Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/235

Rh of thoroughbred Merinos, mostly of the Spanish type, so improved by Vermont breeders as to justify naming them American Merinos, which they at this time began to do. Flocks and herds had so accumulated in 1860 and the wild grasses had so given way, that without reserved pastures or other winter feed little beef or mutton could be found in good condition for market in early spring. The wool product, at first selling high, had declined for lack of a market, there being from 1853 to 1858 only one buyer in Portland for export, whose uniform price was ten cents per pound. It traded among farmers for stocking yarn and flock beds at twenty-five cents per pound, and some house manufacture began even before 1854 in the outside settlements. The writer went to San Francisco in 1856 dressed entirely in clothes of his wife's make from the fleece. Returning home in April he found Joseph Watt of Amity well advanced towards an organization of wool growing farmers for building a woolen factory at Salem.

From the pen of L. E. Pratt, who gave his assistance to securing the proper machinery and threw his personal fortune into the project by coming from Massachusetts to set it up, we have an excellent manuscript history of the inception, early struggles against high rates of interest, frontier and commercial conditions to success, change of ownership, bad management, business wreck and mysterious destruction by fire of this pioneer factory. For the writer's purpose it is sufficient to say here that it was a wool-growers' enterprise, started by Joseph Watt, one of the leading pioneer flock owners, joined by a few men looking to public life in the community, and "it was incorporated in 1856 with Hon. Geo. H. Williams as president; Alfred Stanton, vice president; Joseph Watt, W. H. Rector, Joseph Holman, E. M.Barnum, L. F. Grover,