476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



privilege of pasturing fifty sheep of his own, and receives seven dollars 

 and a half a year from the commune and about fifty dollars yearly in 

 grain from the citizens. The cow-herder makes about forty dollars a 

 year, and the goose-herder receives a hundred loaves of bread from 

 the citizens and twenty-two dollars in money from the commune, for 

 which he must do all the town-crying and go daily for the orders of 

 the Bauermeister. 



I could get very little information in regard to the modes of taxa- 

 tion of the village, each person being willing to tell me what taxes he 

 paid but no one seeming to know just how they were assessed. A 



farmer with forty acres of land paid, the year I was in E , five 



dollars as land-tax, three dollars as poll-tax, one dollar as house-tax, 

 and four dollars as village-tax. He would also, if he had kept a shop 

 or inn, have had to pay a special license. Incomes of less than one 

 hundred and ten dollars are exempt from taxation. Ministers and 



teachers pay state but not village taxes. The pastor of E paid 



a tax of nine dollars on his income of four hundred and fifty dollars, 

 and a land-tax of twenty-four dollars on two hundred acres of land. 

 Communal taxes vary greatly in rate according to the wealth of the 

 commune. Some communes, which own valuable mines or forests, not 

 only exact no tax from their citizens, but divide annually a surplus 

 among the corporators. A case of this sort is rare, but it is not un- 

 common to have most of the communal taxes paid by the sale of wood 

 from commune forests. 



Almshouse accommodations are so poor and the food and treatment 



so bad that but few of the inhabitants of E feel pauperism to be 



their vocation. Only one villager receives food and shelter from the 

 village, and a second food alone. Their provisions are obtained by 

 going from house to house in the village, each house being bound by 

 law to provide food for the paupers so many days each year. I asked 

 why the poor-house was not repaired, and was told that the peasants 

 had purposely built it poorly, fearing that if it were comfortable it 

 might encourage pauperism in the village. The poor are supplied 

 with clothes either from the church or village treasury according to 

 circumstances. A residence of two years in a village compels its in- 

 habitants at the expiration of that time to support the applicant, nor 

 can he be forced to do any work in return for his living. The one 



pauper in E was so distressing to the eye that I never passed 



him if I could avoid it. Blind and lame, hatless, coatless, shoeless, 

 and covered with the mud in which he had slept, he seemed, as he crept 

 from fence-post to fence-post, muttering curses on those who passed 

 without giving him alms, to be forsaken alike by God and man. I can 

 imagine him being, in the words of a dying tramp, " glad to have a hell 

 to go to," but I can not believe that any moderately respectable imp 

 would touch him without the aid of a pair of tongs. A gift of one 

 cent would cause him to bless you until he had reached the nearest 



