How you can resist funding the government →
a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns →
disrupt government auctions →
Missouri railroad bonds scandal, 1876
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 .)
A tactic that I’ve encountered on many occasions in my research into tax resistance campaigns is that of disrupting government auctions of goods, particularly those of seized from tax resisters.
Here are several examples that show the variety of ways campaigns have accomplished this:
Religious nonconformists in the United Kingdom
Education Act-related resistance
Some disruption of auctions took place during the tax resistance in protest of the provisions of the Education Act that provided taxpayer money for sectarian education .
The Westminster Gazette reported:
There was some feeling displayed at a sale of the goods of Passive Resisters at Colchester yesterday, the Rev. T. Batty, a Baptist minister, and the Rev. Pierrepont Edwards, locally, known as “the fighting parson,” entering into discussion in the auction room, but being stopped by the auctioneer, who said he did his work during the week and he hoped they did theirs on Sundays.
At Long Eaton the goods of twenty-three Passive Resisters were sold amid demonstrations of hostility to the auctioneer.
A boy was arrested for throwing a bag of flour.
The New York Times reported that “Auctioneers frequently decline to sell goods upon which distraints have been levied.” And the San Francisco Chronicle noted:
Difficulty is experienced everywhere in getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated.
In Leominster, a ram and some ewe lambs, the property of a resistant named Charles Grundy, were seized and put up at auction, as follows: Ram, Joe Chamberlain; ewes, Lady Balfour, Mrs. Bishop, Lady Cecil, Mrs. Canterbury and so on through the list of those who made themselves conspicuous in forcing the bill through Parliament.
The auctioneer was entitled to a fee under the law of 10 shillings and 6 pence, which he promptly turned over to Mr. Grundy, having during the sale expressed the strongest sympathy for the tax-resisters.
Most of the auction sales are converted into political meetings in which the tax and those responsible for it are roundly denounced.
Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance
Auction disruptions were commonplace in the Annuity Tax resistance campaign in Edinburgh.
By law the distraint auctions (“roupings”) had to be held at the Mercat Cross — the town square, essentially — which made it easy to gather a crowd; or sometimes in the homes of the resisters. Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine reported of one of the Mercat Cross roupings:
If any of our readers know that scene, let them imagine, after the resistance was tolerably well organized, an unfortunate auctioneer arriving at the Cross about noon, with a cart loaded with furniture for sale.
Latterly the passive hubbub rose as if by magic.
Bells sounded, bagpipes brayed, the Fiery Cross passed down the closses, and through the High Street and Cowgate; and men, women, and children, rushed from all points towards the scene of Passive Resistance.
The tax had grinded the faces of the poor, and the poor were, no doubt, the bitterest in indignation.
Irish, Highlanders, Lowlanders, were united by the bond of a common suffering.
Respectable shopkeepers might be seen coming in haste from the Bridges; Irish traders flew from St. Mary’s Wynd; brokers from the Cowgate; all pressing round the miserable auctioneer; yelling, hooting, perhaps cursing, certainly saying anything but what was affectionate or respectful of the clergy.
And here were the black placards tossing above the heads of the angry multitude — ROUPING FOR STIPEND!
This notice was of itself enough to deter any one from purchasing; though we will say it for the good spirit of the people, that both the Scotch and Irish brokers disdained to take bargains of their suffering neighbours’ goods.
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The people lodged the placards and flags in shops about the Cross, so that not a moment was lost in having their machinery in full operation, and scouts were ever ready to spread the intelligence if any symptoms of a sale were discovered.
Sheriff Clerk Kenmure Maitland appeared before a committee that was investigating the resistance campaign.
He mentioned that “Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer for sheriff’s sales, was so much inconvenienced and intimidated that he refused to take any more of those sales.”
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that
occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer
by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any
customer who was of that party.
Q: It was not from any fear of personal violence?
A: That might have had a good deal to do with it.
Q: Was Mr. Whitten the only auctioneer who declined?
A: No. After Mr. Whitten’s refusal I applied to
Mr. Hogg, whose services I should have been glad to have obtained, and he
said he would let me know the next day if he would undertake to act as
auctioneer; he wrote to me the next day saying, that, after consideration
with his friends, he declined to act.
Q: Any other?
A: I do not remember asking any others. The rates
of remuneration for acting as auctioneer at sheriffs’ sales are so low that
men having a better class of business will not act. I had to look about among
not first-class auctioneers, and I found that I would have some difficulty in
getting a man whom I could depend upon, for I had reason to believe that
influence would be used to induce the auctioneer to fail me at the last
moment.
It was difficult for the authorities to get any help at all, either from auctioneers, furniture dealers, or carters.
The government had to purchase (and fortify) their own cart because they were unable to rent one for such use.
Here is an example of an auction of a resister’s goods held at the resister’s
home, as described in the testimony of Thomas Menzies:
A: I saw a large number of the most respectable citizens assembled in the house, and a large number outside awaiting the arrival of the officers who came in a cab, and the indignation was very strong when they got into the house, so much so that a feeling was entertained by some that there was danger to the life of Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer, and that he might be thrown out of the window, because there were such threats, but others soothed down the feeling.
Q: There was no overt act or breach of the peace?
A: No.
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another, and they went away round by a back street, rather than go by the direct way.
Q: Did Mr. Whitten, from his experience on that occasion, refuse ever to come to another sale as auctioneer?
A: He refused to act again, he gave up his
position.
He then described a second such auction:
A: The house was densely packed; it was impossible for me to get entrance; the stair was densely packed to the third and second flats; when the policemen came with the officers, they could not force their way up, except with great difficulty.
The consequence was, that nearly the whole of the rail of the upper storey gave way to the great danger both of the officers and the public, and one young man I saw thrown over the heads of the crowd to the great danger of being precipitated three storeys down.
Then the parties came out of the house, with their clothes dishevelled and severely handled; and the officer on that occasion will tell you that he was very severely dealt with indeed, and Mr. Sheriff Gordon was sent for, so much alarm being felt; but by the time the Sheriff arrived things were considerably subdued.
Sheriff Clerk Maitland also described this auction:
I found a considerable crowd outside; and on going up to the premises on the top flat, I found that I could not get entrance to the house; the house was packed with people, who on our approach kept hooting and shouting out, and jeering us; and, as far as I could see, the shutters were shut and the windows draped in black, and all the rooms crowded with people.
I said that it was necessary to carry out the sale, and they told me to come in, if I dare.
On another occasion, as he tells it, the auction seemed to go smoothly at first, but the buyers didn’t get what they hoped for:
At Mr. McLaren’s sale everything was conducted in an orderly way as far as the sale was concerned.
We got in, and only a limited number were allowed to go in; but after the officials and the police had gone, there was a certain amount of disturbance.
Certain goods were knocked down to the poinding creditors, consisting of an old sofa and an old sideboard, and Mr. McLaren said, “Let those things go to the clergy.” Those were the only things which had to be taken away.
There was no vehicle ready to carry them away.
Mr. McLaren said that he would not keep them.
After the police departed, he turned them out in the street, when they were taken possession of by the crowd of idlers, and made a bonfire of.
A summary of the effect of all of this disruption reads:
So strong was the feeling of hostility, that the town council were unable to procure the services of any auctioneer to sell the effects of those who conscientiously objected to pay the clerical portion of the police taxes, and they were consequently forced to make a special arrangement with a sheriff’s officer, by which, to induce him to undertake the disagreeable task, they provided him for two years with an auctioneer’s license from the police funds.
