146 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. 8. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
cut at their expense by the weed district. It would seem that this 
weed district exists simply as a means of providing work for the 
residents. 
The inequalities in the tax burden caused by the unfair or unnatural 
delineation of the tax district are best seen in the school districts, 
since they are generally the smallest tax-levying units and perform 
the most costly public service. 
In Ohio it is reported that long strips of property consisting of Lake 
Erie frontage or of railroad trackage are attached to certain school 
districts, merely that these strips of property may be taxed to aid in 
the support of the favored schools to the exclus'on of others. There 
are other small poor school districts in the same part of the State with 
a tax base insufficient to support adequately a small one-room school. 
This unfair and unnatural districting sometimes results in two rural 
schools being located within sight of each other, an obvious example 
of inefficiency (44, pp. 180-185). 
Tillamook County, Oreg., presents an excellent example of gerry- 
mandering school districts. Figure 5 outlines the boundaries of the 
school districts. The Oregon laws authorize the district boundary 
board of the county to lay off convenient school districts. These 
boundaries are established and changed by petition of voters in the 
district (46, p. 83). The eastern part of Tillamook County is a forest 
region, largely uninhabited. This forest region is thus divided into 
convenient contiguous areas each tributary to the school in the settle- 
ment. Five of the sixty-two districts (shaded) are here specified as 
fairly typical—not representative of extreme conditions. District 
1 contributes to the support of the high school located in the western 
part of the district and bears a school district rate of 0.39 percent. 
(Rates are as of 1927.) District 2 contributes to the high school 
located near .ts western extremity and bears a district rate of 1.13 
percent. Timber in district 2 of the same value as timber in district 
1 is required to pay nearly three times as much school tax. This 
difference is due merely to the influence of a few voters in obtaining 
the designation of certain remote timber as a tax base for the support 
of their particular school. 
The gross inequality in the tax burden on forest land, thus estab- 
lished arbitrarily by the local voters, is further illustrated by com- 
paring the districts labeled 3, 4, and 5 on the Tillamook County 
diagram. District 3 has a school tax rate of 0.11 percent, district 4 
has levied no school tax at all, and the small district 5 has a school tax 
rate of 2.22 percent. 
If all school district boundaries were eliminated in Tillamook 
County, and all of the schools now established were to be supported 
to the same extent by a county-wide school district, the school tax 
rate would be only 0.68 percent. Merely the elimination of these 
arbitrarily established district boundaries would cause a 33-percent 
reduction in the total burden on forests in district 5, a 28-percent 
increase in total taxes in district 4, and a 13-percent reduction in the 
tax burden in the large district 2. Itis evident that the delineation of 
tax-district boundaries has a large influence on the burden of forest 
taxation. 
The delineation of school-district boundaries is important also in 
determining the ability of the tax base to support the normal functions 
of the district. The assessed valuation per school child in the 
