Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
United States →
Missouri railroad bonds, 1872–1908
Today’s history hunt began with this picture:
Inscription on the Cass County, Missouri Courthouse
I had to go all the way to a New Zealand paper before I found my first mention of this in online newspaper archives.
From the Bay of Plenty Times:
Judge E.T. Lane, presiding judge of Cass County, Mo., United States, who with his associates Judges Wray and George have been prisoners in Jackson County Jail for several months, has been nominated for the legislature by an overwhelming majority over two opposition candidates.
He, with the other Judges, was sent to prison by United States Judge Phillips for refusing to obey an order of his court directing a tax levy to pay bonds voted by Cass County years ago for the construction of a railroad which has never been built.
The three prisoners are the most popular men among the farmers of that section to-day.
If this sounds familiar to you, you may be thinking of a very similar case in Kentucky in , also concerning an unpopular tax levied to pay off bonds for a railroad that never happened.
…some fourteen years ago [R.S. Stevens] was mixed up in a complicated railroad bond transaction in Cass County, Mo. According to our recollection, there was a fraudulent issue of one hundred and sixty-two county bonds of the denomination of $1,000 each, and through a certain land grant railway trust company, of which R.S. Stevens was agent, the citizens of Cass County were saddled with a debt of $229,000, for which the county never received a dollar of consideration.
There was something of a disturbance over this affair, as we remember it, and we believe that Judge Jehiel C. Stevenson, Mr. J.R. Cline, and Mr. Thomas E. Dutro were subsequently shot to death at Gun City by citizens of Cass County during the adjustment of the difficulties growing out of the issue of fraudulent bonds.
In Vernon County, the judges explicitly said that they were bowing to public pressure:
Being… the servants of the people, we have felt our duty to obey their instructions.
In obeying these instructions we have been compelled, though against our own convictions of right, to refuse to levy a tax for the purpose of meeting the rapidly accumulating interest of our railroad bonds.
In thus refusing we have placed ourselves before the higher courts in such a position that we are not only liable, but certain to be arrested, imprisoned and fined for contempt of their authority.
From which, resignation is our only means of escape.
Kansas City, . — Judge Phillips of the United States Circuit court sentenced Judge Ray, Blaine and George of Cass county to jail until they make some arrangements for the payment of the bonds voted by that county in aid of the Tebo & Neosho railroad.
He also imposed a fine of $500 on each of the three.
The sentence of the St. Claire county judges were postponed until .
In the two counties voted $750,000 and $1,000,000 respectfully to aid the construction of the road.
It was never built, but the bonds fell into the hands of innocent purchasers, who have obtained judgment repeatedly, but have never been able to collect it.
Judge Phillips ordered the county judges to issue a special tax levy for the indebtedness, but the judges have repeatedly declined, and Judge Phillips finally determined to summon and commit them for contempt.
A Deplorable State of Affairs the Outcome of Voting R.R. Bonds.
Another chapter of misery is opened up in the history of the bond cases in Missouri, says a dispatch.
One of the St. Claire County Judges, who had been in prison for several months for contempt of the Federal Court, was released on parole to attend the funeral of his daughter, who had died at a lunatic asylum, to which she had been driven by the imprisonment of her father.
Before he could arrange for the removal of the body he was called to the bedside of his wife, who was not expected to recover from the shock caused by the death of the daughter under such cruel circumstances.
And the husband is so much prostrated that it is feared he may not long survive the death of his wife, and may not even live long enough to be taken back to jail.
The people voted bonds for the construction of a railroad which was expected
to benefit them. The corporation to which the bonds were delivered did not
complete the line, and the counties repudiated the debt, interest on which
had been piling up ever since about . The
bondholders obtained judgments in the United States Circuit Court, and the
County Judges have steadily refused to order a tax levy for the purpose of
paying the debt. Judges were elected only to go to jail. Two months ago the
people of Cass County agreed to a compromise of 70 per cent, which was
acceptable to the bond-holders, the fines of the Judges were remitted, and
they were freed from imprisonment, one of them going direct from the jail to
be sworn in as a member of the General Assembly. It is probable that the wave
of sympathy aroused by the affliction of Judge Copenhaver will cause the
people of St. Claire County to
demand a similar compromise. It is said that both of the Judges are in favor
of submitting the question to a vote of the people. But such a vote may not
be ordered for some months to come, and during that time one or both of the
Judges will have to lie in jail. The situation is not a pleasant one to be
contemplated by the fellows who misapplied the proceeds of the bonds.
More on Judge Copenhaver’s troubles can be found in the Nevada, Missouri Daily Mail (also here, which notes that Copenhaver was imprisoned for judicial intransigence twice over an eight-year period over this case), which also reported on his return to jail:
Kansas City, . — Three Judges of St. Claire County, so long imprisoned in the jail in this city for contempt of the United States Court in refusing to order a tax levy to meet railroad bonds and released pending a vote in St. Claire County on a compromise proposition, returned to this city .
