Allen Whites in the Oregon of 1854. Harvey Scott was still a boy of 16 not long from his native Illinois, with the start of his great editorial career still a decade away. There is no "raise more corn and less hell" phrasing in Dryer's homily, but a somewhat similar idea is there, and the Oregon editor made his point courageously. excerpt from the long article follows:
If the people of Oregon would put forth the same efforts and adopt the same methods to become a producing people that they do in the eastern states, we should hear no more complaint of "hard times" except from the lips of universal grumblers. If the farmers would plow and reap, sow and thresh, and sell the products of their farms at the market prices, be the same more or less, this complaint of hard times would seldom be heard. But whenever and wherever they adopt the course generally pursued in Oregon, of raising but little and demanding an exorbitant price for that little, they must look for and expect hard times.
There is no country better adapted to produce a large overplus of the necessaries of life, than Oregon. There is no country more favorably situated for a ready and reliable market for everything the soil and climate will produce, than Oregon. Then why this everlasting cry of hard times? . . . there are too many speculators, gentlemen of leisure, and men who live by their wits among us . . . the anti-sweat society . . . disproportioned in number to the hard working honest labor and tiller of the soil. We have entirely too many lawyers, squires, generals, colonels, majors and captains for the peace of the country and the prosperity of the people. We have an overstocked market of office-seekers and politicians, who stand ready to serve the dear people in almost any capacity. . . We have a large surplus of men well skilled in the science of ten-pins, billiards, and the sciences generally. . . The farms of Oregon are entirely too large to produce anything else but "hard times." There are too many men awaiting the expiration of the "four years" which with "occupancy and cultivation" entitles them to 640 or 320 acres of land as the case may be. These men are many of them in the habit of cultivating a few rods, in the place of acres, merely to comply with the requisition of the law. . . We buy too much and sell too little.
Another fruitful cause of "hard times" may be found in the fact that men desire to get rich too fast. They appear to be unwilling to adopt the sure road to wealth, viz.: industry, economy and perseverance, but rush headlong into speculations. This chasing after gold mines, in the futile
