public property, although they are kept up and supported by taxes imposed upon the cost and value of these same improvements for which the present owner or his predecessors paid years ago, and although he has annually paid general taxes for the support of the city and State governments. The city expenses must be paid and must be collected from persons and property within its boundaries.

The municipal and State authorities allow private corporations to use and occupy the public streets for various monopolies, such as street railroads, telegraph, telephone, electric light lines, and for gas and heating pipes, and for water pipes and police and fire alarms, etc. Their use by private corporations are subject to the franchise tax, to be assessed by State officers, because under legislative control. The revenue that the city derives from this source by taxation is about four million dollars annually.

The mode of assessment and taxation for local improvements are the most prominent examples of taxation of the few for the benefit of the many. We hear little of it, because it only occurs to a few persons at once, and their voice is so feeble that it is lost in protest to the many, and the like wrongs are applied to a few more with the like result. The few are hushed by the assurance and feeling that the like cannot be applied to them again, and they care little for its effect when it is applied to others; thus all disregarding an altruistic principle that should prevail in the administration of municipal economy. Legislation is necessary to protect the few from abuses under it as the occasion arises.

All buildings and structures for public purposes are paid for by long-term bonds, and interest is payable by general taxation. Their construction and proximity are not deemed a benefit or injury to near-by property so as to authorize an assessment for benefits or an award for injuries.

Bridges are built at public expense by bond issues.

There are many special requirements relating to houses occupied by three or more separate families, in cities, that entail further expense on the owners of buildings. Many of them relate chiefly to the sanitary protection of those that, from choice or circumstances, prefer to dwell in places that afford low rent. Builders that pander to the demand for that class of property (and it is said to yield the best income) have to be sharply looked after by law for the welfare and protection of those who are helpless or carcless of their own welfare.

Fire escapes must be provided by the owner on certain kinds of buildings, and fireproof window shutters and doors must be placed on specified buildings when required by the proper public officers. The first are for the protection of life, and the others are to prevent the spreading of fires.

Insurance against loss by fire is a voluntary servitude which is as regular as any enforced tax, and is always made by the owner and may be by tenants, more or less, in their discretion.

In calculating the rate of rent necessary to yield a fair profit on his investment, the landowner must take into consideration, among other things, the loss of rentals and the time of the probable vacancy of the property and expense of carrying it, and the cost of the attention necessary for it.

When all the local improvements demanded by the municipality on and about land are completed, it is deemed more marketable and fit for yielding increased revenue by rentals for various purposes. The owner and investor in that kind of property is not yet through paying for these improvements; he must continue to pay an annual tax on them all.

The owner and investor in real estate in cities must take all this into consideration in connection with the annual taxes that are imposed for general purposes. In New York City the rentals are calculated to yield at least ten per cent. on the investment to cover all expenses and net five per cent. The local taxes and servitudes require at least one-third of the annual rentals of the property to do this. This is of importance to rent-payers and all those employed by rent-payers.

When assessors value property for annual taxation after any one or more local improvements, the increased valuation is founded upon the cost of the improvements, whatever they are, and generally the valuation of some particular property, owing to its location, is increased much more than the cost for the improve

ments.

Improved real estate and the structures upon it are valued according to the actual amount of rent production. Unimproved real estate is valued according to its prospective rent production without the cost of improvements, whatever they may be. In assessing land for general taxation, its valuation and the structures thereon are valued flat; that is, there is no deduction for any mortgage, judgment or lien thereon, or any indebtedness of the owner, which are allowed on assessments of personal property.

When the bare land is to be taxed, its value should be estimated according to the profit of an appropriate structure upon it, less the cost of the structure. This is, in effect, the taxation of the "unearned increment," which Mill and some other writers lay so much stress on as belonging to the public. It can be seen that a tax rate of two and one-fourth per cent. on the land and the street and sewer construction, which the land paid for, will be a larger economic rent to the public than about six per cent. investment ⚫ on the original land.

The actual unearned increment of land is its value in a condition before the hand of man has increased its utility by improvements on and about it, or added matters that render it of increased market value. The same is true of any other kind of property and material used or demanded by the needs and wants of man, whether in civilized or savage life.

Besides the taxation for city purposes on these valuations, the State tax for general purposes and for schools in other localities, and the canal tax, are applied by rate to these conditions of this kind of property.

