The Forgotten Reformer

Sometimes, one person is so identified with a movement that he or she becomes the movement, especially for historians. Such is the case with Oregon City lawyer William S. U'Ren and the Oregon System.

In the late 1800s, U'Ren, a resident of Colorado, participated in Republican politics, studied book-keeping, read the law and edited a newspaper. Along the way, he grew disgusted with politics, abandoned any idea of serving in Congress, and, became a true believer in Henry George's “Single Tax" - a confiscatory land tax that smelled of socialism and sought to put land speculators out of business.

Knowing that no representative legislature would approve George's radical social rearrangement, when U'Ren found himself in Oregon, he set about creating a parallel lawmaking body that might go along with his plans to stick it to the land developers.

From a 1906 editorial in The Oregonian:

“* * * In Oregon, the state government is divided into four departments - the executive, judicial, legislative and Mr. U'Ren.

“(A)nd, it is still an open question which exerts the most power. * * *." (paragraphs mine).

As a member of the Executive Committee of The National Direct Legislation League, a New Jersey-based coalition of direct democracy leagues from across the country, U'Ren developed a reputation and influence that transcended Oregon.

* State-after-state took U'Ren's counsel as to copying Oregon's laws for direct democracy, chief among them the system for direct election of U.S. Senators.

* In 1908, a Boston-based magazine described U'Ren as “the father of the referendum in America."

* Then-Gov. Woodrow Wilson, at first publicly opposed to direct legislation, came out in favor of the populist tools as he prepared to run for President. Some credit a debate with U'Ren for Wilson's change of heart.

* In 1915, the Oregon Voter proclaimed that U'Ren “is possibly known more widely throughout the world than any other citizen of Oregon * * *."

While some playfully referred to the slender -- almost frail -- Oregon City lawyer as “Father U'Ren, of the Referendum," his real goal was adoption of the Single Tax, a radical tax scheme that smelled of socialism and sought to put land speculators, the defense contractors of their day, out of business.

In November, 1910, U'Ren made this remarkable statement to the Single Tax Conference (Fels Fund) held in New York:

“All the work we have done for direct legislation has been done with the single tax in view, but we have not talked single tax because it was not the question before the house."