Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/26

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16
F. G. Young

tion of associated effort. In other words, the Pacific Northwest places man in such relation to history, to nature, and to his fellow-man, as to promise him here, if his inheritance is not sold for a mess of pottage, man's highest development. It rests with the Lewis and Clark Exposition to rise to the occasion. For it represents a first possible step in a grand cooperative effort to develop a social environment here commensurate with what nature has done for us. If for a ruthless, wasteful course of social evolution that would never reach any desirable goal we would realize one of steady, frictionless progress, with opportunities of fullest life open to all, we must make the Lewis and Clark Centennial fulfill its high mission. If the people of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest do not persist in their determination to make this concerted effort toward the inauguration of the highest policies of social progress here it is hard to see what occasion can bring them so near this mood again. It is the spell that the commemoration of a great event and a great movement casts over them that will hardly be repeated. The Lewis and Clark Centennial then is the flood tide of opportunity. If it is not seized and we lapse again into mere individualistic policies "all the voyage" of life in the future of the Pacific Northwest will be bound in comparative "shallows and in miseries."

An exposition planned to meet the twentieth century needs becomes the herald of an industrial democracy in which there is a completely harmonious cooperation for the realization of the highest social ideals. It is dawning upon us that publicity is the first condition of relief from the trust evil. We need yet, however, to realize that essential publicity or light is the talisman for developing a true democratic spirit to which are disclosed ever expanding vistas of possibilities. The first great duty of the exposition authorities is to bring to the people of