Page:Quarterlyoforego10oreg 1.djvu/403

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Finances of Oregon
367

proceeds from the other class of grants the principal itself was available for public expenditures. Along with this latter treasury resource from the sales of internal improvement lands by the state was a money payment of five per cent of the net proceeds of the sales of public lands within the state by the national government. Closely allied with this last are the more recent payments of percentages of the sales of timber from the forest reservations within the state.

In addition to the grants of lands that were made over to the state to have and to hold, or to dispose of for the purposes for which they were accepted, there were land grants to railroads and wagon roads in connection with which the state acted merely as an intermediary. The proceeds from these did not figure in the treasury statements.

The public domain has figured in Oregon's finances in the following ways and items:

  1. Through grants for common and higher education: a, the common school grant first made in the act organizing the the territory, August 14, 1848, of sections 16 and 36 of each township; b, a grant for the use and support of a state university first made in the donation act, September 27, 1850, of two townships and the "Oregon City Claim"; c, the grant under the Morrill Act, July 2, 1862, for the support of a college for the cultivation of agricultural and mechanical science and art, of 30,000 acres for each of the three members of Congress Oregon then was entitled to.
  2. Through grants for internal improvements, public buildings and other uses of the state: a, a grant of 500,000 acres to which Oregon was entitled under the act of September 4, 1841, for internal improvements; b, a grant of 10 sections for public buildings made at the time of admission into the Union, February 14, 1859; c, a grant of not exceeding 12 salt springs with six sections of lands as contiguous as may be to each, at the time of the admission into the Union (but this grant lapsed because of neglect); d, swamp lands for reclaiming, under act of September 28, 1850, and extension to Ore-