perity, "You," he would say, "you who talk of hardships or of 'oppressive conditions' and of the 'grinding forces of life,' are absurd. If all the things you and your kind complain of as oppressive and burdensome were massed together they would not equal one-tenth part of the obstacles which had to be met in the settlement and organization of this country, and about which we never thought to complain." And if in this attitude there was something of the pride of a man of conspicuous achievement, who perhaps regarded too lightly the changed atmospheres of new times compared with old, the fact none-the-less explained and perhaps none-the-less justified a sovereign contempt for socialization projects, for sentimental declamation, for the whole range of pretenses and vanities which mark the man or the community which waits and complains as contrasted with the man or the community which girds its loins and bravely goes forward.
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It was a day of small things when Mr. Scott came to the editorship of The Oregonian. Prior to that event the office staff had consisted of Mr. H. L. Pittock,[1] the publisher, who also served as mechanical foreman, with one outside assistant, who helped with the bookkeeping, collected bills and brought in details of such local happenings as came to his attention. There was a local reporter upon whom the whole burden of preparing the news features of the paper fell. Editorial discussion, when it was required, was supplied by one or another of several public-spirited citizens, among them Judge Shattuck.[2] And it was in response to a call made upon Judge Shattuck for "copy" that Mr. Scott, a student in his office, wrote his first paragraph for the paper. The result so commended itself to the publisher that he promptly asked for more, and as the intelligence and sincerity of the young writer were further demonstrated, he was asked to attach himself regularly to the paper. His compensation, made up in part by the
