CHAPTER XXII.
The towns—Approach to Oregon—The steamers—The Columbia entrance— Astoria—Its situation, industries, development—Salmon—Shipping— Loading and discharging cargo—Up the Columbia and Willamette to Portland—Portland, West and East—Population—Public buildings— United States District Court—The judge—Public Library—The Bishop schools—Hospital—Churches—Stores—Chinese quarter—Banks— Industries—The city's prosperity—Its causes—Its probable future —The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company—Shipping abuses and exactions—Railroad termini—Up the Columbia—The Dalles—Up the Willamette—Oregon City, its history—The falls—Salem—Its position and development—Capitol buildings—Flour-mills—Oil-mills —Buena Vista potteries—Albany—Its water-power—Flour-mills—Values of land—Corvallis—The line of the Oregon Pacific Railroad—Eugene, its university and professors—Roseburg—The West-side Railroad to Portland—Development of the country—Prosperity—Counties of Oregon —Their population—Taxable property—Average possessions—In the Willamette Valley—In Eastern Oregon—In Eastern Oregon tributary to Columbia and Snake Rivers.
Having said so much about the country, something needs to be said about the towns. All persons reaching Oregon, save those few who choose to face the three nights and two days of staging that divide Redding (the northern terminus of the California and Oregon Railroad) from Roseburg (the southern terminus of the Oregon and California Railroad), enter Oregon by ship from San Francisco. And here, in passing, a word of praise for the really beautiful and commodious steamers which have now replaced the Ajax and the other monsters which disgraced the traffic they were furnished for, as well as their owners. No better boats ply on any waters than the State of California, the Columbia, and the Oregon. The first two are new ships, with electric lights, and all other appliances to match. All are safe and speedy. The State of California belongs to the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, the others to the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.
The approach to Oregon is forbidding and stern. There is nothing attractive in the sandy coast, in the muddy water, in the broken but not romantic scenery, where the water is encroaching on the land, and shifting its position and attack from time to time. Here and there along the edge are strewed, or stand in various attitudes of death, the skeletons of the pine-trees, which look like the relics of battle, the perishing remains of the beaten defenders of the coast; and, once over the bar, that terror to sea-worn travelers, the approach to Astoria can hardly be called beautiful.
ASTORIA.But the city of Astoria itself has claims to beauty of position. It lies within the course of the Columbia; though here the estuary is so wide as to give the idea of a lake. Jutting out into the bay above the town rises a little promontory, crowned with firs; and between the eye rests on the unfamiliar outlines of a large cannery, the buildings of gray wood, based on piles sunk into the mud of the bay, and the long, shingled roofs catching the rays of the departing sun.
The city consists of a mass of wooden structures low down by the water's edge—wharves and docks and repairing-yards in front, and a long line of stores and saloons and business-houses behind, broken by the more imposing custom-house, post-office, and churches. On the slopes of the high hills rising from near the water's edge are the scattered white houses of the inhabitants, while the sky-line of the hills is broken through by the cutting by which many tons of stone and sand are being piled into the bay. The city proper mainly stands on piles, the water gurgling and lapping round the barnacles, which cluster thick; the enterprise of the people is fast filling in underneath from the hills behind.
There are large and substantial docks of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and others adjoining, where are generally lying two or three large ships or barks, going out or returning from their long and weary voyage.
The atmosphere of the place in the salmon-season is fishy, huge stacks of boxed salmon filling the wharves. The principal street is fringed with saloons, mainly looking for custom to the fishermen and seamen.
There is a large lumber-mill, which makes the air resonant with the shriek of the great saws; and a boot-and-shoe factory has been recently established. Other industries exist; but it is as a seaport that Astoria justifies its existence and the foresight of its founders.
Clatsop County has 7,200 inhabitants, of which, I suppose, Astoria claims a third. There is an air of business and life about the place, and there will be, so far as I can see, even though means should be found of ending the present practice of all large ships going to sea from Portland being towed to Astoria, and followed by scows and barges, there to complete their loading for their outward voyage. A similar necessity exists for incoming ships to stay at Astoria to discharge a large portion of their cargo before facing the shallows and mud-banks of the Willamette on the way to Portland as their port of discharge.
PORTLAND.The voyage up the Columbia for a hundred miles, and up the Willamette for twelve, to Portland, has many charms. First, the grand stream of the mighty Columbia, telling in its size and volume of the three thousand miles some of its waters have come from their far-off sources among distant mountains; then the banks, rising generally sheer from the water's edge, crowned with rich and varied vegetation, and here and there the rugged rocks breaking through, to give clearness and strength to outline; and then on either side the more distant hills, clothed with the dark fir-timber to their summits, and behind the mountains proper, with Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helen's showing their snowy heads. Here and there in a niche or angle under the bank lie huddled close the buildings of a cannery, the blue smoke rising from the central chimney, and the white boats tied to the piling which juts out into the deep water of the river.
You are hardly conscious of leaving the Columbia for the Willamette. It looks as if it were an island in mid-stream behind and to the south of which you are about to pass; but soon you find that the supposed island is the opposite bank of the Willamette, and, passing beacons and marks, set to define the channel with the accuracy that is absolutely needed (since a sheer to the east or west of only a yard or two would leave you fast in a mud-bank for hours), you come in sight of Portland.
I ought to have noticed that here and there along the banks coming up, almost on the river's level and exposed to inundation at each high water, you pass dairy-farms, consisting of a shanty, or tumble-down house, and a few acres of rank and muddy pasture, where ague seems to sit brooding on the branches of the trees, whose trunks and limbs yet bear the traces of last season's flood.
But now for the juvenile but audacious Portland, who describes herself as "the commercial metropolis of the Northwest." One considerable suburb, called East Portland, stands on the east bank of the Willamette; but the main part of the town is on the west bank, and now nearly fills all the level land between the river and the hills behind, which seem to be pushing at and resenting the intrusion of the streets along their sides. Extensions are taking place along the northern end, where a considerable stretch of low-lying land is yet available along the banks of the river, and also to some extent at the farther or southern end of the city. The building westward is mounting the hill-sides, already dotted with the somewhat pretentious wooden houses of the more prosperous towns-people.
To one who has seen real cities it is but a little place; but some of its twenty-one or twenty-two thousand inhabitants raise claims to greatness and even supremacy that make it difficult to suppress a smile. In thirty-five years the place has grown from a collection of log-huts, set down as if by chance, to its present dimensions, and, no doubt, could go on growing as fast as Oregon developed, could the same conditions last. The city consists of near a dozen streets running parallel with the Willamette, and about twenty-three at right angles. Front Street and First Street contain some brick buildings, remarkable for so very young a place: the former backs on the Willamette, and on it front the warehouses and wharves, against the backs of which the ships are moored; the latter contains nearly all the city's stores and shops of any consequence.
