Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/458

440 could only be done by allowing movable property to thrive, and by attracting a sufficient amount of it to you to occupy additional ground, and to pay additional rental until your rental would be more than the tax.

"I find, in submitting my views to intelligent men, that at first they oppose me, and invariably say it is right and just for all kinds of property to be taxed alike; they all receive protection from the laws alike, and of course they ought to pay alike. Now, this would do very well, and be good reasoning, if we had a Chinese wall around a State; a wall that man could not scale to go out or come in, and no railroad could go under, through, or over; and then I would favor the tax of everything, for then it would all be fixed property; it couldn't run away or come to you; but until that kind of arrangement is made I am not in favor of it."

Commenting on a rate of tax of three per cent imposed on all property by various cities of the Southern States (at the time of his writing, 1873), Mr. Ensley points out as one result of such a policy that it offered "inducements to banks to carry on business with small capitals, and rely upon deposits for their capital; in other words, to undertake to do banking business without capital. A bank with five hundred thousand dollars capital pays fifteen thousand dollars to State, county, and city, being five times as much as a bank with one hundred thousand dollars capital, when the bank with five hundred thousand dollars capital does the State, county, and city, otherwise, five times as much good in the shape of assisting trade, manufactures, and developing the various industries."

Commenting also upon the tax rate of four and a half per cent imposed at that time in the city of Memphis, Mr. Ensley further adds: "If you will levy, enforce, and collect such a tax on the money, trade, etc., of the great city of New York, and charge no tax in Boston, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, I will guarantee to transfer, in a short time, hundreds of millions of the trade, money, etc., of New York to those cities; and, if she will continue it five or ten years, I will guarantee to show you, in either of these cities, more trade, more money, and more people than in New York. I will guarantee to depopulate her more effectually and more permanently than a plague ever did a city, and impoverish her more effectually than ever a war did. Yes, I will hurt her infinitely worse than a fire, that might burn every house from Castle Garden, from river to river, to Central Park. I will make it entirely safe for women and children to cross Broadway at City Park, Astor House, Wall Street, or elsewhere, without the protection of policemen. I will reduce the value of the real estate of Mr. Astor from one hundred million dollars (it is said to be worth one hundred million dollars) to twenty-five million