Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/871

 pass through the Cascade mountains to ship the lumber to the eastern states, the growth and prosperity of the business, and the city growing out of the business, is incalculable.

There are no statistics of the lumber industry prior to 1903, in which year the total cut at Portland as the center of its lumber trade, was 361,000,000 feet board measure. That business had nearly doubled by the end of 1910, when the total cut reached 700,000,000 feet board measure, and which was worth, as it came from the saw, the sum of $10,000,000. Of this amount about one-third went foreign by ship's cargo and one-third to California and eastern states by rail, and the balance into buildings at Portland.

MANUFACTURES.

The first manufactures at Portland, Oregon consisted of making salmon bar- rels to pack dried and salted fish in for export to any port the ship captains could find a market at. There was one shop in Portland town, and another across the river run by "Uncle Jimmie Stevens" on his own land. It is a far call back to those days.

Manufactures at Portland made very little showing prior to the year 1870; and was confined to the immediate necessities of the town for building materials, saw- mill repairs, a little furniture and some iron work, flour milling, quartz mills, and some leather. From 1870 the growth of the manufacturing interest was steady and substantial. By the year 1890 there were 600 firms and companies engaged in converting raw materials into saleable goods, employing over 7,000 workmen on a working capital of fourteen million dollars, and producing an output worth twenty million dollars. It would be impossible in this work to give an account of the present manufacturing industries. There are now over 2,200 manufactur- ing establishments with an invested capital of more than $32,000,000, and em- ploying 23,000 persons, who earn $9,000,000 annually and who produce manu- facturing goods to the amount of fifty million dollars annually. Practically all the necessaries of life except glass hardware, crockery and cotton cloth, are made in Portland or Oregon.

STREET RAILWAY EXTENSION.

Street railway transportation in Portland commenced with horse power, which has been noticed in Chapter XVI. Some of the lines, notably the first cars on Hawthorne avenue, and down to St. Johns, and over to Vancouver, and out to Mt. Scott, and up to Milwaukie, used steam motors for motive power. Electricity came in with the road constructed to Fulton park and the cemeteries in 1889, and opened to traffic January ist, 1890. From that time on all the lines were changed to electric power as fast as practicable, so that by 1892 electricity had supplanted all other forms of motive power. The Fulton park line was the first electric road on the Pacific coast, and the third electric road in the United States, the first be- ing at Boston, the second at Richmond, Virginia, and the third at Portland, Oregon.

Since the present owner of the lines. The Portland Railway Light and Power Company, took over all the lines in 1905, great improvements and extensions of the lines have been made. The mileage and equipment has doubled since that date, and the traffic has quadrupled.

As illustrating the growth of our city in the year 1900, the number of cars crossing the Burnside bridge daily was about 140, while at the present time the number crossing in regular service each day amounts to over 1000, an increase of about 600 per cent. In 1900 all the lines were operated by about 250 men ; now it requires an army of 4,000. About 4,000 cars now cross the river each day.

INCREASE OF RAILROAD TRAFFIC.

Portland as a railroad center, has come to the front more rapidly in the past two years than in any preceding five years in its history. Seventy steam railroad