Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
women’s suffrage movements →
American women’s suffrage movement →
Abby & Julia Smith
I have reproduced here before the text of some documents relating to the British women’s suffrage movement’s organized tax resistance campaign.
Today I’ll add some concerning tax resistance in the women’s suffrage movement in the United States.
The first comes from Annie Shaw.
It’s an amusing look at the state of that portion of the franchise that was being generously offered to the tax-paying women of Massachusetts by its men, and ends with Shaw’s pledge:
“I will not pay another cent of tax in Massachusetts while I live.”—
You have all heard what school suffrage is in the State of Massachusetts, and it isn’t much of anything, for we have not school suffrage; we haven’t anything but school committee suffrage, and that is a good way from school suffrage.
When the law was passed giving us school committee suffrage I felt as old and as large as my brother did when he was twenty-one; and so I immediately started with some of the ladies of my church to register.
We went out into the field to find a person to register our names, we hunted him up and brought him in from the hay-field, and then we all stood along in a row, like a lot of school-girls, waiting to take our oaths.
The way they do this in Massachusetts, they make us women swear to our property in order to tax us.
That isn’t the way they do with men; they tax them first and then send in their bill and let them do the swearing afterwards.
I had never been taxed before for three reasons: being a Methodist preacher, nobody supposed I had anything to tax, and nobody asked me; and then again, having paid the tax on the property I did own in the place where it was, we in Massachusetts, by a double system, have to pay it over again, and I wouldn’t pay it anyhow; and then again, I don’t believe in taxation without representation, that is tyranny, and I never pay a cent of taxes unless I am obliged to.
Upon going there we women stood up in a little row, and took our little oath in regard to property.
My property yields me $105 a year.
Out of this enormous income I paid $22.50 tax! leaving me a large amount of money to live on the rest of the year, you see.
On the morning of the election I did not know, as we lived in the country, when we were to vote for school suffrage; so we went early.
The way they do there, they stand in a sort of line or procession, you know, as they do in our country places, and vote first for one thing and then another; so we stood there until our time came.
At nine o’clock in the morning we got our places; and presently the men who were there began burning incense on the altar of liberty, and the smoke began rising until by and by, along toward noon, we could scarcely see across the house.
We live in a seafaring place, where they smoke red herring, and every one of us went through the process and know how red herring feel when they are smoked through.
At three o’clock our time to vote for school committee came, and now, we thought to ourselves, is our opportunity.
Just as the time was announced the moderator said, with great dignity:
“I appoint three men to nominate a gentleman for school committee.”
And they walked out and returned with the name of the only man in town whom they could persuade to take the office.
There was no pay to the office, and in order to get a man to take it they had to talk to him of George Washington and the Pilgrim Fathers and the Fourth of July, and wave the flag there in his face for an hour.
So they nominated the only man they could persuade, and the moderator said:
“I appoint Captain Crowell to cast the ballot for the town.”
But I said, “Gentlemen, I thought I was to vote;” but they said, “This is the way we always do it.”
I said, “Yes, I know, but I have paid $22.50 tax; I have been smoked done, and I want to be allowed to vote; may I not be allowed to cast my vote?”
He said, “Ladies, we have no time to spare.”
I said, “Gentlemen, I think I ought to vote, and I want to vote.”
“Very well,” said he, “if you must vote, vote for the town.”
But I said, “I can’t do that, gentlemen, because there are five other ladies here, who all want to vote.”
And as I was talking, an old man, with a pipe in his mouth, snarled out, “That’s just the way; just the way I knew it would be, just the way.”
The moderator quieted them down after a little, and I said, “Gentlemen, I insist upon voting; I came here to vote;” and then I nominated one of the ladies who was with me as my candidate for school committee, and then immediately we began to buttonhole and every one began to vote, and everybody began to dive to get a chance to vote for school committee; and it took us just three hours to vote.
And then the old gentleman who was so angry that the institutions of the fathers had been overturned immediately mounted a chair, and, doubling up his fist, exclaimed, “If this is woman’s suffrage, I am agin it every time.
Here we have spent three hours on the school-house, when we needed it all on the herring brook.”
So that is my voting; that is the opportunity which we say we women are not equal to grasp!
When the question of appropriations for schools came up, there was a certain class of men who wanted to cut them down, and I was asked to speak a word against it, and I said I would do it gladly; but the moderator said: “The lady can not speak upon that subject.”
And I said: “Why not; I am entitled to vote on this subject?”
And he said: “No; you don’t vote on questions pertaining to schools; it is only a question pertaining to school committees” — and that is school suffrage!
And men who never paid a dollar of tax, and men who never paid a dollar for the town, voted to cut down that appropriation, but to increase the fund to support the poor outside of the poor-house, knowing very well that the women who paid the taxes would raise that fund.
I said to the gentlemen: “Can’t you stop this?” and they said: “No, ladies; we can’t stop this.”
I looked up to see who it was, and I saw he was running for representative, and I knew he couldn’t stop it, because there were nine or ten votes involved there.
Finally I said: “Gentlemen, I can stop my part of it, because I will not pay another cent of tax in Massachusetts while I live.”
He said: “You can’t help it; that is what school suffrage does for women in Massachusetts.
They register and swear to their property, and we know what they have and we tax them after.”
Said I: “Gentlemen, you will never tax me again in Massachusetts.”
They laughed at me and said I could not help it; but I could.
I happened to be my own master, so the next day I put my property in such a shape that it has never been taxed in Massachusetts since, and it never will be taxed there if I live there until the angel Gabriel blows the last trumpet.
It costs me more not to pay the tax than it would to pay it, and my friends say: “You are squandering your money.”
I know I am squandering my money, but if I have any money to squander I want to do it.
That is my experience on school suffrage in Massachusetts.
Now, do you wonder that every woman in the State is not anxious to be taxed and get nothing but the privilege to vote on such an unimportant matter as this, knowing full well that if she does vote it will amount to nothing at all?
Lucy Stone wrote:
It is the duty of woman to resist taxation as long as she is not represented.
It may involve the loss of friends as it surely will the loss of property.
But let them all go; friends, house, garden spot, and all.
The principle at issue requires the sacrifice.
Resist, let the case be tried in the courts; be your own lawyers; base your cause on the admitted self-evident truth, that taxation and representation are inseparable.
One such resistance, by the agitation that will grow out of it, will do more to set this question right than all the conventions in the world.
There are $15,000,000 of taxable property owned by women of Boston who have no voice either in the use or imposition of the tax.
An this is the letter she wrote to the tax collector when she put this into practice:
Orange, N.J.,
Mr. Mandeville, Tax Collector, Sir:— Enclosed I return my tax bill, without paying it.
My reason for doing so is, that women suffer taxation, and yet have no representation, which is not only unjust to one-half the adult population, but is contrary to our theory of government.
For years some women have been paying their taxes under protest, but still taxes are imposed, and representation is not granted.
The only course now left us is to refuse to pay the tax.
We know well what the immediate result of this refusal must be.
But we believe that when the attention of men is called to the wide difference between their theory of government and its practice, in this particular, they can not fail to see the mistake they now make, by imposing taxes on women, while they refuse them the right of suffrage, and that the sense of justice which is in all good men, will lead them to correct it.
Then we shall cheerfully pay our taxes — not till then.
Respectfully, Lucy Stone
Elizabeth Cady Stanton tried to get some momentum behind an organized and large-scale campaign of tax resistance:
Should not all women living in States where woman has the right to hold property refuse to pay taxes, so long as she is unrepresented in the government of that State?
Such a movement, if simultaneous, would no doubt produce a great deal of confusion, litigation, and suffering on the part of woman; but shall we fear to suffer for the maintenance of the same glorious principle for which our forefathers fought, bled, and died? shall we deny the faith of the old Revolutionary heroes, and purchase for ourselves a false power and ignoble ease, by declaring in action that taxation without representation is just?
Ah, no! like the English Dissenters and high-souled Quakers of our own land, let us suffer our property to be seized and sold, but let us never pay another tax until our existence as citizens, our civil and political rights be fully recognized.…
The poor, crushed slave, but yesterday tolling on the rice plantation in Georgia, a beast, a chattel, a thing, is to-day, in the Empire State (if he own a bit of land and a shed to cover him), a person, and may enjoy the proud honor of paying into the hand of the complaisant tax-gatherer the sum of seventy-five cents.
Even so with the white woman — the satellite of the dinner-pot, the presiding genius of the wash-tub, the seamstress, the teacher, the gay butterfly of fashion, the feme covert of the law, man takes no note of her through all these changing scenes.
But, lo! to-day, by the fruit of her industry, she becomes the owner of a house and lot, and now her existence is remembered and recognized, and she too may have the privilege of contributing to the support of this mighty Republic, for the white male citizen claims of her one dollar and seventy-five cents a year, because, under the glorious institutions of this free and happy land, she has been able, at the age of fifty years, to possess herself of a property worth the enormous sum of three hundred dollars.
It is natural to suppose she will answer this demand on her joyously and promptly, for she must, in view of all her rights and privileges so long enjoyed, consider it a great favor to be permitted to contribute thus largely to the governmental treasury.
One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.
Laws are capable of many and various constructions; we find among men that as they have new wants, that as they develop into more enlarged views of justice, the laws are susceptible of more generous interpretation, or changed altogether; that is, all laws touching their own interests; for while man has abolished hanging for theft, imprisonment for debt, and secured universal suffrage for himself, a married woman, in most of the States in the Union, remains a nonentity in law — can own nothing; can be whipped and locked up by her lord; can be worked without wages, be robbed of her inheritance, stripped of her children, and left alone and penniless; and all this, they say, according to law.
Now, it is quite time that we have these laws revised by our own sex, for man does not yet feel that what is unjust for himself, is also unjust for woman.
Yes, we must have our own lawyers, as well as our physicians and priests.
Some of our women should go at once into this profession, and see if there is no way by which we may shuffle off our shackles and assume our civil and political rights.
We can not accept man’s interpretation of the law.
The Presbyterian Magazine told its readers that “We fear that these deluded women are the unconscious subjects of that influence which tempted their first maternal ancestor in Paradise.
A glance at some of their sayings in the Syracuse Convention, as reported in the papers, will confirm this apprehension.”
Among these sayings were the following:
Miss Lucy Stone took the platform. She wished to say a word about taxation.
She wished to urge women heroically to resist, bear the reproaches, receive the disgrace, but resist firmly oppression.
What did our fathers say to taxation without representation?
She advised woman, when the tax-gatherer came, to refuse; and when brought to justice, to reply that taxation and representation are inseparable, and keep saying it in reply to every question asked.
Mrs. E. Oakes Smith advocated woman’s right to resist taxation.
She made a motion: “Resolved, That it is the right of every woman holding property, to resist taxation till such time as she is fully represented at the ballot box.”
Miss Susan B. Anthony offered the following resolutions, drawn up by Mrs. Henry B. Stanton:
Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of those States, in which woman has now by law a right to the property she inherits, to refuse to pay taxes.
She is unrepresented in the Government…
Finally, the story of Julia and Abby Smith, and their cows Votey and Taxey:
From time to time women had protested against taxation without representation, some going so far as to refuse absolutely to pay.
