Multnomah-Wasco-Baker County OR Archives Biographies.....Baker, George Luis August 23, 1868 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/or/orfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Ila L. Wakley iwakley@msn.com April 17, 2008, 9:49 pm Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company GEORGE LUIS BAKER. “From street Arab to mayor,” said Fred Lockley in the Journal, “that’s the journey our present mayor, George L. Baker, has made. What he has seen and experienced on the way from bootblack and newsie to chief executive of a city of three hundred and fifty thousand is a plenty. He told me about it the other day, and the story of his boyhood, with its ups and downs, is worth retelling. His career has had no lack of downs in it, but he is like a cat—he always lights on his feet. “‘I was born August 23, 1868, at The Dalles, Oregon,’ said the Mayor as we sat in his office, ‘and bear a strong resemblance to my father, John Baker. He was not a tramp, for he would work, but he was like a tramp in wanting to wander from to place. The wanderlust had in him a willing victim. Father was a German. He was a cobbler and shoemaker. He came to America when he was seventeen years old. In 1855 he drifted out west, settling at Jacksonville in southern Oregon. He made big money there. Miners and stockmen were flush and money was abundant. He was an expert bootmaker and was paid twenty-five dollars a pair for high-topped leather boots. He also did lots of work mending and patching the miners’ rubber hip boots. He, with most of the other residents of Jacksonville, enlisted in a company there to fight the Indians in 1855 and later he was an exempt fireman, serving with the old Willamette Engine Company, No. 1. My mother, Mary Edgett, was a native of Vermont and in 1867 was married in Portland, Oregon. The ceremony was performed by Judge Shattuck and shortly afterward my parents moved to The Dalles. I don’t know how long we lived there, as my first vivid recollection is of coming from Walla Walla, Washington, to the Willamette valley. We had two horses. Mother and my little sister rode on one and the other was a packhorse. I was nearly five years old. I walked a good part of the time and when I got too tired to trudge any farther, father placed me on the packhorse or carried me. We crossed the Cascade mountains and I have never forgotten the impression of immensity they made upon mc. “‘When I was six years old we moved to Seattle, Washington. Times were dull. Our money was soon all gone, so my father landed a job as cook on a sailing vessel going to San Francisco, and both he and mother worked on the schooner to pay for their own and our passage. Father started a shoe shop in San Francisco and later owned one in Oakland. John Logan of this city and I were schoolmates in Oakland. “‘We were poor -- desperately poor. When other boys were playing I was out with a gunnysack or a basket picking up coal on the street. If we had enough to eat we considered ourselves lucky. Occasionally I would not be able to find any coal on the streets or along the railroad track, so I would have to lie in wait till a cart or wagon loaded with coal came along. I would scramble up and dislodge some of the coal, get cursed by the driver and thrown off, and then, as he drove on, I would pick up the coal. I always brought home the coal. “‘I had to quit school when I was nine years old, as my help was needed to support the family. I blacked boots and sold papers and picked up coal on the side. By this time there were three children. Hattie was too little to help much and Ferdinand was the baby. My earnings as a newsboy and bootblack were too uncertain, so I got a job with Kimball Brothers, painting wagons and buggies. I worked there two years and was then offered more money to be offbearer at a planing mill, where I received six dollars a week. We needed more money, so I got an additional job at fifty cents a night to help the stage manager in Morosco’s theater. I was one of the mob in the mob scenes and I did the rough and heavy work. I was seventeen years old. I was tall and slender, but wiry and strong. The stage director took a shine to me, so when his assistant left he gave me the job, which I held for two and a half years. I was then made assistant manager and it was my duty to look after the wardrobe, check the supes, borrow the kind of furniture needed in a play, help the property man and hold the manuscript. After a while I was made assistant to the scenic artist. I painted the scenery — an old castle, a farmhouse, woods, a lake or the ocean, for I had to turn out whatever was necessary. “‘I was now nineteen years old and doing well. The folks decided to return to Seattle to get a new start, and as my earnings were needed to do so, I went with them. Seattle had just been wiped out by a big fire. Everyone was broke, and in a very short time we joined the ranks of the down and out and up against it. Day after day I walked from morning until long after dark trying to land work, but it wasn’t to be had. Finally I got a piano box and, setting it on end in an alley, I started a newsstand. Mother sewed carpet rags and scrubbed floors. While we were in Seattle two more babies were born, but both died. I remember one Christmas we fasted instead of feasting because we had nothing to eat in the