Wicked Portland: The Wild And Lusty Underworld Of A Frontier Seaport Town, by Finn J.D. John

Despite the presence of some historical errors (including ascribing Herbert Hoover’s anti-starvation efforts in Belgium to World War II and thinking that Benjamin Harrison was president after McKinley and that McKinley was President in 1892, neither of which were true), this is a short and amusing book about the wicked history of the wicked city of Portland in the late 1800’s. Intriguingly enough, the origins of Portland as a place for New England (and other) elites gone bad (which makes my own presence in the city at least mildly ironic, I suppose) is something that has largely continued throughout its history. Portland’s identity has been fairly similar since the 1800’s, something that ought to cause us pause.

Among the interests of this short book are the issues of Portland as a place for the acquisition of surplus labor for employers. For example, Portland was once the capital of forced indentured servitude at a time when sailors were considered unworthy of fourteenth amendment protections and not full citizens, leading the hipster saloons and bars of the time to exploit the labor of young men in the area. The longtime political corruption of Oregon (which was once infamous) as well as its police force is also highlighted here. A 19th century cartoon showing a blind policeman with a sign wearing “Please Help The Blind” is one of the many biting reference to police incompetence and malfeasance in the late 19th century. Among the more loveable of the many rogues here is one Jonathan Bourne, a New England-bred corrupt politician (and one of the founders of Grant’s Pass!) who had a mid-life crisis, turned honest politician, and was cashiered after being a one-term Senator, largely hated and mistrusted by both left and right for his corruption and principles. It appears that the author has a distinctly anti-Republican bias from his writings, but it is clear that Portland has always been a place of moral corruption, and not only recently.

A book like this, for which the audience is not precisely clear (is the author celebrating the corruption of the past or being hipster ironic in calling the late 19th century corruption the “Golden Age” of the city, or both?) is not likely to be well-read outside of Portland except for those who will wish to use the information in the book to point out that the leopard has a hard time changing its spots, so to speak, whether we are speaking of people or cultures. Nonetheless, for those who have a dry and witty sense of humor and are not inclined to be sympathetic with the pious moral hypocrisies of either the present or bygone eras, there is much in this book to provoke thought and reflection upon the consequences of civic culture on future generations. Hopefully future printings of this book may benefit from some historical fact checking, but this does not deter from the entertainment value of this short book.