That 89 women in this borough refused to pay their tax was brought out in the
report of ex-Tax Collector Mahlon M. Binder in his requests for exonerations
at the meeting of the Board of
Education. The consensus of opinion of the members was that as the women have
been given the right to vote, they assumed the responsibilities of
citizenship and it would be unwise to exonerate them. Every effort should be
made to collect the taxes.
When women won the vote in Pennsylvania, they also won the tax, and some were none too happy about it.
Here are the stories of a few who said “no.”
Refusal to Pay $4.05 Impost May Result in Jail Sentences.
Darby, Pa., —
Six women out of 300 who defied the local tax collector and refused to pay a personal tax of $4.05, still were holding out against the payment of the impost.
Unless they pay the tax, says S. Robert Shaw, the collector, he will be forced to send them to the Delaware county jail until they meet this obligation to the borough.
Despite the resistance of the little band, a majority of the housewives of Darby chose to pay the tax in preference to going to jail.
Many of the women who decided to pay brought their babies along to the tax collector’s office and at one time there was a string of baby coaches outside the door.
Harry W. Shein, deputy collector, had his troubles in trying to find some of the delinquents.
There was no response to his call at several of the homes and there was nothing for him to do but pass on to the next delinquency.
He found Mrs. Margaret Lytle at home.
She was busy doing an odd job in jainting.
“Jainting”? You got me.
“I’m the tax collector,” said Shein.
“So I see,” said Mrs. Lytle.
“What will my husband do if he comes home and finds no supper?” asked Mrs. Lytle.
Shein had no reply to this and again warned Mrs. Lytle that non-payers of taxes will go to jail.
Another woman, who is reported to have failed to pay her tax, asserted she was laughed at by her friends when she paid her tax in former years, and she would not be laughed at any longer.
The tax has been imposed to complete the new Darby high school, and is part of $5,000 that is needed.
All the men apparently have paid the tax.
Media, Pa., — (U.P.) —
Darby’s tax war, which threatened jail for several score of women who refused to pay an annual personal levy, assessed through a law, continued with several hundred women dodging irate collectors or barricading themselves in their homes against them.
None of those whom Borough Tax Collector Robert Shaw threatened with jail if they had not paid their taxes by last night, were behind bars .
Many of them paid, according to the collector, and others had, for the time, disappeared.
The borough is levying the tax to get funds to complete the new high school.
Madia, — (U.P.) —
The $4.05 personal tax which scores of women in Darby borough defied constables and collectors in refusing to pay, even under threat of being jailed, had amounted to $7.41 for the recalcitrant ones, Collector of Taxes Robert Shaw announced.
The additional “ante” came about through the court costs of issuing and serving summons and commitments papers by constables — when they were served.
The original tax Shaw explained, was $3.85 with a 20-cent fine for delayed payment, and now an additional $3.36 for court costs.
Committment papers were to be served , Shaw said, on those who persisted in defying the tax collector.
The law, passed in , levying an annual personal tax on all voters has not heretofore been enforced against women in Darby borough.
Here is another example from the previous year from a town about 70 miles from Darby:
Lancaster, Pa., —
After spending eighty-five hours in the county jail because she refused to pay $6.82 in personal tax, Mrs. Anna Beck, 32 years old, of Murrell, this county, was released .
The tax collector of the district, M.B. Hacker, appeared at the jail and signed her release.
He stated that “a friend” had paid the township tax.
The tax collector declared that he has had trouble with Mrs. Beck before and was determined to make a test case of her refusal to pay.
“If I had not collected this tax I feel sure there are many others in he district who would have refused to pay,” he stated.
He acted, he said, under an old statute which gave him the right to seize the body of any one refusing to pay taxes.
Mrs. Beck was obdurate in her refusal to allow her relatives to pay the tax, but the long hours in jail apparently changed her mind.
Lancaster, Pa., — (AP) —
Mrs. Anna Beck, of Murrell, who would rather “stay in jail until dooms day” than pay a township tax of $6.82, was still a prisoner in county jail although her tax has been paid.
Claiming, that women should not have to pay taxes, Mrs. Beck, the mother of a year old child, willingly went to prison .
She would not pay the tax, she said, and ordered that no one pay it for her.
Her husband and friends pleaded with her, but she was adamant.
, however, a neighbor called at the tax collector’s home and paid the necessary amount.
The payment was made to a member of the collector’s family, who then telephoned the jail and asked that Mrs. Beck be released.
The jailer refused to do so, stating that under the law, the collector, who had placed Mrs. Beck in prison, must appear in person and sign her release.
The collector, it was learned, is visiting in another section of the state and no one knows when he will return.
Until he comes back, the jailer said, Mrs. Beck will remain in prison.
Here is another case to accompany my previously-recounted examples of women in
Pottstown, Pennsylvania in , Anna Beck of
Murrell, Pennsylvania in , and women in Darby,
Pennsylvania in . This one concerns women in
Charleroi, Pennsylvania, as reported on in the Washington Reporter:
Charleroi, . — The Charleroi board of education, at a meeting called by President
F.C. Stahlman , in the high school building, decided to take drastic measures
to force 2,000 taxpayers to pay their assessments. Of the delinquents, 1,700
are women who have steadfastly refused to pay school taxes and the discussion
last night centered for the most part on them. Tax Collector Fred W. Brady
and his bondsmen were present. The board passed a motion to the effect that
Tax Collector Brady, in accordance with the provisions of the legislative act
made and enacted in , be empowered
to make arrests of all the men and women who are school tax delinquents. Mr.
Brady is today preparing the papers and will begin to serve them on
.
The work of serving the warrants will be performed by two constables duly
qualified, and the delinquents will not only have their taxes to pay, but the
added costs. The board further agreed to stand the expense of the
transmission to jail of either man or woman who failed to liquidate when
served with a warrant by the constables.
Why southern Pennsylvania in particular would have been host to such actions
is curious to me, but I can’t think of a good explanation. I think I’ll do
some more digging in the archives and see if maybe I can piece together more.
Anti-tax agitation began as early as , according to
an article in the Wellsboro Gazette
which noted that “Because of the irregularities in the taxation of women in
city and county a movement has been started in many parts of the State…” The
irregularities being that there was no poll tax on women in Pittsburgh or
Philadelphia, but there was on rural women. The article ends on this note: “Tax
collectors will be hard up against it in some districts in getting the money,
as hundreds will refuse to pay from $3 to $6 to exercise their right of
suffrage at the polls this fall.”
The Wellsboro Gazette noted some of the curious
background of the tax law in its
edition:
May Be Sent to Jail for Failure to Pay Their Taxes
According to a bill signed by Governor Pinchot last week women who fail to
pay their taxes may be sent to jail. It is not likely, however, that the jail
penalty will ever need to be enforced. There are comparatively few women in
Pennsylvania who are not willing to pay their taxes and cast a ballot.