The most notable case was that of Julia and Abby Smith of Glastonbury, Connecticut, who, rather than pay their taxes without the privilege of voting, allowed their fine dairy cows and rich meadow-lands to be sold, year after year, at public auction, until even the assessor grew ashamed to visit them.
These women attracted wide attention because of their plucky stand.
At the time they made their fight they were aged women, with neither brothers, husbands, nor sons.
They were highly educated ladies as well as thrifty farmers, earning by their labors a goodly income.
Becoming converted to the principles of equal rights, they carried their conviction to the logical end and resisted taxation.
When at last they were reduced to two cows they named them respectively “Votey” and “Taxey,” and it is recorded that “Taxey” was always aggressive, while “Votey” was ever timid and shy.
Lucy Stone had long since gone on record on the subject, and held that women were in duty bound to resist taxation even though they should lose all they had, and that by combining they could force the Government to consider their rights.
Dr. Harriot K. Hunt protested every year, and many others did the same.
In a number of anti-tax societies were organized, chief among which was that of Rochester, N.Y.
The war taxes made big inroads upon incomes and laid heavy burdens on all property.
Large meetings of protest were called in many places, as the women felt the pressure severely, and at last they resolved to resist.
It was in vain they struggled, however, and, after many fruitless appeals for justice, they gave up the attempt.
Strange, is it not, that men laud to the sky the historic Boston Tea Party, by which the participators lost not a cent, and yet will continue year after year to collect the taxes of unrepresented persons, and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any one brave enough to resist their tyranny?
Men boast of their chivalry, of the fulness of their protection, yet they inflict upon helpless women wrongs which they themselves would never suffer.
If the women resist, the courts are set in motion; back of the court stand the prison, the Government, and the army.
Truly, men have but little of which to boast in their treatment of women as a class, whether the women be brave or meekly submissive.
I managed to get a copy of Abby Smith and Her Cows (by her sister Julia Smith) through inter-library loan.
It’s mostly a collection of newspaper articles concerning the Smith sisters’ tax resistance campaign in Glastonbury, Connecticut (see the tale of “Votey” and “Taxey” in The Picket Line for ).
From this, I’ll reprint a few pieces today.
The first is an excerpt from Julia Smith’s introduction:
Perhaps the public would like to learn the circumstances which first led two defenceless women, to make such a stand as they have done against taxation without representation.
They were quiet peaceable citizens of the town of Glastonbury, Ct., born and brought up there, having no idea of going contrary to men’s laws, neither have they by any means broken one of them.
Without any fault of their own, have they been driven into their present unpleasant situation.
The first time I ever said anything in self-defense to any of the town officers was in .
An overseer of the highway called here in , and brought a bill of about eighteen dollars and said it was not due till , but wished we would furnish the money beforehand, for he must pay the laborers and could get no money from the men.
I paid it, and there was another highway tax sent in of about the same amount.
I thought there must be a mistake, and did not want to pay it over twice.
I called on the overseer, but he seemed to know nothing how it happened.
He was a republican and wanted to give me some insight into town affairs, and show me how miserably the democrats governed the town, and got the late town report to read to me.
I told him I knew not how to stay, and I had no power to help it.
But he read several items and among the rest was more than $700 for registering men’s names.
“What’s that?” said I. “Why there has been a law passed, which I approve; for some men would vote twice over if their names were not put down.”
“But who pays this?”
“Why the tax payers of course.”
“But if I wanted my name set down would they do it?”
“Oh no!
it is the voter’s names.”
“What! and make the women pay for it?”
He said the democrats charged a third more than the republicans, for the democrats charged three dollars a day, horse hire and a dinner.
“And then make the women pay for it?
If they are going on at this rate, I must go to that suffrage meeting in Hartford and see if we cannot do better, for I have no doubt one woman would write down every name in town for half that money.”
To the suffrage meeting we went, the day but one after.
It was presided over by Dr. Burton, and capital speeches were made.
Snow on the ground, travelling bad, a raw, sour day; we could stay at only one session, and came home believing that the women had truth on their side; but never did it once enter our heads to refuse to pay taxes.
Not long after we had sickness and death in the family, and lost our eldest sister, the life of the house, who had a keen sense of injustice.
In when Collector Cornish called for our taxes, (not collector Andrews the cow auctioneer) I asked him why our assessment was more than , for we laid up no money and did not intend to.
He replied, the assessor had a right to add to our tax as much as he pleased, and he had assessed our house and homestead a hundred dollars more.
To be sure it increased our tax but a little, but what is unjust in least is unjust in much.
I inquired if it was done so to any man’s property.
He looked over his book to see, and not a man had his tax raised; there were only two widows in our neighborhood that were so used.
I told him how wrong it was to treat us in this manner, for we could not even raise money enough from our land to pay its taxes, but men had strength and could raise tobacco and pay theirs readily.
He said he would see the selectmen and call again.
He did call again with peremptory orders to collect it, and that year we paid over $200 to the town.
That man was killed the next winter by being thrown out of his sleigh against a post near his own door.
Had he lived, I do not believe he would ever been forced by any authority to use us so outrageously as collector Andrews has done.
My sister who has the most courage of the two, and seemed to think almost the whole of our native town friendly to us, declared she was not going to be so unjustly used, without telling of it.
I warned her of the consequences, and as we had so short a time to stay here, we had better submit; and asked how she would do it?
She said, when the men met in town meeting.
I at last consented to go with her to the town hall, she having written better than I thought possible.
My scrap book entitled “Abby Smith and her Cows” must give the sequel.
The second excerpt is Abby Smith’s address to the Glastonbury town meeting:
It is not without due deliberation that we have been willing to attend this meeting, but we had no other way of coming before the men of the town.
Others, our neighbours, can complain more effectually than we can, without speaking a word, when they think those who rule over them rule with injustice; but we are not put under the laws of the land as they are — we are wholly in the power of those we have come to address.
You have the power over our property to take it from us whenever you chose, and we can have no voice in the matter whatever, not even to say what shall be done with it, and no power to appeal to; we are perfectly defenseless.
Can you wonder, then, we should wish to speak with you?
People do not generally hold power without exercising it, and those who exercise it do not appear to have the least idea of its injustice.
The Southern slaveholder only possessed the same power that you have to rule over us.
“Happy dog,” he would say of his slave, “I have given him everything; I am the slave, and he the master; does he complain? give him ten lashes.”
The slaveholder really thought they had done so much for their slaves they would not leave them, when the great consideration was, the slave wanted control of his own earnings; and so does every human being of what rightfully belongs to him.
We do not suppose the men of the town think they have done so much for us that they have a right to take our money when they please.
But then there is always excuse enough where there is power.
They say all the property of the town should be taxed for the expenses of the town, according to its valuation, and as taxation without representation is wrong, they give permission to a part of these owners to say what valuation shall be made, and how the money can best be applied for their benefit.
They meet together to consult who among them shall have the offices of the town and what salary they will give them.
All is this done without ever consulting or alluding to the other part of the owners of this property.
But they tax the other owners and take from them just what amount they please.
We had two hundred dollars taken from us in this way , by the same power the robber takes his money, because we are defenceless and cannot resist.
But the robber would have the whole community against him, and he would not be apt to come but once; but from the men of our town we are never safe — they can come in and take our money from us just when they choose.
Now, we cannot see any justice, any right, or any reason in this thing.
We cannot see why we are not just as capable of assisting in managing the affairs of the town as the men are.
We cannot possibly see why we have not just as much intelligence and information or as much capacity for doing business, as they have.
Are we not as far-seeing, and do we not manage our own affairs, as far as we are permitted by the laws, as well as they do?
Is it any more just to take a woman’s property without her consent, than it is to take a man’s property without his consent?
Those whom the town put over us are the very dregs of society, those who are making the town and their families continual expense and trouble, for which we are liable, and the authorities make the town pay the expense of meeting to take off their poll tax, for they can’t pay a dollar; and they have taken some from the insane retreat and kept them in a barn over night to vote the next day.
Now all these things clearly prove how much more these lawless men are valued by the town than such citizens as we are, who never make it the least trouble or expense.
Such men as these are set over us and can vote away our property; indeed, our property is liable for their support.
Now all we ask of the town is to put us on an equality with these men, not to rule over them as they rule over us, but to be put on an equality with them.
Is this an unreasonable request?
Do we not stand on an equality with them, and every man in this assembly, before the law of God?
God is a God of justice; men and women stand alike in his sight; he has but one law for both.
And why should man have but one law for both, to which both shall be accountable alike?
Let each rise if they can by their own ability, and put no obstructions in their way.
Is it right because men are the strongest, that they should go into the women’s houses and take their money from them, knowing they cannot resist?
It is not physical strength that akes a town prosper; it is mind; it is capability to guide the physical strength and put its resources to the best possible advantage.
You are rejecting just half of the very element you need.
You well know that a man and his wife must counsel together to make the affairs of their household prosper; they must be one in the business, and if they are one, I cannot see how one can rule over the other, from which idea comes all the disturbance between them.
Ought not this town to represent one great family all equally interested in its government?
As it is, its government is no concern of ours whatever.
We cannot alter it if we see ever so much injustice.
No woman concerns herself about the government of the town, being placed under the men, instead of being placed under the laws, their whole business is to please the men as the slave’s business is to please his master, because their living comes from the men; the laws are such that they can get it in no other way.
The motto of our government is “Proclaim liberty to all the inhabitants of the land,” and here where liberty is so highly extolled and gloried by every man in it, one-half the inhabitants are not put under her laws, but are ruled over by the other half, who can by their own laws, not hers, take from the other half all they possess.
How is Liberty pleased with such worship?
Would she not be apt to think of her own sex?
This assembly have put such men as Judge Hunt over us, to fine a woman one hundred dollars for doing what is an honor for a man to do, and denied us a trial by jury.
This is the highest court in the land made by your votes.
No man ever had more regard for this town than our father had.
He was born and brought up here, and all his ancestors before him.
He knew ever man in it, and seemed as much interested in their welfare as his own.
He was a man that any town would be proud of.
He did all its law business for nearly forty years.
Did he ever take any of its money without giving full compensation?
It was never said of him.
Is not this the great law of nations, that compensation shall be made when money is taken from women as well as men?
But instead of compensation it is taken from us and every other woman in the place, to strengthen the power of those that rule over us.
It is taken to pay the men for making laws to govern us, by which they themselves would not be governed under any consideration.
Neither would we, if we could help it.
Some of it is given to buy votes which add to their power.
A man’s wife told me they gave her husband four dollars, which kept him drunk a long time to abuse his family.
His wife said if she could vote, her vote would be as good as her husband’s, and the men which came after him to carry him to the polls would treat her as well as they treated him.
Her hard earnings could not be taken for his drams.
And some of the money is taken for the authorities of the town to meet at all the different hotels in it, to make voters and take off the poll tax of all the poor vagabonds, that they may vote; then the authorities want to meet to consult what would be most for the advantage of half of the inhabitants of the town, who do the business and put them into office (the women are not mentioned, of course, for having no power they are of no consequence) and then these officers are furnished with an entertainment at the expense of all the inhabitants of the town.
