Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/27

Rh the Pacific Northwest the largest enlightenment on the natural resources of this region. Taking our timber resources as an illustration, we are painfully aware that the timber holdings are not as widely and equably distributed among the masses as one could wish; but we have many rich natural monopolies which the whole people should share. They have common and incalculable permanent interests in the forests of Oregon, in the water power of our streams, in our facilities for irrigation, in the mines, and in the ensemble of natural beauty here. Shall the great natural forest areas in Oregon which may become the source of an ever increasing flow of wealth for all time for the whole people be allowed, without state forestry activity, to become mere waste places for weed trees? We are told by Mr. Elwood Mead, Chief of the Division of Irrigation, that he believes Oregon "has the largest area of unimproved land whereon irrigation is possible of any State in the Union." Here is a great interest in which most fortunately a policy of coöperation between the state and the nation has been instituted. What could be more propitious for the good fortune of the people than an active coöperation between the authorities of the exposition and the United States bureaus of forestry, irrigation, and the United States geological survey in preparing an exhibit of the data on the interests of the people of the State in these natural resources? With such definite, earnest, and laudable purposes in view, Congress and the Administration would respond to the claims of the Lewis and Clark Exposition in a very different spirit from that with which they have met recent expositions.

By means of models, relief maps, photographs, drawings, charts, and graphic representations generally, along with congresses and the discussions by the press, the people, and their legislators, would come to take an intelli-