Towns and cities increased in number and in size. Social life had broadened in every way.
With the readjustments that followed the discovery of gold a forward step was taken in the evolution, but the isolation of position had not been overcome. Soon the conditions of an earlier time returned. Though less apparent, they were just as real and urged to further progress. Already the people had felt the need, and forces were at work to liberate the community from its isolation and to continue in the line of growth.
None of the forces in the industrial evolution of Oregon is more significant than the efforts to utilize the high seas as an avenue of approach to the markets of the world. Nearest to Oregon were the ports of Asia. From the time that the early merchants of Boston carried the furs to the market of Canton a strange link existed between the social evolution of Oregon and the markets of the Orient. When the Chinese nobles trimmed their robes with the furs of the animals that live in the forests of the northwest of America, they established a bond of union that was destined to strengthen until the large populations of Asia should become ready to receive the surplus products that the growing population of Oregon and the whole Pacific Coast were anxious to supply. Following the opening of the ports of China by England in 1842, and of Japan by Commodore Perry in 1854, a closer industrial relation has been gradually established, which the people of Oregon have come to feel is inseparably connected with the industrial welfare of the state.
Of equal importance was the first cargo that was sent to the market at Liverpool in 1868, and led the way to an export trade which solves, in a large measure, the question of Oregon's continued evolution. To Joseph Watt, whose courage made the venture, a large place must be given among those who have contributed to the
