gs, 31
cows, 23 calves, 2 hogs, i donkey, i sheep, 7 colts and 2 goats, using up 1,761 loads of sawdust and 369 cords of wood, and costing $22,182 to do the work.
The Health Department — This department has been noticed in the chapter on the doctors. It is presided over by a health officer whose report covers many tables with some information. He reports an epidemic of scarlet fever affecting 573 cases, resulting in 14 deaths; 267 cases of diphtheria, with 19 deaths; and the largest number of cases of typhoid fever ever known — 186 cases, and an ad- ditional 118 cases brought into the city from outside for treatment, with a death rate of 14 per cent. There was no death during the year from small pox, and only one death in 1,446 cases of measles.
INCREASE OF CITY BUSINESS.
Never in the history of Portland has there been such activity in municipal busi- ness, projects actually under way aggregating $4,329,900, aside from the enor- mous amount of hard-surface pavements, extensive systems of sewers and park properties to be worked out this season.
In addition to nearly one hundred miles of street improvements now in pro- cess of construction, a second pipe line to Bull Run to increase the water supply, and Broadway bridge in the course of litigation, many miles of street railway being rebuilt, there are four hundred residence houses and half a dozen steel frame ten-story office buildings in course of erection. All this of course adds to the duties and responsibilities of the several departments of the city and greatly increases the city expenses. The assessable property now within the incorporated limits of the city amounts to two hundred and fifty million dollars, and out of that and various licenses the city government must raise for the current year two million dollars to pay current administration city expenses. To the above must be added two and a half million dollars in city bonds voted by the people at the last election for public docks.
TtlE PUBLIC UTILITIES.
The Port of Portland — The first and most obvious public utility is the river dividing the city into two equal parts, carrying away to the rest of the world the produce of the state and bringing back from foreign countries the goods pur- chased with the exported produce. And just as this river from the heart of Port- land to the ocean is made free, open and navigable to all the great ships that sail the great ocean, in the same proportion will the city grow.
When Portland was located here it was thought by sea captains that no ship carrying more than 400 tons could reach this point. And before the city com- menced to improve the channel to the river no ships drawing more than 17 feet of water could reach the city. Now ships drawing 25 feet of water come to Portland and ocean steamers carrying 6,000 tons dead weight come and go with- out delay.
To bring about this improvement, much thought and work has been given to the proposition by public-spirited citizens. The first work done and first move made to improve Portland's access to the ocean was made by Col. W. W. Chap- man, while a member of the legislature of 1868. It took the shape of an act of the legislature appropriating the sum of $30,000 to subsidize a tugboat to be located at the mouth of the Columbia to assist shipping to get in and out of the river, help tow them up to Portland. In addition to that the city undertook to maintain a dredger on the lower Willamette river, and with that dredger a new channel was cut across Swan Island bar at a cost of $25,000. But the exper- ience with the tug and the dredger quickly showed the people that improvement of the river could be made ; but that to do so the undertaking must be perma- nent, continuous, and expensive. And after nearly twenty years' temporizing policy, depending largely on appropriations of congress, pieced out by grants and
