Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/318

 w; 280 JOHN TILSON GANOE m' Holladay was accused of raising the rates on river boats so as to increase the carrying trade of the railroad so that the railroad bonds would be more salable. 62 Then when the Oregonian published a table showing that freight rates in Oregon were two and three times what was being paid in the east, the people were frantic. The tables quoted by the Oregonian, which were taken from the New York Mercantile Journal, showed a re- markable contrast. Price per ton per 100 miles Boston and Albany $2.16 New York Central $1.75 Erie Chicago, R. I. and Pacific $2.64 Union Pacific $2.70 No wonder when compared with $10.40 per ton ship- ping over the Oregon and California Railroad, the farm- ers were furious. For wheat they saw again a wide varia- tion in rates, an as usual the Oregon and California was the highest. Illinois Central _ . .. . .$5.00 Erie $3.00 Burlington $3.60 Oregon and California $5.60 It would be supposed that with such rates, if the traffic amounted to anything near the estimate, that the road would be a paying proposition. The German investors, however, had already begun to doubt the ability of the road to pay out, but until 1873 the company had kept up inter- est payments, so no action was taken by the bond holders. When, however, the company did default in the interest payments, a committee of bond holders immediately be- gan an investigation which revealed that "the road was producing only about one-third of the interest charge and •I m 62 See Scott—The Grange Movement in Oregon, page 15.
 * 1) 1.56