Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/397

Rh valley made no subscriptions to the stock of the company, while the people on the west side made large subscriptions and thereby secured the location of the road on the west side of the Willamette river, where it is now constructed from Portland to Corvallis.

The Californians who had secured the above land grant as far as it was located within that state were not disinterested spectators of what was going on in Oregon. In fact, the record shows that even before the passage of the act granting the lands, a party of California capitalists had filed articles of incorporation in this state, to incorporate a company to take the land granted within the boundaries of Oregon. On July 1, 1865, articles of incorporation to incorporate "The Oregon and California Railroad Company" were executed in San Francisco, and signed by Alphens Bull, S. G. Elliott, C. Temple Emmett, Thomas Bell, Joseph Barron, David M. Richards, S. F. Elliott, T. J. Gallagher and Wm. E. Barron, and brought up to Oregon by S. G. Elliott, and filed in the office of the secretary of the state at Salem on July 13, 1865. These articles provided for a corporation with a capital stock of sixteen million dollars, that its principal office should be at Jacksonville, Oregon, and that the company should build a railroad from some point on the state line between California and Oregon as should be thereafter designated "to some point on the navigable waters of the Columbia river," and should receive the lands that might be granted by congress in aid of such a road.

Here was a carefully planned scheme gotten up in California, with not a single Oregonian connected with it, one year before the passage of the land grant about which there was so great a battle forty years ago; and about which there is now as great a battle in the U. S. courts between the United States and the companies claiming the lands; and which was a secret, stealthy attack on the vital interests of the city of Portland.

As soon as Gaston commenced canvassing for subscriptions to the stock of the company, Mr. S. G. Elliott, the promoter of the above mentioned California scheme, appeared on the scene and put in an appearance at Salem, where it appeared he had Oregon confederates in his San Francisco company.

Mr. Elliott had been a county surveyor, and was a man of great energy and ambition, but was not a civil engineer or constructor of railroads, and was not troubled with any scruples about plans or methods of business. He had a large scheme for the construction of this Oregon railroad, and at once laid it before I. R. Moores and others of Salem. His scheme was to get control of the company already incorporated, and, in default of that, to organize a new company which should execute a power of attorney to S. G. Elliott, authorizing him to let a contract to build a railroad to the California line, and that such company should issue two million dollars of unassessable stock to certain Californians for their good will in the matter, and then these Californians would transfer back to the Oregonians getting up this company one million dollars of the unassessable stock for their services in organizing the company. Gaston was invited to go into this scheme and offered an office in such new company and some unassessable stock if he would throw away the papers of the original company. This he declined, but offered to submit their scheme to the incorporators of the Oregon Central Company and if they approved, Mr. Elliott could use their organization to advance his scheme. But upon submitting the Elliott scheme to the incorporators supporting Gaston, every one of them opposed it. Accordingly, Elliott and his Salem friends, on April 22, 1867, incorporated another Oregon Central Railroad Company, the incorporators being S. A. Clarke, John H. Moores, George L. Woods, and I. R. Moores. The articles of incorporation of this company provided for a capital stock of $7,250,000, to which six persons subscribed each $100, and thereupon elected George L. Woods,