270 
THIRTEENTH REPORT. 
The term chattels has itself undergone pronounced expansion in the 
successive taxing laws which have been adopted both as to the number 
and as to the variety of things to which it has been applicable. The earl- 
iest taxing law, for example, excluded from among the list of things which 
would be commonly thought of as chattels, young domestic animals, 
sheep and all property not subject to the laws of execution. These were 
all reincluded, however, among the things considered as chattels by a 
subsequent law. The law of 1853 excluded wearing apparel from among 
the things called chattels, that of 1869 family pictures, of 1891 pensions, 
while the last tax enactment, that of 1893, threw out all of these and 
also school books, private sewing machines, libraries and re-exempted 
young domestic animals from the assessment list. But frequent as these 
excisions have been, the term has been depleted but slightly of its con- 
tent through exemption and the present taxing statute groups no less 
than twenty familiar classes of property under the title of chattels while 
the personal property tax receives its staunchest buttressing as a part 
of state tax systems through the amount of revenue which can be col- 
lected from this sort of property. 
The growth of the common city street car lines into the familiar inter- 
urban electric systems was the cause of the most serious anomaly in the 
classification of personalty within our statutes. After the abandonment 
of specific taxes upon these properties in 1S82 the street car companies 
became liable for taxation upon the ordinary assessment rolls although 
the usual rule that “fixtures and appurtenances to real estate must be 
taxed as realty was everywhere abandoned because the typical property 
of street car companies is fixed to the non-taxable public streets. Car 
tracks, switches and street cars were assessed under these circumstances 
by a species of mutual agreement as corporate personal property and 
no injustice was done since the same rate of taxation is usually applica- 
ble under the same taxing authority to both personalty and realty. But 
with the strife of competing jurisdictions as these lines were extended 
as interurban roads into the country under the same circumstances of 
traversing public property, a more formal arrangement was necessary 
and the law of 1893 formally legalized the absurdity of regarding car 
tracks as personal property and further violated our tax customs by al- 
lowing this personalty to be levied upon by the jurisdiction under which 
it is found. No unusual features have developed with regard to the other 
recent additions to the personality definition such as forest products, 
produce, seeds, grains and nursery stock, and all of these have been sim- 
ply incorporated into the assessment lists with the twenty or more other 
classes of goods which come under the name of chattels. 
The actual amount of property which has developed revenues for the 
support of government from time to time has been far less extensive than 
the realty and personalty classifications just referred to would suggest. 
This has been the outcome from exempting many different property own- 
ing organizations, institutions and persons from the payment of taxes. 
The most important of these remissions are those which government has 
given itself through absolving from tax payments all public property 
throughout the State. The earliest of our taxing laws left the belong- 
ings of the local governments untouched through specific exemption while 
the later Jaws have extended the same privilege to the properties of the 
commonwealth for the reason in both instances that it is obviously in- 
