Lockley, Fred.  "History of the Columbia River Valley, From The Dalles to the
Sea." Vol. 3.  S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1928.  p. 371.
 
ELDON J. STEELE

     Eldon J. Steele, who enjoys a worldwide reputation as a pansy grower and as
a leading authority on the pansy and its culture, today conducts the largest
business of its kind in the United States as the owner of Steele's Pansy
Gardens, which he began on a very small scale in Portland more than a third of a
century ago. He was born at Mayville, Wisconsin, March 13, 1860, his parents
being E. T. and Irene (Pollock) Steele, natives of New York and North Carolina,
respectively. The father, an attorney by profession, was successfully engaged in
law practice for many years. He located in Wisconsin in 1856 but eventually left
that state and thereafter resided in various sections of the country. Eldon J.
Steele remained with his parents until 1877 and attended school at the different
places in which they temporarily established their home. He himself inherited
the wanderlust to a considerable degree and roamed over the country until
finally he accepted the management of a plantation in the vicinity of Nashville,
Tennessee. Subsequently he returned to the north in accordance with the written
advice of his uncle, Thomas Steele, who had located in Wisconsin in 1854, had
been elevated to the bench and had become one of the best known representatives
of the legal profession in that state. He joined his uncle and attended school
for three years, after which he read law with Joseph Morrow, one of the most
famous criminal lawyers of the Badger state. His professional training was
completed under the direction of Rusk and Wyman, the father of the former being
at one time governor of Wisconsin. Following his admission to the bar in 1883,
Eldon J. Steele responded to the lure of the west and made his way to the
territory of Dakota, taking up his abode at Mandan, across the river from
Bismarck. He opened a law office, but clients were few and far between. Not long
afterward he was elected county superintendent of schools, in which capacity he
served for seven years with such modest financial remuneration that he was
obliged to sell life and fire insurance in order to eke out a livelihood. In
1891 he resigned the position to come to Portland. As an example of how slowly
news traveled in those days, it may be stated that at the next election for
county school superintendent in the Dakota community which he had left, three
precincts "went solid" for Mr. Steele, although he was then living in Portland.
The first man whose acquaintance he formed in this city was Chief of Police
Parrish, whom he met in the lobby of the St. Charles Hotel. During the first two
years of his residence in Portland he engaged in the real estate and insurance
business, after which he was appointed principal of the, Russelville school. He
continued teaching in various city schools for a period of thirteen years,
imparting clearly and readily to others the knowledge which he had acquired.
     The following review of his activities as a floriculturist of Portland has
been written by Mr. Steele in his characteristically interesting style under the
caption "Recollections of a Pansy Grower." "When we began to consider the
possibilities of commercial pansy culture in 1898, the panic was on, and an
inventory of belongings at that time would read about as follows: (1) A wife and
baby, both healthy but also hungry three or more times a day; (2) A small house
and fifty-foot lot with a mortgage on it that looked bigger than the Mississippi
valley; (3) Seventy-five dollars worth of furniture, purchased on the
installment plan—five dollars down and five dollars a month. No hot water except
in the tea-kettle; no bath-room and no electric lights. No basement—only a
dugout under the house—and absolutely no, income except twenty-five dollars per
month, these payments expiring in the summer of 1894. Portland was a small city
of forty thousand, but I am sure that I owed everybody in the town, except
possibly a few hundred who were indeed lucky to escape. Having been a pedagogue
back east, I succeeded in selling my services to the city school board as
principal of a suburban grammar school at the princely salary of seven hundred
dollars per annum. When you, stop to consider that I was a public official after
election, you will readily see that it became necessary for me to divide my
income with my creditors, which I did 50-50. Three hundred and fifty dollars a
year to support a family of three with a mortgage interest, taxes, doctor's