In , it was found necessary to enter into another arrangement with the officer, by which the council had to pay him 12½ percent, on all arrears, including the police, prison, and registration rates, as well as the clerical tax; and he receives this per-centage whether the sums are recovered by himself or paid direct to the police collector, and that over and above all the expenses he recovers from the recusants.
But this is not all; the council were unable to hire a cart or vehicle from any of the citizens, and it was found necessary to purchase a lorry, and to provide all the necessary apparatus and assistance for enforcing payment of the arrears.
All this machinery, which owes its existence entirely to the Clerico-Police Act, involves a wasteful expenditure of city funds, induces a chronic state of irritation in the minds of the citizens, and is felt to be a gross violation of the principles of civil and religious liberty.
The Tithe War
William John Fitzpatrick wrote of the auctions during the Tithe War:
[T]he parson’s first step was to put the cattle up to auction in the presence of a regiment of English soldiery; but it almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators were afraid to bid, lest they should incur the vengeance of the peasantry, or else they stammered out such a low offer, that, when knocked down, the expenses of the sale would be found to exceed it.
The same observation applies to the crops.
Not one man in a hundred had the hardihood to declare himself the purchaser.
Sometimes the parson, disgusted at the backwardness of bidders, and trying to remove it, would order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away in order to their being a second time put up for auction.
But the locomotive progress of the beasts was always closely tracked, and means were taken to prevent either driver or beast receiving shelter or sustenance throughout the march.
The Sentinel wrote of one auction:
Yesterday being the day on which the sheriff announced that, if no bidders could be obtained for the cattle, he would have the property returned to Mr. Germain, immense crowds were collected from the neighbouring counties — upwards of 20,000 men.
The County Kildare men, amounting to about 7000, entered, led by Jonas Duckett, Esq., in the most regular and orderly manner.
This body was preceded by a band of music, and had several banners on which were “Kilkea and Moone, Independence for ever,” “No Church Tax,” “No Tithe,” “Liberty,” &c. The whole body followed six carts, which were prepared in the English style — each drawn by two horses.
The rear was brought up by several respectable landholders of Kildare.
The barrack-gates were thrown open, and different detachments of infantry took their stations right and left, while the cavalry, after performing sundry evolutions, occupied the passes leading to the place of sale.
The cattle were ordered out, when the sheriff, as on the former day, put them up for sale; but no one could be found to bid for the cattle, upon which he announced his intention of returning them to Mr. Germain.
The news was instantly conveyed, like electricity, throughout the entire meeting, when the huzzas of the people surpassed anything we ever witnessed.
The cattle were instantly liberated and given up to Mr. Germain.
At this period a company of grenadiers arrived, in double-quick time, after travelling from Castlecomer, both officers and men fatigued and covered with dust.
Thus terminated this extraordinary contest between the Church and the people, the latter having obtained, by their steadiness, a complete victory.
The cattle will be given to the poor of the sundry districts.
Similar examples were reported in the foreign press:
Cork. — A most extraordinary scene has been exhibited in this city.
Some cows seized for tithes were brought to a public place for sale, escorted by a squadron of lancers, and followed by thousands of infuriated people.
All the garrison, cavalry and infantry, under the command of Sir George Bingham, were called out.
The cattle were set up at three pounds for each, no bidder; two pounds, no bidder; one pound, no bidder; in short, the auctioneer descended to three shillings for each cow, but no purchaser appeared.
This scene lasted for above an hour, when there being no chance of making sale of the cattle, it was proposed to adjourn the auction; but, as we are informed, the General in command of the military expressed an unwillingness to have the troops subjected to a repetition of the harassing duty thus imposed on them.
After a short delay, it was, at the interference and remonstrance of several gentlemen, both of town and country, agreed upon that the cattle should be given up to the people, subject to certain private arrangements.
We never witnessed such a scene; thousands of country people jumping with exulted feelings at the result, wielding their shillelaghs, and exhibiting all the other symptoms of exuberant joy characteristic of the buoyancy of Irish feeling.
At Carlow a triumphant resistance to the laws, similar to that which occurred
at Cork, has been exhibited in the presence of the authorities and the
military. Some cattle had been seized for tithe, and a public sale announced,
when a large body of men, stated at 50,000, marched to the place appointed,
and, of course, under the influence of such terror, none were found to bid
for the cattle. The sale was adjourned from day to day, for seven days, and
upon each day the same organised bands entered the town, and rendered the
attempt to sell the cattle, in pursuance of the law, abortive. At last the
cattle are given up to the mob, crowned with laurels, and driven home with an
escort of 10,000 men.
In a somewhat later case, a Catholic priest in Blarney by the name of Peyton refused to pay his income tax on the grounds that the law treated him in an inferior way to his Protestant counterparts.
His horse was seized and sold at auction, where “the multitude assembled hissed, hooted, hustled, and otherwise impeded the proceedings.”
There was precedent for this. During the Tithe War period and thereafter, the
authorities had to go to extraordinary lengths to auction off seized goods. As
one account put it:
In Ireland we pay — the whole people of the empire pay — troops who march up from the country to Dublin, fifty or sixty miles, as escorts of the parson-pounded pigs and cattle, which passive resistance prevents from being sold or bought at home; and we also maintain barracks in that country which not only lodge the parsons’ military guards, but afford, of late, convenient resting-places in their journey to the poor people’s cattle, whom the soldiers are driving to sale; and which would otherwise be rescued on the road.
The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom
The tax resisters in the women’s suffrage movement in Britain were particularly adept in disrupting tax auctions and in making them opportunities for propaganda and protest.
Here are several examples, largely as reported in the movement newsletter called The Vote:
“On a sale was held… of
jewellery seized in distraint for income-tax… Members of the
W.F.L.
and Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn
(Hon.
Sec.) assembled to
protest against the proceedings, and the usual policeman kept a dreary
vigil at the open door. The day had been specially chosen by the
authorities, who wished to prevent a demonstration…”
“The sale of Mrs. Cleeves’ dog-cart took place at the Bush Hotel, Sketty,
on afternoon. The
W.F.L.
held their protest meeting outside — much to the discomfort of the
auctioneer, who declared the impossibility of ‘drowning the voice
outside.’ ”
“Notwithstanding the mud and odoriferous atmosphere of the back streets
off Drury-lane, quite a large number of members of the Tax Resisters’
League, the Women’s Freedom League, and the Women’s Social and Political
Union, met outside Bulloch’s Sale Rooms shortly after
to protest against the sale of Miss Bertha Brewster’s goods, which had
been seized because of her refusal to pay her Imperial taxes. Before the
sale took place, Mrs. Gatty, as chairman, explained to at least a hundred
people the reasons of Miss Brewster’s refusal to pay her taxes and the
importance of the constitutional principle that taxation without
representation is tyranny, which this refusal stood for. Miss Leonora
Tyson proposed the resolution protesting against the injustice of this
sale, and it was seconded by Miss F[lorence]. A. Underwood, and supported
by Miss Brackenbury. The resolution was carried with only two
dissentients, and these dissentients were women!”
“The goods seized were sold at the public auction room. Before selling
them the auctioneer allowed Mrs. How Martyn to make a short explanatory
speech, and he himself added that it was an unpleasant duty he had to
perform.”