The bond proposition was defeated some days ago, and, as they were only out
on parole pending the election, they came to report to Judge Phillips. Judges
Copenhaver and Lyons went directly to the jail, but Judge Nevitt stopped at a
hotel for the night. They may be committed to some other jail on account of
too lenient treatment here.
A.L. Webber, in the book History and Directory of Cass County, Missouri devotes chapter 13 to this fiasco.
Webber agrees that R.S. Stevens was “one of the greatest scoundrels of his day,” along with his henchmen James R. Cline and A.D. Ladue.
In this book, the Gunn City shootings cap a case of government corruption
that plays out like a great train robbery, and certainly helps explain why
the people of Cass and St.
Claire were reluctant to tax themselves to pay off railroad bonds. Among
those indicted (but acquitted) in the Gunn City shootings was William P.
Barnes, whom you can see mentioned as one of the later intransigent judges
in the Cass County Courthouse inscription.
The book also includes these details:
In St. Claire county the judges were elected with the understanding that they would stay in the timber or in jail, as conditions might require, during their term of office.
Deputy United States marshals searched for them in the forests and the people of the county helped hide their fugitive officers.
Occasionally the courts would meet at nights and transact their business, and the next that would be heard of the judges, would be when deputy marshals would be gathering them in to the federal courts.
Jeremy Neely, in The border between them: violence and reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri line notes that in St. Claire county “a group of citizens broke into the courthouse, seized the county’s tax assessments, and burned them, thereby complicating the job of local officials who might try to collect further railroad taxes.”
St. Clair’s taxpayers joined the movement in the 1870s to repudiate the debts, but the county’s new leaders wanted to repay the investors.
Afraid to try taxing the residents, they decided to raise the interest by staging a huge livestock auction in , the proceeds to pay off the railroad bond interest.
On auction day, however, “no one seemed to want to buy” any animals.
To bondholders the “great shock” of the auction’s failure proved the depth of local resistance to railroad taxes.
By the tax season rumors began to circulate
that the county court was planing [sic] to tax residents for
the bonds. On the night of , a gang of armed men rode into the county seat of Osceola and
held tax officials at gunpoint while its members stole all the official tax
records. The gang warned the county court judges that they would be lynched
unless they resigned immediately. Lawmen recognized individuals in the gang
but took no action because they knew residents admired the gang more than
they did the court. The gang destroyed the tax records, and that meant that
the county had no way of taxing anyone. All three judges resigned and, at a
special election, voters selected three dedicated
Greenbackers, one
of them a relative of train robber Cole Younger who could presumably be
trusted not to ally with railroads…
Early in rumors of new taxes began to circulate again.
Around midnight on , an armed gang forced Deputy Treasurer K.B. Wooncott to take its members to the county offices.
The gang seized the railroad tax book and escaped into the night.
Once again the county was incapable of collecting taxes.
After an “investigation,” the prosecuting attorney, J.B. Jennings, announced that he could only discover “the charred remains” of the tax book.
No one was prosecuted: No one paid railroad taxes.
Another technique mentioned in Thelen’s book:
Under renewed popular threats of physical harm, county courts in Knox and Macon devised schemes in that prevented the county treasuries from ever having enough funds to pay railroad debts.
The higher courts rejected this dodge and ordered an end to civil disobedience by local taxpayers and county courts.
Thelen also says:
Since local taxpayers believed that the judges were, finally, obeying public opinion, they helped the judges evade the marshals and the law.
Homeowners welcomed and hid any judge trying to escape the marshals.
In Dallas County the court met in the woods, under culverts, in barns, and other places where marshals were not likely to look.
At the county seat of Buffalo, residents developed an elaborate network to warn the judges whenever a stranger appeared who might be a marshal.
These new forms of representative government, featuring imprisoned local officials and court meetings in the woods, restored to taxpayers the traditional control that citizens had exercised over elected officials.
The plain truth was that those officials had abdicated their governing function, leaving the field of battle to local taxpayers and remote investors.
It wasn’t until that Cass County finally settled with the remaining bond holders. (Some counties held out until as late as .)
There are many ways to support tax resisters when they are targeted by the
police or courts, including:
Today I’ll finish off this series by mentioning some other examples of ways
sympathizers, supporters, and organized campaigns have responded to the arrest,
trial, or imprisonment of tax resisters.
Mass action in response to arrests
When elderly pensioner Sylvia Hardy was imprisoned for refusing to
continue to pay her ever-rising council tax, supporters started a daily
vigil outside Exeter Cathedral to bring attention to her plight. “Judging
from the passers-by,” one said, “most people are fully aware of what’s
happened to her and we’ve had a lot of sympathy and interest.”
