own wants, and, though there was plenty of a kind, it surprises us now to think how few things were necessary.
Out of this mode of life we have passed, because we could not remain in it. New conditions have grown up around us, to which of necessity we conform. Society is in a perpetual flux, and though we look back to the past for instruction, we accept the present without regret, and look forward to the future with an eager but undefined expectation. We talk of successive generations of men, but, looking at society in a mass, the generations do not come and go. One unites with another, and there is no line of separation. But the whole living organism, to which we belong, is carried forward by impulses that lie within the laws of its own existence. The changes are assumed only by degrees, and not with abruptness; they come as a ctunulative effect, yet that effect cannot abide or remain in any state of fixity, but must pass on.
Familiar as I am and, during a long period, have been, with the growth and progress of the Oregon country, and, indeed, of all our Pacific Coast states, I am yet, upon review of this growth and progress, astonished at what has been accomplished, within the period of my own observation. We who observed the slowness of the growth, during a long period of time, could not imagine we should live to see what we have seen; and yet all that heretofore has been accomplished is as nothing to the prospect that opens before us. Industry and production are the factors of our material progress, in peace, as iron and gold are the two main nerves of war. Industry, operating on the resources of nature, in a country so favored as ours, will do all things. Labor omnia vincit remains as true as in the olden time, and truer; for man now is able to make the forces of nature serve him in innumerable ways formerly unknown.
Our states of the Pacific Coast are linked together in a common interest. Together they have risen; together they still will rise and grow. Forces within them and without them, whether similar or common, or not, all work toward the same