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.The United States District and Circuit Courts sit at Portland. The former is and has been for several years presided over by the Hon. Matthew P. Deady. This gentleman's name will be long associated with the jurisprudence of Oregon, having been one of the original compilers of the Code, and reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the State, until, promoted to the bench of the United States Court, he has taken a high place as a conscientious and able judge. To him also Portland mainly owes that which I consider the chief ornament and pride of the city, rather than the ambitious but faulty structures in wood, stone, and iron on which most of the citizens glorify themselves—I mean the Public Library. This institution has its headquarters in spacious rooms over Messrs. Ladd & Tilton's Bank; the shelves are filled with upward of ten thousand well-selected books, and the process of addition is going on under the same careful oversight. Here every evening are groups of readers, and it must be a source of constant satisfaction to the judge to have been the means of organizing and continuing the successful working of an institution which is effecting silent but untold good.
Portland is also the residence of Bishop Morris, of the Episcopal Church. He has resided there for twelve years past; and to him the city is indebted for the St. Vincent's Hospital, where accidents are treated at all times, and which is open for receiving besides a certain number of sick persons. The bishop has also founded and kept going the Bishop Scott Grammar-School. This is a high-school for boys. Last year it had fifty-nine pupils and five teachers, and a sound and solid education is there given. St. Helen's Hall, the best girls' school in the State, was also founded by him. There were here one hundred and sixty pupils and twelve teachers last year. Other churches exert themselves to occupy and hold prominent positions in the city: notably the Roman Catholics, whose archbishop, Seghers, resides in Portland, and who have erected a large red-brick cathedral. It is as yet unfinished, but a further effort by the Roman Catholics in the diocese is about to be made to complete and furnish it.
There is a fair theatre in the city; it is occupied now and again by a traveling troupe from San Francisco, generally consisting of a star, and his or her supports of a more or less wooden consistency.
The building of the Mechanics' Fair, which is used for balls and concerts, one or two Masonic and societies' halls, the rooms of the several fire companies, and those of the Young Men's Christian Association, complete the list. There are a good many expensive stores of all kinds, and all seem prosperous.
The Chinese quarter is, of course, not so large and picturesque as in San Francisco, but it is equally well marked: a complete range of Chinese stores, with doctors' shops and theatre, the usual lanterns hung out over the doors, and the common display of curious edibles. There are several substantial Chinese firms and business-houses; one of their chief sources of revenue is the bringing over and hiring out the large numbers of Chinese laborers required for the railway works now in progress. The census disclosed nineteen hundred Chinamen as residents of Multnomah County; I suppose eighteen hundred of them were found in Portland.
BANKS AND MANUFACTORIES.Four banks do a large general business, and there is also a savings-bank. A mortgage company, having its headquarters in Scotland, at Dundee, takes up cheap money in Scotland, and lends it out to great advantage in Oregon, at the rates prevalent here, with results satisfactory to its manager, Mr. William Reid, as well as to its stockholders.
There are two iron-works, a large sash and door factory, a brewery, and a twine and rope factory, but beyond these scarcely any manufacturing industry.
The prosperity of the city, which has been very great during the last few years, is solely attributable to its character of toll-gate. Situated at the extreme northern boundary of the State, in a position which was not unsuitable when Oregon and Washington Territory were bound together, it is perfectly anomalous to suppose that the capital city of Oregon should have been there placed by deliberate intention. As matters now stand, it is the only port in Oregon, save Astoria, to which the large grain-ships can come, and at which the deep-draught ocean-going steamers can take in and discharge their cargoes; and, very naturally, its business-men seek to perpetuate that state of affairs, regardless of the growing interest of the great country which now pays tribute to their little town. It is not easy to forget how more than one of its leading citizens, when applied to to add their signatures to a petition to Congress in aid of the removal of the reef partially obstructing Yaquina Bay, replied, "Every dollar you get is so much taken directly from our pockets."
A further adventitious help that Portland got was by being made the headquarters of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which brought to its wharves the produce of the Columbia River traffic as well as that of the Willamette. It might be natural to bring to and to leave at Portland wharves the wheat of Western Oregon, but there seems little sense in bringing grain down the Columbia, and then up the Willamette, to be deposited in Portland, thence to be transferred partly in ships, partly in barges and river-steamers, to Astoria, where alone the loading of the ships could be completed.
The present style of the Portland and Astoria newspapers is to make very light of the Columbia bar. In fact, they boldly state that to hardly any port is so good an approach vouchsafed as to Portland; they instance London and Philadelphia, Glasgow and New Orleans, as parallel instances in position; and "The Oregonian" is never weary of singing the praises of their Tom Tiddler's ground of a city.
But it has not always been so with them. "The Astorian" stated, on the 30th of January, 1880, that there were thirty vessels off the bar, unable to enter. The same paper, on the 23d of March, 1880, published this item of news: "Pilots on the bar all agree that, unless some measures are adopted for permanent improvement of the channel, it will not be longer considered safe for vessels to enter or cross out with more than eighteen feet draught of water." "The Astorian" in the same issue also informed us that "Captain Flavel has been making personal inspections of bar-soundings, ... and is himself fully satisfied that it is only a question of very brief time, so rapid and broadcast is the shoaling process, when it will be impossible for deep vessels to cross; the North Channel, along Sand Island from the head, is filling up as fast as does the South Channel"; while "The Oregonian" told us as recently as December, 1880, that "the Gatherer, with railroad-iron for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, was compelled to lighter four times between Baker's Bay and Kalama, at heavy expense. The Chandos, sailing from this port within the past two weeks, lightered thirteen hundred tons. The A. M. Simpson lightered eleven hundred tons; and the last departure, the Edwin Reed, getting off on a winter rain-flood, scraped over the shoals with all but two hundred and eighty tons of her load, the lightest lighterage of a wooden vessel for many months. The report has gone forth that to reach Portland a ship must be dragged up a hundred miles or more of river over four bad bars, and at the shipping season lighterage at enormous cost is necessary. Naturally enough, we now have no large ships."
