# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 14/Harvey W. Scott, Editor

HARVEY W. SCOTT, EDITOR—REVIEW OF HIS HALF-CENTURY CAREER AND ESTIMATE OF HIS WORK
By Alfred Holman
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 stand 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 ​regard this primitive country with attention only to the numbers 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 organization, 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 purposes 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 an 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 carried 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, Ill., 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 township. 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 northwest of the present town of Shelton, on land 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 ​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 resounding name, in December, 1856, but was compelled under necessities, domestic and individual, to abandon its classes four months later to become again a manual laborer. From the late Thomas Charman 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, he worked as a woodcutter, living 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 during the winter of 1858-9. In the Fall of the latter year he reentered 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 serving 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 ​April 17, 1865, as an editorial on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court in September, 1865.
By this time Mr. Scott had become established in the editorship 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 in 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 end. 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 influences 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, father, was born in what was then Washington County, Kentucky. Anne Roelofson, wife of John Tucker Scott and mother of Harvey Scott, was, like ​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 wilderness.
I can speak from personal recollection of this typical pioneer. In physical aspect he was very much the counterpart of his distinguished son, although framed in even larger mold. There was in his face and eye a certain eagle-like quality, 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 tendency to sympathy with movements not always wisely considered 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 agitator; yet I suspect that the soundness of his mmd would under any circumstances have checked any temperamental disposition toward utopianism. He had grown old when I knew ​him, and in his bearing there was something of the arbitrariness 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 authority. However others might defer to the knowledge and judgment of the son, the father in leonine spirit would oftentimes 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 in these moods unnumbered times and can recall but one other—that of the death of a promising son—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 sense of the mystery of life which was always at the background 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 sustained affection in which long after her death she was held by her children. I do not remember ever to have heard Mr. ​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—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.
​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 refined his mind, mental training gave him orderliness of method, 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 professional ascendancy and ultimately of a notable fame. But with all and back of all there was the temper and mental attitude 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 symphony 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 themselves 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 characteristic 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.
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​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 conspicuous 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 justified a sovereign contempt for socialization projects, for sentimental 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.
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   JOHN TUCKER SCOTT HARVEY W. SCOTT'S FATHER. CROSSED PLAINS TO OREGON IN 1852 FROM ILLINOIS
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 reporters, 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 question 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, preeminent journalist, though he was, for nearly half a century, his interest was never in the things which present-day journalism 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 ​Mr. Scott about what was happening in incidental and inconsequential ways. He comprehended the necessity for encouraging 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 perfunctory 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 editorial page. All the rest he knew to be essential. But if there had been a way to get it done without demands upon his personal 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, entertainment, showy writing—these he valued perhaps for not less than their real worth, but for infinitely less than the estimate 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 instinct 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 effective competition. He might have made easy work of it; he chose rather to work hard.
​As the only publicist and pre-eminent man of opinion in the country, Mr. Scott spoke with authority. The habit of regarding his public counsels as authoritative reacted upon his own mind in the sense of creating and sustaining a feeling of intense individual responsibility. Ultimately he became something 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 assumption, 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 sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, for the very lack of judgment which permits you now to assume judgment without knowledge is but a poor guaranty of your character. I bid you good-day, sir!" I promised a single instance, but here is another: An editor of small calibre, commenting upon what he characterized "Scott's arrogance," declared that he had as good a title to consideration as Mr. Scott himself. "Tell him," said Mr. Scott, to the friend who had ​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 experience 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?" "Well," he replied, "I never cross bridges until I come to them." A few hours later I reported this conversation 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 influences have become a colossus of self-esteem. Mr. Scott indeed knew himself a factor in affairs, but he never lost himself in a fog of self-admiration. Oftentimes, when some visitor had paid extravagant compliments upon his work in general ​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 extravagantly an article which merely applies in a timely way principles 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 immediately 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 allowed 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 anything. 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 manuscript 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 ​of his own thunderbolts to his own line of thought. Oftentimes 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.
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 contemporary journalism had no place in Mr. Scott's philosophy. 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 newspaper. I never knew him to give an order to "color" the news. His rule with respect to the news pages was to present ​the facts as clearly and as briefly as possible. His judgments and opinions, his preferences and resentments, his loves and his hates—if they were exploited, and candor requires 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 Mitchell's address to the legislature upon the occasion of his second election. 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 completeness 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 perhaps was said that would have been left unsaid upon reflection. 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 notion 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" ​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 exhibiting 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 perhaps 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 output of individual work in some ninety volumes of half-year files of The Oregonian, it now seems that he was almost always in opposition. "It seems forever my fate to be contending 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.