When Australian miners refused to pay a license tax in
, they resolved that if any one of them
were arrested: “it should be reported to the [tax resistance] committee by
the nearest observer; they would immediately call a monster meeting, and
the whole of the people would deliver themselves into custody.”
In , Australian miners were at it again,
this time resisting the income tax. They voted on a resolution that said,
in part, that upon “any member being sent to prison for refusing to pay,
that all unionists be called on immediately to stop work, and refuse to
recommence until such member is released, or the garnished money is
refunded.”
In Beidenfleth, Germany, between the World Wars, farmers were unable to
keep up with their tax payments, and decided to strike rather than see
themselves further impoverished. When fifty-seven were indicted for
interfering with a tax seizure, hundreds of others who either had been
involved with that action (or who wished they could have been), demanded
to be tried alongside them:
[A] fever seemed to grip the countryside. From far and wide the peasants
poured into Itzehoe, where the case was to be tried, with wild cries of
self-accusation. The public prosecutor could not walk down the streets
without being at once mobbed by powerful, earnest men begging him to
lift the heavy weight of guilt from their shoulders and to restore their
inner peace of mind by issuing a writ against them.
Honor prisoners
While people were desperately trying to get themselves indicted for tax
resistance in Beidenfleth, those who succeeded were honored:
The Beidenfleth Heifer Case developed into a regular popular festival.
Maidenly hands strung garlands about the necks of those enviable
peasants who had achieved the honour of receiving a writ.
I’ve mentioned before the badges awarded by the Women’s Tax Resistance
League to those who had gone to prison in the course of the campaign, and
how those so awarded were given the place of honor at campaign events
(see The Picket
Line for ).
It was also common for the League to throw luncheons or other such events
to honor imprisoned resisters upon their release.
The annuity tax resisters in Edinburgh, Scotland, honored one imprisoned
resister with “a piece of plate for his conduct on this occasion.” Another
time, they passed the hat for contributions, which, when the money was
given to resister Thomas Russell, he said: “We shall give it to the
Annuity Tax League, to enable them to carry out their operations in the
abolishment of the tax.”
A plaque on the Cass County, Missouri courthouse building honors the five
county judges who were imprisoned for contempt for refusing to order the
county to collect taxes to pay off fraudulent railroad bonds
.
Formal shows of support
When John Brown Smith, a lone Christian anarchist tax resister who was
imprisoned for tax resistance for about a year
, a convention of
“Liberalists” in Boston passed a resolution in support of Smith’s stand,
saying: “That in suffering eight months’ imprisonment in the orthodox
Republican hell of Northampton, rather than pay his taxes, John Brown Smith
has shown discerning wisdom and invincible courage, which place him high
among the world’s benefactors, and disclose a practical way to vanquish
sanguinary forces without shedding innocent or vicious blood.”
One of the Cass County judges who went to jail for refusing to obey a
higher court order to impose taxes on the county to pay for fraudulent
railroad bonds, was elected to the state legislature by the citizens of
the county while he was in prison.
When war tax resister Zerah C. Whipple was in jail for his stand, the
Connecticut State Peace Society passed a series of resolutions in support.
For example: “Resolved: That it is a great, previous, and sanctifying
privilege of us all, to feel that in his bonds we are bound with him, and
to pour our heart’s holiest sympathies into his cup of trial.”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League and allied organizations would pass
resolutions in support of imprisoned resisters, send telegrams of
congratulation to resisters who were being jailed for the cause, and hold
meetings to especially commemorate and support their stand.
Petition the government for leniency
When a number of young Quaker men were imprisoned for failure to pay a
militia exemption tax in , David Cooper
followed them to jail, and met with the officers who were holding them
captive. He wrote:
I had much conversation with them; they appeared very moderate, but were
very earnest for me to pay the fine, and not suffer our sons to be
committed to prison. I told them they were aware that our religious
principles forbade it; the young men were in their possession, and I had
no desire to persuade them to deviate from what they believed their duty
as officers required; but only wished them to use their power in a
manner that would afford peace hereafter. It was a matter of conscience;
they ought therefore to be very tender, and not use rigor. If they were
committed I saw no end. They could never pay the fines without wounding
their own minds, nor could their friends do it for them. They appeared
friendly, and the young men being under the Sheriff’s care, he directed
them to go home, and meet him at Woodbury at an appointed day. He
afterwards sent them word they need give themselves no further trouble
till he called for them. So the matter rested.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League would write letters of inquiry to
government officials whenever one of them was imprisoned. For instance,
when Kate Harvey was jailed, Charlotte Despard wrote to her representative
in Parliament to point out the discrepancy between her cruel sentence and
the wrist-slaps given to men for similar offenses. “I cannot believe,
sir,” she wrote, “that you will permit this injustice to be done. … Mrs.