“A scene which was probably never equalled in the whole of its history
took place at the Oxenham Auction Rooms, Oxford-street, on
. About a fortnight before
the bailiffs had entered Mrs. Despard’s residence in Nine Elms and seized
goods which they valued at £15. Our President, for some years past, as is
well known, has refused to pay her income-tax and inhabited house duty on
the grounds that taxation and representation should go together; and this
is the third time her goods have been seized for distraint. It was not
until the day before — — that Mrs. Despard was informed of the time and place where
her furniture was to be sold. In spite of this short notice — which we
learn on good authority to be illegal — a large crowd composed not only of
our own members but also of women and men from various Suffrage societies
gathered together at the place specified in the notice. ¶ When ‘Lot
325’ was called Mrs. Despard mounted a chair, and said, ‘I rise to
protest, in the strongest, in the most emphatic way of which I am capable,
against these iniquities, which are perpetually being perpetrated in the
name of the law. I should like to say I have served my country in various
capacities, but I am shut out altogether from citizenship. I think special
obloquy has been put upon me in this matter. It was well known that I
should not run away and that I should not take my goods away, but the
authorities sent a man in possession. He remained in the house — a
household of women — at night. I only heard
of this sale, and from a man
who knows that of which he is speaking, I know that this sale is illegal.
I now claim the law — the law that is supposed to be for women as well as
men.’ ”
“[A] most successful protest against taxation without representation was
made by Mrs. Muir, of Broadstairs, whose goods were sold at the Auction
Rooms, 120, High-street, Margate. The protest was conducted by Mrs.
[Emily] Juson Kerr; and Miss Ethel Fennings, of the W.F.L.,
went down to speak. The auctioneer, Mr. Holness, was most courteous, and
not only allowed Mrs. Muir to explain in a few words why she resisted
taxation, but also gave permission to hold meeting in his rooms after the
sale was over.”
“One of the most successful and effective Suffrage demonstrations ever
held in St. Leonards was that arranged jointly by the Women’s Tax
Resistance League and the Hastings and St. Leonards Women’s Suffrage
Propaganda League, on ,
on the occasion of the sale of some family silver which had been seized at
the residence of Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison for non-payment of
Inhabited House Duty. Certainly the most striking feature of this protest
was the fact that members of all societies in Hastings,
St. Leonards, Bexhill and
Winchelsea united in their effort to render the protest representative of
all shades of Suffrage opinion. Flags, banners, pennons and regalia of
many societies were seen in the procession.… The hearty response from the
men to Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes’s call for ‘three cheers for Mrs.
Darent Harrison’ at the close of the proceedings in the auction room, came
as a surprise to the Suffragists themselves.”
“On , the last item on
the catalogue of Messrs. Whiteley’s weekly sale in Westbourne-grove was
household silver seized in distraint for King’s taxes from Miss Gertrude
Eaton, of Kensington. Miss Eaton is a lady very well known in the musical
world and interested in social reforms, and
hon. secretary of the
Prison Reform Committee. Miss Eaton said a few dignified words of protest
in the auction room, and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Saunderson explained to the
large crowd of bidders the reason why tax-paying women, believing as they
do that taxation without representation is tyranny, feel that they cannot,
by remaining inactive, any longer subscribe to it. A procession then
formed up and a protest meeting was held…”
“At the offices of the collector of Government taxes, Westborough, on
a silver cream jug and sugar
basin were sold. These were the property of
Dr. Marion McKenzie, who
had refused payment of taxes to support her claim on behalf of women’s
suffrage. A party of suffragettes marched to the collector’s office, which
proved far too small to accommodate them all. Mr. Parnell said he regretted
personally having the duty to perform. He believed that ultimately the
women would get the vote. They had the municipal vote and he maintained
that women who paid rates and taxes should be allowed to vote. (Applause.)
But that was his own personal view. He would have been delighted not to
have had that process, but he had endeavoured to keep the costs down.
Dr. Marion McKenzie thanked
Mr. Parnell for the courtesy shown them. A protest meeting was afterwards
held on St. Nicholas
Cliff.”
“Mrs. [Anne] Cobden-Sanderson, representing the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, was, by courtesy of the auctioneer, allowed to explain the reason
of the protest. Judging by the applause with which her remarks were
received, most of those present were in sympathy.”
“The auctioneer was entirely in sympathy with the protest, and explained
the circumstances under which the sale took place. He courteously allowed
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr to put clearly
the women’s point of view; Miss Raleigh made a warm appeal for true
freedom. A procession was formed and an open-air meeting subsequently
held.”
“The auctioneer, who is in sympathy with the suffragists, refused to take
commission.”
“[A] crowd of Suffragists of all shades of opinion assembled at Hawking’s
Sale Rooms, Lisson-grove, Marylebone, to support Dr. Frances Ede and Dr.
Amy Sheppard, whose goods were to be sold by public auction for tax
resistance. By the courtesy of the auctioneer, Mr. Hawking, speeches were
allowed, and Dr. Ede
emphasized her conscientious objection to supporting taxation without
representation; she said that women like herself and her partner felt that
they must make this logical and dignified protest, but as it caused very
considerable inconvenience and sacrifice to professional women, she
trusted that the grave injustice would speedily be remedied. Three cheers
were given for the doctors, and a procession with banners marched to
Marble Arch, where a brief meeting was held in Hyde Park, at which the
usual resolution was passed unanimously.”
“An interesting sequel to the seizure of Mrs. Tollemache’s goods last
week, and the ejection of the bailiff from her residence, Batheaston
Villa, Bath, was the sale held , at the White Hart Hotel. To cover a tax of only £15 and
costs, goods were seized to the value of about £80, and it was at once
decided by the Women’s Tax Resistance League and Mrs. Tollemache’s friends
that such conduct on the part of the authorities must be circumvented and
exposed. The goods were on view the morning of the sale, and as there was
much valuable old china, silver, and furniture, the dealers were early on
the spot, and buzzing like flies around the articles they greatly desired
to possess. The first two pieces put up were, fortunately, quite
inviting; £19 being bid for a chest of drawers worth about
50s. and £3 for an
ordinary leather-top table, the requisite amount was realised, and the
auctioneer was obliged to withdraw the remaining lots much to the disgust
of the assembled dealers. Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, in her speech at
the protest meeting, which followed the sale, explained to these irate
gentlemen that women never took such steps unless compelled to do so, and
that if the tax collector had seized a legitimate amount of goods to
satisfy his claim, Mrs. Tollemache would willingly have allowed them to
go.”
“Under the auspices of the Tax Resistance League and the Women’s Freedom
League a protest meeting was held at Great Marlow on
, on the occasion of the sale
of plate and jewellery belonging to Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence, the
well-known artist, and to Miss Hayes, daughter of Admiral Hayes. Their
property had been seized for the non-payment of Imperial taxes, and
through the courtesy of the tax-collector every facility was afforded to
the protesters to explain their action.”
“At the sale of a silver salver belonging to
Dr. Winifred Patch, of
Highbury, Steen’s Auction Rooms, Drayton Park, were crowded on
by members of the Women’s Freedom
League, the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and other Suffrage societies.
The auctioneer refused to allow the usual five minutes for explanation
before the sale, but Miss Alison Neilans, of the Women’s Freedom League,
was well supported and cheered when she insisted on making clear the
reasons why Dr. Patch for
several years has refused to pay taxes while deprived of a vote. A
procession was then formed, and marched to Highbury Corner, where a large
open-air meeting was presided over by Mrs. [Marianne] Clarendon Hyde, of
the Women’s Freedom League, and addressed by Mrs. Merrivale Mayer.”
