44 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Tickets of all descriptions — railroad, theater, etc. — must have a 

 stamp, as must each page of the reports of meetings, each leaf of 

 a merchant's ledger, day or cash book, and every cigar sold singly, 

 which must be delivered to the buyer in a stamped wrapper. 

 Sales of imported spirits pay eight per cent on the duties levied 

 on their importation, and a half of one per cent in addition when 

 retailed. Domestic spirits pay three per cent when sold by pro- 

 ducers or dealers at wholesale, and a half of one per cent additional 

 when sold at retail. Gross receipts of city railroads pay four per 

 cent ; public amusements, two per cent upon the amount paid for 

 entrance ; playing cards, fifty per cent — paid in stamps — on the 

 retail price; and manufactured tobacco a variety of taxes, pro- 

 portioned to quality and value. Mercantile drafts are taxed at 

 a dollar on every hundred. 



Farms, haciendas, and town estates are required to be taxed at 

 the rate of three dollars per each thousand dollars of the val- 

 uation, but such is the influence of the landowners that the 

 valuation is almost nominal. In Vera Cruz the rate is reported 

 at about two mills on the dollar for the most productive portions 

 of country estates ; while in the Pacific State of Colima the rate 

 is said to be one and a half per cent. Land and buildings not 

 actually producing income are exempt from taxation, notwith- 

 standing they may be continually enhancing in value. This sys- 

 tem of exempting unoccupied realty from taxation also prevails 

 in Portugal ; and the Mexican usage was probably derived from 

 that country, where the theory in justification of the practice is, 

 that the use of a thing defines its measure of value, and that to 

 tax unused property is confiscation. 



A recent Mexican statute for the taxation of land contains 

 forty-seven different sections, each providing the ways and 

 means of enforcing the tax and prescribing penalties for its in- 

 fraction. In the towns and cities of Mexico this system of infini- 

 tesimal taxation is indefinitely repeated, the towns acting as col- 

 lectors of revenue for the Federal and State governments, as well 

 as for their own municipal requirements. All industries pay a 

 monthly fee : As tanneries, fifty cents ; soap factories, one dollar. 

 So also all shops for the sale of goods pay according to their class, 

 from a few dollars down to a few cents per month. Each beef 

 animal, on leaving a town, pays fifty cents ; each fat pig, twenty- 

 five cents ; each sheep, twelve cents ; each load of corn, fruit, 

 vegetables, or charcoal, six cents (as a supposed road tax), and so 

 on ; and, on entering another town, all these exactions are re- 

 peated. A miller, in Mexico, it is said, is obliged to pay thirty- 

 two separate taxes on his wheat before he can get it from the 

 field and offer it, in the form of flour, on the market for consump- 

 tion. As a matter of necessity, furthermore, every center of popu- 



