The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1899-07-03

aster followed fast and faster until we'll
TODD men abandoned their homes and fled
from the town where they were born and
reared as if it were stricken with pes
thence. A few men who had stocks and
bends that the assessors could not get at
for taxation and good number of pen
sioners, men and women, who draw quar-
terly bounties for services rendered by
themselves or their kindred in the civil
war, fingered about decayed homesteads
and complained bitterly how modern man
hood had gone to decay. The rest of the
population consisted of paupers, of those
who were about to be paupers and of
those who were preparing to move away.
The town was on the high road to ruin
and nothing could check the encroach-
ment of poverty unless the place became
a plantation. Then the paupers which the
town was compelled to support would be
thrown upon the oldest adjoining town
and with the enormous pauper bill lifted
from the tax list the people under the
beneficent system of plantation govern
ment could hope to pay up their bills
and reconstruct new prosperity upon
the foundation of an old ruin.
Before this could be done, however, the
valuation of the town must be reduced to
$4,000, because plantations which have
an appraisal value of $4,000 and over are
obliged to support their own paupers.
w nile II is easy 6IlOuSH lOI Tie lOWiI
SCISSORS to scale down the valuation to
any sum, their opinions in the case are
not final, for the state assessors must
approve of the judgment to make 1t bind
ing, and as all legislative action is based
upon state assessments the actual valua-
ton must go below $4,000 before the law
makers will listen to the plantation idea.
GETTING AROUND LAW.
The way the residents of a town that
| 20 oTlto ion md
the valuation wall is worthy of better
! cause. Residents who own land in the
! tabooed town move over the lines into
/ an adjoining town, taking all their live
! stock and personal property along. Hav-
! ing transferred their poll tax and personal
| property to another town they proceed to
! demolish their buildings, cut off what
ever timber there may be on their lands
and crop their farms to death by SOW
| ing oats and .buckwheat year after year
without returning any dressing to pay
| for the loss. AS a rule, 1t takes about
i four years for a town that Is valued at
| 100000 to reduce its worth so as to come
within the $4,000 plantation. limit. After
! this is done a committee of the leading
citizens, who have gone into voluntary
| exile, go before the legislature fortified
with such a truthful and pathetic story
! that no man and no body of men can re-
/ siSt their appeals.
| The town is made over into plantdtlon,
the paupers go to the oldest adjoining
town, which at once prepares to reduce
it's valuation and become a plantation,
| and the eXpatriated citizens come back
to their old homes and begin a new battle
| for life upon the debilitated fields.
1t is a strange metamorphosis from
plantation to town, from town to indebt-
edness and from Overwhelming debt back
to plantation again. Several Maine
| towns have been through the mill within
the past twenty years, and several more
are getting ready to do so. AS a rule,
! the towns of Maine are filled with thrift
and comfort. On the seaboard are fac
tories and great fleets of fishermen and
coasting vessels. Far inland the men find
paying employment in cutting timber, in
making pulp and paper and in working
among the sawmills. Between these two
| geographical extremes are few towns
that have lost all their timber, and which
have never improved their farms or built
factories to earn money enough for cur
rent expenses of the inhabitants. These
are the towns that must become planta-
tons or lose all of their population.