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Boosting Medford

Medford didn't grow all by itself; for a time it was a tossup which town would become "the metropolis of Southern Oregon." It was boosterism--and the resulting inflow of outside capital--that assured the town's growth. It was boosterism that quadrupled the town's population between about 1905 and 1910. And it was boosterism--and the real estate agents' misrepresentations-- that caused the crippling crash that followed.
Medford booster button 1913

Train's Speech at Jacksonville.
    We copy from the Sentinel a portion of the remarks made by George Francis Train at Jacksonville:
    The early pioneers were heroes. Half a century hence you will be spoken of as the great column of progress. Speaking of 1845 to 1855 they will say--they were giants in those days. Six months on the buffalo and Indian trail, facing fever and starvation, and six days on the Pacific Railway in a Pullman hotel car are two distinct eras in civilization.
*    *    *
    Why did you come here then? Was it for love of adventure, or had you been doing something wrong at home, and wished to escape from old friends, old sheriffs and old associates? (Loud laughter.) Or perhaps this was it--the donation claim was the bait. You came--selected the 320 acres of land, and married a girl of thirteen to get the other 320--(Laughter.)--then came the only crops that seemed to be more than perennial--the crops of babies! (Loud laughter.) Whitehead on children is the great work for these valleys. (Continued laughter.) Madame Restell must starve in this land where infanticide is murder and Restellism is unknown. (Sensation.) Where everlasting health, salmon trout, red apples, jackrabbits and volunteer crops of children are indigenous to the soil. (Loud laughter and applause.) Well, ye came, saw and conquered the forest, seized upon every garden plot, every fertile valley and available piece of land, and went to work. This was between 1850-55 and 1860. The mountains and hills were covered with beautiful natural grasses, and the climate was that for which Ponce de Leon so vainly sought to find his perpetual fountain of youth. (Applause.) As luck would have it, the mines were discovered, population marched in.
    Money easily made is easily spent. Sitting at your own doors on land given to you, your little log cabin was made fat with the clinking of miners' gold. Fifty dollars for flour, one hundred for cows, twelve for apples, and all your fruits, grains and vegetables in proportion went off at miners' prices. (That's so.) You became rich, improvident, indolent. The climate was enervating. You did not support newspapers. You paid nothing for advertising--hence, today the world looks on you as a northern county of California. San Francisco absorbed your products, and destroyed your individuality--as wet nurse, she still treats you as a child, putting on your clothes, feeding you with a spoon and wiping your nose with a handkerchief made in England. (Laughter.) Wheat raised at your door is sent to Portland, shipped on Holladay's steamers to San Francisco, ground up and put in California sacks and sold in Puget Sound as California flour. They pay you 20 cents for wool and sell it for 40 as California wool. They call your apples California apples. Your salmon, California salmon, and your people "Webfeet," with a sneer. (Laughter.) They cut a 22-inch square 150-foot-long piece of timber on the Columbia, send it to the Paris Exhibition and get a California prize. (That's true.) They have lived off of you, and ridicule you for allowing it. They make you father the infamous lead of repudiating our national debt, so that today you don't know good from evil. No matter which party, whether Democratic or Republican, Federal or Copperhead, Abolitionist or Secessionist, you are so fearfully demoralized you cannot tell right from wrong inasmuch as all of you repudiate our national debt by refusing our currency. (Sensation.) Again, they took $1,000 gold in San Francisco and got $1,400 in greenbacks in New York, and sold you your clothes which you paid $2,000 in gold for, charge you 100 percent for exchange and commission. Still blind, you covered the hills with cattle--you overdid it. Every year you planted the same grain. You killed the goose with the golden egg. The cattle ate off and stamped out the grasses. The mines gave out. The good times changed. The decade of prosperity ended with 1860. Thus the tide turned. Since which time adversity set in. Instead of building factories, working up your own wool, you relied on two uncertain things--mines and pasture. You became thoughtless. Tarweed, fern, brake and whiteweed destroyed your beautiful natural grasses. No new seed was sown, hence ten sheep cannot live where formerly a thousand fattened. Ten bushels only to the acre where you once raised thirty, and no market for the wheat you raise. You sit over your portions in your towns the long day, asking what is the matter--will the mines come again? Will the railroad help us? Where is it all to end? Will Mr. Train send out the population? I have been too well treated by the people of Oregon to deceive them, even were it possible for me to be deceitful. I tell you what I think. Judge yourself. Know then, that no emigrants will come from the East. None can without money, and capital commands higher wages there. Few yet but deadheads and deadbeats have come over the Pacific Railroad. (Laughter.) Expect no emigrants, no new capital. You rely on yourselves, digest these plain facts--wake up from your Rip Van Winkle sleep of 20 years. What chance has the poor settler here? Let us take an observation: Many of you are from Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois and Iowa. Are you not aware that in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, for $15 any man can get his thirty-bushels-an-acre homestead of 160 acres? Where can he find it here? Your pioneers have taken the breast of the chicken long ago. (That's so and laughter.) Again, can we not buy in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas the finest land in the world for $5 an acre? Is it not absurd to expect that the Eastern farmer will sell out his all these dull times, leave railways, markets and population, pay a thousand dollars to come out where you have neither--with his household gods--two thousand miles, to take your farms off your hands in the Grand Ronde, Umatilla, Willamette, Umpqua and Rogue River valleys at ten, twenty and thirty dollars an acre? (Sensation.) There is nothing so dangerous as to deceive yourselves.
    They call me a humbug--my humbugging consists in telling the truth and showing the world one free man, who is not afraid of church, state, party, family, friends or God (loud applause) but who practices what he preaches, believing that abstinence, knowledge, sobriety, virtue, morality, courage, manhood, independence, and good health is better than quack religion, quack medicines or quack statesmanship. (Applause.)
The religion of the Christians,
Since the child first learned to spell,
Is a phantom God, a local Heaven
A long-tailed Devil and a brimstone Hell.
    (Loud laughter and great applause.)
    While my religion is so living in this life, so following the beautiful character and precepts of the Saviour, so to be prepared for anything which is to come, and not love God so much I have no time to love my fellow men. (Applause.)
*    *    *
OREGON MUST LOOK TO CHINA.
    Rely not on the East. Turn to the West. China makes all nations rich with whom she trades. There are merchants and bankers there, having a capital of a hundred million. China wants our telegraphs, our railways, our machinery, our flour, our fish, our bacon, our timber, our clothing, our boots. Let these "Johns" with us go home with American boots. Start the fashion, and all the pasture lands, all the farmers, all the boot and shoe factories you could build would not supply that vast population for a day. Think of 450,000,000 pair of boots! (Applause.) Take our felt hats--150,000,000 of hats. Take salmon in tins--450,000,000 lbs. of salmon. Take flour, one barrel each, 450,000,000 barrels of flour, for which you realize $3,250,000,000, or equal to our national debt, and this would only give them a barrel apiece for an entire year! (Loud applause.) You must wake up to your great destiny. You want population. China overflows with industry and wealth.
    Let your politicians stand back. Can they stop the great river of progress, the laws of emigration, the ebbing and flowing of the tide? First came the Irish driven away, then the Germans, striking the Atlantic shore. Now rushes in the Chinese on the Pacific side like a torrent. Can Senator Casserly and your one-horse politicians mop back this living stream of humanity with their Tammany Hall broom? As well stop the moon's attraction or the shifting of the sun. (Applause.) You must have producer and consumer living together. Capital must work alongside with labor. Let the factor go up next the farm. Remember there are 800,000,000 of bellies to be fed in Asia, and today there are less than one million of American souls this side the Missouri River. (Sensation.) Open wide your door, and strike for wealth through China.
Morning Oregonian, Portland, August 13, 1869, page 5  Read the entire speech here.

Oregon Abroad.
    We give the following extract from a letter of Capt. Sprague, from Sunbury, Ohio, to Mr. Langell, of this place, which shows how little Oregon is known abroad. "Oregon only wants to be known to be appreciated. Numbers of intelligent people think it is a cold desert, some do not even know that it is a state, nor where it is. It would pay the state to appropriate money to send a good lecturer through the Eastern States. Hundreds of thousands are going to Kansas, Colorado, and other western places, many of whom would go to Oregon if they were properly instructed. The papers are filled with California, since the road was finished; all visitors are in raptures over it, yet Oregon is the best of the two. People will crowd around me to hear me talk about Oregon, and many have expressed a desire to go there. Stick to it--you will be sorry if you ever leave it."
Oregon Sentinel, Jacksonville, October 2, 1869, page 2


How To Build Up Your Town.
    Don't fret.
    Talk about it.
    Write about it.
    Speak well about it.
    Beautify the streets.
    Patronize the merchants.
    Be friendly to everybody.
    Advertise in its newspaper.
    Elect good men to all the offices.
    Don't grumble about hard times.
    Keep your sidewalks in good repair.
    Avoid gossip about your neighbors.
    Do your trading with your home merchants.
    Sell all you can and buy all you can at home.
    If you are rich, invest something; employ somebody, be a "hustler."
    If you don't think of any good word don't say anything about it.
    Remember that every dollar invested in permanent improvement is that much on interest.
    Be courteous to strangers that come among you, so that they may go away with good impressions.
    Always cheer on the men who go in for improvements; your portion of the cost will be nothing only what is just.
    Don't kick at any proposed necessary improvement because it is not at your own door or for fear that your taxes will be raised fifty cents.
    Don't use rubber stamps on your letterheads, that is a dead giveaway on your business, on the town and newspaper published in it. Get your letterheads, envelopes, business cards, etc. printed at the printing office.
    Never condemn the local paper unless it has unfairly misused you. If it has dealt with you unjustly write to it or go into the office and tell the editor about your case; if he is wrong he will lose no time in telling the public about it.
    Remember that no man does as much for your town as the local newspaper. Every paper sent out is an advertisement of the business, the resources and enterprise of the place; and people abroad get a better idea of it from the local paper than from any other source. If you want to draw people to your section of the country send them your home paper, not one or two stray numbers but a full year's subscription. After they have read the paper for six months the western fever will set in, and no power on earth will keep them from coming.

Ashland Tidings, June 25, 1886, page 4


The Result of Lying.
    A Southern Oregon paper (published at Medford) says Rogue River apples sell at 10 cents apiece in San Francisco. Now that is a little too thin. Rogue River apples are no better than those raised in Lane County, and they will come nearer selling at the rate of ten for a cent. Besides, San Francisco market reports quote apples at 75 cents to $1 per bushel. Perhaps it only takes about ten Rogue River apples to make a bushel.--[Eugene Register.
    As the Times has said in discussing the immigration question on different occasions, it is far better to tell the whole truth than to resort to deception and lying. If people are attracted hither by false and highly colored statements concerning Southern Oregon, they are likely to become dissatisfied when they learn the facts, and in most cases go elsewhere. Thus much injury is done by irresponsible and untruthful "boomers," who generally are carpetbaggers and adventurers, and care nothing for the future results of their duplicity. This section has enough natural advantages without requiring the service of anybody to exaggerate or misrepresent them. The above extract is only one of the many which have been published in ridicule and to the detriment of Southern Oregon, and have already done it much injury.
Democratic Times February 3, 1888, page 3


OUR POSSIBILITIES.
Harry M. Ball Casts an Eye into the Very Probable Future
of the Great Rogue River Valley.
Farmers Plenty and Prosperous--Diversified Agricultural Pursuits and Big Cities Galore.
    EDITOR MEDFORD MAIL:--Your special edition of Dec. 1st came duly to hand, and I have read with interest your excellent and valuable write-up of the Rogue River country. It contains much information that would be greatly appreciated by, and valuable to, eastern persons who are dissatisfied with their present condition and surroundings, and by others who may contemplate emigrating to some portion of the Pacific coast. Every Jackson County reader of The Mail should do his share toward distributing information concerning the resources, climate, lands, etc. of the county by mailing one or more copies of this special edition to friends, acquaintances or others in the eastern states, and I feel that the individuals as well as the country would be benefited by such action.
    One of the present drawbacks to the success of the valley is too large an area of uncultivated land and too many farms of such a large area that they are only partially cultivated, and therefore not very profitable to the owners. If we could divert some of the large immigration that is sure to come to the coast within the next two years to your valley, you would soon see a great change--the farms would be greater in number and smaller in area, say in parcels of 40, 80 or 160 acres each, and much more thoroughly cultivated, thereby considerably increasing the yield per acre. Many more orchards would be set out by these newcomers, and the country now famous for its magnificent fruits would increase and extend that reputation manyfold. With this increased population, composed largely of sober, industrious, saving people, and your lands so largely and well cultivated, your towns would be the first to feel the effects of the good times that would follow and would rapidly increase in population too, as well as in manufactories, trade and wealth, which would place them in such a condition as would practically make them independent and affected very little by the panics and so-called "hard times" that are periodically felt in America. It would render all our lands, much of which is now unproductive, readily salable and at greatly increased values. Lands now selling at an average of from $20 to $30 per acre would soon appreciate to $50 and $100 per acre. This large increase in values would also be felt on the assessment rolls by reducing the rate of taxation by nearly one-half and dividing the whole tax among a greater number of taxpayers. A great many of the modern improvements would come to you by reason of this increased population and wealth, viz, good water works, affording water power for manufactories at a low cost, affording protection from conflagrations, water for flushing sewers, thus contributing to the sanitary condition of the towns, electric lights, and in time a system of interurban electric railways would no doubt pay. These latter would reach out in all directions, furnishing transportation for not only the people, but also for the grain and produce which could be hauled by the electric cheaper than by teams. Their supplies could also be cheaply taken out into the country from the shipping points on the Southern Pacific railroad. Such systems of railways are in operation in certain districts in the eastern states, and they are not only a great convenience to the public but pay handsome profits to their stockholders. To my mind there is now no portion of this northwest country that can offer so many substantial advantages to the intending emigrant as the Rogue River Valley. There he can find in abundance soil of the choicest and most fertile and at moderate prices; a climate unsurpassed except by California--the winters are not long and wet as on Puget Sound, nor extremely cold as in eastern Washington, Oregon and Idaho. You have a vast wealth in your timber on--and mineral within--your hills and mountains, and which a few years hence will be very important factors contributing to your prosperity. Hops, which contribute so largely to the wealth and prosperity of the rich and fertile valleys on Puget Sound, the Willamette River and in California, can without doubt be successfully raised in the Rogue River Valley. The profits of this industry, as you are doubtless aware, are quite large, often ranging from $100 to $500 per acre--the former is considered a low average profit. I hope to be able to interest some large growers in the establishment of an experimental hop farm, and if the experiment proves successful, you can look forward to the time when Jackson County will rank as a large producer of this valuable commodity. A large area of your lands are well adapted to producing alfalfa, of which three to six crops can be out per year and the yield brings from six to ten tons per acre, usually considered worth $4 to $5 per ton in the stack--it sells here readily at $14 per ton, baled. When it comes into general use it will largely supplant the native grasses, and enable the raising of a much larger number of fatter and sleeker cattle and hogs than are now raised, and which will find a ready market at good prices in the cities on Puget Sound and elsewhere. There are also many thousand acres of choice land on the foothills surrounding the valley that are especially adapted for the growing of fruits. These lands when in bearing orchards will be fully as productive as those immediately surrounding Ashland and brings the same large prices, viz, from $200 to $500 per acre. In fact, you have a glorious future before you, but in order to ensure the greatest measure of success, and that reasonably soon everyone must put their shoulder to the wheel of enterprise and progress.
    If you have 100 copies of your special edition to share, kindly send them, with bill, to yours, faithfully,
HARRY M. BALL.           
Medford Mail, December 22, 1893, page 2


