Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/294

 £*>' 256 JOHN TDLSON GANOE m; showed that the West Side Company had filed acceptance to the Act with the Department of the Interior and had been accepted, while the East Side Company had been re- jected, and concluded by saying "we therefore conclude that if the West Side Company has not the land no com- pany has, and no company can get it, and this Legislature can not enable any company to take any steps in the mat- ter. We therefore recommend that no action be taken by this Legislature in the premises, and that we do not in any way make ourselves parties to any contest between rival corporations." 33 The minority of the committee consisted of C. B. Bel- linger of Benton county and J. L. Louden of Jackson county. They ignored the pencil memorandum entirely and declared that there was no company in existence at the time and that the legislature meant to designate cer- tain persons as shown by the report of the select com- mittee to whom the Governor's message was referred in 1866. 34 The company, they said, was not at the time of the act, in existence, so it must have referred to the persons named. The persons named were now a corpora- tion incorporated April 22, 1867, for the express purpose of constructing a railway in accordance with the Act. Since it was the group of persons meant, no company had yet acquired right. The rejecting of the East Side Com- pany by the Department of the Interior, they said, was not because their claim was not good but because the time for filing assent had expired. "The State," they said, "must rely upon the generosity of Congress to grant an extension of time for filing the assent." Still more potent than these reasons the committee be- lieved was the prospects of the roads. The Act provided the first twenty miles of the road should be completed by July 1, 1870. They then discussed the resources of 38 House Journal, 1868, p. 303ff. 34 This report was made two days after the act designating the Oregon Central Company was passed.