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Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL
Newspaper Page Text
SOME BIG JUMPS MADE BY THE PERSONAL TAX CREW The mills of the personal property tax assessors have finished their 1916 grinding. There is the usual amount of peo ple penalized for failing to file their schedules, among them a few of the wealthy. Others got caught in the act of deliberately undervaluing their assessment A few of the big fellows were brought to time for dodging their duty as taxpayers, but in general there is no change in the everlasting system of the poor paying nearly all of the taxes. While it is true that some of the rich corporations and individuals of the city are paying enormous taxes, it is probably that no corporation or millionaire is paying as much in pro portion as the average salaried man, and most of the wealthy are paying a mere pittance of tax. Victor F. Lawson, for instance, who owns the Daily News, the best paying newspaper proposition in the west, who is reputed to have an in come of $1,000,000 a year and who lives in an expensively furnished mansion on Lake Shore drive, pays taxes on an assessment of but $125, 000. Mrs. Potter Palmer, 1350 Lake Shore drive, pays taxes on but $120, 611, and the estate of Potter Palmer, deemed one of the richest in the country, pays taxes on but $193, 344. Th Cudahy families get by very easily; Mrs. Michael Cudahy pays on $20,000; Jos. M., on $20,000, and E. A. on $40,000. Judging from the amount of personal property for which the Cudahy's are assessed, it really must not be worth the work and worry to be owners of one of the country's three biggest packing houses. B. A. Eckhart, 1530 Lake Shore drive, brother of School Comm'r Eckhart, big miller and staunch enemy of union labor, was penalized 50 per cent. His penalty is $22,500. Ira N. Morris, 1400 Lake Shore drive, minister to Sweden, was the most heavily penalized'for failure to file a schedule, an increase of $175, 000 being imposed in his personalty. Jas. A. Pugh, 70 Goethe, was penal ized $3,000 and John S. Miller, 1443 . Astor, big corporation attorney, was 1 penalized $90,000. The largest payer of personalty taxes is the Commonwealth Edison Co., which was assessed $31,250,000, an increase of half a million over last year. The assessment of the Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co. was raised to $16, 000,000 from the $14,000,000 figure which the company submitted. The biggest jump was probably that of the Continental & Commer cial National bank, which was as sessed $17,846,000, an increase of $971,000 over 1915. o o THESE STRIKERS PLAYED A SAFE GAME FOR PROTECTION To escape the full force of an in junction similar to those issued agairist the striking tannery, clothing and musical instrument workers, the Metal Polishers, Buffers and Platers' union entered Judge Denis Sullivan's court and agreed that its members would not picket the plants where there are strikes. ''This is a serious curtailment of what we consider our rights," said Thos. Dolan, business agent of the union, "but we may at least look at the strike-bound factories and even walk by them if we. please, which is more than strikers can do who are bound by the pernicious injunctions some judges have been issuing at the f request of the manufacturers." The metal polishers are on strike' at the following plants: Alex T. Bag ley Co., 312 S. Canal; Aetna Polish ers, 126 S. Clinton; National Co., 609 Fulton; Domestic, 1121 Washington; Mercilo & Sons,. 1911 Fulton; Co-Op-erative Co., 1920 Kinzie, ;