Pioneer Character Oregon Progress 253
then was full of sneers about the Jews * The whole mercan- tile class> indeed, was regarded with suspicion, with distrust, and with consequent dislike, by the provincial pioneer mind. It is described with accuracy by Mr. Roosevelt in one of his volumes on the settlement of the West in these words, viz. :
"The pioneer in his constant struggle with poverty was prone to look with puzzled anger at those who made more money than he did, and whose lives were easier. The back- woods farmer or planter of that day looked upon the merchant with the same suspicion now felt by his successor for the banker or the railroad ms^^ate. He did not quite understand how it was that the merchant who seemed to work less hard than he did should make money ; and, being ignorant and sus- picious, he usually followed some hopelessly wrong-headed course when he tried to remedy his wrongs."^
Some pictures have long-lasting colors. Here and there men then engaged in mercantile business, who had no knowledge whatever of the requirements of the business. They sold their land and engaged in trade, supposing they might com- pete with and triumph over others to whom knowledge of the business had come through experience, or as an hereditary possession. They failed, of course. They knew nothing about the laws of trade, of bu)dng and selling, of credit among the farmers or of credit at bank. But they thought they could imitate the "store keeper," and this was the height of their purpose or ambition. It was an exceedingly primitive state however, might be indefinitely extended; but this would not of society that could produce examples of this kind.
But perhaps I have written enough in this line. The essay, be the time or place. I have simply responded to a request for an article made by The Jewish Trihutve. All of us together have made this country ; and it is not what any single g^oup of us would have made it, nor what any single group of us could have expected it would be. The greatest of the changes, probably, are still to come.
8 For narrative of Jewish pioneers in the Pacific Northwest, see Th§ Oregonion, December r. 1903, p. 10.
9 See Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning of thg West, vol. iv., p. 344.