Harvey is one whose time, service and money are given to the rescue of
little destitute children, and to the help of those not so fortunately
placed as herself. While such injustices as these are permitted by the
authorities, can you wonder that women are in revolt?” League member Marie
Lawson started what she called a “snowball” protest — a sort of chain
letter that sympathizers were supposed to send to their friends that
included a postcard-sized petition they could send to various government
figures.
When American war tax resister Maurice McCracken was imprisoned, supporters
sent a telegram to President Eisenbower, asking him to release the
prisoner (they got a vague, noncommittal reply).
Somewhat related to this is that when the American Revolution broke out,
one item on the agenda of the revolutionaries from North Carolina was the
legal rehabilitation of the tax rebels who had been convicted at the end
of the Regulator movement of
.
Tax resistance is a time-honored tactic of nonviolent resistance, but it has
also been used by movements or individuals that had little interest in holding
to nonviolence. History gives us plenty of examples of people violently
resisting taxation.
Today I’ll give some examples of attacks on tax offices, many of which were
violent or included intimidation by threats of violence.
Bomb threats and “mysterious white powder”-type incidents
Since I’ve started this blog, I’ve kept half an eye on the news for examples
of IRS
offices being evacuated by explicit bomb threats or suspicious packages. Here
are some examples:
: “The
FBI
is investigating after a mysterious white powder was sent to the
IRS
mail room in Fresno. The discovery forced the mail room to shut down for
about three-and-a-half-hours
afternoon.”
: “A hazardous materials
scare forced a huge evacuation Tuesday of the
IRS
center in southeast Fresno. A mailroom employee thought he was opening a
regular letter from a taxpayer. But when he opened it, a white powder
spilled all over him.”
: “A letter containing a white
powder and a note mentioning anthrax forced federal authorities to shut
down the mailroom of the Kansas City IRS headquarters.… ‘We do not think
this is going to be anthrax or any other biological agent, but we have to
treat this to the Nth degree,’ Herndon said, adding that a field test
found the substance likely to be talcum powder.”
: “Officials have given the
‘all clear’ after a letter containing a suspicious powder was received in
the mailroom at the
IRS
office in the John Duncan Federal Office Building in Knoxville.”
: “Someone apparently trying
to make a political statement caused a brief stir Tuesday at the Boulder
office of U.S.
Rep. Jared Polis. …
The Boulder Fire Department Hazardous Materials Team responded and opened
the envelope. They found a tea bag inside, with a note reading, ‘We the
People, .’ ”
: “A package of foot powder
mailed from a prison ZIP code caused
250 workers to be evacuated Thursday from [the building containing the
IRS
offices] in the Flair Park area of El Monte.”
: “Michelle Lowry… who processes
forms for the
IRS
in Austin, confronts that venom regularly. People slip razor blades and
pushpins into the same envelopes as their W-2 forms. They send nasty notes
with their crumpled documents. Last year during the height of the Tea
Party movement, hundreds of taxpayers included — what else? — tea bags
with their returns. And then there’s the weird stuff. ‘Sometimes you’ll
see stuff that looks like blood on them,’ said Lowry, who has worked as a
seasonal employee for five years. ‘We wear gloves.’ … She’s been through
evacuations caused by suspicious items in the mail, such as white powder.
(It turned out to be packing material.)”
: “A suspicious substance
discovered Monday at an Internal Revenue Service building is not
hazardous, a
U.S. Postal
Inspection Service official said. A portion of an office building that
houses an Internal Revenue Service mail processing center was evacuated
after an unknown substance was found about
11:15 a.m.” “ ‘There was an envelope
that appeared to have seeds inside,’ Buttars said. ‘What it was is not
known yet.’ ”
: “Hundreds of people had to
evacuate, and dozens of downtown businesses were disrupted, all because of
a suspicious package found near the
IRS
building — the contents of which were soon found to be harmless.”
: “Fox 4 reported that this was
the second day in a row that workers had found a suspicious package. On
Sunday, a powdery substance was found in an envelope (it wasn’t anything
threatening).”
: “The FBI
is now investigating a discovery at Ogden’s James V. Hansen Federal
Building that caused a scare, and the evacuation of more than 200
employees.”
: “An inspector at the Fresno
IRS
noticed a package in the mail room with a suspicious odor. … The Fresno
PD Bomb
squad was called in and the contents inside the package were an unknown
type of feces.”
: “Workers at a downtown
Oklahoma City
IRS
building and people inside the Colcord Hotel were allowed to return after
police investigated a suspicious package that was found Monday
morning.”
Note that in many of these cases, there was no deliberate threat involved, but
merely an over-cautious reaction based on previous threats. For example: The
tactic of including a tea bag with your tax paperwork as a form of protest
alluding to the Boston Tea Party has been a periodic American craze for over
sixty years, but nowadays any tea-bag-sized lumps in envelopes are an occasion
for a very disruptive evacuation and visit from the
hazmat team.
