FOOTNOTE:
[19] Since died at the age of 97.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
I come now to a period of my life, as one might say, on the border land between pioneer days of the old Oregon country and of the later development of the younger territory and this giant State bearing the great name of the father of our country.
An account of these ventures follows in the order of their occurrence.
MY HOP VENTURE.
The public, generally, give me the credit of introducing hop culture into the Northwest.
As this business created such a stir in the world's market, and made the Puyallup Valley famous, and as my name has become so prominently connected with hop culture, I can hardly pass this episode of my life by without notice. As I say elsewhere, this should not properly be called a venture, although the violent fluctuations of prices made it hazardous. But I can truly say, that for twenty-two years' successive crops, I did not raise a single crop upon which I lost money, and that for that many years I added each year some acreage to my holdings. But few hop-growers, however, can say so much as to losses incurred.
A history of the establishment and destruction of the business follows:
About the fifteenth of March, 1865, Chas. Wood, of Olympia, sent about three pecks of hop roots to Steilacoom for my father, Jacob R. Meeker, who then lived on his claim nearby where Sumner was afterwards built in the Puyallup Valley. John V. Meeker, my brother, carried this sack of roots on his back from Steilacoom to my father's home, a distance of about twenty miles, passing by my cabin (the remains of which are still standing in Pioneer Park, Puyallup) with his precious burden. I fingered out of the sack roots sufficient to plant six hills of hops, and so far as I know those were the first hops planted in the Puyallup Valley. My father planted the remainder in four rows of about six rods in length, and in the following September harvested the equivalent of one bale of hops, 180 pounds, and sold them to Mr. Wood for 85 cents per pound, receiving a little over $150.00.
One Group of Five of Ezra Meeker's Hop Houses.
This was the beginning of the hop business in the Puyallup Valley, and the Territory of Washington.
This was more money than had been received by any settler in the Puyallup Valley, excepting perhaps two, from the products of their farm for that year. My father's nearby neighbors, Messrs. E. C. Mead and L. F. Thompson, obtained a barrel of hop roots from California the next year, and planted them the following spring—four acres. I obtained what roots I could get that year, but not enough to plant an acre. The following year (1867) I planted four acres, and for twenty-six successive years thereafter added to this plantation until our holdings reached past the five-hundred-acre mark, and our production over four hundred tons a year.
After having produced his third crop my father died (1869), but not until after he had shipped his hops to Portland, Oregon. In settling up his affairs I found it necessary for me to go to Portland, and there met Henry Winehard, who had purchased some of the hops. Mr. Winehard, was the largest brewer in Oregon. After closing up the business with Mr. Winehard, he abruptly said, "I want your hops next year." I answered that I did not know what the price would be. He said, "I will pay you as much as anybody else," and then frankly told me of their value. He said they were the finest hops he had ever used, and that with them he had no need to use either foreign or New York hops, but with the hops raised in the hotter climate of California, he could not use them alone. I told him he should have them, and the result was that for fourteen years, with the exception of one year, Mr. Winehard used the hops grown on my place, some years 200 bales, some years more. My meeting with him gave me such confidence in the business that I did not hesitate to add to my yards as rapidly as I could get the land cleared, for I had at first planted right among the stumps. There came a depression in this business in 1869 and 1870, and my neighbors, Messrs. Mead and Thompson, made the mistake of shipping their hops to Australia, and finally lost their entire crop—not selling for much, if anything, above the cost of the freight, while Mr. Winehard paid me 25 cents a pound for my crop. Under the discouragement of the loss of their crop, Messrs. Mead and Thompson concluded to plow up a part of their plantation—two acres and a half—whereupon I leased that portion of their yard for a year, paying them $10.00 an acre in advance, and harvested from those two acres and a half over four thousand pounds of hops, and sold them to Henry Winehard for 50 cents a pound. This was for the crop of 1871.
None of us knew anything about the hop business, and it was totally accidental that we engaged in it, but seeing that there were possibilities of great gain, I took extra pains to study up the question, and found that by allowing our hops to mature thoroughly and curing them at a low temperature, and baling them while hot, we could produce a hop that would compete with any product in the world. Others of my neighbors planted, and also many in Oregon, until there soon became a field for purchasing and shipping hops.
But the fluctuations were so great that in a few years many became discouraged and lost their holdings, until finally, during the world's hop crop failure of the year 1882, there came to be unheard-of prices for hops, and fully one-third of the crop of the Puyallup Valley was sold for $1.00 per pound. I had that year nearly 100,000 pounds, which averaged me 70 cents per pound.
