Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/293

Rh were the Hassalo and the Mary. Ruckle and Olmstead owned the portage on the south side of the River, and their steamer was the Wasco. Sharp competition arose between the Bradford and Stark interests on one side and Ruckle and Olmstead on the other. The Stark Company was known as the Columbia River Navigation Company, and the rival was the Oregon Transportation Company. J. C. Ainsworth now joined the Stark party with the Carrie Ladd. So efficient did this reinforcement prove to be that the Transportation Company proposed to them a combination. This was effected in April, 1859, and the new organisation became known as the Union Transportation Company. This was soon found to be too loose a consolidation to accomplish the desired ends, and the parties interested set about a new combination to embrace all the steamboat men from Celilo to Astoria. The result was the formation of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which came into legal existence on December 20, 1860. Its stock in steamboats, sailboats, wharf-boats, and miscellaneous property was stated at $172,500.

Such was the genesis of the "O. S. N. Co." In a valuable article by Irene Lincoln Poppleton in the Oregon Historical Quarterly for September, 1908, to which we here make acknowledgments, it is said that no assessment was ever levied on the stock of this company, but that from the proceeds of the business the management expended in gold nearly three million dollars in developing their property, besides paying to the stockholders in dividends over two million and a half dollars. Never perhaps was there such a record of money-making on such a capitalisation.