Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/476

462 of Minnesota states that "the revenue from the corporation tax is steadily increasing, and if it should continue to increase, and the probabilities are that it will, as it has done for the last four years, it bids fair to pay all the expenses of the State government." In New Jersey there is no regular tax, except for schools, as the new railroad and canal tax law and the tax on miscellaneous corporations maintain the government.

These are striking illustrations of the workings of a new system of imposing special taxes on special classes of property, which was only first tried about ten years ago. The idea of treating railroads and corporations generally in a different manner in the tax levies from other kinds of property was a development, perhaps, of the granger and anti-monopoly movements. It is founded on the theory that parties enjoying special privileges from the State should share with the State, to some extent, the profits of their enterprises. If the Government gives certain individuals peculiar advantages and protection in the inauguration and prosecution of their schemes and business, it is held that they should make a return for the favors granted, in proportion to the success of their undertaking. In every State where the plan has been tried it has worked admirably. After a stout resistance on the part of the corporations, resulting in a judicial interpretation of all the provisions of the statute, the execution of the new law goes on smoothly in each State. The largest corporations naturally fight every encroachment on their sources of income, but when the law is once in full operation they submit gracefully. The various Legislatures adopting the system have endeavored not to make the tax too heavy. If the rate is moderate it inflicts no serious burden on the corporations, and yet brings a handsome sum into the public treasury. The benefits of this new plan have, so far, been appreciated only in the New England, Middle, and Northwestern States. Twelve States now impose special taxes on railroads and other corporations. In eight more, including three Southern States, insurance companies are subject to a special rate. The ordinary method of levying a direct tax on real and personal property still furnishes, in the large majority of States, almost the entire revenue. The old poll-tax remains a favorite form of taxation in parts of New England and the South, twelve States raising most of their school funds in that way. An examination of the tax laws of each of the thirty-eight Commonwealths indicates, however, a steady development of the idea of "taxation without lamentation." The attack is not confined to corporations. There is a reaching out in every direction for special subjects for taxation. If one State finds an object that can pay special rates without suffering materially, and without raising a popular outcry, other States follow in the line of the discovery. On the other hand, a number of experiments have been abandoned, after a year or two of trial, because the law was unconstitutional or unpopular. All the New England States have a tax on deposits in