THE A B C OF TAXATION 
•3° 
marked illustration that actual conditions call for an 
apportionment the very reverse of this academic 
treatment of the subject. Thus: 
ASSESSED VALUATIONS LAND BUILDINGS TOTAL 
33 cities $1,088,329,177 $998,896,745 $2,087,225,922 
37 large towns 139,965,083 178,810,787 318,775,870 
70 cities and towns . . . $1,228,294,260 $1,177,707,532 $2,406,001,792 
•284 small towns 123,986,089 216,017,954 340,004,043 
354 cities and towns . . . $1,352,280,349 $1,393,725,486 $2,746,005,835 
Thus the land valuations of the 284 small towns 
($123,986,089) and of the 70 cities and large towns 
($1,228,294,260) are seen to be about in the ratio of 
one to ten. Nor must it be overlooked, that there is a 
larger proportion of urban property in small towns 
than of farm property in the large ones. The state 
census, which gives farm values by themselves, corrob 
orates the above estimate that the Massachusetts 
farm land value left for the agricultural illustration of 
Ricardo’s law of rent does not; exceed one-tenth of the 
assessed land value of the whole state. 
Putting the foregoing statements together—that 
is, considering at once the relative weight assigned 
to the two, as indicated by the treatment of the 
authorities, and the relative importance of the subjects 
—we are confronted with the spectacle of fourteen 
times too much attention given for a hundred years to 
ten times too small a matter. Proceeding now to the 
multiplication of fourteen by ten, we are brought face to 
face with the mathematical conclusion that in order to 
restore a lost equilibrium, the schools might reasonably 
from now on give one hundred and forty times more 
study to the subject of urban or city rent than they 
have been in the habit of doing in the past.