That turned out to be optimistic. But anyway:
If the law were to be strictly enforced in every case there would be more men
than women landed in jail for failure to settle their tax bills.
When Governor Pinchot signed the bill permitting imprisonment of women for
non-payment of taxes he made effective legislation that was strongly
advocated by a large majority of the women of Pennsylvania but that was for a
time threatened with defeat by members of the law-making body.
It was not until some time after women were given the ballot and taxes were
assessed against them that it became generally known that under the law of
the State women could not be imprisoned for refusal to pay taxes although it
provided for the imprisonment of men taxables who failed to settle.
Soon after the present Legislature convened a bill amending the law so as to
make it apply to women as well as men was introduced and its strongest
supporters were the women members of the House. The measure passed the House
by a large majority but when it got over into the Senate, in which there are
no women representatives, it met with strong opposition and a majority vote
was cast against it [19-24, according to another account].
Later the vote was reconsidered, the bill was put through, and now by
receiving the Governor’s signature, it becomes a law.
The New York Herald, in an editorial dealing with
the passage of an old law which made it impossible to place in jail women who
did not pay their taxes, assumes that the reason for the passage of the
measure was the desire, through the forcing of the payment of taxes by women,
to qualify more of them as voters.
The Philadelphia Record says that the
Herald is all wrong: “The tax law which it is
desired to enforce against the women of Pensylvania who live outside of
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh is the school tax law, and not the tax law
providing for the payment every two years of a State or county tax, which
alone is the tax that carries with it the right to vote. A woman or a man who
pays a school tax alone cannot vote.
“The school tax law as passed before the advent of the women as a citizen
with the same rights as a man provided that, in addition to the regular
property tax, every citizen on the assessors’ list should pay an occupation
or head tax of not less than $1, nor more than $5 a year for school purposes,
as the directors of each school district might determine.
“The makers of the law, the members of the Legislature, were controlled by
the leaders of the political machines in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. They
realized that to make this tax general would force on the list of taxpayers
the thousands of irresponsible voters in the two big cities who do not
personally pay any tax, except such as they contribute indirectly through the
landlord or the dealers who pay taxes and take that into consideration in
fixing rents or the prices of the articles they sell. They realized also that
once this class of voters were called upon or forced to pay a direct tax of
any kind they might begin to take an interest in what they were voting for.
“But under the new School Code money was needed, much more money than could
be provided by the ordinary property tax. This at least was true of the
country districts. And so the tax plan of adding a head, or occupation, tax
was devised, with Philadelphia and Pittsburgh exempt.
“It is operating as the law provides, outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh,
and it is the women of the farm and of the small town who will have to go to
jail if they do not pay. The city ladies need have no fear of either the jail
or the tax.
“The city man does not pay the tax or go to jail. Neither does his wife or
daughter of age. The farmer pays it. So do his wife and daughter, or to jail
they go until they do or are declared paupers.”
The Chester Times
reported
that “800 women in the township [of Haverford] failed to pay taxes of
approximately $3.20 each last year.”
“The law is the law,” the township treasurer [G. Howard Leedom] explained. “I
can’t see why the women should want to evade the payment of the small tax. As
a matter of fact, it is only $4 this year and the road tax, which is due
, is only $1. Surely the women are
not kicking over that. I am determined to get this money. The law says that
the women must pay and the notice [he issued] speaks for itself.”
Some announced they would get a list of the women who had not paid and would
request county newspapers to publish the names. The treasurer would not give
up the lists, however, and the threat failed.
Not long ago at a Commissioners meeting, Mr. Leedom announced that he was
afraid of the women vote in the township and that as a result he would not be
a candidate for treasurer at the fall elections. It looks now as though it
will be up to Leedom’s successor to follow out or reject the Leedom
proclamation. So far there are four candidates who have shied their hats into
the ring and at least five others are expected to come out within the next
two weeks.
Four of these men when questioned as to what they would do if either one of
them happened to be treasurer, were non-committal. “You don’t think that I am
going to antagonize the women and then ask them for their votes, do you?”
said one candidate and his sentiments were echoed by the others.
The two constables of Haverford… are also up for re-election and there are
candidates in the field against them, so these two men will not commit
themselves either.
Just what would happen in Haverford township if constables went forth to drag
women to jail for non-payment of taxes is uncertain. It is a foregone
conclusion, however, that no red-blooded male of the township would see his
spouse dragged off to the pretty little cells at Oakmont without putting up a
howl, and it’s a safe bet that two constables would have their hands full if
the self-same women who did not pay last year made up their minds that they
would not pay again this year.…
By , there were still
“[s]everal hundred women residing in Haverford… delinquent in their taxes.”
They were notified that warrants would be served on those who continued to
refuse the $4.68 tax (plus $2.50 in penalties), and threatened that the cost
of the warrant would add another $4.10 to that amount.
“Somebody may be arrested and put in jail, to test out the law. Of course, no
one desires to see a woman go to jail, but how are the authorities going to
find out whether women are exempt from paying taxes?”
Instead, the authorities seized property from five of the resisters:
Action Taken when Collector Showed Determination to Sell Personal
Property
A public sale of articles owned by five Media women who had refused to pay
delinquent taxes was called off
by Mrs. Emily Cooper, the borough’s delinquent tax collector. The holdouts
changed their minds and paid taxes ranging from $3 to $5 each.
Twelve other persons who have declined to pay were notified that levies will
be made on their personal property for public sale
.
The taxes collected amounted to $1000 and should have been paid in
. The Media school board told Mrs. Cooper
she must either collect the amount or pay the taxes, whereupon Mrs. Cooper
said she would levy on the personal property of 100 women who were delinquent.
Mrs. Cooper’s action was taken after she had learned a recent act of the
legislature permitted her to levy on personal property to recover unpaid
taxes.
The women had refused to pay their taxes saying it was only since women got
the right to vote that that taxes were said, was “wished” upon them against
their will.
It seems as though it were typical for the government to present a tax bill
to the tax collector based on how much they felt was collectible in the
collector’s demesne, at which point the collector her or himself was
liable for the amount, and would sometimes cough the whole of it up in advance
of collecting it. Then he or she’d have to go back to the government and
plead for “exoneration” for certain taxpayers if they couldn’t be collected
from for reasons of death, poverty, or… ornery womanhood.
County Tax Collectors Instructed To See That Act Is Complied With
The following statement issued by the County Commissioners precludes the
possibility of any further conjecture regarding the liability of women
taxables:
There seems to be some doubt in the minds of a great many people as to the
liability of a woman to pay her taxes, and a spirit on the part of a great
many to let them go by default.
For the benefit of all those who may doubt the liability of these women to
pay their tax, be advised that the Act passed , P.L.
