The State of Washington

THERE is no epic like the making of a state. Beneath the hard, homely, even repulsive details of pioneer life are hidden all heroisms, all sacrifices, all achievements. The ox team, the flatboat, the prairie schooner, and the log cabin will some day become invested with the halo of the Golden Fleece, and they will be far nobler historically, because the symbols of a grander epoch.

In this age of railway and telegraph we do not appreciate the period of the pioneers. Immigration has become almost a science at the present day. Whole cities are picked up and moved West bodily. But this period of state-making, in all its railroad swiftness and continental vastness, began with the flatboat and the immigrant train, and these were preceded by the hunter and the explorer. In the space between the first explorers (six months across the continent) and the vestibule train, sleepers, dining car, and all (five days from New York to Seattle), has been enacted the epic of one of our latest states. Of all that group of states carved out of the majestic wilderness with which this continent faces the mightiest ocean, none now excites a livelier interest than that named for the Father of his Country. But it must be remembered that Washington as a state, even as a settled country, is very young. She was practically unpeopled, except in a few places, twenty-five years ago. She became a state only twelve years ago. Her heroic age was as a part of Old Oregon Territory. Glance at a map of that lordly domain marked Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. A land of thrilling and romantic history, of scenic grandeur and beauty, of pleasant and healthful climate, of rich and varied resources, — such was Old Oregon Territory, the “ Westmost West ” of a generation ago. Oregon had her heroes of discovery, — Bodega, Drake, Juan de Fuca, Heceta, Gray, Vancouver, Lewis and Clarke, and many more whose deeds are unrecorded. There were heroes of the fur trade, — Hunt, McKay, McLeod, Day, Wyeth, Bonneville, Smith, McLoughlin, Ross, Meek, — some of whom have told their own stories, some of whom have found preservation in Irving’s fascinating pages, while many others exist only in the fireside tale. There were also heroes of missions, — Whitman, Lee, Wilbur, Eells, Spalding, — whose works follow them.

Without doubt the Spanish claim to the Pacific coast by right of discovery was just. But in 1579 came the advance guard of that race whose descendants were destined to deprive the Spaniard of his misused realms in all the western hemisphere. For in that year Francis Drake, boldest and most picturesque of English freebooters, reached lat. 43°, some claim 48°, on our western shore. Then, in 1592, old Juan de Fuca, whether myth or man no one knows, left his name for the strait which now separates Washington from British Columbia, and which he supposed to be the longsought Strait of Anian. But the era of discovery passed, leaving many names of many nations built into our state ; for each bore a part in the great epic. There gradually became evolved from the mass of myth a definite impression that there was somewhere between lat. 43° and lat. 47° a great river, variously named River of Kings, River of Aguilar, River of the West, Rio San Roque, River Thegayo, and at last the Oregon, so first named by Carver, an American, in 1774. All felt that the discovery of this river would constitute the best title to possession. In 1792 the mystery was solved; the Columbia bowed his neck to the foot of civilized man. Three nations had contributed to the discovery, — Spain, United States, Great Britain. But we shall probably not be thought too partial if we believe that the shrewd Yankee skipper, Gray, from Boston, in the gallant bark Columbia Rediviva, was the Jason that first set foot on our western Colchis, and delivered to us the best title to the Golden Fleeces of the Far West.

Following the explorers by sea came those by canoe, foot, and horse. After Napoleon, with one of those lightning glances by which he was accustomed to outrun time and forestall destiny, had said that he would help build upon the western hemisphere a maritime power that would sometime humble England ; and after Jefferson and Monroe had, with equal quickness, grasped the transcendent opportunity of the Louisiana purchase, thereby stretching out beyond “ the crack of doom ” the westward destiny of the United States, there came an eager public interest in our sunset domain; and in 1804 Lewis and Clarke ascended the Missouri, crossed the “ Shining Mountains,” descended the torrents of Snake River, embarked upon the Columbia, and in the autumn drizzle looked through the parted headlands upon the infinite expanse of the sea. In 1811 the first town in Oregon, Astoria, was founded ; and to execute the designs of its founder, John Jacob Astor, the ill-fated Tonquin and her consort ships rounded Cape Horn for the Columbia River, while the land force of trappers, led by the gallant Hunt, crossed the continent, encountering incredible hardships amid the cañons of the Snake, — “ that accursed mad river,” in the imprecatory phrase of the Canadian voyageurs.

