Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 37/Number 3/Reviews
REVIEWS
Orient Meets Occident, by Enoch A. Bryan, The Students Book Corporation, Pullman, Washington, 269 pages.
By Leslie M. Scott
The author, president emeritus of the State College of Washington at Pullman, resident of the inland empire since 1893, makes available to readers his large knowledge of Pacific northwest progress and history.
The book is a narrative of railroad development in the west, and particularly in Oregon and Washington.
The railroad idea began in the 1830s as that of a transcontinental portage to connect the commerce of the occident and the orient, like that of the navigators who, beginning 300 years before, sought a route to the far east. The upbuilding of the pioneer west, led by gold discoveries in the 1850s and 1860s, and the need for fast transit for national defense enforced by the civil war, changed the railroad plan from oriental idealism to domestic industrialism. The author's first chapter portrays a part realization of the original idea in the later growth of transpacific trade. "The story ends," says the author, "as it began."
The lure of gold awakened energies which opened the west to industry and built the railroads. The civil war eclipsed the Santa Fe route which once had dominant southern support in the government. Then northern sentiment put through the central or Union Pacific route to California, with big subsidies of government lands and bonds, to the enrichment of Huntington, Stanford, Crocker and Hopkins. Followed the Northern Pacific, longer delayed because of popular objection to the methods of such personal gains. The author's hero is James J. Hill, builder of the Great Northern Railway (no subsidies). Hill's adversary, E. H. Harriman, the author seeks also to praise, but by comparison does so faintly.
Especially satisfactory is the chapter in eighteen pages, "The Pacific Northwest Has Its Own Gold Rush," which rush began in the upper Columbia country in 1860 and created activities that drew in their wake first the Northern Pacific and the Union Pacific, then the Great Northern, and finally the Milwaukee.
The author gives credence to the questionable story of "treachery" to Astor on the part of Astor's partners in 1813; and to the version that the Pacific northwest was "almost" lost by the United States to Britain. He indulges in occasional colloquialisms; in popular dogmas that wastes and profits piled up excessive capitalizations, which survived bankrupt liquidations and perpetuated high rates; in the modern fiction that Dr. D. S. Baker built the Walla Walla-Wallula railroad out of public spirit and philanthropy, instead of profit designs. The greatest industrialists of their time, the ruggedest individualists, were the railroad builders, and the busiest periods of progress were those of railroad construction, 1868-73, 1880-93, 1905-09. Dr. Bryan has brought to fruition the observations and reflections of a long and useful career amid the scenes of his narrative.
Express and Stagecoach Days in California, by Oscar Osburn Winther, Stanford University Press, 1936, 197 pages.
By Dan E. Clark
Those who expect a book on stagecoach days to be filled with adventure and with stories of attacks by bandits and Indians may be disappointed in this volume. The author has made a thorough search of source materials, as well as of secondary works, and has produced an accurate, scholarly account of the origin, development, and services of the express and stagecoach companies in California before the civil war.
A brief introductory chapter furnishes a picture of the economic situation in California in the decade or more just preceding the gold rush. Then follows a more lengthy discussion of the gold rush and inland transportation, including the beginnings of the express business by various individuals and firms. The third chapter deals with the consolidated companies, principally Adams and Company and Wells, Fargo and Company, from 1849 to 1855. A similar survey of the origin and early development of the stagecoach business, including the establishment of the California Stage Company, is contained in the fourth chapter. After this comes a description of the events and consequences of the panic year 1855 in California. The supremacy of Wells, Fargo and Company and of the California Stage Company in their respective fields, the expansion of the stagecoach business, and a brief account of the stage connections of California with the east, are the main topics in the sixth chapter. A short resume, a bibliography, and an index complete the book.
The average reader would no doubt be glad to have a more definite description than is here given of what stagecoach travel was really like the length of time it took to go from place to place, the hotels and eating places, the most famous "whips" and their characteristics, and other "human interest" aspects. A chapter on wagon freighting would have rounded out the story of transportation before the coming of the railroads. However, the reviewer has no reason to complain of the limitations which the author placed upon himself. Dr. Winther has made an important contribution to the early history of the Pacfic coast.
