The following was reproduced without further editorial comment in the Friends’ Intelligencer, and is more good evidence of the decay of Quaker war tax resistance around the turn of the century:
The following report of Concord [Pennsylvania] Quarterly Meeting on , is taken from the West Chester Local News:
In reply to the suggestion made by one of the speakers as to whether Friends could consistently pay income tax, Charles Paxson said that there was a time when refusal to pay taxes to be used for purposes of war was the only way in which Quakers could bear testimony against this evil. Today there are many and more efficient ways. Friends are loyal to the government, even though there may be some points in which they differ from its present policy. Taxes are not all used for war purposes, and the refusal to pay them would gain nothing in point of principle and would do harm by being misunderstood and misinterpreted.…
I’m curious as to what Paxson meant by these “more efficient ways” of bearing testimony against war that had in his view made war tax resistance obsolete.