SHIPPING ABUSES AND EXACTIONS.The abuses of the present system of shipping are many and great, and all on the principle of making hay while the sun shines. Hear a shipmaster who published his experiences in October last:
"On the fourth day we got two tugs and crossed the outer bar and anchored in Baker's Bay, where the ship had to be lightened to twenty feet and six inches draught before she could cross the inner bar and reach Astoria. This lighterage cost two dollars per ton, and had to be paid by the ship. As four other ships arrived about that time which required lightering also before they could proceed farther, we were detained at Baker's Bay for nine days, having the expense of a full crew on board all that time. The distance from outside of the outer bar to Astoria is about fourteen miles, for which the towage is $500, pilotage $192, and that was in the middle of a beautiful day, ship also using her own canvas and hawser. I believe this charge is almost equal to salvage. The pilots are hired by the owner of the tugs, who collects the pilotage, paying the pilots $100 a month for their services.... As the pilots have no boat of their own, they are obliged to go in the tugs, which are all owned by one man. I was just fourteen days from the time I anchored off the bar till I reached the dock where I was to discharge cargo, and for towage and pilotage alone from the bar to the dock, paid $1,009."
Portland is the Oregon headquarters of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, a corporation formed by the fertile genius of Mr. Henry Villard in June, 1879, by the amalgamation of the Oregon Steamship Company, owning the ocean-going steamers between San Francisco and Portland, and the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, owning the river-boats plying on the Columbia and Willamette. Here are the termini of the East and West Side Railroads (originally formed by Mr. Ben Holladay, a name very familiar to Oregon ears), but until this spring of 1881 owned and worked by the committee of European bondholders, into whose hands the lines in question fell by virtue of the securities they held. And in Portland also are the head offices in Oregon of the Scotch system of narrow-gauge railroads, now being constructed by means of Scotch capital attracted to the State by the successful working of the land-mortgage company referred to above.
It will be seen, therefore, that there are abundant reasons for predicting that a large portion of the business of Oregon will center in Portland, for many years to come, at any rate. The more cause that Portland men should welcome the development of the other portions of the State, with which in the future profitable business is certain to arise, as new industries are started, existing interests widen and strengthen themselves, and new centers of population and business find their places in the growing State. Time will show whether the sanguine hopes of the Portland people that their city will hold the virtual monopoly of the trade of the Northwest are well founded or not. There can, in my mind, be little doubt that she will have a very formidable rival in the city on Puget Sound which will spring up, as by magic, when the Northern Pacific Railroad there receives and discharges passengers and freight. It will be an evil day for Portland when the wharves at Tacoma find the grain-ships alongside, and the cars pouring in the grain of Eastern Oregon and Washington Territory. And some little effect on her tolls will be produced when Yaquina Bay is opened, and the cars of the Oregon Pacific are there delivering the freight of Middle and Southern Oregon.
Portlanders rely on what they call the concentration of capital to pull them through. They have yet to learn the sensitiveness of the movements of their divinity—how prone she is to follow the current of trade to its points of receipt and delivery. And should that day ever dawn, when figures show her "supremacy" to have departed, not one single sigh will escape these valley counties, which Portland has levied tribute on, and done her best to keep in bondage till the end of time.
UP THE COLUMBIA RIVER.Passing eastward from Portland up the Columbia, in one of the large and comfortable boats of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, a day's journey brings you to the Dalles. I have already mentioned how rapidly this town is growing, as the point of distribution for the greater portion of Northeastern Oregon, and the point of reception for vast quantities of grain, wool, hides, and other productions of that pastoral and agricultural country.
Taking a Willamette River boat, notice in passing the Oswego Iron-Works, seven miles from Portland, and then the village of Milwaukee, with large and well-appointed nurseries, whence many of the orchards of the State have been supplied.
The steamer will then stop at the wharf of Oregon City, just below the great falls of the Willamette. Notice the magnificent river throwing itself over the rocky ridge which shows one or two black points of rock amid the foam of the falls. See the lofty hills on either side, clad with vegetation to their very tops, while the little town is crowded on the narrow strip down by the river on the eastern side. What a water-power is yet running to waste, though lumber-mills, flour-mills, and woolen-mills take their tribute as it passes!
On the west side are the locks. Here the steamer crosses the river from the city, and you get a pretty view of this, one of the earliest settled towns in the State. It dates from the Hudson Bay Company's rule, and the oldest inhabitant can tell you story after story of the early days, when the meetings were held here which virtually determined the allegiance of the infant State.
Iron-ore has been prospected in plenty in these hills above the town, but waits for development.
The Columbia Point below the Dalles.
The Columbia Point below the Dalles.
SALEM.Passing up the river, the next important place we meet is Salem, the capital of the State. The State Capitol stands on elevated ground about a mile back from the river, with a large, green space in front, planted with ornamental trees and shrubs. The scene from the great windows at the back is really grand, Mount Jefferson being in full view, and the line of the Cascades in ridge after ridge displayed in all their beauty. Fronting the Capitol buildings at the other side of the Park are the Court-House and offices of Marion County, also a substantial and handsome pile. On the southern side of the Capitol stand the buildings of the Willamette University.
The town of Salem is now growing. It has the advantage of a splendid water-power, called Mill Creek, which is turned to good account before it reaches the Willamette just below the city. On it are placed the Pioneer Oil-Mills, where linseed-oil and linseed-cake are produced, of excellent quality and moderate price; also a large building now used both as an implement-factory and as a flour-mill; this has lately changed hands, and it is too soon yet to speak of its success. Below this are placed the "Salem Flour-Mills" of Kinney Brothers & Co. Their brand is recognized and approved in all the markets of the world—as it ought to be, if the best of wheat turned into the best of flour, and its sale honestly and intelligently carried out, can command success. The mills are fine buildings, fitted with the most modern and powerful machinery, and stand just on the edge of the Willamette, with a dock where the river-steamers can deliver wheat and receive flour. I believe that this last fall of 1881 they converted 600,000 bushels of wheat into flour. A switch from the Oregon and California Railroad runs from the main line to the mills on the other side, and is proving an immense convenience to the city generally as well as to the mills.
The steamboat pauses on its upward journey at Buena Vista, to take in and deliver freight for the pottery there, already extensive, and which by the excellence of its productions demonstrates that it only needs further capital and enlarged business relations to do an important share of the trade of the coast. The glaze on the ware is very good, made from a mineral earth found in the bank of the Willamette at Corvallis.
After passing the mouth of the Santiam, the most considerable tributary of the Willamette, we stop at Albany. This is one of the best situated and most progressive towns in the State. Although with a little less than two thousand inhabitants at present, it has all the enterprise and "go" of a town in Europe of five times that number. There are here also three large flour-mills, the brands of some of which are known and prized in Liverpool, to which port cargoes are frequently sent.
