How you can resist funding the government →
the tax resistance movement →
birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement →
Francis B. and Valerie Riggs
The Miami News
I didn’t find much else about the Riggses in on-line newspaper archives, but one other article, from , reads:
Tax Collector Wins, But Refusal Registers War Tax Protest
Boston — AP —
The tax collectors always catch up with Mrs. Francis R. Riggs — by her own admissions — but she feels she scores a point.
The Cambridge woman was one of nearly a score of persons who participated in a public protest against use of tax funds for military purposes.
She told reporters that for seven years she had deducted from her federal income tax that proportion she believes is being spent to prepare for war.
This year, she said, she and her husband are withholding 39.3 per cent of their tax.
“They catch up with me in the end and charge me six per cent,” Mrs. Riggs said, “but I am convinced that public protest is morally right and necessary.”
The group, led by the Rev. Wolcott Cutler of St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Charlestown, carried posters reading “I refuse war taxes” and “H-bombs return to burn.”
The posters said members of the group represented the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters’ League and the Peacemakers.
They walked for an hour on Tremont Street between Park and Boylston Streets.
The protest was timed to interest workers hurrying home at
The Saga of Valerie: The Tech receives all sorts of mail — bills, checks, Clipsheets from the Board of Temperance.
But in garnering material for this article, I was handed a letter with the scribbled commentary, “required reading.”
It is from one Valerie Riggs, who says that she has refused to pay income taxes and is refusing again this year because, to put it simply, she doesn’t like the way the government is spending it.
She says that “…those in our government who are deciding our fate for us … are consulting the cleverest minds in science to concoct the most diabolical schemes for killing innocent men, women, and children…” This is probably accurate enough to make the boys in Ballistics run their fingers around the insides of their collars, but Valerie has found the solution, fellows!
Just refuse to pay your taxes, and the world situation is solved!
Let’s all Laissez-faire with a big bang!
We appreciate the thought, but someone, whose initials are V.R., is being awfully idealistic.
There is even an organization known as the Peacemakers whose members are doing the same as Valerie.
So if any of you want to do away with your taxes, we can give you the address of these people and you too can refuse to pay.
There’s only one catch — it’s illegal.
Whittier, Calif. — (AP) —
A Quaker pacifist couple have mailed their income tax returns to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, minus 72.6 per cent of the tax due, which they figure is the amount the government would spend on war.
Francis Behn Riggs, 70, retired boys’ school headmaster, and his wife, Valerie, 67, said they expect the bureau to seize the missing funds from their savings accounts.
“as it has been doing .”
But, Mrs. Riggs added, “There is a difference between handing the government our income tax for the military and the government taking it from us.”
Along with the returns, Mrs. Riggs sent a note saying: “My conscience tells me that the killing of human beings is a criminal act, and that paying for that killing is likewise criminal.
This conviction is based on religious belief.”
In a small tax resistance movement emerged when several tax refusers learned about one another and began to correspond.
Many of these early tax resisters were WRL members.
Abraham Kaufman, the League’s executive secretary, facilitated many of these contacts.
At its founding conference in , Peacemakers established a Tax Refusal Committee.
League members formed a majority on this committee, which was chaired by Ernest Bromley, a Methodist minister and the nation’s leading proponent of tax resistance.
For the next two decades, Bromley championed tax resistance and publicized examples from three continents to demonstrate its power.
American examples included Quaker tax resistance during both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, the popular tax protests by colonists during the American Revolution, and Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay the Massachusetts poll tax to protest the Mexican War.
He also cited England’s Wat Tyler (fourteenth century) and John Hampden (seventeenth century).
Finally, he invoked Gandhi and the Indian independence movement; both resorted to tax resistance in the struggle against British rule.
For both moral and pragmatic reasons, tax resistance appealed to Peacemakers and to radical pacifists.
Most important, it enabled absolutists to express their total commitment against militarism and war.