And now came on apace the second era of the history of Oregon, that of the fur trade. It had started long before. Bering had led Russia into the North Pacific, and in 1771 the first cargo of furs had been transported to China. Then it became known that the waters of Kamtchatka joined the China Sea, thence leading to the island empires of the South Sea, and that the same ocean throb of the Aleutian Islands beat against the stormy battlements of Cape Horn. Then first Europe realized the vastness of the Pacific.

All nations joined eagerly in search for furs. But England and the United States soon distanced their rivals in Oregon. Then the British Hudson’s Bay and Northwest companies outgeneraled, and finally put out their American competitors ; and after a brief struggle between themselves for supremacy, they united, stretched their Briarean hands over a dozen degrees of latitude and longitude, and to all appearance Oregon was destined to be the perpetual home of Indians, trappers, and fur-bearing animals. But through the joint occupation treaties of 1818 and 1826 our nation still retained an interest in Oregon, and in 1834 there entered a champion into the lists apparently so puny that the nabobs of the fur trade would have noticed him but to laugh at him, if they had noticed him at all. Yet he was destined to be one of the great epic figures of our history, the Siegfried to deliver the Kriemhild of the American state from the dragons of the desert and the giants of commercial despotism. And this champion of the American state was the American missionary.

A strange thing occurred in 1832. Three Flathead Indians came to St. Louis in search of the “ white man’s book which should show them the way to heaven.” The pathetic story reached the churches at that time of profound religious and missionary sentiment, and was interpreted as an inspired cry for the gospel. As a result, the Methodists, under Jason Lee, established a mission in the Willamette Valley in 1834 ; and two years later, Marcus Whitman, under commission of the American Board, settled at Walla Walla. In this last man and place there was the destiny of empire, for his mission became the outpost of the American state, the entering wedge of American occupation. Of Whitman’s midwinter ride to Washington city in 1842 for the purpose of showing the government the momentous importance of this region to our nation, of the great immigration of 1843 which he led across the Rocky Mountains, and of his martyrdom at the hands of the Indians in 1847, we cannot speak. Suffice it to say that, of many who bore a part in bringing Oregon into the Union, the missionary and martyr, Whitman, must be accorded a foremost place.

Hard upon the period of the missionary came the establishment of a provisional government by American settlers in 1843. Then the question of the ownership of this land was appealed to the wider tribunal of the English and American governments ; very nearly, indeed, to the arbitrament of war. For Oregon became the burning question of two administrations, and “ Fifty-four forty or fight! ” was the cry of at least one campaign. Then came the treaty of 1846, by which the parallel of 49° became the boundary, and our territorial destiny was secured. We say “secured,” for if the American state - builder had not raised his banner of triumph over Oregon, it is possible that we might have delayed the acquisition of California until too late. But the Tancreds and Godfreys of American emigration had triumphed over the English trader, and, unlike the successors of Tasso’s heroes, we hold what they won. Such was the heroic age of Oregon.

Washington became a separate territory in 1853. It was a land of magnificent distances. Walla Walla County then included all of what is now eastern Washington, Idaho, and the western third of Montana. One of the county commissioners lived near the present site of Missoula, and it would have taken him three months to visit the county seat and return. He never qualified. The new territory grew very slowly until 1883, the period of railroad - building. Then she sprung into a life that astonished the country, and in 1889 she became a state.

And now, with this hurried outline of the ancient epic days, our sketch requires an answer to these two questions : What is the nature of the land thus won from the wilderness and from contending nations, and what are the descendants of the heroes making of it ?

