Evening star., 1940-08-28

ward a century into the experience
of the bearded men and the heroic
mothers who rode uncomplainingly
in covered wagons over the iron
road" from the great bend of the
Missouri to the banks of the Villa
mette; following the valleys of the
Kaw, the Platte, the Sweetwater, the
Snake and the lordly Columbia;
fording icy streams, withstanding
hostile tribes, suffering hunger,
thirst and sickness aggravated by
strange diets and exposure-and
leaving thousands of unmarked
graves beside the trail.
The settlement of the Oregon
country remains one of our proudest
epics. At the time of the Yorktown
surrender, our frontier rested on the
AlleghanieS. Sixty years later, the
surging genius of our ancestors had
pushed our borders to the Pacific.
The beginnings of Oregon lay in the
Imagination of Thomas Jefferson,
the apostle of democracy, who served
only two terms in the presidency,
froWning upon contemplation of a
third term. 1t was Jefferson who,
after purchasing the Louisiana
country, sent Lewis and Clark to
spy out the land beyond the Rockies.
Their journals kindled the interest
of Colonial America in the Far West.
The explorer, the fur trapper and
trader broke the trail. Next came
the missionary, and, close behind,
the homeseeker. If we pause today,
we may read in the old Oregon Trail
lessons applicable to the problems
besetting us now.
The People Move
On to the Pacific. ..---'
Most Americans are familiar with
the broad outlines of this vast
migration. They are not so familiar
with the fact that it was a peoples
movement. The Government at
Washington, absorbed in the 1840s
by the acquisition of Texas and the
gathering clouds of secession, vir-
tually ignored the trend toward the
Northwest. In Congress numerous
voices were raised in discourage
ment. 1t was said that Oregon lay
beyond our proper aspirations as a
Nation, that the Rockies should
mark the permanent boundary.
Senator Thomas H. Benton, the Mis-
souri, giant, suggested erecting a
statue of the Roman god Terminus
on peak of those mountains as a
reminder of our natural limitations.
Fortunately there were dissenters.
The great Calhoun warned the SEN
ate that in spite of governmental
objections settlers were overruning
the Oregon country and-he sus-
pected-the settlers, once estab-
lished, would maintain themselves
against the world.
No, the Government did not oc-'
cupy the Oregon country That job,
thank God, was accomplished by the
people. Americans had not then
been instructed that they must look
to Washington for inspiration and
sanction for their every act. And
when the pioneers found they need
ed to organize their rude society
into lawful patterns they made no
appeal to the Government. They
acted. They formed their own gov
ernment.
The place where they met was
Champoeg. A proud and happy
sentiment encompasses me a I re-
fleet that that hallowed place lies
only little distance from where
We now meet. There free Americans
demonstrated the flexibility of the
American political system, they
proved that institutions forged on
the Atlantic served equally as well
on the Pacific and that, therefore,
the continent could be welded into
one Nation. Out of the bold and
considered action at Champoeg
sprang the assurance which forti-
fled our diplomacy in acquiring title
to the old Oregon. country from
Great Britain.
Little Americans Then and Now.
We can afford to smile at the
timidity of the obstructionists who
lived century ago. In their day,
they thought America finished.
They belonged to the tribe, SEEM
1ngly numerous in each generation,
which holds that the limit has been
reached. Little Americans they
were; the type that advocated i'm
peaching Jefferson for mis- purchase
and derided Seward for buying
Alaska.
In like manner, the little Ameri-
can of 1910 maintains that our race
is run. The throb he hears is not
the hum of Americas dynamos, but
the hardening of Americas arteries.
1t is his respondent outlook that
debates the hopes of youth, insists
that our industrial plant is over
built and that we must look for
ward only to slippered senility.
We, of the old Oregon country,
reject the hypothesis of the little
American. We are optimists. We
say that America is not yet half
built. The little American dates
the decline of American enterprise
from the time when the last free
land was thrown open for settlement.
We hold that the theory of the last
frontier is only figurative. Land, II
you had to work 1t, never was free.