Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/860

 Oregon and Idaho. The gold of Cahfornia affected this city, first by stimulating the natural trade of the town in furnishing supplies to the California miners, and secondly in the expenditure at this point of the quickly made fortunes of return- ing Oregon miners. This prosperity did not wane before gold was discovered in eastern Oregon ; and that discovery quickly and directly stimulated all sorts of business in Portland, and especially the steamboat transportation business. Then came the discovery of gold in Idaho and the distant mines of British Colum- bia. [This called for the immediate enlargement of all means of transportation, and Portland became the supply and distributing point to a wide field of mining and commercial activities.] So that by 1870 the population had more than doubled.

Portland was then in the full tide of prosperity. The merchants were pros- perous, the transportation companies were piling up fortunes. The city was rap- idly growing, and the commencement of railroad construction encouraged the more substantial construction of the city.

But about this time (1870) the town of Seattle entered the Hsts, guided by some very able and energetic men, and disputed the supremacy of Portland by bidding for all the trade of Puget Sound, British Columbia and Alaska. The fur trade of the north was then yet a very considerable item, and the gold mines of Frazer river were pouring out millions of dollars. And while Portland lost no trade in Oregon, it did lose men and capital who moved over to Tacoma and Seattle in prospect of the North Pacific Railroad making that region its terminus, as it afterward did. And while Portland did within the decade following 1870, more than double its population, it was felt at the time that the city was making but a slow growth.

But with the building of the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company Rail- road to eastern Oregon, and especially the completion of the Northern Pacific under Villard in September, 1883, the city took on a veritable "boom" of pros- perity. And while this stimulus stirred things to the bottom, yet there was no little of the excitement that wore the appearance of the many who had gone too often to the wine cask. And when Villard and his great stock speculation in the "Transcontinental Company" fell down, and the Northern Pacific went into the hands of a receiver, and the Philadelphians took control and built the Northern Pacific straight over the mountains from Pasco to Tacoma, the temperature cooled down distressingly in the latitude of Portland, Oregon, while the mer- cury rose rapidly at Tacoma and Seattle. What trade Portland had maintained with Puget Sound, Victoria and coast ports in Washington was taken away from her by the aggressive work of Seattle, which town was further helped mightily by the discoveries of gold in Alaska. And for the decade covering the years be- tween 1890 and 1900, Portland held on her way, growing slowly but surely and doggedly holding to every inch of ground that economy in administration, mod- esty in profits, and natural advantages would secure. In this fight, the city was compelled to go into the pockets of its taxpayers for hard cash to deepen the ship channel to Portland, to build portage railways around the obstructions in the Columbia river, and to fight for improvements of the Columbia river bar with the whole political influence of the state of Washington dead against it.

It was during this long siege in standing off the enemies of the city that Port- land and the whole country, was further tried and tested by the financial panic and continued depression of 1893. And during these trying years, the city and the reliable population had a still further and severer test in managing and pro- viding for a large population of unemployed and penniless men. There was no doubt of the poverty and distress of those days. Men walked the streets idle and hungry because there was no work for them to do. There are more idle men in the city now than there was in 1893 ; but they are not idle for want of work, but because there is too much work. In 1893, there was no building of houses at all, no street work, and no railroad work, and the farmers were doing all their own work and selling wheat in eastern Oregon at 25 cents