The Peacemakers’ literature underscored this uncompromising position.
One publication explained that tax resistance “is not merely a protest.
It is an act.”
Aware that modern, technological warfare required huge expenditures, tax resisters were seeking to cripple war preparation — and war — through nonpayment of taxes.
Other literature asserted that nearly 35 percent of the national budget was earmarked for the military and that 80 percent paid for past, present, and future wars.
The “new push-button type warfare,” Bromley declared, would require “more drafted dollars than drafted men.”
Tax resisters were hoping to influence American policy by publicly repudiating military preparedness and weapon stockpiling before conflict broke out again.
Unlike COs and nonregistration, tax resistance was both age and gender neutral.
By enabling men and women of all ages and occupations to participate, tax refusal expanded the sphere of war resistance and promoted solidarity with draft-eligible men.
Ernest and Marion Bromley, whose Wilmington, Ohio, home served as unofficial headquarters of the Tax Refusal Committee, embodied the spirit of tax resistance.
“The time has now come,” Ernest exclaimed in his IRS tax statement, “when men ought no longer to depend solely upon their spoken witness against war or preparation for it.
They ought to prepare themselves for an outright resistance by a thorough-going dissociation with the war-making system.”
In her letter to the tax collector, Marion charged that “this country did not turn to peace at the end of World War Ⅱ, but instead sought to protect and expand an American Empire,” declaring “I want to dissociate myself as completely as possible from these tragic, suicidal and evil policies… and to do all I can to convince my fellow citizens that we must completely renounce the way of war and violence.”
The Bromleys believed that radical pacifist individuals and organizations must assume risks for war resistance.
Anticipating the New Left, Ernest asserted: “Pacifists believe… that there is a… time and place where they as individuals must simply come to a stop, and ‘clog [the system] with their whole weight.’
Perhaps that time and place have come.”
Four months after its formation, Peacemakers’ Tax Refusal Committee published the statements of active tax resisters.
Many of these people were WRL members.
These statements illustrate the total commitment and absolutist nature of Peacemakers and of a section of the League.
Writing in a different venue, Caroline Urie similarly declared:
In a time of crisis like the present it is our duty as sovereign citizens to defend our country not only with protest but with our lives, if necessary, against military enslavement and the possible annihilation implicit in atomic and bacterial warfare.
In the brief time at our disposal, protest is not enough; if we are to assume real responsibility, we must act in a manner simple enough and clear enough to be understood and to arouse public conscience.
As justification for tax resistance, several WRL members pointed to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which had established the principle of individual responsibility for wartime actions, even in the face of wartime orders.
In his letter to the IRS, Walter Gormley declared that he was “refusing to make any federal income tax payment, because they money would be used mostly for ‘crimes against peace.’ ” “The U.S. is preparing for a shooting war of aggression by maintaining bases, subservient governments and military forces from Korea to Turkey, by intensive research on methods of mass slaughter and by maintaining a huge military organization,” he charged.
“I must refrain from supporting such a government.”
Likewise, Valerie Riggs explained that “if our government… at Nuremberg could hold individuals responsible to stand against crime… I feel thoroughly justified by my own government in not paying this part of my tax.”
Perhaps A.J. Muste best expressed the compelling logic of tax resistance.
“World War Ⅲ has already started,” he exclaimed in :
I cannot support a government in these war-measures, which I deem insane, wicked and suicidal.
I must withdraw support from such war-measures in every possible way.
The two decisive powers of government… are the power to conscript and the power to tax.
Pacifists recognize that to be consistent they must refuse to be conscripted for military service or training.
I have come… to the conviction that I at least am in conscience bound… to challenge the right of the government to tax me for waging war, and in particular for the production of atomic and bacterial weapons… The need for getting our pacifist teaching off the level of talk and writing and onto the level of action is, I believe, imperative.
Peacemakers was highly critical of pacifist organizations — the WRL included — that collected withholding taxes from their employees.
