Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/514

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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

percentages of assessment of such land should bear to that of similar lands sold by warranty deed a ratio of lOO to from 60 to 66. This would be the case, providing the lands sold by warranty deeds do not have fictitious considerations stated in the same. The following exhibit presents for the seventy -eight rural counties the percentages of all acres sold by warranty deeds, and also of those sold by foreclosures, and the percentage which the former constitute of the latter. The groups over 85,000 are here consoli- dated into one, since there were only five sales by foreclosures over g 1 0,000.

Classification by amounts of sales

Percentages of assessed value to staled selling price

Percentages which the former are of the

Deeds

Foreclosures

latter

S 500 and less 501 to JJi.ooo

1,001 to 2,000 2,001 to 3,000

3,001 to 5,000 Over 5,000

59.04

53-65 45.68

39-92 36-22 34-36

190.78 89-39 70.00 62.08 58.59

53-51

30.95 60.02 65.26 64.30 61.82 64.62

Total,

40.75

80.50

50.62

The percentages of the last column are obtained by dividing those of the first by those of the second. On the assumption that the lands sold by foreclosures are, by groups of sale, assessed relatively the same as the lands sold by warranty deeds, the percentages in the last column show the relative credit secured by the loans which led to the foreclosures here tabulated. The percentages in the last column, with the exception of that for sales in amounts less than S500, are such as would occur on the conditions of assessment above stated, where there was no material number of deeds tabulated with sacrifice sales, or with fictitious stated considerations, or other factors creating large apparent variations in relative assessment. For all excepting the first group the table leaves but little room for doubt that most, if not all, of the variation shown in the percentages of assessment records discriminations by the assessors against the poor man, or at least against the owner of cheap, or little improved, land.