Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/109

 ECCENTRIC OFFICIAL STATISTICS 95

that of 1873, or an increase of 50 per cent, in a single year. Minnesota increased her assessment of real estate 109 per cent, the same year. The previous year Indiana added 250 million dollars to her assessment of real estate. Illinois increased her assessment from 372 million to 899 million dollars, the work of a twelvemonth. Ohio in her decennial assessment increased that of real estate 318 million dollars, or to within 76 million dollars of what it was assessed at ten years later. California in 1873 increased her assessment of real estate from 182 million to 423 million dollars. New York's record was no less wonderful. After the panic of 1873, in the face of swift- declining values caused by 92 million dollars of debts being liquidated in bankruptcy in New York City in a single year, the towns in thirty counties in a single twelvemonth increased their assessment of real estate by a mere change in the rate of per cent, at which it was assessed from 380 million to 880 million dollars, while other towns and counties raised their assessment by annual leaps and bounds. According to the state assessors, the assessment was raised from 37 per cent, of the true value in 1870 to 62 per cent, of the true value in 1880. That their estimate of the true value of real estate was not too low is apparent from the fact that it quite accurately corresponds with the tenth-census estimate, which, by the way, is the only estimate of our total wealth ever made by the national government worthy of the name. The sworn statement of over three thousand assessors as to the rate at which they assessed real estate proves conclusively that the estimate of 1870 was not too .high. Hence the claim is rightly made by the state assessors that 67 per cent., or more than one billion, was added to the assessed value of real estate during the decade by a mere change in the rate per cent, of assessment, or, in other words, a net increase of 800 million dollars to the assessment rolls, while the total true value as measured in an appreciating dollar had fallen 340 million dollars. In short, taking the assessed value of real estate for each assessment district in eight commonwealths in the year before the change of the per cent, of the true value at which real estate was assessed, and placing it in one column and the assessments for the next year in another column, the difference between the two columns shows that in eight states alone a mere change in the per cent, of assessment added over three billion dollars to the assessment rolls. Remember that this was the work of a twelvemonth during which, in most cases, the value of property was depreciat- ing more rapidly than new property was being created.

Space will not permit me to quote Mr. Waite's demonstration, from six independent masses of statistics, that the true value of all property could not have been less than 25 billion dollars in 1860 and not far from 40 billion dollars in 1870. It would seem that these investigations regarding the value of property in 1850