DEBT OF PACIFIC NORTHWEST TO DR. JOSEPH SCHAFER
ALFRED POWERS
Dr. Joseph Schafer, superintendent of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, died at Madison on January 27. He was one month past 73 years old.
He lacked four months of being 33 when he came to Oregon in the late summer of 1900. Half of his mature, creative, productive life—the magnificent, buoyant, tireless first half—was given to Oregon. He returned in 1920 to Wisconsin where he had spent his boyhood and early, preparatory manhood.
Oregon is proud of the men and women it has sent to the more populous regions of the nation to turn up significant careers for themselves. During successive bienniums, Who's Who in America has been noticeably sprinkled with their names. This, upon closer analysis, is not a cause for pride, but rather a reflection upon our prodigality in giving away our talent. In many instances, out of economic necessity, these gifted Oregonians have reluctantly moved away because a few thousand dollars extra, sometimes only several hundred dollars, beckoned at the other end.
Dr. Schafer loved Wisconsin and could not be indifferent to the professional opportunities available there, but many of his friends felt that very reasonable rewards would have kept him here for the second twenty years of a citizenship that no commonwealth can afford to relinquish casually.
Oregon, however, never became remote to him. He not only thought of it nostalgically, but he kept in touch with it, and revisited it, and, as much as possible at a distance, always remained currently a part of it. A feature of his remarkable capacity was that it could cumulatively encompass all enlarging influences. Growth in his case was not a replacement of lesser previous gains with large ones but a series of net additions. He never forgot knowledge and he was permanently enriched by
