The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-06-23
HOUSTON'S CRANKY MAYOR HENRYGEORGES TAXES DOWN Uncle Joe Pastoriza Acknowledged Pest to Politicians Made Revenue Commissioner He'd Mess Things Up and Then Be Good, Beat the Game and Is Now
 the Texas City's Chief Executive
Fly ZOE BEcKLEY


 Houston, Tex, June 22.-(speciaL)-A dozen years ago, when Houston, grad uating from knickerbockers to it's first long trousers, was trying to be sort of grown up and dignified, it began to get irritated with Joe Pastoriza. Joe was a crank. He was always fussing around the tax commissioners, nagging them to levy on land and let buildings and per- sonal property go almost free. Joe had all sorts of plans for making Houston a big town, full of skyscrapers and ann pie homes and enormous hotels and pros porous citizens.
 He was a human mosquito that you corldn't brush off. He was worse than a joke. He was becoming pest, little, t..., siIy, good humored, sharp -witted old man pest with his silly, nay, dan gerous ideas of tax reform.
 Today Uncle Joe" Pastoriza is mayor of Houston. Nobody regards him as a joke now, though many call him a crank on single tax, for his honors poli- tics is as purely Henry Georgian as his ancestry is Castilian Spanish.
 Gentlemen whose financial ambitions were based on real estate speculation are said to have mentioned buckshot as the only effectual means of curbing Joes mania for helping the plain people
 Others, more temperate said the best thing to do to Joe was to make him commissioner of taxes and revenue and he'd soon make such a fool of himself and such a mess of the city's finances that he would be busted and civically killed for all time.
 Then Houston could have little peace and owners of valuable land could enjoy the hundred-to-one returns thereof With out a busybody of an old single-taxer spelling their sleep with cries of "Un- earned increment"
 REAL ESTATE MEN JOLTED
 It was funny how their plans didn work out. They made Uncle Joe com missioner all right. But instead of get ting himself into trouble, he took off his coat and collar, rolled up his shirt sleeves and began to pull down the tax rate of the town of Hyewston, Tex, from $1.70 to $1.50 per $100 valuation, while the assessment rolls showed an increase of $33, 900, 900.
 Uncle Joe Just distributed things diff ferently, that's all. He exempted cash owned by individuals or corporations de- posted in the banks of Houston. He exempted household furniture and per- sonal effects. He assessed improvements upon land and stocks of merchandise at only 25 per cent of their value.
 He adopted the Somers system of equalization of property values and de- veloped from 1t what is now known throughout the United States as the Houston plan of taxation" which is an application of the single tax principle so far as it can be worked in harmony with existing constitutional laws.
 A few years of this sort of thing, with wide open tax books and a system that gave the poor man as square tax deal as the rich, made the plain people sit up and take serious notice of the dynamic little retired businessman who had re- fused to flivver on his job as per sched- ule.
 With their trusty ballots they made Joseph J. Pastoriza mayor on the 23d of last February-the plainest, simplest most sincere and hardworking mayor 8 bustling, forward-looking southwestern city ever had.
 J. J. was born in New Orleans sixty something years ago and brought to Houston when both he and Houston were babies. His parents died and some good people adopted him, knowing only that his father and mother were edu- cated Spaniards and surely never dream ing that Joe would one day turn every thing upside down and make Houston over from sluggish town to live wire metropolis.
 Mayor Joe had been in office only a short time when I called upon him in his plain old room In the city market