Medford's Invigorating "Ozone."
    Acts of courtesy, a spirit of progress and good will toward our fellow man are sure to reap a just reward. Upon the occasion of the State Horticultural Society's meeting at Ashland and when these members reached Medford from the north, they were met at the depot with the brass band, baskets and bouquets of flowers, and baskets and boxes of fruit. The little demonstration didn't cost much--in fact only a little trouble--but it advertised our city more than any one act that has been performed during the last twelve months.
    This is the way the Rural Northwest writes of the occasion:
    "There seems to be more 'ozone' in the air in Southern Oregon than in some other portions of the state. When the members of the Oregon State Horticultural Society, on their way to Ashland, reached the enterprising young city of Medford they were met by a brass band, and a large delegation of citizens who literally overwhelmed the members with bouquets and sent each on his way laden with a large basket of the choice fruits grown about Medford, and a pleasant remembrance. Such a demonstration would not have been strange in Dakota in its palmy days, but it is not a very common thing in Oregon. Naturally the visitors were impressed with the fact that Medford is going to increase in size and importance--because it has the kind of citizens who build up cities."
    A little further on in the Northwest's article appears the following, which is a part of the resolutions passed by the board at their meeting:
    "That special thanks are likewise due the people of Medford, and the ladies particularly, for the surprise of Tuesday morning last when they held up our train, but instead of robbing us, loaded us down with delicious fruit and covered us with beautiful roses."

Medford Mail, November 9, 1894, page 2


    Transcontinental railroads have restored settler's rates on their lines, and a big tidal wave of immigration toward Oregon and the Pacific Coast will commence in the spring. Last year was considered an extra heavy one for Western immigration, but the opinions of railroad men who are posted on such things are to the effect that it will not be a marker to the number who will arrive and settle in Oregon this year. Several Willamette Valley towns have already the nucleus for colonies of these Eastern people, who for the greater part are thrifty and industrious people. Other sections are organizing to offer inducements for settlers to locate and establish homes. Those sections where the people are most active in advertising will reap the benefit from this influx. Cannot Jackson County derive some plan whereby the attention of Eastern people may be called to its resources? Cannot some advertising tracts or booklets be published and distributed? If we are to progress, the citizens will needs be up and doing. To procrastinate in a matter of this kind is to forfeit the benefits to be accrued through increasing population of sturdy, thrifty and wealth-producing settlers.
"City Happenings," Medford Mail, January 25, 1901, page 7


    Almost every day The Mail has inquiries for printed matter descriptive of Medford and Southern Oregon. We have nothing with which to fill these orders, and it's a pity we have not. Our townspeople are standing in their own light when they defer, by nonsupport, the publication of matter of this nature. People of Eastern states are hungry for information regarding Southern Oregon. This hunger is being appeased by other towns of the valley, and [they] are reaping the benefits which might be ours, in part, at least.
Medford Mail, February 1, 1901, page 2


MEDFORD'S POSSIBILITIES.
    If present indications count for anything, the city of Medford bids fair to increase in wealth and population within the next few years to an extent hitherto unknown in its history. Founded eighteen years ago as a way station on the Southern Pacific, with the old established town of Jacksonville five miles west and Ashland twelve miles south, it has slowly grown, principally by its favorable geographical location almost in the center of the valley, until it has become one of the most important shipping points for the products of Jackson County. Very slow was that growth at first, but it has been steady all through. There has never been a boom in Medford, consequently no reaction. Even during the years of the "hard times," the growth of the town was not perceptibly checked. It has now reached the point when, conditions being favorable, it may be expected to expand into the chief city of Southern Oregon within a very few years.
    It is the opinion of the writer that those favorable conditions are present, and the reasons for this opinion we will endeavor to set forth below.
    The fruit industry, not in its infancy, it is true, but still far from having reached its full development, is one of the foundations of this opinion. Medford lies in the heart of one of the greatest fruit-growing districts in the known world. North, south, east and west for miles the soil is nearly all adapted to the successful growing of fruit. Only a comparatively small acreage of this land has been planted to fruit yet, but more and more is being put out each year, until eventually the central portion of the valley will become almost a solid orchard, interspersed with waving fields of alfalfa or gardens of small fruits. Medford, as said before, lies in the heart of this fruit-growing section, and is the natural shipping point for most of the products, and the trading place of nearly all the residents thereof. This reason alone would be sufficient upon which to base an opinion of Medford's future greatness, but there are others.
    Eastward, only a short five miles away, the Southern Pacific Company is delving into the earth seeking a bed of coal, which its geological experts, who have a record of sixteen years with never a failure behind them, have declared is there. As soon as the development work proceeds far enough, several hundred men will be employed. Medford will naturally be their trading point, and the coal from the mine will all pass through this city, as the nearest point on the main line. Coal near at hand and the favorable situation of the city as regards handling the freight traffic of the valley will unite to make Medford the proper place for the end of a railroad division, with all that means to a young and growing town. Another thing in this connection is the projected straightening and shortening of the Southern Pacific line from Myrtle Creek south. There have been mysterious movements going on in the mountains about the heads of Evans and Cow creeks, and should a railroad line be located through, the end of the first division south of Roseburg would naturally fall here.
    Along the slopes of the Cascade stretches a mighty body of the finest timber out of doors, which must be marketed in the not-distant future, and again Medford shows up as the natural shipping point for the products and trading point for the men engaged in this industry. The marketing of this timber means either an electric car line for transportation or the extension of the R.R.V.R.R. eastward. Its construction eastward will, as a correlative, be followed by a westward extension toward the coast into the rich valleys of the Applegate and the Illinois, and the consequent hauling of their products to the junction with the Southern Pacific line at Medford. Thus the entire trade of this productive region will pass through our city, making its future the brightest of any town in this part of the state.
    But we cannot sit supinely down and wait for these things to come. The citizens of the town have a great work to perform in this development. However much we may differ in other things, let us have but one cause when it comes to the upbuilding of the city. Let our first thought be how to best advance the interest of the community at large and thus benefit the city and help the cause of progress.
    Every new enterprise of merit should receive the hearty encouragement and support of every citizen. Don't throw cold water on a new business in the town. If you can't see anything good in it, keep still.
    The resources which will go toward making Medford a handsome and prosperous city of no small size are here, ready and anxious to do their part--needing only development. It lies with the people to encourage and foster that development.
Medford Mail, February 7, 1902, page 2

Real estate ad, February 7, 1909 Sunday Oregonian
February 7, 1909 Sunday Oregonian

    MEDFORD, Or., July 17.--The members of the Harriman immigration bureau and Pacific Coast railroad officials who are making a tour of the state visited Medford late yesterday afternoon. A special meeting of the Medford Board of Trade was called by president W. I. Vawter at the city hall to listen to speeches from these visitors, in which was outlined their scheme for advertising this country. The Medford Board of Trade agreed to supply the bureau for distribution 100,000 copies of pamphlets descriptive of the resources of this valley. At the meeting brief addresses of welcome were made by president Vawter and mayor Crowell. Samples of Southern Oregon products were displayed, and Southern Oregon peaches were freely partaken of by the visitors.
Morning Oregonian, July 19, 1902, page 11


In the Interest of Immigration.
    Medford was paid a visit Wednesday by several distinguished gentlemen, they being members of Harriman's Immigration Bureau and Pacific Coast railroad officials.
    These gentlemen are traveling over the country gathering data for advertising this and other sections of the Pacific Coast throughout the East. A meeting of the Medford Board of Trade was called by president Vawter, and a goodly number of our citizens gathered at the city hall to listen to speeches from the visitors, in which was outlined their proposed scheme for advertising this country.
    A bureau has been established in Chicago by Mr. Harriman, president of the Southern Pacific system, for the purpose of encouraging immigration and for the dissemination of information relative to the Pacific Northwest. Advertising matter prepared by citizens and boards of trade of the different localities will be distributed throughout the East by this bureau of information.
    The Medford Board of Trade agreed to supply the bureau with a goodly amount of literature advertising the resources of Jackson County, and the same is now being prepared.
    At the Wednesday meeting brief addresses of welcome were delivered by president Vawter and Mayor Crowell. Samples of our products were displayed, and a box of Southern Oregon peaches was partaken of. The visitors were enthusiastic in their words of praise for our valley--many of them never before having been in the land of the great Rogue and knew nothing of our wondrous resources.
    The gentlemen comprising the visiting party were S. M. McKinney, chief of the Harriman bureau, and his assistants, C. MacKinzey, I. N. Conklin, W. H. Burke, H. A. Townsend, T. A. Krouse and A. M. Hall; W. E. Coman, passenger agent of the Southern Pacific; J. H. O'Neil, traveling passenger agent for the O.R.&N.; J. P. Jones, traveling passenger agent for the Southern Pacific, and H. E. Lounsbury, traveling freight agent for the Southern Pacific.
Medford Mail, July 18, 1902, page 3


Bright Prospects in Southern Oregon
From the Medford Mail.

    Unless all indications are deceptive the year 1906 will be one of unparalleled growth and development in Southern Oregon in general and Jackson County in particular.
    Never before has this section attracted so much attention from people of all classes.
    Miners, orchardmen, lumbermen, all kinds of business men are finding out that the many and varied resources of Southern Oregon offer a field for their energies unsurpassed anywhere.
    Jackson County is just starting on a steady, upward march toward prosperity, which nothing can stop.
    Next year will see the mineral-seamed hills to the west and south begin giving up the stored wealth of centuries in greater proportion than ever before. East of us the vast pine and fir forests will begin paying tribute, and in return a stream of wealth will flow into the pockets of the people.
    A start at least will be made toward the irrigation of the valley, and within a few years after this is accomplished not two, but many blades of grass will grow where none grew before. Orchards, gardens and happy homes will take the place of the waste places, and nowhere on earth will there be a more prosperous vale than that of the Rogue. All this will not come in a day, to be sure, but the start toward it will be made during 1906, and most of us will live to see its realization.
Oregon Journal, Portland, January 2, 1906, page 4



RAILROAD ADVERTISING
The $100,000 Experiment of the Southern Pacific.
    What returns may be expected from the judicious expenditure of $100,000 in magazine and newspaper advertising will be solved by the Southern Pacific Company within a few months or at the close of an advertising campaign it has just inaugurated. The object is to bring to the Southwest and the Pacific Coast the patronage of a large number of Americans who now make annual journeys abroad.
    The first work of the campaign was begun in all the principal magazines of the country in their January numbers, and the lines described were the Coast Line and the Shasta Route of the Southern Pacific Company. Under the caption "Road of a Thousand Wonders" the ads will be read by millions, for besides a good, common-sense article setting forth the wonders of the section the lines named traverse, there are numerous illustrations of the scenes described. The stations along the route are shown, as are also the attractions at each point designated.
    Not many weeks ago one of the great railroad lines of the East established a press and publicity department to carry on a similar line of work, but the recent appropriation of the Southern Pacific Company for advertising to be dispensed through the Sunset Magazine is the largest single appropriation for railroad advertising yet made by any of the lines of the Pacific Coast.
Arizona Republican, Phoenix, January 14, 1906, page 10



Sunset Magazine, October 1907.

