pair of blankets. If the ground is wet they first spread a rubber blanket, and if it is raining, they spread another rubber blanket over the top. The Indians can roll themselves in one buffalo robe so as to cover their heads and feet too, and lay and sleep in that manner.

June 20. A cloudy day and the mosquitoes are very bad.

June 21. Camped for noon near the O K store and saw General Curtis' block house. It is made of red cedar posts like railroad ties, but longer. They are set on end in the ground and project up about ten feet above the ground. It is built in a square about 300 feet long on each side and each corner is made with a projection or a small square built the same as the other, only about fifteen feet square each way. They were joined together in just such a shape as if the corner had been cut off of the large square and the two openings set together. These small squares had port holes so as to give free range of each wall of the large square. After noon we got to and crossed Wood river

and camped near it for the night.

June 22 and 23 was spent in reaching Fort Kearney Military Reservation and in getting ready to begin the survey.

June 24 we began the survey from the northwest corner of the reservation to the north, and in a few hours were out of sight of the line of travel, and here over a dry and sandy country, with no sign that any white person had ever been here before, with only the pranks of the wild animals to break the monotony of the scene, we worked day after day. On the morning of the fourth of July we fired off our guns, and then the same old routine, but soon after I got sick and quit the work. The people, though strangers, were as kind as they could well be under the circumstances. It is not a good country to be sick in; but after lying in a tent for a long time I got better, but did not make much. I came back and took a district school near Lancaster, and soon got stout and ready to try the west again.

THE COST OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT-THEN AND NOW.

Read at the Annual Meeting, January 15, 1896. Written by Hon. J. Sterling Morton.

The organic act of the territory of Nebraska became law in May, 1854. A proclamation was issued by Acting Governor Cuming in December of that year, convening the territorial legislative assembly on the Omaha townsite, in January, 1855. That session of the territorial legislative assembly was the inauguration of local civil government in Nebraska. Counties were instituted and their boundaries described and established. All the machinery for neighborhood government was set up ready for use. Under it each community, as a corporation, entered upon civil life penniless. No county, city, or town corporation came into being as the heir of anything more than the right to govern itself. The power, however, to levy taxes was vested in each communal corporation. The county and the city had each the power to levy taxes only for public purposes. The savages, whom that small settlement of frontiersmen, as proprietors, succeeded, had no such thing as legislation or taxation. They had not emerged from barbarism and tribal relations. The pioneers had, however, in their own race history recorded the fact that, while in a barbaric state each individual for himself had to protect his person, its earnings, and its liberty, and that civilization began when humanity emerged from its primitive condition and declared that each person was entitled to life, liberty, and its own earnings, and that therefore all must be combined for the defense and preservation of the rights of each. This was the best aim and duty of civilization. In fact, up to this date the principal business of civilization and its laws is to protect, by the power of all, the natural rights of each. To accomplish this, the power to tax has been evolved and vested in governments.

Taxation in the territory of Nebraska was never oppressive. To it the United States appropriated each year $20,000, out of which sum the territorial legislative assembly was paid its per diem and the printing of its journals and its statutes provided for, together with the postages and mileages and all other incidental expenses of that body. And to show how frugal and economical the management of federal finances in Nebraska was in those days, it is only necessary to point to the fact that after thirteen years of territorial existence, with an annual appropriation of the sum named, and without any debts, and all expenses paid to date, Nebraska territory, in March, 1867, became a state of the American Union and had $40,000 of unexpended balances remaining to her credit in the United States treasury out of that yearly appropriation, which to-day would be considered quite insufficient to meet the annual expenses of an ordinary board of county commissioners in one of the smallest eastern counties of the state. That annual appropriation of $20,000, however, paid the legislating and printing expenses of a territory which at that time embraced, for purposes of government and protection, all that vast area which is now the two Dakotas, Wyoming, and a part of Colorado. By the census of 1860 the territory contained between 128,000 and 129,000 population. This number of people was scattered in sparsely settled counties from north to south and east to west over an area of 75,000 square miles. Nevertheless, protection to life, liberty, and property was almost as satisfactory then as it is now. County organizations along the river were fully as well managed then as they are now. The counties of Richardson, Nemaha, Otoe, Cass, Sarpy, Douglas, Washington, Burt, and Dakota boasted then as reputable boards of commissioners, as honest and as well qualified and efficient sheriffs, judges, treasurers, and clerks as they have to-day. In 1865, two years before the admission of the state, taxes in Richardson county were twelve mills on the dollar. Ten years later, notwithstanding a promise made everywhere of lower taxes by the advocates of statehood, in the same county they were sixteen mills on the dollar. In 1885-twenty years later-they were

