Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → American conservative arguments for tax resistance → Mary D. Cain

And yes, Virginia, back in 1952 they really did start newspaper articles with phrases like “An attractive woman newspaper editor” (Rome News-Tribune, 13 March 1952):

Mary Cain, during her run for Louisiana governor

Woman Dares Court Fight on Social Security Tax

Summit, Miss., March 13 — (AP), — An attractive woman newspaper editor today refused to pay her social security tax, closed out her bank account and dared Treasury Secretary Snyder to “pop your whip” and jail her.

“To force me to pay this outrageous demand you must either confiscate my business or put me in prison,” Mrs. Mary D. Cain, editor and owner of the weekly Summit Sun, wrote Snyder, “I hope you choose the latter course.”

“This is a test case in the matter of paying this thing,” she said. “Pop your whip, Mr. Snyder. I am ready.”

Last year the government attached the bank accounts of a number of Texas housewives who refused to pay social security on their domestic help.

Mrs. Cain announced today that she had closed her bank account, farmed out the task of printing her paper, and released her husband from any obligation to pay either her own or the newspaper’s debts.

Mrs. Cain’s 1,500 word letter to Snyder sounded a great deal like a playback of the anti-New-Deal-Fair-Deal platform on which she stumped Mississippi last summer as the state’s first woman candidate for governor.

Lately she has been mentioned as a possible candidate for congress or the U.S. senate this year. She has denied both reports.

According to Cain’s obit in the New York Times:

Although she lost a battle that went to the Supreme Court [over her Social Security tax resistance], the Government eventually dropped the case. The Social Security program, she said, was “unconstitutional, immoral and un-American.”

Two revenue agents secured her weekly newspaper office in Summit with a padlocked chain. Mrs. Cain sawed off the lock and chain and mailed them to the Internal Revenue Department with a defiant note.

The story of the lock and chain is also told in Westbrook Pegler’s column for 1 June 1953, which adds these details:

To frustrate the collectors she assigned her weekly paper, Summit Sun to her niece, Mary Lou Butler, 20 years old, but retained the authority of editor and manager, without pay.…

The government set a marshall to padlock the Summit Sun…

Mrs. Cain sawed off the padlock and mailed it to the marshal. She repeated the job for the benefit of newspaper, newsreel and television cameras. She made her crime as flagrant as she could. She gloried and gloated. The violence against the court’s padlock probably also made her guilty of deliberate, defiant contempt of the federal district court, but still the Department of Justice, like the Treasury, looked the other way.…

…She has received more than 7,000 letters and unsolicited donations of $700 for her legal expenses.…

And, from The Times-News of Hendersonville, North Carolina, 15 March 1952:

Revenue Agents Headed For Miss. Town To Collect From Lady Editor

By Robert F. Loftus

Washington, Mar. 15. (U.P.) The Treasury had news today for that lady editor in Summit, Miss., who says she won’t pay her social security taxes.

Revenue agents are headed her way.

Mrs. Mary D. Cain, editor of the weekly Summit Sun, wrote an open letter to Secretary of Treasury John W. Snyder the other day denouncing social security as illegal and immoral. She said she could take care of her own old-age — when it arrives.

Mrs. Cain said she wouldn’t pay the taxes for herself or deduct them from her employes’ wages. And what was Snyder going to do about it?

“Shades of Vivian Kellems,” Snyder muttered, or something like that.

What he meant was that this wasn’t the first time in his memory that a woman has tried to start a taxpayers’ rebellion.

Mrs. Kellems, a Connecticut manufacturer, gave Synder quite a headache about a year ago by refusing to collect withholding takes [sic] from her employes. She said she wasn’t working for the Treasury and Snyder could do his own tax collecting.

Snyder had to take her to court, but he got his taxes. And Mrs. Kellems collects them for him now. She wasn’t fined or sent to jail because she wasn’t trying to evade payment.

Treasury spokesmen said Mrs. Cain may not be so lucky if she insists on challenging the tax law.

