THE “JUUL” ACT 
 
 ITS HISTORY 
 
 AND PRACTICAL OPERATION 
 
 A TALK BEFORE THE 
 JOHN MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL 
 BY COLIN C. H. FYFFE 
 
 DECEMBER 16, 1904 
 

 
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 in 2018 with funding from 
 
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 HISTORY AND PRACTICAL OPERATION OF 
 
 THE “JUUL” ACT. 
 
 
 The Juul Act is known in the Statutes as an act entitled 
 “An Act Concerning the Levy and Extension of Taxes/’ approved 
 May 9, 1901, in force July 1, 1901. The whole object of this 
 Act is to reduce the aggregate rates of taxation, with certain 
 exclusions, to 5 per cent, of the assessed valuation. As a matter 
 of fact, it is directed at Chicago alone, for there are so many 
 exclusions from the reduction except in cities of 100,000 popula¬ 
 tion or more that there is no reduction in the State except in 
 Chicago. I think I will be able to show you that the Act has 
 certain very bad features from a financial point of view. I shall 
 also take the liberty to discuss the question whether the Juul Act 
 as it stands to-day under the decisions of the Supreme Court of 
 this State is a constitutional Statute. 
 
 Now, I will explain something about the history of the 
 Act. I have already told you that the Revenue Act of 1898 was 
 desirable because of the bad system which existed before that 
 time for the assessment of the value of taxable property. The 
 prime object of the Act of 1898 was to bring out and make sub¬ 
 ject to taxation much more personal property than had been 
 reached previously. The object was principally personal prop¬ 
 erty. For many years, real estate had been getting much the 
 worst of it, as a payer of taxes. From about 1891 until almost 
 the present time—at least until 1898—there had been great de¬ 
 pression in the value of real estate in this city. It was difficult 
 to sell, and when sold the price was not what it had been. In the 
 meantime, the value of real estate for purposes of taxation was 
 being steadily put up by the assessors. I know cases in the down- 
 
 p 35463 
 
4 
 
 town district where the taxation in 1894, a year after the panic, 
 was more than 50 per cent higher than taxes on the same prop¬ 
 erty had been in 1891, although the value of the same property 
 had fallen off in the same time 40 or 50 per cent. Taxes were 
 
 - * < i 
 
 piled high upon real estate because the real estate was in sight; 
 and in times of depression it is much more difficult to get at a 
 man’s unseen personal property than it is to do that in times of 
 prosperity. Moreover, the people had acquired a bluntness of 
 conscience which enabled a man to state untruths under oath 
 with regard to the character and amount of his personal prop¬ 
 erty if he was not likely to be found out. Anyway, real estate 
 was getting more than its fair share of the tax. Therefore, came 
 the law of 1898, which we have already discussed in a former 
 talk, instituting the Board of Assessors and the Board of Review. 
 Now, it was thought that people would come forward much 
 more readily with the true schedules of their personal property 
 if they knew that there would be a lower limit to the tax rate. 
 As part of the general scheme of the Act, and indeed as a very 
 essential part of it, Section 49 was passed. This section was 
 the forerunner of the Juul Act. That part of the section com¬ 
 pelling the reduction of the aggregate rates reads as follows: 
 
 “In counties containing one hundred and twenty-five thou¬ 
 sand (125,000) or more inhabitants the amount to which any 
 county, city, township, school district or other municipal cor¬ 
 poration shall be allowed to become indebted in any manner, or 
 for any purpose, shall not hereafter exceed two and one-half per 
 cent, on the assessed value of the taxable property therein, to be 
 ascertained by the last assessment for State and county taxes 
 previous to the incurring of such indebtedness. In any munici¬ 
 pality or taxing district in any county or counties containing a 
 population of 125,000 or more inhabitants in which the aggre¬ 
 gate of the levies or taxes certified to the County Clerk exceeds 
 five per cent, a reduction shall be made by the County Clerk in 
 the taxes so certified so as to reduce the aggregate of such taxes 
 to five per cent, in the manner following, viz: 
 
 “The rate of county taxes throughout the county shall be 
 
5 
 
 fixed by reducing the aggregate rate of taxation in the munici¬ 
 pality or taxing district within the county in which such aggre¬ 
 gate rate is the highest to five per cent, by a pro rata reduction 
 of all the levies certified therein, exclusive of the State taxes. 
 The rate of each of the other kinds of tax levies shall be fixed in 
 the same manner, taking the highest rate of taxation in any part 
 of the municipality or other taxing district, or part thereof, as the 
 basis of ascertaining the rate of taxation to be levied by such 
 municipality or taxing district, and making the rate of taxation 
 within the limits thereof uniform, and reducing the aggregate 
 rate of taxation in each district in which it exceeds five per cent, 
 to five per cent.” 
 
