CHAPTER XXIV.
LATER EVENTS.
1887-1888
Taking a later general view of progress, I find that
the multiplication of railroad enterprises had become
in 1887–8 a striking feature of Oregon's , unfolding.
In this sudden development, the Northern Pacific had
taken the initiative, causing the construction of the
lines of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, the formation of the Oregon and Transcontinental and other companies, and finally the control for a time of the Northern Pacific by the Oregon interest.[1] That these operations miscarried to some extent was the natural sequence of overstrained effort. The city of Portland, and to a considerable
extent, the state, suffered by the neglect of the
Northern Pacific Terminal Company to construct a
- ↑ I have already referred to the O. R. & N. co.'s origin and management in 1879–83, but reference to the methods employed by Villard will not be out of place here. He gained an introduction to Oregon through being the financial agent of the German bond-holders of the Or. and Cal. R. R., and a year afterward was made president of this road and the Oregon Steamship co., of which Holladay had been president, through the action of the bond holders in dispossessing Holladay in 1875. In 1872 a controlling interest in the Oregon Steam Navigation co., on the Columbia river, had been sold to the Northern Pacific R. R. co., and was largely hypothecated for loans, or on the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., divided among the creditors as assets. This stock was gathered up in 1879 wherever it could be obtained, at a price much below its real value.