They said revenue agents will be in to see her as soon as they look over her income tax return, which is due in the Jackson, Miss., collector’s office by midnight Monday, if she hasn’t already filed.

Mrs. Cain, being her own boss, is supposed to pay her own social security taxes via the self-employment tax, which she has to pay along with her regular income tax.

Like other employers, she also is required to deduct social security taxes from her employes’ wages each payday and to send the money to the Internal Revenue Bureau at the end of each quarter. Her next such payment is due March 31, and the bureau said it will keep an eye out for it.

The bureau said “several” persons besides Mrs. Cain have refused to pay the social security taxes. It would not identify them, but they’re in the same boat with the fiery lady from Summit, who wound up her open letter like this:

“I’ve had enough of the New Deal. I’m sick of the whole Truman administration. Pop your whip, Mr. Snyder, I am ready.”

Treasury spokesmen said Snyder probably wouldn’t think of using a whip on a lady. But they noted that the law carries pretty stiff penalties for taxpayers of either sex who refuse to pay their social security taxes.

Willful failure to file a return and pay the taxes is a misdemeanor, punishable by fines up to $10,000 or one year in jail, or both. And a willful attempt to evade or defeat the tax laws could cost the offender a maximum of five years in jail, plus a $10,000 fine.

The Lewiston Evening Journal for 20 June 1952 carried Westbrook Pegler’s column boosting the U.S. Senate candidacy of upstart Vivien Kellems against the New England Republican establishment. (Kellems ran as an “Independent Republican” but got fewer than 5% of the votes of the winning Republican candidate.) Kellems was a tireless tax resister whose exploits have been recounted here before. The Pegler column includes some interesting notes on other conservative tax resistance actions of the time:

Vivien Kellems has been flapping around in planes year after year, making speeches against the income and withholding taxes and inciting women to patriotic rebellion. Nobody knows the history of the income tax better. The real rebellion of the time is led by women. The Marshall girls, of Marshall, Tex., refused to pay the baby-sitters’ tax. Vivien flew down to give them counsel and now Mrs. Winifred Furrh, of Marshall, reports that only 20,000 households out of 50,000 in the Dallas Internal Revenue district have even filed returns under this section.

From Bethel, Vermont comes a carbon copy of a Social Security return, proudly sent by Lucille Miller, a rebel against the Communist invasion up there. Across the face runs the loud defi: “Go to Hell, you cheap parasites!” The amount was $5.07.

In Summit, Miss., Mrs. Mary D. Cain, the editor of the weekly Sun, refused to pay Social Security, closed her bank account, announced that her husband wasn’t responsible for her debts and dared John Snyder, the secretary of the Treasury, to do something.

Lucille Miller also did time for encouraging military draft evasion in 1955. The judge in the case declared her insane and ordered her locked up, and she was captured under a storm of tear gas after a brief siege of her house and not released until she won a federal court order. She was later found guilty of “18 counts of counseling young men to evade the Selective Service Act” and given a two-year suspended sentence. The U.S. Court of Appeals turned down her appeal.

She published a zine, The Green Mountain Rifleman, which is usually described as “anti-communist” in the press of the day, but I’ve also seen it referred to as anti-semitic. Having not seen any copies myself, it’s hard for me to say.

Winifred Furrh was one of the “Texas housewives” whose case I covered last year.

Texas Housewives In Tax Revolt — Federal warrants for refusing to pay social security taxes on wages of domestic help are studied in Marshall, Texas, by housewives (seated, l to r.) Mrs. Virginia Whelan and Mrs. Winifred Furrh; and standing, Mrs. Carolyn Abney (left) and Mrs. Etheldrea Spangler. Mrs. Abney spoke for the group, which includes 14 others, when she announced a “wait and see” policy in the dispute, involving only $54. The warrants authorize seizure of property. (International Soundphoto.)

