, that
"the occupation of the Pacific Coast by the American people was not
only the greatest event in American history, but a great event in all
history."
That the American movement Oregonward and Pacificward followed
strictly in the wake of the Lewis and Clark expedition has many
proofs. Even before Lewis and Clark reached Saint Louis on their
homeward journey they met parties of traders and trappers bound for
the heart of the wilderness from which they were returning. These were
acting on the information Lewis and Clark had sent back from their
Mandan winter quarters. A few months after they reached Saint Louis
the Missouri Fur Company was organized to conduct operations on the
Upper Missouri, that is, on the trail of Lewis and Clark. Four years
later John Jacob Astor organized the Pacific Fur Company, and devised
plans including a great emporium at the mouth of the Columbia, trade
with China on the west, with the Russian settlements on the north, and
a line of trading posts overland on the Lewis and Clark route. Astor's
scheme was a feasible one, but the war of 1812 came on and England
dispatched a vessel to capture the American post on the Columbia.
Before this reached Astoria the British sympathizers among Astor's
partners sold him out. Astor was probably the first to have a vision
not only of what the nation was to gain on this coast, but also of
what more might have been gained had President Madison been as bold in
regard to his enterprise as was Jefferson in the Louisiana purchase.
Had this been so Captain Chittenden thinks "the political map of North
America would not be what it is to-day," implying that there would
have been an uninterrupted American Pacific coast line from the
extreme north to the Mexican boundary.
So far our rights to the region were based on priority in discovery,
in exploration, and in occupation; but now for a period of thirty
years the British Hudson Bay Company was to have almost undisputed
possession. However, the rights established by Gray, Lewis and Clark,
and Astor did not lapse and could not be set aside through occupation
by a mere trading company. During nearly all of this thirty-year
period the Boston schoolmaster, Hall J. Kelley, was agitating the
colonization of Oregon, and in 1832, and again in 1834, Nathaniel J.
Wyeth, with herculean effort, indomitable perseverance, and incredible
energy led expeditions to the Columbia only to meet with disaster when
with his slender means he was pitted against the mighty corporation in
possession here. With Wyeth came the first party of missionaries. The
"Mountain Men"--retired trappers--soon followed, seeking homes here;
and, beginning with 1842, annual migrations of thousands of Oregon
pioneers were on the way. The Lewis and Clark exploration had thus led
to a national movement--"the migration of a people," says Captain
Chittenden, "seeking to avail itself of opportunities which have come
but rarely in the history of the world, and which will never come
again." The route traced by these Oregon pioneers will some day be
restored as a national memorial highway, and will be celebrated in
song and story, every mile of which has the tenderest associations of
hardship and suffering, but also of high purpose and stern
determination; and yet the Oregon trail was in the strictest sense a
derivative of the Lewis and Clark trail. For nearly twenty years the
Lewis and Clark route up the Missouri River had been the only one used
to reach the Rocky-mountain wilderness, but in the fall of 1823 a
party of trappers, pushing westward from the Yellowstone and desirous
of avoiding the implacable Blackfeet on the Upper Missouri, turned to
the south and discovered in South Pass, an easy crossing of the Rocky
Mountains. The region beyond on the headwaters of the Green and Snake
rivers, and in the basin of the Great Salt Lake, was found to be rich
in furs. Henceforth to some point in this region the annual cavalcades
of the fur companies would come and there meet their own trappers, the
free trappers, and the Indians of all the interior country. This was
the annual rendezvous for trading, for the delivery of the season's
catch of furs, and for equipment for the next year's activity. In
making this annual round trip from Saint Louis the original route into
this transmontane country, the half-circle route along the Missouri,
was naturally abandoned for a great cut-off from the western borders
of Missouri to the South Pass. A direct route northwestward across the
plains of present Kansas and Nebraska to the Platte, up the Platte and
the North Fork and its tributary, the Sweetwater, was found to be the
finest natural highway in the world. To reach Oregon the pioneers took
this great cut off of the Lewis and Clark trail, and from its western
terminus on the upper waters of the Snake they had but to follow the
route of Hunt's Astor party until the original Lewis and Clark trail
was struck again on the Columbia. The Lewis and Clark trail was thus
the basis from which was developed the Oregon trail.
During the forties, when the national movement was setting strongly
towards the Pacific, Oregon was an uppermost subject in the thought,
and frequently in the plans, of a large portion of the people of this
country. Oregon pioneers were clinching our hold upon the Pacific
coast. The party slogan of "fifty-four forty or fight" in 1844 had
response deep in the hearts of a great majority of the people of the
northern part of the Mississippi Valley, and stirred the whole nation.
