Bisbee daily review., 1907-01-23

tai has not been driven from the Ter ritory. On the contrary, never be- ! fore in our history was capital so eag- erly seeking mines. The industry has not been throttled; on the contrary, the present boom" in the mining business is without a parallel in Ari. zona. Nor has the small mine own. CT" been ruined.
 | The mining industry should be en- eouraged in every legitimate way. It should have our particular care. The | great wealth produced by the mines should create neither envy nor enmity. Nor, on the other hand, should it be | treated as a sacred thing that should not be taxed. l ask that wealth and property in all forms. whether owned by the mining company or the lowly shoemaker shall be treated exactly alike. The tax assessor and the tax collector must not discriminate. If our laws are to be respected: If goE- ernment by the people is not to be made farce; if the anarchist is ncI to be encouraged by example of inc rich corporation in evading the law, all men, high and low, must be treat ed with equal justice and all alike must be compelled to obey the impar- tial administration of the law. I shall never accept the doctrine that the payment of taxes should be treated gratefully by the Territory as a dona- ton
 The corporation or individual who thinks it or he is making a concession to the Territory by paying its or his fair proportion of the cost of govern ment has a wholly mistaken notion of its or his relation to the government under which it or he transacts busi- ness. To pay proper taxes is a duty. And if either so far forgets itself or himself as to eyade the discharge of this duty. it or he violates the law either in letter or in spirit, and should be treated as d Jaw breaker.
 It is seriously urged by some that mine should not be taxed unless it is paying a profit to the owner. Null titules of men in other lines of buSi- ness may fail to make a profit. others barely exist, and the profits of others are small; but they are taxed with reg ularity, and nobody complains that the rule is unfair. It is no novel doctrine, therefore, that an unprofitable mine should escape taxation altogether. But it should be freely conceded that mines in an unproductive state should be assessed at valuations wholly nOmi- nal in comparison with their prospec- tive value, for the reason that the val ue of a mine must remain purely spec ulatiye and undetermined un it's ore contents can be measured with some certainty.
 As already suggested, some amend ments of the existing law would en- able assessors to asses and the local boards of equalization to properly equalize the assessments of the mines by methods which could not be fairly criticised. If required to make two classifications of mines-classifying them as producing" and ''non-produc- ing''-county assessors, if at all intel ligent, and attentive to their duty, would not value a non-producing mine on an equality with a producing mine as has been practically the rule. And when reviewing the county assess ments tke Territorial Board could or. der a decrease or increase of the val uations in either class without affect ing the other. If the law shall be amended in this particular, and the To- cal obards are compelled to carry into effect for the benefit of their respec- tive counties the order of the Territo- rial Board. the present law should prove very satisfactory In its opera tion. As 1t is now, any county may be deprived of the benefit of increased assessments ordered by the Territo rial Board, through the failure of the supervisors to collect county taxes on the basis of such increases.
 Apart from the present law, proba- bly, an effective method of taxing a mine would be to fix its value by the market value of the ore extracted therefrOm, the value of the ore extract ed each year to be taken as the valua. ton of the mine for that year. A mine producing nothing would conse- quently be assessed at substantially nothing beyond the improvements upon it. While some difficulties would arise in working out such a sys- tenn of taxation, it would be practica- ble, am confident, to frame law that would meet the requirements. To as certain the market value of the ores extracted from a mine would entail considerable degree of supervision by the Territory to guard against false statements of production, but not so much supervision would be necessary as in the case of a tax on bullion. Hence any objections to the ''inquisi- toriaf' features of such a law would
 
 viding for the taxation of bullion. That a revenue should in any degree be in quisitoTial" seems to alarm the natural timidity of great corporations even though the inquisition Is for public good. l have given the subject of just taxation enough consideration to have learned that without some power of inquisition, any tax law becomes simply, more or less, a means of shift ing the burdens of taxation from the rich and powerful. who can best bear them, to those of moderate or little means, who can least bear them. The very obvious method for the great corporations to avoid what they deem fmpertineut inquisition is to make frank and truthful statements of the extent, character and value of their property. If they had not be come so willing and expert in eva sion of the duty of paying their proper taxes, the people would not have been compelled to be so inquisitive.
 The equable assessment of all prop erty, as the law intends, by the coun- tY officers, and caution and wisdom on I the part of the government of the Ter ritory, would soon reduce the Territo- rial and county rates of taxation to very low figures. And nothing would do so much to make Arizona attractive to settlers and to capital as a justly enforced system of fair assessments with it's necessary corollary - low