Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/144

138 more money to be wasted on profligate politics that had been borrowed to build a railroad. Holladay told his workers that this brief item cost him $100,000; so "time at last makes all things even."

The readers of the two preceding accounts of the beginning of extensive railroad building in Oregon no doubt wish that there had been the means and the determination to project railways down both sides of the Willamette Valley as parts of the same first system. We should then have been spared some of the accusation that representatives of the "east side" and the "west side" projects now hurl against each other. The documents given below do not settle all of the discrepancies as regards statements of fact made by Messrs. Gaston and Clarke, but to cover all the points at issue between them would require an extended examination of contemporary sources. This the editor promises to make in the near future.

The documents given and the citations made by Mr. Gaston in the body of his paper (pages 116 and 117) do, however, establish the following as facts concerning which Messrs. Gaston and Clarke are at issue:

1. No such company as The Oregon Central Railroad Company was organized or in existence on October 10 when the legislature designated a corporation of that name to receive the land grant made by Congress on the preceding July 25, 1866. As shown by Document 11 the organization of the company that was first intended to be the recipient was at that date (October 10) only partially organized.

2. The Salem corporation organized November 17, 1866 (see Document I), on which Mr. Clarke bases claims of