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.