As a matter of fact, from 1803 to 1848, in each of the twelve territories organized from the public lands, the sixteenth section in every township was reserved for school purposes, Oregon being the first to receive the addition of the thirty-sixth. There has been no fixed rule of appropriation, much depending upon the people and their representatives. In 1812, and again in 1824 congress ordered a survey of certain towns and villages in Missouri, reserving for the use of schools one-twentieth part of the whole survey. When sold these town reservations produced large sums, as in the case of St. Louis. Down to 1880 seven states and eight territories had received the thirty-sixth section in each township. Twenty-four states had received two townships each for the use of universities. Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Florida had taken more. Previous to 1882 the appropriation of land for common schools in the land states aggregated sixty-seven million eight hundred and ninety-three thousand nine hundred and nineteen acres; for university purposes, one million six hundred and fifty thousand five hundred and twenty acres; for agricultural and mechanical colleges, nine million six hundred thousand acres—a total of seventy-nine million one hundred and forty-four thousand four hundred and thirty-nine acres devoted to the support of education in the United States. From time to time it has been necessary to make changes in the land laws, as when the discovery of mineral lands, reserved by congress called for the substitution of lieu lands, but there has been no diminution in quantity or value. Oregon has less vacant or public land than from its area might be expected. The bounty of government in donating to the pioneer settlers six hundred and forty acres to a family—three hundred and twenty to the husband, and the same amount to the wife—and to single men and women three hundred and twenty each, provided they lived upon or improved their claims, disposed of most of the cultivable area west of the Cascade Range. The school lands which passed with the territorial act occupied two thirty-sixths of every township. The act of admission passed to the state the usual endowment of five hundred thousand acres for its public uses,[17] with twelve salt springs and six sections adjoining each; ninety thousand acres for the endowment of an agricultural college, and seventy-two sections for the use and support of a state university. Subsequent grants to railroads and public highways, with military and Indian reservations, absorbed large bodies of land, both in the valleys and the mountains. The state devoted the net proceeds, with the accruing interest of the five hundred thousand acres, as an irreducible fund for the support of common schools, and for the purchase of libraries and apparatus.[18] It also added to this fund all gifts to the state whose purpose was not named.