Yesterday I gave some examples of attacks directed at tax offices Today I’m going to give some further examples of attacks on the apparatus of taxation.

Parking meters and traffic cameras

• There is a semi-organized movement in Chicago to make parking meters unusable through vandalism, including smashing them, disassembling them, making them unreadable with spray-paint, stuffing them with pennies, jamming them with glue or expanding foam, or removing them entirely.
• Disabling speed-trap cameras has become almost a popular sport in the United States. I’ve seen video of people dressed up in Santa suits and temporarily disabling cameras by wrapping them in colorful gift boxes. Others have used everything from “sticky notes, Silly String, and even a pick-axe” to stop the cameras from taxing speeders. In Palmer Park, Maryland, recently, the authorities had to install a new set of surveillance cameras to keep an eye on their speed cameras because they were getting vandalized so frequently.

Toll-booths

• During the sixteen months of the Rebecca Riots in Wales, there were over a hundred attacks on toll-houses, toll-gates, and toll-bars. “During this period, all the gates and bars in the Whitland, Tivyside, and Brechfa Trusts were destroyed. Two gates only out of the twenty-one survived in the Three Commotts Trust, whilst between seventy and eighty gates out of about one hundred and twenty were destroyed in Carmarthenshire. Only nine were left standing out of twenty-two in Cardiganshire.” Here is one account:

  The secret was well kept, no sign of the time and place of the meditated descent was allowed to transpire. All was still and undisturbed in the vicinity of the doomed toll-gate, until a wild concert of horns and guns in the dead of night and the clatter of horses’ hoofs, announced to the startled toll-keeper his “occupation gone.” With soldier-like promptitude and decision, the work was commenced; no idle parleying, no irrelevant desire of plunder or revenge divided their attention or embroiled their proceedings. They came to destroy the turnpike and they did it as fast as saws, and pickaxes, and strong arms could accomplish the task.

  No elfish troop at their pranks of mischief ever worked so deftly beneath the moonlight; stroke after stroke was plied unceasingly, until in a space which might be reckoned by minutes from the time when the first wild notes of their rebel music had heralded the attack, the stalwart oak posts were sawn asunder at their base, the strong gate was in billets, and the substantial little dwelling, in which not half an hour before the collector and his family were quietly slumbering, had become a shapeless pile of stones or brick-bats at the wayside.

  When the Scleddy turnpike-gate was attacked, they “broke the gates, posts, walls, and toll-boards into pieces so small that in the morning there was not a piece of the timber larger than would make matches”
• Toll-booth destruction was also part of the riots in Naples in 1647: “the toll-booths throughout the town were demolished; the mob went from one gate to another. Everywhere the toll-gatherers had escaped — nobody thought of making any resistance…”
• Toll-booth attacks are also a trademark of the current “won’t pay” movement in Greece. Resisters there have mobbed highway toll plazas, raising the bars and waving cars through.

Miscellany

• Danny Burns reports that during the Poll Tax rebellion in Thatcher’s Britain, “In Lothian, it was widely reported that Anti-Poll Tax activists had managed to put a bug into the computer, which randomly wiped out every sixth record on the register. The virus story was never proven. However, a month before it was mentioned in the newspapers, its effects were accurately described to two Anti-Poll Tax activists by two computer hackers one of whom had worked for Lothian Regional Council and had been sacked.”
• There are some examples in Hippolyte Taine’s history of the French Revolution:
  • “At Limoux, under the pretext of searching for grain, they enter the houses of the comptroller and tax contractors, carry off their registers, and throw them into the water along with the furniture of their clerks.”
  • In Anjou, the tax clerks’ horses are seized and sold at auction.
  • “In Touraine, ‘as the publication of the tax-rolls takes place, riots break out against the municipal authorities; they are forced to surrender the rolls they have drawn up, and their papers are torn up.’ ”
  • “In Creuse, at Clugnac, the moment the clerk begins to read the document, the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and ‘tear it up with countless imprecations;’ ”
• When the IRS seized tax resister Mary Cain’s newspaper, and put a chain and padlock on the front door, “Mrs. Cain sawed off the lock and chain and mailed them to the Internal Revenue Department with a defiant note.”
• Whiskey Rebels were known to steal the records of tax collectors.
• During the resistance in Missouri against taxes to pay off owners of corruptly-issued railroad bonds, “a gang of armed men rode into the county seat of Osceola and held tax officials at gunpoint while its members stole all the official tax records.”

