Chapman set his case before the public in a column-long newspaper appeal headed "The Gateway of the Cascade Mountains—A Monopoly's Attempt to Hold the Key of Our Interior Country, to Prevent Competition and to Strangle Portland and Oregon" from which the following is extracted:
Contracts which I was enabled to make for the portage links were made upon condition of obtaining the right of way at the Cascades * * * immediately on effecting an organization in 1871 a survey and location was made at the Cascade portage of four and one half miles of road, and suit instituted to condemn the land 60 feet wide for a roadway, which was not pressed for trial, as arrangements for its immediate use had not been made. But having this spring made contracts for the construction of the two portages to be commenced immediately upon obtaining the right of way at the Cascades, the counsel of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company was notified in advance that the suit would be pressed for trial at this term of Court. In the winter of 1871-2 the Northern Pacific Railroad Company became the owner of three-fourths of the stock of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, and more recently the president of the latter has become a managing director of the former, so that the contest by our company and the people of this country for competition and reduction of the cost of transportation on the Columbia river is substantially with the Northern Pacific Railroad Company in the name of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. This was apparent in the trial on the question of the value of the land—or rather rocks and mountains. Last fall, when the legislature was about to pass the bill for aid in the construction of the road over the Cascade Portage, and also for a wagon road over the same ground, known as the Sandy and Dalles wagon road, the Northern Pacific dropped their work, whipped across the Columbia and ran a line crossing and recrossing our lines, extending it on to Portland. Again, all of a sudden, on its being reported that work would shortly be commenced on our portage roads, a display is made of improvement and repairs upon a dilapidated horse railroad which a mule has grown old in holding against competition while the business is being done upon a first-class railroad on the opposite side of the river. On the trial
