Part 23 (1/2)

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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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.