Oregon and Corruption Before the Reform
"One of the most corrupt and inefficient governments to be found"
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| The party boss Mark Hanna (click here) by Oregon's own Homer Davenport, the United States best cartoonist of the nineteenth century, our answer to France's Honore Daumier (click here). Silverton today hosts Homer Davenport Days (click here). Davenport was also the originator of the Davenport Arabian horse breed (click here) |
One legislator was paid $5,000 to stay out of the hold-up session; another received $4,000 for changing his vote on the final night of a legislative session. A third received $100 and some whiskey every time he voted for a certain candidate, and on another occasion $5,000 was given to a go-between to purchase a legislator’s vote. A nominee for governor paid $10,000 to one man and $15,000 to another to quiet an opposing faction, while a nominee for state printer was forced to divide the profits from his office with two other individuals before the convention would nominate him. Brownell declared he could report hundreds of similar instances.
- George Brownell, ex-President of the Oregon Senate. Oregon Journal, June 9, 1910
“Don’t tell me that conditions were better in the past than they are now. I sat next to the right hand of the dealer in the old days of political control in Portland by the bosses. I have sat at the pay window in his place. I watched the voter take the ballot from the judges of election, who deposited it in the ballot box and then the voter appeared at my window and I handed him the five dollar gold piece that he had earned.
- Circuit Judge Henry McGuinn; Governor Walter Pierce Memoirs
"Between sessions, there was but little paper money in circulation in Salem.... But when the law givers convened and there was a U.S. senator to elect, greenbacks by the flock took wing at Portland and flew to Salem—there to choke the avenues of legislative trade.
The prevailing prices were four and three—four thousand for Republicans. . . and three thousand for Democrats—such prices became common knowledge. As a Democrat I always resented this unjust discrimination and when once I asked a political kale purveyor how they justified the discrimination he said: “As a rule the Republicans occupied a higher social scale.”-Oswald West, Governor of Oregon, Them Were the Days
"Jonathan
said that Mark Hanna told him face to face it
cost
the national committee more than $7,000,000 to beat Bryan in 1896. Jonathan said
that $390,000 was spent in Oregon by Sol Hirsch. Then they actually stole the
election. Joe Simon admitted to him that the $390,000 had been spent in Oregon.
Boume spent $5,000 of his own money. They stuffed the ballot boxes in
Portland.
Jonathan (Bourne) told me that he sent to California for a notorious criminal who supplied repeaters for elections.... Jonathan agreed to pay transportation and the living costs of repeaters, all of whom should leave the state the day after election. The terms were settled except for the leader. The agreement was fully carried out and the night after the election the leader met Jonathan in the Arlington Club and together they burned in the fireplace the picture of the leader, which had been taken from the police walls by Jonathan who was the Commissioner of Police. It seems that when he asked the leader what his price would be, he said he wanted just one thing— and that was that his picture should be removed from the Rogue’s Gallery in Portland. ... The reason they didn’t win was that Corbett employed more men and sent them up and down the river to vote and they voted at outside towns as well as in Portland."
- Former First Lady of Oregon, Cornelia Pierce, wife of Governor Walter Pierce, Salem Capitol Journal 29 Sept.,1955
"After
the November election, 1896, 1 met Senator Mitchell on the street in Portland. I
said to him, “Senator, the report here in Portland is, and at the club, that
when you are reelected senator in this coming legislature, you expect to go back
to Washington, join Mark Hanna and the gold crowd, going completely back on your
silver friends. I don’t believe a word of it.
You
won’t go back on me?” He hesitated. I said, “Out with it;
tell me the fact.” The Senator
said, “That is what I am going to do, Jonathan.” I looked him straight in
the face and I said, “You are not going to be elected by this legislative body
that meets next January.” The Senator replied, “Jonathan, you can’t help it.