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ANNE ROELOFSON SCOTT
HARVEY W SCOTT'S MOTHER, FROM A FADED DAGUERREOTYPE
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 nonexistent. Scholarship and philosophy gave him a vision of an airline; but as a leader in the affairs of practical life he realized 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 windmills. 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 quality 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 becomes a leader in practical thought, but he never lost sight of any principle which had come to possess his mind and conscience. 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 ​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 hazards 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 practically 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 curious 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 reports 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 ​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 historian. Your average journalist is a mere popularizer of appropriated materials. He applies to current events conclusions 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 public 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 ​a sound and stable currency. He was among the first to recognize 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 realized 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 protest 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. 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 journalism—standards which under the amazing prosperity which recent years have brought to the business of newspaper publishing have been well nigh overborne. A fine sense of social responsibility, an intense respect for fundamental considerations, the disposition to get from himself the best that was in him in matters small and large, the quick conscience with respect 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 reckoned not at all upon consequences, the ability to work and the ​propensity to work in season and out of season—these qualities, 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 professional 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 nothing of the stimulus which comes from intellectual rivalry, with few of the legitimate helps of intellectual association, unspurred 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 constitution 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 cautioned to be careful of his vision. Labors which would exhaust 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 dissipate time. Many men of fine minds are subject to atmospheres 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 undisturbed the most abstruse studies. In later years his powers of abstraction declined, but in the first twenty years of my ​acquaintance with him they were absolute. It was his habit in these more acquisitive years to turn every moment to account. 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 sustained 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, 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 comparison 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 rendered 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 ​habit through life. His feats of memory indeed were marvelous. 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 remembered him as a schoolboy rendering heavily one of Webster'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. Whatever form of literature found in him especial appreciation 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 admirer 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 familiar with the world's literature might easily trace the genesis of many a thought and of a thousand turns of expression to the amazing storehouse of his memory.
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 reproach 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 perhaps 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 ​literature of the world. Time changed his purpose but it never altered, I am sure, a philosophy which was the foundation 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 propensity was to thought rather than to expression. He had nothing 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 process 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 employ 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 cleanminded regard for pure forms overcame the tendency to verbal 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 exacting. When, as rarely happened, he could be induced to depart 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 declaration of heroic views, Mr. Scott remarked, "I don't know just ​how to treat that." Mr. Ernest Bross, 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 assistants. "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 suggestion 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 entertainment 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 ​literature and I doubt if there is anywhere a high imaginative figure or a great poetic image that was unknown to him. Passages 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, another long time member of the Oregonian 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; I didn't write that"—and opening 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 workshops 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 ​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 emerging 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 window, 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, graceful, purposeless work. "Feeble elegance" was his characterization of all such. He not only wrote with his own hand, but perhaps for every column of finished matter which he produced he made a column and a half of manuscript. Oftentimes not only his desk but the floor about him would be littered with sheets of paper written over but rejected. He detested slovenliness in the form of a manuscript and would laboriously erase words, phrases and whole sentences and rewrite 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 ​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 whimsical 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. Solidity of thought, solidity of expression—this was his characteristic quality.
Upon many occasions I have heard remarks suggesting the idea of Mr. Scott as a severe man as if he were a hard taskmaster. 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 observation 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 consideration. 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 reflected 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 ​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 interpretation 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 performance. 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 otherwise it was a bore. Perhaps the keenest pleasure in his life in the sense of occupation, apart from his studies and professional labors, was the clearing of a forest tract at Mount Scott. 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 ​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 intercourse, 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 or Mr. William Lair Hill, Judge Williams or Mr. Asahel Bush would look in upon him. These were men of his own stamp, worthy of his steel, and in their company the very best of Mr. Scott's mind and the best of his vast knowledge was brought into play.
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   HARVEY W. SCOTT
   AT 27 YEARS OF AGE ON BECOMING EDITOR OF THE OREGONIAN
There were other men for whom Mr. Scott cherished warm ​sentiments. The late Judge Struve 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, a man of quite another type, who inter ested Mr. Scott chiefly by a certain receptivity of mind. The late F. N. Shurtleff 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 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. ​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 appreciation.
I cannot pass from this phase of Mr. Scott's character without reference to an incident which curiously exhibited the sentimental side of his nature. Between himself and the late Edward 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." He sat with fixed gaze as if upon nothing for a full minute, then rose and walked to the window, took up his field glass and carefully studied the glowing mountain. 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!"
​In the later years of his life Mr. Scott went much to the East. These visits he greatly enjoyed. His reputation, long an established quantity in the professional world, had expanded into fame. He stood among the leaders in his profession—a towering 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 and Whitelaw Reid, with whom he fell into cordial association, 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. "Scott," said Mr. Reid, "came late and was obviously embarrassed 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 sitting 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 exhibited his acquaintance with theological scholarship. The ​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 extraordinary 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 despised 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 infrequently heard from Mr. Scott. But he had the tenderest ​feeling for childhood. Nothing so aroused him as reports of suffering on the part of children, especially if caused by somebody'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 merciless 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 vengeance 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 stepfather on a squalid scow-house up the river near the old pumping 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 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 impatient 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— ​but I think it was well for the beast that he had slunk from sight. For days after, Mr. Scott could hardly speak of anything 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 children 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 administrative 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 contempt 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 likewise 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 ​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. And at another time he was informally tendered a similarly dignified post in one of the European countries. 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.
