The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-10

every state, 1t will be found that the
 small towns suffer as compared with
 the large cities. The Connecticut re-
 ports are not made in such manner as
 to make it possible toyanaylze them, but
 in New York there are many small
 towns in which personal property pays
 more than one-third of the taxes,
 whereas in several large cities it pays
 less than ne-twentieth. & THE EFFECT OF LISTING LAWS.
 In Ohio the law is very severe. Eve
 " citizen is bound to make a complete
 return of his property under oath, and
 is liable to a fine if he fails to make the
 list and 50 per cent. may be added to
 the assessors estimate of tho value of
 his property; in addition to this they
 have what is called the Tax inaaisitor law" which provides for the payment of informers who prove that lists do not state the full value of the listers prop erty.
 The effect of this law is that rural dis 1 tricts pay out of all proportion to the cities and that men of wealth are being driven out of Ohio at rapid rate. In l 1866 intangible personal property in Hamilton county, which contains the l city of Cincinnati, was assessed to the amount of over seventeen millions, and thirty years later the assessment had | fallen nearly to five millions. The Hon E. A. Angel, formerly state tax commits sioner of Ohio, in an article in the Inde- pendent in February, 1898 stated that ''The informer scheme does not make the general property tax effective. It has utterly broken down In Ohio else- where. The merest bagatelle is reached outside of visible tangible property" | The Ohio tax commission appointed in | 1893 said in their report 'The system as | 1t is actually administered results in de- | bauching the moral sense; it is a school of perjury It sends large amounts of property into hiding. It drives capital in l arge quantities from the state. Worst of all, it imposes unjust burdens upon various classes in the community; upon the farmer in the country, all of whose property is taxed because it is tangible; upon the man who is scrupu- lously honest and upon the guardian, executor and trustee, whose accounts are matters of public record"
 l have examined the reports of many states and in no state have 1 failed to find overwhelming evidence that the taxation of personal property is une- qual, unjust, productive of perjury and destructive to the best interests of all the citizens of the state.
 Some kinds of personal property 1t is impossible for the ordinary man to value, even when he personally inspects them. You have here an immense amount of machinery, and as to this class of property the tax commission in Massachusetts reported in 1897 an ex- ample which showed the great injustice which often follows the attempt to per form this impossible task of assessment. They said that the Lawrence Manufac- turing company of Lowell sold forty thousand spindes in good condition for 62 1-2 cents per spindle. This machine " had been assessed a year before at $6.43 a spindle, or ten times the amount of it's real value. In Rhode Island the state board said that There was not a board of assessors in the state who knew, and but few who pretended to know, what the true valuation of mill property was"
 l think practically all agree that the taxation of personal property is imprac- ticable, unequal and unjust, but many feel that to exempt it from taxation would be to confer a favor upon the owners of personal property. Nothing could be further from the truth.
 TAXES ON PERSONAL PROPERTY
 ARE PAID BY THE CONSUMER
 A tax on machinery increases the cost of producing goods and is ultimate ly paid by the consumers of the goods. A tax on merchandise increases the cost