Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/510

 490 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

such data, and calls attention to a large number of interesting phases of the tax question, as well as to the purely statistical ele- ments presented in the tables. A discussion of all, or even a few, of these subjects is impossible in an article such as the present- Attention is called to only two of the leading facts brought out by this investigation. They are the greater relative taxation of the acre or farm property owned by the poor, and the reason for the same. The report includes the tabulation of many thousands of sales of city or town lots. Those sales are tabulated by themselves, as are the sales of acre or farm property. No detailed reference will here be given to the relative taxation of city lots. Only the sales of acres by warranty deed and by mortgage foreclosures will here be passed in review. At the close of the article are to be found brief summary tables of all the facts to which reference is here made. The percentages of those tables are the only por- tions thereof which are given in tabular form in connection with the reading matter here presented.

Minnesota has three quite important cities within its borders. They are Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth. The counties con- taining them are Hennepin, Ramsey, and St. Louis. In the report these counties are referred to as the city counties. The balance of the state, including seventy-eight counties, is spoken of as the rural counties. As the character of the real property sold in the last few years and the condition of sale under which land is transferred are, and have been, quite different in the city and rural sections, the data of land values and of actual and relative assess- ment for the two sections have been tabulated apart. There are here given only the data for acre property in the rural counties. Those data amply suffice to set forth the character of the assess- ment of farm property in the state, and the circumstances under which a faulty system of assessment has grown up in most of the western states, and the causes and cure for the same. Attention is now called to those data. The following is a condensed exhibit from the accompanying tables of the relative assessment of the acre or farm property in the seventy-eight rural counties of Min- nesota, sold by warranty deed and mortgage foreclosures. The exhibit presents separately the percentages for improved and