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244 LESLIE M. SCOTT

the State Supreme Court confirmed it July 22, 1895. Wallis Nash opposed the confirmation on the ground that certain English buyers would pay $200,000; so also George Bigham of Salem and J. K. Weatherford and Percy Kelly, of Albany, who represented various claims. (Statement of Company finances, Oregonian, January 3, 20, 1895 ; July 29, 1895 ; Feb. 2, 24, 1896; March 19, 1896.) Taxes and court costs, amount- ing to $66,000 were first satisfied out of the $100,000, leaving $34,000 for satisfaction of nearly $1,200,000 claims, that were scaled down by the referee to $341,971. (Oregonian, Febru- ary 2, 24, 1896.) The people of Corvallis voiced approval of the Supreme Court's decision at a public demonstration July 22, 1895.

VII.

A well-known and esteemed citizen of Oregon, Mr. Wallis Nash, who gave many of his best years to the Oregon Pacific, tells me that the project was wrecked by factional dissensions, which balked its completion and final success. On account of my high regard for Mr. Nash, I wish to insert here a para- graph from one of his recent letters on this subject :

"It is just to remember that no one connected with the man- agement of the Company had any idea except that the receiver- ship (October, 1890) was a step in the way to reorganization by the bondholders. Dissensions among those bondholders and financiers, of the most virulent kind, was the cause of the total wreck of the enterprise. This same dissension foiled every effort that Colonel Hogg put forth until he died (1896) for the resumption and completion of the road."

The new Company, incorporated to take over the Oregon Pacific property by A. B. Hammond, Edwin Stone and Charles Clark, April 12, 1895, was the Oregon Central and Eastern Railway. This Company was succeeded by the Corvallis and Eastern Railroad, which Hammond incorporated December 15, 1897, capital $2,500,000, for the purpose of bonding for ex- tension through Eastern Oregon, but the project was not carried out.