Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/700



members of that company were: W. K. Kilborne, Theophilus Magruder, James Taylor, George Abernethy, W. H. Willson, W. H. Rector, J. G. Campbell and Noyes Smith. Rector made the stamps and dyes. The engraving was done by Campbell. Rector acted as coiner, and no assaying was done. This company coined about $55,000 worth of gold into two pieces to circulate as tokens of five and ten dollars, respectively. This coinage raised the price of gold dust from twelve to sixteen dollars an ounce, and saved a vast amount of money to the honest miners. Engravings of the "beaver money," as this last coinage was called, are shown on another page.

The general effect of the wealth of gold brought back from California was beneficial to Oregon ; yet in all too many instances it proved the ruin of many men whose sudden rise to riches induced habits of profligacy and dissipation from which they never recovered. Many men brought back as much as thirty or forty thousand dollars washed out of the California streams within a year or two; and then threw it all away on idle dissipation, and had to start in again at the bottom of the ladder encumbered with bad habits and remorseful regrets.

THE FIRST BANK AND BANKER.

The first bank opened in Portland was the joint venture of William S. Ladd and Charles E. Tilton. Mr. Ladd came to Portland from Vermont in the year 1850, and engaged as a salesman in a grocery and liquor house. He was ener- getic and attentive to business, and soon rose from salesman to owner of the establishment. He pushed his business with energy and assiduous industry, rapidly accumulating money out of the gold dust ladened miners returning from California. He was the first man to risk money in more substantial improve- ments, and built the first brick house — a business house — on Front street in Portland.

In 1859, ^^ partnership with Charles E. Tilton of New York, they started the first bank in Portland, it being the first bank doing regular business on the Pacific coast. Interest was 2 per cent a month in those days ; times were flush, and the bank made money from the very first day with great rapidity, being a veritable gold mine. And as it had no competition until the organization of the First Na- tional in 1866, the bank was a power from the start, and cleared up half a million dollars on its original capital of twenty-five thousand before the First National got into the field. Mr. Ladd was not only a shrewd and successful banker, but he had a keen insight to the future of the city, and never took cash when he could get land adjoining East or West Portland for old debts. These early in- vestments proved enormously profitable. One of them, 400 acres, costing $4,000, now platted as "Laurelhurst," is being harvested at a profit of $4,000,000.

The first bankers in the state had a rich harvest field for their financial tal- ents. Money in 1865 was about as plentiful as today; and the opportunities to use it profitably were upon every hand. In southern Oregon the rate of interest was 2 per cent a month, while at Portland and in the Willamette valley it com- manded about 18 per cent per annum. And those who had money to buy up "greenbacks" — 'U. S. treasury notes — at forty cents on the dollar, made even more than the current high rate of interest. For a while it was very risky busi- ness to loan out gold coin at interest ; for as the greenbacks were an absolute legal tender, the borrower, if so disposed, could pay ofif a loan made in gold with the greenbacks not costing half the value of gold. Not many men took advan- tage of the law to pay gold obligations in notes, and those that did so were there- after marked as dishonorable men. To avoid the contingency of being paid in greenbacks, a bill was introduced in the legislature in 1865 or '66 called the "Specific Contract Act," and which was passed into a law, authorizing the courts to specifically enforce contracts payable in gold ; and providing that the courts should include in judgments and decrees, founded on such contracts, an order to the sheriff to sell property on execution for such debts, for gold