From the Aspen [Colorado] Democrat:
Refuse to Pay Poll Tax
Birmingham, Ala., . — The plant of the Dimick Paint company at North Birmingham, employing 200 men, closed down because a deputy tax collector served garnishment on the employees for the non-payment of poll tax. Many of the men quit work causing the plant to shut down. Efforts are being made to resume operations . The men persist in their refusal because they claim the tax is an unjust one and not constitutional. The citizens all side with the strikers.
(The New York Times, in its version of the article, called it, more correctly I think, the “Dimmick Pipe Company” and added: “A large number of the men are from the North, and were not apprised of the Birmingham system of paying poll tax until they found that, on notices from a Justice of the Peace, $5.80 had been held back from their wages to pay the Tax Collector. The men became indignant and many of them quit work, causing the plant to shut down.”)
Labor strikes as a tactic to amplify a tax resistance campaign is one of the topics I’ll be covering in my upcoming book on the tactics of successful tax resistance campaigns. The book is coming along well, but I’ve still got a lot of work ahead before it’ll be ready.
