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to get money out of it, and as improvements would increase the taxes to be paid, neither landlord nor tenant will make them, and the result is that some of the best sections of the State are arrested in their development and must fall behind in civilization. The American Republic has depended largely upon the intelligent and patriotic yeomanry of the land, who, as a rule, owned the soil they cultivated. There seems to be a tendency now to wipe this out, to allow the land to pass into the hands of men who live in cities and feel no interest in it except to get money out of it, and as population and the consequent demand for land increase, the condition of the tenant will be constantly lowered and in time this must produce a lower class of citizenship that will in no way be equal to the independent farmers that have been the boast of our country. It is far better for the State that the farmer should own his own land even though he be in debt for it, than that he should feel no interest in the soil and see all of his earnings go to the landlord.

REMEDY.

I do not venture to make any suggestions as to the best method of dealing with the subject, farther than to say that nothing should be done that would impair the value of the lands in the hands of the present owners, but some reasonable time in the future should be named after which every individual will be limited in the quantity of land which he may own in this State.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN LARGE CITIES.

I repeat with emphasis what I said in a former message on this subject: "The condition of business in the courts of Chicago almost amounts to a denial of justice. It takes years to get a case finally settled by the courts, while the expense, annoyance and loss of time involved in watching it are so great that the poor cannot stand it and the business men cannot afford it. Litigants are worn out and the subject matter of dispute often becomes useless before the courts get done with it. This is not the fault of the judges, but of the system, which, in its practical workings, often discourages the honest man and encourages the dishonest one, for it enables him to wear out the former.

"Urged by the bar, the number of judges was greatly increased by the last General Assembly, but the conditions are almost the same. We now have twenty-eight judges in Cook county alone, while there are only thirty-four in England, Ireland and Wales. In England, most cases are disposed of at The dishonest man does not find it to his interest to go into the courts there, while we, with our system of distinctions and delays, almost offer him a premium to do so.

once.

"We borrowed our system of jurisprudence from England more than a century ago when it was loaded down with absurd distinctions and formalities. We have clung tenaciously to its faults while England long ago brushed them aside. Three-quarters of a century ago that country began to reform its judicial procedure by wiping out all useless distinctions and formalities, and making all procedure simple and disposing of each case promptly on its merits, and their appellate courts now revise cases only when it is shown that an actual injustice has been done and not simply because some rule or useless formality has been disregarded. As regards the administration of justice we are to-day three-quarters of a century behind that country from which we borrowed our system. We may be great in polities but do not yet lead the way in statesmanship. The whole system should be revised and simplified so that it will give our people more prompt and speedy justice and less fine spun law.

JUSTICE COURTS.

"I must again call attention to the conditions surrounding the police and justice courts of Chicago. They are a disgrace, and we will not rise to the demands of the occasion if we do not devise some remedy for these evils. I also again call attention to the subject of permitting any officer connected

with the administration of justice to keep fees. This is the very foundation upon which the whole structure of fraud, extortion and oppression rests. No man's bread should depend upon the amount of business he can 'drum up, around a so-called court of justice."

At present the practice prevails in Chicago of making raids in the evening and running in from fifty to one hundred women and a few men at a time on no particular charge. Then the justice gets a dollar from each for taking a bond, thus making from fifty to one hundred dollars a night, and a lot of cormorants known as special bailors and other hangers-on make four or five hundred dollars if it can be wrung from the miserable creatures. In many instances certain police officers are believed to share in the plunder. In this way the machinery of the law is used to gather a harvest off of vice, and the people arrested are simply forced into deeper degradation; whatever self-respect they have left is broken. Not only should the whole fee system be abolished, but the law should not require any person to give bond before conviction except in cases where the charge is a serious one.

