Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/175

Rh agreed to take the entire product of the mill for a period of three years at a fixed price. By an aggressive process of advertising, in which he personally carried the goods into all the important places along the line of the old Holladay stage route, both in Oregon and California, a market was created for the goods. In three months after the agreement had been made the managers of the mill were willing to give a large consideration in return for a relinquishment of his contract. The goods found such ready market that the building and machinery were doubled. Prices continued to rise; debts were paid off; the value of the stock rose; a gristmill was built by the company; the race through the town constructed, and salaries of officials were raised "as high as their consciences would allow them to take." A woolen fever began to spread through the country. Mills were built at Oregon City, Brownsville, and Ellendale. This was the period of greatest prosperity. Conditions changed, but Watt was not then connected with the business. Divisions had arisen among the stockholders of the company, and Watt had disposed of his stock in 1866, when it sold for a value of $800 per share. He continued to be interested in sheep to the close of his life, and large flocks of the finest breeds were kept on his farm under the care of a Scotch herder employed for the special purpose. He was ever interested in furthering the sheep industry in other parts of Oregon, and it was partly through his influence that sheep were first placed upon the ranges of eastern Oregon.

But the dreams of the dreamer broadened as time passed. In 1866, when divisions led to his withdrawal from the woolen mill, the crop of wheat in the valley was unusually large. The wheat industry had been increasing for years. Oregon was rapidly passing from the fur trading and pastoral stages of industrial life to that