“Practically every day sees a sale and protest somewhere, and the banners
of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, frequently supported by Suffrage
Societies, are becoming familiar in town and country. At the protest
meetings which follow all sales the reason why is explained to large
numbers of people who would not attend a suffrage meeting. Auctioneers are
becoming sympathetic even so far as to speak in support of the women’s
protest against a law which demands their money, but gives them no voice
in the way in which it is spent.”
“The sale was conducted, laughably enough, under the auspices of the
Women’s Freedom League and the Women’s Tax Resistance League; for, on
obtaining entrance to the hall, Miss Anderson and Mrs. Fisher bedecked it
with all the insignia of suffrage protest. The rostrum was spread with our
flag proclaiming the inauguration of Tax Resistance by the W.F.L.;
above the auctioneer’s head hung Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard’s embroidered
silk banner, with its challenge “Dare to be Free”; on every side the
green, white and gold of the
W.F.L.
was accompanied by the brown and black of the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, with its cheery ‘No Vote, no Tax’ injunctions and its John Hampden
maxims; while in the front rows, besides Miss Anderson, the heroine of the
day, Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Fisher, were seen the inspiring figures of our
President and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, vice-president of the
W.T.R.L.”
“…all Women’s Freedom League members who know anything of the way in which
the sister society organises these matters should attend the sale in the
certainty of enjoying a really telling demonstration…”
“From early in the day Mrs. Huntsman and a noble band of sandwich-women
had paraded the town announcing the sale and distributing leaflets. In the
afternoon a contingent of the Tax Resistance League arrived with the John
Hampden banner and the brown and black pennons and flags. These marched
through the town and market square before entering the hall in which the
sale and meeting were to be held, and which was decorated with the flags
and colours of the Women’s Freedom League. Mr. Croome, the King’s officer,
conducted the sale in person, the goods sold being a quantity of table
silver, a silver toilette set, and one or two other articles. The prices
fetched were trifling, Mrs. Harvey desiring that no one should buy the
goods in for her.”
“Miss Andrews asked the auctioneer if she might explain the reason for the
sale of the waggon, and, having received the necessary permission was able
to give an address on tax resistance, and to show how it is one of the
weapons employed by the Freedom League to secure the enfranchisement of
women. Then came the sale — but beforehand the auctioneer said he had not
been aware he was to sell ‘distressed’ goods, and he very much objected to
doing so.… The meeting and the auctioneer together made the assembly chary
of bidding, and the waggon was not sold, which was a great triumph for the
tax-resisters.… Miss Trott and Miss Bobby helped to advertise the meeting
by carrying placards round the crowded market.”
“There was a crowded audience, and the auctioneer opened the proceedings
by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he
attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his
capacity as tax collector. After the sale a public meeting was held… At
the close of the meeting many questions were asked, new members joined the
League…”
The authorities tried to auction off Kate Harvey’s goods on-site, at her
home, rather than in a public hall, so that they might avoid
demonstrations of that sort. “On
morning a band of Suffragist
men carried placards through the streets of Bromley, on which was the
device, ‘I personally protest against the sale of a woman’s goods to pay
taxes over which she has no control,’ and long before
, the time fixed for the
sale, from North, South, East and West, people came streaming into the
little town of Bromley, and made their way towards ‘Brackenhill.’
Punctually at the
tax-collector and his deputy mounted the table in the dining-room, and the
former, more in sorrow than in anger, began to explain to the crowd
assembled that this was a genuine sale! Mrs. Harvey at once protested
against the sale taking place. Simply and solely because she was a woman,
although she was a mother, a business woman, and a tax-payer, she had no
voice in saying how the taxes collected from her should be spent. The tax
collector suffered this speech in silence, but he could judge by the
cheers it received that there were many ardent sympathisers with Mrs.
Harvey in her protest. He tried to proceed, but one after another the men
present loudly urged that no one there should bid for the goods. The
tax-collector feebly said this wasn’t a political meeting, but a genuine
sale! ‘One penny for your goods then!’ was the derisive answer. ‘One
penny — one penny!’ was the continued cry from both inside and outside
‘Brackenhill.’ Then men protested that the tax-collector was not a genuine
auctioneer; he had no hammer, no list of goods to be sold was hung up in
the room. There was no catalogue, nothing to show bidders what was to be
sold and what wasn’t. The men also objected to the presence of the
tax-collector’s deputy. ‘Tell him to get down!’ they shouted. ‘The sale
shan’t proceed till he does,’ they yelled. ‘Get down! Get down:’ they
sang. But the tax-collector felt safer by the support of this deputy.
‘He’s afraid of his own clerk,’ they jeered. Again the tax-collector asked
for bids. ‘One penny! One penny!’ was the deafening response. The din
increased every moment and pandemonium reigned supreme. During a temporary
lull the tax-collector said a sideboard had been sold for nine guineas.
Angry cries from angry men greeted this announcement. ‘Illegal sale!’ ‘He
shan’t take it home!’ ‘The whole thing’s illegal!’ ‘You shan’t sell
anything else!’ and The Daily Herald Leaguers,
members of the Men’s Political Union, and of other men’s societies,
proceeded to make more noise than twenty brass bands. Darkness was quickly
settling in; the tax-collector looked helpless, and his deputy smiled
wearily. ‘Talk about a comic opera — it’s better than Gilbert and Sullivan
could manage,’ roared an enthusiast. ‘My word, you look sick, guv’nor!
Give it up, man!’ Then everyone shouted against the other until the
tax-collector said he closed the sale, remarking plaintively that he had
lost £7 over the job! Ironical cheers greeted this news, with ‘Serve you
right for stealing a woman’s goods!’ He turned his back on his tormentors,
and sat down in a chair on the table to think things over. The protesters
sat on the sideboard informing all and sundry that if anyone wanted to
take away the sideboard he should take them with it! With the exit of the
tax-collector, his deputy and the bailiff, things gradually grew quieter,
and later on Mrs. Harvey entertained her supporters to tea at the Bell
Hotel. But the curious thing is, a man paid nine guineas for the sideboard
to the tax-collector. Mrs. Harvey owed him more than £17, and Mrs. Harvey
is still in possession of the sideboard!”
“The assistant auctioneer, to whom it fell to conduct the sale, was most
unfriendly, and refused to allow any speaking during the sale; but Miss
Boyle was able to shout through a window at his back, just over his
shoulder, an announcement that the goods were seized because Miss Cummins
refused to submit to taxation without representation, after which quite a
number of people who were attending the sale came out to listen to the
speeches.”
“The auctioneer was very sympathetic, and allowed Miss [Anna] Munro to
make a short speech before the waggon was sold. He then spoke a few
friendly words for the Woman’s Movement. After the sale a meeting was
held, and Mrs. Tippett and Miss Munro were listened to with evident
interest by a large number of men. The Vote and
other Suffrage literature was sold.”
“A joint demonstration of the Tax Resisters’ League and militant
suffragettes, held here [Hastings]
as a protest against the sale of
the belongings of those who refused to pay taxes, was broken up by a mob.
The women were roughly handled and half smothered with soot. Their banners
were smashed. The police finally succeeded in getting the women into a
blacksmith’s shop, where they held the mob at bay until the arrival of
reinforcements. The women were then escorted to a railway station.”
