HOW THEY SCHEMED TO SECURE WIVES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XIX, 8 May 1897, Page 570

HOW THEY SCHEMED TO SECURE WIVES.

• There are plenty of women in Oregon now,’ observed a prominent Oregon politician, ‘ but it is within the memory of many of ns when women were scarce there. We gave it out that we wanted them for school teachers and the like, and encouraged them to come out there, but the truth was the men wanted them for wives. I remember once we sent a young man to Massachusetts, where he was well acquainted, with orders to collect too young women and to escort them back to Oregon. We guaranteed every one of them one year’s employment. The active man in the matter was a fine-looking voung man, who afterwards served two terms in Congress from our State. He spent two months in selecting the party and started West with them. On the trip out he courted one of the school teachers on his own hook and actually got her consent to a marriage on the arrival of the train at Portland. The boys howled considerably about it, claiming that he had treated them unfairly in having first choice, but there was a lot of fine, marriageable material left. Some of those women are to-day the leading ladies of the society of the State. More than three-fourths of the hundred were married inside of three years, and many in less than one year. A few of the lot, however, are teaching school there today, not that they did not have any offers, but because they would not accept any of the fellows who offered themselves.