First, then, what are the resources, actual and potential, of the state of Washington ? Take your map, and note its physical features and the international location, and data for an answer will be at command. To a person of information and imagination, a map is a picture gallery and encyclopædia combined. Three salient local features are revealed by map, — Puget Sound, the Cascade Mountains, and the Columbia River. Though the geological history of the state has not yet been written, it is evident that its physical features are the work of fire and water, of volcano and inland sea, of glacier and torrent. The soil, now marvelous for fertility, was made of volcanic dust, covered by the silt of rivers, drained by stupendous erosion, and then covered with the grass and decomposition of ages.

When the sky-piercing heads of the Cascades were uplifted they created two climates, and consequently two divisions of natural productions and resources. The oceans of warm vapor from the Pacific, condensed upon the snowy crests of the mountains, pour down their floods upon the western slopes ; giving to that part of the state a soft, humid, and uniform climate, the home of giant trees and succulent grasses. East of the mountains is a land of sunshine, of wheatfield and bunch grass. But all parts of the state are much warmer than the same latitudes on the Atlantic coast. The Japan ocean current sweeps the vast circuit of the Aleutian Islands, and gives Washington about the average temperature of Virginia, and a growing season nearly two months longer than that of New England or the Lake states.

With respect to the productive capacity of Washington, accounts so glowing as to excite incredulity have sometimes found their way into the Eastern press. Yet, in truth, the “ frozen facts ” are more and more enlisting the interest and the industry of shrewd and far-seeing men. The state is not a paradise, and it has its drawbacks ; but the consensus of opinion of capable observers is that it is conspicuous among American states for ability to supply all the needs of civilized man. The great fact is its variety of resources. Substantially every industry possible to a temperate climate is represented here, either actually or potentially. Lumbering, shipbuilding, fishing, dairying, mining of every sort, agriculture, horticulture, fruit-raising, stock-raising of all kinds, manufacturing of every manner of fabrics, utensils, and structures, — all these industries not only have every natural facility, but exist in such relation to each other as to give the utmost variety and fullness of development.

The state is naturally divisible into four great zones of geography, climate, and production. The first zone is that of the sea, the Sound, and the Lower Columbia. Here the chief industries are lumbering, fisheries, shipbuilding, and manufacturing, though dairying, gardening, fruit-raising, and hop-growing have a vast field of development. But the timber ! Between the Cascade Mountains and the ocean stand the finest known forests of fir, spruce, pine, cedar, and hemlock. Along the multiplied arms of Puget Sound (and the Columbia River, Gray’s Harbor, and Shoalwater Bay are similar in character, only less extensive), these forests, in close juxtaposition to innumerable water powers and mountains of coal and iron, afford resources for shipping and manufacturing that will some day create here another England. Puget Sound is one vast harbor, in which the navies of all nations might almost be lost. It needs no prophetic eye to see that here will be the future lumberyard and shipyard of the world. Already the biggest sawmill on earth is on Puget Sound, and the yearly output is about a billion and a half feet. Yet the forests are hardly more than scratched. But the forests of the Great Lakes are giving out.

During May of last year, orders for 30,000,000 feet of bridge stuff and ties were placed in Washington by railway companies of the East and Middle West. Most remarkable to Eastern readers is the yield of an acre of Washington timber land. A single acre has been known to produce 500,000 feet, and one tree has yielded 50,000. It is estimated that within a radius of eight miles from Skomokawa is standing 600,000,000 feet of yellow fir. There is poetry in one of these swaying forests, which carry their coronals of green 300 feet aloft, with the sunlight filtering through greenishly, as if in leafy eclipse ; but there are dollars in the knotless stems when sawed, and of the latter feature only the lumberman thinks.

