Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/136

126 the successive legislative assemblies were fully notified of the status of the state's grants. The first governor, John Whiteaker, was particularly persistent in his attempts to get the requisite legislative action for selecting the lands. The second during the distracting years of the civil war was faithful but not pushing in this matter ; the third was careless; but the fourth, Lafayette Grover, made it the mission of his administration, which began in 1870, that the state should get all the lands coming to it under grants by Congress or by virtue of any other right. Yet the controlling idea in the handling of these lands from the beginning down to the present has been to turn them over for a return to individualistic exploitation. This was wholly natural and normal during the earlier decades, say down to the middle of the eighties. The conditions until then were, as will be pointed out, such that any suggestion of a state policy of leasing or direct public use for any purpose was not deserving of any consideration. Tentative experimentation along these lines was never broached. It would have been too visionary to deserve any attention whatever. But beginning with swamp lands in 1870, and with indemnity school lands in the later eighties, the accumulation of vast holdings out of state lands by individuals and corporations was a most conspicuous proceeding. These were simply to be held idle for speculation. Yet no scheme was ever presented for realizing to the people in their collective capacity this social increment of wealth represented in the enhancing values of these former state holdings. What gains in value there actually were under these circumstances must have been of collective creation and yet the idea of conserving this wealth to the producer of it, and particularly when it was