Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/109



OREGON NORMAL SCHOOLS 99

thousand miles "on the hurricane deck of a cayuse" visiting schools. Eastern Oregon is still called by the facetious "the country of magnificent distances." In those days this remark might truly have been made of the entire state.

Property values were low, and in few places, relatively considered, was property concentrated so as to furnish op- portunity for taxation for local school purposes. Neither county or state levies for school purposes were available, and district rates were invariably low; in some instances directors refused altogether to lay a school tax. Multnomah County now has an assessed valuation about eleven times as great as the entire state in 1870. Something of the growth of the state is shown by the table of assessed valuations herewith given :

1870 $ 29,587,846

1880 48,483,174

1890 114,077,788

1900 117,804,874

1910 844,887,708

1918 987,533,896

Economic conditions furnish a good index to school con- ditions. School buildings were for the most part poor struc- tures. The first state superintendent remarked that many were utterly unfit for use. More specific are some of the state- ments made by county superintendents in their reports to state superintendent Sylvester C. Simpson in 1874. In Josephine County it was stated: "The present condition of the school- houses is bad. Some of them were originally built of logs; others are 'box' houses. All are furnished with seats, from the strong and durable slab, with four stout two-inch legs, to the genuine sugar-pine bench with the slivers planed off." On the same subject the Marion County superintendent said: "The district clerks' reports are not full enough to enable me to state the exact condition of the school houses. Many of them are bad ; others are worse ; and many of them are a dis- grace to Marion County and an insult to nineteenth century civilization."