Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/861

 a bushel.

Now the farmers can't get men to grub, or plow, or pick apples ; the street con- tractors can't get half enough men, the railroad contractors are shorthanded ; and yet there are more idle men on the streets now than in 1893, because wages are so good and employment so plentiful that laboring men can support life and get clothes, lodging, and the two prime necessaries — tobacco and whisky — by work- ing half the time and loafing the other half.

During this sore period of liquidation, a vast amount of real estate changed hands. The legislature interfered to protect debtors as far as possible, and passed a law giving debtors a year to redeem their real estate after sales by the sheriff. While liquidation was ruin to many debtors, it seemed to be absolutely necessary to get down to a solid foundation again. A great many persons had bought city and suburban real estate on a small cash payment and a large mortgage to cover balance. The collapse of values precipitated by the panic left no possible chance to sell suburban lots, and nothing btit a sale to the highest bidder for cash, or the taking over of the property by the creditor and wiping out the debt could save the community from a much longer struggle at recuperation. The worst was over by 1896, and in 1897 property took on a more hopeful view ; in 1898 real estate began to move again on inside property, and in 1899, George W. Brown began to move things out on the Mt. Scott line, selling lots at a hundred dollars apiece on monthly installments. And even at these rates, many pur- chasers, mostly wage earners, would drop their payments. Upon the renomina- tion of President McKinley in 1890, the large capitalists of the eastern states commenced to again invest in railroads and build more factories. The great steel trust was formed in this year, and that event did more to induce invest- ments from the eastern hoards of money than anything else. This all had a toning up influence on business in Portland ; and Dan McAllen commenced talk- ing up the Lewis and Clark Exposition.

It required a vast deal of hopefulness, and no little presumption to propose an exposition that must cost first and last three or four million dollars to get up something that would be a credit to the city and an honor to the great event. The details of that work are given in another chapter ; and we are dealing with the general effects only here. Portland capital had put up the old exposition building at Washington and i8th streets; but that was a cheap rough board af- fair; here was something that if built at all must be such as would compare favor- ably with all the other national shows that had preceded it — and Portland almost, very nearly, balked at the proposition. Finally, when the die was cast, and the proposition grappled with in earnest, it was felt to be not such an impossible un- dertaking. The very decision to hold the exposition, strengthened every man that put down a dollar for it; and from that very day Portland business, Port- land real estate, and Portland's great future commenced to move up — to move with confidence, courage, steadfastness, and accelerating energy; and the move- ment has never halted or hesitated from that day to this. The exposition proved a great success from every point of view. It was in itself, in its setting and its administration, a highly meritorious and successful exhibition of arts, sciences, industries and productions, that in many respects surpassed in novelty and ex- cellence anything of the kind that had preceded it in the United States. It at- tracted hundreds of thousands of people, many of them wealthy, to this city, who knew nothing of the advantages of Portland and its surroundings. They were surprised and pleased at what they found and learned, and went away to spread the story of Portland's beauty and future prospects, and then came back to invest their money in Portland property and business.

And with the exposition came the great influx of foreign capital to invest in Oregon timber. Portland became the center of that movement of capital. In 1901 Nehalem timber could be purchased by the quarter section at the rate of twenty cents per thousand feet board measure on the stump. By the time the fair had opened, that valuation had been raised to fifty cents per thousand feet; and now it is five or six times that value.