The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-03-15
ROWE BILL IS RE-AEPIRMED
Continued From First Page. ]

e.J
 spoke in favor of the bill were Genera
 George H. Ford, Attorney C. S. Ham
 ilton, Julius Twiss, Professor William Chandler and Secretary John C. Gal.
 lagher. The arguments adduced in fla. vor of the bill are included in the fol lowing statement made by MT. Rowe
 which Is given at length:
 The law provides that all kinds of property shall be assessed at it's pres
 ent, fair market value. The superior
 court and the supreme court have de- cided that the present, fair market
 value" of any property or thing is what
 it will sell for at the present time.
 This definition commends itself to
 practical common sense. Under the
 law, then, what we desire to do is to
 assess property for taxation upon the
 level principle of what it will sell for at
 the present time.
 In fact, other property than real es- tate is assessed for a little less than it's present market value on the first day of october. As, for instance, the stock of banks and other corporations, mer- chandise, horses, carriages and any of the property ordinarily in the tax list are assessed for little less than their market value, except real estate, but the law provides for no such distinction against real estate. Justice prescribes the same principle. Take, for instance, a certain bank stock, the market price of which on the first of last October was, say, 12S and was assessed at that time for. say, 125. Another stock was worth in the market, say 11S, and was assessed at, say, 115. I need not take time for illustrations. of which I could give you hundreds.
 The alleged arguments against this bill are founded on the erroneous SUD- position that the cost of a property has bearing upon it's assessment. There is no warrant for any such supposition in the law, nor in the practice of assess Ing other property than real estate. A share of stock may cost hundred dol lars, so that when it depreciates to, say, ten dollars per share it will not be as- sessed any more than that. If, on the other hand, a share of stock costs one hundred dollars and it becomes worth five hundred dollars, it will be so as- SeoSeu' LII SHOFl, no aLlenClUn IS palu to it's original cost. So a house and lot may cost S3,000 but if 1t will not sell for more than $2,000 it ought not to be as- sessed at any more than that.
 In order to understand this simple bill we must first realize that we must tax simply the market value, or else we violate the law. If all the property in the city was assessed upon it's present market value it would constitute a level plane which would represent just as- sessments, and no one would be wrong ed thereby; but when the assessors as- sess house and lot which would only sell for $1,500 and they place it in the list at $2500 they raise that piece of property above the level, and do injus- tice to the owner.
 If the assessments were all at the level of the present market value it would be like the smooth, level surface If lake, Now, suppose a portion of the lake hundred feet long and fifty teet front raised ten feet above the rest If the lake, it could not be sustained there excepting by retaining walls of some kind. This Is an illustration of m over-assessment of a house and lot which is worth S1 300 and is assessed at '25O0. It is sustained in that unnatu- al position, not by the law, which for bids 1t, but by the act of the assessors