house and nothing the pawnbroker would lend us anything on. Father had inflammatory rheumatism, so it was up to mother and me to support the family. I had tackled a contractor several times for a job of sewer digging but had been turned down hard. I watched my chance, picked up a shovel and, dropping into a ditch, began to work. Presently a foreman spotted me and said, “Hey, you. Who hired you?” I said, “Nobody” and went on digging. He watched me for a while and said, “All right, you’re hired. I’ll put you on the payroll at two dollars and a quarter a day.” “‘I worked there until the sewer was completed, drawing over sixty dollars for my month’s work. My father pulled out for Bakersfield, California. I went to a boarding house and told them to take care of my mother, saying that I would redeem her as soon as I had the money. Leaving my mother “in hock;’ I came to Portland. The only job along the theatrical line I could land was cleaning the monkey cage and feeding the animals at Cordray’s Theatre. I took the job and saved every cent I could get my hands on, sending the money to my mother. I sure was proud when I got her “out of hock” and could bring her to Portland. “‘In those days Cordray had a museum, a Strasburg clock and a few animals. The admission was ten cents, which admitted you to the vaudeville show. If you wanted to take in the Melodrama you dug up ten, twenty or thirty cents additional, depending on the seat you bought. My job was that of roustabout in the museum. Soon I was promoted to property man, the hours to be sixteen a day and the wages fifteen dollars a week. I jumped at it. I took small parts in the show also. I moved, with great decorum, for a quick movement would have broken my trousers, they were so threadbare. ‘“When the Marquam opened I was offered a larger salary. I went to Cordray and said, “I would rather stay with you, but the Marquam will pay me a larger salary.” He said, “Which means that you want me to pay you more. You are not worth what you are getting now. I can get men with real ability for fifteen dollars a week.” I went over to the Marquam, where I drew down eighteen dollars a week as assistant flyman. I knew how to handle the hanging stuff, I had done a lot of that kind of work, so I was made head flyman. I also took a job with the high-sounding title of lithographer, which really means billsticker and distributor. I went on duty at eight A. M., getting out the showbills, and worked all day. Then I worked at night from seven-thirty until twelve-thirty and the two jobs netted me seventy-five dollars a week. I had to support my mother, and I was figuring on having a family of my own; hence the two jobs and the workday of seventeen hours. “‘In 1890, when I was twenty-two, I married Miss Helen Roth, a young lady who lived near our house, and we had one child, Mabel Alice, who made good on the stage. She is the wife of Russ Dudley, of Los Angeles, and they have a son, Richard Dudley, and a daughter, Betty Jane. “‘I worked for a good many years at the Marquam and finally they built an opera house for me at Baker City, Oregon. I put in three thousand, three hundred dollars of my own money, stayed there a year, and came back to Portland with a twenty dollar gold piece. I had to put my mother “in hock” again till I could rustle money to pay her board. Lee Pearl, treasurer of the Baker Theatre here in Portland, was my partner at Baker City. He remained there two and a half years longer than I did and finally reached Portland with less than twenty dollars. “‘I had to get busy at once, so it occurred to me to get a job. I put in a lot of serious thought on the matter and decided that I would be my own boss and never again go on a payroll and work for somebody else. The old Metropolitan Theatre was in the last throes of its existence. It looked as if it would peter out any day. I went to Donald McKay and secured a lease on it at a very reasonable figure. Cordray’s Theatre had tied up the Stair & Haviland shows, popular priced melodramas, so I had to skirmish around and book wildcat shows. “The King of the Opium Ring” was a good drawing card. It was booked to play at Cordray’s but the owner of the theater had a row with the manager of the company, which I managed to secure. This attraction gave me a good start and at times played to standing room only. “‘Hearing that R. Stuart, with an excellent stock company, was playing to empty seats in Seattle, I went up there and showed him how we could both make money if he would come to my place and finish the season. It took a lot of nerve to do this, for I was operating on a shoestring and stretching my credit to the breaking point. He came down and it was a “knock-out.” We packed the house every night and closed the season with a fat bankroll. We remodeled the house and got ready for the next season. Jim Neal, Stuart and I formed a partnership. We had a wonderful season, my share of the profits being thirty- four thousand dollars. “‘Stuart believed he could do better in New York city, so he pulled out. Neal went into partnership with Morosco, as he believed he could spread out and make still more money the next season in Los Angeles and southern California. Morosco and Neal decided to invade the northwest. I fought them to a finish—my finish. When the smoke of battle had cleared away I had lost my