HE STEALS MILLIONS IN TAXES.
Marshall Field, as we have said, was heralded far and wide as an unusually honest business man, the implication being that every cent of his fortune was made fairly and squarely. Those fawners to wealth, and they were many, who persisted in acclaiming his business methods as proper and honorable, were grievously at a loss for an explanation when his will was probated, and it was found that even under the existing laws, favorable as they were to wealth, he had been nothing more than a common perjurer and a cheat. It was too true, alas! This man "of strict probity" had to be catalogued with the rest of his class.
For many years he had insisted on paying taxes on personal property on a valuation of not more than $2,500,000; and the pious old shopkeeper had repeatedly threatened, in case the board of assessors should raise his assessment, that he would forthwith bundle off his domicile from Chicago, and reside in a place where assessors refrain from too much curiosity as to one's belongings. But lo! when the schedule of his property was filed in court, it was disclosed that for many years he had owned at least $17,500,000 of taxable personal property subject to the laws of the State of Illinois. Thus was another idol cruelly shattered; for the aforesaid fawners had never tired of exulting elaborately upon the theme of Field's success, and how it was due to his absolute integrity and pure, undented character.
At another time the facts of his thefts of taxes might have been suppressed or toned down. But at this particular juncture Chicago happened to have a certain corporation counsel who, while mildly infected with conventional views, was not a truckler to wealth. Suit was brought in behalf of the city for recovery of $1,730,000 back taxes. So clear was the case that the trustees of Field's estate decided to compromise. On March 2, 1908, they delivered to John R. Thompson, treasurer of Cook County, a check for one million dollars. If the