But the roads make the most complaint to every woman that owns property; they all know as well as we do, that they would not be made as they are before their houses if they could vote.
We have every reason to think the officers of the town add what they please to our taxes.
they added $100 to our homestead without giving us any notice, and the same amount to two widows in the neighborhood, who cannot work their land, and not a man who can work it had his property raised, for he could find it out and a woman could not.
We have paid the town of Glastonbury during more than $1000, and for what? to be ruled over and be put under, what all the citizens know to be the lowest and worthless of any in the place.
We ask only for ourselves and our property.
Why should we be cast out?
Why should we be outlawed?
We should be glad to stay in our homestead where we were born and have always lived, the little time we have to stay, and to be buried with our family and ancestors, but its pleasantness is gone, for we know we do not hold it in security as our neighbors hold theirs; that it is liable to be taken from us whenever the town sees fit.
The town collector called for our taxes on at sunset — the last day and hour he could call.
We told him we would prefer to wait till we had been heard by the town, for if they gave us no hopes of voting, we wanted them to sell our farm for the taxes, for it was but reasonable, if they owned it, to get the taxes from it, we could not; and we wished they would begin at the east end and come into the street, for we wanted to save our homestead while we lived, and thought it would last us.
He said he hoped he should not be the collector then.
He agreed to all the injustice of which we complained.
The Hartford Courant printed this address, and then Abby Smith wrote a follow-up article for them:
To the Editor of the Courant:
Several having read my speech in your paper have requested to know how it was received by the town, and if you would publish the sequel I should feel greatly obliged.
The collector called a second time this evening, as we had told him our paying the tax depended entirely on the encouragement we received about voting, after addressing the meeting.
We told him tonight we received none at all.
We thought no man had spoken about it, for what could they say?
The facts must be admitted, and their not speaking of them allowed they did not intend that we should vote.
Now what would you do?
Mr. A., said we, if some men should get together and agree that you should pay them a certain sum, every little while, without your consent, and without your having the least advantage by it; would you pay it, or would you let them get it as they could?
This is precisely our case; there is no difference between us; it is just as wrong to take it from us as it is to take it from you.
Therefore we had come to the conclusion, if the town owned our farm (about 130 acres), it belonged to the men to get out of it what they said we should pay, for we never could; and it surely did not belong to us to assist them in any way, having no voice in the matter.
As to the expense of selling it off, it made no difference to us by what name they called it, expense or anything else, so long as they could take the whole.
Our money we owned, and we were not willing, any more, to take what we owned to pay for what we did not own.
Our father, when he advised us to keep the farm, said, “You need not cultivate it, but it wont run away from you.”
It did not seem to enter his mind but what we might hold it as securely as the men held theirs; but, being a lawyer he must have known that as soon as he died it would pass into the hands of the men of the town, and not be secured to us by the laws of the land, as the men hold their property.
The collector enquired if we wished to begin at the east end first (the farm is three miles long and twenty-two and a half rods wide).
We said we would be glad to save our homestead, while we lived, but then our homestead did not look so well to us as it did when we thought we owned it.
The movable property would not go very far, for we believed they must leave us, as they did to the poor man, one cow and its keeping, and a part of our furniture.
Mr. A., the collector, said, as many do, he thought women that had property ought to vote.
We said those that had none needed it more.
If they could have the power to vote against the grog shops, their drunken husbands would never dare to abuse them as they did, but they could do it now with impunity, for the town officers would not punish a voter; women have no redress for whatever injury they may receive from a voter!
If the women could have voted, the town would never have been so in debt.
It is very hard for them to earn their money, and they are more careful whom they trust, and would never have employed those men who have brought in such enormous bills against the town.
We inquired of the collector if there were any in the place that are taxed higher than we are.
We knew of one that was, but never paid any money; he took much more from the town than he paid it.
The collector mentioned but one other that was taxed higher, but said he had orders on the town to pay.
Of course they have orders on the town to pay — those that rule — and many work out their taxes on the roads, bridges, etc., and then there is a rotation in office that gives them all a chance at the money, which is taken mostly from the women.
The town is six miles on the river and eight miles east from the river, seven miles from Hartford.
And now, if my sister and I pay the highest taxes, in money, of any of the inhabitants of this large place, how does it look as to the administration of its justice?
The town is doubtless managed like our school districts in which we pay the highest tax, double to any of the men but one.
The voters decided a few years ago to have a new schoolhouse, and a contractor offered to build it for the same price he had just finished one a few miles off.
But the men rejected the offer, for they said they wanted to work out their taxes, which they did, and more too, charging what they pleased to the district, which made the expense to the women nearly as much again as what the contractor offered to do the whole for.
There is not a man but what knows it is perfectly just and right for us to have the same protection, under the laws, that he has; neither does he fear Judge Hunt, but it is hard to give up power.
Some of them mention the Catholics, forgetting that all the command which is given to man is, “Do justly.”
God alone controls the consequences.
The collector said, when he left, that he should call again.
It turns out that their home is still standing, on the land that the male citizens of the town kept trying to tax away and seize from them back in the day.
The Kimberly Mansion in Connecticut is a National Historic Landmark.
The women of Wisconsin have apparently forgotten the story of the Glastonbury
sisters [Julia & Abby Smith], two ladies with dauntless tongue the little
tyrants and tax-gatherers of their fields withstood up in Connecticut some
thirty years ago. You do not let us vote, therefore we will pay no taxes,
they cried to the tax man; taxation without representation is
unconstitutional and wicked. Get thee hence. The woman suffragists of
Wisconsin announce their intention to play the game in that way. They have
formed a league, they will take a census of the women taxpayers, the list of
names will be published and used as a basis of a “protest to the Legislature
against taxation without representation.” Later, when 10,000 names have been
secured to a pledge, the women will refuse to pay taxes, and the questions
involved will be taken to the courts. This course, it has been reported, has
been approved by prominent women lawyers of Wisconsin interested in the
women’s suffrage movement.
This is about the worst thing that could be said about the women lawyers of
Wisconsin. Instead of encouraging the rebellion of their sisters they should
advise them that they have got the thing all wrong. They should tell them
that the suffrage is not a right, but a privilege, which Legislatures may
withhold or confer in their discretion; that the handy phrase, taxation
without representation, refers to communities, colonies, or subject States,
and has no bearing upon the case of an individual. If the women property
owners of Wisconsin, after their property has been duly assessed and tax
bills have been presented, defiantly and seditiously refuse to pay the same,
the State will in the most matter-of-fact way levy upon their property and
sell it for taxes, just as if the owner were a mere man and voter. The
Glastonbury sisters up in Connecticut were baffled and routed in their
attempt to withhold taxes in order to extort from an unwilling State the
privilege of the vote. That is what will happen in Wisconsin, the women
lawyers to the contrary notwithstanding.
A suffrage referendum failed in Wisconsin in
, but the state was the first in the union to
ratify the 19th Amendment granting women the
“privilege” to vote in .
The Wisconsin “Tax Paying Woman’s Pledge” that the article alludes to may have
been this one:
We, the tax paying women of Wisconsin, hereby agree to do what we can by
protest and argument to emphasize the fact that taxation without
representation is tyranny as much for American women today as it was for
American colonists in . And we also pledge
ourselves that when 5,000 or more women in Wisconsin shall have similarly
enrolled we will simultaneously take action by whatever method may seem best
in accordance with official advice from the Wisconsin Suffrage Association to
the end that public attention may be thoroughly and effectively called to the
injustice and injury done to women by taxing them without giving them any
voice as to how their money should be employed.
Though there was also talk of a 10,000-signer threshold and of tax resistance
as the explicit pre-declared strategy, so perhaps there was a second pledge
I haven’t located yet.
At the fifth convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Washington, D.C. that opened on , Susan B. Anthony submitted two resolutions concerning tax resistance:
Resolved, That the thanks of woman suffrage are due to the Misses [Julia & Abby] Smith, of Glastonbury, Connecticut, for their patriotic resistance to the tyranny of taxation without representation, and that all women tax payers through the country should follow their example.
Resolved, That the best means of agitating at the present hour is for all women to insist on their right of representation by actually presenting their votes at every election, and for all property-holding women to refuse to pay another dollar of tax until their right of representation is recognized.
Resolved, That as the duties of citizens are the outgrowth of their rights, a class denied the common rights of citizenship should be exempt from all duties to the State.
Hence the Misses Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn. and Abby Kelly Foster, of Worcester, Mass., who refused to pay taxes because not allowed to vote, suffered gross injustice and oppression at the hands of State officials, who seized and sold their property for taxes.
It was the tax on tea — woman’s drink prerogative — which precipitated the rebellion of .
To allay the irritation of the colonies, all taxes were rescinded save that on tea, which was left to indicate King George’s dominion.
But our revolutionary fathers and mothers said, “No; the tax is paltry, but the principle is great” and Eve, as usual, pointed the moral for Adam’s benefit.
A most suggestive picture, one which aroused the intensest patriotism of the colonies, was that of a woman pinioned by her arms to the ground by a British peer, with a British red-coat holding her with one hand and with the other forcibly thrusting down her throat the contents of a tea-pot, which she heroically spewed back in his face; while the figure of Justice, in the distance, wept over this prostrate Liberty.
Now, gentlemen, we might well adopt a similar representation.
Here is Miss Smith of Glastonbury, Conn., whose cows have been sold every year by the government, contending for the same principle as our forefathers — that of resistance to taxation without representation.
We might have a picture of a cow, with an American tax collector at the horns, a foreign-born assessor at the heels, forcibly selling the birthright of an American citizen, while Julia and Abby Smith, in the background, with veiled faces, weep over the degeneracy of Republican leadership.
Susan B. Anthony addressed the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Woman Suffrage on .
She was accompanied by Sarah E. Wall.
Wall did not speak, or at least she is not represented in the transcripts, but Anthony introduced her in this way:
Gentlemen of the committee, here is another woman I wish to show you, Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., who, for the last twenty-five years, has resisted the tax gatherer when he came around.
I want you to look at her.
She looks very harmless, but she will not pay a dollar of tax.
She says when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will give her the right of representation she will pay her taxes.
I do not know exactly how it is now, but the assessor has left her name off the tax-list, and passed her by rather than have a lawsuit with her.
This is how Wall announced her tax resistance (according to the Worcester Daily Spy of ):
Believing with the immortal Declaration of Independence that taxation and representation are inseparable; believing that the Constitution of the State furnishes no authority for the taxation of woman; believing also that the Constitution of the higher law of God, written on the human soul, requires us, if we would be worthy the rich inheritance of the past and true to ourselves and the future, to yield obedience to no statute that shall tend to fetter its aspirations, I shall henceforth pay no taxes until the word male is stricken from the voting clauses of the Constitution of Massachusetts.
Earlier , she had addressed her state legislature’s Joint Special Committee on the Qualifications of Voters, saying:
We do not expect to remedy all the evils of society, or that the defects of woman will be speedily corrected; she will commit her follies still, as man does; she will sometimes make a mistake in voting, as many wise men have done; but with all her follies, and all her mistakes, she cannot possibly bring on the country a more perverted state of the moral atmosphere than the present, or a worse financial crisis than that through which we are now passing.
