Not covered in a lot of the texts provided before is the reason the law was even thought of in the first place. If you look through newspapers archives around this time you can see a bit more of this.

At the time it was being discussed, Oregon’s population was much more rural. A large percentage of people depended on the revenue generated by extraction of natural resources - namely timber. The post WWII building boom was coming to an end, demand for lumber was down. The average Unemployment rate for the state was double digits.

Lawmakers, desperate to fix this - or at least be seen to do something about it so that they could get re-elected, passed a number of laws to increase jobs. One of these was a highly contentious bill requiring all gas stations to have a person on hand to pump gas, and the price to be the same as self-pumped gas.

This of course irritated gas station owners, most of whom were out of state corporate owners. They fought back hard agains the bill. Lobbyist, before they were common, started flooding Salem and the bill was looking like it would be killed.

And then came the “accident.” I think this might be a bit of urban legend, or at least the facts have been stretched a bit. But a young lady, related to a senator, reportedly somehow spilled fuel on her car and set it on fire. After this story circulated, the bill was rewritten into one about safety. Opposition from out of state corporate owners dissipated, the bill passed, and roughly 3000 jobs were created across the state. Many of them in small towns with next to no economy outside of a small store and a gas station.

Since then there have been three or four attempts to over turn the bill. It has been put to voters every time, who overwhelmingly defeated it. It is estimated that about 7500 people are still employed by this bill. Keep in mind that motorcycles and diesels are exempt from this, although some gas stations insist “for insurance purposes” in pumping gas for even those vehicles.