Stateside with Rosalea Barker: Oregon

Coincidentally, I’m writing this Oregon piece on Valentine’s Day, when masses of roses exchange hands to win hearts. Portland, OR, is known as the City of Roses. Search “Oregon roses” on Google, and the first link that’s returned goes to a nearby company of that name. Not surprising—until you click on the website’s Products link and discover that they don’t do roses any more. This video on the Oregonian website explains why: when the US entered into a free trade agreement with Latin America, where the sun and warmth—and lack of controls on the kinds of pesticides that are used—has ensured that most of the roses sold in the US come from South America.

Oregon’s path to statehood was a somewhat bizarre one. It was the subject of territorial claims by Britain, Spain, and Russia, and it took a series of treaties during the early decades of the nineteenth century before the boundaries of what would belong to the United States were defined. Even then, it took a while for an “Oregon Territory” to be organized, and this territory was pretty much cut in half at the time of Oregon’s entry into the Union on February 14, 1859. (Oh! So they had a Sesqui last Valentine’s Day. I wonder how that went.) The (British) Hudson’s Bay Company, which was the de facto political entity in the area before it became a US territory, actively discouraged settlement by Americans, claiming it would interfere in the fur trade. In some watersheds, the HBC created a “fur desert” by killing as many beaver as quickly as possible so there’d be none left for newcomers. But the newcomers kept coming anyway. Oregon’s official nickname is The Beaver State.

The residents of the Oregon Territory voted three times to reject statehood. As a territory, they felt protected from the worst excesses of having a federal government tell them what to do—and they especially didn’t want to pay federal taxes. All that changed in 1857, when the US Supreme Court ruled, among other things, that Congress and territorial legislatures had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories—only sovereign states could decide the issue of slavery. Oregon’s territorial government had not only banned slavery, it had banned African-Americans from living there. A constitutional convention was called, but slavery wasn’t the only issue that Oregonians got into a pother over.

There was the question of corporations. From the Oregon State Archives:

Much of the rhetorical heat centered on stockholder liability. The committee with responsibility over corporations drafted a report that proposed limiting this liability to the amount of each stockholder's investment but it placed no limit on the liability for debts owed to laborers. Each stockholder, therefore, conceivably could be sued into insolvency for wages owed by a failed corporation.

In the end, the constitution limited the liability of stockholders, convention delegates having been “swayed by the argument that the legislature could enact a mechanic's lien law that would protect laborers from corporate failures.” It helped that out of the window of the building where the constitutional convention was held, the brand new Willamette Woolen Mill could be seen arising, with its promise of diversifying and strengthening Oregon’s economy.

Speaking of woolen mills, let’s go swimming! “Huh?” you ask. “Jantzen,” I reply. Bathing suits were originally made of wool, and Portland’s Jantzen company pretty much cornered the market on them. The company celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, but for Mid-Century Modern nostalgia, let me recommend the ad on page 5 of this issue of Life Magazine. From May 12, 1958, it shows the kind of fashions Jantzen had branched into at that time, including the iconic Kiwi footwear, the jandal. Less unexpected—given the weather in Oregon—is Portland’s sportswear company, Columbia, which specializes in apparel and accessories for the great outdoors.

But Portland isn’t the only place of note in Oregon. There’s wacky Eugene, aka the Emerald City, where Nike had its beginnings. The writer of the Wikipedia entry for Eugene points out that it is home to “a significant population of people in pursuit of alternative ideas, and a large, though aging, hippie population.” It was Ken Kesey’s hometown, and it is also home to the University of Oregon, which was the center of the “community development” movement in town planning in the 1970s. Wisconsin might have had its “Idea” but Oregon had its “Experiment”. And then there’s Ashland, which from June to October each year hosts a Shakespeare Festival on its Elizabethan Stage, plus year-round performances in its other venues. Ashland is a town of only 20,000 people, in a largely rural area, but it has managed to garner international renown as a cultural center.

Just one final note: Oregon’s wariness of taxes extends to more than just federal taxes. There hasn’t been a state tax hike since 1931—until this year. At the same time that Democrats were bemoaning the loss of a Massachusetts senate seat to a Republican, Oregonians were voting to increase state taxes. Since 1931, corporations have only had to pay a minimum tax of ten dollars. The backstory about the vote on January 26 is here, and the successful ad campaign for Vote Yes on Measures 66 and 67 is here. Bizarrely, the measures were put on the ballot by business interests who were convinced that the voters would reject them!

--PEACE—

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

© Scoop Media