Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/25

Rh of the maritime world, yet its apparent rank as a ship-owning port is insignificant."

It is important also to notice how changes in the methods of doing business, in the facilities for transporting persons and property, and in the constitution of society and standards of morality, antagonize and nullify the popular ideas concerning taxation of personal property.

Formerly (as has been already pointed out) a man could not conveniently live in one place and carry on business in another. But now men may live and be taxed at places where the taxes are light and do business every day in a city twenty, thirty, or fifty miles distant where taxes are high, and there be exempt from all taxation. And yet how are you going to prevent a citizen from deciding for himself where he will live and where, under the accepted fiction of law that personal property follows the owner, his personal property shall be taxed? Formerly, to bargain for the sale of goods in a place not farther removed than New York is from Boston or Philadelphia, transport them there, and receive the proceeds of the sale, was an affair of weeks. Now a man living in Boston may bargain for a sale of thousands of dollars worth of goods in New York, transport them there, and receive his pay in the space of a single day. Nay, more. A man may acquire property and part with it at places on the opposite side of the globe with the greatest ease and security within the space of a few hours.

A change in the standards of morality has been alluded to as antagonizing methods of taxation. Thus, not very many years ago, every man knew, at least approximately, the amount and kind of property of all his neighbors, and knew that his neighbors knew the same in respect to himself. "He was willing to admit, under oath or otherwise, what everybody knew; and he would hardly dare to drive six cows to pasture every morning and swear in the afternoon that he had none." But now let us see from an indisputable experience of very recent date how the conditions of property and of morals have changed. Previous to January 1, 1889, the State of Connecticut, in accordance with common practice, taxed personal property in the form of bonds and notes from one to two or more per cent, wherever it could be found. The result was that the State from the outset could never reach for assessment but a small fraction of such property, although every citizen was required to annually submit a list to the assessors and make oath that he had included in it all property of the character in question; and this fraction, furthermore, tended to rapidly decrease. Thus, in the so-called grand list or aggregate valuation of the State for the year 1855, the value of the notes, bonds, and money at interest made subject to assessment constituted about ten per cent of