apparatus.[1] It also added to this fund all gifts to the state whose purpose was not named.
The actual quantity of land allowed by congress to Oregon for common school purposes is three million two hundred and fifty thousand acres, at a minimum price per acre of $1.25, the management of the income being left to a board, of which the Governor is one. I am informed by the clerk of this board that the fund now amounts to $3,000,000, which is securely invested at ten per cent.
In 1850 congress passed a swamp land act, the intention of which was to enable the states subject to overflow by the Mississippi, to construct levees, and drain overflowed lands. The law was subsequently extended to other states. Oregon, however, had no rivers requiring levees, nor any swamp lands. This fact did not prevent beaver-dam lands, the most valuable in the state, from being taken up as swamp lands. The scandal attached also the meadow lands about lakes in the interior, and even to lands included in Indian reservation lands. Nor is congress quite guiltless in this respect, since it has recklessly granted principalities in the public soil to aid enterprises designed by private companies for their own benefit, these grants being obtained by representations, wholly unfounded, of the public utility in the undertaking.[2] The hand of the lobbyist is visible in these matters, while suspicion attaches to both state and national
- ↑ The canal and locks at Oregon City were built out of the first proceeds of the five hundred thousand acres, when it was converted to the school fund to prevent its appropriation to local schemes of minor importance.
- ↑ By act of July, 1864, congress granted to the State of Oregon, to aid in the construction of a military wagon road from Eugene to the eastern boundary of the state, alternate sections of the public lands designated by odd numbers, for three sections in width on each side of the road, the United States to share in it as a military post road. The land was to be sold in quantities at one time of thirty sections on the completion of ten miles, and within five years, failing which, the land reverted to the United States. The grant amounted to one thousand nine hundred and twenty acres per mile for a distance of four hundred and twenty miles—or more than all given to the state on its admission by one hundred and fifty thousand acres. The company was allowed a primary sale of thirty sections with which to begin surveying. A road was opened from Eugene to and over the mountains in 1867, which was little used or useful. In 1873 the land grant was sold to a San Francisco company, and this immense government gift passed to private ownership in another state.
