PRESS DISCUSSIONS.

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borrowed directly from the banks. But when you are borrow-ing money on mortgage from the money lender, while he addsthe State personal property tax to the interest that you mustpay him for the use of his money, you have no guaranteethat the State gets that personal property mortgage tax. Thechances are that, if the money lender is imbued with the spiritof old Adam, he quietly puts that extra tax in his own pocket,and the farmer and the State are both losers.

It is an old error among the farmers in thinking that thepersonal property tax on mortgages comes out of the manwho loans the money. If the farmer who has a mortgage onhis farm should suddenly find his situation changed and shouldfind himself able to loan money on mortgage, I have not theslightest doubt that he would, in loaning his money on farmmortgages, take into consideration the tax that the Statedemands ; and I have also not the slightest doubt that if hecould pocket that tax without any one being the wiser, he woulddo it. Most mortgages can now be hidden from any assessor,and if laws were passed to put the screws on the money lenderto make him exhibit his mortgages, he would not loan his *money without extra interest or bonus so as to secure him areasonable profit for the use of his money.

It is the mortgage part of the personal property tax that thefarmers and their press especially dwell upon, and I think Ihave demonstrated that in trying to increase the burdens of themen who lend their money on farm mortgages they are chasinga ghost that will never be there when the farmers try to placetheir hands on it.

We know that the representatives of some of the farmingconstituencies are going to introduce rigorous personal prop-erty tax bills in the coming legislature. This associationdesires to see all those bills defeated, and to see the personalproperty tax abolished. But, if that cannot be done, the nextbest thing will be to have those bills passed and put into