We do not send our petitions to you year after year, merely for you to report “leave to withdraw;” we demand action, immediate action.
If it cannot be done in the name of affection, in the name of justice it must be done.
If, in the absence of every argument, after the removal of every objection, you still persist in refusing her appeal, but one step remains for her to take, and that is, to refuse to pay taxes, and she will do it.
Having made good on her threat, the tax collector took her to court, and the judge decided the case against her .
Susan B. Anthony also gave a shout-out to Wall when she was defending herself against a criminal charge of Voting While Female:
I would that the women of this republic at once resolve, never again to submit to taxation until their right to vote be recognized.
Miss Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., twenty years ago, took this position.
For several years, the officers of the law distrained her property and sold it to meet the necessary amount; still she persisted, and would not yield an iota, though every foot of her lands should be struck off under the hammer.
And now, for several years, the assessor has left her name off the tax list, and the collector passed her by without a call.
Mrs. J.S. Weeden, of Viroqua, Wis., for the past six years has refused to pay her taxes, though the annual assessment is $75.
Mrs. Ellen Van Valkenburg, of Santa Cruz, Cal., who sued the County Clerk for refusing to register her name, declares she will never pay another dollar of tax until allowed to vote; and all over the country, women property holders are waking up to the injustice of taxation without representation, and ere long will refuse, en masse, to submit to imposition.
, the National Woman Suffrage Association held its Ninth Annual Convention and passed a resolution “That we rejoice in the resistance of Julia and Abby Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, Sarah E. Wall and many more resolute women in various parts of the country, to taxation without representation.”
I haven’t been able to find much else about the tax resistance of J.S. Weeden or Ellen Van Valkenburg.
In , American Heritage magazine featured an article by Elizabeth George Speare about the tax resistance of Abby and Julia Smith:
In two dead-game spinsters who wouldn’t be unfairly taxed, the men of Glastonbury met their match and the cause of feminism found a bovine cause célèbre.
Abby, Julia, and the Cows
In the early morning of , a momentous procession moved along the quiet Main Street of the small New England town of Glastonbury, Connecticut.
Led by an implacable town official, who doubled as constable and tax collector, seven Alderney cows plodded toward the auction block, their reluctant progress urged by four men, a dog, and a drum.
Behind followed some forty-odd local citizens with teams of horses, and in the rear, black-bonneted heads high, their resolute spines never touching the backs of the wagon seats, rode two frail little elderly ladies.
The scene was, in the words of a Hartford correspondent, “a fit centennial celebration of the Boston Tea Party.”
Justice was at stake, and the seven cows, like the chests of tea, were destined to become a national symbol.
The embattled owners of the cows were Julia Smith and her sister Abby.
Though these two were quietly living out the closing years of a long and uneventful life — Julia was 82 and Abby 77 — they were not wholly unacquainted with notoriety.
They were the last remaining members of a family of nonconformists who for half a century had nonplussed the small community of Glastonbury.
Zephaniah Hollister Smith, father of the sisters, was a native of Glastonbury, born in .
A graduate of Yale, a scholar, linguist, and mechanical genius, he began, as an ordained minister in western Connecticut, a career which he soon found irreconcilable to his conviction that the gospel should not be preached for money.
Legend has it that in the resultant dispute with his parishioners he sweepingly excommunicated the entire parish and was in turn excommunicated by them.
Leaving the ministry, he undertook the study of law and presently set up a practice in his native Glastonbury.
Zephaniah married Hannah Hadassah Hickock, herself a linguist, mathematician, astronomer, and poet.
On their five daughters these two seem to have bestowed an incredible legacy of talent, as well as an impressive collection of names: Hancy Zephina, Cyrinthia Sacretia, Laurilla Aleroyla, Julia Evelina, and Abby Hadassah.
The five sisters never married, perhaps, as rumor implies, because of a pact made in early youth, perhaps because few suitors in that small town could have measured up to their formidable requirements.
Legend tells of one persistent young man who was so unresponsive to hints that the sisters were forced to deal with him plainly.
“Now,” one of them said at last, “we are all busy.
But if you will tell us which one of us you prefer, she will remain and the rest of us will continue our work and not waste our time.”
The caller took one startled look around the circle.
“Damned if I know,” he stammered, and, seizing his hat, departed, never to return.
For 32 years Julia Smith kept a diary in French and Latin, in which are recorded the minutiae of quiet days filled with good works.
The Smith sisters read and studied, tended their farm, wove and spun, drank tea with their friends, nursed the sick, and took food to the destitute.
Under the spirited guidance of their mother, however, their imaginations ranged wide.
The antislavery movement in particular fired their ardent sympathies.
When William Lloyd Garrison was denied Hartford pulpits, the sisters invited him to give his abolitionist speeches from a convenient stump on the Smith front lawn, and they were zealous distributors of the Charter Oak, an antislavery paper.
One of the earliest anti-slavery petitions, presented before Congress by John Quincy Adams, was drawn up by Hannah Hickock Smith and bore the names of forty women of Glastonbury.
In , when woman suffrage had become a fiery issue, only Julia and Abby remained in the spacious white homestead.
Less and less frequently now did they appear in public.
Probably they would have been content to cheer their suffragist sisters from their own fireside, had it not been for an affair which involved not only freedom, justice, and equality, but objects even nearer to the sisters’ hearts: their pet Alderney cows.
In the town tax collector called at the Smith homestead with a notice that the property had been reassessed and $100 added to its value.
The property of two widows of the town had likewise risen in value, while not one acre owned by the voting-males of Glastonbury had been reappraised.
Such high-handed treatment could not fail to arouse the Smith sense of justice.
“To be sure,” Abby wrote later, “it increased our tax but little, but what is unjust in least is unjust in much.”
In a furor of moral indignation, Abby, always the more practical and energetic of the two, composed a speech which so surprised the scholarly and retiring Julia that she agreed to appear with her sister at a Glastonbury town meeting.
Disconcerting as their presence must have been in that masculine sanctum, the Glastonbury gentlemen received the two elderly women indulgently and granted Abby permission to speak.
No wonder Julia had been awed.
“The motto of our government,” Abby declared, “is ‘proclaim liberty to all the inhabitants of the land,’ and here, where liberty is so highly extolled and glorified by every man in it, one half of the inhabitants are not put under the law, but are ruled over by the other half, who can… take all they possess.
How is liberty pleased with such worship?”
“All we ask of the town,” she concluded her lengthy and spirited plea, “is not to rule over them as they rule over us, but to be on an equality with them.”
The town voters received the speech in complete silence, and at its end resumed the business of the meeting as though the interruption had never occurred.
Julia and Abby returned home with hardened resolution.
Taxation without representation had been out of fashion for a hundred years; they would pay no further taxes to the town of Glastonbury until they could have some say in the town spending.
When the collector called again they informed him that “it really does not belong to us to assist in any way, having no voice in the matter.”
It was customary at that time for property-holding women to be represented “constructively” at town meetings by their male relatives.
The Smith sisters had no means of representation.
Furthermore, it was allowable for any citizen to withhold taxes upon payment of twelve per cent interest, and the sisters were aware that thousands of dollars in taxes were at that time outstanding.
No such privilege was extended to the old ladies.
Instead, the collector attached seven of the Smith cows for taxes amounting to $101.39. Despite the sisters’ pleading, the cows were led, with considerable difficulty, out of their familiar stable and lodged for seven days in the small tobacco shed of a neighbor.
The officials soon discovered that they had no ordinary cows on their hands.
These creatures had been delicately and lovingly reared.
They responded at a gallop to the names of Jessie, Daisy, Proxy, Minnie, Bessie, Whitey, and Lily.
They were so emotionally dependent that every day of their captivity they refused to be milked until Julia came and stood reassuringly in sight.
Their plaintive lowing rent the sisters’ hearts and distracted the neighbors.
On the morning when the cows marched to the auction block, the Glastonbury citizens who had come expecting to buy some fine Alderney cows for a song were chagrined to find that the Smith sisters, while refusing to pay a tax of $101.39, were prepared to outbid all comers to redeem their pets.
The Smiths’ agent bought back four of the cows but was obliged to sacrifice the others.
It was the editor of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican who first recognized in an amusing local incident implications of national importance.
He reprinted Abby’s entire speech and ran a flag-waving account of her first skirmish with the tax collector, adding that “Abby Smith and her sister as truly stand for the American principle as did the citizens who ripped open the tea chests in Boston Harbor, or the farmers who leveled their muskets at Concord.… It will not be creditable if Abby Smith and her sister are left to stand alone… to fight the battle of principle unaided.”
Without the sisters’ knowledge the editor proposed an Abby Smith defense fund and solicited contributions.
As money and encouragement began to pour in, editors across the country sensed that a good fight was just beginning.
A writer in Harper’s Weekly referred to Abby Smith as “Sam Adams redivivus.”
Overnight the seven cows of Glastonbury became so famous that flowers made from hairs of their tails, tied with ribbons bearing the slogan “Taxation without Representation,” were featured at a bazaar in Chicago.
National leaders of woman suffrage respectfully welcomed the sisters to a place of honor in their ranks.
Lucy Stone traveled to Glastonbury to meet them and wrote back to the Woman’s Journal: “Here some day, as to Bunker Hill now, will come men and women who are reverent of the great principle of the consent of the governed, who respect courage and fidelity to principle, and who will hold at its true value the part which these sisters have taken in solving the meaning of a representative government.”
Abby’s first taste of public speaking had apparently been exhilarating.
In , the two sisters accepted an invitation to appear at a convention on woman suffrage at Worcester, Massachusetts, where Abby made another spirited appeal, ending on the defiant note: “I fear we shall receive no mercy at their hands, and must rest content that they can’t shut us up as they did our cows, and what is worse still they cannot shut our mouths.”
Glastonbury males could refuse to listen, however.
When in April the sisters appeared for a second time at the town meeting, Abby’s petition to speak was denied.
Undaunted, Abby mounted an old wagon which stood outside the town hall, pulled from her pocket the speech she had prepared, and directed her vigorous logic toward a handful of curious spectators.
Julia circulated among the audience, emphasizing her sister’s arguments by the vehement little jerks of her head that were forever sending her black bonnet down over one ear.
Unimpressed, the tax collector called once more with the suggestion that the ladies might now be ready to pay.
“We cannot think it right to do so,” they replied, “and you will have to do as you think best in the matter.”
Remembering the contrary cows, the tax collector thought best to make an oblique attack upon them.
The sisters anticipated the removal of their furniture and were righteously ignoring their friends’ advice to remove to safety Laurilla’s paintings which adorned every wall.
Instead, an inconspicuous advertisement in the Hartford Courant announced the sale at public auction of fifteen acres of Smith pasture land on , a date contrived to fall just before the grass would be cut.
Though the sisters set out on that day with ample funds, the collector adroitly shifted the meeting place, and when the two women caught up with the auction, the gavel had just gone down transferring for $78.35 land worth nearly $2,000 to none other than a covetous neighbor who had tried for years to get possession of it.
