Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/28

 MILES CANNON

20

become the

stone which the builders rejected has of the arch."

chief stone

with a population of 450,000, has a property valuation, according to a tax commission report, of about $500,000,000. Though as a start we are but 28 years

The

old,

state of Idaho,

we have an

indebtedness, including state, county, municipal,

which This interest charge, added to our annual running expenses, makes a burden of $11,000,000 which the people, 80 per cent of whom live within the Snake river watershed, must pay each year

school, highway, etc., amounting to $17,000,000, upon we pay an interest charge of about $3,000 per day.

for taxes.

As a you

sequel I crave your pardon if I find it necessary to lead At the time the Champoeg confar afield once more.

vention was being held,

May

2,

1843, a

Hartford, Conn., was making his alphabet. That he well succeeded

is

six-year-old boy in attempt to master the

little

first

indicated

by the

fact that

he finished his education at the University of Gottingen, Germany, before he reached his 20th year. During the period 1860-5, when states were springing up in the vast territory embraced in Old Oregon, and when the great question of secession

was being

settled

by the arbitraments of war,

this

young

man entered the banking business in the city of New York. Some light as to his success in his chosen work is furnished in

a governmental report* published and distributed in 1912, this man, together with his

and from which we learn that

immediate associates, controlled at that time, $22,245,000,000 out of a grand total of all property in the United States given as $187,739,000,000. In other words he then controlled about one-eighth of all the wealth in the country. You have already guessed the name of the famous American citizen referred to, the late

When

J.

Pierpont Morgan.

Hydro-power was sufficiently developed to insure continuous and permanent use, Mr. Morgan, as a minor achievement, organized the General Electric Company, of the

its

which The Idaho Power Company is said to be a subsidiary concern. During 1915 the latter company took over the The Pujo Congressional

Report.