PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 321 



the disagreement among economists respecting the diffusion of taxes 

 has mainly originated. 



With this premise, let us next consider what facts and experi- 

 ences are pertinent to this subject, and available to assist in reach- 

 ing sound conclusions; proceeding very carefully and cautiously in 

 so doing, inasmuch as territory is to be entered upon that has not 

 been generally or thoroughly explored. 



The facts and experiences of first importance in such inquiry are 

 that the examination of the tax rolls in any State, city, or muni- 

 cipality of the United States will show that surprisingly small num- 

 bers of persons primarily pay or advance any kind of taxes. It is not 

 probable that more than one tenth of the adult population or about 

 one twentieth of the entire population of the United States ever 

 come in contact officially with a tax assessor or tax collector. It is 

 also estimated that less than two per cent of the total population of 

 the United States advance the entire customs and internal revenue of 

 the Federal Government. 



In the investigations made in 1871, by a commission created by 

 the Legislature of the State of New York to revise its laws relative to 

 the assessment and collection of taxes, it was found that in the city of 

 New York, out of a population of over one million in the above year, 

 only 8,920 names, or less than one per cent of this great multitude 

 of people, had " any household furniture, money, goods, chattels, 

 debts due from solvent debtors, whether on account of contract, note, 

 bond, or mortgage, or any public stocks, or stocks in moneyed cor- 

 porations, or in general any personal property of which the assessors 

 could take cognizance for taxation "; and further, that not over four 

 per cent, or, say, forty thousand persons out of the million, were sub- 

 ject to any primary tax in respect to the ownership of any property 

 whatever, real or personal; while only a few years subsequent, or in 

 1875, the regular tax commissioners of New York estimated that of 

 the property defined and described by the laws of the State as per- 

 sonal property, an amount approximating two thousand million dol- 

 lars in value was held in New York city alone. Later investigations 

 show that this state of things has continued. Thus, in 1895, out of 

 a population of about two million, it was estimated that only seventy- 

 nine thousand, or not over four per cent of the inhabitants of the 

 city, were subject to primary taxation, and that one half the whole 

 amount collected in that year was paid by less than a thousand per- 

 sons. In the city of Boston, where the tax laws are executed in the 

 most arbitrary manner, the ratio of population directly assessed is 

 somewhat greater, but aside from the poll tax, which is a per capita 

 and not a property tax, only 7.27 per cent of residents paid a prop- 

 erty tax in 1895 out of a population of 494,205. In one of the 



