5 16 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thin air ; for the notes go to the kitchen stove, and the new Constitution 

 made no provision for taxing the ashes. 



" Charles Young takes a pig in payment for his paper — like for like. 

 Being a Jew, Mr. Young has conscientious scruples against eating pork, 

 so he sells his i)ig to a butcher, taking his note. The butcher, finding the 

 animal more than usually intelligent, thinks it would be wrong to hide the 

 light of its political sagacity under a bushel of salt, and sells it alive to 

 Clitus Barbour to represent that statesman, who helped to launch the new 

 Constitution. Clitus gives his note for the pig 1 . Becoming jealous of its 

 rivalry, he sells it to Governor Kearney (taking his note), whose parlor it 

 graces for a season, but, being detected in an indiscretion, the Governor 

 sells it to General Howard, who gives his note. General Howard wants 

 this pig to write letters favoring the new Constitution ; but, as it scorns to 

 prostitute its intellect that way, its less scrupulous owner parts with it to 

 the congregation of Metropolitan Temple, whose pulpit it now fills, they 

 giving their note and a benediction. 



"The foregoing pig is now represented by five promissory notes and a 

 benediction not taxed. None of these notes bear interest, nor are they of 

 any benefit to their holders except as they may enable them, at a stated 

 time, to get something of the same value as something previously renounced. 

 The various notes make a trail of papers like that left by the ' hare ' in the 

 boys' game of ' hare and hounds.' Now comes the assessor under the new 

 Constitution, and, in obedience to a righteous provision taxing property 

 used for religious purposes, assesses that porker in the bosom of the church. 

 Then he strikes the paper trail extending out through secular spaces into 

 an editorial office, and, having assessed the grunter where it is, he again 

 assesses it where it was last, and again where it was the time before, and 

 so on through the whole series, until that not very valuable flitch of bacon, 

 which has 'dragged at each remove a lengthening chain' of 'solvent cred- 

 its,' has been the innocent cause of six payments into the State treasury. 

 Beyond Mr. Young the assessor does not trouble himself to go, for on the 

 ranch of a granger who is so intelligent as to exchange pigs for his papers 

 the pachyderm's trail consists of tracks in the mud, and these the new Con- 

 stitution neglected to declare to be property." 



Money Property. — But, after all, says some objector, " notwith- 

 standing your many and plausible arguments — your statement that 

 all the world except the United States have done away with the old, 

 atomic, inquisitorial system of taxation — I do not like your proposed 

 reforms, and for the reason mainly that they exempt ' money prop- 

 erty! ' " It is most important, therefore, to inquire what is " money 

 property," and also its relations to local taxation. 



All capital or property is accumulated labor, labor being the 

 source of all property. Hence any attempt to excite prejudice against 

 capital or property, or to attack either, is an attack upon labor itself. 



" Moneyed property " is generally understood to mean evidences 

 of debt, which are not in a strict sense property; but rights to prop- 

 erty, or assignments of property, according to the amount of interest 

 of the creditor. 