 The first thing to be noticed is that Section 49 applies only 
 to Cook County, as Cook County is the only county in the State 
 having a population exceeding 125,000. Another noteworthy 
 point in Section 49 has nothing to do with the reduction or with 
 the Juul Act, but I want to call your attention to it because it 
 shows the animus of the section, and the short-sighted, I might 
 say, cheap policy which lay behind it. In counties containing 
 125,000 or more inhabitants no municipality may become in¬ 
 debted beyond 2per cent, on the assessed valuation. That is 
 a cut of one-half on the limit of 5 per cent. I am told that this 
 provision never received proper discussion in the Legislature. 
 There is a story, the truth of which I cannot vouch for, that this 
 reduction of the limit of indebtedness, was run in late in the 
 night before the passage of the bill. Today, it is hard to believe 
 that such a measure could have found any supporters. If it had 
 any real supporters then, public opinion now has completely 
 veered around. Today, one of the chief reasons for a new charter 
 is that the city’s indebtedness may be increased and that certain 
 great public improvements may be made, which can only be made 
 out of the proceeds of bond issues. If Section 49 had been allowed 
 to stand, the indebtedness feature of it would have crippled Chi¬ 
 cago permanently. 
 
 Now we come to the reduction of the aggregate rates under 
 
6 
 
 Section 49. Let us consider what the County Clerk was required 
 to do. He first must put aside the State rate, which is protected 
 by the Constitution, and, second, the rate for school-building- pur¬ 
 poses which the Act itself in a proviso excluded from the reduc¬ 
 tion ; then the County Clerk enquires whether there is any mu¬ 
 nicipality or taxing district in the county in which the aggregate 
 of the rates or levies certified to him exceeds 5 per cent of the 
 assessed valuation. If he finds any such district or districts, he 
 proceeds to reduce the rates to 5 per cent, as follows: He first 
 finds the County rate by reducing the aggregate rate in the dis¬ 
 trict of the County where the aggregate rate is the highest to 
 five per cent, by a pro rata reduction of all the rates except the 
 two excluded. This fixes all the rates levied in the particular dis¬ 
 trict. The County Clerk then finds the district where there is the 
 next highest aggregate rates. If any of the rates fixed in the first 
 reduction are in this second district, they are still considered 
 fixed, and are not subject to any further reduction. This is 
 because of the Constitutional provision that the taxes levied by 
 any corporate authority must be uniform within the jurisdiction 
 of the body imposing the tax. Hence the county rate must be 
 the same all over the county; the city rate must be the same in 
 Rogers Park and Austin and everywhere else in Chicago. But 
 the aggregate rates will differ in different parts of the same 
 taxing body. The Chicago rate, that is, the rate levied by the 
 City Council, extends all over the city; so does the County rate, 
 because the city lies wholly within Cook County. But the rate 
 levied by the Sanitary District did not then cover the extreme 
 northeast part of Chicago. On one side of a street a man paid 
 the Chicago rate and the Sanitary District rate too, because he 
 lived in both municipalities. Across the street a man lived in 
 Chicago and paid its rate, but was outside the territory of the 
 Sanitary District. Hence the rate of the Sanitary District did 
 not affect him. Outside the city limits to the southwest you pay 
 the Sanitary District rate, but not that of the city. Taking the 
 
7 
 
 rates made in the first reduction as fixed for good and all, the 
 County Clerk then reduces those of the next highest district to 
 5 per cent, and so the process is continued until the rates through¬ 
 out the County have been all reduced—except in those places 
 where no reduction is necessary because the aggregate rates do 
 not exceed 5 per cent. This would be either because the aggregate 
 original rates as levied did not exceed 5 per cent or because the 
 previous reduction of the County and other rates left the remain¬ 
 ing rates unaffected. 
 
