Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/316

294 state government activities in Oregon have been kept within a most restricted range. This stinting of the state government in Oregon, or,—viewing it from a different standpoint,—this failure of the people of Oregon to make the most of their state organization as a means of co-operation in promoting their common welfare, can be accounted for as the result of the combined influence of several conditions that obtained hereto a peculiar degree.

The Oregon community was a frontier community to a degree, and for a length of time, nowhere else paralleled in this country. Such a community cannot from the nature of things get much out of its state organization—except to use it as an agency directing the common defence. The frontier communities of the Middle West, it is true, did attempt great things with their state organizations, but Oregon became a state just in time to profit by their sad experiences and did take full warning.

In determining the boundaries of the different states of the Pacific Northwest the suggestions of the natural features of the region were defied. Unity of geographical conditions was ignored. The penalty is of course paid in the absence of unanimity and in the lack of vigorous and efficient commonwealth life. Outlying sections of the different states that were unnaturally joined to the main portions take little interest in the main lines of state policy and are almost constantly entertaining projects for a revision of the boundaries.

Physical features in this region are prevailingly of a titanic mold and communities with limited resources are daunted and great undertakings for the common welfare are well-nigh out of the question. Projects rather of the nature of avoiding than of overcoming the obstructions to navigation of the Willamette at its falls and of the Columbia at the cascades, and