American influences and activities in California from 1846 on radiated
mainly from Oregon. Captain Fremont was sent out originally to explore
the best route to Oregon, and went to California from Oregon. William
Marshall, the discoverer of gold in California in 1848 was an Oregon
pioneer of 1844. Peter H. Burnett, the first governor of California,
was an Oregon pioneer of 1843. The exclusion of slave labor from the
mines of California was largely due to the "Columbia-river men." But
now at the close of the forties came the diversion of the national
interest from Oregon amounting almost to an eclipse of Oregon for some
fifty years. The annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, the gold
discovery in California, the opening of the Kansas and Nebraska lands,
the civil war, the development of the manufacturing industries, the
occupation of the Dakotas, absorbed in turn the main attention and
energies of the nation, leaving outlying Oregon in comparative
obscurity, with resources developing but slowly.
Oregon's day, however, is dawning again. America's surplus energy is
no longer absorbed in gold mining in California, in occupying the
plains of Kansas, Nebraska, or the Dakotas. The overloaded passenger
trains to the Pacific Northwest tell unmistakably the nation's need of
this region. It needs our farm lands. It will more and more urgently
need our lumber and our water power and our outlook upon the Pacific;
and to whom do the American people owe the possession of these
incomparable and growing boons but to Lewis and Clark and to the
pioneers to whom Lewis and Clark pointed the way. Governor Chamberlain
was right the other night when at Boise he spoke of the Lewis and
Clark expedition as Jefferson's greatest act. Alongside the two
inscriptions on Jefferson's monument selected by him, namely, that he
was the author of the Declaration of Independence and that he was the
founder of the University of Virginia, posterity will fain inscribe
the fact that he was the promoter and organizer of the Lewis and Clark
expedition.
The observance of the Lewis and Clark Centennial, therefore, is an
occasion in which the American people as a whole and through their
government have the largest reasons for generous participation. For
great was the Oregon opportunity to the nation and the Lewis and Clark
expedition was the key that opened it. All honor from the nation at
large is due to those who made this national opportunity and seized
it. The possession of the Pacific coast was the corollary and sequel
to the Oregon movement; but the Oregon movement itself was corollary
to nothing less than the spirit and vigor of the American people and
their foothold upon this continent.
We have, then, a national occasion second only to that of Philadelphia
in 1876; and the first great mission of the centennial will be
realized when its occasion has been so interpreted and enforced that a
hearty and liberal participation in the celebration on the part of the
nation has been secured so that our American national consciousness
may fully realize what has been "the course of empire" with us as a
nation and what it is almost certain to be in the future.
The accomplishment of the other mission of the exposition requires a
true interpretation of the problem of largest progress for the Pacific
Northwest. Expositions worthy of the name can not be "hit or miss"
affairs. They are not mere congeries of remarkable products. An
exposition should have an organic unity and a distinct aim. Its aim
must bear directly on the highest interests of the supporting
community. There are peculiar reasons for the exercise of the highest
degree of care and insight in the organization of the Lewis and Clark
Centennial Exposition. No people ever before invested so heavily in
proportion to their means as Portland and Oregon propose to invest in
the Lewis and Clark Centennial. No exposition was ever held in a
community so plastic, so completely in the making as are Portland and
Oregon. The current of common thought and effort is so strongly set
toward the Lewis and Clark Centennial that the very cast of Oregon's
civilization in the future will surely come from what is realized in
that event. The exposition will leave an inspired, unified, and
enlightened people, with ideals newly defined and elevated; or it will
be followed by more or less of humiliation, factional strife,
disgrace, blighting discouragement, with sordid ideals and disordered
social relations.
Most auspicious was Oregon's response to the idea of a celebration.
Stronger faith in the good that may come from unity in action toward
higher things no other people has ever shown; and why should not
Oregon have faith in greater things for herself and the Pacific
Northwest? The Pacific Northwest bears almost exactly the same
relation to the rest of the nation east of us geographically,
historically, and economically that Greece bore to the Orient, and
that England bore to the continental nations of Europe.
I take it, then, that the normal attitude towards the exposition
project is one that regards it as a serious undertaking, having
tremendous possibilities for making or marring much in the future of
Oregon. The exposition comes when Oregon is just at the flood tide of
new opportunities--opportunities that require twentieth century
enlightenment on the part of the masses if these opportunities are to
yield anything like unmixed good. Just as the Lewis and Clark
expedition was the key that opened the Oregon opportunity to the
nation so is the Lewis and Clark Centennial admirably adapted to
become the key to open the way to the highest development of
industrial democracy in the Pacific Northwest and to realize its
leadership in social progress on this continent. We have, I think, a
fine example given us by the authorities of Louisiana Purchase
Exposition of how to plan definitely an exposition to accomplish a
great purpose. The main idea with them is to make a world's fair for
the first time represent the world in epitome as a "going concern."
