OREGON AN IDEAL PLACE FOR THE COUNTRY NEWSPAPER
By N. J. LEVINSON
Associate Editor Portland Telegram
[Paper read by Mr. Levinson before the 1922 Convention of the Oregon State Editorial Association.]
YOU may be asking yourselves why a man who has passed most of his working years in Portland would presume to speak of Oregon, outside of Portland, as an ideal field for the country newspaper. To plunge into my topic, I make bold to say that Oregon is the best field I know for a daily or weekly whose editor wants to shoot straight always. I base this fact, or opinion, if you wish, in part on the civilization of Oregon as I have seen it; in part on what I have absorbed by contact with several intellectual and spiritual leaders; and in part on occasional excursions into Oregon history.
Of course, I have to assume that I am speaking to a group of men who in good faith intend to keep their pledge, made some months ago, to conduct their newspapers according to the code laid down by the Oregon State Editorial Association—to respect it as a guide in spirit, if not in letter.
In one respect, the civilization of Oregon differs from that of any other section of the Union,—for that matter, from any other part of the world,—for this is the only country where earliest permanent settlement was made by missionaries. In all other new countries trade followed the flag, and the missionary followed the trader, but in the “Oregon Country” the missionaries who undertook the work of carrying Christianity to the Indians declared that the only way this task could be accomplished was for the missionaries to attach themselves to the soil to build homes, rear children, and plant and reap crops.
In the first heavy immigration, particularly that of 1843, the American spirit was joined with the missionary spirit. The immigrants who founded an American state at Champoeg were a religious people. Most of them were the progeny of men and women to whom the Bible was a rule of conduct, and whether they had received the benefit of the higher education or stopped with the elementary grades, they had well-grounded ethical principles. They drew a sharp line between what is right and what is wrong, and though they differed on many things they were at one on doing the right thing be tween man and man.
It would be foolish for me to declare that the people of Oregon in the mass are better citizens than you will find in the other states west of the Mississippi, but I venture to say this, that there is a larger number of men and women in Oregon, in proportion to the whole population, imbued with the pioneer spirit than in any other section of the United States.
Environment is Favorable
About forty-two years ago, soon after
I came to Oregon, President Hayes, while he was still in office, visited Oregon and spoke in the principal cities. He praised our great mountains and broad rivers and tall trees, and he said that no people brought up in such environment could be a mean people. And he was right. The three generations who succeeded the early pioneers have the inheritance of good blood and the ennobling, continuous influence of majestic nature. The members of this association are co-workers of the