We cannot linger to tempt the disciple of the gentle Walton with visions of trout so numerous as to block the course of streams, and it must suffice to say of our piscatorial resources that the royal Chinook salmon, noblest of the finny tribes, has furnished yearly, for two decades, upon the Columbia River (which belongs to Oregon and Washington together), from 400,000 to 650,000 cases of his toothsome sides, and probably twice as much more in other forms. Puget Sound formerly yielded about half as much fish as the Columbia, but during the past year considerably exceeded it. Deep-sea fishing promises to rival the fisheries of Newfoundland.

The second zone is that of the mountains. Grand, sombre, mysterious, beautiful, sublime, the Cascade Mountains are the repositories of mineral wealth of many kinds, coal, iron, gold, silver, copper, ledges of onyx, marble, and granite, hardly touched as yet; only waiting for capital to develop and bring them into the markets of the world.

The third zone, so different from the others that it is hard to realize that it belongs to the same state, is the arid centre ; seeming desert, yet blossoming like the rose when touched with water. This borders the Columbia, Snake, and Yakima rivers, with smaller areas on other streams. This is the land of the orchardist and gardener, of the dairyman and hop-grower. We cannot speak of the treasures of vine and tree, which the hot sun, the rich soil, and the glad streams cause to drop so bounteously in the valleys of Walla Walla, Yakima, and Wenatchee. Even a picture of a Snake River peach or cherry or apricot or bunch of grapes is tantalizing, and we forbear.

The last zone is the eastern border, with long arms on the south and north central. This is the wheat belt. Fringing the snowy chains of the Blue, Bitter Root, Cæur d’Alene, Klikitat, and Badger mountains is an irregular semicircle of rolling prairie, where 40, 50, even 60 bushels of wheat to the acre is not uncommon, 100 has been known, while the average for the state exceeds that of any other state in the Union. There are about 14,000 square miles of these wheat lands. The crop for this year will probably be 30,000,000 bushels, worth perhaps $15,000,000, — nearly $30 to every man, woman, and child in the state, and doubtless over $100 to every inhabitant in the wheat zone.

But the imperial resources of Washington would lie idle were it not for the transportation lines, and in the number and character of these the state is singularly fortunate. There are four transcontinental lines, and, in effect, a fifth. These are the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Union Pacific, and Canadian, while the Southern Pacific, reaching Portland, is also accessible. Of these lines the Northern Pacific was the great pioneer, and the completion of its line to Wallula in 1883, and to Tacoma in 1887, marked an epoch in the history of the state and of the nation. The Northern Pacific and the Washington and Columbia River railroads recently performed the unexampled act of lowering their passenger rates to three cents per mile, without compulsion from legislature or people ; being quickly followed by the Great Northern and Union Pacific in the good work. This fact well shows the healthy nature of business and the effect of active competition, as well as a liberal policy on the part of the railroad lines. As a sample of the amount of local work on the new lines of this region we may take a few figures from the Washington and Columbia River Railroad, which is a line connecting the Northern Pacific with the wheat region of Walla Walla and Umatilla counties, the latter being in Oregon. The road has about 160 miles of line, and the population tributary does not exceed 40,000. Moreover, the Union Pacific traverses most of the same territory, doing about as much business. Yet this line carried in, during 1900, 40,000 tons of freight, and carried out 150,000 tons. About 130,000 tons was wheat and flour. It carried 2,000,000 grain sacks. Double these figures, to include both roads, and we get some conception of the energy with which both people and railroads are applying themselves to the practical epic of building their state.

But great as is the sum of the commerce already reached here, it sinks into insignificance compared with the prospective transcontinental and oceanic business that is heading for Puget Sound. Consult the map again, and note the position that this body of water occupies with respect to the world. It sounds extravagant now, but sober and coolheaded business men, familiar with the facts, believe that Washington holds the key to the future commerce of the world. She stands at the crossroads of the nations, at the confluence of the commodities of the four quarters of the globe. She is the successor of Phænicia, Carthage, Italy, and England, as the natural exchange point of all lands. Europe and the United States are at her back, Alaska and British Columbia at her right hand, the tropics at her left, and the Orient, with half the population of the world, in front. Formerly California was supposed to be the natural centre of our western frontage. We cannot discredit the magnificent location and resources of that state, but it is true that Washington is gaining on California by leaps and bounds. This is due to three causes : first, Washington has five transcontinental railways in reach, California is under the despotism of one; second, the vast developments of Alaska and British Columbia have made Puget Sound the hub of Pacific coast trade ; third, and most important, the route to the Orient, owing to the rotundity of the earth, is materially shorter by Puget Sound than by the Golden Gate.