And then there’s this:
: “Angry New Zealand farmers are
reportedly sending parcels of cattle manure to cabinet ministers in a
campaign against a so-called “flatulence tax” on their animals. New
Zealand Post said it was treating the campaign “as seriously as
cyanide”…”
Actual bombings and other attacks
In addition to these mailed threats and suspicious packages, most of which
turn out to be bluffs, there have been cases of indisputably real attacks on
tax offices. For example:
In , a letter bomb exploded
in the hands of the director general of Equitalia, a quasi-private
company that handles taxes in Italy. The following month, three bombs
went off outside Equitalia’s offices in Naples. In
another branch was
struck with molotov cocktails. “The phrases ‘Thieves’ and ‘Death to
Equitalia’ were sprayed onto outside walls.”
A couple of years back, a fellow named Joe Stack loaded up his small plane
with fuel and flew it into the offices of the
IRS,
torching the building and killing an
IRS
employee (in addition to himself). National Treasury Employees Union
president Colleen Kelley said that after Joe Stack’s kamikaze attack,
“there were calls where taxpayers said they were thinking of ‘taking
flying lessons’ in the context of an audit or a collection. There are 70
that have been reported.”
During the Poll Tax rebellion, “In Cambridgeshire two petrol bombs were
thrown at the Poll Tax Headquarters and Anti-Poll Tax slogans were sprayed
on the side of the building…”
A patrol moves around ruins of the income tax office in Jerusalem after a
bomb wrecked the building.
, Jewish independence fighters
bombed an income tax office in Palestine, killing a constable, and
injuring five others. “All employes had been evacuated from the building
following a telephone warning 10 minutes before the blast. Police said
three Jews, one dressed as an Arab, pushed a bomb-laden, Arab-type
delivery cart into the building and fled, after clubbing a Jewish
policeman and snatching a rifle from an Arab guard. Police tried to drag
the cart from the building, but the rope parted. They said they then
detonated the bomb with rifle fire, but ‘miscalculated the charge.’ ”
In , the Railway Protection Movement in
Sichuan destroyed tax offices there.
In St. Claire county,
Missouri, in , “a gang of armed men rode into the county seat of Osceola and held tax officials at gunpoint while its members stole all the official tax records. … The gang destroyed the tax records, and that meant that the county had no way of taxing anyone.” A year and a half later: “Around midnight on , an armed gang forced Deputy Treasurer K.B. Wooncott to take its members to the county offices. The gang seized the railroad tax book and escaped into the night.”
During the rioting that followed the British parliament’s failure to pass
the Reform Bill in , the mob burned the
Custom-house and Excise-office, along with many other government
buildings.
In Hippolyte Taine’s history of the French Revolution, he includes many
examples of attacks on tax offices:
“the crowd, rushing off to the barriers, to the gates of Sainte-Claire
and Perrache, and to the Guillotière bridge, burn or demolish the
bureaux, destroy the registers, sack the lodgings of the clerks, carry
off the money and pillage the wine on hand in the depôt.”
“At Limoux, under the pretext of searching for grain, they enter the
houses of the comptroller and tax contractors, carry off their
registers, and throw them into the water along with the furniture of
their clerks.”
“at Aupt and at Luc nothing remains of the weighing-house but the four
walls; at Marseilles the house of the slaughter-house contractor, at
Brignolles that of the director of the leather excise, are sacked: the
determination is ‘to purge the land of excise-men.’ ”
“…the windows of the excise office are smashed, and the public notices
are torn down…”
“During the months of , the tax offices are burnt in almost every town in the
kingdom.”
“Without waiting, however, for any legal measures, they take the
authority on themselves, rush to the toll-houses and drive out the
clerks…”
“…the pillagers who, on the
, set fire to the tax offices…”
Taine also notes that “in Issoudun after , against the combined imposts[, s]even or
eight thousand vine-dressers burnt the archives and tax-offices and dragged
an employé through the streets, shouting out at each street-lamp, ‘Let him be
hung!’ ”
In Naples in , a tax revolt expressed
itself with attacks on tax offices: “On one beautiful summer night the custom-house in the great market-place flew up into the air. A quantity of powder had been conveyed into it by unknown hands, and in the morning nothing remained but the blackened ruins.” “the populace proceeded from fruit to stones, put to flight the tax-gatherers and sbirri, crowded into the custom-house, destroyed the table and chairs, set fire to the ruins as well as the account-books, so that soon a bright flame rose up amidst the loud rejoicings of the bystanders.” The archbishop, under pressure from the crowd, “ordered them aloud, and in the presence of all, to pull down the custom-houses”
Nonviolent blockades and occupations
Nonviolent tactics have also been directed at disrupting tax offices.
I mentioned
the “Free Keene”
activists in New Hampshire who were arrested for entering an
IRS
office and trying to convince the employees there to resign their positions.