Albany has a lumber-mill, foundry, twine-mill, and scutching-mill, fruit-drying works, sash and door factory, and soon will have woolen-mills also. The making of the place is the water-power of the Santiam River, brought in a canal for thirteen miles through the level prairie-land, but rushing through the town and supplying the mills and factories with a flow and force of water sufficient for double as many works as at present use it. The town is supplied with water for domestic purposes from the same source, of clearness and purity that it is hard to equal.
Albany has three newspapers, six churches, a very good collegiate school, and excellent common schools. It is a principal station on the Oregon and California Railroad, and also an important station on the Oregon Pacific, now so rapidly building, and its point of crossing the Oregon and California, and a junction for the branch line to Lebanon, away there under the slopes of the Cascades. Land in the neighborhood of the town, and indeed throughout the level portions of Linn County, ranging over an area of nearly twenty miles each way, is worth from twenty-five to sixty dollars an acre—the last sale I heard of, of one hundred and thirty-two acres, about five miles from the town, being at thirty-nine dollars an acre.
CORVALLIS AND EUGENE CITY.The next town we come to is our own Corvallis, appropriately named as the heart of the valley. It is indeed fitly placed as the valley starting-point seaward of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, being on the direct line east and west between Yaquina Bay, the Mount Jefferson Pass through the Cascades, Prineville, in Eastern Oregon, Harney Lake and Valley, the Malheur River and Valley, and Boisé City—the meeting-place in the near future of divers transcontinental lines.
Corvallis has been too fully described in these pages to need further reference here. The commencement of energetic construction of the Oregon Pacific and the assurance of its early completion have given an increased business-life to the place which impresses the visitor strongly with the idea of rapid future growth.
Continuing in our steamboat to the head of the Willamette navigation, we pass the little towns of Peoria and Harrisburg, and at last reach Eugene City. This, which is the chief town of Lane County, is blessed with a university, presided over by excellent professors, one of whom, Professor Condon, has a name and fame as a geologist far beyond the limits of his county and also of the State. I trust the time will soon come when the liberality of the Legislature of Oregon will provide the funds necessary to enable Professor Condon to complete and publish the systematic geology and mineralogy of Oregon, the materials for which are already to a large extent in his possession, the result of years of careful study and journeyings over the State.
Eugene City is a lively, pleasant little town, but has not yet attained any manufacturing or industrial development like some of the other towns in Oregon. This is to come.
Leaving the river for the railroad, we journey up to Roseburg, the capital of Douglas County, and the southern terminus of the Oregon and California line. No town can be more prettily placed, really at the head of the great valley country, with the vast mountain-forms behind frowning on the traveler who dares attempt to thread their passes. As I have said, the Douglas County people trust to get a railroad outlet from Roseburg down to Coos. I hope they will succeed, and so open to ocean-transit the productions of a vast and fertile country.
Turning north again as far as Corvallis, we may there take the West-side Railroad and journey along the western side of the Willamette Valley and River.
The towns of Independence, Dallas, Sheridan, Amity, Lafayette, McMinnville, Forest Grove, and Hillsboro' lie in the district between Corvallis and Portland. Each and all are thriving, but I can do no more than mention them, though I fear so short a reference will be considered scant courtesy to the active, pushing people who are laboring with such success at the development of Polk, Yam Hill, and Washington Counties. The land is almost uniformly good; large quantities are being yearly grubbed and put under the plow, and several of my recently arrived English friends prefer the undulating land and gentle slopes of this side of the valley to any other part of Oregon, and have proved their preference by their actions. Land in these counties varies from ten to twenty-five dollars an acre in price.
COUNTIES: POPULATION, ETC.I think I will close this somewhat tedious chapter by setting out the counties of Oregon, their population, and the statement of their taxable property, furnished by the Secretary of State:
The proportion of taxable property held by each man, woman, and child in Oregon is therefore $277.47.
The population of the valley counties, properly so called, is 83,549—this leaves Portland and Multnomah County entirely out. The taxable property of these valley counties is $23,735,262.
The population of the whole of Eastern Oregon east of the Cascades is but 39,099. The value of its taxable property is only $8,958,724.
The population of that part of Eastern and Northeastern Oregon which is in any sense tributary to the Columbia or Snake Rivers is 28,180. The value of their taxable property is $6,256,547.
The average taxable property of the population of the valley counties is $282.68; that of the population of Eastern Oregon, $228.96.
The Columbia Cascades Landing (Looking up stream).
The Columbia Cascades Landing (Looking up stream).
These figures will be seen to have an important hearing on the subject of the next chapter.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The transportation question—Its importance—Present legal position— Oregon Railway and Navigation Committee's general report—That company —Its ocean-going steamers—Their traffic and earnings—Its river-boats —Their traffic and earnings—Its railroads in existence—Their traffic and earnings—Its new railroads in construction and in prospect—Their probable influence—The Northern Pacific—Terminus on Puget Sound—Its prospects—The East and West Side Railroads—"Bearing" traffic and earnings—How to get "control"—Lands owned by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company—Monopoly—How threatened—The narrow-gauge railroads —Their terminus and working—Efforts to consolidate monopoly—The "blind pool"—Resistance—The Oregon Pacific—Its causes, possessions, and prospects—Land grant and its enemies—The traffic of the valley— Yaquina Bay—Its improvement—The farmers take it in hand—Contrast and comparisons—The two presidents—Probable effects of competition —Tactics in opposition—The Yaquina improvements—Description of works—The prospects for competition and the farmers' gains.
From all that has gone before, the deduction is plain that on the solution of the transportation question in the interests of the fixed and industrious population of the State depends absolutely the growth and prosperity of Oregon. Nature has done her part.
The words of Messrs. George M. Pullman, of Chicago, and William Endicott, Jr., of Boston, in their report of August 1, 1880, to the stockholders of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, will be echoed by every man who is now or has been in Oregon with eyes to see. They wrote as follows:
"Our observations afforded, in the first place, ample confirmation of all we had previously heard and read of the propitious climate, great attractions of scenery, and wonderful agricultural resources of Western and Eastern Oregon, and Eastern Washington Territory. We believe that in these respects those regions are not surpassed, if equaled, by any other portion of the United States. It can, indeed, be safely said that nowhere else in this country do rich soil and mild climate combine to the same degree in insuring such extraordinary results of almost every agricultural pursuit as regards quantity, quality, and regularity of yield.... The striking evidence of past and present growth which we found everywhere, forced at the same time the irresistible conclusion upon us that we were beholding but the beginning of the sure and rapid progress in population, productiveness, and prosperity which will be witnessed in the immediate future within the vast stretch of country watered by the great river Columbia and its numerous tributaries."