The epic of Washington is going to involve the nations of the earth. The great fact of the twentieth century will undoubtedly be the commerce of the Pacific Ocean and the disposition of the Orient. And at what point is that mighty commerce first to touch the American continent ?

A student of maps, history, and contemporary trade can hardly doubt that Puget Sound is to be the place of destiny, the great wharf line of the continent. And not alone are Occident and Orient about to clasp hands over the “ Mediterranean of the Pacific,” but Alaska rises from her boreal mists to join with tropic islands in a grasp of this handle of the world’s trade. Latitudes and longitudes are merging along these fair archipelagoes which the mythical old Greek pilot of Cephalonia, Juan de Fuca, imagined to link Atlantic and Pacific. The genius of this railway age has created a substitute for the fabled Strait of Anian. That dream of the older navigators has been realized, though it lies between lines of steel instead of headlands of the sea. As we “ dip into the future, see the vision of the world and all the wonder that will be,” converging toward the western approaches of this new Northwest Passage,

But the great question of an epic is, after all, the character of the hero. “ Men, high-minded men, constitute a state ; ” and what of our men ? First of all, it is not so easy as some imagine to differentiate a Pacific “type.” There is no distinct Washington type. Eastern people often suppose that the West is essentially different from the East, forgetting that only yesterday it was transplanted from the East. “ Do you mean to tell us, then, that if we came West we should fail to encounter desperadoes ? Are you going to bereave us ruthlessly of the heroes of Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, and Mark Twain ? ”

All peace to the men who have immortalized the age of the Argonauts of ’49, but truth compels us to suggest that Roaring Camp is not a universal picture of the Pacific coast. Of course California is “peculiar.” Washington is “peculiar.” So is every other country. But strangers and travelers habitually exaggerate peculiarities. They first note the rougher, wilder, more sensational phases of life. The quiet, unobtrusive life of home, school, office, and shop is not visible from the train, street, or hotel, which are the main points of observation for the ordinary passer-through. Travelers are usually all agog to see the sensational, grotesque, criminal aspects of the West, the job lots of desperadoes and frontier ruffians, but their eyes are closed to the common virtues of home. They did not go West to see that sort of thing. Human nature loves the marvelous, and bids good-by to the commonplace after it crosses the Mississippi. And it may be observed that the faithful Westerner usually does his best to provide the kind of spice that his visitor wants. Hence arise reports partly unjust, partly ludicrous. There is nothing more exasperating or amusing to the old-timer than the calm assumption of superior moral virtue by visitors from the East, and their tranquil assurance that flaunting vice is an every-day affair “out West.” The truth is that a traveler to any country is most likely to see the worst, and is often unaware that the very same thing exists down the back alleys of the town he lives in, in some other social stratum than his own.

