Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/220

206 about the private affairs of any individual the chief assessors and their subordinates in that city, to the number of some fifty, meet in secret session in a large upper chamber set aside for the purpose, and appropriately termed the "dooming chamber," when the citizen in question, without being present either by counsel or in person, is arbitrarily doomed to the payment of any sum which a majority of those present may think proper, and from which "dooming" there can be no appeal.

The following record of the actual working of this system may be thus illustrated: During the year 1889 the whole amount of taxable personal property which the assessors of Boston were able to discover, exclusive of bank stock, was $39,000,000, of which amount $14,570,000, or thirty-seven and a half per cent, was returned as visible, and $27,650,000 as invisible. Being dissatisfied with this result, which was all that was justified by any facts which the assessors could state, they proceeded to multiply it four and a half times by a mere guess. In their "dooming" chamber they guessed that personal property, other than bank stock, ought to be valued at $186,000,000; and the citizens of Boston were compelled to pay taxes upon that amount. Could anything be more monstrous or absurd than a system of taxation which, even when administered by phenomenally honest and competent men, produces such results?

—Consideration is properly asked in this connection to the use and value of oaths, an increase in the number and stringency of which is often regarded as essential to effective and equal taxation. It is the all but unanimous opinion of officials who of late have had extensive experience in the administration of both the national and State revenue laws that oaths as a matter of restraint, or as a guarantee of truth in respect to official statements, have in a great measure ceased to be effectual; or, in other words, that perjury, direct or constructive, has become so common as to almost cease to occasion notice. In fact, there has come to be a feeling in the community that an oath in respect to matters in which the Government is a party is a mere matter of form, of mechanical procedure, and that its violation, especially with a mental reservation, and when the interest of other individuals is not specifically affected, does not in itself constitute a crime. The fact that the assessors of almost every State every year make oath that they have valued all property at its actual value, when they know they have not, constitutes one proof of the truth of this assertion. The everyday entry of goods at the customhouse at undervaluation constitutes another; the enormous frauds committed in recent years under the internal revenue laws of the United States, which in the case of distilled spirits