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.