It is safe to say that any measures agreed upon by the Farmers' Unions are pretty certain to become the action of the body politic in the different counties. Once each quarter, and sometimes oftener, there are meetings of the Tri-County Union, at which the larger problems of farm life are considered, and in connection with which appetizing banquets prepared by the skillful hands and fine artistic taste of the wives and daughters bring joy and gayety and good fellowship to all concerned.
To many of the readers of this volume, and in years to come to their children and grandchildren, the most significant of all the organized associations of their home country is the
INLAND EMPIRE PIONEER ASSOCIATION
This association was formed in 1900, largely under the initiative of Dr. N. G. Blalock. While there has been little machinery or formality about it, its yearly meetings for renewing the old ties have been among the most anticipated and cherished of all in the minds of many of the builders, the fathers and mothers of the Inland Empire. While the main membership has been in Walla Walla County or her daughter counties, it is not confined to that county, and a number of members live in Umatilla County, Oregon, and in Whitman, Adams and Franklin counties on the north side of Snake River.
The officers of the association chosen at the first meeting were: Dr. N. G. Blalock, president; W. P. Winans, A. G. Lloyd and Ben Burgunder, vice presidents; Marvin Evans, secretary; Levi Ankeny, treasurer; W. D. Lyman, historian. These officers were almost constantly re-elected, until the lamented deaths of Doctor Blalock, Mr. Winans, and Mr. Lloyd. Ben Burgunder was chosen president to succeed Doctor Blalock, and at the present time F. M. Lowden, Joseph Harbert and W. D. Wallace are vice presidents.
With the feeling that the members of the association and many others will be glad to read some of the proceedings and to see the list of members as a matter of permanent reference, we close this chapter with the excellent accounts given in the Walla Walla Union of October 15, 1904, and June 2, 1911, of the annual meetings of those years.
ANNUAL PIONEER MEETING OF 1904
About one hundred and fifty of the pioneers of Southeastern Washington and Northeastern Oregon, sturdy men and women, who have seen the country grow from a desolate looking waste of sagebrush and sand to one of the beauty spots of the Northwest—men and women who had not only seen this take place, but had helped, and are still, many of them, helping in this wonderful evolution—people who thirty or forty years ago were neighbors, though living many miles apart, met yesterday and sat down to the festive board loaded with the good cheer provided by the devoted pioneer women of this city in honor of the occasion.
OLD NEIGHBORS MEET
The crowd assembled in the Goodman Building and there registered and received their badges, after which they marched to the banqueting rooms. There were many hearty handshakes as these old neighbors met, and the scene was one of glad reunion. There were the more elderly who had come here in the prime of life and whose gray hairs and wrinkled cheeks recalled the energy and vitality that had been spent in building up a new country. There were the younger men. those whose memories of older lands are but indistinct visions, and who have grown up with the country. But all had the common bond of acquaintance dating far back, a friendship tried and found worthy in the strife of many years.