Advertising that Pays.
    We reproduce the following from the Portland Journal's editorial columns, not as a matter of news, but as showing that Medford is being given a place on the map, even by metropolitan newspapers. We take exceptions to the assertion, however, that [we] were a "sleepy, listless community" a few years ago, and while we admit the fact that we occasionally nodded, we deny that we were at any time sound asleep. Medford, since the first bunches of chaparral were cut away and a building started on the site, has been growing. At some times it has grown faster than at others, but it has never stood still, nor has it retrograded, and while we might have "batted our eyes" occasionally, we have never been asleep.
    The Journal article follows:
    One of the best advertised towns in the state of Oregon is Medford. This we say without any disparagement of the efforts of other places in the state but rather to stir them to emulation. Within the last year Medford has experienced a decided awakening. The younger and more progressive men of the town have come to the front and have taken the direction of affairs. The mossbacks have been retired to the back seats. The spirit of progress has been in the air, and the opportunities for profitable investment are attracting the attention of outside capital. The results are already apparent. Medford has many advantages to attract the homeseeker and the investor.  It is surrounded by a region of extraordinary fertility whose products have won fame in eastern markets. It is the distributing point for a mining district of unusual promise. Its people are prosperous and seem to have awakened to the future which lies before them.
    A few years ago Medford was a sleepy, listless community, heedless of its opportunities, blind to the possibilities within its grasp. It was unknown and unadvertised. Through passengers on the Southern Pacific glanced idly from the car windows at the little settlement, looked up the name on the time card, and then forgot it. And the natives gazed just as idly and with just as little interest at the passengers, without a thought of attracting the attention of a stranger to their town.
    Now all this is changed. When the traveler arrives at Medford he recognizes it at once as a locality of which he has heard a thousand times. His interest has been aroused in advance and
[he] is eager to see for himself what it has to offer. If he is a capitalist looking for investments he wants to investigate Medford's opportunities. If he is a homeseeker he is predisposed to stop and purchase and build, without looking further. If he is simply a tourist bent on enjoyment he welcomes the chance for sightseeing and recreation in a locality whose fame has so often reached his ears. Whatever his purpose he knows that Medford is on the map.
    What has wrought the change? Advertising. Intelligent, well-directed advertising. Without advertising Medford would have droned along in the same old way for a dozen years to come. Now and then some stranded stranger would have been added to the population, now and then Bill Jones would have put a fresh coat of paint on his home or Tom Smith would have bought another cow. But there would have been nothing in the way of actual development and progress. When the people of Medford became inoculated with the spirit of progress, and not until then, the town woke up. Medford rubbed its eyes, yawned, stretched and then suddenly realized that the day of opportunity had dawned. Close on the heels of that realization came the campaign of advertising which is already bearing rich fruit.
    Medford is but an instance and an example. There are other towns in Oregon which are showing the same spirit of progress and which are experiencing the rewards that follow.
    Eugene is an instance. Salem will soon be in the same class. Astoria, Hood River, The Dalles, Pendleton, Baker City and a score of other towns are rapidly awakening to the necessity of exploitation and civic improvements. For years they have been asleep, but that period of lethargy is past. The time has come for earnest, concerted and energetic effort on the part of every community in the state. There is not a town in Oregon which will not profit by following the policy that has been adopted by Medford.
Medford Mail,
February 21, 1908, page 4


    Vancouver, Washington, is one of the progressive and alert communities of the Pacific Northwest, which has adopted, with absolute unanimity, the extraordinary publicity plan of the
PASSENGER DEPARTMENT OF THE
SOUTHERN PACIFIC COMPANY.
    It is generally admitted that this plan is the most liberal and far-reaching publicity proposition for communities that could be devised. It does not produce inquiries alone. It produces RESULTS. It brings people, who settle on the farms, business men who build up communities, and it has never failed to convince the most skeptical that it is by far the best, cheapest, most effective and satisfactory method of securing intelligent and effective RESULTS for communities. As a matter of absolute fact, this plan is in a class by itself. It gives to communities the strong cooperation and tremendous facilities of a worldwide character, of the greatest railroad system on earth (the Harriman lines), and it tenders these facilities freely and effectively. Not only this, but this extraordinary plan involves a large expenditure of money by the interested railroads, for communities accepting the proposition, and it offers communities
A VERY GREAT OPPORTUNITY.
    This plan stands upon its own record. It is a success. It is going to be a greater and a greater success. The experience of Medford, Oregon, which adopted the plan early in 1907, is conclusive proof of its wonderful possibilities and its effectiveness. The plan has again been chosen by Medford for 1908. In preference to all others, and with practical unanimity by Roseburg, Grants Pass, Ashland, Yamhill County, Pendleton and Umatilla County, Oregon and Dayton and Columbia County, Washington. Wherever the plan in its entirety has been presented it has been enthusiastically adopted. There is no exception to this.
"The City of Opportunity: Vancouver Washington," Sunset Magazine Homeseekers' Bureau ad, Sunday Oregonian, March 22, 1908, page 14



BOOST!
    We are in hopes that people will notice that every issue of The Morning Mail is a booster issue. We wish to invite all the people to enlist in the great booster campaign of the season, of all the seasons. Southern Oregonians are all boosters all the time. The true southern Oregonian is he who has the sunshine of the glorious climate in his heart, with the fragrance of the flowers and the song of the mockingbirds.
    But this is to be a special effort. Let us all join hands and "make a long pull, a strong pull, a pull altogether," as they say at sea, and set things moving all along all lines. The one question is how to boost just now.
    One--Boost all together. Take up all the good things in sight as one man and give them a good word, which all can do--and, as many as are able, give them all a helping hand. If we all boost as with one mind, one heart and one hand, what a mighty force there will be and what an impetus it will give to every good enterprise!
    Two--Let us not stop to squabble as to where we shall begin. Contention is not boosting; being "stuck" on your own opinion is not boosting. The booster forgets himself, his selfish interests, his own set notions. He loses himself in the crowd and goes with the crowd, doing what the crowd is doing. If you go in the opposite direction you go slowly and retard the procession. In a tug of war, members of the team have no will of their own, no thought of their own. No man can pull any but one way if he is loyal to his fellows in the team. With all the muscles of their body and all its weight they just strain at the rope and make things give way. A crew in a boat race does the same. The oars rise and fall in unison and the water flies in white foam around the prow. No man thinks of himself.
    Three--Boosting is constructive. Tearing down is knocking. It counts for nothing. We are not engaged here in removing debris, in demolishing something out of date. Ours is a new community in a new land and ours is a new age. The old things have all gone from sight. The debris is removed. We are builders. The material is here, the reason for doing is here. The reward of work well done is sure. The man who is now crying out for a destructive campaign of any kind is a back number. He is a knocker. He is in the way of boosters. He belongs back in last century and should move to Rome. Destruction belongs to times of depression. He is too slow, too fastidious to be a good worker who wants to stop and wipe the dust off of the bricks. The good workman lays brick. He slaps on the mortar and puts the brick in place. A little dust is nothing.
    Four--Boosting requires heartiness of action on the part of all. Cheer up, Mary, and all the rest of you! Do not look down. Look up. See the bright side of things. Be optimistic to the last degree. Remember you are in Southern Oregon, the land of heart's desire for all the world, the land of great resources and great opportunities. Do not let a doubt or a misgiving take away half your energy. Reflect on the years of steady growth and great progress which has been the rule here every day. Now is as full of promise as any time in the past. As you put your shoulder to the big wheels which are about to roll us farther along the road of achievement, put your whole force into the effort. The path is clear before us and the goal is certain, at its end success.
    Five--The booster always has friends. "Laugh and the world laughs with you." Boost and the world boosts with you. Do not be content to boost yourself. Call on every friend you have. Tell him what is on foot. All Oregon is boosting. The man who stays out will be left lonely by the wayside while the procession moves on. Do not let your friends get left. Do not lose them among the "dead" ones who refuse to boost.
    Six--The true booster is the man who works for the great communal interests and does not waste all his time in his own small interests. Thousands have been made here in the past because of the general progress of the whole community. Lift things to a higher plane and we shall go up with the rest. The man who is boosting all southern Oregon has all southern Oregon boosting him. We all share the benefit of every foot of advance the crowd makes.
    Seven--Boost all the time. Steady effort is what counts. Do not boost one minute and knock the next. Do not lay bricks in the wall for an hour and then like a child pull them out. It is by constructing all the time that the building is completed. By rowing in one way the home stake is gained. The steady booster wastes no effort. The spasmodic booster, who knocks when things do not go as he thinks best, undoes his own work. Consistency is a jewel and never more so than in a boosting campaign.
    To close, the time is fully ripe for a boosting campaign, and we have the people here to do the work. All we have to do is what most of us are always doing. All we need is to do so a little more so and enlist the kickers. There has been a little resting spell. We have all taken a breath and a rest. Let us put all our accumulated energy into the effort of the day and all things will get an impetus that will carry them along to success smoothly and with expedition. If this boosting is done earnestly and wisely, as is usually the case in southern Oregon, we shall have seen here the last gasp of depression for years to come.
    All shoulders to the wheels of the car of progress! Three cheers and a tiger for a southern Oregon that is the land of the builders, of the doers, where construction is perennial and destruction unknown!
Medford Mail, July 24, 1908, page 4


GAINESVILLE CLAIMS REWARD.
Will Show Thirty-Seven More Points in Resources Than Medford, Ore.

(Houston Post Special.)
    GAINESVILLE, Texas, August 2.--Quite a bit of interest has been created in this city by a challenge which the Commercial Club has taken up. A few weeks ago the Commercial Club of Medford, Oregon published a list of the resources of its town and offered $1000 to any town or city which could show more resources within a radius of forty miles. The gauntlet, thus thrown down, was not picked up until the Medford advertising booklet came to the notice of the Gainesville Commercial Club.
    The Gainesville list of resources will show that Medford is bested by thirty-seven points, and this list will be forwarded tomorrow with a request that the $1000 be forwarded at once or that Medford show more resources than were given in this booklet.
    The Gainesville Commercial Club claims that it can show more resources within a radius of twenty miles than Medford can show in forty. The reward will be claimed, but it is understood that Gainesville will compromise by taking half the amount in advertising in the state papers of Texas, Medford to foot the bills. The people will watch with some interest to see which club makes good in its contention.
Houston Post, Texas, August 3, 1908, page 4

SUNSET MAGAZINE MAN.
    F. E. McCullum, a representative of the Sunset magazine, has been in the city for several days. Of Medford he says:
    "After looking over the cities from Frisco north, I find a real clean city of enterprise, with stores stocked to do credit to a city of 20,000. It is my first stop in Oregon and am more than favorably impressed. Your population, according to voting records, has increased in two years from 720 to 1152 [sic], making an increase of population of over 2160 [sic]. Good enough!"
Medford Mail, October 16, 1908, page 10


AN EDITOR STUNG BY MEDFORD ENTERPRISE
A Quarter of a Million for a Quarter Section of Pears in the Rogue River Valley--
Biggest Bunch of Busy Boosters Ever Born Have Inspired People to Shed Their Money
For Jackson County Dirt--Pointers for Salemites.
    The writer has been at many booster conventions. He has held hot-air festivals in nearly all the principal cities of western Oregon, but never did he run into the specific caloric that makes a community get up and hump and double up its real estate values like the one he struck at Medford. Of course, all understand that the booster city of the Rogue River Valley has been on all the United States maps printed the past few years in boxcar letters, but few people know who did it. It was the Medford bunch discovered Southern Pacific railroad president Edward Harriman in his lodge at Pelican Bay on Klamath Lake and broke the ice that surrounded him for miles, and then swam through it with an invitation in their teeth, asking the "old Man of the Financial Mountain" to come and see them. He did stop a few hours, and Dr. Reddy took him in, too, with his 40-horsepower Thomas Flyer, and when he got through Harriman turned and said to the crowd: "Reddy is the greatest booster I ever met. He mentioned everything under the sun as produced in the Rogue River Valley except tin." Then Reddy produced some tin ore out of his hip pocket and gave Harriman a piece with an assay attached, signed, sealed and sworn to. The next time Harriman came this summer, he stayed three hours, and would have stayed all day but for the modesty of the Medford bunch. They were afraid of overdoing it with the old man of the mountain. After he was gone they regretted they did not keep him overnight. They got hold of Honore Palmer and young Vilas and gave them the time of their lives and each one has been the means of large investments being made in orchards. Young Palmer got his millionaire mama to come through and make the Rogue River Valley her summer home--stole that dame (so fair to look upon from a real estate standpoint) bodily away from Eugene on promise to return her after they had seen the bottom of her purse. She blew herself for $165,000 of Medford orchards, and would have done as much more but for the financial squeeze.
Who Are the Bunch?
    Of course, there is the premier, entitled to stand at the head of the list--Dr. J. F. Reddy, mayor of the city, fighter for new ideas, landlord of the Nash house, about which I must say a little more further on, John D. Olwell, first orchardist and organizer of this industry as a factor of southern Oregon development; Dr. C. R. Ray, of the electric power company, and his brother, Col. Frank Ray; J. E. Enyart, banker; Wm. I. Vawter, banker; Edgar Hafer, the box factory man; J. M. Keene, dentist and all-around booster of all southern Oregon, who takes abuse for breakfast, eats it for lunch and dines on it and grows rich, fat and happy; Jeff Heard, new manager of the Sterling gold mine; Geo. Putnam, who runs the red-hottest little daily in seven states and has libel suits and imprisonments for contempt as often as court meets; Judge Withington, who is legal adviser of the hot-air artists, and Pres. W. M. Colvig.
    I do not know where you would find eleven men who are such concentrated geysers of information as these are, but Medford has many more like them, and is educating them every day. These men are pioneers and have grown worse as they go along.
A Pioneer Orchardist.
    Hon. J. H. Stewart is no more, but he is entitled to the grateful memory of all who love to recount the battles for the upbuilding and and transformation of Oregon. He was a pioneer, a progressive man, a builder of orchards. He built one of 75 acres [illegible] miles up the Rogue River that very few persons have seen. He was an Illinois man and is succeeded by his son, who is a chip off the old block. These men have lived to see orchards that they planted sold for $3500, then sell for $20,000 and then sell for $60,000. They have bought and sold some of these themselves and have made some of this good money and kept it. It is not often that the man who sows so wisely also reaps the crop, but J. H. Stewart planted wiser than he dreamed of, and his son is following with still larger enterprises.
Got a New Hotel.
    One of the first things the Medford boosters did was to get a first-class hotel service. They got a new owner to renovate the old Hotel Nash. They tore out the old partitions full of vermin, took up the old carpets that had been put down on top of each other seven deep and sometimes more, tore out the old unsanitary, disease-breeding plumbing, and put in some baths. The first step toward arousing a community out of its Rip Van Winkle sleep is to get a hotel where a civilized man with money who is not afraid to spend it can telegraph for a suite of rooms with a bath and closet attached. Such a telegram creates surprise at Salem, but cannot be answered in the affirmative. The ownership of Salem's principal hotel refuses to make improvements or to allow a lessee to make any. Such an attitude is almost a disgrace to civilization. Whoever is responsible for such conditions can never make good to this community the injury they have done in advertising us to the world as a city where the traveling public cannot get decent accommodations even if they have the money to pay for them. Neither the State Fair nor the State Capital can be kept at Salem with the filthy sanitary conditions that are imposed upon the well-to-do and influential class of people who have to put up with primitive conditions and go unwashed for want of decent hotel facilities.
    I was delighted with the hotel service at Ashland--where the Hotel Oregon is up to date--with the service at Hotel Nash and Hotel Moore. The Nash has suites of rooms with baths on all the floors, and a grill room where everything is the finest. Where oysters are served in the shells, and game is on the bill of fare every day. A hotel register at Medford reads like a register at New York or Seattle. Medford is the Seattle of Southern Oregon, and the state knows it.
Found Some Salemites.
    Besides Dr. Keene I found Frank Hollis, who has become a furniture king in southern Oregon, owning three bed, carpet and chair and table stores, and looking for more to buy. Young Dr. E. R. Seely has a medical practice worth about ten thousand a year. Doc Keene was celebrating his 44th birthday and has made money enough in 11 years to retire from his practice. He wears flawless clothes, spotless shirts and gloves without wrinkles. He knows everybody, and when he goes down street he bows to right and left, young and old, farmers and bankers, women and children, and they all seem to know and like Doc.
    A man warned me not to be seen around with Doc. We had fought for and against each other, but when it comes to boosting for Medford, Doc knows no politics and is no respecter of persons. He put us in J. D. Olwell's Reo car and we did 30 miles of pear, apple and cherry orchards, when it conveniently broke down in front of a blacksmith shop just in time to take the train to Medford. There the doctor bundled us into Mayor Reddy's 40-horsepower Thomas car, and we did 20 miles more of pear and apple orchards on the east side of the town that is worth, just like the west side, from $500 to $1500 an acre. Medford sits like a big rose in the center of a circle of mountains covered with blue mists, and over the plain, radiating like the spokes of a golden wheel of fortune, one looks down the long continuous rows of orchard trees.
The Big Three Varieties.
    The big cash bumper crops have fixed things so that about all that is planted now are Newtown Pippin and Spitzenberg apples, and Comice pears. There are others nearly as good that make big money, but these are the best. John Wesley Perkins, now of Roseburg, got the first record crop of golden Comice pears, and they sold in New York for fabulous prices, and even got into the White House and the senate through Senator Bourne, who distributed hundreds of boxes of them to advertise Oregon. What did that do? Well, the Perkins Hillcrest pear farm sold for $3500 originally. Perkins had the nerve to pay $21,500 for it, and he has sold it to Seattle people for $80,000, and they took $40,000 worth of fruit off it this year. DeHart, the Portland hardware man, bought a pear and apple orchard for $16,000 a few years ago and has just sold it out for $35,000. The owners are building fine bungalows nestling snugly in brown-leaved kimonos of oak groves and taking almost the price of their gold mine out of it each year in crops that increase each year. And mingled in with the wagons hauling the fruit crops to town are wagonloads of fine coal taken out of the mines in the foothills just back of the orchards. Fred Hopkins off 19 acres of pears this year took $19,000, and the check was published in facsimile. A real estate man was telling a man on the street corner in my hearing of 40 acres this year yielding $46,000, or $45,000 net, and prepared to show him the expense and shipping books. $1500 an acre was refused for the Dillon Hill pear orchard this fall. It is 160 acres, or nearly a quarter of a million.
Something to Think About.
    Here is something to think about for the sluggards of the Willamette Valley, where the soil is just as good for apples and pears as at Medford. Nearly a quarter of a million for a quarter section. Pear trees on that farm just beginning to bear, seven years old from the planting, and growing better every year. That land will never be sold for less than $2000 an acre, and syndicates are already forming to take it in. Why shouldn't Medford boom when it has been the work of the boosters there to reveal the possibilities of that sort of fruit growing? The Hotel Nash, where I stopped, was as busy in the lobby as the Willamette when the legislature is in session and there is a holdup in the senatorship. Why should not Medford build high schools, lay off parks and pave streets? A half-million-dollar water system to be owned by the city is being brought in from the mountains. The Medford Commercial Club was started a few years ago by Keene, Perkins and a half dozen others, and now has 150 members. The finest exhibit building on the whole Harriman system stands at the S.P. depot. It is John Olwell's pet. There are others at Roseburg and Ashland, but not the equal of this. I was taken fifty miles through orchards, in the same seat and over the same route they took Harriman, around through old historical Jacksonville, up to whose doors the rising sea of prosperity is lapping with its gold-glinting waves, and still the tide is rising. Where will it stop?
What a Lesson for Salem.
    With such an example, what is the lesson from all this for the people of the Willamette Valley? The achievements of M. O. Lownsdale at La Fayette are a pointer as to what can be done in every nook and corner of the Willamette Valley. The work done on the Wallace orchard near Salem is a pointer. We haven't got the red-hot tingling bunch of boosters that Medford happens to have. We have the facts and the soil and the products. We have men who can boost. We are on the man. Things are coming our way. Can we not get the Medford spirit? Can we not get the Medford way? The Seattle and Spokane spirit and the Medford spirit are possible for any community that is capable of awakening to the self-conscious state of activity required to make things go. Alas, boosters, like poets, are born, not made. The man to boost Salem into the Aurora Borealis of prominence may not be born. But he will arrive. We need a bunch of him. They happen, but are not made to order.
E. HOFER.                   
Daily Capital Journal, Salem, October 31, 1908, page 11


