Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/872



616 THE CITY OP^ PORTLAND

passenger trains and 164 electric trains, not including local service to Mt. Scott, St. Johns, Troutdale and other nearby points — and not including freight trains — move in and out of Portland every twenty-four hours. This is an average of one steam passenger train arriving or departing every twenty minutes, and one electric train every nine minutes.

October is not regarded as a month in which freight traffic moves in record quantities; but in the first three weeks of this month (1910), the railroads hauled into this city, among other commodities, 1,551 carloads of wheat, barley, flour, oats and hay. They also brought into this city in the first twenty-one days of the month, 8,755 hogs, 8,505 sheep and goats, 4,629 cattle, 1,140 calves and 210 horses; a total of 23,239 animals, or something more than 1,000 head per day. And during the year 1910 the Portland Union depot and North Bank Railroad handled in and out of the city, two hundred and twenty thousand freight cars.

EXPANSION OF GENERAL BUSINESS.

In one day this month of October, 1910, eight steamships, all bringing cargo for Portland, came into the Columbia river. The fleet included two big freight- ers from European ports, bringing nearly 5,000 tons of cargo, two passenger liners from San Francisco, a big Standard Oil tanker, and three freighters, which ply regularly between Portland and San Francisco. During the day an Ameri- can-Hawaiian liner and a lumber carrier crossed out to sea, both loaded to their capacity. .--•-.,

This fleet of ten vessels registered 14,312 tons, and had a carrying capacity of nearly 30,000 tons. All of the craft came along in the regular order of busi- ness. While the tonnage was short of record proportions for a day, it afforded a good illustration of the growth of the shipping business of the port.

The building permits in Portland for the year 1909 amounted to $13,579,560; and for the current year of 1910, covering only the first eight montlis of the year, the total permits amount to $11,973,637. The "American Contractor," a Chicago journal of the building trades interests of the United States in its Au- gust, 1910, issue, in its statistics of building operations, says :

"Building operations in Portland, Oregon, for the seven months from Janu- ary I, to August I, 1910, show an increase over the corresponding period of 1909 of 31 per cent.

This gain places Portland third in the list of American cities as regards gain in building operations for this period. In the list mentioned by the contractor, there are 51 cities shown. Of these, 34 show decreases in the building operations for the early period of the year. This decrease ranges from 4 per cent to 76 per cent, which latter unenviable record is held by Scranton, Pennsylvania.

While Portland shows a solid gain for the first seven months of the year as regards the money expended for new buildings, Seattle shows a loss of 19 per cent for the same period, and during the month of August, 1910, the building operations of Seattle show a decrease of 29 per cent from August, 1909."

Portland's building record for August, 1910, rolls up an aggregate of $2,- 444,415, yielded by 643 building permits issued. It is doubted if for August so large a total was ever made by a city of the 200,000 class.

Portland's gain for the month is 133 per cent over the total for the same month last year, and 15 per cent greater than the aggregate for April of this year, which was the city's high mark. The construction of dwelling houses amounts to about three thousand per annum for the last three years.

CITY PROJECTS UNDER WAY.

Projects of a purely municipal character actually under way in Portland at the present time, aggregate the enormous sum of $4,329,000, and do not include the vast amount of hard-surface pavements laid this summer, or great sewer