Excerpt from Biennial Report of the Wisconsin State Tax Commission to the Legislature The only authority conferred upon the tax commission to secure the equality in assessments enjoined by the constitution is by reassess ment of entire municipalities under subdivision (2) of section of the statutes, or by correction of specific assessments under subdivision (2) of section Reassessment of all taxable property in the district can only be made on the petition of the owners of not less than five per cent of the taxable property therein. In the case of non residents or small taxpayers it is often difficult, if not impossible, to secure the required number of signers. But as the law becomes better understood taxpayers are showing greater diligence in looking after their assessments, and as former legislatures have refused to extend this provision the tax commission is not applying for a change in this statute. The correction of specific assessments or classes of property under subdivision (2) of section of the statutes may be made on the written complaint of a single taxpayer, but no increase of assessments can be made without the signature of two additional taxpayers. This remedy is not available at all unless applied for within twenty days after the adjournment of the board of review and correction must be made before the first day of November. In many cases taxpayers do not learn of the discrimination against them until taxpaying time, too late to avail themselves of this remedy. Many of the assess ments complained of at such time show such unmistakable violation of law and discrimination as to call loudly for relief, and property owners are unable to understand what the tax commission is for if it can not correct such flagrant abuses. Many deserving appeals have to be denied because of this rigid limitation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, twin revolutions swept through American business and government. In business, large corporations came to dominate entire sectors and markets. In government, new services and agencies, especially at the city and state levels, sprang up to ameliorate a broad spectrum of social problems. In The Price of Progress, R. Rudy Higgens-Evenson offers a fresh analysis of therelationship between those two revolutions. Using previously unexploited data from the annual reports of state treasurers and comptrollers, he provides a detailed, empirical assessment of the goods and services provided to citizens, as well as the resources extracted from them, by state governments during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.Focusing on New York, Massachusetts, California, and Kansas, but including data on 13 other states, his comparative study suggests that the "corporate state" originated in tax policies designed to finance new and innovative government services. Business and government grew together in a surprising and complex fashion. In the late nineteenth century, services such as mental health care for the needy and free elementary education for all children created new strains on the states' old property tax systems. In order to pay for newly constructed state asylums and schools, states experimented for the first time with corporate taxation as a source of revenue, linking state revenues to the profitability of industries such as railroads and utilities. To control their tax bills, big businessesintensified lobbying efforts in state legislatures, captured important positions in state tax bureaus, and sponsored a variety of government-efficiency reform organizations. The unintended result of corporate taxation—imposed to allow states to fulfill their responsibilities to their citizens—was the creation of increasingly intimate ties between politicians, bureaucrats, corporate leaders, and progressive citizens. By the 1920s, a variety of "corporate states" had proliferated across the nation, each shaped by a particular mix of taxation and public services, each offering a case study in how the business of America, as President Calvin Coolidge put it, became business. -- Tonya K. Flesher

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