A news dispatch I found in the Lincoln Journal (Nebraska) from :
“Military Portion” of Tax Withheld
Moorestown, N.J. (NANA). William Bacon Evans, firm in his Quaker convictions, has paid his income tax three months ahead of time — deducting from his payment that portion he has estimated would be devoted to military purposes.
Evans has written the federal tax collectors that he does not “feel conscientiously at liberty to contribute toward… the involvement of our country in military programs of occupation and… adoption of peacetime conscription and the manufacture and storage of atomic bombs.” So he is giving the sum deducted from his income-tax check to “constructive programs of relief and reconstruction.”
“No can do,” say the tax collectors.
Evans (1875–1964) is also listed as one of eleven war tax resisters in the Philadelphia area in a newspaper article, along with Margaret Dungan, Emma & Lindley Burton, Caleb & Hope Foote, Emily & Walter Longstreth, Caroline & Lydia Phillips, and Grace Rhoads.
Here’s another article in which he is mentioned, from the Doylestown, Pennsylvania Intelligencer:
6 Countians Won’t Pay Their Tax
Six residents of Bucks County were among the 51 across the nation who announced in a joint statement today that for conscientious reasons they are refusing to pay part or all of their income taxes for .
The statement, issued by Peacemakers, a pacifist organization based on Gandhian principles of non-violence, said that approximately 85 per cent of the Federal income tax is used for past, present, and future wars. The non-payers ask:
“Who knows what weapons his taxes will buy?… In full consciousness of our own involvement in a war-centered economy and of our shortcomings in the pacifist way of life, we nevertheless feel constrained to call this matter to the attention of others who may have felt they had no alternative to payment of their taxes”
The six Bucks County people announcing their tax refusal include:
Doylestown Writer
Jean V.N. DaCosta, RD 2, Doylestown, a writer and member of the Episcopal Pacifist Fellowship. Miss DaCosta declared: “If I were a man and of draft age I would refuse military service: therefore I cannot pay taxes for others to do what I could not do myself.”
Wallace and Juanita Nelson, 970 Wood Road, Southampton. Nelson, who is a construction worker, and his wife, a speech therapist, are active in race relations work. They recently stated: “The peaceful world for which we all hope cannot come about in the atmosphere of hostility created by the armaments race highlighted by the production of the hydrogen bomb. The greatest contribution our country can make toward the elimination of war is the demonstration of brotherhood through action. We cannot pay our money for war.”
Lee Pagano, New Hope, a craftsman who operates his own shop.
Robert and Marjorie Swann, 2845 Sussex Road. Trevose [sic] Swann is a designer and builder. He and his wife have three daughters.
Three other tax refusers in the Philadelphia area are William Bacon Evans of Haverford, and Irene S. Eldridge and Margaret Dungan, both of Wallingford. All are members of the Society of Friends.