    The peculiar conditions which had confronted Oregon culminated about two years ago, and a great change came over the state. It is only proper to give the credit to Medford, Or., as having been one of the first cities in this state to realize the psychological value of the situation. At that time a plan was presented to Medford whereby it could issue literature practically under the auspices of the Southern Pacific Company. The plan was adopted and out of this has grown a very extensive community proposition, which has practically revolutionized the publication of community literature. In fact, so successful has the movement become that Oregon has easily taken first place among all the states in the Union in the publication of high-grade literature as well as in the volume of the output. Other states are following the example of Oregon and other railroads the example of the Southern Pacific and Oregon Railroad & Navigation companies.
Southern Pacific Cooperative Publicity bug, 1914    The plan as now carried on contemplates a very thorough publicity campaign for each community, and involves about 20 important features. The entire burden is lifted from the shoulders of the community and placed upon the railroad, each feature of the proposition, however, being subject to the approval of the commercial organization of each community before the same is executed. The "keynote" of the plan is cooperation in the upbuilding of the West, and under it arrangements have already been made for the publication of more than 1,400,000 copies of high-grade literature on Oregon. These figures do not include any literature issued by the community direct to reinforce the cooperative plan of the Southern Pacific and the Oregon Railroad & Navigation companies, as originated and executed by the Sunset Magazine Homeseekers' Bureau. If we include all forms of literature which will be issued as a result of the plan, the pages of the Sunset Magazine which will be devoted during two years to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, and other forms of advertising which is called for through the community plan, the aggregate amount of literature which will be published on Oregon alone reaches such an enormous number that it is impossible to comprehend it.
William McMurray, "Exploiting State in East," Morning Oregonian, Portland, January 1, 1909, page 11


NO LONGER UNKNOWN.
One Hears of Medford Wherever He May Journey.
    Though Medford pats itself on the back as a community of aggressive boosters, the fact remains that, compared with its resources and opportunities for boosting, this town is really hiding its light under a bushel. Considering what outside people and the world generally think of Medford, local people, boosters though they be, are as the schoolgirl who blushes at every compliment.
    That is what Dr. F. C. Page, owner of the Suncrest orchard, thinks after taking a trip to the north. The doctor returned a short time ago from a trip to Seattle and other cities, and the story he tells is an interesting one to Medfordites.
    "I found an astonishing change in the attitude of people in their interest in and knowledge of Medford and the Rogue River Valley on this trip, as compared with one I made two years ago," said the doctor.
    "Then very few people had heard of Medford. When you went to buy a ticket to this town, the ticket agent had to be enlightened as to where Medford was located. Now, when you ask for a ticket to Medford the agent not only knows where the town is located, but so many people have bought tickets to this place that the chances are that he can tell you the price without looking the fare up in his tariff. Two years ago very few people knew about Medford.
    ‘Now, however, it is different. Wherever I went, as soon as it became known that I was from Medford, I was besieged with inquiries about the place and requests for booklets. Everybody apparently knew something about the place and were eager for information.
    "Way up in the frozen wilds of Alaska there are people watching this town and planning to come here either to live or invest, or both. As an example, while at Seattle I met a gentleman who operates a fleet of freight steamers on the Yukon River. He clears about $20,000 a year and is looking for a place to invest it. He heard of Medford and had studied the place and asked a lot of intelligent questions. He expects to come here to look the valley over in the near future.
    "I carried a supply of the booklets with me on the trip and distributed them, and the people who received them seemed to consider that I was conferring a favor on them. We little realize how generally people are looking toward the valley as a location for their future home and as a place for the investment of their cash. And the next few years will see an immigration into this valley that will put the records of the past in the shade."
    Dr. Page is the owner of the Suncrest orchard, the largest commercial apple orchard in the valley. On it there are 137½ acres of apple trees, six and seven years of age. At this time he is having set out 60 acres additional, 50 of which will be in Newtowns and ten in Comice pears.
    Besides, he is having set out 3000 peach trees between the rows. Peach trees mature and get into bearing early, thus affording a revenue while the apple trees are growing. This will amount to over 200 acres in fruit on one place.
    Apples from the Suncrest took the first prize at the Southern Oregon district fair, held in Medford last September.
    Dr. Page states that he met many of the fruitgrowers from the apple districts to the north who waxed eloquent over their ten-acre tracts. When he unfolded the panorama picture of the Suncrest orchard, showing 137½ acres all in one orchard, the fellows from the other places had nothing to say. He informed than that there were several other orchards approaching the Suncrest in size in the valley.
Medford Mail Tribune, January 29, 1909, page 8



A Booster's Creed.
    If there is a chance to boom business, boom it. Don't be a knocker. Don't pull a long face. Hope a bit. Get a smile on you. Hold up your head. Get a hold with both hands. Then pull. Bury your hatchet. Drop your tomahawk. Hide your little hammer. When a stranger drops in tell him this is the greatest town on earth. It is. Don't be mulish. Don't roast. Be jolly. Get popular. It's dead easy. Help yourself along. Push your friend with you. Soon you'll have a whole procession. Be a good fellow.
    All men are not alike. Once in a while you may find one who is very much alike. But some are different. You're not the only shirt in the wash. If you don't like their style let 'em alone. Don't knock. You'll get used to it. There's no end of fun in minding your own business. And it makes other people like you better. Better have others get stuck on you than get stuck on yourself. Nobody gets stuck on a knocker. Don't be one. Be good.--American Printer.
Ashland Tidings, March 11, 1909, page 1



NEWCOMERS TURNING TO FARMS
Apple Culture Solves Problem of City Man Dreaming [of] Rural Happiness--
Tremendous Movement
    Statistics by the Medford Commercial Club show that 75 percent of the newcomers into the Northwest during the past year turned to farming, stockraising and dairying, while of the others more than 60 percent took up orcharding and chicken-growing in districts tributary to the settled communities.
    Of the hundreds of visitors to the rooms of the Commercial Club the majority, including men and women from all walks of city life, came to the Northwest to seek homes in the rural districts, not to become general farmers, but to take up some special phase of the work, and in the greater number of instances it is fruitgrowing.
    The practice of intensive farming, more especially apple culture, has, in a measure, solved the problem of the American trait of the farmer seeking city life and the city man dreaming of rural happiness, and the nearness of the irrigated districts to the towns and cities in the Northwest has served to satisfy both. Small tracts, telephones, rural mail routes make a combination of the best of city and country, and thousands are passing useful and busy lives in these districts. There has been a tremendous movement to the Northwest in the last 11 months, when, according to the best information available, approximately 100,000 persons settled in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, and of these about 63,300 located in Washington, northern Idaho and Oregon.
    Illinois, Iowa and Missouri furnished the majority of these settlers, the rest coming from Nebraska, Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New York, West Virginia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Vermont, Nevada and Maryland, with [a] sprinkling from southwestern states.
Medford Daily Tribune, March 27, 1909, page 1


NO CURE POSSIBLE.
    Government experts, armed with powerful microscopes and highly scientific educations, have been with us for some time past and have proven worthy friends by running down the sources of the blight, by telling when and how to spray our trees, by inaugurating campaign against the ravages of frost, and by contributing generally to the movements which are of vital interest to Medford and the surrounding country.
    So far, however, a certain microbe, and a very active one at that, has been forcing his way into the anatomies of our citizens and causing them to develop unusual symptoms without once attracting the inquisitive microscope of the men of science who are in our midst.
    We refer to what, in consequence of our ignorance of medical subjects, we must call the "booster germ."
    That the "booster germ" is gaining an alarming foothold in the community is admitted by all. We have all watched with interest the rapid development of marked symptoms which follows the entrance of the germ into the system. You have doubtless in mind the cases of many friends who have developed the now easily recognized symptoms.
    While the "booster germ" is incubating in the human body, and prior to the volcanic outbreak of symptoms, there are few outward signs to enable us to declare positively that the germ is present. The patient exhibits the usual disinclination to work, complains, in accordance with long-established custom, of warm weather when the sun shines, of too much water when it rains, and still maintains his faithful worship of the bird of ill omen.
    When, however, the germ finally works the necessary changes in the patient's system, a marvelous change forces itself upon our attention. The patient exhibits a wild desire to rise early in the morning, to clean up his yard, to paint his house, to increase his bank account and to accomplish all manner of material improvements. He talks continually of the advantages of the town, finds nothing but health and pleasure in the balmy sunshine and turns up his nose at the sour-mouthed citizen yet to feel the influence of the germ. It would be hopeless to attempt to enumerate the tremendous number of physical changes which occur in the body, and the mental changes which take place in the mind following exposure to the effects of the "boosters' germ." The fever which takes hold of the system and which is directly due to the germ increases in intensity as time goes on, and never leaves the body during the term of natural life.
    Experts say that there is no cure for the work accomplished by the "booster germ," and recovery is rendered even more doubtful if the patient remains in Medford. It is hinted that if the patient is transported to a desert island, and pears, apples and all other products of the Rogue River Valley kept from his sight and his diet limited to sawdust and skimmed milk the symptoms may ultimately subside.
    Medford, however, offers no hope to the patient. The climate, the environment, the business standing of the community and the future prospects all preclude against any possibility of it becoming the site of a sanitarium for the cure of those afflicted with "boosterism."
Medford Mail, April 16, 1909, page 7


WELLS BUYS AT MEDFORD
Harriman Publicity Agent Secures Business Property.
    MEDFORD, Or., Nov. 6.--(Special.)--William Biddle Wells, Pacific Northwest manager of the Sunset magazine, and as such the head of the publicity department of the Harriman lines in Oregon, in which position he has extolled the merits of every section of the Northwest, has shown his faith in the city of Medford by purchasing the northwest corner of Fifty and Central Avenue for a sum close to $6000. He will erect a brick business block thereon.
    Mr. Wells has issued all the community booklets published in the Northwest, has visited all the cities and is the best posted man on prevailing conditions in each community.
Sunday Oregonian, Portland, November 7, 1909, page 5



OLD RESIDENT JOINS THE PROGRESSIVE ELEMENT
    "Prices have been raised on acreage on the Beall ranch," said V. T. Beall Saturday. "I have been in Jackson County for over 50 years and have seen the time when I would have traded the whole durned country to be assured that my topknot would remain where nature had placed it, but I've concluded that nothing less than $1500 will take away any part of the Vint Beall ranch. I'll admit that I have been among the kickers, but I've worn my heels acting a mule and have become convinced that there is nothing like the 'Medford spirit'--the spirit that makes things happen. From this time on you will find me boosting all the time."
Medford Mail Tribune, February 20, 1910, page 1



Sunset Magazine, August 1910.