 The first assessment made under the new Act was in 1899. 
 Hence in the first week of January, 1900, the County Clerk 
 started out to ascertain where was the greatest aggregate rate 
 and to make the reduction. In examining the rates all over the 
 County he found that the place where the aggregate rate was 
 highest was in the southern part of the Village of Riverside. If 
 you will look at a map of Cook County you will see that the Town 
 of Lyons, which lies just south of the Town of Proviso (in which 
 latter town Riverside is mainly situated) contains a part of 
 Riverside. Roughly speaking, it is that part of the Village of 
 Riverside which lies south of the C., B. & Q. tracks at the depot 
 and is bounded on the south by a loop of the Desplaines River. 
 I should say from recollection that it does not contain as much 
 as one-half square mile of territory. It is, of course, in the 
 County; it is also in the Village of Riverside, in the Town of 
 Lyons and in the Sanitary District, which latter at that time levied 
 under the law a tax three times as great as now. In addition to 
 all these taxes there was a road and bridge tax levied throughout 
 Lyons and there were two school taxes. One was a rate of 1.57 
 per cent, for School District No. 5. There was also a high school 
 tax in Riverside of .87 per cent. One or the other, I forget which, 
 of these taxes was said at the time to represent a temporary im¬ 
 provement in the educational system. The amount produced could 
 not have been more by reason of the increase, than $1,000, or 
 $2,000, but the result was to make this little territory the spot in 
 
8 
 
 Cook County where the aggregate rates were higher than any¬ 
 where else—a trifle higher than in the Town of West Chicago, 
 which had the next highest aggregate. So it came about that 
 in order that Riverside might have this small increase in its 
 taxes—because in order to produce a few thousand dollars out 
 of a very small assessed valuation you must have a rate of a 
 size that would produce perhaps many hundred thousand dollars 
 in the City or the Sanitary District or the County—the City and 
 the County and the Sanitary District had to lose hundreds of 
 thousands of dollars. This seems incredible. This is how it 
 happened. The County Clerk first put together all the rates in 
 that territory which had the highest aggregate rates; that was in 
 this little territory at Riverside. They amounted to about ~y 2 
 per cent. He then reduced them to 5 per cent, as before ex¬ 
 plained, taking the proper proportion. When the rates were 
 all reduced, the sum of the rates would be 5 per cent. You now 
 have fixed several rates. You have the County and the Sanitary 
 District, both of which enter into the aggregate rates in the City 
 of Chicago. But, as I have explained, you must have the same 
 rate for the County everywhere in the County. You must have 
 the same Sanitary District rate everywhere in the Sanitary Dis- 
 trict; hence those rates fixed at Riverside were fixed not merely 
 as the County and Sanitary District rates at Riverside, but as 
 the rates of those two taxing bodies all over their respective ter¬ 
 ritories. That is the first part of the process in showing how 
 Chicago and the County and the Sanitary District were affected. 
 The second is this: It became now the duty of the County Clerk 
 to fix the rates in the next highest district. The next highest 
 district in the year 1899 was the Town of West Chicago. The 
 County Clerk did not under Section 49 ascertain these rates by 
 adding up all the separate rates as originally levied and reducing 
 them to 5. He must take the County and Sanitary District as 
 already fixed, and his rates then will be the County (fixed), San¬ 
 itary District (fixed), the City corporate, the School Board, the 
 
9 
 
 Public Library, the West Town and the West Park rates—all 
 except the first two as originally levied. Now, anyone can see 
 at a glance that a great difference will be made to the Chicago 
 rate by the fact that the County and Sanitary District rates are 
 already fixed. It made a difference in the proportion when the 
 reduction of the City rate was made. A still greater difference 
 was made in the County and Sanitary District rates. Those 
 rates would have been fixed in the West Town had it not been 
 for the desire of the school trustees either of Riverside or of Dis¬ 
 trict No. 5 to add, no doubt properly, to their expenditures; be¬ 
 cause, of course, the higher any rate is made the lower will be 
 all the others after the reduction has been worked out. 
 
