Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1891-06-06
MINING JOURNAL.
Assessment Vagaries.

This has been busy week for the
kicker.
The kicker at this iuncture is the
man who thinks he was assessed too
high.
The man who thinks he was assessed
too low is laying in the same direction,
saving wood and laughing when no.
body's looking.
The man who does not think his
property is the only one in town did
not appeal, and in many cases did not
ment. The same man did not assume
that the assessors were a band Of
legalized robbers organized and sworn
to raze his house and desOlate his
patch.
In all the history of Frostburg there
was never period in which the cir
cumstances so generally and radically
altered the eases.
There was more and louder talk of
the damage done than when the great
fire of 1875 cleaned up $150,O00 one
short afternoon.
Men who are dumb as an oyster
when improvements for the betterment
of their values are proposed, were
eloquent with Indignation over an
alleged over-estimate of their fortunes.
Had the over-estimate come in the
shape of a private opinion, publicly
expressed, or in the form of an offer
for purchase, it would have been re-
ceived with smiles if not manifesto
tons of explosive delight.
But when the assessors came with
their complimentary valuations-their
substantial tributes of praise to the in
dustry, economy and business sagacity
which had reared such monuments, the
wrong OK was gored.
John S. Combs used to give it out as
a safe rule to determine mans
wealth-"divide the popular estimate
by two"
The average individual, fattered by
popular misconception of his financial
Importance, does not like the appli-
cation of the rule-until the assessors
reach him. Then his repugnance to
paying something for nothing gener-
ally ''lets the cat out of the bag" and
at last he is forced to publish the fact
that after all he is capitalist in the
coming" sense.
One of the peculiarities developed
by the assessment was the notion that
recent purchase prices settled the
values of the properties involved.
This is an error of the first degree.
The assessment is founded on rule,
not on accident. A property might
be bought for $500, Or S., yet grade
along equivalently with others rating
at 81 900. The town is interested
not in recent purchase prices, but in
the equality of the bases for taxation
purposes, and taxation purposes only.
The town neither sets up nor pulls
down values for market effect.
The towns one and only ann is to
establish fair schedule of comparative
values.
For this purpose what an owner
states he will take or not take for a
given property has not and should
have no consideration whatever.
To offer an assessor-who is not
buyer, but an assessor-a property for
less than a given sum is, under the
circumstances, about as reasonable as to
invite confirmed bachelor to buy a
cradle.
The assessment brought out idios-
yncrasies demonstrating that there is
yet "a great deal of human nature in
man."
1t showed that the closer men get to
their own interests-theW oacn ya1ues,
the less sense they have.
Said wise lawyer:
The man who argues his own case has
fool for client.
In much the same degree so it is
with the man who sets up his woes as
outweighing those of everybody else.
To him the assessor, no matter who
heis, like ''the finder, never knows how
to value the owners article"
While it is only true that the as
SCISSOR, also like "the finder, can never
cclrately estimate the extent and
magnitude of the oacner's sentiment"