THE TAXATION QUESTION.
Parallel Cases—Other Colleges are
Exempted.
The decision of the New Haven
-Assessors, in entering certain prop-
erty of Yale University on the town
assessment list for taxation, continues
to excite much discussion and Search
for legal precedents and decisions in
this and other States. <As to the
equities of the question there is con-
siderable difference of opinion in New
Haven.
INCIDENTAL QUESTIONS,
There are several interesting by-
questions in connecticn with the tax-
ation of Yale property, that will be
of considerable importance, should
the matter be brought into the courts.
One of these is whether the Yale
Field, which has cost about $70,000,
would under the law be exempt from
taxation, if the outside corporation
holding it should turn it over to the
University. ‘The Field is in the town
of Orange (West Haven), but the
same rule as in New Haven would
apply. It is at present taxed.
The other question is in regard to
private buildings, used exclusively for
students, which are built and con-
trolled by private parties, such as the
Hutchinson, Kent Hall, and a num-
ber of other apartment houses. Would
these be taxed or would they. be ex-
empt from taxation in case . they
should pass into the hands of the
University and should be used for
dormitories?
In case the matter is brourst into
the courts, as it probably will je, the
course of legal events outlined would
probably be as follows: The Cor-
poration would appeal from the de-
cision of the Assessors to the local
Board of Relief, which would be ex-
pected to confirm the act of the As-
sessors. Then there would be an ap-
peal to the Superior Court of the
State, next an appeal to the Connec-
ticut Supreme Court, and very like-
ly, at last to the Supreme Court of
the United States; -probably -on the
question of the contract rights of
Yale under her charter. A long and
expensive litigation is thus forecast.
THE CASE IN OTHER STATES,
In response to inquiries regarding
the taxation of property of other col-
leges in the Kast the following state-
ment has been received from. the
treasurer of Williams College:—
“The Assessors of this town have
this year for the first time taxed the
Infirmary Building, Weston Field (the
ball grounds) and some vacant land
about some buildings. The College
w.ll probably pay it under protest
and sue to recover it or have it re-
funded.
“Last year the Assessors taxed some
of the houses occupied by the pro-
fessors, which act has been tried and
we now await the decision of the
eourt.’’
From Cornell University the fol-
lowing reply was obtained:—
“The question of taxation of prop-
erty in this State has never’ been
raised in our case. We have no dor-’
mitory system, although we have one
or two buildings which are used al-
most exclusively as residence build-
ings. Several of our professors have
built residences on the University es-
tate, lots having been leased to them
for that purpose. These houses are
assessed to the professors as ‘‘chattel
real,’ so long as they hold title to
same, but as-fast as they become the
property of the University, they have
been stricken from the tax roll.’”’
~ THE GENERAL ARGUMENT FOR EXEMPTION.
A number of years ago, an article
appeared in “The Baptist Quarterly,”
written by the Rev. Henry M. King,
on “The Relation of the Free State
to Education,’ which bears indirectly
upon the question. Among other
things it says:—
“The higher schools, academies, col-
leges, aS well as professional schools,
ought to receive from the State no
srants in aid, but to depend solely
for their maintenance upon the tuition
of students and the benevolence of
friends. This lays the whole burden
of the responsibility for their exist-
erce and support, their character and
YALE ALU saw I
usefulness, upon the intelligence and
generosity of the people.
“To cripple them, in any way to
hinder them in their beneficent work;
to put such institutions, which exist
not for themselves or their founders,
but for the whole state, on the same
level and in the same category with
institutions or corporations which
have no other end in view than the
dididends they may be made to de-
clare to their stockholders, would b2
urworthy of the enlightened spirit of
the age, would be a relapse into bar-
barism.
‘In the majority report of the Com-
missioners on Taxation appointed by
the Legislature of Massachusetts, it
was said that ‘property which passes
out of private hands, a free-will of-
fering for public uses, and which loses
thereby its entire power of reproduc-
ing itself for private gain or, emolu-
ment, deserves very different treat-
ment, for it must ever stand in a
very. different relation to the state
from that which private parties can
still control for private ends.’
“This ought not to be disputed.