MONEY IN STATE TREASURY AND TAX LEVY,

Owing to the fact that it required nearly $600,000 to pay the expenses of the National Guard during the riots of 1894 and to rebuild the Anna Insane Asylum, which burned down, both being matters which were unforeseen and for which therefore no taxes had previously been levied, the funds in the Treasury ran short last winter, and some of the institutions had to make temporary arrangements for money, but all bills have been paid and several hundred thousand dollars which had been appropriated for the purpose of erecting buildings and which were to come out of the taxes to be collected next year, have been advanced because the State was needing the buildings, and, owing to the low price of material and labor it was better for the State to build at once than to wait, and there are now over $300,000.00 in the Treasury, and as soon as the taxes are collected there will again be a surplus.

The tax levy had to be increased for two reasons. One was the extra expenditure already named and the other was the remarkable fact that the assessments of property in this State are constantly growing smaller. For example, the total assessed value of property in the State for the year 1896 is $16.508.847 less than it was for the year 1895, and is less than it has been since 1890.

REVENUE SYSTEM.

Every Governor for more than twelve years has urged a revision of our revenne laws and pronounced the existing system a gigantic fraud. The facts have been so frequently stated that it seems almost a mockery to repeat them, and yet nothing has been done. Great concentrations of wealth and unscrupulous individuals possessed of large fortunes in many cases contribute nothing to the support of the government, while men of moderate means and those men of large means who refuse to resort to corrupt methods, are obliged to bear burdens that belong to others. It is no longer a secret that the machinery of the whole system, especially as it applies to large cities, and to the assessment of some corporations is thoroughly corrupt and should be wiped out. Corporations in this respect fare like individuals; those corporations whose officers refuse to resort to dishonest methods and who endeavor to meet all questions openly and fairly, are loaded with unjust burdens, while other corporations contribute little or nothing, and frequently it is found that the men who resort to dishonorable means in these matters are the ones who have the most to say about patriotism. There has been so much agitation recently upon this question that it is probable that those interests which have heretofore labored to prevent any revision of the revenue law will now change their tactics, and will attempt themselves to shape the revision, so that while the public demand for a new revenue law will be for the time met, still it will be found that in the end matters have not been much improved. Real estate is usually found by the assessor and where no corrupt methods are resorted to there will, as a rule, be no inequality in assessments. So far as real estate is concerned, especially in large cities, the chief

difficulty to be overcome is to stop the operation of the corrupt "go-betweens," who go to rich men and their agents and offer to save from five to twenty thousand dollars in the taxes of one year in consideration of cash payment, and who, on the promise of such cash payment, manage to get the assessments reduced. But in regard to personal property an entire new system from that now existing must be adopted. Each individual must be compelled to furnish a statement of what he has subject to taxation. The present system of allowing the assessor to guess at what the individual has when no report is made, results in no assessment at all. Under it the very rich make no returns and consequently escape with little or no taxation. If every man were required to himself sign a written statement and return it to the assessor showing what he had, and in the event of his failure to do so he were cited to go before some court to make such schedule, and the court were required to double the assessment as a penalty, it would add millions to the taxable property of the State, and thus reduce the burdens of those men and corporations that now are trying to honestly pay their taxes. Corporations are assessed chiefly by the State Board of Equalization, and here the greatest inequality has arisen. Most of the corporations of the State, doing a legitimate business, pay their full share of taxes, and in some cases, perhaps more, while other very large concerns pay almost nothing. A sleeping car company, whose office and headquarters are at Chicago, and which has over $60,000,000.00 worth of property-whose stock sells in the market at figures which aggregate that sum-which annually earns dividends that amount to a high rate of interest on that sum, and which, by reason of the fact that it is located in Chicago, should, under the law, pay taxes there on all its personal property, especially on such as is not assessed elsewhere-is assessed in our State at only $1,561,955.00. Correspondence with the officials of all the other states in this country, and of Canada, shows that all the taxes that it pays on this continent, Illinois included, do not amount to a fair rate of taxation on $20,000,000.00, and that consequently it has over $40,000,000.00 that should be taxed in Chicago, upon which it does not pay a cent. rule, other property is assessed at from one-fourth to one-fifth of its market value. If this corporation were assessed in proportion, its additional assessment would amount to in the neighborhood of $8,000,000.00, and its annual taxes on this sum in Chicago would be considerably over a half a million of dollars. This money, although, in a sense, belonging to the public, is pocketed by the owners of that corporation. Two years ago it cost the State a large sum of money to guard the property of this corporation, yet when it comes to bearing the burdens of the government, it manages to shift them on to the shoulders of others.