By withholding taxes these pacifist groups were effectively barring tax refusers from working for them, or forcing them to resign.
Both the WRL and the FOR paid a lot of attention to this issue.
A special committee of the FOR examined the problem for a year before recommending that the FOR withhold taxes, even though most FOR employees had indicated that they wanted to make individual decisions about tax refusal.
Staff member Marion Coddington (Bromley) resigned over the policy.
The WRL also decided to withhold taxes.
In justifying this policy, a member of the League’s executive committee declared: “The life of the organization is at stake.”
The Peacemakers’ Tax Refusal Committee, which characterized the WRL and other pacifist groups as “tax collectors for the government,” was scathing in its denunciation.
“If pacifist organizations, whose business is to create a warless world, are not ready to risk something for war resistance now,” the committee asked, “when will they be ready?”
Tax resistance took various forms. Total refusers paid not tax.
Since most workers could not avoid withholding tax, total refusers were often self-employed.
Miriam Keeler and Marion Coddington Bromley resigned from the Labor Department and the FOR staff in order to avoid the withholding taxes.
Percentage refusers withheld that portion of taxes corresponding to the percentage the federal government would spend on war preparation and the military (calculations ranged from 35 to 80 percent).
Finally, some tax resisters chose to live on an income below the taxable level or to work at several part-time, low-income jobs to preclude employers from withholding taxes.
Some tax resisters refused to submit tax returns; others explained their action in letters to local tax collectors and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Some tax resisters, instead of remitting taxes to the government, contributed the money to WRL and other peace and justice organizations.
As a result of Peacemakers’ activism, tax resistance became a major issue for the WRL.
The League sold stickers that tax resisters could attach to their tax forms. “This tax goes chiefly for war purposes, as a pacifist I pay under protest.”
In the League passed several resolutions commending those, members or not, who practiced tax resistance.
Beginning in , several tax resisters began donating a portion of their unpaid income tax to the League, an act consistent with their willingness to pay taxes for nonmilitary social programs. The League established a special literature fund for these donations to ensure that they did not go to pay staff salaries, which were subject to withholding taxes.
Ammon Hennacy, a WRL member most often associated with the Catholic Worker movement, was a pioneer tax refuser praised by the League.
A “Christian anarchist,” he first practiced tax refusal in , when the tax withholding system was implemented.
Each year at tax time he prepared a statement and mailed it to the IRS.
Hennacy’s tax statement reflected the direct action and civil disobedience impulse that would shake the League over the next half-decade.
“We can refuse to put our trust in Princes and Presidents,” he declared.
“With Thoreau and Gandhi we can start our own campaign of Civil Disobedience by refusal to buy war bonds… and… pay taxes for war or conscription.”
In , Hennacy began expanding his protest; each year, on 6 August, he fasted and picketed the local IRS office for as many days as years had passed since .
While picketing, he distributed tax statements and leaflets that repudiated war, advocated anarchism, and declared his tax resistance.
When threatened with arrest for disturbing the peace while picketing, he retorted: “I’m disturbing the war.”
In a letter to Hennacy, [Abraham] Kaufman expressed his disagreement with tax resistance.
But then he added: “I admire your guts and want you to know that I am with you, for each of us must use the methods he feels to be effective in bringing the world out of its present insanity.
Your method may prove most effective in the long run.”
Although he did not delude himself that his “One Man Revolution” would change government policy or transform the world, Hennacy insisted on the moral imperative of individual resistance to the militaristic state.
By , radicals had succeeded in raising the issue of the WRL’s payment of withholding taxes, especially for members like Roy Kepler who supported tax refusal.
In the WRL endorsed CCCO assistance for tax resisters and authorized a review of the issue.
Although they extended moral support to tax refusers and publicized their actions, most League members did not support tax resistance, and the WRL did not officially endorse it.
Kaufman, in particular, insisted that it would be “unethical” for a small minority to “coerce” the League into accepting such a policy.