About this time I had come to realize that the important market for hops was in England, and began sending trial shipments, first, seven bales, then the following year 500 bales, then 1,500 bales, until finally our annual shipments reached 11,000 bales a year, or the equivalent in value of £100,000—half million dollars—said to be at that time the largest export hop trade by any one concern in the United States.
This business could not properly be called a venture; it was simply a growth. The conditions were favorable in that we could produce the choicest hops in the world's market at the lowest price of any kind, and we actually did press the English growers so closely that over fifteen thousand acres of hops were destroyed in that country.
My first hop house was built in 1868—a log house—and stands in Pioneer Park, Puyallup, to this day, and is carefully preserved by the city authorities and doubtless will be until it perishes by the hand of time. We frequently employed from a thousand to twelve hundred people during the harvest time. Until the beginning of the decline of the business, the result of that little start of hop roots had brought over twenty million dollars into the Territory of Washington.
I spent four winters in London on the hop market, and became acquainted with all the leading hop men of the metropolis.
One evening as I stepped out of my office, and cast my eyes towards one group of our hop houses, I thought I could see that the hop foliage of a field nearby was off color—did not look natural. Calling one of my clerks from the office he said the same thing—they did not look natural. I walked down to the yards, a quarter of a mile distant, and there first saw the hop-louse. The yard was literally alive with lice, and were destroying—at least the quality. At that time I issued a hop circular, sending it to over 600 correspondents all along the coast in California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and before the week was out. I began to receive samples and letters from them, and inquiries asking what was the matter with the hops.
It transpired that the attack of lice was simultaneous in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, extending over a distance coastwise of more than 500 miles, and even inland up the Skagit River, where there was an isolated yard.
It came like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky, so unexpected was it.
I sent my second son, Fred Meeker, to London to study the question and to get their methods of fighting the pest, and to import some spraying machinery. We found, however, in the lapse of years, to our cost, that the conditions here were different, that while we could kill the louse, the foliage was so dense that we had to use so much spraying material that, in killing the louse, we virtually destroyed the hops, and instead of being able to sell our hops at the top price of the market, our product fell to the foot of the list, the last crop I raised costing me eleven cents per pound, and selling for three under the hammer at sheriff's sale.
At that time I had more than $100,000.00 advanced to my neighbors and others upon their hop crops, which was lost. These people simply could not pay, and I forgave the debt, taking no judgments against them, and have never regretted the action.
All of my accumulations were swept away, and I quit the business, or, rather, the business quit me.
The result was that finally, after a long struggle, nearly all of the hops were plowed up and the land used for dairy, fruit and general crops and is actually now of a higher value than when bearing hops.
A curious episode occurred during the height of our struggle to save the hop business from impending destruction. The Post-Intelligencer of Seattle published the following self-explanatory correspondence on the date shown and while the Methodist conferences were yet in session:
THE CURSE ON THE HOPS.
Puyallup, Sept. 6, 1895.
To the Editor:
In this morning's report of the Methodist conference I notice under the heading "A Curse on the Hop Crop", that Preacher Hanson, of Puyallup, reported he had some good news from that great hop country—the hop crop, the main support of the people, was a failure; the crop had been cursed by God. Whereupon Bishop Bowman said "Good" and from all over the room voices could be heard giving utterance to the fervent ejaculation, "Thank God."
For the edification of the reverend fathers and fervent brethren I wish to publish to them and to the world that I have beat God, for I have 500 acres of hops at Puyallup and Kent that are free from lice, the "curse of God," and that I believe it was the work of an emulsion of whale oil soap and quassie sprayed on the vines that thwarted God's purpose to "curse" me and others who exterminated the lice.
One is almost ready to ask if this is indeed the nineteenth century of enlightenment, to hear such utterances gravely made by men supposed to be expounders of that great religion of love as promulgated by the Great Teacher.
I want to recall to the memory of the Rev. Mr. Hanson that the church in which he has been preaching for a year past was built in great part by money contributed from gains of this business "cursed by God." For myself I can inform him that, as a citizen of Puyallup, I contributed $400, to buy the ground upon which that church edifice is built, every cent of which came from this same hop business "cursed by God." I would "thank God" if they would return the money and thus ease their guilty consciences.
