Suchergebnisse

This article was originally printed in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol. 27 (Jan. 1936), 3-33. For the purpose of reprinting, the author has revised and expanded it, and in doing so has had the benefit of certain valuable suggestions from Mr. J. Nielson Barry of Portland, Oregon.

Several political controversies began with the organization of the territorial government of Washington in 1854, grew in intensity with the passage of years, and did not end on the proclamation of statehood in 1889. Among such controversies was the fight for the location of the capital. In fact, contention over the location of the seat of territorial and state government did not cease until the completion of the capitol building in 1927. During the interval of seventy-three years many efforts were made to relocate the capital, and at some time in this period nearly every important city within the present boundaries of the state made plans or entertained hopes to become the capital. Possession of the seat of government would make a place in the sun for the city which could acquire and retain it. The records show how closely several cities came to winning it, and how one city had the prize within its grasp, only to lose it through a legal technicality. [Courtesy of JSTOR. Posted with permission from Pacific Northwest Quarterly.]

The controversy over the location of the seat of government, which had flared up frequently in Washington Territory during the period 1855-1875, was comparatively dormant in the following decade. With the coming of the railroads, the discovery of gold in the Fraser River country and Idaho, the use of irrigation in central Washington, the growth of the sheep and cattle business, the increase in commerce on the Columbia and Snake rivers, the development of the lumber and fishing industries west of the Cascade Range, the population of all sections of the territory rapidly increased, and Washington Territory was soon to be ready for statehood. In 1878 its citizens had sought entry into the Union, but it had been refused. Ten years later, with rapid expansion in full swing, the talk of statehood was once more revived. At the same time there developed the feeling that it was now time to locate the capital in a new place, which should reflect the internal growth and expansion of Washington. [Courtesy of JSTOR. Posted with permission from Pacific Northwest Quarterly.]

Under the provisions of the Organic Act of Washington Territory, Congress had agreed to provide for the publication of the territorial statutes; hence, so long as Congress was willing to assume the cost of the publication of these territorial laws under the guise of a codification of the statutes, but little attention toward the preparation of a compilation, in the form in which this term is generally understood, was likely. The agitation for statutory reform, which consumed no small part of the time of the various territorial legislative sessions, was not motivated by a hope for a code of the modern type, although that germ might almost be found in the legislative restrictions with which the Code of 1881 was surrounded. This perennial demand for a new territorial code was, on the contrary, the outburst of an enthusiasm which demanded something about which to talk. The simple territorial form of government required no complex system of laws; hence, it was not code revision had become an obligation of the complicated machinery of statehood that statutory compilations were to acquire permanence of form with which the bar of today is familiar. [Courtesy of JSTOR. Posted with permission from Pacific Northwest Quarterly.]

We will probably agree that the college or university as a seat of learning must develop and maintain library facilities commensurate with the standing before the world which the institution's progress has earned. The library, and of course we include the law school library, is one of the indices of an educational institution's efficiency, and as such, we expect it to grow and expand by adding to the richness of its collections, material of ever increasing importance and usefulness. We expect the college library to take the lead in gathering for future reference the materials valuable for research which, on account of their cost, most other libraries cannot afford or which they cannot justify adding to collections of the type and character which they already maintain. May we not then say that the college library is primarily a library for intensive study and research. [Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries at Seattle, Wash., in July, 1925.]