Here are some other examples:
Anti-war demonstrators used handcuffs to lock the doors of an
IRS
building in Rochester, New York, for about a half hour in
.
Poll Tax resisters in Glasgow occupied a tax office, and, as the staff
retreated, took their places at the walk-up windows. One of the occupiers,
John Cooper, remembers: “I just sat down at the desk and said through the
glass, ‘Can I help you?’ I says, ‘It’s okay; you don’t need to pay any
more, it’s abolished!’ and the guy says, ‘Are you sure?’ I says, ‘I’m
positive. You know what I’d do with this money: go and spend it, have a
good time.’ He says, ‘You’re having me on.’ I could see the guy was still
uncertain, so there was a bunch of pads for phone messages — I ripped one
of them off and said, ‘If there’s any bother just send that in to
us.’ ”
Another group of anti-war activists, including representatives from the
War Resisters League and NWTRCC,
performed a sit-down blockade at
IRS
headquarters for about an hour in .
There is a semi-organized movement in Chicago to make parking meters unusable through vandalism, including smashing them, disassembling them, making them unreadable with spray-paint, stuffing them with pennies, jamming them with glue or expanding foam, or removing them entirely.
Disabling speed-trap cameras has become almost a popular sport in the United States.
I’ve seen video of people dressed up in Santa suits and temporarily disabling cameras by wrapping them in colorful gift boxes.
Others have used everything from “sticky notes, Silly String, and even a pick-axe” to stop the cameras from taxing speeders.
In Palmer Park, Maryland, recently, the authorities had to install a new set of surveillance cameras to keep an eye on their speed cameras because they were getting vandalized so frequently.
Toll-booths
Greek resisters occupy a highway toll plaza in .
During of the Rebecca Riots in Wales, there were over a hundred attacks on toll-houses, toll-gates, and toll-bars.
“During this period, all the gates and bars in the Whitland, Tivyside, and Brechfa Trusts were destroyed.
Two gates only out of the twenty-one survived in the Three Commotts Trust, whilst between seventy and eighty gates out of about one hundred and twenty were destroyed in Carmarthenshire.
Only nine were left standing out of twenty-two in Cardiganshire.”
Here is one account:
The secret was well kept, no sign of the time and place of the meditated descent was allowed to transpire.
All was still and undisturbed in the vicinity of the doomed toll-gate, until a wild concert of horns and guns in the dead of night and the clatter of horses’ hoofs, announced to the startled toll-keeper his “occupation gone.”
With soldier-like promptitude and decision, the work was commenced; no idle parleying, no irrelevant desire of plunder or revenge divided their attention or embroiled their proceedings.
They came to destroy the turnpike and they did it as fast as saws, and pickaxes, and strong arms could accomplish the task.
No elfish troop at their pranks of mischief ever worked so deftly beneath the moonlight; stroke after stroke was plied unceasingly, until in a space which might be reckoned by minutes from the time when the first wild notes of their rebel music had heralded the attack, the stalwart oak posts were sawn asunder at their base, the strong gate was in billets, and the substantial little dwelling, in which not half an hour before the collector and his family were quietly slumbering, had become a shapeless pile of stones or brick-bats at the wayside.
When the Scleddy turnpike-gate was attacked, they “broke the gates, posts, walls, and toll-boards into pieces so small that in the morning there was not a piece of the timber larger than would make matches”
Toll-booth destruction was also part of the riots in Naples in : “the toll-booths throughout the town were demolished; the mob went from one gate to another.
Everywhere the toll-gatherers had escaped — nobody thought of making any resistance…”
Toll-booth attacks are also a trademark of the current “won’t pay” movement in Greece.
Resisters there have mobbed highway toll plazas, raising the bars and waving cars through.
Miscellany
Danny Burns reports that during the Poll Tax rebellion in Thatcher’s Britain, “In Lothian, it was widely reported that Anti-Poll Tax activists had managed to put a bug into the computer, which randomly wiped out every sixth record on the register.
The virus story was never proven.
However, a month before it was mentioned in the newspapers, its effects were accurately described to two Anti-Poll Tax activists by two computer hackers one of whom had worked for Lothian Regional Council and had been sacked.”
There are some examples in Hippolyte Taine’s history of the French Revolution:
“At Limoux, under the pretext of searching for grain, they enter the houses of the comptroller and tax contractors, carry off their registers, and throw them into the water along with the furniture of their clerks.”
In Anjou, the tax clerks’ horses are seized and sold at auction.
“In Touraine, ‘as the publication of the tax-rolls takes place, riots break out against the municipal authorities; they are forced to surrender the rolls they have drawn up, and their papers are torn up.’ ”
“In Creuse, at Clugnac, the moment the clerk begins to read the document, the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and ‘tear it up with countless imprecations;’ ”
When the IRS seized tax resister Mary Cain’s newspaper, and put a chain and padlock on the front door, “Mrs. Cain sawed off the lock and chain and mailed them to the Internal Revenue Department with a defiant note.”