 Both the City and Sanitary District and the Board of Edu¬ 
 cation filed petitions for mandamus against the County Clerk 
 to compel him to extend the taxes in the same old way without 
 the reduction. The question also was raised in a case which 
 went to the Supreme Court in December, 1899—which was a 
 general attack on the Act. The City's case is Knopf v. The Peo¬ 
 ple, 185 Ill. 20. The ground upon which the Act was held un¬ 
 constitutional is very plain. You will remember the Constitution 
 of this State provides that no special act shall be passed where a 
 general law can be made applicable. This act was held uncon¬ 
 stitutional as against this provision of the Constitution for the 
 reason that villages and towns had their tax levies affected not 
 because of any characteristic in themselves, but for the mere rea¬ 
 son that they were situated in a county having 125,000 inhabitants. 
 The City of Evanston was the example taken by the Court. There 
 are half a dozen cities in the State of about the same size— 
 Joliet, Aurora, Springfield and Quincy. Now, there is no legal 
 reason why Evanston should have its taxes reduced to 5 per 
 cent, that would not also apply to these other towns. The only 
 reason why Evanston was subjected to the operation of the Act 
 was because of the mere fortuitous circumstance of its being 
 situated in a county of 125,000 inhabitants. There is a plain 
 
10 
 
 difference between this point and the point that arises in cases 
 where a law is made applicable only to cities of a population 
 greater than 100,000. Such statutes have been held valid in many 
 cases, where there was a rational connection between the classifi¬ 
 cation adopted and the subject matter of the Act. 
 
 An amusing feature of the case came from an argument 
 made for the constitutionality of the act to the effect that for 
 many years the tax payers had not told the truth about their 
 personal property, and that Section 49 was an inducement to 
 them to tell the truth. In the preceding year, 1899—the Court 
 was told—they had come forward to a greater extent than be¬ 
 fore and told the truth about their personal property. Having 
 done this, it was claimed it would now be unfair not to reduce 
 the rate as promised. The argument was that the tax payer 
 had been deceived into truthfulness and cajoled into honesty. 
 The Supreme Court made short work of this argument. 
 
 So Section 49 came to an end by the Knopf decision. That 
 was, as I have told you, late in January, 1900. That year the 
 Legislature did not sit, it being an even year. A great clamor 
 was raised against assessing the taxable property that year 
 upon its real value, for the reason that Section 49's reduction 
 no longer existed. The Assessors and the Board of Review 
 yielded to the outcry. The assessed valuation for Chicago in 
 1898 had been $226,000,000 for the real value; in the year 1899, 
 under the new act, it jumped to $345,000,000 for the assessed 
 valuation, which was one-fifth of the real value, but upon 
 Section 49 being found invalid by the courts, the Assessors 
 and the Board of Review deliberately and arbitrarily reduced 
 the assessment both of real estate and personal property, so 
 that the total assessed valuation was set for 1900 at $276,- 
 000,000. You can explain this action as you choose. It was 
 unquestionably a breach of the law. 
 
 We come at last to the operation of the Juul Act. On the 
 whole, I believe this law to be a vicious one. There is a feel¬ 
 ing abroad in this city that any man who thinks ill of the Juul 
 Act is necessarily a bad citizen. The only good quality of the 
 
11 
 
 Act is that it makes the rates low; and, of course, it is better 
 to have low rates of taxation than high rates, provided you get 
 the things which, as a city, you need. But as far as the 
 element of definiteness goes, the Juul Act is a very little im¬ 
 provement on the law as the law stood before its passage or 
 before the passage of Section 49. Any taxpayer in any part 
 of Cook County, if he took the trouble to investigate, could 
 ascertain the maximum aggregate of the rates which he would 
 have to pay. The city can only levy 2 per cent for corporate 
 purposes. As to its levy for bonded indebtedness, no act 
 which the Legislature could pass can reduce that. And the 
 levy for bonded indebtedness is limited, too, for it can only 
 be each year for interest—which would certainly not be more 
 than 5 per cent on the total of the debt—and sinking fund, 
 which would be just that amount, that is to say, an amount 
 sufficient to retire the indebtedness at the end of twenty years. 
 Now the debt limit is 5 per cent of the assessed value. That 
 will give you as the maximum tax for bonded indebtedness one- 
 half of 1 per cent., or 5 mills on the dollar of assessed valu¬ 
 ation. So, you see even the levy protected by the constitution 
 has its limit. The county can only levy .75 per cent and about 
 .04 per cent in addition for indebtedness outstanding before 
 the adoption of the Constitution of 1870. The West Town 
 and West Park aggregate 1.35 per cent, and cannot be more 
 
