1464 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
done with them. Of course I understand that the Senator and all of 
us call it a national zoological park, but it might as well be called a 
District of Columbia zoological park, because of all the people of this 
country not one in ten thousand will ever see it. Why say it is for the 
benefit of the people, who have no interest in it upon earth but to pay 
the taxes by which the $300,000 is to be paid for the land, and then 
perhaps millions more for making arrangements to keep the animals 
and the snakes and the grizzly bears that the Senator spoke of / 
Mr. Morean. If the Senator will indulge me just one second I desire 
to ask him if the people of the District do not, through the tariff, 
through the internal-revenue laws, and through every other system of — 
taxation that the Government has anything to do with, pay their full 
proportion of the taxes for the support of this great and general and 
universal Government of the United States; and having done so, why 
have they not performed their duty to this country # 
Mr. Reacan. Of course the people here pay their proportion of 
taxes for the purpose of supporting the Government. The people 
elsewhere pay their proportion of taxes for supporting the Federal 
Government and this District government, and their State govern- 
ments, and their county governments, and their city governments, and 
their school system, while here we require the Government to pay a 
large amount of the expenses of the schools and to buy schoolbooks for 
the children here. 
Mr. Morean. That is wrong. 
Mr. Hoar. I should like to ask the Senator if he does not under- 
stand that the people here pay a tax equivalent to the average tax of 
well-governed cities throughout the country on their own property 
besides. 
Mr. Reagan. No, sir; not as I understand it. 
Mr. Hoar. They pay $15 on a thousand, I think. What is the per- 
centage they pay on their taxable property ? 
Mr. Reacan. I am unable to state the exact percentage. 
Mr. Harris. It is $2 on a hundred in the city and a dollar and a half 
in the country. 
Mr. Hoar. Two dollars on the hundred is a very heavy tax. 
Mr. Morean. That is on real estate, and on personal estate is an 
additional tax. Then there is the water tax. The Government water 
tax is to be paid. 
Mr. Reag@an. The people do not pay $2 a hundred on their real 
estate here. 
Mr. Moraan. Yes, they do. 
Mr. Hoar. My impression was that the rate is $1.50, but the Sen- 
ator from Tennessee states that it is $2. 
Mr. Harris. Two dollars is the maximum fixed by the organic act. 
Exactly what the assessment is at this time I am not sure. 
OO 