Abby and Julia were daughters of a lawyer.
They brought suit against tax collector George C. Andrews on the grounds that he had violated a law which plainly stated that movable property must first be sold for unpaid taxes before real estate could be seized.
The case was tried in the home of Judge Hollister of Glastonbury, who gave a verdict in favor of the sisters and fined Andrews damages of $10. Threatening terrible consequences, Andrews appealed the case.
The new trial, which lasted three days in the Hartford Court of Common Pleas, had a farcical aspect.
There were misplaced records; there was distorted evidence.
The judge, in absentia, reversed the Glastonbury decision and decided in favor of collector Andrews.
At this point the Smiths’ lawyer backed out.
Abby and Julia, both now in their eighties, began the study of law with the intention of conducting their own case.
Happily a capable lawyer finally agreed to place a second appeal before the Court of Equity.
For two years a wide and sympathetic public followed this devious litigation.
Across the nation, even in England and France, editors and columnists lauded the Glastonbury cows in prose and poetry.
Reporters visited the town, drank tea in the elm-shaded farmhouse, admired the cows, polled public opinion in Glastonbury, and returned with highly flavored and often inaccurate stories.
With whatever condescension these reporters arrived, they seem, one and all, to have found the Smith sisters irresistible.
The hospitality, wit, and charm of the two elderly spinsters captivated the world beyond Glastonbury.
At about this time press accounts of the Alderney cows began to be embellished with holy scripture.
Years before Julia had made a translation of the Bible.
Purely for her own satisfaction, suspecting that the King James version which was read in her weekly Bible study club was not altogether accurate, she had pursued the truth through the Latin and Greek Testaments.
Finding that the exact meaning still eluded her, she had secured textbooks and, when well past middle age, had taught herself the Hebrew language.
In she had begun, word by word, a translation of the original sources.
In she had made not one but five complete translations of both Old and New Testaments, two from the Greek, one from the Latin, and two from the Hebrew.
In the final copy she was satisfied that she had recorded, as faithfully as is humanly possible, the literal meaning of every word from Genesis to Revelation.
This incredible manuscript had lain on her library shelf for .
Julia had never intended to make it public, but she now reasoned that it might be of value to the suffrage cause as proof of what a mere woman had accomplished.
In she arranged with a Hartford firm for its publication.
To warnings that she was throwing her money away she replied that she did not care if she never sold a copy; she thought it “more sensible to spend $1,000 on printing a Bible than to buy a shawl.”
Julia’s Bible made an impressive witness.
But much of the nation’s interest in the Glastonbury case was the work of Abby, who willingly took pen in hand to keep her public informed.
Though she once reminded a Toledo editor that she could not give quite so much time to answering such distant requests, she seems to have welcomed every opportunity to recount, in her pungent style, a tale which lost nothing in constant retelling.
There is no sentimentality in Abby’s letters.
In fact the humor and zest which animate her accounts of hardship and persecution leave more than a suspicion that it was with the utmost enjoyment that the two frail victims awaited the next move.
As Abby remarked to one young reporter, “It is some comfort that the collector and his abettors are as much puzzled as we are to know what is to be done with us next.”
Twice more in the cows paraded to auction.
But the collector had underestimated his adversaries.
Abby and Julia were convinced that they fought on the side of the angels.
Even when events went against them, their dignity and spunk seemed to turn every defeat into a moral victory.
When the final verdict was made in their favor, in , women the country over rejoiced.
To be sure, Julia and Abby did not vote in Glastonbury, but from that time on their property was undisturbed.
Abby Smith lived to enjoy the victory for two years, and to see her letters and speeches collected in a paper-bound volume entitled Abby Smith and Her Cows, published by Julia in .
The two sisters shared honors as speakers at a number of suffrage conventions, got an ovation in Washington, and even appeared at a hearing before the United States Senate.
The only impression made on the home town by these triumphs seems to have been raised eyebrows that the sisters had gone to see the President without even taking a suitcase, but had worn all their clothes at once, simply putting on top, day or night, whatever costume the occasion required.
Romance is not entirely missing from the story of the Smith sisters.
At the age of 87, living alone in the Smith homestead, Julia received a proposal of marriage.
One of her pamphlets reached the hands of Amos A. Parker of Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, a retired judge of 86, whose sole claim to distinction was that he had once written a book of recollections boasting a youthful acquaintance with General Lafayette.
Intrigued by a notice of Julia’s Bible, he ordered a copy and after some correspondence traveled to Glastonbury to meet the author.
Presently Julia announced to a friend that she was thinking of marrying the judge.
“I shall be the laughingstock of the nation,” she confided.
But the Smith sisters had never been intimidated by laughter, Julia and the judge were married in the living room of the homestead and stood side by side watching their friends dance the polka and quadrille to the accompaniment of an ancient piano.
To add that the couple lived happily ever after is a temptation several chroniclers have been unable to resist.
But rumor persists in Glastonbury that Julia came to realize that in her marriage she had made the one serious mistake of her life.
What pathetic loneliness must have lured her to abandon the homestead, with its treasure of memories, for a “small box of a house” in alien Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire!
For seven years she made the best of her bargain.
At her death there at the age of 94, a note was found in her Bible requesting that she be buried in the family plot between Laurilla and Abby, and that her maiden name only be inscribed on the stone with that of her sisters.
The debt the woman suffrage movement owed to the seven cows of Glastonbury would be hard to reckon.
Among the grimly purposeful suffrage tracts this little episode must have sparkled like a jewel, and Abby’s pithy letters, heartening of course to the vast voteless sisterhood, must also have reached many a masculine ear ordinarily deaf to feminine harangues.
“Abby Smith and her cows are marching on like John Brown’s soul,” wrote Isabella Beecher Hooker.
“I am not sure that ‘kine couchant’ on the grassy slope of the beautiful Connecticut should not be adopted as the emblem of our peaceful suffrage banner.”
“The cows are again complacently chewing their cuds in Abby Smith’s comfortable barn,” reported the Boston Herald in , “but the case has given a tough cud to the country to chew upon until the New Declaration of Independence is achieved and Abby Smith votes.”
It’s been a while since I’ve dug into the archives to hunt for information on how tax resistance was used in the British Women’s Suffrage Movement.
Here is a very early example, as reported by the Buffalo (New York) Express on :
London, — Miss Muller [Henrietta Müller, I think —♇], a member of the London School Board for the Lambeth District, is the first woman in England to pose as a martyr in the cause of woman suffrage.
She has undertaken in her own person to prove her devotion to the principle “No taxation without representation.”
Miss Muller is a leader of the Woman Suffragists, and was one of the first to propose, during the pendency of Mr. Woodall’s amendments to the Franchise bill, that women throughout the kingdom should form societies to resist the payment of taxes until the franchise should be extended to women householders.
When Mr. Woodall’s amendment was so overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Commons the ardor of the ladies perceptibly cooled, and but little has lately been heard of the proposed tax-resistance societies and defense fund.
Miss Muller, however, never wavered, and when the rate collector made his rounds this year she promptly and absolutely refused to pay a farthing for taxes upon her house.
This is situated in the fashionable precincts of Cadogan Square.
The collector argues and implored in vain, and finally distrained a portion of the furniture in Miss Muller’s residence in satisfaction of the levy.
was set for the execution of the writ, and Miss Muller, far from relenting to save her property, publicly advertised the date of the seizure, and invited the women of England to come and witness the disgraceful spectacle of a woman being robbed by the minions of the law because she dared to ask for a voice in the disposition of her taxation.
The invitation was accepted by hundreds of well-dressed but excited and indignant women, who crowded into Cadogan Square and nearly mobbed the bailiffs while they were removing the lares and penates from the Muller residence.
An indignation meeting was afterward held in Miss Muller’s drawing-rooms and many bitter and vehement denunciations of the tyranny and injustice of the law were indulged in.
Miss Muller was visited by a Cable News correspondent, and was found to be full of fight and determination to continue in her resistance.
She is a small and slender but sinewy woman of about forty-five, and gives one the impression of a veritable volcano of temper and pluck.
She sadly bewailed the seizure by the minions of the law of her favorite belongings, and said that the wretches had purposely picked out those articles which were most cherished by her on account of their associations and overlooked others of greater value.
“But,” she added, “they did not collect the rates, and they never will if they rob me of every stick of my furniture and pull the doors and windows out of my house.
I shall continue this fight if I am the only woman left in England to do so, but I hope and believe that thousands of English women will be found brave enough to follow my example.”
A paragraph of unsigned editorial commentary accompanied that piece:
The Smith sisters [Abby & Julia] of Glastonbury, Ct., who struggled so hard for the principle of “no taxation without representation,” now have an imitator in England.
The Smith sisters regularly refused to pay their taxes because they could not vote, and as regularly saw their cows sold by the tax collector, they protesting but bidding them in.
Miss Muller, the English woman who is following the same principle, lives in a fashionable quarter of London.
She witnessed the carting off of some of ber choicest furniture by the minions of the law, and invited several hundred other women to be present and witness the outrage.
It was no doubt a touching spectacle.
Our cable special clearly shows that Miss Muller was very mad.
But the public will refuse to sympathize very profoundly with a reform martyr of that sort.
Women suffrage may be advisable, though some of us do not believe in it.
But the policy of trying to reform the laws by refusing to obey them is certainly not the height of wisdom.
My next example is a brief note from the Camperdown Chronicle:
Women can refuse, as Mrs Montefiore is again doing, to pay income tax so long as they remain unenfranchised, on the old historic ground that “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
If resistance, passive or active, ever can be justified, it assuredly is so justified in the case and cause of injured and insulted womanhood.
—“Ignota.” in “Westminster Review.”
From the Albany Advertiser:
Resistance Overcome.
London, .
The widow of Sir James Steel, a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh, refused to pay house or property tax on the ground that she is denied a vote.
A portion of her furniture was sold by auction to cover the amount of the tax.
Five thousand persons were present at the sale.
At first I thought that must be referring to Flora Annie Steele, but she was never married to a James Steel[e].
Turns out this was Barbara Joanna Steel.
She promoted tax resistance in 1907 to the Edinburgh National Society for Woman’s Suffrage, telling them:
On the ground that the franchise has not been extended to women, and she is therefore without a vote, the widow of Sir James Steel, a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh, lately refused to pay her house and property taxes.
The authorities thereupon ordered the sale by auction of a sufficient portion of Lady Steel’s household furniture to meet the demand of the tax collector, and the sale was held in the presence of 5,000 people.
A boycott of the census is (says the “Daily Chronicle” of ) to be the latest method of the militant suffragists for calling attention to their claims to the vote.
The announcement was made by Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard at a “King’s Speech meeting” of the Women’s Freedom League, held in the Caxton Hall.
The census would cost a great deal of money, said Mrs. Despard, and involve an enormous amount of labor.
So far as they were concerned, this census should not be taken.
“We shall prove,” said Mrs. Despard, “whether there is a people, or whether there can be a people without the women.
We shall call upon women householders and women lodgers all over the country to refuse absolutely all information when the census takers come round.”
Women, she went on, had been proud to belong to the nation, but they had been denied their citizenship.
