MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
271 
expedient for government to take from itself wliat it must necessarily 
again restore. This exemption of school establishments, public buildings, 
parks and other municipal properties has made no inconsiderable re- 
duction of the total valuation within the State which would otherwise 
have found its way to the assessment lists. Closely following these reser- 
vations of governmental property in order of importance come the exemp- 
tions of the property of the general public utilities companies owing to 
the fact that these companies have usually paid specific taxes upon their 
earnings or upon some other element and the demands of justice require 
that they should not be doubly taxed. The worth of these properties, and 
therefore the measure of the exemption, which lias prevailed, has varied at 
different periods but at all times their absence from the customary assess- 
ment roll has been a subject of complaint from local authorities who 
have missed the contributions which would otherwise have benefited the 
local treasuries. In 1899 the ‘‘great appraisal” developed a value in these 
properties which equalled almost a sixth of the amount of the assessed 
valuation of all other property within the commonwealth. It may safely 
be estimated that the reservations of this sort commencing with railroads 
and plank roads, in 1846, and subsequently extended to copper, iron and 
coal mines, telegraph and telephone companies and street car lines, and 
to others has at all times equalled fairly approximately this proportion 
of the property value within the State. An examination too, of the taxes 
developed from the specific taxes in comparison with those developed 
from the general property tax shows a disparity at all times of only a 
little less than one-quarter as much from the former as from the latter 
and this tends to confirm the estimates of the relative values of these 
properties as based upon the “great appraisal.”* The property of these 
companies, although no longer paying specific taxes is still exempt from 
the general property tax since its assessment at present takes place under 
a modified property tax. 
The organizations and institutions which came next in the extent of 
the benefits received through being allowed immunity from taxation are 
the churches and religious societies and charitable, benevolent, literary, 
library and scientific associations, etc. The similarity in the ends which 
are striven for by these bodies and those for which government itself 
strives is sufficient reason for omitting their property from the 
assessment rolls, although the propriety of this action has been fre- 
quently questioned by different legislatures. The taxing laws of the ter- 
ritorial period designated simply the property of churches and religious 
bodies as being exempt from taxation but the later statutes have been 
much more specific and have included the furniture, the rights to pews, 
the parsonages and the lands upon which churches stand as coming 
within this tax immunity. Burial grounds and the charitable homes of 
secret and fraternal societies have also come to enjoy a similar exemp- 
tion The memorial societies such as Grand Army posts, sons of veter- 
ans, woman’s relief corps, etc., are also comprised within the same class. 
A great variety of persons have at different, times too been the benefi- 
ciaries of the exempting clauses of the taxing laws some times for ob- 
vious reasons and again for no easily assignable cause. For example, 
persons having household furniture worth in value less than $200 or 
* The Appraisal in 1900 of the railroads, express companies and s'milar public utility .properties by 
the Cooley-Adams commissions. 
