of municipal affairs affects the average citizen when all the property and all the burdens of society are assumed to be equally distributed. In using this form of statement it is necessarily assumed that where, in any given period, the population increases by immigration, the added numbers bring with them the average amount of wealth. This may or may not be the fact. In the present case we know it is not; for the floating classes, which have so greatly swelled the population of our cities, seldom carry much wealth anywhere. But as the error, if corrected, would but strengthen our position, it will not be further noticed.

With the per capita element introduced into the table it is easy to see, for example, that while the official valuation increased the property of Lowell and of Lawrence at the rate of only about ten dollars per capita per annum from 1865 to 1875, the assessors of Fall River advanced the valuation an average of $44.00 per annum upon a popu lation which had grown in the same time from 17,525 to 45,340 being more than two and a half fold. It may also be seen that the tax of one of the cities averaged $5.06 per capita in 1861, that four years later this tax had grown to $10.07 per capita, and in 1875, was no less than $22.41. Another glance at the table shows us that while the debts resting upon the cities outside of Boston in 1861, averaged only $7.63 per capita, in 1875 this average had risen to $54.64.

Perhaps the most striking facts disclosed in the table are first, that at the outbreak of the war in 1861, the actual cost of managing the municipal concerns of the cities of Massachusetts, except Boston, and including the payment of county and State taxes averaged only $5.94 per capita; second, that in 1865 their expenses had risen to $11.08 and that in 1875 they had become no less than $17.11 per capita.

In 1861, the average valuation for all the inhabitants of the cities was $1,054, and in 1875, when the population was double and yet possessed only the same number of acres of city lots with a little more brick and mortar piled upon them, the valuation for each inhabitant was $1,542. Can any one fail to see that this large increase in the valuation represents simply imaginary wealth-that it is fiction rather than fact?

One more impressive lesson remains to be noted. In 1861, the combined funded debt for all the cities was an average burden of $21.62 upon each inhabitant. In 1875, the same debt had risen to

$84.19 apiece upon the the duplicated members. It may be well to contemplate these frightful obligations in the aggregate, and attempt to realize that in 1861 they amounted to $11,000,000, and in 1875 to $70,500,000, the increase being $59,500,000 in fourteen years. The enormity of these figures will be better appreciated if we note, in immediate connection with them, that the annual interest to be paid upon the $70,500,000 amounts to at least $4,500,000, while the total aggregate expenses of all the city governments of the State in 1861 was but $4,700,000. It will be noticed that the present indebtedness of the cities is equal to 5.4 per cent of the enormously inflated valuation of 1875. This per centage would reach to nearly double what it now appears if the valuation were to be properly reduced.

We have seen that the average cost in 1861, of all the city governments of Massachusetts, excepting Boston, was $5.94 per capita. Boston appears to have managed her municipal affairs in the same year for a per capita expense of $12.26. In 1861, Boston was already in debt to the extent of $9,000,000, and, therefore, it may be assumed that about $3.00 per capita of her tax that year was to provide for interest and sinking funds, leaving $9.26 as the probable expense of managing her municipal affairs if there had been no debt. But when Boston is reckoned in with the other Massachusetts cities at her full municipal expenditure, including interest, the average tax for all the cities, as appears by the table, was only $8.79, or say $9.00 per capita. This hard fact should never be lost sight of by those who have charge of municipal affairs in these latter days.

A recent number of the New York Financial Chronicle contains the statistics of valuation, amount of debt less sinking funds, the debt per capita, the tax-rate per thousand dollars and the percentage of debt to valuation for fifteen of the prominent cities of the country. Assuming the correctness of these statistics and deducing the population from the per capita column, and the total amount of taxes from the tax-rate, the accompanying table is constructed on the same general plan as the one we have been contemplating.

It will be seen from this table that wide differences obtain in the valuation of property for tax purposes, and how little reliance can be placed upon any simple statement of "the tax rate per thousand dollars" for measuring the desirability of any city as an economical place of residence. Thus St. Louis and New York City each appear