Was it not logical, therefore, that they should say, “Very well; citizens we are not, and we shall not register ourselves as citizens?”
That was logical, as a protest should be, and it would be effective.
Speaking of the preparations for the census, Mrs. Despard asserted that the officials were trying to get cheap labor: little girls from the schools at six and seven shillings a week.
Mrs. Despard added that the members were going to obstruct other Government business and make other protests, and they would stop the census boycott only when they had the promise of the Prime Minister that a Woman’s Suffrage Bill would be introduced this session.
Tax resistance is to be another method of obstruction, and Mrs. Despard, who has already been “sold up” twice for refusing to pay taxes, produced a third summons to which she intimated that she would pay no attention.
A diamond ring, the property of the Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, seized because she refused to pay fines inflicted for failing to take out licenses for five dogs, a male servant, and a carriage, was sold by auction at Ashford (Middlesex) lately.
It was explained that the princess, as a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance league, refused to pay money to a Government which failed to give women representation in Parliament.
The ring was sold for £10, and was subsequently, on behalf of the league, returned to the princess.
London, — The first instance of a suffragist being committed to prison for non-payment of taxes as a protest against the disfranchisement of women occurred when Miss Clemence Housman, an authoress, and sister of Lawrence Houseman, was taken to Holloway Gaol by the Sheriff’s officer.
Similar protests have previously ended in distraint but Miss Houseman had no distrainable goods and was accordingly committed.
Miss Houseman, who belongs to the Women’s Social and Political Union and is on the committee of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, refused to pay for the taxicab in which she was taken to prison and the Sheriff’s officer paid the fare of $2,50, which curiously enough was the amount of the tax she originally declined to pay.
The monotony of purely educational work for woman suffrage has been enlivened by the arrest, imprisonment, and release of Miss Clemence Housman, writes an English correspondent, for non payment of the habitation tax.
Miss Housman a year ago refused to pay this tax, which was only 4/6 (1.10 dollar), and during the year has had sundry notices served upon her, the cost of which brought the amount up to between twenty five and thirty dollars.
The Government offered to compromise, but Miss Housman remained firm.
At length she received notice that she would be arrested on a certain day.
This was made the occasion by the Tax Resistance League of a protest meeting and a tea at the home of Miss Housman’s brother, Lawrence Housman, the noted dramatist and noted suffragist, for Mr. Housman is always speaking and writing for this cause and has thoroughly identified himself with it as his own.
The “John Hampden” dinner was the name under which the members of the “Women’s Tax Resistance League” gave a dinner recently in London.
At the end of the dining hall hung a picture of the hero, who resisted the ship money imposition, and on the menu cards appeared the legend, “No vote, no tax.”
The guests included many well-known people interested in woman suffrage, and the speakers, Earl Russell, Mrs. Despard, Sir Thomas Barclay, and Mr. Laurence Houseman, all upheld the right of women in refusing to pay taxes while they had no voice in the government of the country.
Miss Green, a member of the New Constitutional Society, and honorary treasurer to the Women’s Tax Resistance League, London, having again refused to pay inhabited house duty for 14 Warwick Crescent, Paddington, her bookcase was sold at Messrs.
Gill’s auction rooms in Kilburn.
Many sympathisers attended the sale, and the usual speech of protest having been made, three cheers were raised for Miss Green before the party left the auction room.
A procession then formed up, headed by a waggon decorated with the colours of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and an open air meeting was held on the High-road, Kilburn.
Dr. Helen Hanson, who presided, spoke of the special injustice under which the voteless taxpaying women are suffering, and expressed her satisfaction in finding that they are now combining to protest in this way.
I’ve encountered “Miss Green” in the archives a couple of times before, but never with enough information for me to be able to attach a first name to her.
Discovery by Mrs. Mark Wilks Gives Suffragets Brilliant Idea.
Campaign of Sympathy
Wilks in Jail Because His Wife Refused to Pay Her Taxes.
London, . —
Mrs. Mark Wilks, whose husband is in jail because she refuses to pay her taxes, is entitled to immense credit for discovering a new and very formidable weapon for suffragets, members of the Women’s Social and Political Union said .
Suffragets are very generally women of property and will follow Mrs. Wilks’ example.
Their husbands in turn will follow Wilks’ example — go to jail, because they can’t help themselves.
It is not, of course, that the suffragets have anything against their husbands.
Many of these husbands are themselves suffraget sympathizers.
Indeed, suffragets are campaigning to create sympathy for Wilks.
Mrs. Wilks’ discovery is too valuable not to be utilised, however.
Husbands will have to be sacrificed on the altar of votes for women.
The plan will work only in the case of husbands whose wives have independent incomes.
Nor will it work in cases where husbands pay taxes on their wives’ incomes.
Some husbands, like Wilks, have not enough money to pay the taxes.
Suffraget-sympathizing husbands, who can pay, are counted on to refuse to do so.
Thus will a large proportion of Englishmen with suffraget wives be in jail shortly.
The suffragets think the scandal and injustice of it will be a big thing, for them.
Under the married women’s property act a husband has no control over his wife’s property or income.
Under the income tax act, he is responsible for the taxes.
If the taxes are not paid the husband — not the wife — is imprisoned.
Mrs. Wilks refused to pay her income tax, $185, and her husband was locked up.
He will spend the rest of his life in prison unless his wife says otherwise or the law is changed.
When at liberty, he is a teacher in the suburb of Clapton.
The arrest and imprisonment “during the King’s pleasure” of Mr. Mark Wilks, the Clapton schoolmaster, who is unable to pay the tax on his wife’s income, is to be the subject of numerous protest meetings, organised by the Women’s Tax Resistance League, during the next few days (said the “Daily News and Leader” on ).
the Wilks campaign opens with a demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
On there will be another mass meeting in Hyde Park, and on a procession will march from Kennington Church to Brixton Gaol, where the central figure in the fight is detained.
In addition, a protest meeting is to be held outside the gaol every morning, and on Mr. Bernard Shaw will address a similar gathering in the Caxton Hall.
Under Two Acts.
A clear and humorous account of the affair was given to a “Daily News and Leader” representative by Mrs. Charles Stansfield; a sister of Mrs. Wilks.
“Mr. Wilks is in prison,” she said, “because he has not got £37 to pay a tax on property he does not own and cannot control.
That is really the whole case.
Under the Income Tax Act the property of his wife is his property for the purposes of taxation, but under the Married Women’s Property Act it is entirely out of his control.
“Every man who is married to a woman with an income of her own is in that position; and if he cannot pay his wife’s taxes he is liable to imprisonment.
It seems to place an enormous weapon in the hands of rich wives.”
It seems that in and Mrs. Wilks refused to make any return of her income either to the Inland Revenue authorities or to her husband, and, in consequence, the furniture, which is hers, was seized and sold.
The Schoolmaster’s Plight.
“In ,” her sister explained, “she claimed that such distraint was illegal, asserting that under the Income Tax Act she, as a married woman, was exempt from taxation.
As a consequence, all taxes charged upon her were withdrawn, and the authorities contented themselves afterwards with making their claim, sometimes on Mr. Wilks, sometimes on both conjointly, and, finally, on him alone.
“All this is interesting,” she added, “as showing the ridiculous position that arises through the operation of the two Acts.
But the serious side of the matter is that Mr. Wilks is in prison for debt, and his position as a master in a London County Council school must be endangered.
He does not know for what period he will be in prison, and he has no possible way of settling the debt.”
Which prompted George Bernard Shaw to wax wittily (from the Barrier Miner):
Mr. G.B. Shaw was the chief speaker at a meeting held in Caxton Hall, London, by the Women’s Tax Resistance League last month, “to protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay the taxes on his wife’s earned income.”
Sir John Cockburn was in the chair.
Mr. Shaw said that this was the beginning of the revolt of his own unfortunate sex against the intolerable henpecking which had been brought upon them by the refusal by the Government to bring about a reform which everybody knew was going to come, and the delay of which was a mere piece of senseless stupidity.
From the unfortunate Prime Minister downwards no man was safe.
He know of cases in his boyhood where women managed to make homes for their children and themselves, and then their husbands sold the furniture, turned the wife and children out, and got drunk.
The Married Women’s Property Act was then carried, under which the husband retained the responsibility of the property and the woman had the property to herself.
As Mrs. Wilks would not pay the tax on her own income Mr. Wilks went to gaol.
“If my wife did that to me,” said Mr. Shaw, “the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife.
(Laughter.)
It is indefensible.”
Women, he went on, had got completely beyond the law at the present time.
Mrs. [Mary] Leigh had been let out, but he presumed that after a brief interval for refreshments she would set fire to another theatre.
He got his living by the theatre, and very probably when she read the report of that speech she would set fire to a theatre where his plays were being performed.
The other day he practically challenged the Government to starve Mrs. Leigh, and in the course of the last fortnight he had received the most abusive letters which had ever reached him in his life.
The Government should put an end to the difficulty at once by giving women the votes.
As he resumed his seat Mr. Shaw said — “I feel glad I have been allowed to say the things I have, here to-night without being lynched.”
A resolution protesting against the imprisonment of Mr. Wilks was unanimously carried.
Mr. Zangwill wrote, expressing sympathy with the protest, and said, “Marrying an heiress may be the ruin of a man.”
Anna Stout, wife of the former New Zealand prime minister Robert Stout, gave her opinions of the suffrage movement (as found in the Perth Western Mail), including these remarks:
…the Tax-Resistance League… secured hundreds of converts to the cause.
“Twenty-six million pounds” Lady Stout said, “are paid annually in taxes into the Treasury by English women, and naturally there is much resentment created when the injustice of their not having a voice in the expenditure of it is pointed out to them.
We appeal to their pockets first, but almost invariably find hearts and brains behind them.”
Urges This Method of Getting Jailed for Non-Militant Suffragettes.
The non-militant suffragettes of Britain have decided to “let slip the dogs of war” to help win the cause that window smashing, red pepper distribution, mall destruction, and other gentle forms of militant protest have been ineffective in promoting.
Mrs. [Ethel] Philip Snowden, whose husband is an M.P. for Blackburn, announced on in a talk before the Equal Franchise Society how the dogs were going to be utilized.
Any old dog will do.
Mrs. Snowden herself has a dog, the breed of which she did not mention, and Philip Snowden, M.P., is not responsible for the dog.
Mrs. Snowden herself must pay the license for the dog.
Mr. Snowden, as a Member of Parliament, is responsible for the other taxes of Mrs. Snowden, which she has refused to pay, declaring that taxation without representation is unjustifiable, a sentiment that has been uttered on this continent, but they cannot put Mr. Snowden in jail for the refusal of Mrs. Snowden to pay her taxes, as he is exempted as an M.P..
The proposition of Mrs. Snowden seems to squint at the acquisition by all British maids and matrons of dogs and the refusal of the owners to pay the dog license.
Mr. Snowden, M.P., may not even know that Mrs. Snowden, N.M.S. — non-militant suffragette — has a dog; but she has.
By buying up dogs of all sorts and refusing to pay the licenses the suffragettes may get into jail with facility and honor.
