Biography
West was born in Ontario, Canada but moved to Salem, Oregon with his family at the age of four where he attended school and eventually went into banking. After several years as a banker in Salem and Astoria, and a six month stint searching for gold in Alaska, West gained an appointment as the State Land Agent. He proved effective in his position, recovering almost 1 million acres (4,000 km²) of fraudulently held state land.
In 1907, West left his position as Land Agent and was appointed to the Oregon Railroad Commission, where he again found a great deal of success.
Read more about this topic: Oswald West
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—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
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