Such property has an income, but it
is incalculable, and accrues, not to
those who surrendered the property,
but wholly to the State.
tually State property, managed in the
interest of the State, and at no ex-
pense to the State. For all the pur-
poses for which property is usual-
ly held and valued by private citizens,
it is valueless. It has been surren-
dered forever.
of President Eliot, of Cambridge:
‘Exemption from taxation is not a
form of State aid, in the usual sense
of those words, it is an inducement
or encouragement held out by the
State to private parties or private
corporations, to establish or maintain
institutions which are of benefit ‘to
the State;’ that is, to surrender a cer-
tain amount of their private property,
relinquishing all claims upon it, for
the public good, for the general ‘wel-
fare of the State.’ ”
SRE ii cA At Veron e
Subjects for Townsend Pre-
miums,
The subjects for the Townsend - De...
“Forest. prize essays are the follow-
ing :—
1. The Prometheus of Aeschylus and
the Prometheus of Shelley.
2. The King’s Peace.
3. The Grail Legend in English.
4. The French Revolution and ithe
English Poets. -
5. The Ethics of Horace.
6. George Meredith.
7. The French Canadian.
8. The Literary Politicians of the
Highteenth Century.
9. The Housing of the Poor,
10. Hellenism in English Literature
of the Nineteenth Century.
11. The American Protective Asso-
ciation.
——_—_+o—__—__
Philosophical Club Meetings.
The first meeting of the Philosophi-
cal club this year was held,in Osborn
hall on Monday evening. The club
was reorganized for the work of the
year, and the following officers were
elected:. President, Professor Ladd;
Vice President, Mr. Clark; Secretary
and Treasurer, Mr. Davies; Executive
Committee, Dr. H. Davies, Mr. Green,
Mr. Kendall, Mr. Lloyd and Dr. Buck-
ner. The annual work of the club will
consist of papers by its members,
book reviews, and current literature,
and lectures by distinguished phycho-
legists and lecturers. The meeting of
the club will be open to the professors
and students of the University.
At the meeting last Monday night
a report for detailed work was
brought up and read, which will be
added to at another meeting this
evening. The constitution was read
and also papers by Mr. Lloyd and Dr.
Buckner.
a
Dartmouth won the championship of
the New England College League com-
posed of Dartmouth, Amherst § and
Williams, on Saturday, by. defeating
Amherst 32-0.
The preparatory schools represented
on the University eleven are: An-
dover 8, St. Paul’s 2, Brooklyn Poly-
technic Institute 2, and one each from
Brooklyn Latin, Hill School, Hotch-
kiss, Groton, St. Marks and Adelphi
Academy.
It is vit-_
Moreover in the words—
experienced in
admission),
WEEKLY
tHE BOOK “SHELF.
{Conducted by ALBERT LEE, ’91.]
The publication of a new book from
the pen of Ian MacLaren is an event
interesting not alone to the general
reader but especially so to Yale men
on account of Dr. Watson’s recent
visit to the University. It is to be
regretted, however, that “Kate Car-
negie’ (New York: Dodd, Mead &
Co.) should have been placed upon the
market in such a poor form as almost
to discourage and repel the prospec-
tive purchaser. This is an injustice
both to author and reader, and the
latter will soon learn to resent it in a.
manner so effective as to compel a
higher grade 6£ mechanical work.
“Kate Carnegie’ is a longer story
than ‘“‘Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush,”
but it will not achieve the popularity
of its predecessor. The present tale
can hardly be considered as one of
absorbing interest. It treats in a dis-
connected fashion of the love of Car-
michael, a clergyman, for Kate Car-
negie, a young woman of Jacobite pa-
rentage who finds it difficult to rec-
oncile her affections to her political
and religious beliefs. The book ought
rather to be considered as a Series of
sketches than as a novel, and conse-
quently it lacks just that thread of
continuity which is required to pull
a goodly number of readers over the
rough obstacles of a Scotch dialect.
Dr. Watson has treated his several
subjects with grace, pathos, and some
humor; but the subjects themselves
are not such as will appeal to a very
large class of readers in America.
To turn from bad book-making to
good, we have Mr. Gilbert Parker’s
“A Romany of ihe Snows” and Mr.