Why place a bomb on the front porch or spread carbolic acid in a mail box, when you may get jugged just as well merely by refusing to pay your dog tax?
Mrs. Snowden commented on the “outrageous incompetence of the Liberal Government” and said she felt that her party no longer could trust its affairs with the Liberals.
The physical force party, Mrs. Snowden said, might destroy the sympathy of the British public.
Mrs. Pankhurst had started a crusade that she could not control.
The doctrine that the end justified the means might wind up with the blowing off of [Prime Minister H.H.] Asquith’s head.
The dodging of the dog tax seemed to Mrs. Snowden the lever with which the non-militants might pry themselves into prison.
The possibilities were large.
Every male member of the audience admitted this.
Think of a lady who had accumulated a pack of hounds refusing to pay the licenses thereon and thus making herself liable to a life sentence!
If one dog sent you to prison for one month, how many months would you be forced to serve if you owned 100 or 200 dogs?
Meanwhile you might put on all the dogs blankets inscribed “Votes for Women” and turn them loose in the Strand to the confusion of the bobbies and Parliament.
Destraint has been levied upon [Mary Russell] the Duchess of Bedford, who, as a protest against the non-enfranchisement of women refuses to pay property tax for the Prince’s Skating Rink, which is owned by her.
The tax is eight months overdue.
(When she first announced that she would resist payment of the tax the Duchess of Bedford said:— “I am very strongly opposed to the militant tactics adopted by a portion of those who are in favour of women’s franchise, and I have therefore taken this, the only course open to me, which appears justifiable, of protesting against the way in which the question of woman suffrage has been treated by the Government.)
This is an interesting example of how the violent tactics of the most militant wing of the British women’s suffrage movement (which make today’s “black bloc” look like the kumbaya chorus) gave the tax resistance movement space to present themselves as the reasonable non-militant alternative.
At this time in the United States, by contrast, tax resistance was considered a far-out militant tactic only adopted by the most radical fringe of the suffragist movement.
Distraint was levied on the Duchess of Bedford for non-payment of taxes due in respect of Prince’s Skating Rink.
A silver cup was taken to satisfy the claim.
The Duchess, who refused to pay the taxes on suffrage grounds, has instructed the Women’s Tax Resistance League to point out that the distraint is quite out of order, because as a married woman she is not liable to taxation.
The assessment or demand not should have been served not upon her, but upon the Duke of Bedford.
“Obviously,” she adds, “it was not my business to point out the law to those duty it should be to understand it.”
Carrie Chapman Catt was an American suffrage activist who felt the need to distance herself from the militant tactics of some of her fellow-strugglers across the pond.
But she had kinder words to say about the tax resisters.
From the New York Sun:
“The non-militant organization that interested me most was the Tax Resistance League, which has an enormous influence in England just now.
I went to the sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s curios, on which she had refused to pay taxes.
A member of the league made a speech along the lines of no taxation without representation which had a familiar Fourth of July sound.
It was expressly stated that this was the Duchess’s manner of protesting against militancy, though I fancy we should have considered it rather militant here.”
“No Vote, No Helping Government,” Is Suffragettes Latest Slogan.
Homes Sold Over Women.
One Firm Soldier of “The Cause” Calm While Husband Languishes in Jail for Her.
London, — The suffrage impasse in England is to be solved by a new and startling campaign.
This is to take the form of resistance to paying taxes — and is to be run by all the militant suffragettes in the kingdom who have homes but no votes.
The militants themselves are already jubilant at the prospect of their success, and are asking what Mr. Lloyd-George can possibly do to make up for this leakage in the revenues of England.
This movement is seriously worrying Lloyd-George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and those unfortunate and always unwelcome officials — the tax collectors of England.
The women are either going to jail or having their jewelry and furniture distrained upon and sold by public auction, for the settlement of the Government’s claims.
Everyone of these public auction sales, too, is made the occasion for a grand procession of women tax resisters.
They march to the scene of the fray with drums beating and banners and pennons flying.
Some of the best suffrage speakers in the country are rallying to their aid.
Frequently thousands of people surround the auction halls and when the sale is over the “victim of distraint” mounts a platform outside the hall and addresses the multitude on the text “No Vote, No Tax.”
The suggestion that “taxation and representation should go together” and that “taxation without representation is tyranny” evidently appeals to the sense of fair play in a British crowd, so that converts are easily made, money comes rolling in, and propaganda goes merrily on.
Tax Resistance Three Years Old.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League started as a small cloud — no bigger than a man’s hand — in Lloyd-George’s financial sky, about three years ago.
That it has been growing steadily ever since is probably due to the fact that it is continually stirring the imagination and touching the sense of humor of the “man in the street.”
The society has been able to attain such proportions that shortly it will give a preconcerted “signal” to the women householders in every large city and town in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, causing a general “tax strike.”
Every sympathizer who is a householder will, at a given moment, openly refuse to pay any more imperial taxes until political representation is accorded her.
Some startling developments are likely to follow.
Among the important and extremely active members of the league are the Duchess of Bedford, whose husband owns over 84,000 acres of land and whose collection of pictures at Woburn Abbey is one of the finest and most historic in the world; Princess Sophia Dhulep Sing, an Indian lady, at present in residence in England; Beatrice Harraden, author of “Ships That Pass in the Night,” and Miss Clemence Housman, sister of Laurence Housman, whose fame as an author and artist are recognized in America as well as in his own country.
His “Englishwoman’s Love Letters” made quite a sensation over here some years ago.
All London was agog when it became known that the Duchess of Bedford, aided and abetted by the Women’s Tax Resistance League, had definitely and emphatically refused to pay property tax and house duty on one of her own houses.
People who were not versed in the law speculated as to whether Mr. Lloyd-George would have the courage to order the Duchess to be arrested like an ordinary commoner and dragged off to Holloway Jail, there to endure the rigors of a plank bed and jail fare or to win her freedom by resorting to the hunger strike.
Fortunately, however, such indignities are not necessary in collecting the King’s taxes in England if tax-resisting rebels possess furniture, plate, or jewelry upon which distraint can be made.
Mr. Lloyd-George’s emissaries were therefore able to seize and carry off a beautiful silver trophy cup from the Duchess’ collection of plate, and sell it by public auction.
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, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, the secretary of the league; Mrs. Lilian Hicks, the honorary treasurer, and other Suffrage speakers held forth on the advisability and necessity of every self-respecting woman householder in Great Britain following the Duchess of Bedford’s lead.
Miss Clemence Housman’s Case a Poser.
The case of Miss Clemence Housman was really a “poser” for Mr. Lloyd-George.
It led to a long struggle between the woman and the authorities, and a denouement which was of the nature of an anti-climax for the Government.
The amount in question was an exceedingly small one — about $1 — but Miss Housman, incited and encouraged by the belligerent Tax Resistance League, refused on principle to pay.
As she had no goods on which to distrain, she was herself seized and thrown into Holloway Jail, there to remain until the tax was paid.
When it became evident that Miss Housman was a woman of determination and was quite prepared to spend the rest of her natural existence within the grim walls of Holloway Castle, the authorities reflected that the maintenance of a prisoner thirty or forty years in jail, and the public excitement this would involve, was too expensive and troublesome a method of collecting $1, so the doors of her cell were, after five days, thrown open and Miss Housman emerged a free and triumphant woman.
The most important and sensational event in the history of the tax-resistance movement, however, was the capture by the Government of the unfortunate husband of a woman tax-resister.
The case arose through the refusal of Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, as a Suffragist and tax-resister, to pay the tax levied on her earned income.
On two previous occasions this refusal had been followed by a distraint on her goods, but one of the peculiar anomalies of the income tax law, as distinct from the property tax in England is that, in spite of the Married Woman’s Property Act, a husband can be made liable for his wife’s income tax.
Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, realizing, therefore, that as a married woman she was not really liable to this taxation, informed the authorities that the claim should be sent not to her, but to her husband.
The government fell into the trap and sent the claim to Mark Wilks, a schoolmaster, who immediately declined to pay on the grounds that he had no legal means of ascertaining his wife’s income.
The treasury refused to accept this plea, and after a long correspondence decided to seize the person of Wilks and throw him into jail.
A public agitation was immediately started, among those who made strong protests on the platform and in the press being George Bernard Shaw, Sir John Cockburn, K.C.M.G., the Rt.
Hon. Thomas Lough, M.P., and Laurence Housman, with the result that Wilks, after being several weeks in jail, was suddenly released, no reason being given by the British Home Secretary for this act of clemency and wisdom.
The incident formed excellent subject for jest by all the humorous papers in England, and one of them suggested that now that husbands could be placed in durance vile for the non-payment of their wives’ income tax, it would be an excellent way for women who held the purse strings not only to get rid of lazy and troublesome husbands, but to have them maintained at the expense of the state!
Another ingenious form of protest adopted by women tax-resisters has been to refuse admission to the officials of the Inland Revenue who came to seize the goods, barricading their homes against the intruders.
Mrs. Dora Montefiore, a well-known Australian Socialist, was the first to adopt this novel method, and several others have since followed her example, the last being Mrs. [Kate] Harvey, whose house has been barricaded for months past.
Mrs. Harvey decided to resist Mr. Lloyd George’s insurance tax, and also refused to pay her gardener’s license.
In the meantime she took the precaution of getting a bill of sale on her furniture, so that the authorities, balked in every direction of their prey, have now seized the lady herself and committed her to jail for two months.
A vigorous agitation for her release is going on, and it is confidently expected that within a few days Halloway’s portals will again open wide and that a huge mass meeting already being organized, in Trafalgar Square, will publicly welcome her back to the arms of her fellow tax-resisters.
Primitive but effective means were resorted to by a bailiff, who, acting on a distraint order, sought to enter the house of a leading suffragette.
The lady in question was Mrs. Kate Harvey, of the Women’s Freedom League.
She had declined to pay taxes, and was being supported in her resolve by Mrs. Charlotte Despard, the well-known president of the league.
Mrs. Harvey resides in “Brackenhill,” a large mansion in Highland road, Bromley (Kent).
Failing to gain an entrance to the house, the bailiffs procured a battering ram, and, with the assistance of the police, accomplished his purpose at the end of two hours by smashing in the front door.
[Mrs. Harvey has for years been an ardent exponent of tax resistance.
In her goods were seized and sold for inhabited house duty, and her residence was barricaded against the King’s officers for eight months, entry by force being a last effected under a warrant.
On the same date Mrs. Harvey was sentenced to distraint or seven day’s imprisonment for a tax unpaid on a male servant.
Her companion, Mrs. Despard, has served two terms of imprisonment.]
Considerable difficulty attended the levying of a distress upon the goods of Mrs. Harvey, of the Tax Resistance League; at Bromley, Kent, on Tuesday.
Upon the arrival of a tax collector, a bailiff, and a police sergeant, they found the outer gate locked and the doors of the house barricaded.
The gate offered little obstruction, but to get the door of the house open was a difficult matter.
Finally, after a heavy beam was used as a battering ram, the door went in with a crash.
The door, however, led only to a narrow passage, where a still more obstinate door barred the way.