All who, like myself, shared in the advantages of close association with Mr. Scott are fond of recalling a thousand trivialities 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 happened 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​pose one must make some concession to the style." I once reminded 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 and 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 retrieved 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 and 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​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 circumstances, with clearness of statement and power of argument unsurpassed, marked the outlines of his personal character. 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 and unaffectedness of action. His immense powers, of which he himself never seemed unaware, were always at his command."
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 ​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 arrangements for commerce in this hew world these early pressed upon his attention to find in him a conscientious student 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, questions growing out of the populistic movement, of labor organization, 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 addressed. 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 concession. He could no more have purveyed poisons to the mind than he could have fed poisons to the body. For the practices in 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 elsewhere. 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 and 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.
* ↑ Mr. Holman, many years prominent in the journalism of the Pacific Coast, now editor of the San Francisco Argonaut, received his first newspaper training under Mr. Scott on The Oregonian in 1869-70. His fitness proved itself early and Mr. Scott gave him growing opportunities. His intimate association with Mr. Scott during more than 40 years gave him close knowledge of the editor's personality for this appreciative article. Mr. Holman has called Mr. Scott the "parent of my mind" and Scott once publicly referred to Mr. Holman as the "well-beloved son of my professional life." Mr. Holman's article shows not only keen insight into the personality of his subject, but also wide knowledge of pioneer conditions and sympathy with pioneer life. This equipment comes to him from long residence in Oregon and contact with it in newspaper work; also from his pioneer family connections. His paternal grandfather was John Holman, native of Kentucky (1787-1864), who came to Oregon in 1843 from Missouri; his father was Francis Dillard Holman, who came to Oregon in 1845. Mr. Holman's maternal grandfather, Dr. James McBride (1802-73), native of Tennessee, came to Oregon in 1846 from Missouri. His daughter, Mary, married Francis Dillard Holman September 25, 1856. The Holman and the McBride families settled in Yamhill county. Later the McBride family moved to St. Helens, in which vicinity members of it yet reside. The two connections belonged to the pioneer energies of Kentucky and Tennessee.—(L. M. S.)
* ↑ 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.)
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.)
* ↑ Died at Forest Grove September 1, 1880; born February 18, 1809.
* ↑ Died on river Platte, 30 miles west of Fort Laramie, en route across the plains June 20, 1852; born July 26, 1811.
* ↑ Kenneth Nicklin Scott, born May 4, 1878; died February 8, 1881, at Portland.
* ↑ Catharine Amanda Coburn, associate editor The Oregonian 1888-1913. Born in Tazewell county, Illinois, November 30, 1839; died at Portland May 28, 1913. She was one of the able members of The Oregonian staff, an efficient and devoted assistant of her brother, the editor. She made strong impress upon the newspaper-reading community.
* ↑ Managing owner of The Oregonian.
* ↑ Erasmus D. Shattuck, noted Oregon jurist, born at Bakersfield, Vt., December 31, 1824; died at Portland July 26, 1900.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, was candidate for President in 1896, of the free silver Democratic party. Supporters of the single gold standard were commonly called "gold bugs."
* ↑ 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 whatsoever; 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 general achievement, are known. What has been done may tell the story."—(L. M. S.)
* ↑ Elected November 18, 1885; died December 8, 1905.
* ↑ Mr. Scott, though a free 'trader, acted throughout his life with the protective 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Born in New York City Dec. 18, 1840; died Portland, Jan. 29, 1900. Came to Portland in 1853.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Managing editor The Oregonian 1897-1904; now editor Indianapolis Star.
* ↑ N. T. Levinson now publishes Fresno Herald; many years city editor and Sunday editor The Oregonian.
* ↑ Seven miles southeast center of Portland; named for Mr. Scott in 1889 by W. P. Ready.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Mr. Hill is now a resident of Oakland, Cal., was editor The Oregonian 1872–77.
* ↑ George H. Williams, jurist, attorney-general under President Grant, foremost 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.
* ↑ 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 Westheld, Mass., June 4, 1824.
* ↑ John P. Ward, still living in Portland, long prominent in Republican political affairs; born in Rhode Island June 30, 1833. Came to Oregon in 1863.
* ↑ 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 Vancouver 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.)
* ↑ 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 1, 1907. leaving a wife and two sons. (Geo. H. Himes.)
* ↑ Ferdinand N. Shurtleff came from Washington, D. C., to Iowa. Was married 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.)
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Jan. 29, 1900; see supra.
* ↑ Editor Louisville Courier Journal; long-time friend of Mr. Scott's.
* ↑ Editor New York Tribune and later Ambassador to Great Britain.
* ↑ Michael Augustine Corrigan (1839-1902), Archbishop of New York.
* ↑ John M. Baltimore crossed the plains in 1863 and grew to manhood near Salem. In the early 70s 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 18g6 he went to Spokan* and later to Oakland, Gal. He died at San Francisco in January, 1912.
* ↑ Tendered by President Taft in 1909.
* ↑ Tendered by President Roosevelt in 1904; Minister to Belgium.
* ↑ 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.