“The auction sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s silver cup proved, perhaps,
the best advertisement the Women’s Tax Resistance League ever had. It was
made the occasion for widespread propaganda. The newspapers gave columns
of space to the event, while at the big mass meeting, held outside the
auction room…”
“When a member is to be sold up a number of her comrades accompany her to
the auction-room. The auctioneer is usually friendly and stays the
proceedings until some one of the league has mounted the table and
explained to the crowd what it all means. Here are the banners, and the
room full of women carrying them, and it does not take long to impress
upon the mind of the people who have come to attend the sale that here is
a body of women willing to sacrifice their property for the principle for
which John Hampden went to prison — that taxation without representation
is tyranny. … The women remain at these auctions until the property of the
offender is disposed of. The kindly auctioneer puts the property seized
from the suffragists early on his list, or lets them know when it will be
called.”
American war tax resisters
There have been a few celebrated auction sales in the American war tax resistance movement.
Some of them have been met with protests or used as occasions for outreach and propaganda, but others have been more actively interfered with.
When Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home was seized, for example, there were
“months of continuous picketing and leafletting” before the sale. Then:
The day began with a silent vigil initiated by the local Quaker group.
While the bids were being read inside the building, guerrilla theatre took place out on the sidewalk.
At one point the Federal building was auctioned (offers ranging from 25¢ to 2 bottle caps).
Several supporters present at the proceedings inside made brief statements about the unjust nature of the whole ordeal.
Waldo the Clown was also there, face painted sadly, opening envelopes along with the IRS person.
As the official read the bids and the names of the bidders, Waldo searched his envelopes and revealed their contents: a flower, a unicorn, some toilet paper, which he handed to different office people.
Marion Bromley also spoke as the bids were opened, reiterating that the seizure was based on fraudulent assumptions, and that therefore the property could not be rightfully sold.
The protests, odd as they were, eventually paid off, as the IRS had in the interim been caught improperly pursuing political dissidents, and as a result it decided to reverse the sale of the Bromley home and give up on that particular fight.
When Paul and Addie Snyder’s home was auctioned off for back taxes, it was
reported that “many bids of $1 or less were made.”
Making a bid of pennies for farm property being foreclosed for failure to meet mortgages was a common tactic among angry farmers during the Depression.
If their bids succeeded, the property was returned to its owner and the mortgage torn up.
In some such cases, entire farms plus their livestock, equipment and home furnishings sold for as little as $2.
When George Willoughby’s car was seized and sold by the IRS,
Friends, brandishing balloons, party horns, cookies and lemonade, invaded the IRS office in Chester and bought the car back for $900.
The Rebecca rioters
On a couple of occasions the Rebeccaites prevented auctions, though not of goods seized for tax debts but for ordinary debts.
Here are two examples from Henry Tobit Evans’s book on the Rebecca phenomenon:
A distress for rent was levied on the goods of a man named Lloyd… and a bailiff of the name of Rees kept possession of the goods.
Previous to the day of sale, Rebecca and a great number of her daughters paid him a visit, horsewhipped him well, and kept him in safe custody until the furniture was entirely cleared from the house.
When Rees was freed, he found nothing but an empty house, Rebecca and her followers having departed.
Two bailiffs were there in possession of the goods and chattels under execution… Having entered the house by bursting open the door, Rebecca ran upstairs, followed by some of her daughters.
She ordered the bailiffs, who were in bed at the time, to be up and going in five minutes, or to prepare for a good drubbing.
The bailiffs promptly obeyed, but were driven forth by a bodyguard of the rioters, who escorted them some distance, pushing and driving the poor men in front of them.
At last they were allowed to depart to their homes on a sincere promise of not returning.
Reform Act agitation
During the tax resistance that accompanied the drive to pass the Reform Act in the in the United Kingdom, hundreds of people signed pledges in which they declared that “they will not purchase the goods of their townsmen not represented in Parliament which may be seized for the non-payment of taxes, imposed by any House of Commons as at present constituted.”
The True Sun asserted that
The tax-gatherer… might seize for them, but the brokers assured the inhabitants that they would neither seize any goods for such taxes, nor would they purchase goods so seized.
Yesterday afternoon, Mr Philips, a broker, in the Broadway, Westminster, exhibited the following placard at the door of his shop:— “Take notice, that the proprietor of this shop will not distrain for the house and window duties, nor will he purchase any goods that are seized for the said taxes; neither will any of those oppressive taxes be paid for this house in future.” A similar notice was also exhibited at a broker’s shop in York Street, Westminster.
Another newspaper account said:
A sale by auction of goods taken in distress for assessed taxes was announced to take place at Ashton Tavern on , at Birmingham.
From forty to fifty persons attended, including some brokers, but no one could be found except the poor woman from whose husband the goods had been seized, and the auctioneer himself.
A man came when the sale was nearly over, who was perfectly ignorant of the circumstances under which it took place, and bid for one of the last lots; he soon received an intimation, however, from the company that he had better desist, which be accordingly did.
After the sale was over nearly the whole of the persons present surrounded this man, and lectured him severely upon his conduct, and it was only by his solemnly declaring to them that he had bid in perfect ignorance of the nature of the sale that he was suffered to escape without some more substantial proof of their displeasure.
Railroad bond shenanigans
There was an epidemic of fraud in the United States in in which citizens of local jurisdictions were convinced to vote to sell bonds to pay for the Railroad to come to town.
The railroad never arrived, but the citizens then were on the hook to tax themselves to pay off the bonds.
Many said “hell no,” but by then the bonds had been sold to people who were not necessarily involved in the original swindle but had just bought them as investments.
In the course of the tax resistance campaigns associated with these railroad
bond boondoggles, auction disruption was resorted to on some occasions. Here
are some examples:
St. Clair [Missouri]’s taxpayers joined the movement in 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.
Another attempt was made the other day to sell farm property in the town of Greenwood, Steuben county [New York], on account of a tax levied for the town bonding in aid of railroads, and another failure has followed.
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.” The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
The White League in Louisiana
In Reconstruction-era Louisiana, white supremacist tax resisters disrupted a tax auction.
There was a mob of fifty or sixty armed men 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.
Mr. [Valsin A.?] Fournet came with eight or ten.
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.
…very few people attended tax-sales [typically], because the white people were organized to prevent tax-collection, and pledged themselves not to buy any property at tax-sales, and the property was generally bought by the State.
Miscellaneous
The First Boer War broke out in the aftermath of the successfully resisted
auction of a tax resister’s waggon. Paul Kruger wrote of the incident:
The first sign of the approaching storm was the incident that happened at the forced sale of Field Cornet Bezuidenhout’s waggon, on which a distress had been levied.
The British Government had begun to collect taxes and to take proceedings against those who refused to pay them.
Among these was Piet Bezuidenhout, who lived in the Potchefstroom District.
This refusal to pay taxes was one of the methods of passive resistance which were now employed towards the British Government.
Hitherto, many of the burghers had paid their taxes, declaring that they were only yielding to force.
But, when this was explained by the English politicians as though the population were contented and peacefully paying their taxes, some asked for a receipt showing that they were only paying under protest and others refused to pay at all.
The Government then levied a distress on Bezuidenhout’s waggon and sent it to public action at Potchefstroom.
Piet Cronjé, who became so well known in the last war, appeared at the auction with a number of armed Boers, who flung the bailiff from the waggon and drew the waggon itself back in triumph to Bezuidenhout’s farm.
When the U.S.
government seized Valentine Byler’s horse because of the Amish man’s
conscientious objection to paying into the social security system, no
other Amish would bid at the auction.