Whiskey Rebels were known to steal the records of tax collectors.
During the resistance in Missouri against taxes to pay off owners of corruptly-issued railroad bonds, “a gang of armed men rode into the county seat of Osceola and held tax officials at gunpoint while its members stole all the official tax records.”
, I’m finishing off Violence Week here at The Picket Line.
Violence certainly can be an effective way to disrupt the tax collecting bureaucracy.
Most tax collectors are not particularly enthusiastic about their calling, and so a little intimidation can go a long way in discouraging them.
This in turn makes tax collection more expensive for the government, decreasing its return-on-investment and compelling it either to tighten its belt or to resort to higher taxes and thereby expand the ranks of resisters.
The IRS even now is complaining of “a surge of hostility towards the federal government” that threatens its employees.
“Attacks and threats against IRS employees and facilities have risen steadily in recent years.”
Taxation is such a political hot potato, and politicians are so venal, that the people who most profit from taxes are often the first ones to fan the flames of hostility.
Violence also has a way of backfiring.
Tax resistance campaigns often show great success right up to the point where they start relying on violent tactics, whereupon they lose popular support, become subject to an easier-to-justify draconian crack-down, or reinvigorate their opponents.
Violence also, in a less-obvious way, harms the body politic by increasing fear, divisiveness, and tension, by giving precedent to people who already have tendencies to resolve conflicts violently, by making it harder for opposing sides to come to a reconciliation, and so forth.
And of course, in many cases, it is just cruel and wrong in its own right.
I have presented examples this week largely without passing judgment as to whether they were justified or helpful to their cause.
Some examples, for instance the Rebecca Riots, are hard to imagine without violence.
Other examples, for instance the Regulator movement in colonial North Carolina, seemed to me to be cases where violent tactics were counterproductive to the point of being disastrous.
And in some cases, the violence was so cruel or misdirected that even if you were being generous about the ends justifying the means, you would be hard-pressed to defend it.
(You can read my personal views about whether violence directed at tax collectors can be justified or helpful at an earlier Picket Line post.)
A good example of violence being used successfully is also an unsavory one.
White supremacists in the defeated states of the Confederacy after the U.S. Civil War used violent white militias to back up their tax resistance campaign against the reconstruction state governments that were being propped up by the victorious Union forces.
In Louisiana, dozens of armed men from the paramilitary “White League”…
…came to prevent the deputy tax-collector effecting a sale, armed with revolvers nearly all.
Mr. Fournet came and threatened the deputy and tax-collector.
The deputy and tax-collector ran into their offices.
I came down and called upon the citizens to clear the court-house, but could not succeed.
I then called upon the military, but they had no orders at that time to give me assistance to carry out the law.
When the deputy tax-collector attempted to make a sale Mr. Fournet raised his hand and struck him.
The deputy then shoved him down.
As soon as this was done forty, fifty, or sixty men came with their revolvers in hand.
White supremacist paramilitary groups went from terrorizing tax collectors and auctioneers to intimidating voters, assassinating office-holders, and massacring blacks.
Their terror campaign was ultimately successful at wearing down the will of the North.
The U.S. withdrew federal troops, whereupon the white supremacist forces retook political control, the white paramilitaries were absorbed into the state militias, and the white supremacists held absolute political control for generations after.
So, yes, sometimes the terrorists do win, and sometimes violence is successful, for some definitions of “success.”
Here are a few examples of attacks on tax officials that I wasn’t sure how to categorize… I include them below in a sort of catch-all miscellany category:
In one of the more amusing cases in my archive, when colonial Governor John Evans tried to impose a tax on shipping on the Delaware river, in violation of the colonial charter, and to enforce this by firing cannons on vessels that tried to pass his fort without paying, Richard Hill decided to defy the tax.
First he sent men “with the ship’s papers to the fort, to show that the vessel had been regularly cleared at the custom-house, and to endeavour to persuade the officer to suffer her to pass without molestation,” but that didn’t work.
Then he just tried to sail by, “steering as near to the opposite side as he safely could,” and almost got through “without damage, except [for] the main-sail, which was shot through.”
Then:
The officer at the fort, not willing to miss his prize, immediately had his boat manned and went in pursuit.
[Hill’s] ship’s sails were now slackened, and the boat was allowed to come alongside, and having fastened a rope to the ship, the officer and his men came on board.
Whilst engaged in a warm controversy with the owner and his friends, some one on board (no doubt advisedly) quietly loosed the boat and let her drift astern.
The ship was now under full sail, and when the officer at length discovered that he was in danger of a voyage to the West Indies, and that all his hopes of retreat were cut off, his courage failed, and he suffered himself to be led as a prisoner into the cabin.