 than this. The Public Library tax is . 10 per cent. The 
 maximum rate of the Board of Education for educational pur¬ 
 poses is 2.50 per cent, and the aggregate rate of the Sanitary 
 District is or should be .50 per cent. These come, all told, to 
 7.74 per cent. As a matter of fact, they never have been levied 
 to such an extent; but, at all events, it is clear that the Juul 
 Act does not bring any more definiteness to the rates than 
 existed before its passage. Many real estate men around town, 
 and a great many property owners, will tell you that the 
 Juul Act was carried about in the Ark of the Covenant, and 
 that there is something peculiarly sacred about it. But that is 
 
12 
 
 not so. You will, I believe, find, on the contrary, that it is a 
 very inadequate and sloppy piece of legislation. 
 
 It is time, however, that you learned what the Act is about. 
 It is an act of the General Assembly, entitled “An Act Con¬ 
 cerning the Levy and Extension of Taxes/' approved May 9, 
 1901, in force July 1, 1901. The County Clerk is directed to 
 ascertain the rates per cent required to be extended upon the 
 assessed valuations of the taxable property in the respective 
 towns, townships, districts, incorporated cities and villages in 
 his county, to produce the amounts certified by the taxing 
 bodies for extension. The rate per cent of course, is found 
 by dividing the amount asked for by the valuation. If the 
 aggregate of all the taxes, exclusive of state, village, levee, all 
 school taxes, road and bridge taxes and bonded indebtedness 
 taxes, where the bonded indebtedness exceeds 10 per cent, of 
 the valuation, exceeds 5 per cent, they must be reduced pro rata 
 to 5 per cent. This sounds just like old Section 49, except 
 that there are more exclusions. That is just where the dif¬ 
 ference comes in, because the exclusions are so great that if 
 the Act stopped here, there would be no reduction at all. In 
 Riverside, where the first reduction took place four years 
 ago, you would have all school taxes excluded, all village 
 taxes, and road and bridge taxes. These three kinds of taxes 
 in 1889 came to about 4 per cent upon the assessed valuation. 
 Without these, the taxes subject to reduction would come to a 
 little over 3 per cent. Hence, in Riverside, there is now no 
 reduction at all of the aggregate rates. The only reduction is 
 an indirect one, arising from the reduction which takes place 
 in Chicago, of the County and Sanitary District rates, both of 
 
 which also cover Riverside. The Act was not intended to re¬ 
 duce taxes anywhere except in Chicago, hence it begins by 
 excluding from the reduction enough taxes to prevent any 
 reduction anywhere. You then come to the proviso which 
 lands the reduction in Chicago as follows: 
 
13 
 
 “Provided further, in reducing tax levies hereunder all 
 school taxes levied in cities exceeding 100,000 inhabitants, 
 with the exception of the levy for school building purposes, 
 shall be included in the taxes to be reduced.” Now see how 
 this works. Chicago is a city, not a village. A village tax is 
 excluded from the reduction, but not a city tax. Chicago has 
 no levee tax. That exclusion was for the purpose of prevent¬ 
 ing the reduction from taking place in the counties along the 
 Mississippi. The tax for educational purposes, which is ex¬ 
 cluded generally but included in the reduction here, amounts 
 to 2.50 per cent. You will find that what it really provides 
 is this: That in cities of over 100,000 inhabitants there shall 
 be a reduction of the aggregate rates down to 5 per cent of 
 the assessed valuation if those aggregate rates, exclusive of 
 the state rate and the school building rate, shall exceed 5 per 
 cent. In other words, the act provides that such reduction 
 shall take place in Chicago, and nowhere but in Chicago. 
 