Between the Wars in Germany, the government had a hard time conducting
auctions of the goods of tax resisters. Ernst von Salomon writes:
Everywhere bailiff’s orders were being disobeyed.… Compulsory sales could not be held: when the young peasants of the riding club appeared at the scene of the auction on their horses and with music, nobody seemed willing to make a bid.
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher disrupted a Bureau of Land
Management auction by making winning bids on everything that he
had no intention of honoring.
During the Poujadist disruptions in France, “They also took to spiking
forced tax sales by refusing to bid until the auctioneer had lowered the
price of whatever was up for sale to a laughably small figure. Thus a tax
delinquent might buy back his own shop for, say 10 cents. At an auction
the other day, a brand-new car went for one franc, or less than one-third
of a cent.”
in roughly the same region
of France:
It was in the south where the wine growers refuse to pay taxes to the government.
A farmer had had half a dozen rabbits sent him by a friend; he refused to pay duty on them, whereupon they control or local customs tried to sell the six “original” rabbits and their offspring at auction.
The inhabitants have now boycotted the auction sales so that the local officials must feed the rabbits till the case is settled by the courts.
In York, Pennsylvania in , a group
“surrounded the crier and forbid any person purchasing when the property
which had been seized was offered for sale. A cow which had been in the
hands of the collector was driven away by the rioters.”
In the Dutch West Indies in “The
household effects of a physician who refused to pay the tax were offered
for sale at auction today by the Government. Although the building in
which the sale was held was crowded, there were no bids and the articles
were not sold.”
In Tasmania, in , “Large quantities of
goods were seized, and lodged in the Commissariat Store [but] Lawless mobs
paraded the streets, tore down fences, and, arming themselves with rails
and batons, smashed windows and doors.… The fence round the Commissariat
Store was torn down…”
During the Bardoli tax strike, “There were meetings in talukas contiguous
to Bardoli, not only in British territory, but also in the Baroda
territory, for expression of sympathy with the Satyagrahis and calling
upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the
authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by bidding for any
forfeited property that may be put to auction by the authorities.”
Here’s a fun telling of the tale of how St. Clair County, Missouri resisted collecting taxes to pay off investors in fraudulently-issued railroad bonds, from the issue of The Century Magazine:
Being the Story of a Rural Community in Missouri wherein a Public Office Is a Private Calamity
by Frank Wickizer
When a candidate for a county judgeship in St. Clair County, Missouri, makes the race for office, he does so with the understanding that, unless he would spend the time in jail, he must put in his term of office skulking in the brush, a fugitive from justice.
This is because he will be in contempt of the United States court.
For the Federal tribunal has been trying to compel St. Clair County to pay interest on bonds issued in to assist in the building of a railroad.
The road was never built, and the county declines to obey the court’s mandate, not believing in paying for goods which were not delivered.
For the county has been in open and successful rebellion against the Federal authorities.
Meanwhile the people, through their officers, are paying the penalty of their rashness.
The county is virtually bankrupt.
Here public office is a species of martyrdom.
Still, there is no lack of competent candidates, and even the county bench, upon which falls the brunt of the burden, has never been without its full quota of three judges.
Without inquiring deeply into the ethics of the situation, there is a refreshing quality about the unselfishness with which they obey the will of their constituents; right or wrong, they display something which is not far removed from heroism.
The position in which St. Clair County finds itself is the sequel of a State law passed just before the war, the purpose of which was to encourage the building of railroads.
Under this law a county court was privileged to bond its county, in order to subsidize a railroad project, without submitting the proposition to a vote of the people.
During the first decade after the close of the war the courts of one hundred and seven counties in Missouri availed themselves of this new prerogative.
Of these counties all save three — Knox, Dallas, and St. Clair — long since canceled their obligations.
Many of them were swindled by the promoters, but, the bonds being in the hands of “innocent purchasers,” they paid because the Federal court compelled them to pay.
Knox County, it is understood, is willing to compromise with the bondholders as soon as certain pending litigation is closed.
As to Dallas, the debt it owes the bondholders exceeds by several hundred thousand dollars the total valuation of all property, personal and real, in the county, and the creditors long ago dropped all negotiations looking to a settlement.
There was a time when St. Clair County was by way of being a mining community.
Silver was discovered, and it was known that the hills contained deposits of some of the baser ores; but, as a step preliminary to the development of these resources, it was necessary to secure railroads.
Railroad-building throughout the State was then almost a craze — the reaction from the stagnation of war times.
Besides, river traffic was on the wane.
Osceola, the county-seat, once at the head of navigation on the Osage River, with fleets of steamers from St. Louis and Kansas City at its ports, and with a great tributary region in Arkansas and the Indian Territory for which it was the natural trading-point, felt that its commercial importance was declining, and a master-stroke was required to reëstablish its connection with the outside world.
The time was ripe for the leading citizens to listen to the voice of the tempter, and his visit was not long deferred.
He came in , and his scheme was to build a railroad from Clinton, a short distance northwest of Osceola, to Memphis, Tennessee, which would put Osceola on a direct line of road between Kansas City and Memphis.
It sounds almost like travesty to say that the court selected , as the date for entering its memorable order directing the county treasurer to take stock in the venture; but it is the solemn truth.
By the court’s ruling the county was bonded in the sum of $250,000, and the treasurer was instructed to deliver the bonds to the projectors of the the Tebo & Neosha Railroad Company “when the contract is let.”
The contract was let a few months later, and the promoters received their bonds.
There were some preliminary surveys, and a gang of laborers went to work in the northern part of the county, piling up earth for a “fill.”
The bonds were sold to “innocent purchasers.”
Taxes were levied to pay the first year’s interest; then one day the construction train pulled out with a gang of laborers, and was never seen there again.
A mile or so of fill, with some rotten ties and rusted rails, now remains as a monument to the short-sightedness of the county judges who wrote, “to be delivered when the contract is let,” instead of “when the work is done.”
During the years following the transaction the feeling against the railroad swindlers grew daily more bitter, and the determination to resist payment became more deeply rooted.
But the “innocent purchasers” were clamoring for their dues, and , they secured a judgment in the Federal court.
The succeeding steps followed in quick succession.
The county court was ordered to make a levy to pay the claim; it declined to comply.
The Federal court issued a mandamus; it was ignored.
The county court was cited for contempt; it disregarded the summons, and United States marshals were sent to arrest the recalcitrants.
This procedure has been observed many times since, but then it was new: the limitations of the higher court were not so well known then as now.
The citizens of St. Clair began to have misgivings as to the outcome, and to feel the necessity of doing something to appease the powers.
A conference of the wise ones was called, and immediately afterward it was announced that a plan had been devised to meet the bond interest without taxation.
Each property-owner was to be requested to contribute of his personal effects according to his means, one giving a horse, one a cow, and another a hog or two — all to be put up at public auction at the county-seat on a certain day.
A formal notice of this sale, with a statement as to its purpose, was sent to each of the “innocent purchasers” and to the Federal judge at Kansas City.
But it seemed to take a long while to collect the personal property, and the date of the sale was postponed from time to time until nearly two years had elapsed.
Then, the vengeance of the court being imminent, the auction was advertised for the last time.
The day arriving, cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep were received in most gratifying numbers.
The scene on court-house square suggested a live-stock exhibit at a county fair.
The auctioneer rang his bell and shouted himself hoarse, and the assembled farmers and the few non-residents took a most active interest in the proceedings; but yet the sale was not a success, as success at auctions is usually computed.
