224 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



wealth who is worth a million dollars, and it is all invested 

 in Western railroads and Western mortgages. He does not 

 own any real estate ; he pays no tax ; he takes that interest 

 money as it comes in, and reinvests it in Western mortgages 

 and Western railroads. What benefit is he to the Common- 

 wealth? That is just the kind of men we should drive out. 

 Such a man is no benefit to this Commonwealth by simply 

 living here, standing still, and accumulating property that 

 pays no tax. We should not drive out any honest capital 

 that is paying an honest tax. It is no argument against 

 the proposed law, to say such a man is going to leave the 

 State because he has got to be honest. I believe in honesty, 

 I believe in righteousness. I believe that if a man has got 

 $100,000 in personal property, and is receiving the benefit 

 of the laws of Massachusetts, he should pay the same pro- 

 portion of the taxation as though he had $100,000 in real 

 estate. One man came before the committee of the Legisla- 

 ture, and said, "We want you to pass. a law that will put 

 the whole tax upon land, exempting all personal property." 

 I could bring my own town up to show the absurdity of that 

 thing. Our personal property and our real estate are just 

 equal. Our tax is ten dollars per thousand. You take off 

 the personal property, and you make the taxation twenty 

 dollars a thousand to the farmer. Then you take off the 

 buildings, which he called personal property, which are just 

 about equal to the value of the land in the town of Barnstable, 

 and you make the farmers' tax forty dollars a thousand. I told 

 him, if he wanted to annihilate every farmer, drive him out 

 of the business in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, pass 

 that law. But, unless we stir in this matter, and enact 

 some law that will get hold of personal property, just so sure 

 as I stand here a law will be passed exempting personal 

 property from taxation. 



Secretary Sessions. I want to say just one word, lest a 

 wrong impression should be created by this discussion. It 

 is, I suppose, well known to you that all bank stock and all 

 stock of corporations in Massachusetts is taxed, and all 

 savings bank deposits are taxed to a certain extent. So 

 that the personal property that escapes taxation is not of 

 this character. It is not oersonal prouertv that is invested 



