best portions of the state in making its selections; (2) upon adhering to a policy calculated to secure highest returns consistent with the best general development of the resources of the state.
How difficult a task was made of the first phase of this problem in connection with the university, agricultural college and internal improvement grants has already been outlined. In locating none of these lands did the state get tracts of as good a quality as more effective promptness and care would have secured. The salt springs grant was allowed to lapse altogether ; the swamp land selection was attended with a protracted state of loggerheads with the national authorities and prodigious scandal with no* returns whatever for the people[1]. It remained for the selection of the indemnity school lands, as will be brought out, to lead to a situation involving losses of great magnitude and dire disgrace to the state. So far as any one matter could, it tended to render the name Oregon a byword and a hissing.
This Oregon commonwealth thus acquired a patrimony of some 4,000,000 acres of land. About 3,000,000 acres of it were pretty evenly distributed throughout the length and breadth of the state; the remaining portions were located in more or less segregated patches here and there In the western, the south central and the northeastern sections of the state. What controlling ideas determined the policy applied in the disposition of this public estate of the Oregon people?
Controlling Idea in State's Policy — There is no evidence that these lands were ever made a subject of thought as a commonwealth resource. They were of course regarded as a possession having a money value; but there was no discernment of possibilities in them that adapted policies of management might be made to realize. The early governors charged with responsibilities regarding them as the agents of state for securing these grants were not derelict to this duty. At least
- ↑ Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. X, pp. 371-394.
