Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/866

 For the week ending August 20th, 1910, the clearings of the Portland banks showed an increase of 31 per cent, which was a greater increase for that period than any other city in the United States except Oakland, California, Atlanta, Georgia, and Detroit, Michigan.

The total amount of exports from Portland in the year 1864 reached the sum of $8,079,631. But the larger portion of this was gold dust from the mines of Eastern Oregon and Idaho. There was some wheat, flour, fruit, potatoes and meat, sent along with the gold dust to San Francisco. Gold dust has never been regarded as a reliable index to the permanent value of any country.

By the year 1876, the character of the exports had changed. Wool and sal- mon had been added to the list, and wheat was then shipped directly to Europe, instead of through San Francisco. This year, 3,125,000 pounds of wool worth $600,000; and 480,000 cases of salmon were shipped to San Francisco to be sent East over the Central Pacific Railroad. In the same year the export of wheat rose to 1,937,787 centals nearly all of which went direct to Europe, while the export of flour amounted to 215,714 barrels ; and the export of gold dust amounted to $2,651,431. Oregon had grown to be a great factor in the production of wheat ; and it was the boast then that "with a population of forty thousand men, Oregon's export of wheat equals one-seventh of the total export of the United States."

Ten years later (1887) the export of wheat had reached 173,915 tons, and flour 45,766 tons ; with eighteen million pounds of wool and 428,000 cases of salmon ; the total cash value of export being $16,385,000.

Coming down to the end of the year 1909 it is found that the exports of wheat from Portland for 1909 is 10,649,179 bushels worth $10,317,315; and for the same period there were exported 552,324 barrels of flour worth $2,160,681, or a total of $12,477,996 for wheat and flour. For the same period there were exported 822,510 bushels of barley worth $549,485.

Portland stands next to New York city in the exports of wheat. Bulletin No. 6, of the Department of Commerce and Labor, under date of January 12, gives the total wheat exports for 1909 as follows: New York, 12,587,537 bushelsj Portland 5,571,000 bushels; Duluth is fourth with 3,996,516 bushels. And that Portland's export is only a small portion of her actual wheat business, is shown by the figures for 1909 on coastwise wheat and flour traffic. Exclusively of the 5,571,000 bushels exported as wheat, Portland last year handled an additional 8,000,000 bushels which were shipped either coastwise or as flour to the Orient.

During the period from 1883 down to the present, the two items of wool and salmon disappeared from the list of exports by ships from Portland, having taken the route east by the overland railroads. Wool and salmon are still shipped from Portland but by rail. The annual wool clip shipped east is about sixteen million pounds, four million pounds being worked up annually by the Oregon woolen mills. All the Columbia river salmon pack amounting to about 400,000 cases annually, goes east from Portland.

The manufacture and shipment of lumber is already, and will continue to be the largest producer of wealth at this city. With three hundred billion feet, board measure, of standing timber in Oregon, and half as much more in Wash- ington, tributary to the business of this city, it must always be the center of an immense traffic built up on this one item. With a water front on the Willamette and Columbia rivers for hundreds of miles on each side on which to erect mills and to which tow logs on the rivers, with rail transportation on both sides of the river, giving ships on one side and railroad on the other side of the mills to carry away the lumber foreign to all the world, and with the only water level