Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/750



and water company followed, and in the fall of 1857 two sets of woollen ma chinery were put in motion. The goods manufactured, blankets, flannels, and cassimeres, were exhibited at the lirst state fair of California, in 1858, being the first cloth made on the Pacific coast of the United States by modern ma chinery. In I860 the capacity of the mill was doubled, the company pros pered, and in 1863 built a large flouring mill to utilize its water-power. The canal which brought the Saniiain into Salem was less than a mile in length and had a fall of 40 feet. The water was exhaustless, and there was laid the foundations of unlimited facilities for manufactures at Salem.

The building of the Willamette woollen-mill at Salem was a great incentive to wool-growing. The amount of wool produced in Oregon in I860 was 220,000 pounds, not as much as the Salern mill required after it was enlarged, which was 400,000. But in 1870 the wool crop of the state was 1,500,000, and in 1880 over eight million of pounds were exported. Board of Trade Re view, 1877, 15; Pasijic North-west, 4. The Salem mill burned to the ground in May 1876, but in the mean time a number of others had been erected. In 18GO \\ T. J. Linnviilc and others petitioned the senate for a charter for a woollen manufacturing company, which was refused, on the ground that the constitution of the state forbade creating corporations by special laws except fur municipal purposes. Or. Jour. Senate, 1860, 68, 73. In 1864 a woollen-mill was erected at Ellendale, which was running in 1866, and turning out flannels by tho thousand yards, but which has since been suspended. Or. Statesman, May 7, 186o; Deadfs Scrap- Book, 149. The Oregon City Woollen Mill was projected as early as 18G2, although not built until 1864-5. The incorpora tion papers were filed Dec. 31, 1862, in the office of the secretary of state. The iucorporators were A. L. Lovejoy, L. D. C. Latourette, Arthur Warner, \Y. W. Buck, William Whitlock, F. Barclay, Daniel Harvey, G. H. Atkin son, J. L. Barlow, John D. Dement, W. C. Dement, D. P. Thompson, Wil liam Barlow, W. C. Johnson, and A. H. Sceele. Capital stock, $60,000. Or. Arym, Jan. 31, 1862. Five lots were purchased of Harvey for $12,000, and water-power guaranteed. The building was of brick and stone, 188 by 52 feet, anvi tw- storiea high. Joel Palmer was elected president of the company. It was designed, as we are told, to concentrate capital at Oregon City, tfuck s Enterprises, M^., 6-8. Buck relates how when they had built the mill the directors could go no further, having no money to buy the wool to start with, until he succeeded in borrowing it from the bank of British Columbia. A few men bougat up all the stock, and some of the original holders realized nothing, among whom was Buck, whose place among the projectors of enterprises is conspicuous if not remunerative. The enterprise was successful from the stare. The mill began by making flannels, but soon manufactured all kinds of woollen goods. It was destroyed by fire in 1868, and rebuilt in the follow ing year. In point of capacity and means of every sort, the Oregon City mill was the first in the state. Its annual consumption of wool was not much short of a million pounds, and the value of the goods manufactured from forty to for ty -iivo thousand dollars a month. A wholesale clothing manufactory in con nection with the mill employs from fifty to sixty cutters and tailors in work ing up tweeds and cassimeres into goods for the market. This branch of the business was represented in S. F. by a firm which manufactures Oregon City cloths into goods to the value of 400,000 annually. The mill employed 150 operatives, to whom it paid $90,000 a year in wages. HittelVs Resources, 445 -6. A fire in February 1881 destroyed a portion of the mill, which sustained a loss of $20,000. The wool-growers of Wasco county at one time contem plated fitting up the abandoned mint building at The Dalles for a -woollen factory, but later, with Portland capitalists, making arrangements to erect a large mill at the fall of Des Chutes River.

Another woollen- mill was established at Brownsville in 1875, with four sets of machinery, which could manufacture tweeds, doeskins, cassimeres, satinets, flannels, and blankets. Its sales were about 150,000 annually, on a paid-up capital of $36,000. Linn county had a hosiery factory also. At Albany, also, there was a hosiery-mill, called The Pioneer, owned by A. L. \n