Every traveler in another land adventures into a domain whose counterpart exists right around his own home without his knowledge. A story is told of a Scotchman in the Far West, disappointed in not finding the typical “ bad man ” whom he supposed to be the common product of the country; and while thus hungering to be thrilled, suddenly encountering his man on a steamboat. There he was, sure enough, —ferocious mustaches, cowboy hat, fringed “shapps,” buckskin coat, “ gun ” in belt, vitriolic breath, and all, strictly according to Bret Harte. Our Scotchman gazed upon this “ Western type ” some time, and at last ventured to interrogate him. The “ bad man,” as soon as he heard the Caledonian tones, leaned over confidentially and exclaimed, “ Hoot, mon, I’m jast oot from Inverness ! ” It was another Scotchman, on a Western steamboat, who, seeing a man at the table distinguishing himself by his horrible voracity and greed, was remarking to his American neighbor, “There ! Just look at that specimen of the West. We never see a thing like that in Scotland,” when the “ specimen ” suddenly shouted, “ Hi, waiter, hae ye ony mair fash ? ” The writer was once told, by a delightful man of Hartford, about going into a hotel in a California town, when a gigantic “Western ruffian ” stumped up to the register, and on discovering the stranger’s name thundered out, “Where is that man from Connecticut?” Our friend, though expecting that he would at least have to treat the crowd, and probably get a shot through his hat, at last timidly acknowledged his identity, when the giant bore down on him with broad grin and extended hand, exclaiming, “ Shake, pard ! I ’m from Connecticut myself.”

Do we have no Pacific coast type, then ? Yes, we have, but it is elusive and indefinable, a composite of many types. The Atlantic and Pacific seem, indeed, very dissimilar, but the dissimilarity is of environment rather than of character of people. There are only four real generic types in the United States, — the Down East Yankee, the Southern colonel, the “ Pike,” and the Western “ cowboy.” There is no Pacific type of such distinctness; or rather, there is a heterogeneous mixture of all types, with a resulting “ blend ” in the native product. The following table of birthplaces of the 597 registered voters of Yakima, an agricultural town in the central part of the state, will be of interest as showing the composition of an ordinary town in Washington : —

In addition, there were three each from Holland, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Switzerland; two each from Ontario, Arkansas, Italy, Georgia, and New Brunswick ; and one each from Connecticut, Florida, India, Luxemburg, Utah, South Carolina, Wyoming, Prussia, Alabama, France, Louisiana, Isle of Jersey, Isle of Man, and New Mexico.

With such an exhibition of the cosmopolitanism of our communities, the reader will see the impossibility of any distinct type as yet. Surprised Eastern visitors sometimes say, “ Why, this state is not so very wild and woolly, after all.” And inasmuch as the majority of the people that they meet have been out from the East only four or five years, this is not strange.

But “ East,” it must be remarked in passing, does not mean to us what it means to the New Englander. Anything the other side of the Missouri is “ East ” to us. A new arrival from Massachusetts was once greeted very cordially, in my hearing, by a lady who had been here some time, and who said, “ I came from the East myself ! ” “ Ah ! ” said the New Englander. “ From what place ? ” “ From Iowa,” was the unexpected answer.

It is evident that if we cannot distinguish between the Pacific coast and the West in general, we shall be unable to discriminate Washington from her immediate sisters. Yet there is a subtle something by which the older resident will recognize his own. California has, in general, more glare and glitter and “ style ; ” Oregon is less venturesome and progressive; Washington is, with some qualifications, more solid and reliable than either. In business methods and spirit, Washington is more like the East, especially the Lake states, than are the other Pacific states. With regard to manners and outer semblance, the men are less reserved, more flexible, less mindful of dress, style, and appearances, than men of like wealth and education in the East. Outside show counts for very little with one of these hardheaded, keen-sighted pioneers, who, in his varied career, has “ rubbed up ” against nearly every species of human being. It will never do, in Washington, to judge a man by dress or immediate surroundings. You may think that you have a country bumpkin or a raw backwoodsman, only to find, when you have scratched him,” that you have a university star or a veteran of half a dozen wars. But the women and children of the Far West come nearer to being “ types ” than do the men. The average Western man leaves literature, art, and society to his wife and girls. The Western woman is an institution in herself, keen, alert, eager for impressions, education, culture, experience, career, independence, — anything, in short, that will widen her “ sphere.” The native Pacific girl is conspicuously bright, ambitious, rather spoiled by excessive petting from the men; not so regular and “ cultured,” in general, as her Eastern sister, but thoroughly womanly and fascinating, and possessing good sense, and capacity for improving her own powers and imparting inspiration to others, beyond most of her sex.