No one seemed to want to buy.
The auctioneer’s clerk stood ready, with pencil poised above his book, but not a single bid did he record.
There are those who have the hardihood to hint that this was the exact situation contemplated by the conferees when they planned the “sale.”
The non-residents, of course, were not in the secret, but it is explained that they were easily won over to the native way of thinking.
This fiasco was a great shock to both bondholders and Federal judges.
It served to make the marshals more zealous, and to send the value of the bonds down at a phenomenal rate.
Within the next six months they dropped to twenty-two cents.
One side-issue of the “sale” is worthy of mention here.
After the live stock had been corralled in the square, it was checked off to determine if all freeholders had contributed their share, and it was found that, among others, one Sam Peden of Doyle township was delinquent.
The sheriff forthwith rode out to Peden’s farm to demand his tithe, and there found assembled half a dozen of the most rabid partizans of repudiation.
“You’ll have to dig up a critter er two, Sam,” he announced.
By way of answer, Peden threw his rifle to his shoulder and ordered the sheriff off the place.
This act of rebellion not only served to foist Peden upon the county bench at the next election, but to keep him either there or in some other county office for nearly twenty-five years.
He has been arrested several times, and has spent much of his time in jail, but it is said that his experience has served only to strengthen his faith in the rifle as an arbiter of- vexed questions.
Not long after the bogus stock sale, — to be exact, on .
— a gang of masked night-riders called at County Treasurer Wonacott’s residence at midnight, and forced him to go to the courthouse and turn over to them the taxbooks.
These books contained the delinquent tax-lists for railroad bonds and other purposes, covering a period of ten years.
The next morning the charred remains of the books were found among the hills south of Osceola.
It would seem to one not in sympathy with the prevailing spirit that the county judgeships would go begging at election time; yet the opposite is true.
They are the most eagerly sought of all the offices within the gift of the county.
The people say to the aspirant: “Your duty will be to refuse to make a tax levy to pay the bonds; if chased, to hide in the brush; if caught, to lie in jail.
As to your salary, it will be one hundred dollars a year in discounted treasury warrants and such glory as falls to the lot of martyrs.”
This seems to satisfy them.
As well talk surrender to a Patrick Henry as compromise in St. Clair County.
The story of this stubbornness can be read everywhere between the lines of its history, retarding education, reducing wheat and corn acreage, frightening away foreign capital, depressing property values, paralyzing business, and keeping its treasury in a perpetual state of deficit.
No county in the State, perhaps, is so blessed with natural wealth.
Its hills are rich in lead and zinc ores, oil has been found in paying quantities, and there are virgin deposits of mineral paints; yet all these resources are undeveloped, or virtually so.
The people themselves are too poor to develop them, and foreign capital, having been bitten once, will not venture again.
So the population contents itself with stock-breeding, a desultory kind of agriculture, and — defying the Federal court.
To evade the United States deputy marshals, the county judges have had to place themselves in some extraordinary predicaments, not all of them consonant with judicial dignity.
“Hiding out” was the regular order of business.
Judge Thomas Scott, shorn of his long white beard, remained under cover for a year, thereby winning the sobriquet of the “Swamp Fox.”
Every stranger was a suspected sleuth, and every loyal citizen a “stool-pigeon,” his duty to inform the fugitives of the stranger’s movements.
So the judges spent most of their time in the brush.
Belated farmer lads, groping through the woods at night in quest of strayed cattle, have chanced upon the court in session on a fallen tree.
With an arsenal of small arms as their square and compass, without light save such as was reflected from the masked lantern by which the clerk wrote his minutes, the judges here performed the humble rites of their office, being always alert to adjourn and scuttle into the brush should a twig break or the foliage of a bush stir suspiciously.
Again, when the wind caused trouble with the clerk’s papers and lantern, or when it was feared that deputies prowling in the neighborhood might be attracted by the light, these farmer lads have seen four shadowy figures — three judges and a clerk — struggle through a tangle of shrubbery and disappear in the mouth of a cave.
In such cases the approaches were invariably guarded by volunteer sentinels.
Nevertheless, the marshals were quite as resourceful in the expedient as were the judges, and showed themselves willing to take extraordinary pains.
Take for example the case of Joseph H. Graham, a deputy marshal of St. Joseph, and his co-worker, Henry W. Pyatt of Joplin.
Being newly appointed officers, and unknown in the region, they were assigned to work on the St. Clair County case.
This was in .
They met in Kansas City and agreed upon a plan of campaign.
Pyatt’s case was made easy by the fact that he had a married sister living in Osceola.
Through the influence of his brother-in-law, he secured a position as helper at the ’Frisco depot, and at once took up his residence at the home of his sister.
Graham had to work out a more elaborate plan.
Deciding finally to palm himself off as a commercial traveler, he secured the necessary trunks and cases, and laid in a line of grocery samples.
Unfortunately, he knew nothing about the grocery business, and realizing that his ignorance would be detected by the first retail dealer that he approached, he set out resolutely to take a primary course in the theory, practice, and technic of commerce.
He haunted the wholesale houses of Kansas City to acquire the language and manner of the trade; he fraternized with drummers, studied pricelists, schooled himself in the late novelties of the grocery market, and finally took a graduate course of one week on the road with a veteran drummer as master, all at his own expense.
Pyatt in the interim had kept him posted as to conditions in Osceola.
“On the ,” he had written, “the judges will hold court openly in the court-house, relying for safety on the fact that they are known to no one save the natives.
This will be our chance.”
Graham arrived , put up at the Commercial Hotel, and began canvassing the local grocery-stores.
It must be that the schooling stood him in good stead, for it is not of record that his inexperience was detected.
During he had an opportunity to consult with Pyatt.
The latter had gathered some information as to the personal appearance of the two judges in contempt, Sam C. Peden and James M. Nevitt (David Walker, the third judge, not having fallen under the ban of the Federal court), and the details of the attack were arranged.
By farmwagons began to arrive from every point of the compass, and by court-house square was hedged about with a compact rank of them.
Farmers, stockmen, county officials, and townspeople stood about in knots, engaged in conversation; and in one of these groups, the deputies knew, were the men they sought, but to pick them out by applying the loose verbal description Pyatt had received was no easy task.
Peden had been designated as “tall, lank, and swivel-jointed, with a drooping blond mustache”; but half the men in the yard seemed to answer to this.
And the description of Nevitt as a man “not quite so tall as Peden, but heavier and with a stoop to his shoulders,” was not less indefinite.
Graham and Pyatt stood in the entrance of a dry-goods store, selected as a point of reconnoiter because the clerks were too busy waiting on a crowd of women to notice them.
It was agreed that they should stay there until court opened, when the judges, they thought, would disclose their official identity by taking their positions on the bench.
They would then swoop down, each entering by a different door, and arrest all three.
Later they could ascertain which was Walker, and release him.
At the sheriff’s “Hear ye!
Hear ye!” the groups converged upon the picturesque ruin used as a court-house.
Graham, meanwhile, acting on a happy impulse, had caused a report to be circulated among the women in the store that a marriage was about to be solemnized.
He had seen the bride, and she was beautifully dressed.
In the next five minutes not less than twenty women, remembering that they had occasion to speak with their husbands or fathers, sauntered with studied leisure across the street, all their faculties alert to catch a glimpse of white organdie and nun’s veiling.
Carefully gauging their speed, to give the women exactly time to reach the court-room and no more, the deputies followed.