thirty-four thousand dollars and was in the hole twenty-seven thousand dollars. I went through bankruptcy. Although legally absolved from my debts, I didn’t rest until I had paid off this obligation. Cleaning up this debt of twenty-seven thousand dollars took several years of hard work. “‘They tore down my theatre to put up the building for the Powers furniture store. I stored all my theatrical fixtures and equipment in the old Exposition building till I could lease some other building for a theatre. This equipment represented all my worldly wealth and I counted on it to put me on my feet again. The Exposition building burned down and I lost all my stuff. I didn’t have a cent of insurance on it, so I was broke again. “‘I got hold of the old Tabernacle and remodeled it into the Bungalow Theatre. I made a lot of money there. Izetta Jewell in “The Girl of the Golden West” was a big drawing card. I decided to strike while the iron was hot, so I promoted the Eleventh street theatre, known as the Baker. It was erected in 1910 at an expense of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and was Portland’s first up-to-date playhouse. The project looked like a sure winner, but it wasn’t, and once again I was flat broke. I got hold of the Marguam lease from the Sullivan-Considine people when they took over the Heilig and things once more came my way and 1 could draw a check without wondering whether my account was overdrawn. Eventually I sold out and at present I haven’t any interest in the theatre business. “‘For eleven years I was a member of the city council. I helped frame the present city charter and also aided in putting it over, thus voting myself out of a job. I lost two years when the commission form of government came in. I ran for commissioner, was defeated, but two years later ran again and was elected for the four years’ term. Two years after my election I ran for mayor and was elected to the office, which I have filled for three terms. “‘When we declared war on Germany I wanted to get into the service, but I had been born a few years too soon to get to the front. I tried to do my bit here to carry on, and exert every effort to help win the war by backing up our boys over there. I worked to the limit of my ability to put various war activities over the top. Portland and Oregon made a wonderful record along all lines of war work and I shall never cease to be gratified that it was my good fortune to be the mayor of Portland during the war.’” In his administration of the affairs of the municipality Mayor Baker brings to bear the executive force, the keen powers of discernment and mature judgment of an experienced, capable business man and his long retention in the office is an eloquent testimonial to the quality of his service. On August 7, 1911, Mayor Baker married Miss Clara M. Galloway, who is a business woman of exceptional ability and acts as agent for The Tides, one of the popular seaside resorts of Oregon. Situated in the picturesque and historic district south of the present city limits of Seaside, it is skirted on one side by the majestic Pacific ocean and on the other by the rugged Tillamook Head and adjacent forest-clad hills. The Tides, owned by the Seaside Snug Harbor Company, is designed to provide a vacation nook for discriminating people, away from the turmoil of busy streets and urban life and surrounded by the pleasures of a real outing. The atmosphere is one of comfort, rest and quietude, free from household responsibilities. The Tides provides an ideal beach home of elegant comfort and complete convenience at nominal cost. A Knight Templar Mason and Shriner, Mayor Baker has also attained the thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rite. He is a past potentate of Al Kader Temple and is also connected with the Grotto, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Artisans, the Knights & Ladies of Security, the Loyal Order of Moose, the Improved Order of Red Men, the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Woodmen of the World, the Modern Woodmen of America, the Knights of Pythias and the Dramatic Order of the Knights of Khorassan. His wife is affiliated with the Pythian Sisters, the Women of Woodcraft, the Eastern Star and the Knights & Ladies of Security. Mayor Baker is one of the Royal Rosarians, the Sons & Daughters of Oregon Pioneers, the State Historical Society, the Civic League, the Portland Chamber of Commerce and the Realty Board. He is a past president of the Ad Club and also belongs to the Rotary Club, the Multnomah Athletic Club, the Portland Gun Club, the Alderwood Country Club, the Peninsula Golf Club, of which he is a life member, and the Auld Lang Syne Society. A broad-gauged man of forceful personality, Mayor Baker’s name lends additional prestige to every organization with which he is identified and his influence upon the life of his community has been far- reaching and beneficial. The struggle with adversity has brought out the best and strongest traits in his character and his record reflects credit and honor upon the city which he represents. Additional Comments: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. II, Pages 413-416 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/or/multnomah/bios/baker448gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/orfiles/ File size: 16.4 Kb