MEDFORD CHALLENGE OUT
Offer of $5000 Made If Any City Has Richter Tributary Region.
    MEDFORD, Or., Nov. 5.--(Special.)--Medford "dares" Baker to prove that its natural resources exceed those of Medford.
    The Commercial Club here has written to the Baker club and offers to pay $5000 for conclusive proof that the Baker metropolis is the richer in resources.
    The Medford challenge sets forth that the reward will be paid if authentic testimony shows that "any city or town in the United States has, tributary to it, within a 20-mile radius, as many diversified resources as Medford has within a corresponding radius."
Sunday Oregonian, Portland, November 6, 1910, page 36


REALTY DEALERS SHOULD WORK TOGETHER
    Medford has arrived at a point in her development where she is the most talked-of little city on the Pacific coast, and more people are inquiring and investigating the Rogue River Valley, with a view to its becoming their permanent home, than any other spot in Southern Oregon.
    Homeseekers come first in contact with the real estate men. People of the East are unfamiliar with our conditions here. A farmer in Iowa may have good judgment as to agriculture in the Middle West, but his judgment will avail him nothing in this valley, where intense farming is the rule. Consequently, it is no more than fair and business justice that he be told the plain truth. Surely the truth about the Rogue River Valley is flattering enough.
    There is no portion of the district adjoining Medford and vicinity that will not produce something. There are apple orchards that have been planted on ground too heavy and cold to be good producers, while this same land would be par-excellent for pears--and so on. Even the so-called "desert," practically uninhabited, has proven to be a district that, with water, will produce everything that can be raised in the valley. The local market that is now being supplied from California and farther north in this state could be amply supplied by products raised upon this so-called "desert."
    There are many real estate men in this town who are heavy taxpayers, are enterprising citizens and in every way deserve the respect of the community. There is also a class of irresponsibles working only for the commission who will make any statement, or any kind of a misrepresentation, in order to make a sale. These men should be eliminated from the business or made to stick to the truth.
    If the real estate men, as a body, wish the respect of this community and wish their business to be regarded in the light of a legitimate business, let them do like they have done in other cities, form a real estate association, meet often together and formulate rules whereby their business can be conducted with the same dignity that other lines of business are managed. If they refuse to get together, and maintain the same cutthroat business, then they do not deserve the assistance of the Commercial Club or any other body of citizens in Medford.
    Either organize or quit talking about the rights of the real estate man.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 22, 1910, page 4

Roguelands ad, February 2, 1911 Oxford Mirror
Roguelands ad, February 2, 1911 Oxford Mirror

MUCH INTEREST IN NEW ADDITION
    New Plan of Owners in Guaranteeing Every Purchaser 4 Percent on Investment
Is Attracting Much Attention Throughout the City.
    The whole town is talking about the wonderful idea that has been presented to the people of this vicinity in the last few days. You can't talk to a real estate man, a private citizen or hardly a person but what they will ask you if you have heard about the new idea of selling real estate. Of course you have heard about it, for most everyone has. Automobiles are busy carrying the prospective buyers out to the new South Park addition. Everyone is anxious to see this addition. It lies at the end of South Holly Street right at the end of the paving and only six blocks from Main Street. The city is built up on three sides, and it will only be a short time until building will go far beyond. It is the highest residence section west of the creek so close to the main business part of the city. A lot in this beautiful section is as sure to advance in value as the city of Medford is to remain on the map.
    You can't lose by investing in lots in South Park addition, for the owners guarantee every purchaser 4 percent on their investment. This means that at the end of the year if you are dissatisfied with your buy you can get your money back with interest at the rate of 4 percent per annum. Very small chance of anyone ever asking for their money back in this section--they will more than likely sell later on for an advance of from 50 to 100 percent increase on their investment. There is a building restriction and a line limit on every lot, and this means that only the better class of residences will be built. For full information see the owners, C. W. Palm, H. U. Lumsden, C. I. Hutchison or F. W. Hutchison.
Medford Mail Tribune, March 31, 1911, page 8


Medford Has Found Her Stride
    Medford has found her stride. Her phenomenal growth of the past two years will be eclipsed by that of the coming year. "25,000 for 1915" is no longer an idle dream.
    This constantly augmented army of newcomers is the material from which cities are made, and the future character and appearance of our city will depend upon the disposition made NOW of this material.
    YOURS is the OPPORTUNITY to play a man's part NOW in the laying down of the skeleton plan about which shall be built the CITY BEAUTIFUL!
   
The first strong line of that plan must be the marking out of a definite RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT as distinct from the business and the mixed residence and business district, into which residential district may be attracted those who are essentially HOME BUILDERS--those for whom HOME shall mean atmosphere and environment as well as mere housing for the family.
    OPPORTUNITY calls you to add your effort to that of Medford's architects and help direct her growth into the proper and natural channels--along that road awaits FAME.
    OPPORTUNITY calls you to take NOTICE and ADVANTAGE of the fact that the East Side is awake and moving; that physical improvements will be effected there within the next six months which will prove more noticeable than any yet consummated in the city--along that road awaits FORTUNE.
Excerpt, East Side Improvement Association advertisement, Medford Sun, April 16, 1911, page B4



BE A BOOSTER

Do you know there's lots o' people
    Settin' round in every town,
Growlin' like a broody chicken,
    Knockin' every good thing down?
Don't you be that kind of cattle,
    'Cause they ain't no use on earth;
You just be a booster rooster--
    Crow and boost for all you're worth.

If your town needs boostin' booster,
    Don't hold back and wait to see
If some other feller's willin'
    Sail right in--this country's free;
No one's got a mortgage on it,
    It's yours just as much as his.
If your town is shy on boosters,
    You get in the boostin' biz.

If things don't seem to suit you,
    An' the world seems kinder wrong,
What's the matter with a-boostin'
    Just to help the thing along?
'Cause if things should stop a-goin'
    We'd be in a sorry plight.
You just keep the horn a-blowin'
    Booster up with all your might.

If you see some feller tryin'
    For to make some project go,
You can boost it up a trifle.
    That you're one to let him know
That you're not goin' to knock it,
    Just because it's not your "shout,"
But you're goin' to boost a little
    'Cause he's got the "best thing out."

If you know some feller's failin's,
    Just forget 'em, 'cause, you know,
That same feller's got some good points--
    Them's the ones you want to show,
Cast your loaves out on the waters,
    "They'll come back," is a saying true.
Maybe they will come back "buttered,"
    When some feller boosts for you.

Medford Sun, June 25, 1911, page 4


    On the train I [Frank C. Elliott, owner of the Pantorium] made the acquaintance of a number of people, and nearly all of them had heard of Medford, Ore. One well-dressed man, probably a capitalist, struck up a conversation with me by asking if I had ever heard of that town down there in Oregon called Medford. He son found out that I had been there. There was opportunity and time for lots of missionary work on the train. Everyone I talked with was receptive when I talked of the Rogue River Valley, and they thought our booklets the most beautiful they ever had seen. Medford is really the most talked-of town in the whole United States, taking into consideration its size. I could not sit in a car for half an hour without hearing the familiar name. When I got into California this was much more apparent. There are many California people interested in Medford.
"Medford Known Country Over," Medford Sun, July 7, 1911, page 8

MEDFORD HAS HOMELIEST MEN
BUT THE PRETTIEST WOMEN
So Declares Judge Colvig at Banquet to President Gray of Hill Lines--
Other Things That Medford Has, Eloquently Portrayed
    "We have the homeliest men in the universe," said Judge Wm. M. Colvig to President Carl Gray of the Hill Lines in Oregon, "but we have the most beautiful women in the world."
    The occasion was Friday night's banquet to the prominent railroad man, and the remark was the introduction of one of the most picturesque and interesting after-dinner speeches that has been heard in Medford in years.
    The judge was in rare form. His rich voice rang through the spaces of the Nash Grill, fluttered through the masses of sweet peas clustered on the table, and resonantly bursting through the screen door to Main Street attracted autoists and passersby who stopped to listen, while many of them entered the room, and unnoticed in the spell of oratory that bound the banqueters, took seats at unoccupied tables to listen.
    "I have been selected to speak to you," continued the toastmaster, "because I have the deserved reputation of always speaking the truth. Whenever a distinguished visitor is in our midst I am selected to speak to him because, like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. (Laughter and applause.)
    "Jackson County, sir, has a taxable value of $28,000,000. Its men, I repeat, are homely but they are the strongest and most aggressive body of souls of earth. For many years we have been cooped up here with the services of only one transcontinental line. I have for many years been local attorney for that line, but I would prefer to be local attorney for two continental lines. (Prolonged laughter.) We have here in this country 75,000 [railroad] cars from the first of August to the first of December of every year. This is not poetry, sir, but truth.
    "We have mines. Thirty-one millions in gold have been taken out of this county. Thirty-five miles east of here there is a copper mine on which has been spent a million and a half of dollars. But the rich deposits of copper there cannot be utilized until there is another road.
    "We have timber. Thousands and thousands of feet of sugar pine and fir cover the hills and mountains, which are merely awaiting the coming of the railroad to be converted into gold. We have coal mines on the outskirts of Medford. There is nothing that can grow on the face of the earth that cannot grow as well in Medford--wheat, alfalfa, oats, onions, berries--everything.
    "I love this country, sir. I believe the time is coming when the highest degree of civilization, the greatest culture, the greatest wealth per capita, will be centered here in the Rogue River Valley. This country has a charm, sir, which no other part of God's earth has. It has natural scenery that is not excelled in any part of this country or the world. The time is coming when this will be the greatest center for tourists in America. If you extend your road over the Cascades it will pass near Crater Lake, which is one of the greatest wonders nature has ever wrought. If you should come here once you would never leave, for this country holds with a siren's spell and binds as no other district binds with the mystic bonds of home."
Medford Sun, July 9, 1911, page 3


    William M. Colvig gave one of his interesting and entertaining talks [at the meeting of the Oregon Development League in Astoria]. He is known to be one of the best and wittiest public speakers in Oregon, and he was at his best. He spoke as follows:
    "For three years past I have been the president of the Medford Commercial Club, and, with my associates, have induced a great many people to come to Oregon, many of whom are now basking in the sunshine of happier and more prosperous days than they had ever known before, and yet I am sorry to say there are a few others who seem to have been 'over-much persuaded,' and who have either returned to the familiar faces of their old homes in the East or are found wandering up and down the Pacific Coast cussing the country and everybody in it. These few need parental guidance and should not have crossed the threshold where the 'old folks stay.'
    "As loyal citizens of Oregon we should be glad to welcome among us all those who are not afraid to face the obstacles which lie in the pathway of every new civilization. We should not hesitate to sing the praises of our home in this land of rich endowment, but there is danger that we may overdraw the picture and offer inducements that will never be realized by those who may come. We must, therefore, be careful in all our statements so that we will not be afraid to face the newcomer when he arrives."
"Awaken, Pleads Wilcox to Oregon," Morning Oregonian, Portland, August 15, 1911, page 1



What to Tell Your Friends When you Write--
Local Conditions as They Are
By William M. Colvig, President, Medford Commercial Club
    Tell them that Medford has between 10,000 and 11,000 inhabitants, and that its rate of increase during the last census was second in the United States.
    Tell them that it is an American city, as shown by its register of voters; that out of 1000 enrolled for the city election only 59 were of foreign birth, and only two of all of these voters did not write their names on the register.
    Tell them that Medford has more miles of hard-surfaced paved streets than any other city of its size in the civilized world, that it has 17.27 miles of such streets.
    Tell them that the city has a gravity water system that cost $450,000, and that the water is pure, soft mountain water, brought a distance of 22 miles by underground pipes, and that the emergency reservoir has a capacity of 2,000,000 gallons.
    Tell them that our sewers have cost $214,651.24, there being 26.21 miles of sewers, and 27.01 miles of water mains.
    Tell them that no city in Oregon can show a better bill of health than Medford for the year 1911: that the total enrollment in the four public schools and one high school is over 1600 children, and that since the opening in September 1911, not one of these schools has been closed for any length of time whatever on account of contagious diseases, such as mumps, measles, smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, etc., because there have not been any of these diseases prevalent in the city during said time.
    Tell them that the record of the secretary of state's office for 1911 shows that only Portland and Salem, of all the cities of the state, have a greater number of registered automobiles in use, Medford being third on the list.
    Tell them that the character of our citizenship is unexcelled; that among the social clubs of the city the University Club is one of the most prominent, its membership representing graduates of 49 different universities and colleges.
    Tell them that Medford city bonds find ready sale at a premium, because moneyed men have confidence in the future of the city.
    Tell them that Medford is a well-governed city; that the tax levy for state, school, county and city purposes aggregates a total of only 28.5 mills for the year 1911. Impress upon their minds the fact that a levy of 28.5 mills is lower than the levy in any other city outside of Portland in western Oregon, except the city of Albany, which also has 28.5 mills. The following is from the official records:
    Ashland . . . 40. 5 mills
    Central Point . . . 32 mills
    Grants Pass . . . 37 mills
    Roseburg . . . 32.5 mills
    Eugene . . . 30.7 mills
    Marshfield . . . 28.5 mills
    Albany . . . 28.5 mills
    Salem . . . 32.6 mills
    And after having told them all of these facts, then say to them that Medford is in the center of Rogue River Valley, Jackson County, southern Oregon, and that a person has but one life to live, and why not spend it under the genial skies of Rogue River Valley? This valley is one of the leading apple and pear countries of the world. It took the sweepstakes prize on apples at the Spokane Apple Show, 1909; and its growers were awarded the title of "Apple Kings of the World." In 1910, it took first prize in a carload exhibit at Vancouver, B.C., and again in 1911, with a like exhibit at Spokane it took first prize. No county in the United States has a larger area devoted to pears, and no country in the world ever produced pears of a more excellent quality. The valley is sheltered from every inclement wind by the mountains which surround it, and when all the country east of the Rocky Mountains is smitten by blizzards, nature here is in her calmest mood, and spring-like weather prevails. At no time during the past winter was the mercury at Medford below 20½ degrees above zero. It was 17¼ above at Los Angeles. The average rainfall for 23 years, as taken from the government records, is 27.21 inches. There have been but 1½ inches of snow in the valley the winter, and it lay on the ground about five hours.
    The Medford Commercial Club is an Oregon corporation; its membership includes all the live business men of the community. It will vouch for the truthfulness of every statement contained in this article, for each is confirmed by the records.
    Tell your friends to buy tickets directly to Medford, and from thence it will be easy to travel out and see the rest of the state, and that if they want further information to write to the Medford Commercial Club.
Medford Mail Tribune weekly edition, March 21, 1912, page 3


