Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/143

Rh Reservation of State Lands Impracticable— Furthermore, any policy applied in Oregon looking towards the holding out of the market its school lands in place, sections 16 and 36, would have involved some results clearly pernicious. It must be remembered that because of the beginnings of settlement more than a decade before the starting of the surveys lands near the population centers were lost to the state. So such a proposed policy would have meant the holding of the outlying lands it did get nearly half of a century to have secured any substantial increments of value. In the meantime such vacant lands — the chances would have been all against improvement of them — intervening between cultivated farms would have caused greater isolation and greater burdens in the building and maintenance of roads and schools. A general blighting influence upon the conditions of country life would have resulted. Further, the interest on a fund accumulated from the sale at a nominal price would have in the course of the decades aggregated an amount probably nearly equal to the enhanced value that could later have been realized.

The Two Periods in Oregon's Land Policy — A Wise Earlier and a Foolish Later Period— The conclusion of the whole matter as to the earlier history of Oregon's lands is that there was little if any basis for a state policy higher than that followed. It is what was done with the Oregon lands in the later period that brings the blush of shame and anger and causes apprehension as to the possibilities of a commonwealth spirit competent for attainment of highest destiny. Though the national government began to give evidence in its policy of nobler ideas and though conditions had so changed in Oregon that the Oregon land laws which before, excepting in connection with the swamp lands, yielded salutary results now bred speculation, fraud and monopoly; yet instead of amending them in the direction of a cure of these evils they were in 1887 m vital points changed in exactly the wrong direction. Then it was that the state began to play its pitiable role.

There have been thus two distinct and contrasted periods