Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/862



The new capital coming to Oregon from New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas to invest in timber in the last seven years, has not been less than twenty million dollars. Not only the money has come, but the people have come with it; and new mills and various industries have been promoted by it, employing a large addition to the permanent population of the state — all of which has made this city the headquarters of its influence and activity.

Following in after the exposition, came the location of the great packing house of Swift & Company of Chicago and Kansas City. The selection of Portland as the headquarters of this great corporation, and the location of its packing house and all the associated industries, was not made until an exhaustive examination of the advantages offered by all other points from Seattle down to Los Angeles had been made; and then Portland was chosen because of advantages it offered superior to all other points on the Pacific coast. Portland was chosen on its merits wholly, not a dollar of subsidy bonus or other financial consideration being offered by town citizens or property holders. This great industry not only brought millions of dollars for investment, but it made Portland the central point of the live stock interests of the northwest — of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

But the one fact, more than all others, that has indicated and established the supremacy! of Portland over all other Pacific coast cities, was the location and construction of the "North Bank Railroad" — the railroad from Pasco in eastern Washington, down the north bank of the Columbia river to Vancouver, and thence to Portland across the Columbia river by the greatest railroad bridge in the United States. This was the greatest event in railroad construction on the Pacific coast, from the fall of Villard in 1892, down to the present. Had the Northern Pacific been confined to the Columbia river valley, as was intended by Villard, and reached the Puget Sound cities from Portland, the construction of a new line down the Columbia on the north bank would have attracted but little attention. But all the capitalists of the Northern Pacific, and all the capi- talists of the Great Northern, backed by such men as Pierpont Morgan, James J. Hill, and all their millionaire friends, having deliberately ignored Portland and the Columbia river gateway, and even scouted the idea of either the Willamette city or its mountain pass being a factor that they need consider, and at a cost of forty million dollars built two lines of railway over the Cascade mountains to reach Tacoma and Seattle, and then being compelled by the immutable laws of nature and commerce to practically abandon their mountain lines and come to Portland over the very route they had condemned, was a verdict in favor of Portland that all the world must take notice of. The city of Portland could not in any way whatever have chosen or provided or asked for a more complete and overwhelming decision against all its rivals. The spending of twenty million dollars to build the North Bank Road and its Columbia- Vancouver bridge by the enemies of Portland, and their hauling their Puget Sound lumber trains two hundred miles to reach the Portland gateway, is an object-lesson that forever silences all doubts or questions of Portland's surpassing advantages and ability to secure and control not only the commerce of the Columbia river basin, but also the transcontinental commerce to China, Japan and the Indies.

POPULATION.

Increase of population is generally accepted as the standard of growth of all other elements of city life and business, especially if that increase has been regu- lar and continuous for many years. The increase of population at this city comes within these conditions, and may be regarded as an index to the certainty of fu- ture steady growth. The statistics given from the ten-year census periods in the first part of this chapter show that Portland growth has been regular, steady, continuous and averaging about 10 per cent per year, for the fifty years last past.