Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/216

202 "The system as it is actually administered results in debauching the moral sense. It is a school of perjury. It sends large amounts of property into hiding. It drives capital in large quantities from the State. Worst of all, it imposes unjust burdens upon various classes in the community: upon the farmer in the country, all of whose property is taxed because it is tangible; upon the man who is scrupulously honest; and upon the guardian, executor, and trustee, whose accounts are matters of public record. These burdens are unjust because by the system as administered these people pay the taxes which should be paid by their neighbors." And the commissioners finally add that "these conclusions are in accord with all current authorities on the subject."

That this claim of accordance on the part of the Ohio commissioners is fully warranted, attention is next asked to the conclusions of other State commissions which within a comparatively recent period have also officially investigated and reported upon this subject. Thus, a tax commission of New Hampshire in 1876, after recognizing the inefficiency of the existing laws for the taxation of personal property and "their corrupting and demoralizing influences," "frankly admit that they are unable to frame any law to which a free people would submit, or should be asked to submit, that will bring this class of property under actual assessment more effectually than it now is." An Illinois commission in 1886 asserted that the existing system "is debauching to the conscience and subversive of the public morals—a school for perjury, promoted by law." A Connecticut commission in 1887 reported that "the results of an investigation of nearly three years into the workings of our tax system have brought us to the conclusion that all items of intangible property ought to be struck out of the list. As the law stands it may be a burden upon the conscience of many, but it is a burden on the property of the few, not because there are few who ought to pay, but because there are few who can be made to pay." A West Virginia commission in 1884 asserted that "the payment of the tax on personalty" (in the State) "is almost as voluntary, and is considered pretty much in the same light, as donations to the neighboring church or a Sunday school."

In Massachusetts, where the law admits no offset of debts against visible and tangible property, and is regarded as complete, and where its execution is acknowledged to be most arbitrary and inquisitorial—some towns publishing each year every known item of each man's personal property, even down to the family pig and a string of sleigh bells—the most intelligent officials admit that their system is a comparative failure; and almost a complete failure as to reaching evidences of indebtedness, which, as before shown, constitute in