The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1884-11-05

aires, and lend their editorial columns
to the side of wealth. The minor press
very generally echoes the opinions
of the leading papers, and does not
give the thorough study to the question
necessary to penetrate the sophistries
used and so sustain the law Most of
the leading papers, it is asserted, re-
fuse to admit anything to their columns
except on the side of the money-lend-
! ers, and not one of them has dared to
publish the official tables of the tax
commissioner or the abstracts from the
sworn returns of the savings banks,
showing the truth in the matter of the
decline of interest. Then the money
lenders adopted a shrewd dodge to
make the borrowers help them in resist
ing repeal. They got the savings banks
and leading lenders to combine to in
sert in the mortgages a covenant by
which the borrower agrees that if the
tax shall ever be reimposed on mort
gage notes they will pay that as well as
the tax on the land. When repeal is
proposed the lenders send their circu-
lars to all the borrowers they can find
on record who have made this cove
nant, calling them in to lobby against
repeal This is how the minority of
the committee last winter was able to
procure the petition Of " four hundred
mortgageors against repeal. There
were poor women and widows who had
been inveigled into this snare standing
about the state house steps to lobby their
members "against return to double
taxation" Another class plead in favor
of giving the law fair trial and argue
that two or three years are not enough.
On the other hand, it is stoutly main
tanned that, so far as is known, no diSin-
terested person, in Massachusetts,, whose
opinion is of any value on tax questions,
favors the presents law. Professor Perry,
the political economist, President Seelye
of Amherst College, who has served on
the tax commission, State Treasurer
Gleason, who as tax commissioner has
given seventeen years study to taxa
ton and written much of the Massa-
chusetts law on the subject, Thomas
Hill, principal assessor of Boston, who
has given his whole life to the study of
these questions, are all sturdily opposed
to the present law, These men are not
sociologists " who, our esthetic con-
temporary, the Free Press, says are all
arrayed against double taxation" but
they are practical men of affairs and
take practical view of an intensely
practical public question. To the ques-
ton, What is the practical working of
the law? our informant says:
cit is to extort subsidy of 50, 100 900
from the farmers, merchants and manufac-
turers which is pocketed by the capitalists
in the form of exemption without any per-
ceptible reduction in their interest charge.
made by the advocates of the law in this
state that interest rates on mortgage loans
went down one to one and half per cent at
the time of the passage of the law-well, it
is simply gross misrepresentation. The adj
vocates of the law brought before the legis-
lative committee a lot of loan brokers, who
think their business is improved by the law
and number of men who were in the power
of the money-lenders and they testified-not
hot tl,ar 4
in mortgage interest rates. Some of them
We're honest. Interest has been declining
through the world during most of the past
ten years. A great many men who gave
notes three or five years before the passage
of the law, found themselves able to borrow
again at maturity one and a half or two per
cent less, and some We're so ignorant of the
general movement in the interest rate az to
suppose the drop was due to the law, while
if their notes had matured the year before
they would have had the same experience.
Others lied. Thus we took pains to trace
one man who said all his mortgages were
seven per cent before the law, and the mo-
ment it passed he was able to borrow of
savings banks and individuals at four and
half TO five per cent We found on the rec
ords his last mortgages made prior to the
passage of the law to be at six per cent and
his first mortgage after to be at six also.
The law did not appear to make the differ
ence of a mill in his rates. A minority of
the committee had the assurances on such
testimony to make the assertion you speak
of, namely, that interest fell in money CEN
ters one to one and a half per cent on mort
gage loans"
The majority of the committee re-
ported that the rates did not decline at
all on account of the law and showed
from the most conclusive testimony,
which in former article we quoted,
that the decline in mortgage rates, such
rs it was, like the greater decline in the
rates on standard state and railway Sc
curities, was from the operation of
causes producing general decline in
the rate on all securities AT the hear
ing before the legislative committee
in 1888, on the bill to repeal the law of
1881, the gentlemen present opposing
repeal, the chairman said, represented
eight or ten millions of capital. The
committee unanimously reported in
fouDr Of ra,Naa1 IL 1904 tba f,;o,,lo &c