169, makes it compulsory for a woman to pay her tax under penalty of arrest
for non-payment.
It has been brought very forcibly to the attention of the County
Commissioners, by women property owners, that the County Commissioners and
officers of other municipalities are compelled by law and their oath to see
that this tax is assessed and collected.
This statement is to notify the women tax payers of Tioga County, that the
tax Collectors of the various boroughs and townships are being instructed to
collect this tax and comply with the Act above referred to.
F.G. Brown, R.B. Baity, F.E. Reinwald, County Commissioners.
But that did not seem to convince everybody. The following comes from the
Wellsboro Agitator of
:
Sex does not exempt tax delinquents, asserts judge who advises making
examples
Wilkes-Barre, Pa., . —
Holding that women who refuse to pay their taxes should be sent to jail, and
that females cannot expect to stand on their modern privileges without
assuming the burdens which attach to them, President Judge Fuller, of the
Luzerne county court, in a decision handed down advises tax collectors to
make an example of defiant female tax dodgers as a warning to all others.
The decision was based on a petition of Hugh F. O’Donnell, tax collector of
Freeland, who asked for a declaratory judgment on female liability in respect
to non-payment of school tax. The tax collector presented a list of fifteen
women who refused to pay school taxes for , amounting to from $4.35 to $6.49 on each for each year.
Solicitor M. S. DePierro stated there are almost 200 women In Freeland who
have refused to pay school taxes and hundreds of women in other
municipalities of the county who do not pay taxes. The decision of the court
has a bearing on all women tax delinquents.
Judge Fuller’s decision is as follows:
“We are asking in this proceeding to render a declaratory judgment that
certain fifteen refractory and delinquent taxables of Freeland shall
forthwith pay their taxes to the tax collector.
“We have no power in this proceeding to declare that they shall pay, but we
do have the power to declare, as we have already declared, that they should
pay or go to jail for default, after unsuccessful effort to collect by levy
and sale of property.
“Females cannot expect to stand on their modern privileges without standing
under the burdens which attach.
“We would advise, however, that the collector does not make at the outset of
his anti-female campaign, an omnibus commitment of fifteen, but that he first
select one or more of the most refractory delinquents, single women, defiant,
childless, and able to pay, who may be committed without compunction, as a
warning to others.”
This is accompanied by a sidebar:
Please Read the Above Warning Carefully.
To the delinquent taxpayers of Wellsboro,
Pa.: We wish to state
that we do not want to cause any hardship on any one, but we are going to
collect all taxes collectible; so please pay them on or before
, and save further costs
and added percentage. Two-thirds have paid, why not you?
Very truly yours W.R. Keagle, Tax Collector.
Wellsboro is in north-central Pennsylvania, by the way, so at least we have
learned that there was nothing special about the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh axis
in the south.
A edition of the
Wellsboro Gazette noted the peculiar feature
of the then-law that no woman (“or infant or person found by inquisition to be
of unsound mind”) could be jailed for nonpayment, but said that this would not
necessarily be a bar to enforcement, as the usual techniques of property levy
and sale could still be used. According to that article, 923 out of 974 women
voters in Hollidaysburg had paid-up, with 51 delinquents unaccounted for.
Collector [S. Robert] Shaw threatened several hundred women with jail if they
had not paid up by .
he granted them 48 hours
of grace to pay the outstanding taxes. Now they have until
.
He was much disgruntled when his office opened
and a few women
straggled in to pay their taxes, while down the street he said scores of
women were standing in line and pushing their way into a department store
that had announced a sale on buckets.
“Look at the way they rush for a bargain and yet won’t pay their legal
debts,” he commented.
Threats to throw women in jail seemed largely to be bluff, but there were
examples. Here’s one from the Chester Times of
:
Carlisle, Pa., . —
Because they refused to pay their personal taxes for a two-year period and
refused to let their husbands pay, Mrs. Ella Rotz and Mrs. Rhoda Rotz,
sisters-in-law, of Shippensburg,
Pa., were committed to
the Cumberland county jail yesterday. The taxes amount to $5.57 and $3.91[?
not legible —♇] respectively.
Under state law women as well as men may be jailed for non-payment of their
local taxes. Having no property they were arrested although their husbands
offered to pay.
They will be held until taxes and the penalty are paid, it was announced by
Tax Collector C.A. Goodhart.
Tax Collector W.L. Bailey, of Franklin township, brought Mrs. E.A. Webster to
Montrose, Pa., and she
was placed in the county jail for refusing to pay her taxes. Her husband also
refused to pay them for her, says a Montrose,
Pa., newspaper. As a
collector is bound under the law to collect the taxes where the party is able
to pay them, which appeared likely in this instance, his only recourse was to
commit her to jail. Her taxes amounted to $2.10, and the justice’s costs for
hearing was $2, making a total of $4.10 to secure her release. The collector
is also entitled to additional costs if he sees fit to impose them, such as a
dollar for serving the warrant and ten cents a mile for travelling expenses
in placing the delinquent in jail.
Franklin’s tax collector has had two other women who refused to pay their
taxes, but after a hearing in each case their husbands had come to the rescue
by paying taxes and costs. This is the first instance known in the county
where a woman has gone to jail because of refusing to pay taxes. A number of
similar instances have come up in various parts of the state, but after
remaining in jail a few hours or a few days the husbands have come along and
paid the taxes and thus released their wives.
On , Henry Webster, of
Hallstead, her son, came to Montrose and paid the taxes and costs and she was
released.
Washington, Pa., (AP) —
The Washington county jail was again the temporary home
of a Monongahela Valley resident
because of refusal to meet a tax bill.
Mrs. Caroline Behanna, of Eldora, went to prison rather than pay a road and
school levy amounting to $5.80. She is the third resident of that district to
go to jail under such circumstances in the last 18 months.
The first was Mrs. Henrietta Moss, of North Charleroi, who remained in the
prison for a month until members of her family persuaded her to pay the small
amount.
Wade Ford, of Monongahela, recently served five months. He claimed he had no
money to meet the taxes. His case gained widespread attention, contributions
being received from all sections of the country to pay the taxes and costs. He
was released when the gifts reached the total needed.
Relatives Pay
Washington, Pa., (AP) —
Committed to the Washington county jail for refusing to pay taxes, Mrs.
Caroline Behanna, of Eldora, was released today after relatives paid $19.99,
the amount of the taxes and costs.
The bottom-up, seemingly leaderless, loosely-organized nature of this revolt
means that it has left a somewhat diffuse record — notice for instance how few
times in any of the accounts above any of the women involved are quoted or
their motives are given. But the thousands of resisters involved, and the great
difficulty the collectors had in combating the resistance, makes this one of
the major tax resistance campaigns in United States history.