Here are a couple of examples of American social security tax resisters from back in the day. First, from the Amsterdam, New York, Evening Recorder from this day in 1940:

Man, Jailed for Defying NRA in ’34, Now Refuses to Pay Security Taxes

Uncle Sam to Sell Trucks Of Battery Manufacturer To Satisfy $105 Claim; Penna. Also Files Suit

York, Pa., Jan. 8. — (AP) — Uncle Sam raised an auctioneer’s hammer today above two trucks seized from government-defying Fred Perkins and said more of Perkins’ property would be taken unless the sale satisfies a social securities tax claim.

The trucks were confiscated from the York battery manufacturer last month because he refused to pay $105.36 in social security taxes, penalties and interest.

Today’s auction at the post office garage marked another round in the Perkins-versus-New Deal battle which began in 1934 when he went to jail for 18 days for defying the NRA. [He had apparently paid less than the 40¢/hour minimum wage set by that New Deal federal office. The Supreme Court later ruled the NRA was unconstitutional, and so the government abandoned its defense of the conviction against Perkins while he was appealing it.]

The 61-year-old former Cornell University football player, who also is in hot water with the State of Pennsylvania for non-payment of unemployment compensation taxes, said he would try to buy back his trucks.

Sale of the trucks to Perkins for less than the amount of the government’s claim, said Henry L. Haines, chief field deputy of the internal revenue office in Philadelphia, means that they will be seized again. If they go to another bidder and the claim remains unfulfilled, regulations provide that more of Perkins’ property be confiscated until the taxes and costs are paid in full.

On the other hand. Haines explained, Perkins can make a settlement before the hammer falls or can erase the claim by buying his trucks for a price equal to his unpaid taxes plus costs.

Since Federal agents took Perkins up on his challenge to “come and get it” [an earlier article had quoted him as saying “I ask the government if it has the courage to enforce this law.”] and seized the trucks December 28, he has been delivering batteries in his son’s roadster.

The state plans to sue Perkins this week unless he pays $222.41 in job taxes — an expense he declares he “can’t afford.” Perkins employs only six or seven men.

In another article, Perkins explained:

“I certainly don’t intend to pay the State taxes. I haven’t made any net profits and can’t afford to pay them. My net earnings for 1937–38–39 were less than my employes’. … We should tax employers who lay off their employes. Don’t soak the man who gives his employes steady employment — at least the small business man. What is morally wrong is never politically right.”

Another newspaper quoted him as calling on “every self-respecting and oppressed employer in the state of Pennsylvania to join me in refusing to pay another cent in payroll taxes — come what may.”

Here’s another example, from 1952:

Social Security “Immoral, Illegal”

Woman Editor Defies U.S. on Old Age Tax

Summit, Miss. — (U.P.) — A fiery woman editor and recent unsuccessful candidate for governor declared today she will not pay Social Security taxes and challenged the Federal Government to do something about it.

Mrs. Mary D. Cain, editor of the weekly Summit Sun, wrote an open letter to Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder, denouncing Social Security as “immoral and illegal.”

Mrs. Cain said she will refuse to pay the new self-employment tax on herself and also will not deduct Social Security payments from the salaries of employes.

“Pop your whip, Mr. Snyder, I’m ready,” she wrote. “Either confiscate my business or put me in prison.”

She said she hopes the government will imprison her for not paying the tax “because then the people of America will realize to what a pretty pass we have come in this country when one can be imprisoned or heavily fined for simply doing what has ever been considered the honorable, American way of living — taking care of one’s own old age.”

