a pair of cowhide boots; in these boots he trudged afoot to Puget Sound; "rustled" there for three years and raked together $70, with which he came back to Oregon afoot, to go to school, and managed by close economy to live six months, till, his last dollar having vanished, he bought an ax of Tom Charman, of Oregon City, on credit, made himself a camp on the hill above Oregon City and cut cordwood till he got a little money to pay debts he owed for books arid clothes. The next years were spent very much the same way—hard work and hard study, but nothing for beer and tobacco, and no time fooled away listening to political demagogues. All this is very commonplace, but it is recited to show that when the editor of this newspaper talks about hard times, self-help and what men can do, he knows what he is talking about."
XIIIINDIVIDUALISM
None knew better than Mr. Scott the irresistible drift toward substitution of collective function for personal duty. He stemmed the drift as only his strong personality could do, yet not nearly so often as his conscience urged. He insisted that citizens should supply, as far as society could compel them, their own facilities and luxuries for selves and children, without leaning on government. Otherwise character would be impaired and the many would be burdened on the thrifty few, with the former quota fast growing. Always he was urging his readers to employ energies of the self-reliant aforetime and apply themselves to creative labor, instead of to seek the created wealth of others. Pioneer conditions, he used to say, were a thousand times harder than the later conditions that were called "oppressive" and "grinding" by many a poor man. The contrast between the pioneer era of self-help and the new era of leaning on society he portrayed in the subjoined article, March 1, 1884:
"Our fathers, who settled and subdued the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, pursued the rational and successful way. Each family pushed out for itself, without theories to hamper it. All worked with intelligence and industry, but no one leaned upon another. The theories of modern social science, so-called, fortunately for them and for the country, were unknown. Its jargon had not yet been evolved to mystify the
