s 



204 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the necessity of raising increased revenues has drawn especial atten- 

 tion to the subject of local taxation; but in neither of these two 

 countries has any prominent speaker or writer advocated the direct 

 taxation of personal property, or even alluded to the subject, except 

 to scout the very idea of such a proposition." * 



And yet, notwithstanding this record of disastrous and discredita- 

 ble experience, and the opposition to the almost unanimous judgment 

 of all whose investigations warrant the expression of opinion, the 

 strength of popular prejudice in the United States in favor of the 

 infinitesimal system of taxation is so great as to make the substitu- 

 tion of any better system a matter of very great difficulty, and per- 

 haps a present impossibility. " Although all Europe, as already 

 pointed out, has tried and discarded taxation of personal property, 

 our own people have grown up under the opposite system. Every 

 State tries to tax it. ISTo American has any personal experience of 

 a system which does not pretend to tax it. The proposition to dis- 

 pense with such taxation, therefore, strikes every American as an 

 experiment. Eew Americans know or care anything about the 

 experience of other nations." 



There is, however, at the present time, some gratifying evidence 

 of a change in popular sentiment in favor of radical tax reforms. 

 Thus, in October, 1897, the grand jury of the county of New York 

 made a presentment on the subject of taxation under the following 

 circumstances : A complaint was made against the tax officials, charg- 

 ing undervaluations of property, and therefore perjury, but the 

 grand jury finds in effect that the State laws are of such a character 

 that assessors are almost inevitably led into blunders, and it recom- 

 mends a general revision of the tax laws imposing upon the State 

 the duty of assessing personal property, so that local expenditure 

 may be paid by real-estate taxes alone, and the " question of con- 

 tinuing or abolishing personal taxes " be " fought out on State 

 lines." 



A special tax commission, appointed by the Governor of Massa- 

 chusetts, and composed of men of wide financial experience and 

 business ability, after careful study of this subject, reported in 

 October, 1897, in favor of the entire exemption of personal property 



* Holland, by reason of her immense national debt, the largest, comparatively, of any 

 country, has been obliged to maintain a most rigorous and extensive system of taxation in 

 order to raise revenue sufficient to the wants and requirements of the state. But it has 

 been prominently brought out, in recent years, that the decadence of Holland dates almost 

 from the hour when taxes were imposed on manufactories, commerce, fishing industry, and 

 moneyed capital. Business went elsewhere, and with the decline of business the ability to 

 pay taxes diminished, and the burden of taxation augmented. (See Journal des Econo- 

 mistes, November, 1871 ; also Principles of Political Economy, J. R. McCulloch, pp. 

 470, 471.) • 



