Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/68

50 shore was lined with a fleet of barks, brigs, and ships, and where wharves and warehouses were in great demand. In Oregon City the mills were kept busy making flour and lumber, and new saw-mills were erected on the Columbia.

The farmers did not at first derive much benefit from the change in affairs, as labor was so high and scarce, and there was a partial loss of crops in consequence. Furthermore their wheat was already in store with the merchants and millers at a fixed price, or contracted for to pay debts. They therefore could not demand the advanced price of wheat till the crop of 1849 was harvested, while the merchant–millers had almost a whole year in which to make flour out of wheat costing them not more than five eighths of a dollar a bushel in goods, and which they sold at ten and twelve dollars a barrel at the mills. If able to send it to San Francisco, they realized double that price. As with wheat so with other things, the speculators had the best of it.