Two Years in Oregon

by Wallis Nash

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.