Hill landed on the Jersey side of the river, run by Evans’s rival-governor Lord Cornbury, “who claimed in his own right the exclusive jurisdiction of the river” and, being “a proud and haughty man, on hearing the case, was quite indignant at this encroachment on his prerogative, and he threatened the officer in no measured terms of rebuke, who now became seriously alarmed at his situation, and sued for pardon, making many professions of sorrow for the offence he had committed.
At length, having promised never to attempt the like again, he was suffered to depart.”
Evans then gave up on his pet tax.
When a higher court ordered county court judges in Missouri to institute taxes there to pay off the owners of fraudulently-issued railroad bonds, “a gang of armed men rode into the county seat of Osceola and held tax officials at gunpoint while its members stole all the official tax records.
The gang warned the county court judges that they would be lynched unless they resigned immediately.
Lawmen recognized individuals in the gang but took no action because they knew residents admired the gang more than they did the court.
… All three judges resigned and, at a special election, voters selected three dedicated Greenbackers, one of them a relative of train robber Cole Younger who could presumably be trusted not to ally with railroads” … “Under renewed popular threats of physical harm, county courts in Knox and Macon devised schemes in that prevented the county treasuries from ever having enough funds to pay railroad debts.”
British Constitutionalists last year stormed a courtroom where a man was challenging his council tax bill and attempted to place the judge under citizens’ arrest.
“In chaotic scenes, police rescued Judge Michael Peake from the clutches of a mob and escorted him safely from the County Court…”
A related tactic is for tax resisters to flee or hide to evade arrest.
Here are a couple of examples:
Residents of St. Claire county, Missouri, in , used a number of methods to avoid being taxed to pay back railroad bonds that the county had issued as part of a swindle (the railroad was never built).
Among these was the election of local judges who were willing to refuse to enforce higher court rulings meant to force the county to raise the tax funds.
“[T]he judges were elected with the understanding that they would stay in the timber or in jail, as conditions might require, during their term of office.
Deputy United States marshals searched for them in the forests and the people of the county helped hide their fugitive officers.
Occasionally the courts would meet at nights and transact their business…” According to one account:
Since local taxpayers believed that the judges were, finally, obeying public opinion, they helped the judges evade the marshals and the law.
Homeowners welcomed and hid any judge trying to escape the marshals.
In Dallas County the court met in the woods, under culverts, in barns, and other places where marshals were not likely to look.
At the county seat of Buffalo, residents developed an elaborate network to warn the judges whenever a stranger appeared who might be a marshal.
These new forms of representative government, featuring imprisoned local officials and court meetings in the woods, restored to taxpayers the traditional control that citizens had exercised over elected officials.
The plain truth was that those officials had abdicated their governing function, leaving the field of battle to local taxpayers and remote investors.
During the Annuity Tax resistance in Edinburgh in , a group of resisters liberated an arrested resister.
A newspaper report at the time said, “we hear that the constables are on the alert each night to catch the marked men; and that, fearing a visit in the dark, these persons quit their homes and sleep abroad.”
When Dickens was over here he paid Americans a deserved compliment for the promptitude with which they stepped up and paid their taxes.
“The tax collector does not come to your house,” he says, “but invites you to his.
Imagine an Englishman hunting up this collector to pay his taxes to him.”
But this promptitude, which struck Dickens so forcibly, and seemed to him an earnest proof that Americans felt a patriotic pride in their country and were willing to aid it in every way possible, is now, alas! extinct — no longer exists; and we have become instead a race of confirmed tax-resisters.
The disease is growing worse every year; at first it was only legal taxes that were resisted, now it is all; at first it was only a few litigious persons that fought the government, soon it became the whole mass of the property holders; tax-resisting associations and tax-resisting leagues were organized everywhere to fight the government in every court.
The bitterness of this feeling has been demonstrated by the late tax rebellions in several Kentucky and Missouri counties, where the tax offices were broken into, the books burned, and the collectors warned not to attempt the collection of any taxes under threat of lynch law.
The various States and municipalities have, on the other hand, made their tax laws more and more stringent each year, Georgia going to the extremity of disfranchising all tax resisters.
Thus the war between the government and taxpayers goes on, becoming more bitter every year.
If promptness in the payment of taxes be proof of patriotism, patriotic feelings are rapidly on the wane in this country.
Such is one of the fruits of bad government, heavy and fraudulent debts, and the general political disorder, peculation, and mismanagement that the Republican party has developed wherever it has held full sway.
The mention of tax resistance actions in Missouri and Kentucky refer to the railroad bonds scandals in which localities were induced to issue bonds to pay for the railroad to come to town, whereupon various well-connected folk sold off the bonds and, although the railroad never materialized, the local people were on the hook to tax themselves to pay off the bond speculators.