services, etc., was hopeless. Why not sell a few pansy plants? To be sure! And
so in 1894 our income was two dollars and seventy cents for pansies. 1895 sales
were twenty-five dollars—blooming plants packed in baskets—take the whole basket
or none. In 1896, I was ready for the early spring market with ten thousand very
nice reset plants. Why so many and no market? Discouraged at my own folly and
fearing almost total loss, I offered to sell and deliver at his pleasure to Mr.
Harding, then manager of a local seed company, during the spring season, each
plant in bloom and wrapped separately—the entire ten thousand plants at one cent
apiece, urging that he could sell locally, and ship to outside customers at a
handsome profit. He refused the offer. Was it to be or not to be! Was the baby
to have fresh milk or go without? I bought all the splint baskets I could carry
home on the street car. I lifted sixty dozen blooming plants and packed them in
sixty baskets, and packed ten crates with them; billed at from seventy-five
cents to one dollar per basket, and shipped a crate each to ten express agents
in ten different towns to be sold on consignment, twenty per cent commission,
charges prepaid, and any loss to fall on me. Before 10:00 A. M. the following
day wires began to come. 'Ship daily'—`Ship tri-weekly'—`Sold before I got the
covers off the box' etc., and the net proceeds of that crop was over two hundred
and seventy dollars. Now I learned a valuable lesson at this time which you have
all learned in the seed trade. It is this—when you offer a customer an article
for sale that is of ordinary quality, he is quick to sense the approximate value
and mentally fixes the price he will pay. But if you offer him something of a
quality that completely surpasses anything he has ever seen before, he not only
wants it, but he is perfectly willing to let you fix the price for it. Quality
regardless of price seems to us to be the only safe policy in building a
business. One day came an order from an extensive grower in Georgia with a
letter attached from an Ohio seedsman reading in part as follows: `You will find
that I have filled your order complete except for pansy seed. I regret to say
that my stock of pansy seed is not of the quality you ought to have. Better get
your pansy seed from Steele of Portland, Oregon. He charges a Hades of a price
for it, but it's good stuff.'"
     When Mr. Steele began growing pansies in a four-foot bed in his yard, he
met with no encouragement either from friends or acquaintances, all of whom
assured him that it was impossible for such a venture to succeed. Despite many
obstacles and handicaps he persevered in his purpose and has reached the goal of
success, for today instead of a four-foot bed he has a ranch of thirty-seven
acres devoted to pansy culture. His pansies are known all over the world and
include many famous specimens, a few of the leading varieties being: Steele's
Mastodon "400" Mixed; Mastodon Miracle Mixed; Mastodon Masterpiece Mixed;
Mastodon Greenhouse Special; Golden Gate and scores of others. In June, 1928,
Miss Winifred Walker, artist for the Royal Horticultural Society of London,
England, painted a group of five pansies for Mr. Steele. This is the most
difficult flowers to reproduce. In 1923 Mr. Steele wrote and published a book on
the art of growing pansies. It is the only work of the kind ever compiled and
many thousands of copies have been given to pansy lovers. At the Panama-Pacific
Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915, Mr. Steele supplied two hundred and
fifty thousand seedlings for a pansy bed which was four hundred feet wide and a
half mile long. He makes shipments to every state in the Union and to many of
the foreign countries and his business now nets him many thousands of dollars
annually. He will have more than one and one-quarter million seedlings in 1929.
The story of his business career contains much of inspirational value,
indicating what may be accomplished when one has the will to dare and to do.
     In 1892 Mr. Steele was united in marriage to May I. Flynn, of St. Paul,
Minnesota, and they are the parents of five children, as follows: Thomas A.;
Irene, the wife of J. W. Leache, of Los Angeles; Isabelle, who married John
Layman; Eldon J.,. Jr., who is identified with his father's business as
production manager and who married Irene Sweeney, of Portland; and Donald, also
associated in business with his father.

 
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Submitted to the Oregon Bios. Project in June 2010 by Diana Smith. Submitter has
no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned above.