Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/352

250 down the Columbia, and had a wagon load of salmon for sale to anybody that wanted fresh fish. There were big salmon and little salmon and salmon of all sizes from the royal Chinook weighing seventy-five pounds down to the youngsters weighing two pounds. And people were coming in to get what they wanted. The hotels and restaurants—no "grills" in those days—took the large fish at two-bits apiece, and the family men took the little fish at ten cents apiece. Think of it; now you pay twenty or twenty-five cents a pound for royal Chinook, and four-bits for a two pounder called "Salmon trout."

I said to General Coffin "why don't you can these fish?" "Oh you can't do that, you can't can fish, they'd all spoil." I suggested that eastern men were canning oysters, and I could see no reason why salmon would not be canned. As a matter of fact, at that very time the Hume Brothers had, after years of trial, succeeded in successfully canning salmon on the Sacramento river in California, and the very next year came up to Oregon and started a cannery down the Columbia and made a fortune out of the business before anybody else found out the secrets of the canning process. But employees soon discovered that there was money in the knowledge they possessed, and lost no time in getting Oregonians to put up the money to build canneries, and since that first little cannery of the Humes there has been taken out of the Columbia river and turned into gold coin not less than fifty million dollars worth of salmon. It has been the greatest gold mine the state has possessed excepting only the wheat fields, until now, when lumber is booming up big as a greater mine of wealth than fish or wheat. And notwithstanding the easy money, great profits and reliability of the business, the wealth of the fisheries has well nigh been destroyed by the selfishness and shortsightedness of the fishermen, and some cannerymen, who would not forego a penny of profit, or the chance of losing a single fish, in any effort to maintain a supply of fish, raised without costing one cent, by giving the fish a chance, or half a chance, to propagate their species, or to help out the spawning by artificial hatcheries. Fifty years from now when some one rewrites this history, it will be curious to look in and see if the Columbia river fishermen did ever awake to a common sense view of their business, and a patriotic duty to their city and state, and take effective measures to preserve, and conserve the Columbia river salmon.

Anent this story of the origin of the salmon fisheries in the Columbia, there is another "fish story." Everybody could see and feel the inconvenience of being compelled to buy a whole fish on the wharf whether they wanted a whole fish or not, and then carry it home. As soon as John Quinn, a jolly good natured son of the Emerald isle saw the fish market on the dock a bright idea struck him. "I'll open a little shop, buy the fish, cut them up to suit customers, and do some business," said he, and no sooner said than done, for that very day he rented a little room on the south side of Washington street between First and Second and next door to the grocery establishment that made the Labbe Brothers fortune, and got in his block, scales and knives and was ready for business the next time the boat came up with salmon; and the present enormous fish business of the city started right there in Quinn's little eight by ten shop. From cutting up fish for each customer as they came along, he branched out into the idea of delivering the goods, and John Quinn was the first man in Portland town to deliver parcels to purchasers. His delivery accommodations at first were a basket carried by himself. And as Quinn turned to delivering the purchases his good wife donned her big apron and took his place at the block, and proved as good a salesman and fish cutter as any man. Prosperity rolled in to the happy busy couple. When Alvarez Matteson would come in from Wappato lake with a wagon load of ducks, venison and native pheasants he found a ready market at Quinn's, and dressed poultry and game were added to the attraction of the Quinn market. Those were the halcyon days in Portland life. Venison cost but ten cents a pound, a brace of native pheasants two-bits, a canvas-b', fifteen cents, and Joe Bergman was selling choice porterhouse steak for t it and