David J. Jepsen > Quotes

“In 1885, the American West roiled in anti-Chinese violence. In September, in an incident beyond the pale, 28 Chinese were murdered and 15 injured in Rock Springs, Wyoming.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Pacific Car and Foundry (later named PACCAR) manufactured B-17 parts and Sherman tanks.26 Reynolds Metal Company in Longview made aluminum for aircraft, as did the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) in Vancouver and Troutdale, and two federally funded plants near Spokane.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Tensions and jealousies peaked in May 1887 when a group of white men entered a Chinese camp at night on the Oregon side of the Snake River and murdered as many as 34 Chinese miners. The victims were shot, their bodies stripped and mutilated, and thrown into the river.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“While few deny the prosperity, bountiful irrigation, and affordable electricity created by the dam, it's equally clear the region is paying unanticipated costs. Most significantly, engineers built the dam without fish ladders, permanently blocking salmon from migrating and spawning past the dam.128”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“They were welcome to come and labor, wage workers were told, provided they stayed inside the social, political, and economic boundaries set by those in control. The Wobblies not only pushed against those boundaries, but sought to tear down and rebuild them in their favor.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Like much of America in the second half of the twentieth century, the Civil Rights movement in the Pacific Northwest was fought on many fronts – in the workplace, at school, in the courts, and on the steps of capitol buildings. But few struggles can match the one waged for open housing in Seattle and other large cities.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“In the words of the railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, “Building railroads from nowhere to nowhere is not a legitimate business.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Catholics enjoyed the strongest presence with missions on both sides of the Cascades. While Protestant Evangelicalism emerged mostly in the nineteenth century, Catholics had been ministering to settlers and Native Peoples in North America since the early seventeenth century.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Meanwhile, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho supported FDR's 1936 campaign and continued to vote for his unprecedented bids for a third and fourth term.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“The Pacific Northwest gained a reputation for its tolerance of people of color. Upon arrival many would learn such a reputation was mostly unfounded. Like the rest of the country, the region was deeply divided over slavery. The exception was Oregon's black exclusion laws. In 1844, the provisional government outlawed slavery as a tactic to preclude settlers from bringing their slaves into the territory. Later the exclusion law was written into the state constitution, which was to be submitted to the U.S. Congress in 1857.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Formed in 1935, the WPA put more than 8 million Americans to work on an astonishingly wide array of small-scale projects.78 They built roads, bridges, sidewalks, and city park structures throughout the nation, many of which remain in use.79”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Farm Credit Administration and Farm Security Administration provided loans and other forms of assistance, while the Rural Electrification Program brought electricity to farming communities.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“President Lyndon Johnson's Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and launched the “War on Poverty.” In the Pacific Northwest, OEO community development grants helped establish a host of organizations to address employment, health, housing, education and various legal needs. Beginning in 1965, the Yakima Valley Council for Community Action YVCCA opened centers to meet the farmworkers' health and social service needs. A year later they expanded to educational and legal services, offering adult basic education, English as a second language, high school equivalency programs, vocational training, health clinics, and day care. Volunteer attorneys helped workers address conflicts with immigration authorities and social service agencies.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“70 The region's cities bulged with thousands of soldiers, sailors, and defense workers. Portland and Seattle lit up at night as gays and lesbians increasingly enjoyed liberty at a growing lineup of bars and clubs that exclusively catered to them. Historian John D'Emilio said World War II “created something of a nationwide coming out experience.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Intense battles compelled some environmentalists and proponents of industry to find common ground. In John Day, Oregon, and Randle, Washington, both sides wanted to thin forests. It meant work for loggers and better habitat and wildfire protection to environmentalists. These small-scale cases of cooperation suggest that while these boundaries remain fiercely contested, collaboration in the future is possible.82”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“America's wealthy believed in the power of the “individual,” grounded in the sociological theory known as “Individualism.” It held that individuals free to act on their instincts and abilities created wealth and advanced society. Individualism, according to steel baron Andrew Carnegie, was the “foundation” of an advancing society. In America, it's “the leaders who do the new things that count, all these have been Individualistic to a degree beyond ordinary men and worked in perfect freedom …”11 The laboring class suffered not from class divisions and lack of opportunity, but from their individual shortcomings, according to the theory. The “failures which a man makes in his life are due almost always to some defect in his personality, some weakness of body, or mind, or character, will or temperament,” wrote oil baron John D. Rockefeller.12”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Whatever their place of origin, diseases came in waves, one after the other, with deadly results. Smallpox, the most lethal, killed up to 90% of infected peoples during epidemics in the 1770s, 1800–1801, 1838 and 1862–1803.94 Malaria took a comparable death toll along the lower Columbia and Willamette Valley in 1830–1833, followed by outbreaks of measles, flu, and dysentery.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“The Tacoma expulsion stands out because it was planned and organized; not a spur-of-the-moment tragedy, but a well-thought-out eviction. It became known as the “Tacoma Method.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Conditions in the forests and mills eventually improved, but credit for most of those gains goes to the War Department. Desperate to prevent labor unrest from interfering with war production, it employed soldiers in the forest and organized all loggers into a new union, the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, or “4-L.” They deployed soldiers, called the Spruce Divisions, and forced reforms for the benefit of enlisted man.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“So by the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the people of the Pacific Northwest largely displayed an all-American sameness in dress, language, and even religion – except the Chinese. Because many anticipated returning to China after accumulating sufficient savings to support their families at home, they stubbornly clung to their ways. They stood out in the territories, an irritating reminder to whites.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Bad working and living conditions added to frustrations. The growers typically assigned braceros the most physically demanding and lowest paying jobs.85 In camp, six men usually shared a single tent. In Eastern Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, they roasted in the summer and froze in the winter.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“In 2012, Washington became one of the first of three states in which marriage equality was approved by voters on the same day.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Mainstream unions, called “labor aristocrats,” looked down on the less-skilled workers and refused to support their cause.16 The AFL also excluded minorities and to some degree women. African Americans, AFL leaders feared, were “dangerous competitors, scabs who threatened white jobs and white unions.”17 The IWW was born to fill the void.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Additionally, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act prohibited child labor, established a minimum wage, and created a 44-hour workweek. The act did not cover farm workers, but provided important protections for countless other laborers in the Northwest and the nation as a whole.93”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“The twin threats of deforestation and fire prompted the private and public sectors to act. Large firms like Weyerhaeuser began fire prevention programs and invested in sustainable yield research.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“To French Canadians Fr. Francois Norbert Blanchet and Fr. Modeste Demers, Oregon Country was the Catholic's last religious frontier. They opened a mission on the Cowlitz River in 1838,”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Hanford rode the Cold War money train as well, especially after the Soviet Union tested its first atom bomb in 1949.146 Turning from fission to the more powerful fusion technology in the 1950s, both nations raced to out-produce each other.147 Requiring more and more plutonium, the government steadily poured funds into Hanford, and by 1955, eight reactors churned out plutonium.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Explaining why Native Peoples had multiple wives, Blanchet wrote, “the more they have, the more work gets done and the more food there is.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“Given the frequency of camp movements and men rotating in and out of the program, exact numbers are unavailable, but some 2.5 to 3 million men served in over 45,000 camps nationwide before the program closed in 1942.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History

“By 1880, it had gained a national reputation as prime wheat growing country. Farmers reported average yields of 35–40 bushels per acre, far exceeding other regions.21 So, while the region reportedly grew wheat “cheaper than in any other place in the United States,” the length and cost of transport was greater “than any other wheat grown in the world.”
― David J Jepsen, Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History