Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/141

HISTORY OF OREGON STEAM NAVIGATION Co. 131 be carried t> Portland ;il rates that would leave anything for th.' fanner. Captain James V. Troup, who commanded one of the boats on the upper river, said to mo that ho had so many applications to bring wheat to Portland, which ho had no authority to do, that he finally wont to the president of the company ami asked for permission to do so, hut ho was informed that it was impossible; that wheat was not worth its transportation. The next season the people fairly l>egged him to carry their wheat to market, and ho made another ap- peal. That time the company yielded, and President J. C. Ainsworth said: "Well. Captain Tronp. you may try it, do the best you can." Wheat has boon pouring down the Co- lumbia ever since, and the Inland Empire is one vast wheat field. The career of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company was a great success. It would have been almost impossible, even under bad management, for it to have been anything else. Its beginning was small, but, aided by the peculiar advantages it possessed, and the growth of the country, it soon grew into one of the greatest money-making concerns in America. After years of solicitation and appeal, the government of the Tinted States began what it should have done years be- fore, th nst ruction of a canal around the falls of the Co- lumbia, which has opened a free channel to trade and com- merce that will forever unloose the hand of greed from the throat of the Columbia River. It is almost as important that a e;mal be constructed at the dalles of the river, and so give one of the best wheat-growing districts of the earth an open passage to the markets of the world. It has become almost one of the established policies of the government to free the channels of our '_ r reat rivers of all impediments to navigation. In i ther way can such valuable and general service be ren- dered to the people. It is not ray desire to criticise or censure the management of Oregon's first irreat corporation, which was so intimately connected with the early history, commerce, revenue, and progress of our own State. Perhaps any other set of men