They thus express their main purpose: "As to the lesson for the world,
the Directorate desire to make a leading point. It is to show life and
movement. * * An attempt will be made to put the world before the eye
of the visitor, each exhibit being so displayed as to make plain its
story, its purpose, and its aim." And again: "The Department of
Education is made the first department of the classification in
accordance with the theory upon which the entire exposition is
founded. * * * Through education man comes to a knowledge of his
powers, and of the possibilities of life, and upon it are dependent
the processes which extend throughout all the fields of industry. This
correlation of the powers of the brain and of the hand of man,
extending throughout the entire exhibit scheme of the exposition,
will, for the first time in the history of expositions, afford a
strictly scientific basis for the collection and classification of
objects." And finally: "At Saint Louis, the prevailing characteristic,
it is intended, shall be life and motion, and the installation of
products and processes in juxtaposition. The classification is based
upon this plan, and its effects upon the proportions of the buildings
is noticeable in that Machinery Hall is relatively so small in area.
The machines through whose operation raw material is converted into
use and the processes employed in utilizing natural products will be
exhibited, so that not only will the fund of human information be
greatly increased, but suggestion will be made to students,
scientists, and inventors that will give still greater development
to genius in the following than in the preceding decade."
The World's Fair, in this carefully planned purpose, affords a fine
model for the Lewis and Clark Exposition. But Portland is not simply
to do for the Pacific Northwest and the other peoples in close
economic and commercial relations with it what Saint Louis aspires to
do for the world. Saint Louis undertakes what was distinctively the
nineteenth century problem--that of mastery by man of the physical
forces of the world and of more nearly perfect adjustment to his
natural environment. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, with its World
Congress of the Arts and Sciences, and all of its exhibits arranged to
promote the development of invention and the application of scientific
methods to industry, has a great mission; and yet the peculiar field
which belongs to the Lewis and Clark Exposition gives it, if not a
greater mission, at least one more advanced--if you please a twentieth
century mission. Man in the Pacific Northwest has a peculiar problem.
All the science and art of the past are his legacy. They fairly press
in upon him in their appeal to him for utilization here. Man here has
a physical environment so rich and so diversified as not only to
invite the largest application of science and art, but also one that
demands the highest organization of associated effort. In other
words, the Pacific Northwest places man in such relation to history,
to nature, and to his fellow-man, as to promise him here, if his
inheritance is not sold for a mess of pottage, man's highest
development. It rests with the Lewis and Clark Exposition to rise to
the occasion. For it represents a first possible step in a grand
cooperative effort to develop a social environment here commensurate
with what nature has done for us. If for a ruthless, wasteful course
of social evolution that would never reach any desirable goal we would
realize one of steady, frictionless progress, with opportunities of
fullest life open to all, we must make the Lewis and Clark Centennial
fulfill its high mission. If the people of Oregon and the Pacific
Northwest do not persist in their determination to make this concerted
effort toward the inauguration of the highest policies of social
progress here it is hard to see what occasion can bring them so near
this mood again. It is the spell that the commemoration of a great
event and a great movement casts over them that will hardly be
repeated. The Lewis and Clark Centennial then is the flood tide of
opportunity. If it is not seized and we lapse again into mere
individualistic policies "all the voyage" of life in the future of the
Pacific Northwest will be bound in comparative "shallows and in
miseries."
