After disposing of the question of how taxes and public expenses could be discharged the first Great Council took up the question of what property should be taxable. Among the private individualist enterprises in Idaho mining and grazing predominated. Both the mine owners and cattle men, whose herds were permitted to wander at will on the ranges, were expert “tax dodgers.” How to reach them and compel them to pay their just and fair proportion of the expense of running the state and maintaining the schools was an important question. It was decided that all taxes should be levied on land values. In other words, what is sometimes called the Single-Tax system was adopted. Wherever cattle men occupied a range together the total number of cattle upon it was determined, owners’ names were obtained and the value of the range per acre was estimated upon the basis of its use for grazing purposes. Each owner was then made liable for the tax on the total acreage of the range occupied, and the proportion each was bound to pay was no question for the state, but was a question for the cattle men to determine for and among themselves. Cattle men now found it impossible to escape their taxes as formerly, each being zealous to require his neighbor to pay his part, and it must be confessed that they showed a strong disposition to leave the state, so that the ranges abandoned by them were left for the use of our herds. It ought to be said, however, that the cattle owners did not abandon the state without a fight. They resisted the collection of taxes, claiming the system to be unjust and against public policy. One of the trial courts decided in their favor, but the case was appealed to the Great Council, which, it will be remembered, retained the Supreme Judicial authority in itself. The matter was referred by this body to six of its members, all lawyers, and indeed the only lawyers in the Great Council, all of whom were Co-operators, and the trial court was reversed. There was also an armed resistance to the collection of the tax, but the cattle men were speedily put to rout, the state militia suffering no other loss than three men wounded. The newspaper press throughout the Union, however, took sides with the cattle men, claiming that the system of taxation had been adopted for the sole purpose of driving these “honest” men from the state and taking possession of “their” ranges. The truth was that the men who left the state on account of this law did so to escape honest burdens and went where the laws were more unjust, or if not unjust not effectual to prevent the shifting of such burdens dishonestly to other shoulders which ought not to bear them. We offered no encouragement to dishonest practices, and if our failure to do so was an advantage to some other state which did, we certainly had no occasion to feel envious. Mining property owned by corporations or associations was valued at the full par of its capital stock and assessed accordingly.