The reader of this book will, I think, admit that the facts herein detailed go far to justify the conclusions summed up in these few but carefully chosen words.
How does this transportation question now stand, and what (if any) matters are in progress or contemplation to affect it?
In the first place, the companies are all free to manage their own business in their own way; they charge what they like, favor what persons and places they choose, and load on others burdens heavy to be borne.
I have before indicated what was the purpose of the bill introduced in the Legislature of 1880, to prevent discrimination by common carriers. "The Oregonian" commented on the loss of the measure in these terms: "We present to-day the report of the (hostile) Senate committee on this bill. The report shows why the proposed measure was both an unjust and an impracticable one. It should be apparent to every one that railways never can be operated in this way. The confusion and disorder would be endless; besides, every railroad which is undertaken and constructed as an actual business enterprise is entitled to make fair earnings. Instead of being annoyed by straw railroads got up for speculative purposes, it ought to have protection from such annoyance."
OREGON RAILWAY AND NAVIGATION CO.In further illustration of the working of the present system, I would instance the fact that from Corvallis to Portland for about a year the freight on wheat by the river steamboats of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company has been one dollar a ton, and of this fifty cents had to be paid for passing the locks at Oregon City; the rate immediately previous to this was three dollars and a half. This ridiculously low rate was put on in order to destroy the traffic of the East and West Side Railroads, and is in strong contrast with the rate from Corvallis to Junction City, some twenty miles up the river, where no such reasons existed, and which stood through this period at about tenfold the one-dollar rate.
No sooner did the President of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company think he had secured "control" of the two railroads, than steps were prepared to quadruple the previous rate. The question of "control" stood adjourned, and the one-dollar rate was confirmed. But, having seen reason to think his acquisition secure, the rates from Portland to Corvallis (ninety-seven miles by railroad), both by railroads and steamboats, have just now (April, 1881) been raised to six dollars per ton—a rate equal to that charged in the infancy of the business, twenty years ago.
The lion's share of the carrying business of the State is in the hands of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and with them are closely identified the hopes of the city of Portland. This company owns two of the steamers plying between Portland and San Francisco—the Oregon and the Columbia. With these two steamers, or with the George W. Elder as the predecessor of the Columbia, they carried from the 1st of July, 1879, to the 30th of June, 1880, 17,333 passengers, and 101,661 tons of freight. The gross receipts were $636,888; the net profits, $286,459. As we know from the published circular of Mr. Villard, the president, that the cost of the Columbia was $400,000, and the Oregon is a smaller and decidedly less expensive ship, the proportion of net earnings of the vessels in question to their total cost will be seen to be about enough to pay ten per cent. per annum on their cost, and to buy the vessels out and out in three years and a half. The fare from Portland to San Francisco, even while these earnings were being made, stood at twenty dollars the first-class passenger. News has just arrived that these fares are to be raised to thirty dollars a head. If the same rate of expense is maintained as during last year, the earnings at the higher figure now put on will be increased by about $100,000, and enough will be realized to pay for the fleet in about two years and a half.
With twenty-five steamboats (stern-wheelers) navigating the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, and twelve barges and two scows (several of the boats being old, and laid up in ordinary much of the time, reducing thus materially the fleet in real service), the company earned $1,992,836 gross, and $1,101,766 net profit. If $50,000 is deducted for the earnings of the barges, it will be seen that the average net earnings of the twenty-five river-steamers are positively $44,070 each. The fleet could be replaced for less than the sum of the net profit of one year. Like Oliver, "asking for more," they are positively raising these freights also!
RAILROAD ALONG THE COLUMBIA.The railroad possessions of the company for the year in question consisted of but forty-eight miles, and of these the line from Walla Walla to Wallula on the upper Columbia, a distance of about thirty miles, was the longest; the other two being short strips of portage railroad round the Cascades or rapids on the Columbia. The passengers carried were 12,588; the tons of freight, 72,149; and the net profits, $269,004, or $5,604 a mile.
The company is engaged in constructing a line of railroad along the south bank of the Columbia; the portion from Celilo (the upper end of the rapids, at the lower end of which the town of the Dalles is situated) to Wallula, just over the Washington Territory border, a distance of one hundred and fifteen miles, is just completed. The line is being extended to the city of Portland, the works between the Dalles and the western end of the pass through the Cascade Mountains being of the most severe and expensive character. At least two tunnels and mile after mile of blasting and cutting through solid rock, where the mountains tower perpendicular above, would inspire dismay in the soul of any ordinary railroad-man.
But the word has gone forth that the road has to follow what is facetiously called the pass of the Columbia through the Cascades, and doubtless it will be done. Several thousand Chinamen are at work; steam-drills are busy perforating the rocks; scows have to be moored alongside in the river (there not being even room for the track between mountain and water), while the perpendicular faces of the cliffs are being tormented and torn. And thus about seventy miles of construction of this nature have to be got through. When completed, of course, the result will be at once to transfer nearly all of as many of the 117,000 passengers as traveled in the company's boats on the Columbia, to the cars; and a vast quantity of the freight must follow the same route.
Columbia, above the Lower Cascade.
Columbia, above the Lower Cascade.
But another factor is intended shortly to come into play. The Northern Pacific Railroad is vigorously at work, and in a year or two will compete with the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company for the Washington Territory and extreme Eastern Oregon trade. The passengers and freight intrusted to the Northern Pacific line will be carried from Wallula, the Columbia River point above referred to, to Tacoma, on Puget Sound. By this route a saving of one hundred and fifty-one miles in actual distance will be effected, and the traffic will reach the deep and still waters of Puget Sound, far away from the troubles and stickings of the Willamette and Columbia mouths, and the delays, dangers, and expenses of the Columbia bar. It is true that before this result is gained the line must cross the Cascade Mountains, but it is well known that a pass at less than thirty-four hundred feet exists, and the engineers have no doubt whatever that this piece of road will keep pace with the rest to the port.
HOW TO GET "CONTROL."Mark now another feature in the case. The East and West Side Railroads on either side of the Willamette River compete with the boats of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company for the trade of the Willamette Valley. The railroads naturally divert the passenger traffic almost entirely, and carry a large quantity of freight. They would carry more and earn a fair profit for their owners, the German and English bondholders, but, instead of a fair competition, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, as I have said, put down the freights from Corvallis downward to Portland on grain to one dollar per ton—of course, an impossible rate for either river or railroad to profit by.