And here’s an article that slipped by me when I was preparing
my post on the thousands of tax
resisting women in Pennsylvania in (from the McKean County Democrat
on ):
Commissioners Start Drive to Collect All Back Taxes Due From County Collectors
The McKean county commissioners have taken a decided stand to enforce
collection of delinquent taxes in McKean county.
Tax collectors of the county have been given until
to make a complete return of
all taxes long overdue in all instances except where exonerations are allowed
by local governing bodies.
It is said that in some communities taxes are back as far as
.
In at least one McKean county community the collector is confronted by an
obstinate group of forty or more women citizens who have flatly refused to
pay taxes. It is probable that in this instance the harassed collector will
be compelled to turn over the difficult task of collecting the resulting
arrearages to a constable for drastic measures.
The law compels a jail penalty for women citizens who refuse to pay their
taxes, just as it does in cases of male delinquents. Interesting developments
are expected in the nearby community.
The commissioners are to be commended for taking this firm stand to collect
delinquent tax money in the county, a move which will greatly increase the
county revenues this year at a time when the considerable sum involved is
needed greatly.
Mark Wilks was arrested and sent to Brixton Prison for failing to pay his wife’s income taxes.
The case became a cause célèbre in the British women’s suffrage movement and an embarrassment to the British government and its tax authorities.
This is a good example of how careful study of the law can help tax resisters find and exploit flaws that hold the tax system or its enforcement arm up to ridicule, make them unworkable, or make them vehicles for additional resistance or propaganda opportunities.
Ethel Ayres Purdie, resident tax law expert of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, discovered the vulnerability.
The Income Tax Act, she wrote, “is a most fearsome piece of composition.
Its language is archaic and tautological, it rises wholly superior to punctuation, and proceeds breathlessly through one hundred and ninety-four clauses.”
But one of those clauses held a fatal flaw.
The “Married Woman’s Property Act” of was a reform that allowed married women to maintain control of their property rather than relinquishing it to their husbands’ control upon marriage.
But the earlier () Income Tax Act still considered the husband to be solely liable for the income taxes of both the husband and wife.
At first, when Elizabeth Wilks began resisting her income tax, the government responded by seizing and selling her property, but when this quirk in the law was discovered, tax resisters like Wilks protested that the government could not legally seize her property since as a married woman her taxes were legally owed by the him in the marriage.
So the government went after Mark Wilks instead.
Mark Wilks, for his part, insisted that he could hardly fill out an income tax return since he had no legal right to demand information from his wife about her income!
Besides, his modest income and lack of property in his own name meant that he could not afford to pay the taxes on his wife’s considerably larger income (he did pay the tax on the portion of their joint income that was attributable to his own income, though his income was low enough that by itself it would not have been taxable).
“I am informed that I am liable for taxes levied on her income,” he wrote “while at the same time the law places all her property entirely beyond my control.”
Meanwhile, the Women’s Tax Resistance League trumpeted the arrest of Mark Wilks and his indefinite imprisonment — “for non-payment of taxes not his own and due on an income over which he has no control and whose amount he can only guess at” — as proving their contention that not only should women resist the income tax, but that married women were not even legally obligated to pay it and those who were paying it were operating under a legal delusion.
The imprisonment of Mark Wilks was a propaganda coup:
For what do the arrest and imprisonment of Mark Wilks mean?
We are perfectly certain that it will not last long.
Stupid and inept as it has been, the Government, we are certain, will not risk the odium which would justly fall upon it if this outrage on liberty went on.
A Government which has much at stake and which lives by the breath of popular opinion cannot afford to ignore such strong and healthy protest as is being poured out on all sides.
To us, who are in the midst of it, that which seems most remarkable is the growth of public feeling.
In the streets where processions are nightly held, we were met at first by banter and rowdyism.
“A man in prison for the sake of Suffragettes!”
To the boy-mind of the metropolis, on the outskirts of many an earnest crowd, that seemed irresistibly funny; but thoughtfulness is spreading; into even the boy-mind, the light of truth is creeping.
If it had done nothing else, the imprisonment of Mark Wilks has certainly done this — it has educated the public mind.
Wilks was released after less than a month in prison, without official explanation, and without paying the tax.
A tax resistance campaign is almost always one that butts up against the law, and it can be helpful to have campaigners who know a thing or two about legal matters.
As Elizabeth Cady Stanton put it when she was considering a tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in America,
One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.
Today I’ll summarize some examples of how legal study and the assistance of attorneys have made a difference in tax resistance campaigns.
Poll Tax rebels in Thatcher’s Britain
Understanding the law and the legal process was important in the poll tax rebellion — to give confidence to resisters, to support targets of government reprisals, and to make the process of tax enforcement costly and unmanageable.
Anti-poll tax volunteer Danny Burns writes:
In Bristol when the court cases started, each person with a summons, who rang into the office, was logged and sent an information pack.
The same personal attention was given to people with notices from the bailiffs.
At the peak of the campaign, the Bristol office was staffed morning and afternoon five days a week by different volunteers.
, it was receiving over 200 calls a week.
… [The volunteers included] at least five court support workers…
In every part of England and Wales local groups mobilised to provide support for non-payers in the courts.
Tens, if not hundreds of activists in each region attended legal briefing sessions.
These were run both by activists and sympathetic local lawyers.
People were given ideas about how they might disrupt or delay the court proceedings.
These included simple things, like asking for a glass of water because their throat was dry, demanding to see the identity cards of everyone present in court, to fainting in court or arranging for fire alarms to go off.
People were told to demand their rights to see and read every document which was produced as evidence against them.
They were also given briefings on the basic technical arguments.
By , when most of the court cases had started, virtually every Anti-Poll Tax Union in the UK had trained at least two or three of its members to become conversant with the Poll Tax law.
Throughout England and Wales over a thousand people were trained to do court support work and could quote the relevant legislation.
This is unique in the history of popular campaigning.
The Anti-Poll Tax Unions hoped to use the legal precedent of McKenzie versus McKenzie (), which said that a person can “attend a trial as a friend of either party (to) take notes and quietly make suggestions and give advice to that party.”
This person would be known as a “McKenzie friend.” McKenzie friends had no right to address the court, but they could advise the non-payer what to say.
In this way everyone would be able to offer technical defences and thereby delay the proceedings.
The campaign needed lawyers only in the most technical cases.
Lawyers were often seen as a liability, because they represented an individual client, and it was in their interest to get through the procedure as quickly as possible.
It was in the campaign’s interest for everything to proceed as slowly as possible.
Nevertheless, legal knowledge and guidance was essential.
This arrived with the creation of the Poll Tax Legal Group… [which] researched legislation and case law.
It set up a network of lawyers throughout England and Wales who could support the legal challenges of Anti-Poll Tax groups and produced over 30 accessible legal bulletins on the Poll Tax and a book called To Pay or Not To Pay.
