, APPENDIX. 83 



paper used during the year, and every one may satisfy himself that a 

 wise watchfulness has left no loophole for speculation. Indeed, it may 

 be doubted if the small tax-payer gets as great a return from any other 

 payment that he makes as he does from his taxes to the city. 



Before showing what we pay and what is done with the money, it is 

 worth while to consider a moment what we get. We have the best 

 police system in Europe, order is maintained, crime is rare, unpun- 

 ished crime an exception. The complete control which the police has 

 over the movements of the population leads many to "leave the country 

 for their country's good," and honest men profit by their absence. If, 

 as is promised us, we have a general strike this spring, there will be 

 no such scenes as have been reported during the car-strikes in Brook- 

 lyn or even in New York. There is no street in Berlin that the police 

 cannot control, and the right to work on his own terms will be denied 

 to no one by any body of men with impunity. Order is tbe first law of 

 cities as well as of heaven, but even in other ways, in courtesy and in 

 bearing, our police need not fear comparison even with "the finest." 

 Cleanliness is next to godliness. Our city furnishes water at a less 

 rate than is usual in America, and the supply is plentiful, the average 

 used being sixty-four litres per head and day. Gas costs us about $1.12 

 a thousand feet, or 16 pfennige a cubic metre ; but it is honest gas and 

 honest measure, and for mechanical purposes it is furnished a sixth 

 cheaper. The streets of Berlin are well lighted, scrupulously clean 

 even in this trying winter, and well paved. Already one-ninth of our 

 street surface is covered with asphalt, and a third of the remainder 

 with hewn stone blocks laid on cement and joints pointed with tar. 

 The wooden pavement finds small favor here. The elevated road and 

 horse-cars furnish Berlin with better transit facilities than has any 

 other continental city. The parks and squares are many and well kept ; 

 many places are set apart for the children and kept from disturbing el- 

 ements, while the child as he grows older finds ready for him model 

 schools and museums and libraries, which, if they cannot rival the his- 

 toric treasures of earlier collections, are most valuable for training and 

 instruction. 



This is what the tax-payer gets; now let him count the cost. The 

 City Budget for 1888-1889 reckoned the income and expense for the 

 year at sixty-two million marks. We have finished the year with two 

 million surplus, and hope to reduce taxation during the coming year. 

 Of the sixty-two millions the people paid in direct taxes about thirty- 

 five. Two systems of taxation are used side by side, and each helps 

 to correct the inequalities of the other. These are the income-tax, 

 proportioned to a man's ability to pay, and the rent-tax, an unvarying 

 percentage of the rental value, collected on the theory that the streets, 

 the parks, and city works are for the use of all in nearly equal degrees, 



