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6A | WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2019 | COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL Offbeat Oregon Estill Farms U-pick Blueberries That time Oregon granted a shanghaier a monopoly By Finn J.D. John for The Sentinel T hings were looking a bit grim for former Welterweight Cham- pion of the World William “Mysterious Billy” Smith and his partners in almost-crime, brothers Harry and Jim White. They had learned the trade of a Portland waterfront boarding master/crimp/ shanghaier at the feet of the master — the legendary Lar- ry Sullivan. Now they had dared to go into business on their own, in competition with their former mentor, and Larry was not having it. Larry’s usual procedure in such cases was to chase down the offending competitor and put him in the hospital. He was a former profession- al middleweight boxer and more than a match for 99 percent of all Portland men. But he was not a match for Mysterious Billy — a former world champion — and he knew it. So instead, Larry, through his political connections in the ruling Republican party, arranged for the state gov- ernment to legislate a mo- nopoly for him. The Legis- lature promptly established a boardinghouse commission — supposedly in response to a sharp rise in the market rates for sailors’-boarding- house services. This new “state shang- haiing commission” moved immediately to declare that it was going to license only one crimping outfit: Larry’s. It promptly issued a license (and a pin-on badge of the kind law-enforcement of- ficers wear) to Larry, and a cease-and-desist letter to Mysterious Billy and his pals. Of course, they weren’t about to take this lying down. Naturally, the first thing they did was to challenge the commission’s authority in court. But that sort of thing takes time; so, rather than go out of business for a year and wait, or continue doing busi- ness furtively, they adopted an attitude of open defiance. “On that license busi- ness? What do I care about a license?” Harry White said, during an interview with an Oregonian reporter that ran under the headline “HE IS SHIPPING SAILORS: Harry White does Not Worry about the Law.” This, of course, would be a dangerous attitude to take toward the law under or- dinary circumstances. But there seems to have been a widespread awareness that the boardinghouse commis- sion wasn’t a real regulatory agency. Its authority was not much respected on the wa- terfront. Perhaps that had some- thing to do with the fact that, although charged with enforcing the laws against illegal abuses such as board- ing ships without permis- sion and overcharging for services, it showed no inter- est in doing anything of the sort. The only enforcement action it seemed interested in was ordering Larry Sulli- van’s competitors to leave the business. Meanwhile, the Whites’ lawsuit against the commis- sion was making its way up through the courts. It final- ly made it to the Supreme Court in 1904, and the ver- dict was sharp and incisive: No, the state was not allowed to create a monopoly in re- straint of trade. The wailing and gnashing of teeth in the subsequent is- sue of the Oregonian that fol- lowed this devastating blow comes off as almost surreal to a modern reader. “SHORN OF POWER,” screams the headline, fol- lowed by the then-usual stack of sub-headlines: “Board- ing-House Commissioners Disgusted./ PRICE OF TARS MAY GO UP/ Trouble as to High Charges May Be Re- newed./ THEORISTS ARE CRITICISED/ Shipping Men Are Generally Satisfied with Operation of Law which the Supreme Court Declaration has Practically Invalidated.” “When I was urged, much against my will, to serve on the board, the assurance was that we were to have full power to regulate the busi- ness for the best interests of the port,” sniffed commission president E.W. Wright. “Now that the court has decided that we have no such power, it is useless to be bothered any further … I do not feel justified in wasting any more time with it.” The Oregonian, always a reliable voice for the Port- land political establishment back in those days, was clearly sympathetic to the commission’s goals. But its journalists did have the grace and professionalism to talk to some of the opposition, too — not Mysterious Bil- ly or one of the White boys, but James Laidlaw, the Brit- ish consul, whose job it was to look out for British sailors of the grain fleet and whose acerbic letters to the editor about the evils of the crimps were a regular sight in the Oregonian. His comment cut right to the heart of the matter. “The commission has full power to revoke licenses for enticing sailors to desert or charging unlawful exac- tions,” he said. “If the present commissioners feel power- less, perhaps others can be appointed to enforce the law.” “One set of crimps is no better than another, (so) why grant one set a monopoly?” he continued. “If one set struts in immaculate linen and fine clothes and lends its presence to the state Leg- islature, that does not prove superiority. In fact, it doesn’t make any difference so far as I can see.” Ah, but it made all the difference in the world, as Laidlaw surely knew well. (The reference to fine clothes and the state Legislature was an obvious shot at the al- ways-spiffy and politically active Larry Sullivan.) Cer- tainly Laidlaw can’t have been much surprised when the boardinghouse commis- sion, shorn of the one power which likely constituted its entire reason for existing, disappeared from the scene. B would likely be one of seedy saloons, drunk sailors, and winking prostitutes. Sullivan, sensing the shift in political winds, made a last-ditch attempt to get himself elected to the city council. When, in spite of his considerable voter-fraud resources, he lost, he left Portland for Goldfield, Nev., where he promptly in- volved himself in what his- torian Barney Blalock calls “one of the greatest bunco schemes ever perpetrated — a multi-million-dollar bank- ing and mining concern that bore the name ‘Sullivan Trust Company.’” The story of Lar- ry’s adventures in Nevada will be the topic of a future column. Billy, though, stuck around. The White brothers stuck around too, taking care of the dwindling business in tall-ship sailors clear into the 1920s. Jim, after serving a one-year prison stretch for shanghaiing a sailor, decided the job was too rich for his blood and quit, but Harry carried on. In the 1920s, after all risk of non-homeless men actually being shanghaied was gone and it was “safe” to joke about such things, he adopted the nickname “Shanghai White” and con- tinued serving the dwindling grain fleet through at least 1928, possibly later. Billy remained a colorful Portland character. In 1910, he was in the news for sock- ing a socialist agitator in the kisser during an argument over politics. The following year, his ex-wife’s new hus- band emptied a five-shot revolver at him, hitting him four times and nearly killing him; he survived, though, ap- parently without permanen. After Prohibition ended, he opened a new saloon, a beer joint this time, at 15th and Wheeler in Albina; he called it The Champion’s Rest, and that’s exactly what it was. The onetime slugger, shanghaier, and bar fighter finished his days pouring beer and reminiscing with his customers as the host of one of pre-war Portland’s favorite watering holes. He died in 1937. y the time this whole drama was playing out, though, the crimping indus- try in Portland was in obvi- ous decline. The grain fleet was switching over from sails to steam. Steamships were much more sanitary and comfortable than sail- ing ships; the food was much better; and crew members on them, once they’d secured a berth on one, were extreme- ly loath to put it at risk by checking into a boarding- house. The few who did so ran a pretty high risk of ending up back on a sailing ship with slim prospects of returning anytime soon. Plus, Portland was gear- ing up for the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, and had elected a new may- or, Harry Lane, who was on a crusade against the squalor and vice that characterized the North End. Not coinci- dentally, the train station in which all the crowds of vis- itors to the Expo would be arriving — the Union Station — was literally at the north (Sources: Portland’s Lost Waterfront and The Oregon end of the North End. Visi- tors would have to travel all Shanghaiers, two books by Bar- ney Blalock published in 2012 the way through Portland’s worst neighborhood imme- and 2014 respectively; Portland Morning Oregonian archives diately upon arrival. 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