You
took the pledges from the men who were candidates when you gave them the money
for their expenses for the campaign, and you took those pledges to the Southern
Pacific Railroad which put up the $225,000 that you distributed among
candidates for the legislature.’2 Those pledges have been signed.
They are locked up in the Southern Pacific Railroad safe. It is not in your hide
to turn State’s evidence. You can’t help it.
I will be elected.”
Jonathon Bourne, Oregon legislator and U.S. Senator; - quoted by Governor Walter Pierce, Memoirs of Walter M. Pierce
“There was never a time except once when the senatorship wasn’t up for barter and sale.... I remember the time when the Northern Pacific put up $30,000 to bring about the election of a U.S. Senator and when the electric light company put up $18,000" (Ed. Note:Senators were elected by legislators)
- Circuit Judge Henry McGuinn Oregon Journal, July 15, 1910
: “The power that did select its representatives was made up of the corporations, the street railways, the gas and electric light companies, the banks, the railroads... with these had developed a kind of feudal aristocracy— the ‘first families of Portland’ —which habitually used public powers for private ends...“Forty years of corruption in the legislature had reached a logical outcome in anarchy.”
Burton Hendrick, Journalist, Winner, Pulitzer Prize 1923; McCluire's Magazine; July 1911
"As soon as the legislature convened, a troop of prostitutes quite regularly convened at Salem—the lawmakers, in some cases, attaching them to the state payroll. Drunkenness and debauchery commonly prevailed throughout the whole legislative session."
-Cecil Thompson, The Origin of DirectLegislation in Oregon, M.A. These, UO, 1929
At the turn of the 19th century, Oregon was the butt of national jokes about corruption in government. Both Senators (one died before serving his sentence in the federal penitentiary), and both Congressmen (Congressman Bingham also was imprisoned in a federal penitentiary) and the U.S. Attorney in Portland were all indicted in the school lands frauds (click here). Scheme after scheme was launched in the legislature until, as the last straw for the people of the state, the legislature even couldn't muster a quorum because a majority was attending Bourne's orgy (see above - Bourne was a silver mines owner. It was the first time since the California Gold Rush that the legislature lacked a quorum. In 1849, the Governor had issued warrants for the truant legislators. ), and the amendment to the constitution permitting referendums and initiatives passed by the phenomenal 62,024 to 5668 - 11 to 1, despite the fierce opposition of Woodrow Wilson and almost every politician of major standing. Women's suffrage was passed by initiative shortly after.
Of course, there had been earlier scandals. The school land frauds (click here), the Rogue River Wars, the railroad schemes (click here), the pedophilia of President Warren Harding (his victim was an Oregonian born from the Midwest), and so forth. The oldest government documentation is probably the following:
Office Supt Indian Affairs
Portland Oregon June 7th 1862
Sir
I have just returned from a visit to Siletz
Reservation, under charge of Agent B. R. Biddle My object, as expressed in my
letter to you of 17th [inst], was to inspect the condition of this Agency and
investigate the official conduct of Agent Biddle. I regret very much to inform
you that the management of said Agency is far from being satisfactory to this
office. I found a large portion of the Indians subsisting on potatoes, which had
remained in the ground during the entire winter, and were frozen, rotten and
loathesome. There was not less than Six Thousand Bushels of potatoes suffered to
go to waste in this manner, whereas if they had been properly harvested and
taken care of the Indians would now have abundance of good and wholesome food.
This neglect of duty, and loss of property occurred on the Agency farm under the
immediate supervision of Agent Biddle. The lower farm (eight miles from the
Agency farm) under charge of Mr. Megginson, produced a fine crop of potatoes
& oats, all of which was harvested and secured in due time. The result of
this was that Mr. Megginson has furnished Mr. Biddle for Seed on
the Agency farm, some Three Thousand bushels of Potatoes. During the month of
October 1861 I dispatched the Sloop "Fanny" to Siletz Agency with
Thirty five Tons of assorted Merchandise, among which was fifteen Thousand
choice fruit trees, designed for the use and benefit of the Indians on that
Reservation.
