4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tercommunication, required that property should, to a great extent, 

 be put into a condition to admit of being readily mobilized, in order 

 to allow of its most profitable use and application. Thus a large 

 part, in fact the larger part of what is to-day termed " personal prop- 

 erty " in every civilized state, is of the most intangible character, 

 and in great part invisible and incorporeal: such, for example, as 

 negotiable instruments in the form of bills of exchange, state, muni- 

 cipal, and corporate bonds, and the multiplied forms of evidence of 

 indebtedness, certificates of stocks, copyrights, patents, legal-tender 

 notes, etc., all of which, if entitled to the name of property, is, 

 through a great variety of circumstances, constantly exposed to 

 fluctuations in value, frightful in amount, and incalculable in their 

 suddenness, and under the influence of which wealth vanishes as 

 if by the wave of a magician's wand. It is offset or measured by in- 

 debtedness which may never be the same one hour with another; is 

 easy of transfer, and, as essential to using, is in fact continually 

 transferred from one locality to another, and from the jurisdiction 

 of one state to the jurisdiction and laws of another and a different 

 state; is here to-day, gone to-morrow; is burned, sunk at sea, lost 

 in mines, patents, railways, factories, trading associations, and in 

 a thousand other different ways. It has been recently said that five 

 men who do business in Boston can together control or dispose of 

 an amount of property which equals one fifteenth of the entire 

 assessed valuation of that city; and that they could, if they pleased, 

 carry round the evidence of the existence of that property in 

 their coat pockets, or, according to popular theory, the property 

 itself. 



For the purpose of ascertaining the amount of taxable personal 

 property owned by individual citizens two methods have been em- 

 ployed in the United States: 



1. In several States, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and 

 Illinois, the taxpayer is required to give each year to the assessor 

 a detailed and verified statement, carefully itemized, of all the per- 

 sonal property owned by him or under his control and of every kind, 

 sort, and description. This method is generally known as " the 

 listing system." In several of the States the principle that a 

 State can only tax that which is within its territorial jurisdiction 

 is ignored, and even visible tangible property situated outside of 

 the taxing State is required to be returned for the purpose of 

 taxation. 



2. The other and more general method of ascertaining taxable 

 personal estate is that which is exemplified in the State of New York, 

 by which the assessor guesses at the personal property of the victim, 

 and places him upon the list at such a figure as either his information 