“The Social Security program, added to the equally iniquitous and confiscatory income tax program, is the hub around which the whole wheel of communism revolves in this country,

“I’ve had enough of the New Deal. I’m sick of the whole Truman administration. Pop your whip, Mr. Snyder, I am ready.”

We’ve met Mary Cain before. But this article was accompanied by some photos and a caption about a social security tax resistance and redirection action I hadn’t heard about before:

It took me a while to find any more about this action, but I finally found this:

Money Owed U.S. Given To Oldster

Detroit, March 12 [1952]. — A one-man revolt against the government’s new social security tax on self-employed business men was waged today by Howard Pennington, partner in a wholesale tobacco and candy firm in suburban Lincoln Park.

Pennington wrote the internal revenue collector that he would not pay his $81 tax and that he had sent that amount of money to a 72-year-old pensioner in Ypsilanti, Mich. The pensioner, George Robinett, recently was deprived of three months of his social security pension, a total of $210, because he earned 62 cents more than the $50 monthly wage to which a pensioner is limited.

Pennington’s refusal was based on his contention that he would pay at least $3000 “for nothing” under the tax because he wouldn’t mismanage his business sufficiently to remain qualified to receive a pension in return. He said he objected to turning over his money “for waste by socialistic dreamers.”

Here’s a bit more about the tireless paleocon tax resister Vivien Kellems. This comes from the 17 March 1952 edition of The News of the Tonawandas:

Miss Kellems Refuses to Pay Social Security

Stonington, Conn. (UP) — Vivien Kellems, veteran campaigner against “socialistic” federal tax laws, refused today to pay the new Social Security tax on self-employed persons and recruited four other small employers to join her tax strike.

Miss Kellems, who owns a cable grip factory here, sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder with her income tax return, pointing out that she had not included the $81 due for the new tax. She told Snyder that she carried “adequate insurance” and did not wish “further coverage.”

“It will clarify the whole matter if you will please indict me and let us submit this law to the Supreme Court, in the traditional American manner, in order to test its constitutionality,” she told Snyder.

Has 4 Followers

Miss Kellems made public similar letters to Snyder written by John F. Andrews, a Beach City, O., auctioneer; Ralph Bly of the Bly Auto Supply Co., Shelby, O.; Thomas Gaskins, owner of Cypress Knee Products, Palmdale, Fla.; and Mrs. Mary D. Cain, owner-editor of the weekly Summit Sun, Summit, Miss.

Because they are their own bosses, the small business owners are required to pay their own Social Security taxes by means of the self-employment tax. They are supposed to deduct Social Security taxes from their employes’ wages, too, but Gaskins told Snyder he would not do that for his two employes.

“The reason for not paying is because we believe this law to be unconstitutional,” he wrote. “for those of us who still have confidence in our own ability (to take care of personal security), such a socialistic thing should not be forced upon us.”

Treasury Department spokesmen in Washington said that “several” persons have refused to pay Social Security taxes. They said revenue agents would be assigned to investigate as soon as their tax returns, which are due at midnight tonight, are checked.

She Withholds Now

Miss Kellems announced the names of her fellow dissidents yesterday in Bridgeport, Conn., at a rally of the Liberty Belles, a national women’s action organization which she founded last September. One of the Liberty Belles’ objectives is to repeal the personal income tax and the Social Security law.

Miss Kellems’ feud with the Internal Revenue Department dates from 1948 when she refused to deduct income tax from the pay checks of her employes because “no one has paid me to be a tax collector.” She asked the government to prosecute her for criminal violation of the revenue code, but the Treasury Department merely attached her property, taking $7819 it said she owed in back taxes and fines.

The 55-year-old manufacturer sued the government for return of her property in a Hartford, Conn., Federal Court and recovered $6133. The government asked for a dismissal of the verdict but was rejected. Miss Kellems claimed a “moral victory” and then complied with the withholding tax law.