144 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. 8S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
high price is practically universal. This tendency may arise from 
the natural inclination of assessors who do not know how to appraise 
values properly to rely too much on average figures, so that a prop- 
erty is likely to be overassessed if below the average in price and 
underassessed if above the average. The fact that localities where 
properties are not very diverse in character, as in the rural districts 
of lowa (39, p. 63), are more uniformly assessed than city districts, 
seems to support this theory. Other possible causes for this teudency 
which have been suggested are the greater ease with which the small 
puverigs may be examined and appraised, the lack of compre- 
ension of large values by assessors in moderate circumstances and 
of limited experience, and the influence and diligence of the larger 
property owners in looking out for their tax interests (22, p. 19). 
The fact that the property of a very small taxpayer may be seriously 
overassessed without resulting in the payment of more than a nomi- 
nal amount in taxes may account for some of the extreme assessment 
ratios among low-value properties. 
The tendency to overburden property of low price operates against 
cut-over or immature forests. In territories such as the Lake States, 
where a large part of the cut-over land is owned by nonresidents, 
the condition of public finance reinforces this tendency. Where the 
cost of governmental services is relatively heavy, because of scattered 
settlement, uneconomical organization of local government, and 
impoverishment of the tax base by removal of the merchantable 
timber, there is great pressure on the locally elected assessor to 
appraise cut-over lands with a view to getting as much revenue as 
possible from that source in the hope of keeping the taxes on farms 
owned by the local residents at a tolerable level. The fact that 
this policy eventually defeats itself by causing widespread delin- 
quency has not seemed to prevent its application. 
Forest property of high price is not necessarily immune from the 
same kind of pressure as cut-over land, as indicated by the relatively 
high rates at which timberlands are assessed in some of the counties 
studied in Oregon and Washington, where timber cutting has gone 
far enough to cause a noticeable shrinkage in the tax base. How- 
ever, while it seems clear that low-priced forest property, that is, 
cut-over land and land with unmerchantable young trees, is usually 
overassessed, the evidence is conflicting with respect to high-priced 
forest property, that is, old-growth merchantable timber, which 
apparently is overassessed relative to other property only in occa- 
sional districts. 
CONCLUSIONS 
It is safe to conclude that the prevailing inequality in taxation 
through faulty assessment under the property tax places a serious 
handicap on ownership of forest lands in general and particularly of 
lands held for reproduction or growth after the more valuable old- 
growth timber has been removed. The remedy consists not in 
arbitrary fixed assessments nor in specific taxes, since these cures 
are likely to prove worse than the disease, by causing more serious 
inequality in taxation than results from erratic assessment (p. 553). 
Neither does it consist in equalization between property classes, 
which would be as difficult to carry out as equalization between 
political districts and as incapable of eliminating the individual 