The Beaver, June, 1936, contains articles of interest to northwestern readers. "The Journeys of Sir George Simpson, 1820-1860," accompanied by a map showing the routes traveled, were compiled by Mr. R. H. G. Leveson Gower, archivist of the Hudson's Bay Company, from Simpson's letters and journals in the archives of the company. Mr. Leveson Gower also lists briefly the voyages for discovery of the northwest passage in the early part of the 18th century in fulfillment of one of the objects of the Hudson's Bay Company. "54° 40′ or Fight," is the title of an article by H. S. Patterson on the Warre and Vavasour expedition to Oregon in 1845. The author quotes fully the first report, from Fort Garry, dated June 10, 1845, which has not been published before. The article is illustrated with some of the sketches which Warre published in London in 1846, including Fort Vancouver and an American Village, the title the artist gave to his picture of Oregon City. The Oregon Historical Society is fortunate in possessing a copy of the rare portfolio of sketches. The full report of Warre and Vavasour on Oregon is printed in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, volume X. Mr. F. G. Roe discusses further the subject of extermination of the buffalo in western Canada, which began in the Canadian Historical Review, March–June, 1934.
A recently discovered document in the Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico, discloses that Martinez temporarily abandoned Nootka Sound in 1789 on an order from Florez, viceroy of New Spain, as there were then not enough vessels at San Blas to supply the expedition. The document, with an introduction and notes by Charles L. Stewart, is printed in the Canadian Historical Review, June, 1936.
The articles in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly, July, 1936, are "Martial Law in Washington Territory," by Samuel F. Cohen; "Boy Editors of Frontier Montana," by Robert L. Housman; "The Diplomatic Mission of Sir John Rose, 1871," by Robert Carlton Clark; "Remininscences of Murdoch M. McPherson," edited by Harold C. Vedeler.
The Arizona Historical Review, July, 1936, prints a letter from Herman Ehrenberg to Governor Goodwin of Arizona, February 4, 1864, relating to the survey of a wagon route from La Paz to the Weaser mines. Ehrenberg was an early Oregon immigrant, having come with the Clarke party in 1840. In 1850 he was one of the explorers of the Klamath River and one of the founders of Klamath City in northern California
A note in the Missouri Historical Review, July, 1936, says that the burial place of fifteen of the forty-five members of the Lewis and Clark expedition is known, and of the fifteen, Clark, Ordway, Colter and Shannon are buried in Missouri. York, Clark's negro servant, is also believed to be buried in that state.
A sketch of the business enterprises of Simeon G. Reed, made from the collection of his papers at Reed College, Portland, by Dorothy O. Johansen, is printed in the Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, Baker Library, Boston, June, 1936.
William E. Smith describes the "Grave of Sarah Keys on the Oregon Trail," in the Kansas Historical Quarterly, May, 1936. Mrs. Keyes died May 29, 1846, while the immigrant trail was at the Independence crossing of the Big Blue.
The University of Colorado Studies, June, 1936, contains "The Non-Marine Mollusca of Oregon and Washington—Supplement," by Junius Henderson. The original report, to which this is a supplement, was printed in the Studies, 1929, pages 47-190.
The R. R. Bowker Company, New York, announce the early printing of one volume of a four-volume set entitled A History of Printing in the United States, by Douglas C. McMurtrie. The forthcoming volume will cover the middle and south Atlantic states. The remaining volumes will be issued at six-months intervals. Volume III will relate to the middle west and volume IV to the far west. It is interesting to note that this is the first history of American printing since the work of Isaiah Thomas came out in 1810.
Dr. Victor L. O. Chittick, professor of contemporary literature at Reed College, Portland, has accepted the literary editorship of Frontier and Midland, published at Helena, Montana, Dr. Harold G. Merriam, of the University of Montana, editor.