 What I wish to do tonight is to point out two or three 
 facts in the mode of operation of this act which have been 
 brought to my attention, which I think are inconsistent with 
 any rational system, either of municipal taxation or municipal 
 finance. First of all, let us see what the County Clerk does 
 as a practical matter. It is just the same operation as that 
 which I described to you as taking place when Section 49 was 
 in force, except that the reduction by the County Clerk for 
 districts where the rate exceeds 5 per cent is now limited to 
 Chicago. He ascertains the rates levied by all the taxing dis¬ 
 tricts in Chicago. He then searches for that part of Chicago 
 which has the highest aggregate rate of taxation, which is the 
 Town of West Chicago. Every municipality since the passage of 
 the Juul Act has been levying its full rate in order to save itself 
 on the reduction. That rate amounts in the Town of West 
 Chicago to 7.55 per cent of the assessed valuation. That, of 
 course, excludes state taxes and the taxes for school building 
 
14 
 
 purposes of the Board of Education. This aggregate is then 
 reduced by the application of the rule of three to five per 
 cent, of the assessed valuation. That is, as 5 is to 7.55, so X is 
 to the amount originally levied by the particular municipality. 
 The reduction is made pro rata throughout. 
 
 The framers of the law wholly disregarded the fact that 
 when you come to ascertain the various rates, the boundaries 
 of the various taxing bodies whose rates are reduced differ 
 wholly in area and in amount of assessed valuation. For the 
 Sanitary District, which takes up the whole of the city and 
 much outlying territory, the assessed value of the taxable 
 property in 1903 was $431,000,000. For the county itself it 
 was about $440,000,000. For the city it was a little more 
 than $411,000,000. The city levies which are assessed against 
 $411,000,000 include the City, the Public Library and the 
 School Tax. The tax on the West Side was levied against the 
 $89,000,000 of taxable property in the Town of West Chicago. 
 Against the county valuation there was levied the county tax. 
 It will be plain at once from a mere application of arithmetic 
 that in this svstem of reduction from 7.55 to 5, each fraction in 
 the rate of every taxing body has exactly the same value as the 
 same fraction in the rate of any other taxing body. But the 
 assessed valuation of taxable property against which these rates 
 are levied are very different. 
 
 This brings me to the first example. In the year 1901 
 an act was passed authorizing the authorities of the Town of 
 West Chicago to issue bonds to the extent of one million 
 dollars for the acquisition and maintenance of small parks and 
 pleasure grounds, and to raise a tax of one mill on the dollar 
 for the purpose of maintenance and of paying the interest on these 
 bonds and their sinking fund. If that tax had not been levied last 
 year, instead of there being an aggregate rate of taxation of 7.55 
 per cent, it would have been 7.45 per cent. This difference 
 in the rates seems to represent an extremely small amount of 
 
15 
 
 money; but the result of it was this, that that mill on the dollar, 
 or ten cents on $100 of taxable property, when distributed be¬ 
 tween the other taxing bodies, made a loss to the City of 
 Chicago of a little over two and a half cents on the hundred 
 dollars. That ten cents was so spread over the other taxing 
 bodies that the loss to the Sanitary District was about one 
 cent, and the loss to the County about the same. The loss to 
 the schools was something like three cents on one hundred 
 dollars valuation. The result of it was this, that the levy pro¬ 
 duced for the West Park Board on a valuation of $89,000,000, 
 $89,000. Now, as the Juul Act cuts down the levies about 33 
 per cent, this $89,000 was reduced to about $60,000 or $61,000, 
 so that all that the Town of West Chicago or the West Park 
 Board received for the purposes of its small parks and pleasure 
 grounds under the Act of 1901 was about $61,000. The City 
 of Chicago suffered a reduction of about two and a half cents 
 on the hundred dollars by reason of that additional tax for the 
 West Park system. As the assessed valuation of the city’s 
 taxable property was $411,000,000, the additional reduction of 
 two and a half cents amounted to about $100,000. This sum 
 the City of Chicago actually lost by reason of the West Town 
 getting $61,000 net. . The loss to the school system of Chicago 
 from the same cause was something like $130,000; the loss to 
 the County, $50,000; the loss to the Sanitary District perhaps 
 $30,000. The total loss to all the taxing districts could not 
 have been less than $300,000. Now, that was loss outright. 
 The taxing bodies were out that much money, which they 
 would have got if the law of 1901 had not been passed and the 
 levy made. Now, it seems to me that an act which works in 
 that way can hardly be called consistent with any system of 
 finance or legitimate taxation. It would have been much 
 better, as any one can see, if it could legally have been done, 
 for the City, the Sanitary District, and the County, to chip in 
 
16 
 
 and pay that $61,000 over to the West Park Board for its 
 small park purposes, and save their own money. 
 