These underpinned the legal needs of the movement and helped ordinary people to get to grips with the law they needed to use.
Delaying tactics were mixed with serious legal technicalities.
Councils were challenged for sending notices to the wrong addresses.
Given the rate at which people moved houses, it was difficult for the councils to keep up, and as a result many cases were dropped because people hadn’t received proper notice.
Big legal challenges were also made over “correct procedures.”
These came in the first few weeks and resulted mostly from the inexperience of councils in dealing with this sort of process.
The first day of Medina Council’s cases (on the Isle of Wight) is probably the most famous example.
The reminder notices were sent out with second class stamps, they consequently arrived late, people didn’t receive the statutory notice which they were entitled to, and the court threw out all 1,900 cases.
The council had to start again.
When police attacked an anti-poll tax demonstration in London, many of the demonstrators fought back, and hundreds were arrested.
Elements of the campaign leadership distanced themselves from the defendants, embarrassed to have the campaign associated with violence.
So other activists helped to form and coordinate an independent group — the Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign — with the following mandate:
The campaign will:
Unconditionally defend all of those arrested on .
Be controlled by and be accountable to the defendants
Be totally independent of any other organisation.
Seek support from the whole Anti-Poll Tax movement and all other sympathetic organisations.
Seek to co-ordinate the legal defence of all those arrested.
Seek to build a coherent picture of events of from the point of view of those arrested.
Publicise the points of view of defendants.
Raise money for a bust fund, controlled by the defendants to cover their legal and welfare costs.
Ensure that at all future Anti-Poll Tax events there will be proper legal cover and support for anyone arrested.
This will include an office and workers to visit places of detention and look after prisoners’ welfare.
Danny Burns again:
About a dozen people volunteered to carry out the court monitoring process.
They attended every hearing, systematically took notes of everything that was said, recorded the numbers of police officers and approached the defendants asking them to attend the now weekly TSDC meetings… By the summer, over 250 of the defendants had been contacted.
The TSDC ran advice sessions on prison, produced legal briefing notes and mailed out the minutes of the weekly meetings to every defendant every week.
A solicitors’ group was established with a core of three, but at the peak of early activity they managed to get over fifteen solicitors involved.
This proved important because the solicitors’ group managed to get hold of over 50 hours of police videos and handed them over to the campaign.
The police videos were crucial in getting a lot of people off, and a number of people in the campaign worked extremely hard editing videos and rejigging them for particular trials.
The solicitors’ group also got the Crown Prosecution Service to hand over a full list of all of the defendants and the names and addresses of their lawyers.
The lawyers were all contacted and, although many were initially reluctant to co-operate with the campaign, they soon realised that TSDC had a lot of information which their clients needed.
Every possible legal angle was pursued by the campaign’s legal team — down to legal definitions of what constituted a householder, making the councils prove that the person they had summonsed actually lived at the address, that they owned the property, etc., etc. We weren’t doing this because we had any illusions in the impartiality of the court system.
We knew that even though we were successful in finding various legal loopholes these would all be closed one by one and that the judges would be doing their best to facilitate the councils.
This was demonstrated most clearly when a judge in Swords invoked the Public Order Act to close several streets around the courthouse to prevent a protest outside it.
But by contesting every detail of every summons we could make the system unworkable.
There were tens of thousands of non-payers.
After several months the councils had only managed to get a couple of dozen cases through the courts.
Someone calculated that at the rate they were managing to proceed it would take them something like 220 years to process all the cases.
And it was costing them more in legal fees than they could ever hope to take back in charges — even if they managed to bully everyone into paying.
Any time the council did manage to get a court order, it was appealed — again the objective being to clog up the system.
George Cony’s aggressive lawyers
When Oliver Cromwell knocked the English king off his throne, he did so in part in the cause of Parliamentary democracy.
Upon assuming charge of the English government, however, he grew impatient with Parliament and decided to enact some taxes on his own.
One of Cromwell’s more radical supporters, George Cony, taking Cromwell at his word (Cromwell had said that “the subject who submits to an illegal impost is more an enemy of his country than the tyrant who imposes it”) decided to refuse to pay one of these arbitrary taxes.
Cony’s lawyers argued his case so successfully that Cony’s tax evasion case threatened to call the legal underpinnings of Cromwell’s regime into question.
The judges in the case seemed sympathetic, and Cromwell was so alarmed that he had all three lawyers imprisoned in the Tower of London until they repented, upon which the chief-justice who was hearing the case resigned.
Hugh Williams and the Rebecca rioters
Radical lawyer Hugh Williams was of great help to the Rebecca movement in Wales — some say he was more than a legal advisor, but one of the instigators of the movement, or even “Rebecca” herself!
One account says: “[Williams] did all the legal work for the rioters, also drafting various petitions for them.
He was a prominent member of the Chartist movement, acting as their solicitor, and he defended the prisoners at Welshpool Assizes in July, 1839, for taking part in the Chartist Riots.
He rendered similar services to the Rebecca prisoners gratuitously; but was eventually reported to the Lord Chancellor and struck off the Rolls.
He, however, continued to do a considerable amount of legal work, and whenever it became necessary for him to appear in court, he invariably employed [another attorney] to appear for him.”
His familiarity with the law and the legal process helped him help the Rebeccaites translate their grievances into formal petitions, which in turn helped the Rebeccaite “people power” movement effect change in government policy.
White supremacists in Reconstruction-era Louisiana
When white supremacists in New Orleans decided to actively withdraw their consent from the mixed-race Reconstruction government of “scalawags” and “carpet-baggers” there in , they formed “The People’s Association to Resist Unconstitutional Taxation” and declared a tax strike.
Fifty-eight New Orleans attorneys signed the following statement of support:
The undersigned attorneys at law, citizens of New Orleans, engage themselves, without compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all citizens, residents, or property-holders in this city, who shall desire their assistance in resisting the collection by municipal authorities of the taxes known as the “school-tax,” the “park-tax,” and the “metropolitan-police tax,” and other taxes the collection of which may be lawfully resisted.
The Smith sisters of Glastonbury
Abby & Julia Smith refused to pay taxes to a local government that denied women the vote and that took advantage of this by excessively taxing women’s property in order to ease the tax burden on male voters and to redistribute the money to male patronage recipients.
In response, the government periodically seized and auctioned off the Smith sisters’ cows (“Votey” and “Taxey”).
That failing to discourage the Smiths, the town decided to fight dirty, and the Smiths fought back legally in a way that brought further attention to their cause:
[A]n inconspicuous advertisement in the Hartford Courant announced the sale at public auction of fifteen acres of Smith pasture land on , a date contrived to fall just before the grass would be cut.
Though the sisters set out on that day with ample funds, the collector adroitly shifted the meeting place, and when the two women caught up with the auction, the gavel had just gone down transferring for $78.35 land worth nearly $2,000 to none other than a covetous neighbor who had tried for years to get possession of it.
