GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 479 



acquirement of a title in fee, shall " have jurisdiction over any tracts of 

 land within the commonwealth which may be necessary for the erection 

 of marine hospitals, customs offices, post-offices, life-saving stations, 

 . . . but the commonwealth shall retain concurrent jurisdiction . . . 

 so far that all civil and criminal processes issuing under authority of the 

 commonwealth may be executed thereon . . . " (Pub. Stat. Mass., 

 1882, chap. 1, sees. 3, 4.) 



" The following property . . . shall be exempted from taxation : 

 First. The property of the United States." (Idem, chap. 11, sec. 5.) 



Such acts vary in detail, but even, uniform exemption from taxation 

 distinguishes the federal title from the title of a private corporation. 



II. There are in the United States: 1. Towns: (a) bodies corporate of 

 a grade below cities ; (6) rural bodies with democratic control of certain 

 local affairs, sometimes including schools. 2. Townships : (a) the towns 

 last defined, under another name ; (b) bodies for school administration 

 only ; (c) congressional townships, simply areas, of 36 square miles, laid 

 out by government surveyors, often the bases for school townships. 



Two forms of local government are technically : County government, 

 township organization. Usually one form prevails throughout a state. 

 Illinois and Missouri, however, originally under county government, 

 authorized counties desiring it to adopt township organization, and both 

 forms are found in each of these states, at least. Each was laid off in 

 congressional townships, in which the sixteenth or school sections were 

 for the township. The school township prevails throughout both states, 

 and yet not of course. In Louisiana, with a like survey and a like land 

 grant, there is no corporate township. That state, recognizing a town- 

 ship only as a peopled area With a title to the school section, has acted 

 as trustee and keeps accounts with congressional townships in distribut- 

 ing revenue from the land to schools therein. 



The grant was not uniformly "to a township" (sec. 1255), but in a 

 township, sometimes to the state, as in Florida and in Kansas, where a 

 corporate school township has not grown from the congressional town- 

 ship. • . 



A congressional township, a school township or town, and a civil town 

 or township may occupy the same area at the same time, and a city cor- 

 poration may be coincident . upon more or less of the same area. The 

 greatest variety of civil bodies corporate can probably be found in Illinois 

 or Missouri especially, with the early charters still valid. The student of 

 " The State " will have occasion to supplement its explanations, as, indeed, 

 the author suggests. 



III. This edition is apparently the first text-book to recognize the in- 

 dependence of residents in certain cities from county taxes and county 

 control.* The student may advantageously look for kindred cases. In 

 arranging the functions of Boston and Suffolk county, some of which are 

 interchangeable, it is provided that "Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop 

 shall not be taxed for county purposes " (Pub. Stat. Mass., 1882, chap. 11, 

 sec. 47). In Kentucky, in counties containing cities maintaining separate 



*The conditions in Baltimore, St Louis, and the cities of Virginia were published in 

 the National Geographic Magazine, March, 1896. 



