Skinner—Appraisal of Railroad Property . 8 IT 
covering the counties of Barron, Dane, Ozaukee and Milwau¬ 
kee, to ascertain whether the reports of the registers of those 
counties for the years 1898-1902 contain data of sufficient ac¬ 
curacy to justify their use in determining the ratio of assessed 
to true value. Professor Adams’ report has not been pub¬ 
lished, but through his courtesy and with the permission of the 
state tax commission the writer is permitted to refer to some 
results arrived at and to add some comments of his own based 
upon observations taken during the progress of the work. 
Under Professor Adams’s direction, every deed referred to 
in the registers’ reports was read, and every restriction, reserva¬ 
tion and condition was noted upon a card designed to contain 
all data relating to the transfer. The existence of mortgages was 
also carefully noted. After the deeds had been read, the assess¬ 
ments of the property for two or three years were copied upon 
the same card, and finally men were sent into the field to find 
the parties to the sale and verify all data found as well as to 
obtain pertinent data not contained in the record. 
The result of this careful sifting is shown in the following 
table, which gives the figures originally given by the tax com¬ 
mission and the figures found by Professor Adams. The re¬ 
sults give in every case the average of the ratios for each year 
for the five-year period 1898-1903', expressed as a percentages 
Table showing ratios of assessed to “true value ” according to meth¬ 
ods of tax commission and according to work 
done by Professor Adams. 
County or City. 
Ratio of assessed to 
true value as deter¬ 
mined by commis¬ 
sion from data fur¬ 
nished by registers 
of deeds. 
Ratio of asse sed to 
true value as deter¬ 
mined by Professor 
Adams, after care¬ 
fully sifting data 
given by registers of 
deeds. 
Barron. . . 
51 52 
48 40 
Dane. .. . 
48.53 
46! 89 
Ozaukee . 
60.22 
59 48 
Milwaukee (county), not including city... 
40.29 
43.97 
Milwaukee (city). 
57.34 
51.59 