 I would like to call your attention to another case of a like 
 nature in the operation of the Juul Act. The Sanitary Board, as 
 we all know, is the corporation which conducts and maintains 
 the Drainage Canal. The City of Chicago is wholly dependent ? 
 
 for the purity of its water supply on the maintenance of that sys¬ 
 tem. The maintenance of it is an extremely important and costly 
 matter. The Chicago River has to be deepened. The intercept¬ 
 ing sewer system in construction at Thirty-ninth Street on the 
 south and at Lawrence Avenue on the north has to be built and 
 then kept up. The maintenance of all that system will take a 
 great sum of money, a very large annual sum. Now, the Sani¬ 
 tary District of Chicago has had, under the statute creating it, 
 since 1899 (the time of the completion of the Main Drainage 
 Channel) a tax rate of fifty cents upon the hundred dollars; one- 
 half of one per cent, (or 5 mills on the dollar) on the assessed 
 valuation. It has a riglit to an indebtedness of $15,000,000, and 
 under the Constitution of the State and the statute it must, as 
 must all municipalities, levy every year a sinking fund for the 
 retirement of its indebtedness within twenty years and must levy 
 for the payment of interest on its indebtedness. This levy will 
 amount to about ten per cent, of this $15,000,000. That comes to 
 about $1,500,000, which the Sanitary District must levy under 
 the Constitution every year for the payment of its bonds. That 
 amounts to a rate on its valuation equal to about 34 cents on the 
 hundred dollars. It has to have, as I say, this thirty-four cents 
 on the dollar, which cannot be reduced; yet under the operation 
 of the Juul Act, which, as I said before, cuts down the taxes that 
 are asked for, about thirty-three per cent, you have seventeen 
 cents taken off of fifty cents. So, instead of having thirty-four 
 cents with which to pay the bonded indebtedness of the Sanitary - 
 
 District, you have about thirty-two cents, or thirty-three cents in 
 all— not enough to pay the bonded indebtedness alone, and not 
 
17 
 
 a cent left for the maintenance of the Sanitary District and the 
 purification of the water supply of the City. 
 
 Well, the authorities who spread the taxes in Cook County 
 were in a great difficulty. They did what it always seemed to 
 me their duty called upon them to> do. They arbitrarily and un¬ 
 lawfully, without any regard to the Juul Act, staring them in 
 the face, gave the Sanitary District about 20 or 25 cents out of 
 hand. The Sanitary District had no more right to this increase 
 than the City of Chicago has a right, for corporate purposes, to 
 levy a two and a half per cent, tax instead of two per cent. That 
 illegal increase of the Sanitary District's tax has been made two 
 years running to my knowledge. It will probably be made again 
 next month. The difficulty arose from no other reason than the 
 operation of the Juul Act, because if there were not that reduc¬ 
 tion, or if the Sanitary District were excluded from the reduction, 
 you would have the bond levy made and have sixteen cents for 
 maintenance. Now, I say that a scheme that reduces thus the 
 taxes of a municipal corporation that is of such stupendous neces¬ 
 sity to this whole community as is the Sanitary District is utterly 
 bad. It seems as if the framers and supporters of the Juul Act 
 thought of nothing but the selfish object of getting a reduction 
 in their taxes regardless of the welfare or even the health of the 
 community. 
 
 The only other illustration of the operation of the Juul 
 Act that I wish to call attention to is this: In the year or 
 two prior to the first of last January, the Public Library Board 
 of this city had amassed a savings of $125,000 or $130,000. 
 When I say “savings,” I mean that in the two years the ex¬ 
 penditures of the Public Library have been about $125,000 
 less than the income, and the Board in consequence had been 
 able to reduce their anticipations of tax levies about that 
 extent. The City of Chicago was, of course, in hard straits. 
 When the Library Board came around to the Finance Com¬ 
 mittee to get its annual appropriation, it was very naturally 
 
