Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 12.djvu/101

FINANCIAL HISTORY OF OREGON 93 They were by law turned into the county treasuries and loaned from these. The county treasurers of course drew a fee from them for their trouble. 1 No accounting by the county treas- urers for these funds was enforced, so the Board of Land Com- missioners in 1868, when charge of these funds was resumed by the state, had to report: "In some of the counties it (the school fund) had been well and carefully managed, and had constantly accumulated, while in others it had been much neglected, and as a consequence losses had occurred; in some cases, notes had outlawed; in others, they were insufficiently secured, and parties giving notes had changed their residence for parts unknown, while in all, indulgence in the payment of interest had been given, and months, and in some cases, years had passed without its collection/' 2 Even after the state administrative officials were definitely made the custodians in 1868 of these funds accumulated from the proceeds of sales of lands in the different grants the moneys were subject to many vicissitudes of peril before being safely credited to appropriate funds in the state treasury. The legis- lative "Investigating Commission" reporting in November, 1871, says of the "Board of School Land Commissioners" hav- ing charge of the whole matter of state land sales : "No proper books were kept, not even those actually required by law." . . . "On the flimsy pretense that there was not clerical aid in the office sufficient to transact the business, the Board, as a Board, generally refused to receive payments upon lands, though it is on record that some of the members were some- what more yielding [referring to the peculations of the Sec- retary of State that will be mentioned later] and did a little business of that sort on their own individual account." Some sixteen hundred different applications for the purchase of state lands were made to this administration between 1868 and 1870. The representative of the Board refused to receive money from the applicants, so these generally took possession iGeneral Laws, 1858, pp. 43-5. aReport of Board of Commissioners, 1868, p. 36.