ever desirable, are the outgrowth of a management which make the cost of fire departments six times as great per capita as was paid for the corresponding service fifteen years ago.

Few city governments have been able to withstand the pressure brought to bear upon them by real estate speculators, and to refrain from locating costly and useless avenues in outlying districts of their territory. Instances are not uncommon where miles of completed streets with weeds and grass growing through their paving stones, are yet waiting the advent of pioneer builders. In the case of one prominent New England city, a sewer three miles in length has lately been completed by the city authorities along an avenue bounded on both sides by farming lands. And now, we read, that because the abutters cannot afford to pay that portion of the cost which is assessed upon them, their farms are to be turned over to the tax-gatherer.

Hitherto no one has ventured to lift up his voice against the folly of establishing, at the public expense, street lights along miles of sparsely settled roads; or against the practice of keeping them lighted, almost literally, from sun to sun; while the spirit of economy has so far forsaken men that it has become one of the most common sights to see a whole city lighted with gas in the presence of a brilliant full moon."

The common schools no longer occupy the unpretending quarters in which the fathers and mothers of the present day received their early educational training. Now, in lieu of plain school houses, we have costly and inconvenient palaces, with their thee and four stories, their lofty stairways, their spacious reception rooms, and their salaried janitors. Here, head masters receiving from $3,000 to $4,000 a year, preside over numerous assistants with correspondingly high salaries, at a cost of $50 a year to each pupil for the teaching, and from one-half to three-quarters of a ton of coal each, for warming. The members of the school committee, acting through a School Superintendent, receiving a salary two or three times that of the mayor of the city, are selected in a large measure from the profes

In Philadelphia several years ago, the persons having charge of the street lamps were required, on bright moon-light nights to go their rounds and extinguish the gas-lights at the rise of the moon. This practice was made the subject of ridicule by both visitors and citizens; and for that reason, we suppose, was discontinued.-ED.

sional walks of life. Having but little acquaintance with practical affairs, and in some states actually exalted by their legislatures to the possession of a power which renders them independent of the local government, they are still continuing to pay to teachers, who, if employed in the material occupations of life, could not command the half of such compensation,-the high salaries of 1872.

In addition to all these modern extravagances which go to swell the tax levy, an enormous item to provide for interest upon funded debts incurred in building water-works, sewers, and railroads -an item of expense hardly dreamed of in 1861-has become the fashion.

In many cities the payment of this interest now actually requires a greater tax per capita than was the entire tax per capita to meet the expense of running the whole city government ten or fifteen years ago.

Before the war the local taxes of our large cities to meet their ordinary expenses, including county and State taxes, did not much exceed $8.00 to each inhabitant. In Boston the taxes of 1861, including the amount necessarily raised for interest and sinking fund, was only about $12.00 per capita. The tax of New York City at that period with all her incipient municipal extravagance, is said to have averaged only $7.47 per head. When we come to compare these figures with the corresponding figures for 1875, as will be done further on, they will seem almost incredible. This recklessness in the management of public affairs has already brought some of our cities, prominent among which is a leading city of the West, almost to the, yerge of bankruptcy; and the time is fast approaching when the pecuniary obligations of many others are in danger of being dishonored, unless their present scale of expenditure be abandoned.

There is abroad in society a wide-spread, but as yet unpronounced feeling, that this extravagance of municipal expenditure has contributed in some way to the general exhaustion of its individual members. And yet, whenever this feeling chances to develop sufficiently to excite investigation, the inquirer is generally quieted with the suggestion that property has risen so much in value that the taxes are in reality but little more burdensome than they were in 1860. The rate of taxation per thousand on the official valuation is always quoted in support of this suggestion. The trouble is that the people in general have not paid sufficient attention to the mat

ter to comprehend the mysterious relations between a growing val. uation and the tax-rate, or the results of differing rules of valuation in different places, and so, for lack of knowledge, all investigation is postponed. Great irregularities always occur in the administration of local tax levies even under the same State government. The assessors of one city, with certain traditional theories in mind, will appraise all the property at one-half or two-thirds its just value. The assessors of another city may aim to arrive at the exact market value at the time. A third class of assessors, having in mind the professional truism that "the higher the valuation the lower the tax rate," thoughtlessly swell the assessor's list until it not unfrequently happens that similar property in neighboring places may exhibit differences of fifty per cent. in valuation. Very many cities have, through pride, and a desire on the part of managing men to conceal their spendthrift practices, been inveigled into the last named class, and it will not be surprising if within three or four years, when the official valuation shall have been readjusted it will be found that half their fancied wealth has vanished. Hence when we undertake to compare taxation at different periods in the same city, or the taxation in different places at the same period, and are told that in one city the rate is $15.00 per thousand, and in another $20.00 per thousand it by no means follows that the former city is more favored. A rate of $20.00 per thousand applied to property at its just valuation is, of course, less burdensome by one third than a rate of $15.00 upon property rated at double its normal value. The tax rate per thousand dollars by itself is no proper standard of comparison, but the division of the entire tax of a city by the number of its inhabitants gives us the average amount of the burden upon individuals, and there can be no simpler or more reliable standard of measurement than the amount of tax per capita.

To exhibit clearly the frightful extent to which the inflation of all taxable property has been carried and the sad results of extravagance, taxation and indebtedness which have followed such inflation, the accompanying table presents an exact statement for the years 1861, 1865 and 1875, of the population, valuation, amount of taxes and amount of funded debt, with additional columns showing the averages of valuation, taxation and debt per capita for each and all the cities of Massachusetts. The figures may excite surprise, but the hasty conclusion must be avoided that the affairs of these cities have

anything peculiar about them. Similar statistics from other groups of American cities would present corresponding results. Returns from the cities of Massachusetts could be obtained more conveniently than from any other equal number, and hence their selection for our present purpose. (See the table on the opposite page.)

The materials for this table were derived from official sources. It appears that Massachusetts now has nineteen cities, whose aggregate population was 570,348 in 1865, and had risen to 836,781 in 1875, an increase of 47 per cent. in the ten years. In the latter year, Boston, the capital city, possessed a population of 342,000. The population of nine others ranged from 50,000 to 25,000 each, and the nine smaller cities had an average of 17,000. More than one-half of the whole people of the state were then dwelling in the cities.

We can do no more than to indicate the great facts disclosed in this table and invite the reader to make them a subject for careful study. Using round numbers, we may say that the aggregate valuation of the cities of Massachusetts has advanced during the ten years, between 1865 and 1875, from $631,000,000 to $1,299,000,ooo, an increase of 104 per cent.; that the aggregate local taxes to meet the current expenses of these cities have, in the same period, risen from $10,000,000 to $19,500,000 annually, the increase being 95 per cent., while their aggregate funded debt has grown from $18,000,000 to $70,500,000, or an advance to almost four-fold.

If we leave Boston out of the account, the aggregate figures representing the rest of the cities are found to be still more startling. For while in the ten years the combined number of their inhabitants has risen from 312,500 to 495,000, an increase of 59 per cent., their valuation has advanced from $205,000,000 to $496,500,000 or 142 per cent.; their annual local taxes from $3,500,000 to $8,500,000 or 143 per cent.; and worst of all, their combined funded debt from $4,500,000 to $27,000,000, a six-fold increase in ten years. At the present time thirteen of these cities count their debts by the million.

It is difficult to state these propositions in such a way that the full truth can be apprehended. The mind soon wearies of listening to the recital of figures that treat of aggregated thousands of people and millions of dollars. For these reasons the per capita element has been introduced in working up the table, thereby enabling us to see upon the slightest inspection how extravagance in the management