Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/312

290 Several things are to be noted about this flow of wealth into the state treasury destined for public expenditures. First, that it should increase in volume as the years go by in a state increasing in numbers and wealth is most normal. It is, however, worth while to mark particularly the variations in the rate of expansion of this flow as it keeps pace with the growth in population and in wealth. More significant still is the apportionment of this flow of funds by the legislatures for different public purposes as they directed the diversion of it from the whole volume of social income. It is, for instance, a matter of much moment, whether these funds as they pass from the treasury is used in growing proportions for the mere protection of person and property through appropriations for the militia, the courts and the policing officials, or whether they are applied rather in more rapidly increasing sums to provide conditions under which the production of wealth will be facilitated. Most promising of all for the future welfare of a people if the expansion of well-applied expend- itures is greatest for public service affecting the conditions of life and enlightenment. The tendencies exhibited by the items of a significant classification of a state's expenditures answer queries like these concerning the rise or decline of a people. It is, of course, not so much what a people spend as the efficiency they develop in their public service that counts. There is hardly a limit to the amount that may be judiciously applied by a community in public expenditures if efficiency in using them increases correspondingly. The really vital question about public expenditures centers on the returns they yield the people. Improvement in the efficiency of its public agencies a people must have in this age of growing interdependence or that people is doomed.

The growth, the direction that this growth takes, and the efficiency of the public expenditures are among the leading matters to be inquired into in an examination of the treasury records of a state.