in 1887, which had been sold in 1880 to William Reid of Portland.
At the same time the Union Pacific, having modified its views since the period when it was offered an interest in the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company, desired to secure a perpetual lease of this property. To this proposition the Oregon people were largely friendly, because it would change the status of the road from a merely local line to a link in a through line to Omaha, the other link being the Oregon Short Line railroad, a Wyoming corporation, but controlled by the Union Pacific. The lease was signed January 1, 1887, and was made to the Oregon Short Line, the rental being guaranteed by the Union Pacific at five per centum of the earnings of the demised premises.[1]
Seeing in this arrangement a future railroad war in which the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific would be, if not equal, at least coincident sufferers, Villard, who had regained his standing in the company by
coming to its relief with funds to construct the costly Cascades division, desired to make the lease a joint one, by which means the threatened competition should be avoided. But competition was not undesirable to the people, who had more cause to fear pooling. Besides, it was but natural that the Northern should wish to occupy all the country north of Snake river with its own feeders, and to confine the Oregon road to the country south of it. But the wheat region of eastern Washington, and the rich mineral region of northern Idaho, were the fields into which Oregon wished to extend its business. These points being brought forward in the discussion of the
- ↑ It was necessary to pass a special act giving authority to the O. R. & N. to make the lease. The legislature after much argument passed it; it was not signed by Gov. Pennoyer, but became a law without his signature. According to the corporation laws of Oregon, the lease of any railway to a parallel or competing line is prohibited. But a good deal of the opposition to the lease came from the Oregon Pacific, or Yaquina, R. R., which desired as much territory as it could by any means secure in eastern Oregon, and feared so strong a competitor as the U. P. R. R.
