improve their property and beautify and discouraging land speculation;
and when the Government wanted land owned by private parties who were
citizens of the Republic (for no foreigner was permitted by law to own
land directly or indirectly, so that the curse of Absentee Landlordism
which was the ruin of Ireland, should never blight the happiness of the
people of Eurasia), they added up the assessments for the previous five
years and divided them by five and added twenty per cent. to it in payment
for the land, together with fair compensation for any buildings there
might be on it; so that if the owner swore to a low valuation on his land
he was the loser; but the District Court, sitting as a Board of
Equalization every year, could fix the value of the land at what they
considered proper.



CHAPTER XI.

THE INCOME TAX.

The income tax was a graduated income tax beginning with persons having
on income one thousand dollars a year and above what they laid out in
improving their property. All persons whose income was less than one
thousand dollars paid no income tax. The tax was one per cent. on one
thousand dollars, the rate increasing with the amount of income up to
fifty thousand dollars a year, when it was fifty per cent., leaving the
owner twenty-five thousand dollars, and for all incomes over fifty
thousand dollars a year the surplus over twenty-five thousand dollars
went to the Government and as a result of this wise policy there were no
Jay Goulds or J. D. Rockefellers in Eurasia. All money received from
land and income taxes went into the District Fund for the expenses of