Oregon Industries: circa 1925

Where can you find logs, ladies, and lumber? Cows, carcasses, and chickens? Stacks of wheat and a pile of wool? In Oregon, of course!

This week we launched the latest addition to our Flickr Commons account! The 1925 Oregon Industries set focuses on logging, agriculture, and textiles production – quite familiar topics to those of us at the OSU Archives…

And, as I have mentioned many times before, the instruction booklet gives us gems of information about the images. For example, here’s the description for the “Oregon State Capitol Building in Salem, Oregon” image, which give information about the picture above, but also for the set as a whole.

It was in 1873 that work began on the erection of the State Capitol, commonly called the State House, at Salem. It was accepted by the state from the contractor on August 26, 1876. Of course later additions were made to the building and this picture shows it as it is today after a half century of service. During the fifty years the industrial growth of Oregon has been gradual until today, in proportion to population, the quantity and quality of the products of the state are very gratifying.

The lumber and timber products industry, including logging camps and sawmills, is the leader in manufacturing when measured either by value of products or the number of wage earners employed.”

“The basic industry of Agriculture continues to increase its production, in spite of the fact that there were about 8000 less farm owners in 1925 than in 1920. While transportation companies in Oregon rank next to timber in the number of employees, the farms make possible the grain mills and flour mills, the output of which ranks next to timber products in value.”

“Standing third in value in factory products is the slaughtering and meat packing industry, while butter-making flows closely and is steadily gaining in the value of its output.”

“The pictures following give glimpses indicative of a few industrial activities of Oregon.”

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