NEED OF A STATE TAX COMMISSION IN COLORADO 



89 



age values of the other domestic animals; mules $8. 22 in one county, 

 $87.97 ill another; cattle $7.00 in Park and Chaffee counties and 

 from two to four times this amount in others. Sheep and swine 

 are valued about two and a half times as high in some counties as in 

 others. 



Livestock is not only undervalued, but also overlooked by the 

 assessor. This appears from the following table in which the number 

 of domestic animals as ascertained by the United States Census for 

 1900 is compared with the number of such animals reported by the 

 assessors for the same year: 



LIVESTOCK* IN CERTAIN COUNTIES OF COLORADO— UNITED STATES 

 CENSUS ENUMERATION AND NUMBER ASSESSED, 1900 



Arapahoe Boulder Larimer Mesa Otero Weld State 



Horses — 



Actual No 26,105 8,234 14,926 4,580 9,512 24,241 236,546 



No. Assessed . . . 21,006 7,061 9,538 4,480 6,611 15,602 199,894 



Cattle — 



Actual No 82,522 20,825 77)495 43,3io 82,922 70,830 1,433,318 



No. Assessed ... . 46,254 13,798 46,075 20,861 24,251 48,891 828,396 



Sheep — 



Actual No 135,841 1,328 12,617 25,426 60,787 81,021 2,044,814 



No. Assessed 76,35° 2,127 13,252 5,158 37,oi9 125,035 1,278,075 



Swine — 



Actual No 11,491 3,144 4,242 3,307 5,817 11,585 101,198 



No. Assessed ... . 4,643 1,009 862 1,244 1,95° 3,247 33,480 



* Roy G. Blakey, Manuscript Thesis for degree of M.A., University of Colorado, June, 1910, p. 36. 



The above table shows that in the year 1900, with a few exceptions 

 in the case of sheep, the number of domestic animals found by the 

 assessor in his search for the true cash value of the personal property 

 in his county was greatly below the reality — from ^ to | of the actual 

 number. It is true that certain domestic animals', as sheep, for 

 instance, are taken from one county to another for grazing, and this 

 might account for the larger number assessed in certain counties, 

 as the census enumeration and local assessment were not made at 

 the same time. But it is certainly not probable that there occurred 

 any such a migration of domestic animals from the state of Colorado 