The majority of Western men are out of their element in anything except business and politics. The wife usually acts as head of the family in all manner of social and religious crises, as inviting a ministerial guest to ask a blessing at table or conduct family worship; while the masculine partner slouches around, at such times, in hulking and uncomfortable consciousness of his own lack of piety and polish. That solemn sense of his own dignity as head of the house, that shrinking deference paid to him by the weaker vessels ” of his family, which magnify the paterfamilias in England, and to some degree in the oldfashioned New England community,— these never lighten the pathway of the average Western householder. He may consider himself in great luck if he is not discrowned entirely. The independence and “ go-aheadativeness ” of women seem to coexist with a general high standard of intelligence ; for statistics show that Washington is third on the list of states in freedom from illiteracy, being surpassed by Iowa and Nebraska only. In fact, the Pacific coast ranks very high in average education and intelligence, though there is not, of course, so much real cultivation as in some circles of older communities.

The schools of Washington have not yet had time to reach the standard of Massachusetts or Michigan, or even of California ; those of the last state being among the best in the country. Yet nearly every town of three or four thousand or more has a high school; and the high schools, as well as the primary schools, are laid out on such a basis as will give the state an excellent educational system when time has had due opportunity. There is a State University at Seattle, superbly located, and provided with excellent buildings and a generous support, with a faculty of 32 and over 600 students during the present year; and this bids fair to become an acceptable sister of Michigan, Wisconsin, California, and the other highgrade state universities of the country. The State Agricultural College and School of Science at Pullman is equipped with fine buildings and apparatus, has an annual income of $60,000 from state and national funds, and during this year had an enrollment of over 500 students and a faculty of 28. There are three well-equipped normal schools in the state. There are also four colleges under private control, the leading one of which is Whitman College, at Walla Walla, bearing the name of the martyr missionary whose foresight and heroism were factors in making Oregon a part of the Union. Whitman College had 14 professors and 265 students during the year 1900. A number of academies have been established in various sections.

With regard to the other agencies of an intellectual life, it may be said that Washington has the usual large Western number of newspapers, 204 in the last gazetteer, four of which, the Times and Post-Intelligencer of Seattle, the Spokesman-Review of Spokane, and the Ledger of Tacoma, will compare favorably with almost any of the newspapers of the land, aside from the great metropolitan dailies. The Times inaugurated the bold experiment of a two-cent daily, and to all appearance is succeeding, from both a pecuniary and journalistic standpoint. Washington has a state law for the maintenance of free public libraries, under which all the larger towns are making excellent beginnings. Seattle has about 24,000 volumes; Spokane, about half that number; Walla Walla, about 7000 ; and the movement is active throughout the state. There are 47 women’s clubs, and this genuine American idea is leading to many practical steps in public improvement. As to permanent literature, there has not yet been time for a native growth of poets, essayists, and philosophers. The prevailing atmosphere, like that of the West in general, is materialistic. Dollars, not ideals, constitute the staple of men’s thoughts. Nevertheless, all the natural conditions, scenery, climate, environment, history, and future outlook, favor the hope that there will be, in due season, a due meed of honor for the makers of ideas as well as of money, and that we shall have our proportion of “ those rare souls, poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.”

Of Washington politically, it must be confessed that there is more need than hope of a high standard. In this we have plenty of company, East and West. Yet few Westerners, loath as they are to acknowledge that the East is superior in anything, venture to claim equality with New England in the character of men chosen to office. If we should institute a comparison between Washington and Maine, while we could claim for the former an infinite superiority in every sort of natural resource, and at least an equality in intelligence and character of people, we should have to retire without a contest in comparing legislators and members of Congress. The reason is not far to find. Maine has usually looked for national and intellectual qualifications, while Washington, like the West in general, has sought, with some honorable exceptions, local and pecuniary qualifications. The curse of the West is that politics is made a mere tool for business. Greed and commercialism have worked like the canker. Men are chosen to office, not to devise statesmanlike methods of raising the standard of life for the whole state, but to engineer some scheme for squeezing tribute out of the state for the benefit of private business enterprises.

