FARMINGTON TIMES, Farmington, St. Francois County, Missouri, Friday, October 13, 1916 DON'T BOTHER OUR PETS __________ Assessor Wells Criticised for Assessing Foreigner Residents of Flat River __________ We understand that a few Republican Paul Prys are very busy again this week manufacturing dope against Assessor Wells. They have concluded that Mr. Wells has been perniciously active in assessing about 1,200 or 1,500 foreign miners. These miners all possess personal property -- all who are heads of families having cows, hogs, horses, etc., on which they have never paid taxes. Why shouldn't they pay personal taxes as well as the American miner? These Paul Prys who are so concerned about the foreigners being assessed, claim that they won't pay the taxes and ask, then why assess them? How many Americans, they say, refuse to pay and get by with it. Mr. Taxpayer, don't we maintain a Collector, whose fees make his the highest salaried office in the county, to do nothing but collect taxes? And the law instructs him how to proceed in the collection of taxes from persons who refuse to pay. Should the Assessor refrain from assessing them just because they say they won't pay? The Federal Lead Company was employing about 500 foreigners in 1915 -- as many or more than it employed of American miners. It is a well known fact that some of the companies will hire a foreigner in preference to an American, and yet they don't want these foreigners to pay taxes. The Doe Run Lead Company, it is said, incorporated the town Rivermines for no other purpose than to exempt their foreign pets from paying a poll or road tax. Then, they declare that Wells is not the man who raised the companies' assessments. Well, he has never claimed that he did it all, but he did the larger part of it, and as a member of the Board of Equalization concurred in the raises made by the board. That is one reason the companies' agents are so anxious to defeat Mr. Wells and replace him with Mr. Henson, a confidential clerk and paymaster of one of the companies. Mr. Taxpayer, do you see the point?