Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/142

132 Oregon's land policy throughout the whole period of statehood. This would probably alone have sufficed to hold the Oregon lands low and have created the belief that they would continue low in value indefinitely in the future. The state with what was comparatively a mere moiety of lands was from the beginning in competition with the national government in the land business within its borders. The national government held nine-tenths of the vacant lands and the state's holdings altogether comprised less than one-tenth. The national government was on the ground with well-organized agencies for carrying out its policy of disposing of all its lands. Reservations out of them for Indian tribes there were throughout this earlier period. But no suggestion had thus far been given the state by the national government of a policy of conservation through reservations of timber lands of water sheds. Steps with this in view were first taken in the nineties, though the idea had been developing for some years before.

Several conditions surrounding the state's holdings would have held the state back from initiating any salutary commonwealth policy had it seriously conceived the idea and cherished any purpose of making the most of its resources in land. The reserved rights of the national government in the lands of the state, the limited extent of the state's holdings and more especially the widely scattered locations of its lands — all these absolutely handicapped the state. The state not only could not have taken the initiative in any far-reaching policy but also was not in position to emulate, without special aid from Congress, any example set by the national government. Under these conditions the verdict to be rendered upon the legislative and administrative features of Oregon's land policy down to the middle of the eighties, to be fair, must concede that they compare favorably with the corresponding features of the policy of the national government with which Oregon was in competition. More than this, the national government was in a tutelar position to the states.