Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/771

 water power at Oregon City, which ever since 1841 had been a source of discord, and had constituted at times an injurious monopoly, had finally come into the hands of a syndicate of Portland and Oregon City men, who designed to make the latter place what nature intended it to be--the great manufacturing centre of the state.

The estimated value of property in Multnomah county at the close of 1887 was $27,123,780, and the value of transfers for that year about $6,000,000. The immigation to the state numbered nearly fifty thousand, and the importation of cash was estimated at $19,221,000. All parts of the state partook of the new growth. Salem had received the splendid state asylum for the insane, and the schools for the blind and the deaf and dumb, a manufactory of agricultural machinery, and other substantial improvements, be sides a woman s college, and a public school building in East Salem costing $40,000.

The county-seat of Yamhill county had been removed to the flourishing town of McMinnville. Corvallis, Albany, Eugene, and the towns in southern Oregon, of which Ashland was in the lead, all throve excellently.