in their work, it is likely to continue and serve as an example to younger communities.
It is greatly to the credit of a city hewn out of a wilderness, as Portland was, that it early established a public library which has grown until it contains sixteen thousand volumes, besides regularly receiving two hundred periodicals. For many years one of the city’s pioneers has given the rent of a comfortable suite of rooms over his bank for use by the Library Association, and the United States district judge a large measure of his time to the selection of books; and recently a Portland lady, dying, left a bequest to be applied to the erection of a suitable building for library purposes, which is now in course of construction.
Banks are surprisingly frequent on the streets of this city. There are already sixteen, many of them in handsome structures, and the seventeenth is being erected. This brings us to the consideration of capital and trade, and of Portland as a commercial emporium. According to the published statements of the boards of trade and immigration, the capital at disposal in the banking-houses is $20,478,750, while the capital employed in the wholesale and jobbing trade is about $65,000,000, divided among a large number of houses, one hundred of which employ from $200,000 to $1,000,000 or more. The trade of Portland has increased from $50,000,000 in 1886 to $115,000,000 in 1889.
These figures are remarkable as compared with the era of recent growth. But it must be taken into account that a long period of incubation of this wealth was enjoyed while the resources of the large area of which Portland was the trade- centre were being gradually developed. Thus trade was conservative and safe, and failures in wholesale houses or banks were unknown. The leading grocery house in this city, which does business to the extent of many millions annually, never employs travelling salesmen, although competition by Eastern houses has recently compelled other merchants to do so.
For conservatism, which is annoying to the newer men, who gird against it, the non-conservatives have a new word,—namely, “ mossbackism.” But the “ mossbacks” have the best of it, undoubtedly, in their day and generation. What the ultimate outcome of their policy may be remains to the historian to relate. Whether or not Portland is to be forever the metropolis
