Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/748

 daily. This mill was originally erected in 1866 to make paper, but converted in 1868 in to a flour ing- mill. The Imperial Mill at Oregon City, tirst owned by Savier and Burnside, was capable of grinding 500 barrels daily. The Salem Flouring Mills, owned by a company organized in 1870, with a capital of 50,000 since increased to $200,000, and which had A. Bush, the former editor of the Or. Statesman, and later a banker in Salem, for president, manu factured 15,000 to 16,000 barrels of flour monthly. Their flour took the lead in the markets of Europe. The Jefferson City Mills, owned by Corbitt and Macleay of Portland, ground 10,000 barrels monthly. J. H. Foster s mill at Albany had a capacity of 300 barrels daily. HittelVs Resources, 555-8.

In tiie great flood of 1861-2 the Island mill at Oregon City, built by the methodist company, and John McLoughlin s mill were both carried away. McLoughlin s mill was in charge of Daniel Harvey, who married MrsRae, the doctor s daughter. Harvey was born in the parish of Shefibrd, county Essex, England, in 1804, He died at Portland, Dec. 5, 1868. Portland Advocate, Dec. 19, 1808.

Salmon, by the process of canning, becomes a kind of manufactured goods, and was one of the three great staples of the state. The salmon of the Colum bia were introduced to the markets of Honolulu, Valparaiso, and London, in a measure, by the Hudson s Bay Company, before any citizen of the United States had e^ered into the business of salmon-fishing in Oregon. Robert s Recollections, MS., 20; Wilkes Nor. U. S. Ex. Exptd., iv. 3(39-70; //. Com. Kept, 31, i. 57, 27th cong. 3d sess. ; Van Tramp s Adventures, 145-6. The first attempts to compete with this company were made by Wyeth and the methodist missionaries, which was successful only in securing enough for home consumption, the Indians being the fishermen, and the company able to pay more for the fish than the missionaries. The first merchants at Oregon City tra ded a few barrels to the Honolulu merchants for unrefined sugar and mo lasses. Henry Roder went to Oregon City in 1852, with the design of estab lishing a fishery at the falls of the Willamette, but changed his mind and went to Bellingliam Bay to erect a saw-mill. About 1857 John West began putting up salt salmon in barrels, at Westport, on the Lower Columbia. In 1859 Strong, Baldwin & Co. established a similar business at the mouth of Rogue River. Or. Statesman, Oct. 25, 1859. But nothing like a modern fishery was established on the Columbia until 1866, when William Hurne, George Hume, and A. S. Hapgood erected the first fish-preserving factory at Eagle Cliff, on the north bank of the river, in Wahkiakum county, Washington. In 1876 there were seventeen similar establishments on the river, and in ItSO there were thirty-five. The average cost of these fisheries, with their appa ratus for canning salmon, and of the boats and nets used in catching fish, was in the neighborhood of forty thousand dollars each, making a sum total in vested in the Columbia River fisheries of nearly a million and a half. The number of persons employed in the fishing season, which Listed about four months, was six thousand, the greater number of whom were foreign. The boatmen "ere usually Scandinavians, and the men employed in the canneries principally Chinese. A few women were hired to put on labels, at which they were very expert. The mechanics were usually Americans. The following shows the increase of the salmon catch for ten years, by the number of cases put up: loG 9, 20,709; 1870,29,730; 1871,34,805; 1872, 43,696; 1873, 102,733; Io74, 291,021; 1875, 231,500; 1876, 438,730; 1877, 395,288; 1878, 440,917; 1879, 438,004. New Tacoma N. P. Count, June 15, 1880. The production varied with different years, the salmon in some years appearing to avoid the Columbia and all the principal fishing-grounds. There was a falling-off in 1879, for the whole Pacific coast, amounting to nearly 100,000 cases from the catch of the previous year. After the fishing season w r as over some of the canneries put up beef and mutton, to utilize their facilities and round out the year s business.

Tne export of canned salmon did not commence until 1871, when 30,000 cases were exported, which realized $150,000. In 1875, 330,000 cases were sold abroad, which realized $1,650,000, and the following year 479,000 cases, \n