The entire cargo was delivered in good order
and condition to Agent Biddle on the 19th of Nov 1861 as per receipted bill of
lading accompanying Vouch 12 Abstract K of my account 4th Qr 1861. Early in
January Agent Biddle personally informed me in this office, that the entire
cargo had been transported to the Agency, and his abstract of Liabilities for
the 4th Qr shows the sums of $1023.27 due B. F. Cooper for transportation: Seven
hundered Dollars of this amount due for transporting the entire cargo (35 Tons)
at $20 per Ton. I was suprised to find that nearly all the cargo had been packed
from the Depot to the Agency (a distance of Six Miles) by the Indian women: and
that Agent Biddle in consideration of their Services paid them one pint of flour
per day and reporting the amount as issued to Indians.
The fruit trees referred to above were
suffered to remain at Aquina Bay, exposed to the severities of the Winter in the
original packages in which they were Shipped without any care or attention
whatever, until late in the Month of March and then transported by the Indian
women, at the same rate of compensation per diem as the other articles.
My own discovery that the
cargo including the fruit trees, were transported in this manner, together with
the Sworn Statement of B. F. Cooper, herewith accompanying, will show how much
reliance can be placed in Mr. Biddles representations. I found the fruit trees
intrenched horizontally in packages of twenty five each, about two thirds dead,
and the remainder, so stunted and crippled in their growth, that they will
scarcely be worth cultivating. Shortly after Mr. Biddle assumed the duties of
his office, he requested permission from this office to purchase two mules, for
the purpose of thrashing using them on the machine: Stating that there was
nothing on the Agency except oxen and they were not adapted. I gave him
permission to make the purchase.
Instead of Making the purchase, for the
purpose Stated, he purchased of Jeremiah Lilly Two Mules and C. P. Blair one,
paying Mr. Lilly at the time the purchase was made and giving Mr. Blair his
[illegible] note for the amount due him. These Mules were not used on the
Thrashing Machine, in fact never thrashed a grain, but were used by Mr. Biddle
in packing his own private property he charging the cost thereof to Government
at the rate of $80 to 100 per ton, and after the packing was done turning two of
the Mules over to government at 30 percent above original cost, reserving the
third animal as his own private property, acquired in the operation.
Nearly if not quite all of the goods packed from Corvallis were his own private property, which was sold to employees, and to persons mining on the beach for Gold. His Abstract of disbursements 4th Qr 1861 for current expenses shows $125 paid Dick Johnson for interpreting. My investigations show no such Indian on the Reservation, or ever having been there: and further that no actual payment for interpreting has been Made to any one. In view of these facts, I have deemed it advisable to submit for your consideration the accompanying Affidavits and papers relating to Mr. Biddles official acts and would recomend his removal from office. Should you concur with me in the opinion, that he is not the proper person for the position, I hope you will make the facts known to the President, and have his successor appointed and commissioned at once. Until I can be advised of your action in the Matter, I will make all necessary purchases for that agency myself, instead of turning the funds over to him. In conclusion I would respectfully solicit prompt action, so that his successor may take charge at an early day. I would recomend Maxwell Ramsby of Clackamas Co Oregon as a Suitable man for the place.
I am Sir
Very
Respectfully
Your obt Servt
Wm H Rector Supt Ind Affairs
Hon W.P. Dole
Commissioner &c
Note: Indian Agents had a reputation for dishonesty and enriching themselves at the expense of native Americans. J. Ross Browne noted the 'benefits' of providing blankets thin enough that they could also be used as windows. Joel Palmer, generally regarded as the most humane Indian Agent in Oregon (click here), nonetheless was able to build a house near Dayton which easily outshines any Southern Plantation.
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| Above: the main building on the Palmer grounds, a restaurant today (click here) |
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Department of the
Interior Office Indian Affairs Oct. 31st 1854 Sir; |