The West is not peculiar in this respect, for this is the common history of men ; but it is a curious anomaly that such consummate selfishness in business and politics coexists with such intelligence and such hearty good will in the other relations of life. The cause is plain. It is the individualistic and competitive system of business. The extreme individualism, which from its good side has made all that is best in American history, our ambition, our self-reliance, and our originality, and from its evil side has created our monopolies, our bossisms, and our partisanships, — this is keener, more eager, more speculative, and (sometimes, at least) more unscrupulous on the Pacific coast than elsewhere. In California this guerrilla strife for personal and corporate gain is most intense, and its evils are most flagrant. There, according to the local press (we would not venture to say it ourselves), the question in regard to a legislature is not whether it will be honest, —nobody expects that, —but simply whether it will steal more or less than its predecessor. In the newer state of Washington the evils of excessive individualism are not yet so gross, but they exist in pretty sturdy infancy. The spirit of coöperation is correspondingly weak. Statistics of 1897 show that there was municipal ownership of water works in 52.3 per cent of towns in New England, in 67.3 in the middle states, and in 37.5 in the West. Massachusetts led the list, and California ended it. These figures no doubt indicate in a rough way the degree of coöperation, and hence of public spirit, in these different sections. And yet this individualistic spirit of the West is simply one stage in its growth toward a higher civic life. Coöperation is essential to a noble state, but the first requisite of a strong union is strong units. The work of our bold, overbearing, scheming West is the creation of these units. The units will unite in time.

The present state administration of Washington is “ fusion,” — Democrats, Populists, and Silver Republicans. The fusion leaders are largely “ reformers,” old anti-slavery and anti - monopoly men, “ Lincoln Republicans,” temperance “ cranks,” radicals, and the “ dangerous ” element in general; while the conservative, “ respectable,” business class usually belong to the Republican party. The state went Republican in 1900 by a good majority, except in case of Governor Rogers, who ran about 15,000 votes ahead of his ticket. The Philippine question has cut sharply across the former alignment of parties, and produced “ confusion worse confounded.” The sentiment of all parties is strongly in favor of the retention of the islands. In nine cases out of ten, the sole reason assigned is that it will help American trade, and especially favor the introduction of Washington flour and lumber into Asia. It must be confessed that the Western man’s treatment of the “ inferior ” races has not been dictated by philanthropy or sentiment. And yet, underneath the apparently harsh and mercenary spirit of commercial aggression there is a basis of the rugged fair play and good-heartedness which are the saving grace of our masterful AngloSaxon race.

Of all features of Washington, as of the Pacific group in general, the most interesting and encouraging is the ambition and originality of the young people. They are intensified Americans, the legitimate offspring of the epic heroes of American immigration from Plymouth Rock down. The vital air of the land is freedom. Conventionality and affectation are hated. The beaten track is abandoned for some new road across some new wilderness. The Pacific boy and girl are born explorers, experimenters, and inventors. They are singularly susceptible to all sorts of new impressions and aims, and, in consequence, furnish the best kind of material for grafting culture and scholarship upon. It is remarked by educators who come West as teachers that the native boys, while sometimes lacking in external polish and regular discipline, are conspicuous for versatility, native force, ability to “ get on,” and capacity of rapid improvement. And the young men who have gone from our state to Eastern colleges have in many cases become distinguished as scholars and athletes.

Pioneer qualities of mind are indeed liable to abuse, haste, superficiality, presumption, and lawlessness, but out of such mental soil have sprung all the heroic growths of history. It has made the epics of our race. It has made the trails westward over plain and mountain, through forest and sea. Our state of Washington is simply one more of those marvels of the conquests of nature which have made America “ the last best hope of earth.”

W. D. Lyman .