rms the Old World, and the
masters of whose resources wield wealth and power vaster than the wealth
and power of kings. Best of all, the West gave, not only to the
American, but to the unhappy and oppressed of all lands, a vision of
hope, and assurance that the world held a place where were to be found
high faith in man and the will and power to furnish him the opportunity
to grow to the full measure of his own capacity. Great and powerful as
are the new sons of her loins, the Republic is greater than they. The
paths of the pioneer have widened into broad highways. The forest
clearing has expanded into affluent commonwealths. Let us see to it that
the ideals of the pioneer in his log cabin shall enlarge into the
spiritual life of a democracy where civic power shall dominate and
utilize individual achievement for the common good.

FOOTNOTES:

[243:1] _Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1903. Reprinted by permission.

[248:1] See chapter iii.

X

PIONEER IDEALS AND THE STATE UNIVERSITY[269:1]

The ideals of a people, their aspirations and convictions, their hopes
and ambitions, their dreams and determinations, are assets in their
civilization as real and important as per capita wealth or industrial
skill.

This nation was formed under pioneer ideals. During three centuries
after Captain John Smith struck the first blow at the American forest on
the eastern edge of the continent, the pioneers were abandoning settled
society for the wilderness, seeking, for generation after generation,
new frontiers. Their experiences left abiding influences upon the ideas
and purposes of the nation. Indeed the older settled regions themselves
were shaped profoundly by the very fact that the whole nation was
pioneering and that in the development of the West the East had its own
part.

The first ideal of the pioneer was that of conquest. It was his task to
fight with nature for the chance to exist. Not as in older countries did
this contest take place in a mythical past, told in folk lore and epic.
It has been continuous to our own day. Facing each generation of
pioneers was the unmastered continent. Vast forests blocked the way;
mountainous ramparts interposed; desolate, grass-clad prairies, barren
oceans of rolling plains, arid deserts, and a fierce race of savages,
all had to be met and defeated. The rifle and the ax are the symbols of
the backwoods pioneer. They meant a training in aggressive courage, in
domination, in dir