EFFECT OF DIVIDING RESPONSIBILITY.

As a

Experience has shown that division of responsibility in public bodies is productive of corruption and unjust measures; that when the public can put its finger upon the individual and hold him responsible, he will be more careful and circumspect in his actions and will make more effort to keep up, at least a semblance of fairness, than he will if there are a large number of others to share the responsibility with him. It rarely happens that the mayor of a city is charged with corruption while the charge against city councils are very common. These considerations, taken in connection with the experience of this State, as well as other states, show that a board of equalization, composed of twenty-two members, as ours is now, for the purpose of assessing corporations, will never be useful or satisfactory, and is almost certain to continue to be the constant subject of scandal and its work to be tainted with the greatest injustice.

REFORM IN LAND CONVEYANCING.

The great bulk of real estate of Illinois, when measured by value, is in Cook county, and owing to the numerous transfers that have taken place there and the complications in the title to many large tracts of land which have since been subdivided into lots, conditions have arisen which make the transfer of even the smallest piece of real estate a very expensive proceeding. In the first place an abstract must be furnished showing the chain of title down from

the government. This, in some instances, costs hundreds and even thousands of dollars, and in those cases where it is possible to get copies of old abstracts it is still necessary to have a continuation made every time there is a transfer, and no matter how frequently a title may have been examined and pronounced good, it is at present necessary to have it re-examined every time there is a transfer. The result of this is the imposition of burdens which bear very hard upon the owners of small properties, and these burdens are daily becoming more onerous. They have to be met not only at every sale, but every time it is sought to get even a small loan on a house and lot. The last General Assembly endeavored to remedy this evil by providing for a new system of land transfer in which it would be unnecessary to trace the title back to the government every time that it was sought to make a loan or a sale of a small piece of land. The system adopted was one which has for years been in use in many countries of the world and has worked admirably. The Supreme Court recently nullified this law by holding that it was unconstitutional. The subject, therefore, calls for further attention at your hands. The burdens complained of attach not only to most of the real estate in Illinois but they affect more than half the people of the State, and as they arise out of a primitive and antiquated system which is thoroughly inadequate to modern needs, it is the business of the government to provide a new method that shall relieve the people from this heavy expenditure of money for which they get absolutely nothing in return.

MINERS AND FACTORY EMPLOYES.

Illinois is now one of the largest mining states in the world owing to its limitless deposits of coal. It is also one of the greatest manufacturing states in the world. Therefore we are vitally interested in the conditions affecting these two industries, especially in so far as they affect not only the prosperity of our people, but affect the physical and mental development, and consequently the standard of citizenship among those engaged in them.

Mining is a pecular industry, and is attended with a greater degree of danger than exists in most other industries, and as the miners are to a great degree isolated from the rest of the community and as a rule are not so able to represent their interests as other elements of society are, there is a constant tendency toward conditions which bear hard on the miner and prevent him from keeping his family on the same plane of advantage with other members of the community, and which ultimately affect the intelligence and the standard of citizenship of the mining population. Consequently it has been found necessary in all countries for the government to throw its protection around the miner both for the purpose of preventing his being unjustly dealt with and also for the purpose of elevating his standard of citizenship. Nearly a century ago England found that the conditions in her mines were so lowering the moral, physical and intellectual condition of her people as to make them unfit for military and naval service, and make them unfit to maintain the dignity and the greatness of the British empire, and she began a system of mining legislation which has been extended and improved from time to time and has been adopted by nearly all of the civilized countries, and similar legislation has been enacted in all of the older states of the Union. This legislation is based on the ground, not simply of humanity and justice, but that it is the duty of the state to take every necessary step for its own preservation. This legislation, of necessity, affects in a greater or less degree the relations between the miner and the employer and is intended to prevent his being cheated in weighing and being cheated in the screening of the coal, from his being forced to buy the necessaries of life at what are called truck or "pluck me" stores, maintained by the employers, etc.

