Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/509

Rh ago. A few patient and persevering men who believed Oregon would excel the world on fruit, got together and gave their time and money to educate their neighbors, and the people of the state. Many a man who has plodded along raising wheat or potatoes making a brave living, might have been rich now if he had heeded the advice of these pioneers in horticulture.

The present officers of the society are: H. C. Atwell of Forest Grove, president; J. R. Shepard of Portland, vice-president; Frank W. Power of Portland, secretary. Annual membership dues, one dollar.

Portland is the great livestock center of the Pacific coast. As these lines are being penned, a great livestock show is being held on the grounds of the Country Club near Portland. A single item may show the widespread interest in this exhibition. Notwithstanding there are 3,000 automobiles in the city, and hundreds of auto trucks, delivery wagons and taxicabs, yet the interest in fine horses is shown by an exhibition of three hundred thoroughbred horses of all classes. Cattle are equally represented; and the aggregate value of these pure bloods will not fall short of $250,000.

Within the past year the Portland Union Stock Yards have handled 8,448 carloads of fat stock, shipped to this point for meat slaughtering purposes; the total value of which is $8,335,000. This stock is made up of seventy-eight thousand head of beef cattle, fifty-five hundred calves, one hundred and forty thousand mutton sheep, and eighty thousand head of fat hogs.

Portland Union Stock Yards is the only central livestock market west of Denver and St. Paul, where a farmer or stock raiser can ship fifty carloads of stock suitable for slaughter and get the top prices for his property. All the stock enumerated has come in by rail from points all over Oregon, Washington and Idaho, and represents the great interest producing cattle and wool on the public lands in these states, as well as the farmers raising hogs and veal on clover and alfalfa forage in connection with the offal from dairies and cheese factories.

Half of the stock received at the yards was taken by local buyers, and the remainder was bought by packers and butchers in the northwest. Portland is now firmly established as the central livestock market in this part of the United States.

The following gives what for the time is regarded as general range of value: October, 1910—Cattle—Steers, top quality, $5. 25(^5.50; fair to good, $4.00@4.75; cows, top, $4.00@4.50; fair to good, $3.00@3.75; calves, top, $6.00@7.00; heavy; $5.00@5.50; bulls, $2.50@3.50; stags, $3.00@4.00. Hogs—best, $10.00 @10.40; fair to good, $9.00@9.50. Sheep—top wethers, $4.00@4.25; fair to good, $3.00@3.75; ewes, ½c less on all grades; lambs, $4.50@5.50.

To further show the development of this business, the extent to which money has recently been invested, must be considered. Something over a year ago, the great meat packing house of Swift & Co., from Kansas City in the state of Kansas, entered the field of this industry at Portland, by purchasing 150 acres of land on Columbia slough, an arm of the Columbia river, adjoining this city, as the foundation of a great packing house plant on the Pacific coast. Since making the purchase, the company has been actively developing its property for the purposes intended by the erection of extensive buildings, stock yards, railroads, and filling the low lands with sand pumped out of the river, spending altogether over a million and a half of dollars in this enterprise. When all their works are completed, it will be one of the most perfect establishments of its kind in the world. And to show the manifold uses and purposes the carcass of a domestic animal is now put to, the following list is given:

From the hide comes leather, from which, in addition to your shoes, are taken the belts which you use in your mills; from tallow, soap, glycerine, butterine, lubricator and candles; from blood, albumen, fertilizer and stock food;