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WHO PAYS YOUR TAXES?

This subject could be slighted in a young communitywith abundant natural opportunities open to it, but nowthe increasing weight of* the burden which results frommore complex social needs all over the world forces itupon the attention alike of city and country.

The rural community finds that it is suffering, evenoppressed, and it hunts blindly but desperately for aremedy, now in coinage, now in anti-trust laws, now incombination, at last in taxation.

It has already once passed upon the proposition to taxpersonal property. This was under a submission to thepeople of an amendment of the Constitution , by the actof the legislature of April 24, 1869. This was votedupon separately and independently, with an apparentlyfull understanding that the effect of its adoption wouldbe to discontinue the allowance of indebtedness as anoffset against the value of any property for the purposeof assessment and taxation. The proposition was sig-nally disapproved by a plurality of over 273,000, out of avote of more than 450,000. The counties of Sullivan,Oneida, Fulton, Hamilton, Chemung, Clinton, Columbia,Delaware , Genesee, Herkimer, Lewis, Niagara, Dutchess,Orleans, Oswego, Richmond, Rockland, Saratoga, Scho-harie, Schuyler, Ulster, Wayne, and Yates contributedmost largely to this decision of the people. 1 Neverthe-

1 The Tax Reform Association caused a petition to be circulated in 1891,,vhich seems to show that at least in New York City the popular verdict isstill the same. It is as follows: