Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/106



98 H. R. KINCAID

wards for many years he became one of the most powerful capitalists among railroad men in New York City and a great power in Wall street. It was said that he was the only man in New York at that time who always kept ten million dollars in bank ready to loan or be used in any emergency. When the Senate was not in session I was frequently in New York and became acquainted with Sage. He visited at my house in Washington and I received many autograph letters from him. My reminiscences, covering a period of nearly 80 years, from which these few paragraphs are taken in a condensed form, contain some of Sage's letters, and letters from gov- ernors, senators, congressmen, judges, clergymen, authors and others, taken from a collection of many thousand letters, and some of my editorials and other newspaper comments. It would make a large book and whether it will ever be published I do not know. When an attempt was made to assassinate Sage I wrote a lengthy editorial, taking that for a text. He sent me a letter of thanks, and Senator Dolph sent a letter saying he wished the article could be read by every person in the United States. I sent Sage my paper for twenty years or more, up to the time he passed away, perhaps about fifteen years ago. He left over seventy million dollars ($70,000,000) for the Sage foundation, a charitable institution.

During the four years that I served as Secretary of State of Oregon, along with Governor Lord, his wife was an en- thusiastic advocate of making the growing of flax in Oregon an important industry. She was the pioneer of flax-growing in Oregon, and never lost an opportunity to talk about and explain her hobby. If Oregon ever becomes a flax-growing state, as it probably will, she will be entitled to most of the credit. The Governor was so much occupied with politics and the cares of state that he did not have the time nor patience to give much attention to the flax industry at that time, however important it might become in the distant future. Like Huntington, who said posterity might build their own