It was as they had expected: St. Clair County being essentially Southern in sympathies and gallantry, there was a mighty moving of chairs and shuffling of feet as the masculine wing of the assembly hastened to find seats for the late arrivals, and the confusion served to mask their own appearance.
At the end of the room farthest from the doors thirty or forty men stood closely massed about a table.
Idealizing that now was the time and this the place to strike, the deputies charged for the crowd.
Instantly a clarion voice hushed the whispers of chivalry and the drone of business, and a pair of brawny arms seized Pyatt about the waist from behind, pinioning his arms to his sides.
Some one else essayed the same form of attack upon Graham, but he broke away.
“The deputies!
The deputies!” screamed the voice.
Pistols flashed into sight, and there was a rustle of skirts as the women whisked out into the corridor.
Meanwhile Graham had succeeded in drawing his own weapons, and, with a revolver in each hand, he plunged into the crowd about the table.
Behind that human rampart, he believed, sat the judges, and it was his business to arrest them before they had time to mix with the rabble.
He was surprised at the ease with which he accomplished it.
The crowd separated before him like the Red Sea under the rod of Moses; the clock on the wall had ticked less than five times since the alarm was given, and there, serenely occupying the chairs which stand for the “county bench,” sat his quarry.
“Gentlemen, you are my prisoners!”
he cried.
“Throw up your hands!”
And then to the crowd: “Men, move back and give us room!
Stand back!”
But there was no occasion for the latter part of the command, for through the entrances into the corridor and through the windows opening upon the veranda the crowd was melting as if by magic.
There was something ominous about the facility with which the program had been carried out: it was not exactly in keeping with the community’s reputation, this display of the white feather without even a show of resistance, and when Graham looked into the faces of his prisoners it was with a sinking sensation that he recognized he had been duped.
Two were farmer lads, mere striplings scarcely out of their teens, and the third was a mulatto.
A few of the late audience looked back over their shoulders in departing to mock him with derisive laughter and sallies of bucolic wit.
Only two remained; these stood at a window looking out upon the street.
Pyatt had disappeared.
Graham glared at the nondescript trio before him, weighing the question as to whether he should take them into custody for aiding Federal prisoners to escape; but an instant later the sound of pistol-shots in the yard below helped him to decide.
There was, perhaps, bigger game afoot.
The pair at the window became suddenly perturbed at what they saw, and bolted for the stairs.
Graham followed.
Having reached the lawn, he saw, just outside of the inclosure, a crowd of excited farmers and stockmen about a lumber-wagon.
On the spring-seat in front sat two men and a boy; standing in the rear of the wagon, his pistols trained upon the other occupants, was Pyatt.
The crowd about was sullenly demonstrative and rapidly growing.
Graham, his weapons still in hand, charged them, firing a wild shot or two as he ran, by way of moral effect.
The incidents of the next few seconds followed each other so swiftly that no two accounts agree.
Some blows were struck with clubbed weapons; one or two knives were flashed; a revolver was discharged; there was a chorus of shouts, a tangle of legs and arms, and then two things happened: Graham, having fought his way to the front wheel of the wagon, popped his pistol into the face of the nearest occupant.
In the same breath the other adult occupant leaped to the ground and ran, Pyatt after him, while the boy, too terrified to move, sat dumbly holding the reins.
Again Graham repeated the standard formula of the arresting officer: “Judge Nevitt, you are my prisoner!”
This was the critical moment of the scene.
A shrewd tug from behind must have tilted Graham off the wheel and given the prisoner at least a chance for his liberty, but the rabble let it pass unimproved, and the next instant suffered the humiliation of seeing the bracelets clicked upon the wrists of the presiding judge.
A groan, a hiss, some smothered imprecations and muttered threats, and the incident was closed.
“I was sitting on the piazza, of the Commercial Hotel about five minutes later, Judge Nevitt by my side,” said Graham, in telling the story, “when Pyatt came sauntering up from the field with Judge Sam Peden in tow.
Both were splashed with mud, and had about them other evidences of a hot burst of speed.
The judge’s ‘swivel-joints’ had not disqualified him for the sprinter class.
It seems that one of the features of the chase had been the leaping of a six-rail snake-fence, an obstacle which both had cleared at a bound.
As they approached the piazza I overheard their conversation: they were talking about other hurdle-races they had known.”
“How did you get on to their judgeships?”
I asked Pyatt, aside.
“Why,” said he, “when that fellow grabbed me in the court-room, I dallied with him a while until I had him where I wanted him, and then sprang a wrestling trick on him.
It worked, and I wriggled loose.
About this time every one was bolting for the doors.
I tried to get back where you were, but three or four husky chaps got me in front of ’em, and hustled me out.
When I reached the foot of the stairs, I saw quite a crowd around a lumber-wagon.
They were boosting two men and a boy up into the spring-seat, and while one man untied the team, two or three others were hooking the tugs.
They were all laughing — seemed to be tickled half to death about something.
“Of course I supposed all this time that you had nabbed the judges in the court-room, as I saw you had the drop on the three fellows in the chairs; but when I saw those two men on the spring-seat reach down to shake hands with some one in the crowd, I got a hunch that you had barked up the wrong tree, so I fired a few shots in the air and swooped down on ’em.
Well, you know the rest.
Gee! but that fellow Peden is a sprinter!”
After the first six months, Peden attempted to secure his freedom by resigning his office as county judge, but the ruse was only partly successful.
He was kept in jail until within a few weeks of the expiration of his term.
Judge Nevitt served out his time without a murmur, and upon his return to Osceola was given an ovation.
Deputy marshals came into the county in all manner of disguises.
They came as insurance, book, lightning-rod, and patent-medicine agents, as mining engineers, as government surveyors; and one, who had some gift of locution, turned temperance lecturer and stumped the county in the interest of total abstinence.
Spurious buyers of live stock would haunt the principal towns for weeks, talking nothing but cattle, and bogus land speculators took long drives, encouraging meanwhile the conversational talents of their guides.
But all such invariably tipped their hands before leaving, usually by making a bold attempt to arrest some one supposed to be a county judge.
The result was that every visitor, for at least the first six months of his stay, was under suspicion.
The wealthier and more substantial citizens profess to believe that, in electing the present judges, the county took a step which is the beginning of the end.
They maintain that the present incumbents of the county bench represent a higher order of intelligence and business sagacity than their predecessors; that there will be no more skulking in the brush, no more citations for contempt, and no further clashing of authority; but that the court with becoming meekness will submit to the people a proposition to compromise with the bondholders on a basis of $231,000, the face of the original bonds minus $19,000 which has been paid, the interest to be eliminated.
The county judges admit that they have some such plan in view.
However, it is thought in some circles that this project is “loaded”; that in its essence it is like the stock “sale” of ; and that as no one would bid then, no one will vote now.
But of course that would not be the fault of the judges.
Weight is given to this theory by the fact that the bondholders have inadvertently admitted the weakness of their position.
About two years ago several of the heaviest holders issued circulars to their comrades in misfortune, the purpose being to call a meeting to discuss the St. Clair County case and to arrange for the passage of a bill by Congress enabling Federal courts to enforce collection of claims against towns, counties, and other unincorporated communities.
“Experience with the St. Clair County case,” the circular added, “shows how helpless are the United States courts in this respect.”
One of these circulars, by hook or by crook, found its way to Osceola, and within a week news of its contents was in the mouth of every taxpayer.
Naturally they exulted in this admission of their strength, and its effect will not be to hasten compromise.
