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. If things
from 1903, 1904, 1910, and
were not cleaned up, their
1911)
first impression of Portland
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