E. MEEKER.
When this letter appeared, vigorous protests came thick and fast and compelled the good fathers to give Mr. Hanson another charge. But my vainglorious boasting was not justified as the sequel shows; our hops were finally destroyed—whether under a curse or not must be decided by the reader, each for himself or herself. But I never got my $400.00 back, and, in fact, did not want it, and doubtless wrote the letter in a pettish mood.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE BEET SUGAR VENTURE.
A more proper heading, I think, would be "Sugar Beet Raising," but everybody at the time spoke of it the other way, and so it shall be. I did raise hundreds of tons of sugar beets, and fed them to the dairy, but had only enough of them manufactured to get half a ton of sugar, which was exhibited at the New Orleans exposition—the second year of the exposition—and probably the first sugar ever made from Washington grown beets.
The first winter I spent on the London hop market (1884) my attention was called to the remarkably cheap German made beet sugar, selling then at "tuppence" a pound, as the English people expressed it—four cents a pound, our currency. If beet sugar could be produced so cheaply, why could we not make it, I queried, knowing as I did what enormous yields of beets could be obtained in the rich soils of the Puyallup and White River valleys. So I hied me off to the German sugar district, and visited several of the factories, taking only a hasty view of their works, but much impressed with the importance of the subject.
The following spring I planted two acres on one of my White River farms, and Thomas Alvord planted two acres. I harvested forty-seven tons from my two acres and at different times during their later growth sent a dozen samples or more to the beet sugar factory at Alvarado, California, to be tested. The report came back highly favorable—rich and pure, and if figures would not lie, here was a field better than hops—better than any crop any of the farmers were raising at the time. So Mr. Alvord and myself organized a beet sugar company, and the next year increased our acreage to further test the cost of raising and of their sugar producing qualities. I raised over a hundred tons that year, and we sent ten tons to the Alvarado factory to extract the sugar—meanwhile had sent about a hundred samples at different times, to be tested. Not all of the reports came back favorable, and the conclusion was reached to test farther another year, and accordingly a still larger acreage was planted. That year I sent my second son, Fred Meeker, to a school of chemistry in San Francisco, and when the factory started up in Alvarado, to the factory, for what was termed the campaign, to work and to learn the business. Our samples were again sent with the same result, some were exceedingly rich and pure, while others would yield nothing. Fred wrote that the beets that had taken a second growth were worthless for producing sugar.
That letter settled the whole question as our open, moist autumn weather would surely at times destroy the crop, and would make it extremely hazardous to enter into the business and so the whole matter was dropped as well as $2,500.00 of expenses incurred. Subsequently, however, the business has been successfully established in the drier climate of the eastern part of Washington and Oregon.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE HISTORY OF A HISTORY.
Before giving an account of the adventure incident to marking the Oregon Trail given in detail in chapters to follow in this volume, I will write of one more adventure following my return from the Klondike; that is, of my writing a book. The simple act of writing a book was in no sense either a venture or an adventure, though it took me over three years to do it. But when I undertook to have it printed (an afterthought), then a real venture confronted me. No local works so far had paid printers' bills and I was admonished by friends that a loss would undoubtedly occur if I printed the work. But their fears were not well founded, the work was printed, [20] the sales were made and the printer paid.
Four years ago today I arrived at the ripe age of three score years and ten, supposed to be the limit of life. Finding that I possessed more ambition than strength, and that my disposition for a strenuous life was greater than my power of physical endurance, I naturally turned to other fields of work, that condition of life so necessary for the welfare and happiness of the human race.
Many years before it had been my ambition to write our earlier experiences of pioneer life on Puget Sound, and not necessarily for the printer, but because I wanted to, but never could find time; and so when the change came and my usual occupation was gone, what else would I be more likely to do than to turn to my long delayed work, the more particularly being admonished that it must be done soon or not at all. And so, in a cheerful, happy mood, I entered again into the domain of pioneer life, and began writing. But this is not history, you will say. True, but we will come to that by and by.
I had, during the summer of 1853, with an inexperienced companion, in an open boat—a frail skiff built with our own hands—crossed the path of Theodore Winthrop, spending more than a month on a cruise from Olympia to the Straits and return, while that adventurous traveler and delightful writer had with a crew of Indians made the trip from Port Townsend to Fort Nisqually in a canoe. I had followed Winthrop a year later through the Natchess Pass to the Columbia River and beyond, alone, except a companion pony that carried my sack of hard bread for food, the saddle blanket for my bed and myself across the turbulent rivers, and on easy grades. If Winthrop could write such a beautiful book, "The Canoe and the Saddle," based upon such a trip, with Indians to paddle his canoe on the Sound, and with an attendant and three horses through the mountains, why should not my own experience of such a trip be interesting to my own children and their children's children? And so I wrote these trips.