twenty-five mills on the dollar, and in 1895 were still twenty-four mills upon the dollar. But the government of Richardson county is no more satisfactory to-day, as far as the protection of the life, liberty, and property of its citizens is concerned, than it was in 1855, when taxes were still lower than in 1865, though the actual amount of levy for the former year I have been unable to ascertain.

The average annual taxation from 1865 to 1895 in the county of Richardson has been 19 mills on a dollar's valuation. Why is it that a county which by nature-taking into consideration timber, water, and rock for building purposes-is, perhaps, by far the best county in the whole commonwealth, should have thus increased its taxation without materially or perceptibly improving its means of protecting, property and citizens?

Nemaha county, on the north of Richardson, likewise on the Missouri river, began, in 1865, with a taxation of 115 mills on the dollar, ran up to 17 mills in 1885, and declined to 15 mills in 1895. But this county has scaled down (in some of its precincts) vast sums of indebtedness unwisely incurred by the voting of the public funds to private enterprises, like railroads. This misuse of the power to tax, which has raised funds out of all of the people for the purpose of bestowing them upon a few of the people who have projected and constructed for themselves railroads and other enterprises, has created for taxpayers in the state of Nebraska millions of dollars of unlawful and burdensome indebtedness. The town of Brownville, formerly the county seat of Nemaha, has, in its career, its life and death, illustrated the truth of the statement of Chief Justice Marshall that "the power to tax is the power to destroy." That thrifty and attractive little village was originally one of the most prosperous communities in the whole territory. In fact, it was the first point whence grain and other farm products were shipped from Nebraska to an eastern or southern market, via Missouri river steamboats and St. Louis. But in economic blindness its citizens voted $40,000 for the purpose of paying for grading a rail road from Phelps, in the state of Missouri, down to the river

landing opposite Brownville. This sum was given in the bonds. of Brownville precinct, said bonds drawing 10 per cent. interest. The grade was completed, and while the people were tied to this debt and for some years regularly paid the interest, there never were any ties placed upon the grade nor any cars run thereupon, for the reason that no railroad was ever constructed from Phelps to Brownville. During many years the people of Brownville precinct continued to pay for that folly and fallacy. "evertheless, even after this lesson, the people of Brownvill、 were induced again to vote a large subsidy to the Brownville & Fort Kearney railroad. This line was graded, tied and ironed for about nine miles. Over it, with some considerable timidity and no less difficulty, an engine and a few cars several times carefully made trips. The bonds were issued, the interest began to gnaw upon the property of Brownville and to depress the spirit. of enterprise which had characterized it; and then, to further illustrate the fallacy of taxing all for the purpose of raising money to give to the few who compose a corporation, and to emphasize its wickedness, the owners of the Brownville & Fort Kearney railroad tore up its tracks and abandoned the project. But they did not abandon the bonds nor relinquish their claim upon the right to use the taxing power in that precinct for the purpose of raising money to meet the coupons as they annually matured. The result was that taxes in Brownville ran up to 17 cents on the dollar. Brownville property was undesirable. No one demanded it. Its value declined with great velocity. A beautiful home, like that of ex-United States Senator Thomas W. Tipton, consisting of a pretty, substantial two-story brick house, honestly built, well finished, with all modern conveniences, and twelve lots, beautifully located and adorned with trees, was sold for something less than one thousand dollars. The county seat was removed, mercantile houses and banks deserted the townsite, until in some of the best buildings on the main street bats and owls found their most secluded and comfortable roosting places. Grass grew in streets that had been resonant with the rumble of farm wagons and brisk with the traffic of a rich and prosperous county.