Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/515

 SOME INEQUALITIES IN LAND TAXATION

495

The figures for the first group measure quite accurately the loss by mortgage foreclosures of the poor men who secure credit in small amounts and are unable to meet their obligations. Where the average man, with a fair amount of resources, obtains a credit on real estate security of from 60 to 66 per cent, of its selling value, the poorer man obtains such credit only on the average of 33.95 per cent. By inability to meet his obligation he loses the balance of his possessions, or substantially 70 per cent, of his prior savings. This sacrifice throws the loss of the poor man by inequitable assessment into the shadow and proves conclusively how much worse as a taskmaster are debts assumed under conditions that prevent their payment than is the vicious assessment of Minnesota acre realty.

The various tables of the report throw much light upon the character and origin of the discrimination of assessors, above noted, by which the poor man, or the owner of cheap land, is made to pay relatively a higher taxation than the richer land- owner, or the valuable lands. One series of tables which throws much light upon the question contains the data for forty-one rural counties, in all of which improved acres were assessed relatively considerably less than were the unimproved. The following table presents for those counties the average selling and assessed value of the acres conveyed by warranty deeds, and the percent- age which the latter value was of the former.

Improved acres

Unimproved acres

Classification by

Average per acre

Percentage

assessed

to selling

value

Average per acre

Percentage

assessed

to selling

value

amounts of sale

Selling value

Assessed value

Selling value

Assessed value

$ 500 and less SOI to S 1,000 1,001 to 2,000 2,001 to 3,000 3,001 to 5,000 5,001 to 10,000 Over 10,000

$ 6.85 g.26 14.61 19.85 24.14 26.85 48.76

« 4-53 5-27 6-54 7.66 8.14

8-53 10.95

66.22

56-90

44-77 38.60 33-71 31-76 22.45

S 6.75

9-98 13-34 16-53 17-57 15-35 10.37

S4.OI 5.20 6.00 6.76

6.55 6.13 4-59

59-34 52.09

44-94 40.87 37.26

39-93 44.25

Total,

19.88

7-34

36.95

12.64

5.61

44.40