Did you ever, when hungry, taste of a dish of fruit, a luscious, ripe, highly flavored apple for instance, that seemed only to whet but not satisfy your appetite? I know you have, and so can appreciate my feelings when these stories were written. I craved more of pioneer life experience, and so I went back to the earlier scenes, a little earlier only—to the trip in a flat boat down the Columbia. River from The Dalles to the first cabin, where Kalama town now stands; to the pack on our backs from the Columbia to the Sound; to the three times passing the road to and fro to get the wife and baby to tidewater—what a charm that word tidewater had for me with a vision of the greatness of opportunities of the seaboard—and I may say it has never lost its charm—of the great world opened up before me, and so we were soon again housed in the little cabin with its puncheon floor, "cat-and-clay" chimney, and clapboard roof; its surroundings of scenery; of magnificent forests and of constantly moving life, the Indians with their happy song and fishing parties.
All this and more, too, I wrote, every now and then getting over to the Indian question. How could I help it? We had been treated civilly, and I may say, kindly, by them from the very outset, when we, almost alone, were their white neighbors. I had been treated generously by some, and had always found them ready to reciprocate in acts of kindness, and so we had come to respect our untutored neighbors and to sympathize with them in their troubles. Deep troubles came to them when the treaty-making period arrived, and a little later upon all of us, when war came, to break up all our plans and amicable relations. As I began to write more about the Indians and their ways, a step further brought me to the consideration of our Territorial government and the government officials and their acts. It gradually dawned upon me this was a more important work than writing of humble individuals; that the history of our commonwealth was by far a more interesting theme, and more profitable to the generations to follow than recording of private achievements of the pioneer. It was but a step further until I realized that I was fairly launched upon the domain of history, and that I must need be more painstaking and more certain of my facts, and so then came a long rest for my pen and a long search of the records, of old musty letters, of no less old musty books, of forgetful minds of the pioneers left, and again I was carried away into the almost forgotten past.
An authoress once told me that she never named her book until after it was written. I could not then understand why, but I now do. While writing of pioneer life I could think of no other title than something like this: "Pioneer Life on Puget Sound Fifty Years Ago," a pretty long title, but that was what the writing treated of. But when I got on the Indian question and came to realize what a splendid true story was wrapped up in the darkness of impending oblivion; how the Indians had been wronged; how they had fought for their homes and won them; how the chief actors had been sacrificed, but the tribes had profited—I again became enthusiastic over my theme and over my ready-made heroes, and before I realized it, lo! a new name took possession of my mind and rang in it until there was born the title, "The Tragedy of Leschi."
When I come to think of it, that here were tribes that had never shed white men's blood until grim war came, and that then they refused to make war on their old neighbors, and that but one non-combatant settler had lost his life after the first day of frenzy of the Muckleshoot band at the massacre of White River, that here were men we called savages, fighting for a cause, but threw themselves on the track of the military arm of the government and not against helpless settlers. I had myself been in their power and remained unharmed. I knew other of my neighbors also that had been exposed and remained unmolested; surely to tell the truth about such people is no more than justice and I said to myself, I will write it down and prove what I write by the records and the best obtainable witnesses alive, and having done so, will print it, two books in one, two titles, yet but one volume, "Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget Sound; The Tragedy of Leschi."
It is natural that in the stirring times of early days opinions would differ; that neighbors, and even members of families, would look upon events from different points of view, and so out of this maze I have tried to state exact facts and draw just conclusions. The chapter of this history begins with the creation of the Territory and ends with Governor Stevens' official life in the Territory in the period concerned. During that period, treaties were made with the Indians, the war with them was fought; massacres horrid to contemplate were perpetrated by the Indians and whites—by the Indians at the outbreak, and the whites later—murders were committed; martial law proclaimed, our courts invaded with armed men, judges dragged from the bench; our governor in turn brought before the courts, fined and reprieved by himself, and many other happenings unique in history are related, and so, when my labor was finished and my pen laid aside, my only regret was that the work had not been undertaken earlier in life when memory served more accurately, and my contemporaries were more numerous.