or at least to win an equal share, but they were all unsuccessful. Consolidation of the two rival English fur companies in 1821 under the name of the Hudson Bay Company was the crowning act of the fur trading period. With a capital of $400,000, and a comprehensive charter from the English government, it virtually possessed the trade of the whole region.[1] There can be little doubt that the consolidation was a master in the line of business in which it engaged. Removing its headquarters from Astoria to Vancouver it erected forts at the strategic points and soon had within its grasp the entire trade of the basin of the Columbia. Monopolistic in its methods, it was responsible for much of the irritation that marks the early industrial life of Oregon. Its success, however, must be attributed as much to the superiority of its industrial organization and management. In the preservation of order, in the treatment of the native races, in control of its difficult set of employees, in conservation of the fur trading resources, it has probably never been surpassed in the history of the fur trade.
The Hudson Bay Company was an enterprise in which the business interests predominated. Its officers were engaged in developing the resources of a country, wild and remote, because it offered a profit both for themselves and the stockholders who lived in England. The other interests of a social life were incidental rather than essential. A population was brought into the country, but it was small in number and incapable of being molded into anything but a social life that resembled the feudal society of an earlier period in Europe. The gap between the elements of population was great. Among the officers were men fitted to grace the social
- ↑ Act of parliament, 1821. In Appendix to Greenhow's History of Oregon and California.