Abby and Julia were daughters of a lawyer.
They brought suit against tax collector George C. Andrews on the grounds that he had violated a law which plainly stated that movable property must first be sold for unpaid taxes before real estate could be seized.
The case was tried in the home of Judge Hollister of Glastonbury, who gave a verdict in favor of the sisters and fined Andrews damages of $10. Threatening terrible consequences, Andrews appealed the case.
The new trial, which lasted three days in the Hartford Court of Common Pleas, had a farcical aspect.
There were misplaced records; there was distorted evidence.
The judge, in absentia, reversed the Glastonbury decision and decided in favor of collector Andrews.
At this point the Smiths’ lawyer backed out.
Abby and Julia, both now in their eighties, began the study of law with the intention of conducting their own case.
Happily a capable lawyer finally agreed to place a second appeal before the Court of Equity.
For two years a wide and sympathetic public followed this devious litigation.
Across the nation, even in England and France, editors and columnists lauded the Glastonbury cows in prose and poetry.
Reporters visited the town, drank tea in the elm-shaded farmhouse, admired the cows, polled public opinion in Glastonbury, and returned with highly flavored and often inaccurate stories.
With whatever condescension these reporters arrived, they seem, one and all, to have found the Smith sisters irresistible.
The hospitality, wit, and charm of the two elderly spinsters captivated the world beyond Glastonbury.
When the final verdict was made in their favor, in , women the country over rejoiced.
To be sure, Julia and Abby did not vote in Glastonbury, but from that time on their property was undisturbed.
The Greek “Won’t Pay” movement
The current Greek “Won’t Pay” movement, which is resisting a number of stealth taxes the government has added to things like utility bills and road tolls, has also carried its struggle into court — at one point winning an injunction that forbade the state power company from cutting the power of people who were refusing to pay the new utility bill tax.
Newly-enfranchised Pennsylvania women
When women in Pennsylvania won the vote, many discovered to their chagrin that they had also become subject to taxes to which they had previously been immune.
Thousands of them, deciding the package was not worth it, decided to refuse to pay.
And they were able to take advantage of a quirk in an law that did not permit the authorities to send women to prison (though they could imprison men) for tax refusal:
Nothing herein contained shall authorize the arrest or imprisonment for non-payment of any tax of any female or infant or person found by inquisition to be of unsound mind.
It took a few years for the state legislature to pass a law allowing for the jailing of women who refused to pay their taxes.
Maurice McCrackin’s lawyers
Not all legal help is helpful.
When American war tax resister Maurice McCrackin was convicted of refusing to cooperate with an IRS summons, he was following a strategy of complete noncooperation that he kept following right into the courtroom — where he refused to stand for the judge, refused to plead to the charges, refused to answer questions, refused to consult with his court-appointed attorney, fasted while behind bars, and had to be wheeled into and out from his court appearances because he wouldn’t walk there under his own power.
For the same reason, upon his conviction, he emphatically said that he was not interested in pursuing an appeal: “I said I wanted to file no appeal, nor did I want steps taken to keep the door open, so an appeal could be perfected later.
I do not recognize any appeal on my behalf… My position is not changed.
This is a moral, not a legal, struggle.”
One of the lawyers who had been assigned to defend him, however, convinced that the judge had betrayed bias against McCracken in his statements from the bench, said that he intended to appeal anyway.
“Constitutionalist” tax protesters
And then there are the “Constitutionalist” “show me the law!”-style tax protesters.
For years they have been bedeviling the IRS with their baroque, ever-evolving, quasi-legal arguments and pleadings based on the real Constitution, or common law, or tortured interpretations of excerpts from a variety of cherry-picked statutes and court rulings.
While they typically know just enough about the law to get into trouble, without knowing enough to get out again, there’s no question that they cause headaches a-plenty for the powers that be.
Alas, this does not seem to actually be their objective.
Instead, they seem convinced that they’re not just whistling Dixie, but they’re right, and if they can just figure out how to pick the lock of the court system with the right argument, they’ll be able to walk out free into a new world where their Constitution holds sway and the perverters of the true law are vanquished.
Alas, most of what they have discovered is an enormous and inventive catalog of things that don’t work, so in spite of all of their creativity and effort, they have given the rest of us little to work with.
But if you ever have a “that’s so crazy it just might work!” idea about going up against the IRS, you might want to research these folks first — they may have already tried it.
And every once in a while they rack up a courtroom victory — not often one that amounts to much in real terms, but it fuels the movement.
One observer of the movement reacted to a twist of this sort by saying: “This is going to encourage thousands more people who were on the fence, who were paying taxes only because they were afraid they would be criminally prosecuted.
If too many people do this, the tax system will collapse because it is based on people voluntarily complying.”
(I’m most familiar with the U.S. variety, but similar groups exist in Canada, the U.K., and probably elsewhere.
Earlier this year in England, for instance, hundreds of Constitutionalist tax protesters stormed a courtroom where one of their number was on trial, whereupon they attempted to put the judge under citizens arrest, and began making their own rulings from the bench!)
A tax resistance campaign can increase participation by means of a social boycott practiced against non-resisting by-standers.
Here are some examples of social boycotts of this sort:
Vallabhbhai Patel, commander of the Bardoli tax strike
Social boycott was an important tool of the Bardoli tax refusal campaign during the independence struggle in India.
Mahadev Desai, in The Story of Bardoli, writes:
It is this weapon that exasperated the Government, but they were helpless because social boycott was no offence under the Penal Code.
And the Sardar [Vallabhbhai Patel, who commanded the campaign] poured ridicule on Government for grudging the people the use of this their only weapon.
“What do you do yourselves?
Yours is a close corporation maintained by force of arms and its motive is no nobler than keeping a nation in bondage.
We resort to this weapon simply for the sake of self-defence and self-preservation.”
But he never omitted to emphasize its limitations, the very first being that in no circumstances should a Satyagrahi refuse to minister to the physical needs of the party boycotted.
“Eschew by all means molestation or oppression.
We may not refuse anyone milk, water, foodstuffs, help in case of illness or worse.
We cannot afford to prosecute boycott at the expense of our humanity.”
Among the ways they could boycott landowners who capitulated to the government and paid their property taxes was to refuse to rent their fields or to work as agricultural laborers for them.
During the American revolution, boycotts of British imports were enforced by social boycott.
One resolution of boycotters read in part:
[W]e further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public, shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer: and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence, with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer; and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country, and infamous, who shall break this agreement.
another said:
That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt, or in any wise aid or abet in unloading receiving or vending the Tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an Enemy to America — … That a Committee be immediately chosen to wait on those Gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said Tea, and to request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this Town and Province immediately to resign their appointment.