With minor revisions, the League accepted its subcommittee’s Withholding Tax Report.
Concluding that its survival as an organization took priority over tax refusal, the League decided to continue to withhold income taxes from its employees.
The WRL eventually changed its policy on withholding, and stopped withholding income taxes from the wages of one of its tax-resisting employees, Ralph DiGia, in .
War Deduction. — (INS) — A
woman pacifist has deducted a percentage of her income tax due for the
seventh year because she refuses “to be either a participant or an accessory
to the crime of war.”
Mrs. Valerie Riggs of Cambridge wrote the Collector of Internal Revenue and
the Treasury Department that she was withholding 39.3 per cent of her tax.
In a postscript her husband, Francis B. Riggs, retired teacher and engineer,
said he agreed “wholeheartedly with the above — I have refused
.”
The Riggs deduct the portion of their tax they believe goes for military
purposes.
A spokesman for the Internal Revenue office said today that no punitive
action will be taken against the couple but that the amount of the deficiency
plus 6 per cent interest will be levied on the Riggs’ account in a New York
bank.
If Valerie Riggs had
been refusing to pay her war tax percentage, she’d begun resisting in
, making her one of the earliest tax
resisters in the modern American war tax resistance movement.
I haven’t yet visited any archives that hold material from the Peacemakers,
that group that coordinated the early modern American war tax resistance
movement beginning in the . But while I
was following another thread, I found the following article which gave the most
complete membership run-down of the tax refusal committee of Peacemakers that I
have yet seen:
43 Pacifists Won’t Pay U.S. Tax in Arms Protest
Special in The [Philadelphia] Inquirer and New York Herald Tribune
New York, . — Forty-three pacifists throughout the United States
declared that they would refuse to
pay all or a part of their Federal income taxes this year as a protest against
the Nation’s military expenditures.
The group, including a number of Quakers, conscientious objectors, and several
who have refused payment of taxes before, issued a statement through
Peacemakers, [a] national pacifist group with headquarters here, in which they
said:
“Believing that men are accountable for their actions, and that laws requiring
immoral acts should not be obeyed, we have after serious consideration
determined upon a course of civil disobedience with relation to the income tax
laws of the United States.”
Headed by Pastor
Forty-one of the tax refusers acted under a tax refusal committee of
Peacemakers, headed by
Rev. Ernest Bromley, of
Wilmington, O. Their
statement was issued by
Rev. A.J. Muste,
secretary of the organization, and also secretary of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. Mr. Muste, former director of the Presbyterian Labor Temple,
and one-time president of the defunct Brookwood Labor College at Katonah,
N.Y., has long been
known in the labor movement, and as a pacifist and campaigner against military
conscription.
Two additional persons were listed as tax refusers in a statement issued on
behalf of 11 Philadelphians by Walter C. Longstreth, Philadelphia lawyer. The
other nine were all included in the Peacemakers list.
Some Withhold 36.4 Pct.
Mr. Muste, who said he personally would refuse to pay any income taxes
, as he did
, declared that some of the signers would
follow his course of action; while others will withhold the 36.4 percent
estimated by the Bureau of the Budget as that portion of tax money expended
for military purposes.
Others on the list issued by the Peacemakers were:
Ross Anderson, of Portland
Ore.; B. Bargen, of Newton,
Kas.; Marilyn Blaise, religious
education director, New York City; Marion Bromley, of Wilmington,
O.; Lindley Burton, of Bryn Mawr,
Pa.; Horace Champney, of
Yellow Springs, O.; Miriam Keeler
Cornelius, labor economist, Washington
D.C.; Aleck
D. Dodd, clergyman, of Toledo, O.;
Margaret E. Dungan, of Wallingford,
Pa.; William Bacon Evans,
of Morrestown, N.J.;
Caleb Foote, of Arden, Del.;
Hope Foote, of Arden, Del.;
Marion C. Frenyear, clergyman, of Plainfield,
Mass.; Robert C. Friend,
religious education director, of Schenectady,
N.Y.; Walter Gormly, of
Mt. Vernon,
Ia.; J. William Hawkins, of
Winters, Calif.; Ammon
Hennacy, of Phoenix, Ariz.;
George M. Houser, of New York City; Sander Katz, of New York City; Raymond E.