Medford's Hall of Fame
    (Being extracts from an address delivered by Mrs. H. C. Stoddard at a banquet given by the Eastern Star Lodge.)
    When Mr. Garnett asked me to say something humorous on this occasion I explained how utterly impossible it would be for me to say anything funny short of a week's notice, my handicap being an English extraction, with the proverbial ideas which travel by freight. However, I have always believed in the efficacy of "taffy" rather than "epitaphy," and wish to make a few remarks in eulogy of some of our prominent citizens.
    In looking over the record of those who have distinguished themselves in public service, our thoughts naturally turn to the record of Dr. E. B. Pickel. The doctor has the record of being the handsomest mayor to date, and will probably continue to enjoy the distinction until we elect a suffragette.
    Dr. Pickel was mayor in the days [1904-1905] when we drank Bear Creek "liquid." It was generally liquid. In those days if we wished to leave our homes at night we equipped ourselves with rubber boots, procured a lantern, and with fear and trembling sallied forth into utter blackness. If we reached our destination without stepping on the end of a board whose other end was not nailed down we felt that we were under the protection of a special providence.
    Dr. Pickel was largely instrumental in selecting the present site of Medford's pure water supply, and for this service alone we think he is entitled to a place in "Medford's Hall of Fame." Another noted citizen whom we all delight to honor is the Hon. William Colvig. Judge Colvig is the original and only booster--all others are imitations. He was born in Missouri, and lived in Jacksonville for a time, both for which we forgave him, as he now spends all his time convincing people that the best place on earth is Medford in Southern Oregon.
    At a recent meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles, during which all the local members spoke in glowing terms of their own city, Judge Colvig, being present, was invited to speak. The Judge arose and said he did not feel that he could add anything to the beautiful tributes that had been paid to Los Angeles, but that what he had heard reminded him of the following story:
    A party of Los Angeles people who had departed this vale of tears were being shown through the Celestial Regions. As St. Peter pointed out the pearly gates and golden streets their admiration was unbounded, and they expressed themselves with such exclamations as "Beautiful"; "This reminds me of Los Angeles"; "This is just like home." As they proceeded they came to a beautiful palace where in a group of people were chained to the floor with heavy chains. Upon asking St. Peter who those people were, and why they [were] chained, he replied: "Those people came from the Rogue River Valley, and we have to chain them to keep them here."
    Another of Medford's dauntless sons is George Putnam. Mr. Putnam has established a metropolitan paper that is a credit to the town. When George was young he went to Ireland, where he kissed the Blarney Stone, first indulging freely in tabasco sauce, hence the pungent quality of his editorials.
    Mr. A. S. Rosenbaum, besides being the court of last resort for all those who have claims against the Southern Pacific Company, is the original "jiner" in Medford. He belongs to more clubs, colonies, lodges, etc., committees and organizations than any other man in Medford, and can fill four engagements in one evening in a most graceful and Lord Chesterfield manner, and take in a round of the prize fight and the third act of the theater on the way home. His patriotism is unquestioned; as he is one of the few men in Medford who have never missed a meeting of the Commercial Club.
    F. E. Merrick, as a member of the city council for several terms, has always identified himself with progressive measures, and it is largely due to [his] influence and ability, together with his perseverance against criticism and opposition, that we have our present pure water system. Mr. Merrick is noted for his proficiency in dancing the Virginia Reel, which he does in a most "reelistic" manner.
    We all know H. C. Garnett as a booster and a freight rate adjuster, and a live wire among business men, but how many of us remember him as a novelist and short story writer. In the early days of Medford, before we had the "Nat" and the moving picture shows, our principal evening amusement was in reading his thrilling romance of Jack and Edith, which ended with the information that they had purchased a Toledo Range, a 1900 washer and a Maud S. pump of Shorty Garnett and expected to live happily ever after. [Shorty's newspaper ads took this form.]
    Dr. J. F. Reddy and prosperity arrived in the Rogue River Valley about the same time. His influence, precept and example have been behind many of the good things which Medford has achieved. Dr. Reddy's public spirit is shown by the large amount of time and money he has devoted to unselfish boosting of Southern Oregon. He has many friends wherever he goes, as is illustrated by the story that during his recent trip to 'Frisco, his wife wishing to give him the election news from Oregon, and being unable to locate him at his hotel, telegraphed four of his friends, asking each if he had spent the previous night there, and each answered "Yes."
Medford Mail Tribune, December 18, 1912, page 4


SLOGAN CHOSEN BY LOCAL MERCHANTS
    "With Medford Trade Is Medford Made."
    This slogan, to be used on buttons, on the bottom of ads, and for general publicity work, has been accepted by a committee of business men as the winner of the first prize of $5 in the Merchants Association contest. The slogan was submitted by A. B. Schuster, 1427 East Main Street.
    The second prize, $3, was won by Pavlin Debley, aged 11 years, and the slogan reads:
    "Medford merchants still the best,
    Medford climate does the rest."
    Loraine Lawton, North Apple Street, was awarded third prize, $2, on the following:
    "North, south, east or west,
    Medford merchants are the best."
    In all there were 40 contestants, some of whom submitted a number of slogans, bringing the number up to over 75. The slogan could not contain more than 10 words, had to contain the word "Medford," and had to urge the idea of trading in Medford. Many of the slogans were considered very good, and the judges deliberated for a long time before making their decisions.
    Some of the other slogans handed in are:
    "Keep Medford money in Medford; trade at home."
    "Patronize local merchants and Medford will grow."
    "Medford trade for Medfordites."
    "Home trade keeps the M-O-R-E in Medford."
    "Made for maids and men on merit in Medford."
    "Altogether, for irrigation, the trolley and greater Medford."
    "Get the spirit: Buy at home; watch Medford grow."
    "Keep the Medford dollar in sight."
    "Home trade means greater Medford."
    "Keep your money in Medford."
    "For prices that will fit your purse, try Medford first."
    "The best buyer buys in Medford."
    "If I can help Medford 'twill benefit me."
    "Make Medford grow."
    The prize winners may receive their money by calling on John H. Carkin, secretary of the Merchants Association, at his office over the Jackson County Bank.
Medford Mail Tribune, March 11, 1913, page 3



Eliminate the Grafter.
    That would-be settlers coming to Oregon have, in many instances, been victimized by unscrupulous land speculators, and that the state as a whole has been injured by their operations, is a statement made at the annual convention of Oregon bankers recently held at Corvallis, and the attending delegates expressed a determination to cooperate with the commercial bodies throughout the state in an effort to put greedy real estate men out of business. The plan does not contemplate the entire elimination of land-selling agencies, but does propose to annihilate the sharks who have been speculating in good Oregon soil, taking it out of production and holding it for an unreasonable increase in price. It was decided to form an appraisement committee in each community to pass on the prices of lands, the committee to consist of two members of the local commercial body and one banker, and intending purchasers will be advised to purchase no real estate from any dealer until the value of same has been passed upon by the appraisers and the price asked decided to be a reasonable one. It was stated as a fact that much of the agricultural land in Oregon is held at too high a figure. There is doubtless plenty of good land which can be obtained at a fair price, but the newcomer, usually unfamiliar with local values and conditions, seldom hears of that land. The committee will see that he gets a square deal.
Central Point Herald, June 26, 1913, page 1


That Oregon Pear Story.
    To the Editor: I wish to make a few remarks as to an article published in the Pacific Rural Press of January 10 in regard to T. E. Scantlin's wonderful pear story, as he stated one grower received over $3400 from one acre. Now, I wonder how large one of these acres must be?
    I will say Rogue River Valley is a good pear country, but there is plenty of hot air, too. I lived in Rogue River Valley nine years, and six years near Medford, and was in the fruit business myself, and have some knowledge about pears. My Bartletts were second to none, but I did not get returns such as a person reads about.
    I am also sending you clippings from the Medford Mail Tribune, so you can see what the Medford boosters think of California. It seems to be their hobby to come down to California to boost for Rogue River Valley and knock this country. Dr. W. S. Goudy says he has not seen the sun since leaving Medford. Well, I have seen such times in Rogue River Valley, too. And he says California is catching retribution for her misdeeds. If there were anything in that, the Medford boosters have something coming to them, too. Mr. Westerlund was connected in a large orchard tract when I lived there, and probably is yet. He evidently wants to turn the suckers to Medford.--M. DEMMES, Gridley.
    [Mr. Demmer sends us a choice collection of misrepresentations, which we will not kill space with. The proverb says that such things always come home to roost.--EDITOR.]
Pacific Rural Press, San Francisco, February 14, 1914, page 209


SONGS
of the
Medford Chamber of Commerce
MEDFORD, OREGON

OREGON SUITS ME
Tune--"Battle Hymn of Republic" Key F.
I have lived in old Missouri
In that good old show me state,
Where they feed you on corn dodgers,
Buttermilk and sweet potatoes.
I have lived way out in Kansas,
On the broad and rolling plain
But Oregon suits me.
Chorus.
I am satisfied with Oregon,
I am satisfied with Oregon,.
I am satisfied with Oregon,
The good old webfoot state.
 
I have lived in Minnesota,
'Mid her lakes of azure blue
Where the weather in the winter
Has a trend of freezing you.
I have lived among the corn fields,
Of the state of Iowa.
But Oregon suits me.
Chorus.
I have lived in old Virginia
And in sunny Tennessee.
I have roamed the country
And have crossed the rolling sea.
The state of California
Has some wondrous sights to see.
But Oregon suits me.

IT'S A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE IN DEAR OLD MEDFORD
Tune--"It's a Long Way to Berlin"
It's the best place to live in dear old Medford
It's the climate don't you know,
Sunshine and rain, and abundant grain,
Peaches and pears here grow.
If you want to find the best town to live in
With some real live push and pep (Hep)
Come to Medford the best town in the valley
And you'll like it too by heck (by heck).

BEAUTIFUL MEDFORD
Tune-"Katy"
M-M-M-Medford
Beautiful Medford
You're the only t-t-t-town I adore
When the m-m-m-moon shines
Over the mountains
You will hear me b-b-b-boosting ever more.

I'SE GWINE BACK TO MEDFORD
Tune--"I'se Gwine Back to Dixie"
I'se gwine back to Medford
I'se gwine back to Medford,
I'se gwine where those juicy pears do grow.
For I see your warm sun shinin',
My soul for you am pinin'
My heart's turned back to Medford and I must go.

I LONG FOR MY DEAR OLD MEDFORD HOME
Tune--"Indiana"
Back home again in dear old Medford
And it seems that I can see
The blooming apple trees and humming bees
And the mountains call for me
The new-mown hay and grazing cattle
On the hills I used to roam
When I dream about the scenes of peaceful valley
Then I long for  my dear old Medford home.

BOOSTING FOR MEDFORD
Tune--"Marching Through Georgia"
Bring the good old bugle boys
We'll sing a brand-new song.
Sing it all for Medford
And we'll sing it good and strong.
So the people far and near
Both great and small shall hear
How we are boosting for Medford.
Chorus.
Hu rah!--Hu rah!
Old Medford's on the go
Hu rah!--Hu rah!
We're glad to see her grow
So we'll sing the chorus loud
Wherever we may go
While we are boosting for Medford.
2.
Don't you see those apple trees
Just loaded down with fruit
Growing round old Medford
With a lot of pears to boot
Tempting men from everywhere
Our bounties here to share
'Cause we boosting for Medford.
Chorus.
3.
Medford's hills are full of gold
Her streams are jewels rare
They say there's oil beneath the soil.
And health is in the air.
Timber on her mountains bold
Are riches yet untold,
So we are boosting for Medford.

ME FOR MEDFORD
Tune--"Li'l Liza Jane"
I'm a booster, "How do you do?"
Medford for mine.
I'm a booster. How about you?
Medford for mine.
Chorus.
Me for Medford,
None else for mine,
Me for Medford
Oh! Ain't she fine.
   
Lots of sunshine all the time
Medford for mine.
Hills and mountains for to climb
Medford for mine.
Chorus.
Every mawnin' when I wakes
Medford for mine.
Sun o'er Roxy Ann just breaks
Medford for mine.
Chorus.
Never mo' from you I'll roam
Medford, Oh! mine.
Bestest place and home sweet home
Medford, Oh! mine.

KEEP MEDFORD GROWING
Tune--"Keep the Homes Fires Burning"
Keep old Medford growing
Hearts with pride a-glowing.
She's a town of great renown
Both far and near.
Keep the watchword ringing
In our joyous singing
"Medford's made by Medford's trade,"
Sing it loud and clear.