An Ipswich town meeting resolved:
[W]e will not by ourselves or any for or under us directly or indirectly purchase any goods of the persons who have imported or continue to import, or any person or trader who shall purchase any goods of said importer contrary to the agreement of the merchants in Boston and the other trading towns in this government & the neighboring colonies until they make a public retraction or a general importation takes place.
Sicily’s branch of the “Confindustria” industrialists’ union unanimously voted in to expel any member who was caught paying protection money to the mafia, and a few dozen members in fact were expelled from the group under this policy.
Many Quaker “meetings” (congregations) had a policy of “disowning” members who failed to practice war tax resistance.
Sometimes, even failing to report that the government had subjected you to “sufferings” for your resistance could make you suspect, and Quakers would be appointed to visit you and ask how you had managed to avoid government reprisals while maintaining your refusal to pay.
Disowning was something akin to excommunication, and had the effect of removing the benefits of meeting membership from the disobedient Quakers until such time as they repented and made satisfactory amends — which might include reading an acknowledgment of the wrong of their behavior at a future meeting.
Occasionally, as during the American Revolution, disownings like this would lead to schisms and the emergence of rival meetings.
During the Tithe War in Ireland, it was reported that
Immense meetings are held, which form themselves into tribunals, before which persons accused of the crime of tithe-paying are summoned to appear, and give an account of their conduct; and defaulters undergo the punishment of being abandoned at once by every person in their employment.
Country gentlemen and farmers are left without a servant or labourer to perform the most necessary work.
The hay is left to rot on the ground, and the cattle to perish for want of the necessary food, drink, and care; and even on the roads it is common for the horses of the mails and stage-coaches to be changed by the coachmen and passengers, because the unhappy recusant innkeeper has been deserted by every one, even to his hostler.
Such is the terror of this new species of judicial authority, that numbers of highly respectable persons have found it necessary, in order to avert ruinous consequences, to appear before these self-constituted courts, acknowledge their jurisdiction, and promise to give obedience to their decrees!
Another report complained: “The man who in any way upholds the obnoxious system, whatever his previous character or services may have been, is branded as an object of universal execration.”
When resisters at the “New Rush” in South Africa in pledged to refuse to pay further taxes, they also pledged, “that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation.”
Women in Pennsylvania who found themselves suddenly taxable in the wake of women’s suffrage were subject to strong social pressure to join in a largely unorganized but widespread tax boycott.
According to one report:
[A] woman, who is reported to have failed to pay her tax, asserted she was laughed at by her friends when she paid her tax in former years, and she would not be laughed at any longer.
I’m not sure you could call this a tactic, exactly, but it’s worth mentioning that it is possible to have a quiet, leaderless tax strike that never forms an organization or runs a formal campaign, but is nonetheless powerful and successful.
Yale professor James C. Scott has made a career of studying this variety of leaderless, grassroots resistance — and he has noted in particular examples of tax resistance that follow this pattern.
(See The Picket Line for .)
Such “everyday resistance” has many advantages: it is harder for the government to combat, it builds its own momentum, and it promises an easy payoff without requiring much risk or responsibility.
“[T]he peasantry’s most common and durable weapon,” Scott says, “is an everyday resistance that stops short of the more dangerous forms of overt protest and confrontation.”
Everyday resistance does not throw up the manifestos, demonstrations, or pitched battles that normally compel attention.
It makes no headlines.
But just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willy-nilly, a coral reef, so do thousands of individual acts of insubordination and evasion create a political and economic barrier reef of their own.
There is rarely any dramatic confrontation, any movement that is particularly newsworthy.
And whenever, to pursue the simile, the ship of state runs aground on such a reef, attention is typically directed to the shipwreck (for example, a fiscal crisis) itself and not to the vast aggregation of petty acts that made it possible.
In the French National Assembly threw in the towel and formally abolished a series of taxes that the people had informally eliminated by means of their refusal to pay — starting with “salt duties, internal customs-duties, taxes on leather, on oil, on starch, and the stamp of iron,” and then a year later including “octrois and entrance-dues in all the cities and boroughs of the kingdom, all the excise duties and those connected with the excise, especially all taxes which affect the manufacture, sale, or circulation of beverages.”
Some taxes are just so widely ignored and difficult to enforce that they become de facto abolished.
American states that have a sales tax cannot enforce that sales tax on merchants from other states — so they try to enforce it as a “use tax” due from the purchaser.
This means that anyone who orders something from a catalog or from an out-of-state vendor on the internet is supposed to keep careful track of how much they’ve spent on such things throughout the year and then write a check to their state government for their cut.
In practice, almost nobody does this, and the tax might as well not be on the books at all, at least as it applies to the ordinary consumer.
When women in Pennsylvania won the vote and got taxed as a booby prize, many refused to pay.
This happened all across the state, with thousands of women resisting, but without even any hints of formal organization that I been able to uncover.
Nonetheless, it had the authorities thoroughly stymied.
Lancaster, Pa. —
Because “there is nothing in the Bible that says women should pay taxes,” wives of Warwick township farmers refuse to pay per capita levies until forced by liens.
This was revealed by Jacob G. Conrad, township tax collector, and W.T. Wahls, state tax collector, after they filed liens against the properties of four women.
Thereupon the women paid the $4.20 per capita tax, and an additional $2.40 each for costs.
Conrad explained there is a strong faction of Mennonite farmers in the township, headed by Christian Landis, which fights continually against payment of taxes by women.
“They claim,” said Conrad, “that the Constitution of the United States is based on the Bible, and that nowhere in the Bible can they find any record of any woman having to pay taxes.
“This group will not pay until forced to do so, as a matter of principle.”
At first glance, this seems to me to have been a distinct phenomenon, though it may have been inspired by the earlier tax revolt.
One of the great unsung tax rebellions in America was widespread, grassroots tax refusal among women in Pennsylvania in .
Because the resisters did not hold rallies or pickets, did not issue petitions or manifestos, and did not (as far as I can tell) have formal organizations or hold meetings, they have mostly vanished from the historical record.
But their rebellion was widespread, broadly-adopted, and very disruptive to the authorities.
I’ve covered this a bit before, but I’ve since found a few more reports from the press at that time.
First, from the New Castle [Pennsylvania] News:
McKeesport Women Don’t Want To Vote, Refuse To Pay Tax
M’Keesport, . — “Why should we pay taxes in order to vote when we had nothing to do with suffrage for women and don’t want to vote and will not vote?”
Such, in effect, is a [greeting cry?] assessors of McKeesport, August Anderson and Robert E. Taylor, declare they received from eight out of every [ten?] women they approached for listing as new taxables.
The assessors are not opposed to the ballot for women.
They say it is entirely a matter for women, but they are certain that between 75 and 80 per cent of the women of voting age of McKeesport are not interested in the ballot and are opposed to paying any tax on its account.
