Chicago, Satan's Sanctum

by L. O. Curon

A new revenue law has just gone into operation, designed to abolish the inequalities of taxation which grew up and were fraudulently fostered under the repealed law. What its effect will be it is difficult to predict. The personal property holders, those with long lines of stocks, bonds, valuable house furnishings, large bank accounts, and concealed wealth, are very likely to feel unkindly towards the stringent provisions of this law. They have been evading their just share of taxation for years. They are today the most ignorant of the many people calling at the assessor’s office to make out and verify under oath their respective schedules, simply because it is so many years since they were called upon to pay a personal property tax, that they have forgotten all about the form.

The holders of large real estate interests, who, for years, have been paying assessors to exempt them from assessment, or reduce their valuations, are, also, most probably confronted with the impossibility of escape from paying their proper share of general taxes. This iniquitous system has been denounced in the press for years. A year ago a town assessor was convicted of the offense, and heavily fined by the court. The tax evaders are as vicious a class in a community as are sneak thieves. Their payment to assessors to lower their valuations is the worst species of corruption. The payrolls of the town assessors present the most conspicuous instances of corruption to be found in any department of the county, or city, government. Many men are carried on their pay rolls and paid from five to ten dollars per day who never do one moment’s work in the making of the assessment. They are simply being nursed for political purposes. In one of the wealthiest towns a payroll fell under the writer’s observation, which showed a clear steal of $2,200 for a period of two weeks only. These officials designated a personal friend to whom all money was paid. One-fourth of these payments were handed over to the “solicitor” who brought in the “business,” one-fourth to the “friend,” and the remaining one-half went to the assessor. Men in high station in national and state councils, state and national committeemen, city and county officers, lawyers, politicians and sporting men were engaged in this business of boodling, throwing upon the owners of small real estate interests more than their fair share of the burdens of taxation. In an address delivered in this city by an ex-President of the United States, he said that as Lincoln had declared this country could not exist half slave and half free, so he declared “it could not exist half taxed and half free” from taxation, that the sin of tax evasion was a new danger to the integrity of the Republic and that its evil lay in the “evasion of just taxation by the rich, and the consequent thrusting of an extra burden on the poor.” The corporations engaged in the manufacture of gas, in the management of traction companies, of live stock exchanges, of packing companies, railroads, steel companies, sleeping car builders and merchants owning large landed properties, have had their agents regularly employed in procuring a reduction of their valuations for assessment, who were nothing more nor less than bribers. Whether these crimes will be as freely attempted under the new law remains to be developed, but some of the distributors of personal property schedules are again playing their old trick of taking money from the poor under promise of returning them as non-holders of taxable personal property. An arrest of one of these robbers, who had accepted one dollar from each of a number of women has been made. The men elected as assessors and as members of the board of review are men of good character and able judgment. The only indication of danger is that a political boss who has lived and thrived at the public crib and whose political methods have always been unscrupulous has been appointed chief clerk of the board of review. His salary is large enough to keep him out of temptation, if he has not forgotten the ways of the righteous. He was an expert “adjuster” in politics. In assessments the “adjuster’s” occupation should now be gone. The difficulty lies in teaching an old adjuster new tricks. The old system of assessment for general taxation was denounced by an official of the county as “nothing more nor less than a gigantic legalized swindle, reeking in corruption, a harbor for ‘grafters,’ ‘petty thieves,’ and ‘sharks,’ and an enormous, unnecessary and galling burden on the tax payers, the expense of which has no justification in reason and should have none in law.”

The new system abolishes but one of the evils of the old. In place of town assessors, a board of five assessors is established whose work is subject to review by another composed of three members. Their labors are, in turn, passed upon by the State Board of Equalization, before which for years railroads and other corporations have had their adjusters, agents or brokers, and before which they will continue to appear and accomplish, as they always have accomplished, the placing of the lowest possible valuations upon railroad properties, and a reduction of capital stock valuations. The board of assessors now values all the real estate in Cook county in place of the assessors in the separate towns within the county.

These towns, six of which are wholly within the city limits, are, through their officials, plunderers of the public, robbing the funds of the towns by increasing their salaries out of all proportion to the services they are required to render, and which could well be dispensed with to the greatest advantage of the people. In the year 1898 they cost the treasury $395,411.55. Absolutely nothing is apparent as the result of this looting of public funds. They occupy, in the business parts of the city, expensive offices, which are open for public use not to exceed four months in the year, and afford, for the remaining months, club accommodations for the hangers on of the political crooks who manage party affairs. Card playing and gambling are their principal occupations. In the division of the proceeds of the robbery, the justices of the peace participate. They are, by virtue of their offices, members of the town board. Their services are not worth ten dollars per annum, but they receive compensation ranging from $200 to $500 per annum.

As illustrating the tendency of these town boards, from which the assessment of property for taxation has now been taken away, the following are the valuations of real estate and personal property for the past three years as equalized by the state board. The foundation for the assessments was laid by the town assessors. It will be observed that, notwithstanding the increase in population, the value of real estate and personal property has been steadily declining. The decline is a measure of the boodling propensities of the assessors. Their percentage of award “no fellah can find out.”

VALUATIONS FOR ASSESSMENT.

		1896.		1897.		1898.
Real estate		$195,684,875		$184,632,905		$178,801,172
Personal property		34,959,299		33,594,167		29,601,393
Population, school census		1,616,635				1,851,588

The value of the taxable real estate in Chicago, according to these figures, decreased in two years $18,883,703, and the value of taxable personal property $5,357,906. During the same period the population increased 234,953. As wealth and population increase in Chicago, values of property decline. At ten per cent of its cash value, which is the basis adopted by assessors for years for taxation value, taxable real estate in Chicago is, in round numbers worth $1,788,000,000.

It is impossible to average the per cent paid for reductions in valuations to the assessors. Of the eighteen millions in reduced valuations in 1898, as compared with 1896, it is safe to say five millions were purchased. As the rate of taxation was between nine and ten dollars on one hundred dollars the amount of taxes paid by those who should not have paid them was $500,000. The assessors were “not working for their health,” but for about fifty per cent of the taxes saved to their principals, with the aid of the friend and the agent who brought the business, or say about $250,000 of “graft.”

The coroner’s office is also one which not infrequently gives rise to scandals. There are open charges made that some of the juries, called by that official, have found exonerating, instead of incriminating, verdicts for a money consideration in the division of which the office participated. An unseemly quarrel between the coroner and the police revealed the fact that both have favorite undertakers to whom the bodies of those meeting sudden death from accident, or otherwise, are taken. In a dispute as to which should control a corpse a most painful truth became public that it was carted about from one undertaking establishment to another, and that even the law was invoked to obtain possession of it by means of a writ of replevin.