18 
 
 suggested by the members of the committee that the Library 
 Board, being so much better off than any other city depart¬ 
 ment, having this large sum put away, should get this year a 
 less amount by perhaps two cents. When I say two cents, I 
 mean that the Library Board is allowed by law a tax of ten 
 cents on the hundred dollars of assessed valuation, and the 
 suggestion was that, instead of getting that full amount, it 
 should receive eight cents. That would have amounted to a 
 loss to the Library Board of about $82,000. Their revenue 
 would have been cut down about that much. The point was 
 then made to the Finance Committee that it was true that the 
 Library Board’s income could be cut down by $82,000, but 
 where would the money go? Under the Juul Act the City of 
 Chicago gets about twenty-five per cent of all the taxes. The 
 County gets about fifteen per cent, and the whole of it is 
 divided up in that way between six or seven taxing bodies, 
 but the share of the City of Chicago which the Finance Com¬ 
 mittee were endeavoring to conserve would be only about 
 twenty-five per cent of that $82,000. The value of the two 
 cents taken from the Library would be spread in the reduction 
 among all the taxing bodies proportionately. 
 
 CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE JUUL ACT. 
 
 I believe the Juul Act contravenes certain provisions of the 
 Constitution of 1870. The last paragraph of Section 22, Article 
 IV., provides that “in all other cases where a general law can 
 be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted.” I find no 
 reasonable distinction between the character of Section 49 and 
 that of the Juul Act in respect to this provision of the Constitu- ^ 
 
 tion. The proposition can be put in a nutshell. It is this: Sec¬ 
 tion 49 of the Revenue Act of 1898 was held to contravene this 
 provision of the Constitution, by reason of the fact that a mu- v 
 
 nicipality, such as Evanston, had a change worked in its rates 
 of taxation for the sole reason that it was situated in a county 
 
19 
 
 having 125,000, or more, inhabitants. The Juul Act contravenes 
 the same provision of the Constitution in that a municipality, such 
 as Evanston, has a change worked in its rates of taxation for the 
 mere reason that it is situated in a county in which there is a 
 city having 100,000 inhabitants. 
 
 ^ In the case of Section 49, no rational connection could be 
 
 found between the reduction of the taxes of various municipali¬ 
 ties and the fact of Cook County having 1 25,000 inhabitants. 
 There is even less connection between an alteration of the taxes 
 of Evanston and the fact that Evanston lies in a county in which 
 there is a city with 100,000 inhabitants. I will give you an ex¬ 
 ample which, perhaps, may bring out more clearly the absence 
 of any link in reason between the object of the Act and the mode 
 of classification adopted. The object of the Act is the reduction 
 of the rates, in cities of 100,000 people, to 5 per cent, of the 
 assessed valuation. That is the direct object. The indirect object, 
 which does not show on the face of the Juul Act, is to effect a 
 reduction of the rates of every municipality in Cook County, in¬ 
 asmuch as the county rate is of necessity reduced. The example 
 I have in mind is this: The municipality of La Grange is situ¬ 
 ated a mile or so east of the western boundary of Cook County. 
 The municipality of Hinsdale lies a mile and a half, or so, west 
 of La Grange and just over the boundary of Cook County. Du 
 Page County, in which Hinsdale lies, contains no city with 100,- 
 000, or more, inhabitants. Hinsdale and La Grange are as like 
 as any two suburban towns could well be. It would be impossible 
 to pick out any essential or characteristic distinction between 
 them, yet the tax rates of La Grange are altered for the mere fact 
 
 $ mat La Grange lies within the same county as Chicago. Hins¬ 
 dale, being two miles further west, has all its taxes stand as orig¬ 
 inally levied by the various taxing bodies. 
 
 * If the Juul Act is unconstitutional, as I believe it to be, I see 
 
 no reason why its constitutionality should not be attacked by 
 proper proceeding. Its absurd features could be remedied, if 
 
20 
 
 under the constitutional amendment a consolidation of the Chi¬ 
 cago towns is made, and the reduction of the aggregate rates 
 to 5 per cent, might be held valid if the provision affected Chicago 
 alone. Certainly no one is bound to keep one’s hands oil this 
 piece of legislation. At the time when its passage was being 
 urged before the General Assembly, help was sought on all sides. 
 A distinct arrangement was made that if the city authorities would 
 not fight the Act after its passage, the city taxes for bonded in¬ 
 debtedness would be excluded from the reduction in the sense that 
 the state and school building taxes are excluded. This agree¬ 
 ment was not kept by those who had in charge the effort to pass 
 the bill. The city authorities have been only too scrupulous in 
 adherence to their side of the bargain.