The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-07-26

Athens down to the art galleries Of Paris,
Dresden, Berlin, Rome, London and New
York. Too much of the worlds time and
money had been spent over mere art as
the expression of beauty rather than its
industrial expression in works of utility.
Thoreau used to say that he would rather
have helped one tottering human soul to
its feet than to have designed St. Peters
mighty dome or painted the Sistine Ma
donna. The man who makes two blades
of grass to grow where only one did be-
fore; the men who, rich or poor. alleviate
by their brains and their benevolence the
bitterness of the popular struggle for ex-
istence, are worth all the artists that ever
charmed medi@val court or decorated
cathedral ceiling or convent wall.
The American people like money; they
like to make money, but while they are
willing to honor and mourn an honorable
man of business. they do not make them
selves ridiculous by mourning q successful
sharper and railroad speculator as states
man or patriot; the country will not take
off its hat respectfully when men like Jay
Gould and Stanford die as it did when
Franklin, De Witt Clinton, Lincoln,
Greeley and other notable workers for the
public veal were borne to the tomb. We
like success, enterprise, energy, but we
know that the creator, organizer and exc
cutor of great enterprise is not public
benefactor when he proceeds to plumber
through it the people who voted
him charter and franchise. The
American people distinguish with all
their passionate admiration of the
genius for making one dollar two, be-
tween a legitimate man of business who
makes it two, and man who is a mere
bandit in public and private business,
mere fox who despoils hen yard to set
himself up in the poultry business. The
bandit man of business is like this fox
that stands for the lawless destruction,
not for the multiplication of the peoples
chickens. The nation can afford to mourn
a financier whose touch makes "the corpse
of the public credit start to its feet" but
the man whose touch means blight and
mildew to every great trust he handles, and
ill-gotten millions in his pockets is never
honored by the American people in a large
way or mourned by them effusively, no
matter how many stolen millions he dies
possessed of.
We mourn great men Of honest business
success who have treated extraordinary
wealth as great trust, but the American
people are practical and wise enough not
to confuse superior public service and
In this spirit of just discrimination be-
tween man who Is mere egg-salter and
lugger of beech nuts to his squirrels hole,
q mere misery potter of pennies, and a
man WHO'S broad and beneficent potential
business force in his rugged day and gener-
alton. Captain Renton will be mourned and
missed in this community. He stood for
the bone and sinew of Washington; for
the loggers; the sawyers; the mill
hands; the cattle punchers; the
hardy, sturdy men who from March
to November count upon numbering
to make the pot boil for themselves and
their children. He was graduate of the
great school of manual labor, who came to
this coast with small capital but fine,
sturdy physique, a sharp axe and strong
arm; who began in the woods and hewed
his way out of the woods from logger to
great mill owner by extraordinary energy,
ambition, thrift and enterprise; he knew
his business from the bottom to the top;
from the fir in the forest to the last pro-
duct of his mill; he could look at tree
standing and tell whether it would pay to
fell it; he could look at timber tract
and determine just where to touch it
to get the logs at the least cost to the mill;
he could tell where to plant mill to save
needless transportation; he could tell how
work should be done- when it was ill-done,
and how to correct it, and above all no
knew how to manage his men in order to
get the most work out of them, because
having been workingman himself he had
learned that the best way to make man
behave like a man was to treat him like a
man; he did not needlessly fret his men;
he rode with firm seat and rein, but
never recklessly or needlessly used the
curb bit.
BY the vicissitudes of business and the
calamity of fire this rugged graduate of
the woods was more than once out of
pocket many thousands of hard earned
dollars, but with dauntless courage and
energy he got ready for another campaign.
1t is this spirit of enterprise. this resolu-
ton, from the humble settler, who breaks
into a forty-acre tract of timber to hew
out a little home, to the lumberman in
a large way, that has cleared and is still
clearing up and building up both Wash
ington and Oregon. The task is not so
desperately difficult as was that of the
pioneer of the East or Middle West in the
days when there were no railways or
canals or even quick transportation by
stage, but it demands the same sort of
physical vigor. courage, mental energy
and enterprise.
1t is this sort of men that do the hardest
and most thankless work in the redemp-
ton, cultivation and civilization of new
state. The toll is great; the danger by loss
of fire is always before them, yet these
men, whether they escape calamity or
suffer it, are always cheerful, indomitable,
untiring. If they make money they never
retire, but keep on enlarging the circle of
their activity and never stop work
while life lasts or reason holds
its seat; If they are unfortunate they never
yield, but die as they lived, axe in hand.
determined to hsw their way out of the