Why is this? Because what Mr. Villard calls the "control" of these railroads is vitally necessary to the future continuance of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company's stocks in their exalted dividends and consequent enormous market value. Therefore, it is sought now to destroy the earning powers of these railroads, to force the owners into succumbing to the "policy of control."
One more step. The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company owns practically no land—that is to say, it is interested speculatively in the rise of value in property in Portland by having invested a large sum (I believe $199,000) in the purchase of 484 acres of land in and near the city. But, outside this and its railroad-track, the company owns altogether about 3,055 acres of land in scattered pieces, only about 850 acres of which lie in Oregon; the rest in Washington Territory, and a bit or two in Idaho. We will not omit to mention its wharves at the various stopping-places of the boats, as they represent the expenditure of a considerable sum. Once again: if anything at all is clear, it is that the inflated value of this company's securities depends solely on the continuance of their monopoly. I have shown that on the Columbia River this is threatened by the Northern Pacific, and also by themselves in effect, by the substitution of the costly railroad line for the inexpensive boats, and the consequent devotion of both investments, namely, that in the boats and that in the railroad, to the same traffic, which the competition of the Northern Pacific is certain to reduce in gross volume.
Now turn to the Willamette Valley traffic, and scrutinize the position there. Not only is there the existing competition of the railroads, which is fatal, so long as it is genuine, to the earning of large profits from the north and south traffic of the valley, both in passengers and goods, but here come in two competitors more.
The Scotch narrow-gauge system also centers everything in Portland, and has succeeded, after a hard fight with the city authorities, in securing a large tract of land for depot or terminal purposes. It had the audacity to claim a right of way right through the tract purchased by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and, under the law of eminent domain as it exists in Oregon, it would have got it, ay, and used it, too, with but scant regard for the feelings of the high and mighty corporation which had marked it for their own. But a working arrangement was with much difficulty made, by which the Scotch line runs, free of charge, alongside the other, right through its land, to the terminus of the narrow-gauge.
This Scotch line has put boats on the Willamette also. They ply between Ray's Landing, about seventeen miles up the Willamette, and Portland. The narrow-gauge also has an East-side and a West-side line through the Willamette Valley. The East-side line runs north and south a short distance from the foothills of the Cascades, and has now got as far as Brownsville, about one hundred and twenty miles from Portland. Their West-side line runs through the rich farming country in Polk County by Dallas to Sheridan, and a junction with the Western Oregon broad-gauge near by. This is also an ambitious company, who are pushing surveys across the Cascade Range.
The narrow-gauge system is yet by no means complete, but, when it is, it will become at once a very dangerous rival both to the East and West Side roads, and also to the boats of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company on the Willamette.
So seriously did Mr. Villard feel the impending danger that it is no secret in Oregon that a confidential agent was dispatched by him to Scotland, to endeavor to put the Scotch investors out of conceit with their property, and, failing that, he attempted to secure some of their stock, so as to gain a footing inside their camp. But there also he failed.
THE "BLIND POOL."Shortly before these pages were written, occurred the episode of what is known in financial circles in America as "the blind pool." Mr. Villard caused it to be known among his circle of followers that he desired the use of eight million dollars. According to statements made on his authority, he not only secured it, but in all fifteen millions were offered him. Quietly and secretly he used the eight millions in buying up stock of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the New York market, nor did he show his hand until he had thus secured twenty-seven millions par value of the stock of that road. When his great gun was thus loaded, he discharged it full at the head of Mr. Billings, the president of the Northern Pacific, and those directors who had loyally coöperated with him in the reorganization of the company and the redemption of its securities from the chaos into which they had fallen following the Jay Cooke failure. And the invader boldly claimed that he had secured the "control" of that company too, and proposed to oust the president, to install a representative of the "blind pool."
But an unexpected check was met. It seems that part of the reconstituted stock of the company, amounting to eighteen million dollars, was as yet in the treasury of the company, but was the property of divers persons who had coöperated in or assented to the reconstruction. This being issued, as Mr. Billings and his friends claim, in fulfillment of engagements long since entered into, displaced the center of gravity, and caused it to incline heavily toward the Billings section. A vociferous outcry was of course heard; the courts were appealed to; and the result of what promises to be a long and costly litigation remains to be seen.
Even without the entrance on the field of the new forces I am about to describe, the position of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company appears to be a very perilous one.
Under the chieftainship of Mr. Villard, who was no novice at the art of playing with railroad companies as counters in the game of "beggar-my-neighbor," a vast amount of Eastern capital was taken up by the aid of the enormous profits earned by the previously existing Oregon Steamship and Oregon Steam Navigation Company. Then followed naturally an era of really delusive prosperity, while the expenditure of this capital in substituting the new lamps of costly railroads for the magical old lamps of stern-wheel steamboats was going on.
But, in order to secure this capital, it was necessary to publish to the world the enormous profits the earlier companies were making. The effects were twofold and immediate. One was to open the eyes of the farmers of Oregon to the fact that they were paying for the transport to market of their crops sums utterly disproportionate to the cost and risk of the services rendered. And thus it was certain that ere long measures would be taken in the Legislature of Oregon, similar in purport to those adopted in other States, to check and curb the power of discrimination, which was the engine used to force the traffic on to the boats and trains of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The measure to that end introduced in the session of the Legislature of 1880 was, it is true, defeated by the strenuous efforts of the company, aided by their Portland friends. But that success was dearly bought, and the process was so patent as to awaken the farmers, with whom the real power dwells, in a fashion that will soon be felt.
YAQUINA BAY.The other result, equally inevitable, was to call into active life plans, long in preparation, for constructing an east and west line across the State, relying on Yaquina Bay as the outport, and on the trade of the Willamette Valley as the mainstay of the road.
But the enterprise had other features to recommend it. The Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad Company had been originated four or five years back by the farmers of the valley to construct a railroad between Corvallis and Yaquina Bay. It had obtained a charter from the Legislature giving it authority to extend its line across the State to the eastern boundary, at a point directlyen routeto Boisé City, Idaho.
This had been long ago marked out as the probable limit where connection either with a branch from the Union Pacific Railroad, or with some other road pushing westward to the ocean, might be made.
The Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad received in its charter from the State immunity from taxation for twenty years, and also a grant of all the rich tide and overflowed lands in Benton County, amounting to probably upward of one hundred thousand acres.
Not content with this, the framer of this scheme had obtained the right of purchase, on the basis of value of land in Eastern Oregon ten years ago, of the grant of lands in aid of the construction of the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountains Military Wagon-road, amounting to eight hundred and fifty thousand acres. A sketch of the history of this road has been given before in these pages, and of the character of the country through which it runs.