WHERE THERE'S PEARS AND PEACHES GROW
Tune--"Where the Morning Glories Grow"
I want to live down in Medford
Where there's pears and peaches grow.
Where sun comes peepin'
O'er the hilltops creepin'
In the valley down below.
I want to wade in the water
With a fly rod in my hand.
Where there's health, and wealth and sunshine
Where there's pears and peaches grow.

IT'S A DARN GOOD PLACE TO LIVE
Tune--"Tipperary"
It's a good place to live in Medford
It's the best place I know
It's the best place in dear old Medford
No matter where you go
Portland and San Francisco
Have no charms for me.
It's a darn good place to live in Medford,
It's the right place for me.

THE OREGON TRAIL
Tune--"There's a Long, Long Trail"
There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the state we love best,
To the land of milk and honey
'Tis the Golden West.
They are coming from the Southland
And from the states here to stay
To the land of health and sunshine
Down this Southern Oregon way.

PRETTY MEDFORD
Tune--"Mickey"
Medford, pretty Medford
With your orchards all around
You're the center of the valley
And a city of wealth where climate and health abound.
Medford, pretty Medford
Like a mountain flower you grew
Pretty Medford, pretty Medford,
You're the gem of the West
The home of the blest so true.

LIVE IN MEDFORD AND SMILE
Tune--1st half--"Tipperary"
2nd half--"Pack Up Your Troubles"
It's a good place to live in Medford,
It's the best place I know
It's the best place to live in Medford
No matter where you go.
What's the use of wandering
It never was worthwhile
So! Hang out your shingle in this good old town,
And smile, smile, smile

WHAT'S THE MATTER?
What's the matter with Medford? It's all right!
What's the matter with Medford? Out of sight!
For it's a live one and full of vim,
Now take it from us, we're in the swim,
What's the matter with Medford? It's all right.
What's the matter with-----------? He's all right!
What's the matter with-----------? Out of sight!
He's full of ginger and lots of vim,
Now take it from us, we're strong for him,
What's the matter with------------? He's all right!

OH! YOU MEDFORD
Tune--"Montana"
O Medford, you Medford
Gem of all the West
Of all the towns in Oregon
You rightly are the best.
O Medford, you Medford
Your pears are surely fine,
M-E-D-F-O-R-D
We'll back you every time.

MEDFORD SMILES
There are smiles in old Corvallis
There are smiles in Lebanon,
And you'll find them up in Portland city
And in all the rest of Oregon.
There are miles of smiles in Douglas County
And I'm sure they smile in Albany.
But the smiles they smile in dear old Medford
Are the smiles that look good to me.

"GOOD MORNING, MR. ZIP ZIP ZIP"
Good morning Mr. Zip Zip Zip
With your hair cut just as short as mine.
Good morning Mr. Zip Zip Zip
You're surely looking fine
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
If Medford doesn't get you why then Ashland must
Good morning Mr. Zip Zip Zip
With your hair cut just as short as
Your hair cut just as short as
Your hair cut just as short as mine.
Brochure circa 1918, SOHS M36B Box 6.  Lyrics to all but last four songs  by D. E. Millard.


How to Put Medford on the Map Again
    The Medford Commercial Club came into existence about 15 years ago, superseding the Old Medford Board of Trade, then almost as dormant as the present Commercial Club.
    Medford at that time was a sleepy village of about 1,500 inhabitants, with no paving. Its streets [were] mud holes, almost impassable; its sidewalks mostly single-file board walks.
    A few old-timers got together and proceeded to wake things up. Among them were W. I. Vawter, Judge Wm. M. Colvig, J. E. Enyart, J. D. Heard, J. D. Olwell, J. S. Howard, J. A. Perry, Dr. J. M. Keene, I. L. Hamilton, Dr. J. F. Reddy, Dr. C. R. Ray, Dr. E. B. Pickel, and many of the business men in town and the country.
    A soliciting committee was appointed and proceeded to go round up all the rest of the merchants and business men in town to join the club and incidentally assessed them from $1 to $15 per month, and the banks were held up for from $25 to $35 per month.
    A fund of about $600 was soon raised for advertising the resources of Medford and the surrounding country.
    A committee was sent to Portland and obtained an agreement from the Southern Pacific railroad that they would print the literature at cost and would advance at least as much money for advertising as the Medford Commercial Club.
    This started the Southern Pacific advertising campaign among all the principal towns and counties in the state of Oregon.
    The first president of the Commercial Club was Dr. C. R. Ray, then president of the Condor Water and Power Company.
    The need of a good live newspaper was apparent, so a committee was appointed to get busy, and they did. The Mail Tribune was the result. [The Medford Tribune was founded somewhat later than the period described; it was the successor to the Ashland Tribune, founded in 1896 and moved to Medford in March 1906. The Medford Mail had been founded in 1888. The two papers merged in 1909, forming the Medford Mail Tribune.]
    Medford is languishing today. Not because it was over-boomed and decidedly not for lack of resources, but simply for lack of advertising and a spirit of pessimism among its merchants and business men. [Medford was "over-boomed." The astounding construction boom of 1911 couldn't be sustained.]
    There is more reason today for optimism than there was 15 years ago. The town has six times the population. Its streets and sidewalks are the best in the state. It is becoming the leading wholesale and manufacturing center in Southern Oregon. Its bank deposits and business transactions have increased manifold.
    The undeveloped resources surrounding Medford far exceed those surrounding Spokane, and there is no reason why Medford should not become a second Spokane.
    In the past, Medford business men have dug up as high as $5,000 per year for advertising and promotion, and to the subscribers it was acknowledged the best investment they ever made.
    What has been done in the past can be done in the future and on a much larger scale, because there is a better foundation to work upon.
    Every member of the Commercial Club should be furnished a copy of Allen's booklet, entitled "As a Man Thinks, So He Is."
    A city is made by the optimistic spirit of its citizens. "Optimism promotes growth, pessimism decline."
    To recapitulate, the following things must be done to put Medford on the map again and make it grow.
    First--Every citizen should become a member of the Commercial Club and subscribe according to his means, for advertising and promotion establish new manufacturing industries and payrolls.
    Recognizing the fact that what benefits one, benefits all.
    Second--Home industries must be patronized. Which means that your home merchants, home manufacturers and home papers must be patronized.
    Third--The Medford Commercial Club and home merchants and manufacturers should carry standing advertisements in the home paper that it may exist and advertise the resources of the town and surrounding country.
    Fourth--New up-to-date booklets and various forms of advertising should be obtained at once and distributed and mailed to all enquirers.
    Fifth--All new arrivals in the city should be called upon and furnished advertising and all information regarding the town and resources of the country.
    Sixth--The secretary of the Commercial Club should answer promptly all inquiries and supply advertising.
    Seventh--Advertisements should be carried in some of the leading farming, fruit, lumber and mining journals, promoting and advertising these undeveloped industries.
    Eighth--Get-together luncheons should be held at least twice a month by the members of the Commercial Club and citizens, as they are of incalculable value in promoting a pull-together spirit and optimism.
    In the progressive cities of Spokane and Los Angeles, these get-together luncheons are held daily, and thus keep up the enthusiasm and optimistic spirit so necessary for the growth of the town and surrounding country.
    Ninth--Irrigation enterprises now starting up should be promoted and this fact widely advertised, thus largely adding to our agricultural, fruit and stock industries, promoting the establishment of canneries, sugar beet factories and other allied industries, thus producing everything we consume and promoting exports and thus increasing our wealth, instead of sending our money out of the country for products we can produce at home.
    Tenth--The building of railroads to the coast and to our tributary copper, coal, iron, chrome, gold and other minerals should be pushed, thus ensuring cheaper freight rates and the development of these many undeveloped industries, any one of which will make Medford a city of at least 100,000.
OLD TIMER.
Medford Mail Tribune, January 28, 1919, page 2


HARD TIMES ON PACIFIC COAST OVER;
BIGGEST TOURIST TRAVEL YET IS EXPECTED THIS YEAR
    WENATCHEE, April 6.--(Special)--"The worst of the hard times in the Pacific Northwest are over, and the dawn of a new era of prosperity is very near," said Herbert Cuthbert in his address before the Wenatchee Chamber of Commerce and their local branch of the Automobile Club of Western Washington at Wenatchee Tuesday.
    "I do not think I am too optimistic in my prophecy," said Mr. Cuthbert, "taking into consideration what I have observed during the past few weeks and the lessons I have learned during my trip to California and the general tone of the comments of financiers
and business men of the East.
    "California is a wonderful state. They have a great deal to advertise and they are energetic, far-seeing, clear-headed, cheerful people, but do we acknowledge that the state of Oregon and the state of Washington and the province of British Columbia are in any way inferior to the state of California? Do we admit for a single moment California has more natural resources than we have, more opportunities for development, a better state in which to live, a better all the year 'round climate, or that they have a more happy and contented people? If so, do not let us advertise. Let California do all the publicity for the Pacific Coast, but if we do believe in this country and we do believe that there is no place on earth like the Pacific Northwest, then let us advertise to the fullest extent, even as California has done and is doing.
    "In previous years Californians have made their winter season their great advertising plea--'It is summer time in California' when the snows covered the ground of every city in the East, but they have realized that the advertising of the Pacific Northwest Tourist Association during the past five or six years has been very effective, that we were getting the summer business and therefore they have got together a fund of $150,000 a year and are advertising California as 'The Amazing Summer Land' for the first time in history, by the All Year Club of Southern California. This more than ever emphasizes the necessity of the Pacific Northwest Tourist Association redoubling its efforts to hold the summer business and continuing to inform the people of the East about our own scenery, climate, resources and opportunities.
    "I may safely prophesy as a result of the advertising of the Pacific Northwest Tourist Association in the past, from information in our own office, and received from railway officials, automobile clubs and others that we will have at least 50 percent more travel in the Pacific Northwest this year than we had last.
    "As a result of our advertising in California and our work with the automobile clubs and those who travel and as a result of the special tourist rate from California we were able to get from the railways, we know that we will have between 200,000 and 250,000 people from that state this year. Many of these, like visitors from the East, will become residents, for not all the people who are going to California will find the climate suited to them. In any case they will be with us for a time and leave their money here, and they will learn something of the Pacific Northwest which will help to improve general business relations between the South and the North.
    "If we have that many visitors from California and knowing that the railway rates from the East have been reduced 20 percent, that the war tax has been taken off, that there are no less than seven big conventions to be held on the coast this year and that we are in touch with every automobile club and almost every information bureau in the United States and Canada, we can at least anticipate from all the rest of the United States twice as many people as we shall have from California.
    "If we have not less than 650,000 people--and we had 480,000 registrations in automobile camps alone last year--of course there were some duplications, but not more than one tourist in five registers in an automobile camp--and if we put the average expenditure of each person at $100, which is very much lower than the total expenditure, as most of them remain from two weeks to four weeks, while many of them remain with us for two or three months, we will have an income this year from strangers of $65,000,000.
    "This money is all found money. It has cost nothing to bring it in and we have not impoverished the country in any way by sending anything out of the country in return for it. This new revenue will go a long way towards paying taxes and providing additional capital for the development of our established enterprises, but this is not all. It is only a very small portion of the advantages we will secure from the advertising of the past. The experience of California will be repeated in the Pacific Northwest. Many of these people will become permanent residents, either this year or in the years to come. They will realize, as others have realized in California, that the theatre of events is changing, that there is a greater tendency than ever for people who live in a severe climate in winter and extremely hot climate in summer to migrate to the Pacific Coast, especially the man who realizes that manufacturing can be carried on quite as cheaply on the coast and that labor is more efficient.
    "There is one more way in which we may emulate California. There is never the slightest doubt as to where a 'Sunkist Orange' is grown, nor anything else that is produced in California. We in the Pacific Northwest have been allowing the people to guess where our fruit was grown and where our products were produced. Everything that goes out of the Pacific Northwest should go out under the Pacific Northwest label.
    "I have had a design made which I am submitting to you and which might be printed on every piece of paper in which an apple is wrapped. At the top of the outer circle is the legend 'A Pacific Northwest Product.' In the center is an orchard scene and at the bottom of the outer circle a vacant place is left for 'Wenatchee, Washington.' If that label were universally adopted by every district in the Pacific Northwest we would have every apple identified by every consumer. This is just a thought that might be adopted by every grower and every producer in the Pacific Northwest.
    "'The great need of this country,' said Lord Northcliffe when he passed through a few months ago, 'is population.' The great need of our farmers is population but the right kind of population, not of people who are out of work, not of people who are trying to take the place of those who are working, but of people who have money to engage in manufacturing, to engage in shipping, in canning, in iron works, steel works, in mining, in lumbering, in everything that will employ labor and thus provide a market for the things the farmer produces.
    "There is nothing that will increase the profit of the farmer so much, nor that will reduce his taxes so much, as to bring in a class of new people who will employ more labor and will help to pay the taxes that a few are paying now and help to consume the products of the soil.
    "Sixty-five percent of the population of the United States is east of the Mississippi. Our farmers cannot ship their products east of the Mississippi. Very few of them produce enough to do this, even if they could, and so the only solution is to bring the population from east of the Mississippi and even from the Middle West to our coast, and California has found that the most effective way is to bring them on a pleasure trip first--get them acquainted with our advantages, attractions and opportunities, and through these means build up a population of the very best kind of people. We will increase the deposits in our banks, the capital available for development and thus ensure an era of prosperity that so far the Pacific Northwest has not enjoyed."
Medford Mail Tribune, April 6, 1922, page 3


    I called on S. Sumpter Smith of the Mail Tribune, and he gave me a brief history of the city and valley: of the boom that struck here a few years ago; how the valley was advertised as the garden spot of the world, and the city as the coming metropolis of the West; how sales of city and suburban acreages were made at inflated prices, how everybody caught the contagion and became a booster. Then the disillusionment when it was found that the hundreds of apple orchards were badly located as to markets. Then the collapse, taking many investors, large and small, into bankruptcy. Then a tedious and wearisome period of reconstruction; of learning what fruits could be profitably grown; the development of the lumber industry in the hill country adjacent to the valley, and even the recrudescence of mining for gold in the mountains hereabout.
    Medford, with a population of 8,000, has no empty houses, and is doing considerable building. A new Methodist Church is well along in the building which either represents a wealth of subscriptions or a robust deficit.
Excerpt, "Daily Drift," Ammi L. Bixby, Sunday State Journal, Lincoln, Nebraska, December 20, 1923, page 6


Some Problems Met in "Boosting" a Town
BY W. H. CRAWFORD.

