The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-01-02
A NATTER FOR SENSE.
FRON OTHER PENS

FORESTS KILLED BY TAXES
The letter of William H. Jennings
of Wilkesbarre. published in the Press
of last Tuesday, tells how he has L.
500 trees of woodland covered with
trees of good size, but not yet mature
They have been growing thirty years,
but should stand ten years longer for
heir best development. The assess
or, however. figures up what he con-
siders the present market value Of the
wood, and by his return places Mr..
Jennings under obligation to pay the
full tax on those trees, though he has
no revenue from them whatever. Next
year, he must again pay on their mar
ket value, regardless of the fact that
he can market them but once.
This is familiar story. 1t is clear
that those trees will be taxed off the
face of the earth. 1t will not pay the
owner to keep them until mature if
he must pay on their market value
every year for ten years. These 1900
acres will, therefore, be changed
sooner or later, from a beautiful piece
of woods to a wilderness of stumps
and brush
Outside of the city line tracts Of
large trees are very infrequent. When
forests exist at all they are nearly al
ways of young second growth timber.
The tax assessor gets in his deadly
work. He is worse foe of trees
w
the fires which consume them. He is
not so much to blame as the law back
of him that allows trees to be taxed
when standing instead of deferring the
tax until the trees are cut and made a
marketable product. - Philadelphia
Press.
AS IT WAS. IS AND SHALL BE.
There are those who see awful por-
tents in the signs of the times, to
whom the world. and perhaps es-
pecially this nation, seems going along
the paths Of covetousness, luxury.
prohigacy and dissipation to irretriev-
able ruin. and who bitterly lament the
passing away Of the good old days of
soberness, industry and thrift.
Yet 12a years ago today, In the
time of the primitive and sturdy vir-
tues of our ancestors. so juddcious an
observer as George Washington wrote
to his friend Benjamin Harrison: If
was to be called upon to draw a pic
ture Of the times and of men, from
what I have seen and heard and in
part known. I should in one word say
that idleness, dissipation and ex-
travagance seems to have laid hold of
most of them: that for riches seems
to have gotten the better Of every
other consideration and almost every
order of men. I need not repeat to
you that I am alarmed and wish to
see my countrymen reused.
OF a truth Solomon the son of David
was right when he said: "Say not
thou, what is the cause that the for
mer days were better than these p
for thou dost not inquire wisely con-
corning this. New York Tribune
CANADA AND THE U. S.
There has been one happy phase of
the recent development of the Cana
dian northwest in that Canadians have
evidently learned to appreciate Amer
lean settlers as much superior to those
coming from any other country.
American readers of the English
magazines, it must be confessed have
been not a little entertained by the
articles explaining why Englishmen
are not popular in Canada. The de-
velopment has been, probably, a
somewhat painful shock to British
pride. inasmuch as in going to the
Dominion an Englishman feels that he
Is merely entering one of his imperial
possession over the seas-a region
especially reserved for him by the
builders of the greatest empire the
sun shines upon. Yet this very feeling
accounts partly for the unpopularity
he seems to achieve on Canadian soil.
The American in Canada, on the other
hand, is an entirely different creature.
He has been reared on the same con-
tinent, in much the same social and
business atmosphere and with the
same conception of industrial progress
as the native Canadian.-Springfie
Republican