The vital force of the Oregon Pacific Company, which was formed and brought before the world in the autumn of 1880 to complete and operate the Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad, lay in the advantage of position in its central line, cutting Oregon in half, and thereby attracting traffic to it from both sides, and also in the solid backing of about nine hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, stretching across the State from east to west, and which was certain to rise four-fold at least in value by the construction of the railroad through it.
The first hundred and thirty miles of the road pass through Benton and Linn Counties, which together produce about one half, and, with the adjoining counties of Polk and Marion on the north and the county of Lane on the south, fully three quarters of the wheat-crop of Oregon.
It was estimated by a committee formed in these counties, who investigated the subject thoroughly, that not less than one hundred and eighty thousand tons of grain, and other freight to the amount of fifty thousand tons or more, would seek an outlet over this road, from these valley counties, on the basis of the crop of 1878. The subsequent increase in acreage under crops would give not less than three hundred thousand acres instead of two hundred and fifty thousand, at a very moderate estimate. The inward freight may be taken at one half of the outward bound, thus giving four hundred and fourteen thousand tons which the new road would be called on to transport.
These figures raised the ire of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and of some of its Portland friends, and their abuse called forth a reinvestigation of the whole subject, which resulted in thorough confirmation of the estimates.
OREGON PACIFIC RAILROAD.The Oregon Pacific proposed, as soon as open for business, to lower the seven dollars a ton, the previous average charge of the other company on valley freight to San Francisco, to three dollars and a half, and the twenty-four dollars for first-class passengers and fourteen dollars for emigrant passengers to one half of those figures. And it showed a very large probable dividend on its capital, on those reduced figures. The reasonableness of this will be seen by reference to the enormous earnings of the other company.
The whole question turned, of course, on the practicability of so improving the entrance to Yaquina Bay that heavy-laden ships of deep draught could enter to deliver and receive cargo.
The valley farmers and traders, to the number of thirty-four hundred, petitioned Congress to appropriate $240,000 for these works. Strenuous efforts in support of this petition at Washington, in the session of 1880, sufficed to overcome the opposition of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and the prayer was granted in principle, but only in extent to $40,000, after the fashion in such cases.
But the careful surveys and investigations of the United States engineers, which were at once undertaken, justified the hopes of the people and of those interested in the railroad, and very early in 1881 the works for the improvement were begun.
Application was made to Congress in the winter session of 1880-'81 to appropriate $200,000 more for the works; but only $10,000 were granted, although the Legislature of Oregon had, in their session of 1880, by formal resolution, unanimously supported the application for $200,000.
But the farmers of the valley counties were at last roused to vigorous action, and, under the presidency of the Linn County Grange and its officers, are raising a large fund by subscription, to continue without interruption the harbor-works until additional appropriations are made by Congress. The subscription will not only serve to keep the harbor-works in vigorous progress, but demonstrates the subscribers' conviction of the success of the efforts made for the completion of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, and their active and personal interest in such success.
PROBABLE EFFECTS OF COMPETITION.And now the full force of the figures given in the last chapter is seen. So far as the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company depends on Oregon for its support, it must come from counties the population of which is but 28,180, and the value of their taxable property, in 1880, only $6,256,547; the proportion of property for each inhabitant being $228.96, or nearly twenty per cent. below the average for the State.
The Oregon Pacific will draw its present support from the valley counties, with a population of 83,549, and taxable property of $23,735,262, each about four-fold greater. Their average property is $282.68 per head, or about two per cent. above the rate for the whole State.
If it be argued that the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company bases its hopes for maintaining its high dividends on its enlarged capital; on the development of Eastern Oregon in population and productions, which is in rapid progress—I reply that the same considerations apply with vastly increased force to the district served by the Oregon Pacific. The latter relies not only on the fertile lands on the western side of the Cascades, unequaled in the whole United States for attractiveness to immigrants of the better class, but it also asserts its undoubted claim to profit from the settlement of the broad stretch of country, also in Eastern Oregon, through which its line runs in its eastward course.
If stress is laid on the advantage of the established position of Portland for the headquarters of the one road, the scale kicks the beam when the one hundred and ten miles of towage and pilotage, the probable delays in the rivers, the certain dangers and difficulties of the Columbia bar, are weighed against the saving of two hundred and twenty-one miles in actual distance, and the short course of but three miles from the ocean to the wharves at Yaquina.
TACTICS IN OPPOSITION.If Mr. Villard has displayed his cleverness in laying hold of established profits and turning them to the enormous gain of himself and of those friends of his who have followed his lead, I can here do but partial justice to the foresight and energy of Colonel T. Egenton Hogg, whose clear judgment realized the necessity and the many advantages of the Yaquina route ten years ago, who has fought through unnumbered difficulties and a bitter and envenomed opposition toward its attainment, and who has secured in so doing the hearty support of the backbone and sinew of Oregon life, which trust to the Oregon Pacific to set free the commerce of the State.
Let it not be supposed that the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company is foredoomed to failure, or to immediately explode and go out like a rocket. According to my ideas, it may have a moderately prosperous future, bringing down to Portland a certain quantity of freight and passengers from the upper country, and an increasing quantity as that country develops. But to suppose that on its enlarged capital it will be allowed to go on earning dividends at the same preposterous rate as heretofore its boats have made for it, is to insult the common-sense alike of the Oregon farmer and of the capitalist looking now more eagerly than ever for profitable and safe investment.
One other point deserves attention. The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company owns practically no land (except its building-land speculation in Portland); therefore, when these competing lines come into play, and traffic rates are consequently reduced over all the State, its dividend-producing power is gone.
The other lines can follow it down and down in any war of rates so far as the Oregon Railway and Navigation lines see fit to venture. Such tactics would be absolute madness in California, as by its new Constitution rates once lowered can not be raised again. But suppose the war of rates is begun in Oregon. The Northern Pacific, when completed according to law, will save one hundred and fifty-one miles in distance, and deliver freight and passengers at deep water on Puget Sound. The narrow-gauge roads and boats together can carry more cheaply than the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The valley standard-gauge railroads and the Oregon Pacific share with the Northern Pacific this tremendous advantage, that every dollar they lose on transportation is only invested at enormous profit in the rise and value of their lands. It is the cost of transportation that keeps down value on their lands; lower this, and land rises at once.
Nor is it to be supposed for an instant that the same tactics by which it has been attempted to prevent, hamper, or delay the building of the Oregon Pacific Railroad will long succeed.