    In every walk of life we find the relationship of buyer and seller. As a matter of fact, the buying, the selling, the exchanging of ideas, of service, of commodities and of opportunities is just about the complete measure of human commercial activity.
    The Pacific Coast of the United States, from the Canadian border to Mexico, is at present a striking example of the seller of opportunity.
    The buyer may be aptly referred to as outside investment capital seeking new fields of activity. The vast industries of the East and of the Middle West are potential buyers of new location, and the individual worker, or man of small means, who wishes to cast his lot in a country where the struggle for existence has less of personal hardship and more of business opportunity, is responding to the call of the West.
    We are told that the files of many eastern industrial plants are filled with applications from the employees for transfer to the Pacific Coast in the event that the employer opens a western branch house or factory. There is undoubtedly a westward urge based on personal desire as well as business opportunity, but the prospective locator has a lot of territory to cover when he tries to make a quick survey of Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Arizona, which is that part of the United States lying west of the Rocky Mountains, comprising 25 percent of the area of our country and commonly referred to as the Pacific Coast. An eastern industry seeking new location has much to learn, usually in a very limited time, because of the magnificent distances and the peculiar distribution of population and resources.
    We will forget for the present that wonderful expanse of country north of the Columbia River and south of San Francisco Bay, confining ourselves to that intermediate zone, which, if on the Atlantic Seaboard, would extend from Philadelphia to Savannah and back inland to Indianapolis, if we carry our simile on the Pacific Coast back inland as far as Ogden or Salt Lake City. This great Mid-Land Empire is usually passed over very rapidly, because visitors to the coast make the preliminary trip from San Diego to Vancouver, or in the opposite direction, jumping from San Francisco to Portland as you would naturally pass from one great center of population to another. The distance, approximately 750 miles, is rather unusual when measured along a coast line, but it so happens that up to the present time no great seaports have developed between San Francisco Bay and the Columbia River. What the future has in store can only be surmised. There are possibilities, as indicated by thriving harbors of local consequence, particularly devoted to outbound shipments of forest products near the coast. Some of these may later tie in to the development of the great back country. At present the untold wealth of timber, minerals and agriculture in this great Mid-Land Empire finds its principal outlet by rail to the Columbia River on the north and to San Francisco Bay on the south, thence to eastern or foreign markets.
    Every chamber of commerce from Vancouver to San Diego is trying to sell opportunity and is making every effort to connect with the buyer. They all have long lists of individuals and of concerns that want something for nothing or need financial assistance. These prospects are continually seeking out the seller, but the well-financed eastern industries who do not want free land, bonuses or financial help must be sought out by the seller and they must be sold on the basis of real facts that cannot be established except by a well-worked-out merchandising campaign.
    The matter of financing is one that is usually taken care of by the proprietors of industry. The problem of the selling agency is to establish good and sufficient reasons why certain industries would prosper at certain points, and to assist in discussing every obstacle that would prevent success. Empty buildings and idle motors are no credit to a community. The far-sighted chamber of commerce will work just as hard to prevent overexpansion of industry as to encourage additions to a community where the conditions warrant legitimate expansion.
    Aggressive selling methods applied to merchandising the various advantages of different localities has grown to be a business in itself, usually conducted by chambers of commerce or commercial club. At the same time, every business organization, every banking institution, every newspaper, every magazine, every railroad system, and almost every individual in a community has some part in selling that community.
    The California-Oregon Power Company, operating as it does through a large section of this great Mid-Land Empire, with its high-tension power lines extending north into the Willamette Valley as far as Eugene and south into the Sacramento Valley almost to Redding and eastward into Klamath County, has a great personal interest in community development. The success of the company will be in ratio with the growth of Southern Oregon and Northern California. The interests are mutual and inseparable, and it should be noted that while the industries can ship their products to world markets the power company market is limited to the reach of its wires.
    Continuous, uninterrupted light and power service at the lowest possible cost to consumer has done much to bring about present development of the natural resources of the country, but with the great competition of communities to the north and to the south, it has been necessary to include what might be termed a selling function beyond the actual selling of electrical energy--a selling of community advantages and opportunities in cooperation with the various commercial bodies located in the business centers reached by the lines of the power company.
    It is a territory well worth honest exploitation, and since we have likened eastern industry to the buyer, and likened this great Mid-Land Empire to the seller, we should step outside of the problem long enough to view it intelligently from the standpoint of each.
    Consider the buyer, for example, who is not particularly anxious to be sold. Perhaps he has been driven to consider the Pacific Coast because competitors were establishing themselves west of the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps having journeyed west on a vacation trip or to attend a convention, the buyer is greatly impressed with the coast country, which is building cities astounding to the eyes of the easterner, and supporting unusual enterprises which must reflect great potential wealth of resource and unusual character of its people. Perhaps the buyer may represent some side investment money seeking new fields of profitable employment.
    We are told that first impressions are usually lasting and have considerable bearing on subsequent action. The unfortunate thing about the first impressions gained by the investigator of Pacific Coast conditions is that they center around the important points, such as Seattle, Portland, San Francisco-Oakland and Los Angeles.
    The back country is seldom covered with any degree of thoroughness, and to survey the entire ocean frontage of 1,670 miles, with back country extending to the Rocky Mountains, would be almost a superhuman task. If snap judgment is not taken on the basis of first impressions, the thoughtful eastern prospect soon decides that he has a big contract on his hands in selecting a Pacific Coast location. He usually returns to the East and assigns some sales engineer or traffic manager to the job of coming back to the coast to make a detailed survey. The second visitor usually spends several weeks in traveling over the area, in collecting authoritative information from every available source listening to the sales talks and in getting a composite picture of the Pacific Coast that will enable him to report back to his principals. This is no small task because of the peculiar character of the territory involved, with distribution of population and the factors of uncertainty in a rapidly developing virgin country.
    Some decisions that have been made in the past have been too hasty and have led to overdevelopment at one point with underdevelopment at another. After the decision for location is made the executives placed in charge during the following two or three years may find, by actual contact with the territory, some place that would have been a better location for the industry in question. If a wrong decision has been made, part of the responsibility rests with the seller.
    Consider then the seller. With possible overenthusiasm and with the advantage of the "psychological moment" in his favor, the seller may have assisted in bringing about a decision that is not altogether wise. On the other hand, a community salesman from some other point, with lack of information or lack of manufactured opportunity, may have failed to effect contact with the buyer or, if effecting contact, may have failed to impress him sufficiently.
    The business factors which determine the location of new industry should be known to every community-selling organization, and only the ablest exponents of the selling art should be employed to represent the community. He should at least be one who can write a business letter containing something more than that old musty paragraph: "Trusting that you will not hesitate to call upon us if there is any further information you desire." This has the effect of a smoke screen which conceals the lack of real ability to supply what is needed without request.
    The distribution of population on the Pacific Coast is such that those accustomed to eastern figures will not enthuse over merchandise possibilities. Miles of territory must be sometimes covered on the Pacific Coast to reach as many people as are found within the limits of one large eastern city. This means expensive distribution and will cause apprehensive thoughts.
    The buyer will hesitate somewhat at this stage of the proceedings, and it is the part of the seller to emphasize the other business factors, such as labor supply and efficiency, raw material abundance, coupled with economical transportation and power. It must be shown that local distribution and sales are not of anything that are the markets of the Atlantic Seaboard and the Orient.
    Few people realize that Portland, Oregon, for example, is closer to Manila by 3,515 miles than is the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal; that by adding 1,402 miles from Panama to New Orleans, you may save a total of 4,917 miles (the equivalent of a trans-Pacific voyage) in landing the raw materials of the Orient on the Pacific Coast of the United States for manufacture, instead of landing them at a point like New Orleans or farther east; thus much time is saved for many industries by manufacture on the Pacific Coast, even though the consuming market is on the Atlantic coast.
    This is entirely apart from the use of local raw materials, but does take advantage of the economies of manufacture where there are no climatic extremes which slow down production in the summer because of heat and in the winter because of excessive cold.
    The community salesman on the Pacific Coast must be thoroughly familiar with the industries that are already established and proving in actual commercial transactions what were simply theories a few years ago. Making clear these facts to the Eastern investor is a real service on the part of the community salesman. It involves a study of conditions which the engineer sent out for a brief period can hardy be expected to prosecute. The seller can render a priceless service to the Eastern investor by working with him on this problem of location with respect to present and future distribution in all its aspects and in guiding him through the maze of detail that involves the selection of the particular point at which to locate where operating expenses will be lowest. This is what the new industries department of the California-Oregon Power Company refers to as its fundamental principle of community merchandising as distinguished from community advertising.
    The scattered population of the coast has its relative importance from a marketing standpoint, but a nationally operated concern will probably take up the matter of Pacific Coast distribution only after disposing of the problem of national and international distribution. This involves a study of ocean transportation, rail connections and other things that are not local in aspect. The wealth of this great Mid-Land Empire of the Pacific Coast has an appeal to nationally operated concerns. Timber, mineral and agricultural raw materials are already moving to the markets of the world. Gradually the advantages of remanufacture at the point of original production will become known.
    The factor of labor is important to the final decision and conditions will be found to vary greatly in different localities, though generally speaking, the entire Pacific Coast has the advantage of a liberal supply of contented labor. It has been truthfully said that where living conditions are good, labor is efficient. Lack of sustained extremes of either heat or cold throughout a great portion of this Mid-Land Empire has a stimulating effect on labor output, both winter and summer.
    The truth about Southern Oregon and Northern California is good enough for anybody. So-called attractions of free sites, bonuses and other inducements to bribe locators is not sound merchandising. Furthermore, it is not a necessary expedient by which to influence a desirable industrial institution to locate where it really belongs.
    With characteristic western spirit the selling organizations of Southern Oregon and Northern California are unified and are extending real assistance to eastern industry and to eastern investors who see their opportunity in this golden empire that was saved until the last because it was the best.
Medford Mail Tribune, April 1, 1924, page B6

Medford Mail Tribune, June 28, 1927
Medford Mail Tribune, June 28, 1927

Booster Ad, August 11, 1927 MMT
Medford Mail Tribune, August 11, 1927

ADVERTISING MEDFORD
    It is sometimes necessary to leave one's home to fully appreciate it. Everyone in Medford was delighted when Henry Ford advertised the home town as the enterprising, air-minded community, which bonded itself for a first-class airport. But few local residents, we believe, fully appreciate what that advertising has done.
    A few weeks ago, on a train 2000 miles away, the present writer conversed with two eastern traveling men, and when one of them heard we were from Medford, Oregon, he remarked:
    "Oh, yes, I have heard of that place. You are air-minded out there; you built an airport, didn't you? Must have a live town."
    Coming up on the Shasta night before last, two traveling men engaged in a similar conversation. As two Medford residents will testify, when Medford was mentioned as a destination, one of them said:
    "Medford--say, that's one of the best towns on the coast. I hear it everywhere. Look at that airport you built."
    "That's right," said the other. "Never been there, but I've read about it, and hear all about it up and down the coast. Built the first Class A airport on the coast, didn't you?"
    "There are some good people who deplore the fact that the proposed airport celebration in July has been abandoned. But after our recent experience we are inclined to view the decision without any great anguish.
    After all, such a celebration would not only cost a great deal of money, but would, in the main, merely impress people who live in or near Medford--those who know all about the airport anyway--the publicity would hardly extend to distant parts of the country.
    The same amount of money devoted to "foreign advertising" would, in our judgment, bring far better and more desirable returns. It is our conviction that the aforementioned Ford advertising, which didn't cost Medford a cent, has been worth many thousands of dollars to this community.
Medford Mail Tribune, March 12, 1930, page 4


Ex-Medford Mayor Believes Prospects Bright for Future
By GREG NOKES
Mail Tribune Staff Writer
    Earl C. Gaddis, the dean of Medford mayors, believes that Medford's prospects for the future are bright--as long as the city keeps from overdoing any one thing.
    Gaddis, still spry and alert at 81, speaks from experience. He was a mayor and city councilman here during the worst financial crisis in the city's history. The crisis started in 1912 when the bottom fell out of an orchard speculation-inspired boom.
    Gaddis was elected to the city council in 1919, and to the mayoralty post four years later. It was during this period that the city was scheduled to pungle up nearly $1½ million to repay bonds that had been floated by the city during the boom years.
    It was over-speculation in the fruit industry that caused that financial collapse, and Gaddis fears a recurrence [of] the crisis should the city and valley ever overextend themselves in one particular facet of their economy.
    Gaddis recalls that in his first year on the city council, it met more than 100 times to try and work out some solution to the city's financial problems. (The city council now meets only 24 times a year.)
    Much of the blame for the financial collapse, according to Gaddis, rested with the promoters of the Rogue Valley in those days.
    He explained that these promoters would send advertisements all over the country and hold special exhibitions in the East, which led to the false impression that money could be made overnight in the orchard business.
    Easterners flocked to the city and purchased thousands of acres of orchard property. Many bought sight unseen. In a period of about three years, from 1909 to 1911, the city's population jumped from slightly over 2,000 to nearly 12,000. [In 1905 the Medford Mail estimated the population at 2500; the official Census count for 1910 was 8,840, which boosters disputed as too low.] It was during this time that the city floated nearly $1½ million in bonds to finance extensive street, sewer and water improvements.
    But when the speculators in orchard property discovered that they would have to wait at least seven years before they could make any money on their crops, they left. It wasn't long before the city's population dropped to [fewer] than 6,000 people.
    By the time Gaddis joined the city administration in 1919, things were so bad that the city had to borrow $40,000 just to pay its own back taxes.
Excerpt, Medford Mail Tribune, February 28, 1961, page 4B



Last revised September 3, 2022