Following the line of legislation which has been adopted by, and was in force in, the older states of the Union, this State has during the last fifteen years passed a number of laws for the protection of the miner. Several acts have been passed to regulate the weighing of coal at mines. In May, 1891, an act was passed to put an end to the truck-store system, so that miners should no longer be obliged to accept their wages in the goods of the so-called "pluck me" stores of their employers. About the same time a law was passed

requiring miners to be paid their wages weekly, but all these laws were nullified by the Supreme Court on the ground that they conflicted with some provision of the Constitution.

FACTORIES.

With the invention of machinery came great factories and great concentrations of population, and as in many cases physical strength was not necessary to attend a machine, factories were soon filled with women and with children, because they would work for less wages than had to be paid to men. These women and children stood on their feet and worked long hours, and the result was that in time the factory population was found to be stunted and weak. physically and intellectually, so that a parliamentary investigation more than fifty years ago, discovered the fact that as a rule the young men in factory communities were utterly unfit for military service, most of the children born of women who worked in the factories were weak and rarely developed into healthy manhood and womanhood, and that the boys and girls employed in the factory soon grew old, became physically and intellectually stunted and morally weak. It was also found that by reason of machinery not being properly guarded, and matters of ventilation and sanitation not being carefully looked after, operatives in factories were being constantly maimed for life, and becoming charges upon the community, and their health was being undermined because of bad sanitary conditions. The committee reported to parliament that unless these conditions. could in some way be arrested, the tendency would be to endanger if not destroy the perpetuity of the empire, because there would be produced an inferior race of people who could not maintain themselves either intellectually, commercially or martially in the fierce competition with the rest of the world. Out of this parliamentary investigation there grew in the end a system of factory legislation which has been greatly improved and expanded, and adopted by all the civilized countries of the old world, and by nearly all of the older states of this country. It may be of interest to note that both the mining and the factory legislation was opposed by the wealthy classes of England, and for a third of a century met with the opposition of the influential classes who were deriving a benefit from the evils aimed at. But the statesmen of England persisted and ultimately triumphed, and some of the great men of England to-day regard her achievements in mining and factory legislation as among the most important things she has done, not only for her own prosperity and perpetuity, but for the world.

Several years ago it was found that the conditions which once existed in England were rapidly growing up in our State. Shops and factories were full of children and women who slaved long hours and received but a pittance. In many cases dangerous machinery was not properly guarded, and the sanitary conditions were indescribably bad.

To remedy these evils, an act was passed in 1893, which was far less stringent and less comprehensive than laws which were already in force in some of the older states, and which had been held constitutional there. The act was limited to factories and shops.

Under this law the abuses of child labor in the factories of our State were greatly reduced, and an attempt was made to enforce the provisions of the law which forbade the employment of women for more than eight hours a day in shops and factories. But the interests which were coining the lives of women and children into dollars and which wanted to escape the paying of the wages of men were powerful. They combined to resist its enforcement and the Supreme Court has held a portion of the law to be unconstitutional, and the decision leaves the whole of the act in such a condition as makes it difficult to enforce any of its provisions, and including those not employed in factories, there are in Chicago alone over fifteen thousand children working long hours daily, many of them becoming stunted physically and intellectually and weakened morally, and what is known as the "sweat shop" evil is spreading at an alarming rate. Other countries have found it necessary to protect themselves against conditions which tend to lower the vitality and the physical and intellectual development of their citizens and our State must do the same. The Constitution was not intended to be an insurmountable barrier to all correct

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