The tax assessed is $1 for school purposes and is known as “occupation” tax.
Women say it is [misnamed?] as far as they are concerned, declaring that they should not be taxed because they happen to be housewives.
The assessors’ list shows about [9,000?] women taxables.
The registration in McKeesport showed 2,489 women enrolled, which gives color to the statement of the assessors.
Next, from the Greenfield, Pennsylvania, Record-Argus:
A Corry tax collector secured judgment against eleven women who refused or neglected to pay school tax.
The cases will probably get into court, as there seems to be a difference of opinion about what can be done when a woman who does not own property refuses to pay tax.
Next, from the Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, Item:
Refuse To Pay Tax
Tax Collector Edward Nahf, of Tamaqua, has sent out final warnings to those who refuse to pay their taxes in that city.
Most of the trouble, he states, is coming from the women who claim they have never voted and they never will and therefore they will go to jail rather than pay.
Next, from the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Telegraph:
Arrests Women Who Refuse to Pay Tax
New Cumberland, . — Women as well as men of Lower Allen township, Cumberland county, were notified by J.M. Witmer, tax collector, Elkwood, that they would be arrested if all taxes are not paid within the next five days.
Fifteen men and women have been summoned before a justice of the peace and more arrests are promised.
Next, from the issue of the same paper:
Man Refuses to Pay Tax; Wife in “Jail”
Sunbury, . — Mrs. H. Norman Byers, of Valley township, Montour county, spent several hours at the home of Sheriff Gross and family at the jail here when her husband refused to pay her taxes or permit her to pay them.
The sum was $7.65.
When a constable brought the woman to be jailed the Sheriff would not hear of it, and the woman spent the time with Mrs. Gross, instead of in the jail.
Neighbor women made up the amount.
The husband is a well-to-do farmer and operates a milk route in Danville.
Next, from the Altoona, Pennsylvania, Tribune:
Citizens Resist Tax Collector
Portage Official Refused Entrance Into Home to Make Levy
Cresson, . — William Mickey, tax collector of the borough of Portage, has been having trouble in collecting taxes in his bailiwick.
The trouble came to a head when he attempted to levy on the goods of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Stankavitz.
He was prevented entering the house.
Mr. Mickey made information before Justice of the Peace Fred W. Veil, here, against Mr. and Mrs. Stankavitz, charging them with obstructing a process.
At a hearing on both parties were held in the sum of $300 for their appearance at court.
Information was also made by Tax Collector Mickey against Mrs. Lucy Sura on the same charge and when Constable Lytle went to serve the warrant, Mrs. Sura loaded children of the neighborhood in the constable’s car and said she was ready to go to jail.
It was found that but six of the eighteen children were of her family and when Lytle attempted to eject them from his car, Frank Sura, husband of the woman interfered.
As a result he was arrested on a charge of interfering with an officer.
Both he and his wife gave bail in the sum of $300 for their appearance at the next term of court when brought before Justice F.W. Veil .
Next, from the Reading, Pennsylvania, Times:
Woman Refuses to Pay Tax, Arrested
Ephrata, . — Refusing to pay taxes, Anna Beck, wife of John Beck, of near Hahnstown, was arrested and lodged in Lancaster county jail by M.B. Hecker, tax collector of Ephrata township and two deputies, Benjamin Wissler and Jacob Beck.
Next, from the Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, Daily News:
Women of Kulpmont Refuse to Pay Tax; Most of Those Back in Taxes Are Women
Efforts to force women of Kulpmont to pay their taxes are proving rather discouraging.
Constables are not anxious to serve warrants on members of the fair sex.
The Kulpmont News was told by Paul Azary, borough tax collector, on whom demand was made recently to clear up the big exoneration list, which contains the names of hundreds of women voters, that several thousand dollars is due and it was announced that among the delinquents, at least 90 per cent are women.
Objection of the women is principally to the $2.50 special school tax, which they consider exorbitant.
Next, from the Reading, Pennsylvania, Times:
Six Darby Women Refuse to Pay Tax
Most of 300 Who Defied Collector Turn In on Threat of Prison
Darby, Pa.,
(AP) — Six
women out of three hundred who defied the local tax collector and refused to pay a personal tax of $4.05 still were holding out against the payment of the impost.
Unless they pay the tax, says S. Robert Shaw, the collector, he will be forced to send them to the Delaware county jail until they meet this obligation to the borough.
Despite the resistance of the little band, a majority of housewives of Darby chose to pay the tax in preference to going to jail.
Bring Babies Along
Many of the women who decided to pay brought their babies along to the tax collector’s office and at one time there was a string of baby coaches outside the door.
Harry W. Shein, deputy collector, had his troubles in trying to find some of his delinquents.
There was no response to his call at several of the homes and there was nothing for him to do but pass on to the next delinquent.
He found Mrs. Margaret Lytle at home.
She was busy doing an odd job in painting.
“I’m the tax collector,” said Shein.
“So I see,” said Mrs. Lytle.
“You had better pay your taxes,” said Shein.
“What will my husband do if he comes home and finds no supper,” asked Mrs. Lytle.
Shein had no reply to this and again warned Mrs. Lytle that non-payers of taxes will go to jail.
Another woman who is reported to have failed to pay her tax claimed she was laughed at by her friends when she paid her tax in former years, and she would not be laughed at any longer.
The tax has been imposed to complete the new Darby High school, and is part of $5,000 that is needed.
All the men apparently have paid the tax.
Next, from the issue of the same paper:
Recommit Woman to Jail When She Refuses to Pay Tax
Lewistown, Pa.,
(AP) — Mrs.
Lillian Reed, of Milroy, was recommitted to the Mifflin county jail here by W.H. Prints, Mifflin county sheriff, when she refused to pay her school tax.
When the woman was faced with the alternative of paying her taxes or going to jail, she calmly said she preferred jail.
Even when offered the opportunity of giving a security for the tax to be paid in 10 days, she refused.
Exclusive of her attorney fees, Mrs. Reed refused to pay the items of the cost of her case to the court which include court records $29.20, school tax with extras added $5.25, and sheriff costs, $4.40.
Z.T. Stine, Lewistown borough tax collector, stated today that since Judge Bailey delivered his decision against Mrs. Reed many women had come to his office to pay their taxes.
Next, from the issue of the Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Daily News is this item that may or may not be related to the campaign:
Woman Refuses to Pay Tax Bill, Goes to Jail
Easton, Pa., .
— (AP) — Mrs. Ada Housden, of Bangor, a widowed mother of nine children was brought to the county jail today on the warrant of Joshua Price, tax collector because of her inability to pay taxes an penalties assessed against her during the past three years.
The bill is for $17.43. After she had been in jail for several hours she was released upon orders of the solicitor for the county commissioners.
She admits owing the bill but says she is unable to pay it.