Kinney, of Los Angeles; Emily Longstreth, of Philadelphia; Walter Longstreth,
of Philadelphia; Mary Bacon Mason, of Newton Center,
Mass.; Milton Mayer, of
Chicago; Mary McDowell, of Brooklyn,
N.Y.; Wallace Nelson, of
Cincinnati; James Peck, of New York City; Paula Beck, of New York City;
Caroline Philips, of Wilmington,
Del.; Lydia Philips, of
Wilmington, Del.; Grace
Rhoads, of Moorestown,
N.J.; Francis B. Riggs,
of Cambridge, Mass.;
Valerie Riggs, of Cambridge,
Mass.; Igal Roodenko, of
Bronx, N.Y.; Max Sandin,
of Cleveland; Laurence Scott, of Kansas City,
Mo.; Ralph Templin, of Yellow
Springs, O.; Louise Thomas, of
Cherry Valley, N.Y.; Mrs.
Caroline Urie, of Yellow Springs,
O.; Beverly White, of Wichita,
Kas..
Many of these names I’ve encountered before, but several were new to me.
There were fewer than 3,000 people living in Yellow Springs, Ohio at the time,
and three of them were among the 43 public war tax resisters in the United
States. I wonder what that was all about.
While I wasn’t paying attention, someone scanned in many back issues of Friends Bulletin, the journal of the Pacific Yearly Meeting and Pacific Coast Association of Friends.
This has allowed me another window onto the state of American war tax resistance, Quaker war tax resistance in particular, in .
Here, for example, from the issue, is an article on an early Peacemakers tax refusal pledge that includes a complete list of signatories, including several I hadn’t heard of before:
Tax Refusal
On there were among those who did not pay their Federal income taxes the following 59 persons who joined together to support a statement distributed by the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, 2013 Fifth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. Reverend Ernest Bromley is chairman of this subcommittee of Peacemakers: A.J. Muste is secretary of Peacemakers.
A part of their statement is: “Feeling that war must inevitably come unless something drastic is done by individuals to show their unwillingness to go along with war-making policies of their governments, we the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal income taxes due .
For some of us this means that we will not pay that percentage which corresponds to the nation’s outlay for militarism; for others of us it means we will not pay even the first cent for the maintenance of a government whose main business is preparation for annihilation…”
The signers were: Ernest and Marion Bromley, Golay Rd., Gano, Sharonville, Ohio; Lindley and Emma Burton, Low Buildings, Bryn Mawr, Pa.; Horace and Ava Champney, 512 Phillips St., Yellow Springs, O.; Sara Chase, 1525 Sutter St., San Francisco, Calif.; Samuel and Clarissa Cooper, 214 Eastbourne Terr., Moorestown, N.J.; Dorothy DaPonte, Rte. 4, Box 374, Mobile, Ala.; Margaret E. Dungan, Wallingford, Penna.; Arthur Evans, Awbury, Penna.; Rebecca Winsor Evans, Radnor, Penna.; Fyke Farmer, Bellevue Dr., Nashville, Tenn.; Rev. Marion Frenyear, So. Hartford, N.Y.; Henry and Beatrice Dyer, Yellow Springs, O.; Walter Gormly, 412 N. 3rd St., W., Mt. Vernon, Iowa; Konrad Halle, 76 Pinehurst Ave., New York 33, N.Y.
