THE FARMER AND THE SINGLE TAX. 331 



money on hand in banks as the twenty-seven strong state 

 banks of Chicago.* The county in which the city of Peoria is 

 situated returned §279,684 in the hands of banks. 



While the instance given is but one, although a very bad 

 one, the reader may be assured that it is tyiiical. Tliis entire 

 volume could be filled with evidence officially gathered, and 

 undoubtedly true, that the wealthy men of large cities do not 

 pay taxes on considerable portions of their personal property, 

 and can not be made to do so; that those of the smaller cities 

 are seeking to imitate them, and do so to the extent that they 

 dare— the local assessors and the public being better informed 

 as to their assets— and that the evil is extending to the 

 wealthier citizens of the rural districts. In some states — and 

 in many cities — the assessment of personal property is decreas- 

 ing year by year as the communities increase in wealth and 

 population. Whatever burden is shaken off by personal prop- 

 erty must be assessed upon real estate. The owners of land, 

 however, in the main, are also the owners of personal property, 

 •and, as a matter of fact, doubtless pay fully three-fourths of 

 the personal taxes. There are many persons who are not 

 "single taxers" who believe (and for many reasons not here 

 stated t) that it does not pay to try to tax personal property, 

 and that it would be better for all concerned if personal prop- 

 erty were relieved from all taxation. I am here, however, only 

 showing that the present system of taxation is bad for the 

 farmer. 



I can not, however, leave the subject without saying that 

 the farmer himself is to blame for a great part of this evasion. 

 Much of the taxation which the farmer most earnestly demands 



*For a great mass of statistics on this point see Eeport of Illinois Bureau ot 

 Labor Statistics, 1894, from which the figures in the text were obtained. 



f Any adequate exposition of the difficulties attending the subject of taxa- 

 tion, or of the principles or possibility of scientific taxation, would expand this 

 chapter to a book, of which there already are abundance. For one thing the 

 farmer above all things wishes to see " money " taxed, and at the same time is 

 equally anxious to have money "cheap." But to tax money is to make it dear, 

 and to tax it more than property — and it always is so taxed since it is assessed 

 at full value — is to make it scarce by driving it out of the country. 