Clinton Ross’s, “The Scarlet Coat”
(New York: Stone & Kimball). There
is a certain physical pleasure to be
the mere handling of
such books as these, and althcugh
the contents of the former are a trifle
“disappointing after “The Seats of the
Mighty” and ‘An Adventurer of the
North,” the book~is nevertheless a
welcome addition to short-story liter-
ature. While I know nothing what-
ever about it, (and am very possibly
displaying my gross ignorance by the
I hazard the guess that
the stories contained in “A Romany
of the Snows” are not the fruits of
Mr. Parker’s latest efforts, but rather
a collection from the crops of earlier
years which he has now been tempted
to bind together by reason of the suc-
cess that our friend Pierre has had.
The title story is set away toward
the end of the book, and perhaps ad-
visedly; for it is not the best of the
lot. Its name graces the book’s cover
because it has the best ring,—in fact,
all the titles of these stories have a
good sound, and in this respect they
are frequently ahead of the tales they
qualify.
I should choose ‘‘Three Command-
ments in the Vulgar Tongue” as the
choice of the series, but, aS with many
of those that follow it, the reader is
painfully aware or exactly what is
going to happen on the last page from
the moment he has turned the first.
This is the feature of Mr. Parker’s
work in this book—this lack of con-
structive art—which makes me sus-
pect the date of its manufacture. On
the other hand, there are strong and
skilful passages, here and_ there,
(those especially that deal with the
atmosphere of the north country,)
that are equal to anything we have
seen in any of Mr. Parker’s other
_ books.
Mr. Ross has given us a very pretty
little story of revolutionary days in
his tale of ‘“‘The Scarlet Coat.’ There
is nothing particularly thrilling or ex-
citing about it, but the author tells
us pleasinzly of a pretty girl and of a
frank young patriot, and the whole is
set off with a lot of historical infor-
mation that Mr. Ross has gathered
out of books. The fiction, however, is
by far the more entertaining reading;
but I suppose the historical portions
are necessary to the scheme, for no
doubt a historical novelette without
any history would be like ‘Hamlet,
ete., etc., ete.”
Of the more serious literature of the
day we have “Briefs for Debate on
Current Political, Economic, and So-
cial Topics.” (New York: Longmans,
Green & Co.) I do not know much
about debating, and my interest in
the subject is awakened only about
once a year when we “play Harvard,”
but I judge that this book will prove
a valuable aid to all debaters, and the
bibliography it contains seems e€xX-
haustive. The work is largely the re-
sult of Harvard effort and research,
and proves that the men of Cambridge
have done hard and careful labor. I
advise our Yale speakers to take ad-
vantage of. it.
We have also received: “The Pu-
ritan in England and New England,”
by Ezra Hoyt Byington, D. D., (Bos-
ton: Roberts Bros.); “Football,” by
Walter Camp and Lorin F. Deland,
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.);
“Nugae Literatriae,” by William Mat-
thews, (Boston: Roberts Bros.); ‘‘Her
Senator” and “The Love Adventures
of Al Mansur,’ by: A.C. Gunter, and
“Her Foreign Conquest,’ by R. H.
Savage, (New York: The Home Pub-
lishing Co.)
Se oe
Song Recital by Mr. Wither-
spoon,
Mr. Herbert Witherspoon, ’95, gave a
song recital at Harmonie Hall, in this
city, on the evening of Wednesday,
Nov. ii. Mr. Witherspoon was as-
sisted by Mrs. Julie Wyman, the
mezzo soprano, of New York, and by
Mr. H. Stanley Knight at the piano.
The program was delightfully select-
ed. Mr. Witherspoon sang Vulcan’s
couplets from ‘Philemon and Baucis”
and songs by Schumann, Giordani,
Chaminade and others. Mrs. Wy-
man’s songs were mostly of the mod-
ern French school which she inter-
prets so perfectly. Mr. Witherspoon
sings with finished style and his voice
which has broadened and deepened
since his graduation from college has
lost none of the mellowness and
suavity of tone which made him so
popular then. The ushers -were: Mr.
M. Gavin ’95, Mr. J. Thompson ’9,
Mr. H. Cheney ’99 and Mr. E. F.
Newton.
esate <2 cates
The results of Saturday’s. games are
as follows: Boston A. A. 8, Harvard
6; Pennsylvania 27, State College 0;
Cornell 0, Williams 0; Andover 28,
Exeter 0; Dartmouth 32, Amherst 0;
Carlisle Indians 30, Cincinnati Univer-
sity 0; Elizabeth A. C. 6, Orange A.
Or 6é.
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