Mr. Scott about what was happening in incidental and inconsequential ways. He comprehended the necessity for encouraging and inspiring his assistants in all departments of The Oregonian as it grew to greatness as a disseminator of news, and he would upon occasion give himself the labor of going in detail through every column of the paper. But it was a perfunctory labor, and oftentimes I have suspected that it was a duty more frequently honored in the breach than in the observance. In reports of proceedings of congress or state legislature, of utterances of important men the world over, of the larger movements of international politics—in these matters Mr. Scott was interested profoundly. But he cared nothing about the ordinary range of insignificant occurrences and events.
Mr. Scott's interest in his own paper centered in the editorial page. All the rest he knew to be essential. But if there had been a way to get it done without demands upon his personal attention, he would, I think, have felt a distinct sense of relief. He regarded the news department of his paper, in the sense of its appeal to his own personal interest, as subordinate to the department of criticism and opinion. And in the daily making of the editorial page, the fundamental conception was that of social responsibility. Expediency, entertainment, showy writing—these he valued perhaps for not less than their real worth, but for infinitely less than the estimate in which they are held by the ordinary editor. Never at any moment of Mr. Scott's professional life was there any concession on his part to the vice of careless and perfunctory work. Scrupulousness with respect to small as well as large matters, commonly the product only of necessity enforced by competition, was in the case of Mr. Scott sustained upon instinct and principle. During the greater part of his editorial career he labored wholly free from any sort of professional rivalry, and never in relation to anything approaching effective competition. He might have made easy work of it; he chose rather to work hard.
