Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/355

Rh to securing the 500,000 acres of land, which on the day of Oregon's admission as a state would be hers, to be applied to internal improvements, and other grants which might reasonably be expected, and which might amount to millions of acres with which to build railroads and improve navigation.

Judge Pratt, who had strongly advocated state admission, and to whom Oregon owed much, was put forward for the United States senate and his cause advocated by the Democratic Standard with marked ability. Pratt was strongly opposed by the Statesman, whose influence was great throughout the state, and which carried its points so far as electing its candidates, except in a few instances, against the whigs, and also against the prohibitionists, or Maine-law party. But the majority against a state constitution was about one hundred and fifty, a majority so small, however, as to show that, as the democrats had intimated, it would be reduced to nothing by a year or two more of effort in that direction.

In the spring of 1854 there were complaints of hard times in Oregon, which were to be accounted for partly by the Indian disturbances, but chiefly by reason of neglect of the farming interests and a falling-off in the yield of the mines. The great reaction was at hand throughout the coast. Business was prostrated in California, and Oregon felt it, just as Oregon had felt California's first flush on finding gold. To counteract the evil, agricultural societies began to be formed in the older counties. The lumbering interest had greatly declined also, after the erection