Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/308



The State's Finances Viewed as a Whole. — In the interest of a clearer and more comprehensive view of Oregon's finances, it is advisable at this stage of our sketch of them to dwell a moment on the fundamental processes in Oregon's commonwealth housekeeping. An attempt will be made to so characterize them that they can be kept in the mind's eye in their essential relations throughout the remainder of this discussion.

In Part Two the salient features of the system of taxation in use in Oregon, with the changes introduced from time to time, and the varying practices followed in the state's land policy, were outlined. In these two sources, the taxes and the proceeds from its public lands, the organized life of the commonwealth has its support. It is proposed now to trace the application of the revenues derived from these sources. The use of them in public expenditures exhibits the purposes of the people that are served by the government. These public expenditures reveal the course and development of the commonwealth life.

A people does not tax itself or have occasion to utilize a public domain except as it has needs to meet or aims to realize. These community needs and commonwealth ambitions and aims are fundamental and initial to all financial systems and policies. They impel to organization and out of them financial arrangements and finances emerge. It would seem then that they should have been noticed first in a discussion of the finances of a state. So would they had our subject