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."