It can readily be seen that all these improvements and local appliances would not be brought about voluntarily by those who have to bear the immediate expense of them. They must be and are left to some department of the city government to initiate and approve and proceed with, with the ultimate view of the greatest good to the greatest number of the citizens at large, now, as well as in the future. The progress of such work, by legislative requirements, exhibits the utilitarian motive as well as the altruistic effect that can be accomplished in social conditions. It is thus that streets and sewers are made in places in the suburbs that are not built up and not now used. Where their use is now required, or soon will be needed, streets should be at once constructed, so that buildings can be erected, and by increasing their supply thus help reduce the rents and induce the construction and growth of local industries and give employment near homes, thus saving the necessity, time and expense of transportation and traveling, to meet any of the numerous wants of a community. There is much room for further legislation to make tax burdens much lighter on real estate in such manner as will be more enticing to the capitalist and builders, and more economical and satisfactory to rent-payers in large cities.

(Same subject to be continued.)

COSMOPOLITAN HEALTH STUDIES.*

By F. L. OSWALD, M. D.

Author of "Physical Education," "The Remedies of Nature," Etc.

II. GERMANY.

The eight thousand victories of the Roman legions seemed to justify the belief that the destinies of the civilized universe would be permanently controlled by the natives of Western Italy and their southern allies, the Latin and Umbrian tribes of the Caucasian race.

The warrior-city on the Tiber did not doubt her ability to hold her own against all comers, but in the course of the century preceding the beginning of our chronological era the confidence of that hope was seriously shaken by the results of several encounters with the barbarians of the trans-Alpine woodlands. Two Roman armies that attempted to defend the fords of the lower Rhone. were defeated in a manner more alarming than the most serious reverses of the campaign against the veteran cavalry of Hannibal. Without tactics, without defensive armor, with clumsy swords and still more primitive battle-axes, the shaggy invaders routed a detachment of fifteen legions and almost annihilated another, though the Roman commanders, in both cases, had the prestige of a long military experience.

"No skill of fence will avail against giants who can knock down through every parry" was the report of the survivors, and that experience was confirmed by the events of the battle of Vercellae, where the vanguard of the Teutons used leaping-poles to vault over the spears of the Roman battle front, and thus force the fight at close quarters. One of their war-chiefs, though handicapped by a panoply of ponderous weapons, could leap over eight horses, standing side by side, and walk erect under a burden equal to the weight of four full-grown men. In a campaign on the north side of the German Danube a Roman commander attempted to create a panic by turning loose half a hundred lions and driving them into the camp of the barbarians, but with an unexpected result: "They mistook them for dogs," says the Roman historian, "and knocked their brains out."

*Continued from page 532, vol. xlvi.

What combinations of political, religious and social despotism it must have taken to tame down that giant race to the generation of sluggards described in Madame de Stael's Allemagne and the philippics of Ludwig Boerne?-"law-abiding Philistines, twelve of them make a dozen, and if any one attacks them they will shriek for police protection."

"What makes that strange, snoring sound?" asked a tourist in the storm-swept defiies of the St. Gotthardt Pass.

"That? That's Germany sleeping," said one of his traveling companions; "snoring under the paternal government of one hundred and twenty-eight legitimate despots."

But it is hard to keep a stout race narcotized-as hard as to "keep down a good man," and the awakening came eighty years ago, when the athlete-patriot, Jahn, preached the gospel of physical regeneration.

Municipal Turner-leagues and private gymnastic associations sprang up by thousands; boys could be seen training on the public streets, and girls on garden lawns; horizontal bars sprouted in pleasure resorts, on the village green, in the recess yard of the metropolitan schoolhouse.

Government officials at first attempted to discourage the movement, with its alarming tendencies to a novel sort of enthusiasm; but the revival soon defied control. In less than ten years it spread from East Prussia to the Rhine, and from the Baltic to the Alps, with results which, before long, revealed its sanitary benefits. Round-shouldered schoolboys straightened out; the physical standard of recruits improved; prize-turners could be identified in any crowd by their elastic gait and their hale, self-reliant appearance.

That self-reliance was apt to manifest itself in other ways, not altogether convenient to the champions of feudalism, but, at the risk of such drawbacks, half a dozen German Governments decided to patronize the spirit they could not hope to repress. Physical training was made a branch of common-school education, and eventually of military drill, till the population of the entire Teuton confederacy had become a race of gymnasts.

A leaven of passive resistance remained, especially in the centres of beer-worship, and, by way of popularizing the Turnerbund, its leaders arranged frequent excursions to the woodlands and mountains, thus appealing to that outing passion that makes all Teutons kin. The descendants of the old, freeborn forestdwellers still day-dream of greenwood sports as the nearest