188 THE FARMER AS A BUSINESS MAX. 



country there is great waste of public money — more, doubtless, 

 than in any other nation of the blood of the thrifty nations of 

 Nortliern Europe. This is not because we are not intelligent 

 and vigorous, but because our past has been to us a time of 

 great things, and we have been too busy and too prosperous to 

 feel the necessity of economy in public affairs. The oppor- 

 tunity, as always, has brought forth the men, and we have 

 developed a class, larger and more astute than exists elsewhere 

 of the same sort, wliich expects to thrive at the unnecessary 

 expense of the public. Habits have been formed, and prec- 

 edents set, which we now find it difficult to get rid of. 



Our fiscal misfortunes include inequalities of taxation 

 and extravagance in expenditure; and extravagance may in- 

 clude economical expenditure for desirable objects, when 

 beyond the means of the community incurring it. It is no 

 more possible to the poor community than to the poor indi- 

 vidual to practice all the economies of wealth. A rural 

 community might bankrupt itself by the building of a stone 

 road or an irrigation system, in the absence of other capital to 

 make use of them. There must be traffic to justify the stone 

 road, and the use of lands to justify the building of an irri- 

 gation system, and both these involve large investments of 

 capital in addition to the cost of the improvements. 



It is doubtless true that few taxes are justly assessed. Inci- 

 dentally I have said something about our system of taxation 

 elsewhere in this volume.* I do not intend to add much to 

 what has been said there. We are committed to the system 

 of raising most of our taxes for state and local purposes by an 

 ad valorem assessment upon what is called the " value" of all 

 property which can be found. Experience shows that property- 

 holders will lie to get rid of taxation, and that the number 

 who do tills is. so great that it is a physical impossibility to 

 deal properly with the criminals. In medieval times the 

 thumbscrew and the iron boot were employed in assessing 

 rich men.f Even those methods seem not to have been 



* See book Sixth, chapters I and IV. 



t Farmers, and other comparatively poor men, doubtless pay an undue share 

 of taxes, but it is mainly because they can not conceal their property. When 



