Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1902-03-19

towns of Iowa is nearly if not quite 2
per cent upon the full value. SO that
this double tax upon corporation stocks
would reduce the income of the holder
to 2 per cent. We naturally think of a
woman or man left with one hun
dred thousand dollars of mortgages or
corporation securities as rich person.
whose obligation to the community is
to assist literally, and get, by the
| operation of the tax laws of Iowa, the
owner OF 500, 900 of corporation stocks
and mortgage notes has not the income
of many clerk or agent from whom
the community never expects dollar
in gifts.
4th. 1t is to hunt down this class of
widows, orphans and old men, and to
enforce these schemes of double taxa
ton, that the ferret law passed. 1t is
TO them that the ferrets have given at.
tention almost exclusively. Not one
OF these ferrets, not county treasurer,
not board of supervisors in counties
In the state putting in operation the
ferret law, applies it to property over
looked or withheld from taxation,
other than moneys and credits or cor
poration stocks. Real property, stocks
or merchants, manufacturing institu-
tons, are deliberately left uninvesti-
gated, however inadequately taxed.
Farms selling at $50 to 800 per acre.
and assessed at less than 80 per cent. of
their cash value, have never had their
assessments challenged by tax ferret.
The ia millions of deposits in the
state and savings banks of the state are
never brought under ferret inspection.
The hundreds of thousands of dollars
which the ferrets boast of having
squeezed out of the taxpayers of the
state, are the inequitable and double
exactions upon the mortgage and stock
investment of widows and orphans
and old men and women.
5th. The law makes no exemption
for these people Every dollar of mort
gage or stock assets they have is taxed
In full. The farmer, the merchant, the
manufacturer, the real estate holder,
all have by law or in fact, exemptions,
or concessions from full values. A few
weeks since the press of the state
widely published the fact that farm
er In Clayton county had raised 28, 900
bushels of corn last year, worth in the
crib at that time $4,000 Every dol
lar OF that was exempted from taxa,
ton by law. If he had as much of
other crops that would also have been
exempt. If he had 900 pigs less than
six months old and 1000 calves less
than one year Of age, aud thousands of
dollars worth of farm machinery, all
would have been by law exempt. Re-
latively the exemptions of every farm
er are as great And yet if the money
loaners returned for taxation rs or so
per cent. of their moneys and credits
a much larger per cent. than other pro-
perty was assessed on the average as
thousands of them did, they were ac-
counted by the ferrets as tax-dodgers
and made to pay upon the ether 20 or
% per cent. And yet the popular cry
is that the farmer is unjustly taxed,
and that the money loaners or holders
of stocks, whose money pays at least
one tax and by law is made subject to
double tax, escapes unburdened
One of the most clamorous news
papers in the state for the enforcement
of the ferret law is journal in one of
our Mississippi river cities. This paper |
holds itself at a valuation of $4,000, |
and could not be bought for less. In
deed its capital stock is 100000, and !