An exposition planned to meet the twentieth century needs becomes the
herald of an industrial democracy in which there is a completely
harmonious cooperation for the realization of the highest social
ideals. It is dawning upon us that publicity is the first condition of
relief from the trust evil. We need yet, however, to realize that
essential publicity or light is the talisman for developing a true
democratic spirit to which are disclosed ever expanding vistas of
possibilities. The first great duty of the exposition authorities is
to bring to the people of the Pacific Northwest the largest
enlightenment on the natural resources of this region. Taking our
timber resources as an illustration, we are painfully aware that the
timber holdings are not as widely and equably distributed among the
masses as one could wish; but we have many rich natural monopolies
which the whole people should share. They have common and incalculable
permanent interests in the forests of Oregon, in the water power of
our streams, in our facilities for irrigation, in the mines, and in
the ensemble of natural beauty here. Shall the great natural forest
areas in Oregon which may become the source of an ever increasing flow
of wealth for all time for the whole people be allowed, without state
forestry activity, to become mere waste places for weed trees? We are
told by Mr. Elwood Mead, Chief of the Division of Irrigation, that he
believes Oregon "has the largest area of unimproved land whereon
irrigation is possible of any State in the Union." Here is a great
interest in which most fortunately a policy of coöperation between the
state and the nation has been instituted. What could be more
propitious for the good fortune of the people than an active
coöperation between the authorities of the exposition and the United
States bureaus of forestry, irrigation, and the United States
geological survey in preparing an exhibit of the data on the interests
of the people of the State in these natural resources? With such
definite, earnest, and laudable purposes in view, Congress and the
Administration would respond to the claims of the Lewis and Clark
Exposition in a very different spirit from that with which they have
met recent expositions.
By means of models, relief maps, photographs, drawings, charts, and
graphic representations generally, along with congresses and the
discussions by the press, the people, and their legislators, would
come to take an intelligent and far-sighted view of these great
inheritances of theirs. A whole summer given to the exposition of the
people's interests in their common heritage, with the use of the best
art of illustration, representation, and elucidation, would awaken a
living interest so that they would make sure of their rights, conserve
an equality of opportunities and make our natural resources yield
their highest social utility. Our experience with our state school
lands shows that such a fortunate condition is absolutely impossible
without the influence an exposition could exert toward an
enlightenment on our public inheritances.
The Municipal Exposition at Dresden, Germany, during this summer,
gives a suggestion for a municipal department for our exposition that
would work a transformation in our civic spirit and enlightenment. How
glorious it would be for Oregon if the Lewis and Clark Fair Clubs
would in dead earnest determine to possess themselves of the
philosophy of city making, and to do their best to control municipal
activity in Oregon so as to make it conserve highest economic and
æsthetic ends and bring about rational unity in all municipal
development and foster an architectural spirit. Why not commission a
delegate to Dresden? Why not begin to make wholesome, beautiful, and
edifying the Oregon village and city, so that, as a whole, each may be
a positive joy forever? The same strenuous idealism would find a rich
field in the affairs of our counties and of our school districts. The
Oregon farm must come in for as many meliorating influences as the
Oregon town. All that good roads, graded schools, traveling libraries,
neighborhood telephones, and model farm establishments can do to
elevate the social conditions of farm life will be greatly furthered
by the exposition; but the problem that is fundamental with the
people, both of the town and of the country, pertains not merely to
sharing the unearned increment of the natural and artificial
monopolies, but also to participation in the gains of all capitalized
industry. It is the problem of "peopleizing" the industries. Corporate
organization and management should be a department of the exposition.
By the elimination of all the unnecessary risk in investments in
corporation securities through effective governmental regulation and
supervision the people may gain control and reap the large profits of
capitalized industry. The exposition will have its highest mission in
securing to the people an interest in the gains and a share in the
control of our industrial organizations.
The next generation of Oregonians will not be found wanting in their
ardor for the welfare of the state as a whole, in patriotic zeal for
the betterment of all the conditions of life here and in aspiration to
give the Pacific Northwest leadership in social progress if the
schools are furnished the story of the Oregon opportunity as it was
made and realized. This, as told by the actors themselves, should be
compiled and distributed to the districts. The highest pitch of
emulation to the mastery of this story and interest in the aims of the
exposition may advisedly be secured by a system of prize essays on
important topics pertaining to Oregon's development.
This outline of the features that the exposition might include does
not debar from it popular and recreative attractions. It does not slur
the exhibition of the remarkable products of the farm, the orchard,
the mine, the river, the forests, and the factory. The ideas
emphasized will only give these products multiplied significance,
bringing them into vital relations with life that is more than meat,
drink, and wear. An exposition thus rationally planned will be the
poor man's greatest hope. If he loses the aid it would give him toward
the right solution of the social problem the odds are terribly against
him in the race for an equitable distribution. Such an exposition
would go far toward securing an open door to an equality of
opportunity for all in Oregon. To block the organization of such an
exposition would not be far from social suicide for the masses.
The dominance of economic forces in progress is becoming more and more
exclusive. It devolves upon the people to comprehend fully the living
forces, and, by comprehending them, put themselves in position to
control them and mold them to the higher uses of conserving an
equality of opportunity for all. The Lewis and Clark Exposition lends
itself wholly to this great mission. It is hard to see how a means
quite so propitious will be available again.