Wood and the Willamette Road II

Wood's major legal client for a legal career in Portland that spanned more than 35 years (1884-1920) was the New York-based French investment house of Lazard Freres. Founded in 1848 in New Orleans as a dry goods store, it quickly moved to San Francisco after the discovery of gold. It didn't become New York-based until 1880, and in the intervening three decades (1850-80), it morphed from a supplier of gold-diggers to a speculator in gold to an investment house. As I look at its major investment in Oregon in the years between 1879 and 1910 (the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Road Company--"WV"), I see it now as, to use a 2012 term, a hedge fund manager--holding assets that could rapidly increase in value, much quicker than the shares of common stock, and then selling shares of these assets to individual investors. In the late 19th century this asset was land; now it may be real estate or crops or oil leases or other energy resources.

In any case, Lazard Freres in the early 1870s was looking for profitable speculative purchases, and it decided that it wanted a major interest in the WV. The WV was one of five road companies in Oregon which received massive grants of land from the federal government in the 1860s to construct so-called "military" roads, though the roads were never used for military purposes (I think the language of "military" roads was necessary to use in order to get the grants through Congress). When you think that a small group of investors, generally about a dozen or fewer men, were given control of up to 860,000 acres of land for purporting to "build" or "improve" a road within a five-year period from the time of the grant, you see the tremendous profits that could be made from this endeavor. Though LF's name never appears in any of the legal documents or case captions when the cases made it to trial, they became part-owners of the road in the early 1870s and then full owner early in 1879. The key names in the legal captions are three: David Kahn, Alexander Weill and Eugene Meyer. These are LF owners/partners, the first being a brother in law and the second a cousin of the Lazard Brothers themselves.*

[*A carefully-drawn and elegantly written treatment of the history of this road is Carroll John Amundson's 1928 U of O Master's Thesis History of the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Wagon Road Company. His treatment of the history until about 1888 is wonderful--meticulous, thorough, quoting all the primary sources, putting the issue of ownership of the road in the context of the Congressional policies towards "land giveaways" in the late 19th century. The only place where his treatment is greatly inadequate is in the legal cases beginning in 1889. This inadequacy is then picked up by Hamburger, who uses Amundson as his source in Two Rooms, his 1998 biography of Wood. My essays here are meant to redress some of what is lacking in Amundson's work. Amundson went on to become a distinguished historian at the University of Pittsburgh; a chair in his honor has been established. I have not interacted directly with Amundson in these essays because he only mentions Wood in the last few pages of his thesis, and then in a rather perfuctory manner.]

Enter Wood

Wood began practicing law in Portland in 1884, at age 32. This wasn't his first stint in Portland; indeed, in the mid-late 1870s he had been involved in the Indian Wars in the NW, supposedly recording Chief Joseph's famous concession speech, and then was stationed at the "Vancouver Barracks." I use that phrase because it is a striking one and, indeed, it is the place where his long-lived son Erskine (1879-1983) was born.

The key to understanding what some call the "contradiction" of Wood, I believe, is to understand both his military background and his free spirit. The first was part of his DNA; his father, William Maxwell Wood, was born in Baltimore in 1809, entered the navy as an assistant surgeon twenty years later and, by the end of his career, served as surgeon-general and chief of the bureau of medicine and surgery of the navy (1869-71). Young CES then went to West Point, graduating in the mid-1870s, having made extensive contacts throughout the military establishment. Like a preacher's kid who knows the Bible back and forth, or a coach's kid who already knows all the ways to handle a basketball, so Wood had the "jump start" in life that comes with moving in upper circles of the military.

But what does that really mean? It means primarily that you learn, at an early age, what people of means want and need. It means that you can spot the phonies, know the true people, and know what it is that they will pay money for. Of course, if you are exceptionally smart and creative, which often the kids of surgeon generals or other leaders are, you inwardly roll your eyes when you meet many of these people, but you know how to act properly so that they think you are a "charming young man." Thus, his frequent exposure to the political and military world of his upbringing acquainted him with how to act perfectly among the military/political leaders of the culture as well as how to know instinctively what they needed and what they were willing to pay a lot of money for. But often this isn't enough for a creative son of talented people. He needs to strike out in his own way, making his own road in the world. CES did this, first, through the art scene in NYC in the 1870s and then, as he became more and more associated with the Portland aristocracy in the late 1880s, in the financial world.

Thus, by the time he began his career in Portland in 1884, he was already a "bi-cultural" person. He could move effortlessly among the politically connected and he knew the military world like the back of his hand; and he also had enough skill to appreciate, if not to be a leader in, the art world. Effortless movement in numerous (or at least two) worlds is the key to success in life. Wood had that in spades. Thus, when he arrived in Portland in the mid-1880s, he must have considered it utterly simple to win over the Portland establishment. After all, these were just boorish and poor imitations of the people he hung out with for all his early years. They (in the East) at least had Ivy League educations and other academic achievements; the Portland Establishment had little or no higher education. But it was easy for him to honor the Portland Establishment, because he had learned the lessons of how to do that when living in the East. But he also had the thing that the Portland Establishment lusted after most of all--a kind of ease in appropriating the culture of Europe and the East. The Portland big boys had spent their years making money; they were clumsy, really, when it came to the art and education world. But because Wood came by all of this naturally, he could effortlessly move in Portland circles, entertaining, stimulating, challenging, but always aware of where the invisible "line" was that he must not cross if he wanted to keep these people on his side. It might come through encouraging words, deferential articles, or other signs that he knew his "place" in the Portland world but he carried in himself what they most wanted--a young man of culture, eloquence, connections. Wood could supply that.

Conclusion

Thus, one can argue that Portland needed Wood as much as he needed Portland in the 1880s and beyond. He was the perfect one to manage the Lazard Freres interest in land; he would not only know all the legal techniques to pursue (he had graduated from Columbia Univ. law school in 1883), but he would do so with the suave confidence of a young man who knew he belonged in that world. He could stand up for himself as well as for clients. But he also could develop his artistic ties, and so help the city secure a NY-based sculptor for the Skidmore Fountain in downtown Portland. In fact, this 1887 coup for him, when he was still only 35, convinced whatever doubters there were that having this young man along with you could greatly benefit you.

And, not the least of all of this, he seemed to work hard. It is this characteristic which needs most exploring in some future work on Wood. I would like to know, for example, the precise nature of his legal representation of LF. In closing let me give one example, before turning to the history of the WV in the next essay. Sometime in the mid-or late 1880s, someone (probably LF) paid a lot of money (some say up to $100,000) for improvements on the WV. I think this was encouraged before Wood actually came to represent WV. But someone had to walk or ride every mile of the WV road to know the type of improvements needed in order to rebut what would be certain legal claims that would be made that might lead to the forfeiting of the grant back to the US government. When you have a company like LF that has already invested a lot of money in the land (probably a little more than $100,000 in purchase and a like amount in improvements), the company wants to make sure that it doesn't lose the investment. It requres a super hard-working attorney to allay their fears.... In that statement is a great mystery and a great invitation.

Let's turn to what we do know of the WV road, in the next essay.

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