HOLLADAY, AND THE LAND GRANT CONTEST.
Holladay appeared in Oregon about six weeks before the meeting of the legislature in September, 1868, and took energetic steps to attack the rights of the corporation first named above to its land grant. With ready cash Holladay pushed the work of construction on the east side grade, subsidized newspapers to advocate his cause and sing his praises, bought up politicians on all sides to do his bidding, and treated with imperious contempt the rights of all who dared to question his career. At the ensuing session of the legislature he appeared at Salem as the host of a large establishment, dispensing free "meats and drinks" to all comers, and otherwise equipped with all the elements of vice and dissipation. Joined with and a part of this force, was the first hired and organized band of lobbyists in the history of the Oregon legislature. And so energetic and successful was the battle they waged, that on October 20, 1868, the legislature passed a joint resolution declaring that the act of the previous legislature was made in mistake, that the designation of the company to receive the land grant was still to be made, and that The Oregon Central Railroad Company of Salem be designated to receive such grant. This was done in the face of all the facts stated above, fully presented to the legislature, and of the further facts that the first named company had filed its acceptance of the land grant in the Department of the Interior according to the act and within the time provided, which acceptance had been accepted by the Secretary of the Interior, and the time had passed by within which any company could file another acceptance of the grant. Such a high-handed outrage was probably never enacted before in any State, and was accomplished in Oregon only, as Holladay after-