Gerald Haynes, R.R. No. 3, Freeport, Maine; Ammon Hennacy, Rte. 3, Box 227, Phoenix, Ariz.; Rev. George Houser, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Woodbridge O. Johnson, Jr., 106 W. 3rd St., Parkville, Mo.; Sandy Katz 232 W. 29th St., New York 1, N.Y.; Ruth C. LaBarrer, 6 Nutt Ave., Uniontown, Pa.; Sarah B. Leeds, 28 E. Main St., Moorestown, N.J.; Walter and Emily Longstreth, 140 N. 15th St., Philadelphia 2, Pa.; Mary Bacon Mason, 31 Pleasant St., Newton Center, Mass.; Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, 1111 Dayton St., Cincinnati 14, O.; Mary S. McDowell, 555 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn 26, N.Y.; Rev. A.J. Muste, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Ax Nelson, 501 Benvenue, Los Altos, Calif.; Wallace and Juanita Nelson, Golay Rd., in Gano, Sharonville, O.; Ray and Jean Olds, Yellow Springs, O.; Raymond F. Olds, Monterey, Mass.; Storrs F. Olds, Monterey Rd., Great Barrington, Mass.; Jim Otsuka, Rte. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Mrs. Gordon Parker, 1401 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.; Mabel G. Parker, 1804 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.;
James and Paula Peck, 552 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y., Miriam Pennypacker, 6420 Drexel Rd., Philadelphia 31, Pa.; Grace Rhoads, Box 90, Moorestown, N.J.; Elizabeth and Edward C.M. Richards, Nur Mahal, R.D. 3, West Chester, Pa.; Francis and Valerie Riggs, 23 Coolidge Hill Rd., Cambridge 38, Mass.; Margaret Schauffler, 100 S. Cedar St., Oberlin, O.; Robert and Marjorie Swann, R. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Ralph and Lila Templin, Box 125, Yellow Springs, O.; Caroline F. Urie, 128 S. Walnut St., Yellow Springs, O.; Ellen Winsor, Radnor, Pa.; Abraham and Jean Zwickel, P.O. Box 232, Pismo Beach, Calif.
And here’s an early example of a plea for a “peace tax”-style accommodation for conscientious objectors to military taxation, from the issue:
Tax Petition
On , in Whittier, Calif., there was combined with the annual meeting of the southern California office of the Fellowship of Reconciliation a program sponsored by the Peace Board of California Yearly Meeting.
One of the results of the day is the following petition:
To the Congress of the United States of America
We the undersigned citizens of the United States of America believe:
That present tensions between the free enterprise and communist group of nations are the result of reliance upon military force as an instrument of political determination;
That the threat or use of such force can never result in a just or mutually satisfactory resolution of these tensions;
That the labor and material expended in building up military might would have and still might lead to a peaceful and mutually satisfactory solution if used instead indiscriminately to rebuild the homes and industries destroyed in the last war.
We further believe:
That the military way violates the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and the Golden Rule by which a Christian must live.
That to supply the means to induce of compel another to do that which we cannot do is equally a violation of those Commandments.
Therefore relying on our Constitutional Bill of Rights which our nation is this week honoring, and the Right of Petition thereby guaranteed, we humbly pray your august body that you pass legislation exempting all of like religious belief from income tax to be used in support of military establishment and substitute the use of that portion of our tax which is to our total tax as the amount used for military is to the national total, to that committee of the United Nations seeking a peaceful abatement of these tensions, thus giving the citizens of the United States the opportunity of paying taxes for the support of war or peace according to the dictates of their own conscience.
![Won’t Pay “War” Tax: [Cambridge, Mass., March 1] — Mr. and Mrs. Francis B. Riggs go over their federal income tax statement after announcing that for the eighth successive year they would refuse to pay that part of tax they estimate would go for “war.” This year they are refusing to pay 94.2 per cent of their tax. Riggs, 69, a retired school headmaster, says their stand is the “older peoples” equivalent of that taken by young men who go to conscientious objectors’ camps rather than fight. Each year the Riggs have eventually paid up their taxes, plus penalties. — AP Wirephoto.](riggs.png)
