264 Harvey W. Scott
been. All this together made a force that beats all the immi- gration efforts than can possibly be organized at this end of the line. Washington, therefore, received, and receives, pop- ulation.
But how was it and how is it in Oregon? The old settlers had been separated so long from their Eastern friends that they had been totally forgotten. They had ceased, long since, to "write home." Years and years ago the early settlers had sent letters to their "home paper," pving accounts of the country; but long since they had ceased to do it. Long isola- tion had almost completely cut Oregon off from intercourse with the Eastern States.
When the new development began, Washington was com- paratively new. Two great railroads were built into the state, across the continent, and proclaimed the discovery of a new country. People began to rush in. They fotmd the coimtry unoccupied; they settled down and wrote for their friends. People came out with a rush — people who had seen the recent development in Eastern states, and who knew how to do things. They knew how to take hold of the new resources, to go into the lumber business, to hunt for coal and to apply new methods of agriculture. But to a g^eat part of the people of Oregon, long settled here, the methods of these new move- ments were all unknown.
The people of early Oregon had come out of the pioneer conditions in the then pioneer states of the Mississippi Valley, had been forgotten by their old friends there, forgotten even by their own relatives, had not kept up with the new develop- ment, and indeed had no means of doing so. On the other hand, in Washington a new people had come, out of the newer development of the Eastern States, in new and quick touch with the people from whence they came. Every newcomer into Washington was therefore an active and enthusiastic immigration agent But in Oregon, where most of the de- sirable places for settlement had long been taken, there were not so many first-rate opportunities; the railroads were less