Shortly after the prospectus of that railroad was issued, there appeared in "The Oregonian," of Portland, three columns of abuse over the signature of "Examiner." The writer described himself as a citizen of Oregon, anxious to avoid delusion and disaster to the Eastern public.
The whole was telegraphed or mailed long in advance back to New York, and appeared in a garbled and still more contemptible form as a circular, professing to be reprinted from "The Oregonian," as if from the editor's chair of that paper. New York was flooded with the copies. Fortunately, it was easy enough to repel the attack, since the chief points were that the Eastern Oregon lands were worthless, and the statements of the Willamette Valley trade exaggerated. And on both points ample, even overwhelming, evidence was at hand.
THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS ROAD.Then, by what hidden influences it is of course impossible to say, the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Schurz, was set in motion on the allegation that the Cascade Mountains road had never been made, and that consequently the United States had been imposed upon fourteen years ago when Congress granted the lands to the State of Oregon, and that State defrauded in turn ten years ago when, on certificates of due completion satisfactory to the then officials of the State, the lands were duly confirmed to the wagon-road company.
Thereupon, without inquiry as to the facts from the State officials of Oregon, or from the road company or their representatives, who had all the evidence in their possession—without one word of notice to any of the parties concerned—a man named Prosser, then residing at Seattle, and occupied in repressing unwarranted timber-cutting on Government lands in that neighborhood, was dispatched to professedly examine into the condition of things. His journey; the narrative of his duplicity; of his inducing the president of the road company, in the innocence of his heart, to fit him out and to lend him all the money for his expenses; of his return and interviews with the citizens of Albany; of his subsequent report that no road existed where upward of five thousand wagons and innumerable droves of cattle and of passengers on foot and horseback had passed without accident for ten years; of his allegations of the trivial cost of the works, met by the evidence of the outlay of about $100,000 on the construction and repairs of the road; of the storm of indignation which swept through Linn County, and found expression wherever the facts were known—all these things form an amusing chapter in the history of this transaction.
The Congressional committee, to whom the matter was referred, reported, as might be expected, that Congress had no jurisdiction; that, so far as they could see, the present owners, being innocent purchasers, had good title to the lands; and that, if there were to be any attempt made to disturb them, it must be a judicial and not a legislative matter.
Meanwhile an action of ejectment had been brought by the purchasers from the road company of the land grant, in the United States District Court at Portland, against a squatter on the land, whose letters of old date to the Commissioner of the Land-Office had been made the pretext for the course taken by the Secretary of the Interior. Every opportunity was given for raising in court the question of no road; but the defendant dared not accept the challenge, and Judge Deady rendered judgment for the owners of the land grant, and so settled the question for good and all, so far as I can see. His judgment was masterly and exhaustive, and I should think would convince any candid mind.
Thus ends this act in the drama, with the position of the Oregon Pacific confirmed at every point, and the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company with a very pretty quarrel on their hands with the Northern Pacific, and an impending competition, at which the farmers of the State rejoice.
And so the transportation question in Oregon is in a fair way to be settled in a manner consonant with justice and honesty, so that produce will be charged only what is commensurate in fair measure with the cost and risk of the service rendered, and not in the opposite direction of what the producer can bear.
THE YAQUINA IMPROVEMENTS.Before I close this subject, let me describe very shortly the principle and method of the harbor improvement at Yaquina.
The problem is this: In the harbor is a sheet of tidal water running up more than twenty miles inland, and in the bay or harbor proper expanding into a width of about three miles. To the tidal water has to be added that brought down by the Yaquina River and its tributaries in a course of fifty miles or thereabout. The deep-water channel to the ocean through which this inflow and outflow are repeated twice every twenty-four hours is deep and narrow, and the current very swift. Thus, this channel of a quarter of a mile wide between the headlands on either side of the mouth does not vary appreciably in width or depth, and requires no attention.
Just where the mouth opens to the ocean is the reef, of soft sandstone rock, rising in intervals of separate rocks to within ten or eleven feet of low-water mark—that is to say, each of the three channels through the reef, north, middle, and south, gives this depth of water. But here the water, which has kept clear and deep the channel of a quarter of a mile wide or thereabout, expands to a width of about two miles. Consequently, the current is not sufficiently strong in any one of the three channels to prevent the piling of the sand against the rock outside and in, in a gentle rise from the forty-feet depth outside to the height of the rocky reef, and similarly from the thirty feet inside the reef.
The engineers propose, by a jetty from the south beach to a group of rocks forming the south side of the middle channel, to extend the narrow deep channel inside, and the consequent force of concentrated tidal and river water, up to the rocky reef itself. They judge that the tidal force is ample to scour away clean all the sand deposited both in and outside the reef. They propose, then, to blast away the rock itself from the middle channel, which, as the obstruction is both soft and narrow, will be neither a difficult nor costly operation, and they intend thus to open to the commerce of the world the calm and deep waters of the harbor, which will suffice to receive all the fleet of vessels trading to this coast.
The construction of the jetty is proceeding rapidly by means of large mattresses of brushwood sunk in the destined position, loaded with rock and attracting and retaining the sand, and covered in, when the needed breadth and height are gained, with larger rocks brought down from a quarry of hard stone about eight miles up the harbor.
No one who, like the present writer, has often tried to stem the tidal current sweeping out to sea, can doubt the force and velocity it will bring to bear; and no one familiar with Yaquina doubts the anticipated success of the improvement. Once gained, it will be permanent, and then half an hour will suffice to tug the arriving vessel from the deep waters of the Pacific to her station alongside her wharf, and the same time will dispatch her, fully loaded, on her voyage.
To sum up this matter: At present a very large portion of the profits of farming and of other industries in Oregon goes into the pockets of the transportation company. The rates of freight bear no proportion to the benefits obtained, but are fixed simply on the principle of sitting down to pencil out a list to see how much the farmers can possibly pay. If this state of things were to be indefinitely perpetuated, the outlook would be dreary. That a radical change is impending is to me clear. The country is too rich in productive powers, the citizens are too fully awake to the needs of their position, the knowledge of what Oregon is and what she wants is too widely spread, and the president of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company has trumpeted forth the enormous profits of his corporation too loudly, for the failure of the efforts now in progress to introduce competition in the carrying-trade. So that I, for one, am at rest as to the result. Oregon will take her own part in the general movement, now current throughout the United States, to regulate, if not to curtail, the powers of the corporations.
But I have confidence in the steady and peaceful character of her population not to carry this matter here to extremes, which might unduly burden associated capital, and check the flow of its full current to our State.