Two Years in Oregon Part 23

The valley farmers and traders, to the number of thirty-four hundred, pet.i.tioned Congress to appropriate $240,000 for these works. Strenuous efforts in support of this pet.i.tion 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.

[Sidenote: _PROBABLE EFFECTS OF COMPEt.i.tION._]

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 cla.s.s, but it also a.s.serts 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.

[Sidenote: _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 quant.i.ty of freight and pa.s.sengers from the upper country, and an increasing quant.i.ty 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 Const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sengers 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.

[Sidenote: _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 pa.s.sengers on foot and horseback had pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle 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 compet.i.tion, 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.

[Sidenote: _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 antic.i.p.ated 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 compet.i.tion 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 a.s.sociated capital, and check the flow of its full current to our State.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Emigration to Oregon--Who should not come--Free advice and no fees-- English emigrants--Farmers--Haste to be rich--Quoted experiences--Cost and ways of coming--Sea-routes--Railroads--Baggage--What not to bring --What not to forget--Heavy property--The Custom-house--San Francisco hotels--Conclusion.

The question most often asked and most difficult to answer is, "Do you advise me to come out to Oregon?" It is easy to say who should not come. We want no waifs and strays of civilization, enervated with excesses, or depressed with failure; men who can find no niche for themselves, who have neither the habit, the disposition, nor the education for work. We want none of those youngsters who have tried this, have failed in that, until their friends say in disgust, "Oh, ship them to Oregon, and let them take their chances!" We desire no younger sons of English or Eastern parents without energy or capital to start them. High birth, aristocratic connections, we value not at all, unless they carry with them the sense of responsibility to honored forefathers--the determination that the stigma of failure shall not stain a proud name. Nor do we desire those young men whose first thought is, "How shall we amuse ourselves?" and whose first aim is the cricket, or base-ball, or lawn-tennis ground, and whose chief luggage is bat, fishing-rod, and shot-gun.

And, on the other hand, we do not want those who, having qualified themselves, as they suppose, for life in Oregon by six months or a year with some scientific farmer, consider that they know everything, despise instruction, neglect advice, are wiser than their elders, and then throw up in disgust as soon as they find that they have sunk their money, that their theories will not work, and that they must here as elsewhere begin at the beginning.

Nor do we propose (and we are certain it is in no way necessary) to charge new-comers an initiation fee of two hundred and fifty dollars, or any other sum, for the privilege of joining our society in Oregon, and profiting by our experience.

And, as I began by saying, the English who have come here have established no colony, in the usual sense, set up no separate society, and claim no common corporate life.

[Sidenote: _WHO SHOULD COME._]

Society we have, a.s.sociation we have, common amus.e.m.e.nts and pursuits we have, but in all these we invite our American neighbors to take their part, and see no reason to regret our course.

True it is that the costume of knickerbockers and gaiters and heather-suit and pot-hat is a very common object in our town, and that we meet in considerable force at the Episcopal church on Sunday to join in the familiar service. But we adhere to our original plan that the newcomer shall settle where he pleases in these counties, shall have the best advice we can bestow in the choice of land, the purchase of stock and implements, and of the other necessaries for a farmer's start in life; and shall have this free of charge. We offer the right hand of friendship; we will do our part to keep up a.s.sociation and kindly relations of all kinds.

But we are more anxious that Oregon should be built up by the gradual incoming of men of serious purpose, possessed of moderate capital, who shall disperse over the face of the country as they would at home, and strengthen the State by the force of attraction each will exercise over the friends and acquaintances he has left behind, than we are to create here a bit of interjected foreign life.

Therefore let the farmer, above all, tried and worried at home by fickle seasons, heavy rent, burdensome t.i.the and taxes, labor-troubles, low prices, and gradually fading capital--let him bring his wife and children and come. His few hundred pounds will make a good many dollars, and he will be amazed to find himself _owning_ productive land for about the sum he would have paid for two years' rent at home.

If his means do not permit him to pay down the whole purchase price, he is one of the very few who can be safely advised to begin to some extent in debt; for, remember, land in Oregon is expected to pay for itself from its own productions in five years' time.