A crowbar, battering ram, and a small jemmy were here brought into use, but even with those it was nearly half an hour before the door, almost splintered, gave way.
Later, the hall was entered, where the tax collector was met by Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Despard.
Here was little furniture visible, and it was not until a locksmith had forced the door of the dining room that the bailiff was able to place his levy upon goods.
The amount of the tax, it is understood, is about £15.
The remaining articles concern the resistance of Sophia Duleep Singh.
First, from the New York Herald:
Sophia Duleep Singh, of Woman’s Tax Resistance League, Refusing to Pay, Loses Gems.
A pearl necklace and a gold bangle studded with pearls and diamonds, belonging to Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, have been seized to satisfy fines and costs of about $80, which she was ordered to pay for keeping a carriage, a groom and two dogs without a license.
The jewels will be sold at a public auction.
The Princess is a member of the Woman’s Tax Resistance League.
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, of Faraday House, Hampton Court, made her second appearance at Feltham Police Court, Middlesex, on .
She is a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and was summoned for keeping a male servant, a carriage, and two dogs without licences.
The Magistrate imposed fines of £5 each in respect of the groom and carriage, and £1 5/ for each of the dogs, with costs amounting, to 18/.
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, of Faraday House, Hampton Court, saw her jewels seized under a distress warrant rather than pay fines and costs amounting to over £16 for keeping a groom, a carrage, and two dogs without licences.
By order of the Justices of the Spelthorne Division of Middlesex, the jewels were offered for sale by public auction at the Twickenham Town Hall on .
The auctioneer (Mr. Alaway) explained that the jewels seized by the police consisted of a necklace, with 131 pearls, and a gold bangle, with a heart-shaped pendant, with a diamond centre surrounded with pearls.
He was proceeding with the sale when Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who occupied a seat in the front of the hall, rose, and exclaimed:— “I protest against this sale, seeing it is most unjust to women that they should be compelled to pay unjust taxes, when they have no voice in the government of the country.”
The bidding started at £6, and when it had reached £10 the lot was knocked down to Miss Gertrude Eaton, a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Bidding for the gold bangle started at £5, and only two other bids being received, it was sold to the same lady for £7.
In the Washington Herald, Clara Bewick Colby continued her impressions of the British women’s suffrage movement with a note on tax resistance:
There is a league existing for this very purpose to enroll women who are willing to have their property sold for taxes.
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.
Not of American Origin.
I always felt at home on these occasions as I saw the familiar mottoes ranged around.
I had supposed they were of American origin, as we had quoted them in our suffrage work; but I found that all the principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence belonged to an earlier struggle for freedom which had been won on British soil, and exactly the same as the women are waging now.
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.
The object lesson of the sale and the subsequent meeting on the street corner or in the nearest park carries the message to an outlying part of London, and to a people who otherwise would know nothing of the agitation.
The discrimination which the government shows on every hand is apparent in this matter of seizing goods, for some are never annoyed for their delinquent taxes, while others are pounced upon with severity.
The league makes resistance systematic and effective so that no effort is lost.
Sometimes no one will bid for the sufragist’s property and they carry it home again, but the government cannot seize it for that assessment.
Of all forms of militancy this is most logical, and it is one that women might well adopt everywhere, as it was inaugurated in America when the Smith sisters of Glastonbury, Conn., allowed their New Jersey cows to be sold year after year under protest.
Mrs. Despard, sister of Gen. Sir John French, who is president of the Woman’s Freedom League, has been sold out repeatedly, until she has around her only the barest necessaries of life.
There is an imperial tax for the non-payment of which the person and not the property is seized.
Miss Housman, sister of the distinguished dramatist, Lawrence Houman, lives with him, but owns a little property subject to the imperial tax.
It was only a trifle — four and six ($1.05) — but she refused to pay.
Various processes were served upon her until the sum had grown to about $15. She was warned repeatedly by the officer that she would be arrested if she did not pay, but she was obdurate.
At length the officer arrived to escort Miss Housman to Holloway jail.
He was very polite and took her in a taxi, which cost exactly the sum of the original tax.
(Here it would have been for that distance the sum of the tax and costs).
Miss Housman was from day to day interviewed by various officials to get her to pay her tax, which she declared she had no intention of doing.
The government was in a quandary.
There was a law to put Miss Housman in prison but there was no law to let her out until she paid the tax and costs.
The government offered to knock off the costs and let her off with the original four and six.
Miss Housman was still obdurate.
To all intents and purposes she was in Holloway for life.
To make capital of the situation and to keep up her courage the Tax Resistance League organized a procession to Holloway.
I was extremely glad to be on the spot and able to show that I was not a fair-weather suffragist, for the weather had been perfect on the occasions of the five processions in which I had already taken part in England, and this day was rainy and the streets muddy.
It was a long trudge the four miles to Holloway but many made it, and, lo! when we got in front of the frowning old fortress the meeting that had been planned for protest became one of victory, for the government had weakened and Miss Housman was free.
She was a very quiet, delicate woman who had never taken any other part in the movement, and she made her first suffrage speech this day under the walls of Holloway jail.
Miss Housman has just been called upon by the board of inland revenue to pay arrears on her taxes, and she has again expressed her determination to abide by “plain constitutional duty in refusing consent to taxation without representation.”
There is a general movement among tax resisters to send their dues to one or other by the national funds for relief labeled “Taxes withheld from the government by voteless women.”
Jail Procession Frequent.
How many times had the women gone to Holloway to welcome out the prisoners on the day of their release!
This was before the days of forcible feeding and the hunger strike which has made it necessary to take away the tortured victims in an ambulance and to a nursing home as quickly as possible.
In the earlier days they have often been met with bands, sometimes the horses would be taken off the wagon and young girls would draw it in a triumphal procession.
Then there was breakfast and speaking, and everything to make it a gala occasion.
I was present at one of these breakfasts in Queen’s Hall decorated with flowers and banners and with tables for hundreds.
It was a queer sensation in those days to look upon sweet and ladylike young women — I remember that on this occasion one was the niece of the violinist Joachim — and to know that they had actually been prisoners.
It was not long before they were looked upon as something sacred, as those who had made special sacrifices for the cause, and they wore badges to show that they had been prisoners and in every place were given the post of honor until their numbers mounted up to the hundreds.
One, of their favorite banners bears the inscription:
“Stone walls do not a prison make. Nor Iron bars a cage.”
I came across the poem the other day from which this is taken.
It contains four stanzas, written by Sir Richard Lovelace in prison in the middle of the seventeenth century.
The balance of the stanza quoted is:
“Minds innocent and quiet, take That for a hermitage. If I have freedom in my love. And in my soul am free. Angels alone, that soar above. Enjoy such liberty.”
We shall see in the next paper which will deal with Lady Constance Lytton’s two prison experiences, that this is the spirit that animates women in prison even when undergoing tortures.
They are upheld by a sense of devotion to a great cause, and they feel that they are enduring this for the sake of all women.
With such consecration there often comes to such prisoners a development of spirit that is truly marvelous.
All ordinary values have slipped away and the sense of personality is lost in the new sense of solidarity.
They are at one with all the suffering women and the wronged women of the past and of the present.
I never talked with one who regretted having gone through the tortures of the prison.
They are the birth-pangs of the new age.
Rides in the Wagon.
From this wonderful breakfast and the inspiring speaking I was privileged to ride with the group that accompanied the released prisoners to the suffrage headquarters.
Notwithstanding that the young girls dressed in white and harnessed to the wagon with their green, white and purple ribbons, had drawn the six women all the way from Holloway, they gaily took up the march and drew the wagon the additional two miles to St. Clement’s Inn.
There was one young woman not released with the rest because she had infringed a prison regulation and had written a letter to her mother.
She was to be out a week later, and the same demonstration was made for her, only varied with elaborate use of the Scotch heather which gave the colors of the Union, white, purple and green.
Again the girls drew the wagon from Holloway and the young Scotch woman who was being escorted away in triumph bore a banner with the words (warning Mr. Asquith) “Ye mauna meddle with the Scotch thistle, laddie.”
Tax resistance campaigns can increase their visibility by adopting particular
uniforms, badges, ribbons, or other emblems to identify resisters and those
working in concert with the campaign. Today I will summarize some examples of
this.
Gandhi’s satyagraha in India
An important part of the Indian independence struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi
was the wearing of khādī (homespun cloth). This had three
purposes:
To encourage the development of Indian self-reliance and industry as the
economic foundation of Indian independence.
To hurt the British government by boycotting and thereby reducing the
profits from exports of British fabric to India.
To serve as an emblem to identify and express the commitment of Indian
patriots.
Gandhi wrote:
[T]he most effective and visible cooperation which all [Indian National]
Congressmen and the mute millions can show is by not interfering with the
course civil disobedience may take and by themselves spinning and using
khādī to the exclusion of all other cloth. If it is allowed
that there is a meaning in people wearing primroses on
Primrose Day, surely
there is much more in a people using a particular kind of cloth and giving a
particular type of labour to the cause they hold dear. From their compliance
with the khādī test I shall infer that they have shed
untouchability, and that they have nothing but brotherly feeling towards all
without distinction of race, colour, or creed. Those who will do this are as
much Satyagrahis as those who will be singled out for
civil disobedience.
Gandhi wearing a “Gandhi cap”
Gandhi himself put in many hours at the spinning wheel, and demanded this of
his followers as well.
“Gandhi caps” made from
khādī became almost a uniform of the resistance. One news
dispatch from around the time of the Dharasana salt raid noted:
The correspondent said the growth of the Gandhi movement was shown by the
increased number of persons wearing the Gandhi caps. In the cities, he said,
a majority of the people wear them; they also are beginning to be worn in
villages in Punjab while even in aristocratic Simla one person in six of the
population in the bazaars have donned caps, which is the symbol of the
nationalist campaign.
Homespun cloth in the American revolution
But Gandhi’s campaign wasn’t the first blow against the British Empire that
was struck in part by homespun cloth and conspicuous consumption of
locally-manufactured goods. This was also an important part of the American
Revolution.
Here is an example reported in a
edition of the Massachusetts Gazette:
On Wednesday evening the honorable speaker and gentlemen of the House of
Burgesses gave a ball at the capitol… and it is with the greatest pleasure we
inform our readers… [of] the patriotic spirit… [that] was most agreeably
manifested in the dress of the ladies on that occasion, who, to the number of
near one hundred, appeared in homespun gowns; a lively and striking instance
of their acquiescence and concurrence in whatever may be the true and
essential interest of their country.
“Spinning bees” at which patriotic Americans worked together to card, spin,
weave, and sew, so as to avoid having to import clothing from England, were
ways that everybody could demonstrate their revolutionary spirit and
participate in the resistance. Resisters also made a point of eschewing
imported tea in favor of locally-produced substitutes (such as dried raspberry
leaves).
One patriotic poem of the time advised “young ladies”:
Wear none but your own country linen;
Of economy boast, let your pride be the most
To show clothes of your own make and spinning.
What if homespun they say is not quite so gay
As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
For when once it is known this is much worn in town,
One and all will cry out— ’Tis the fashion!
And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be
To such as will wear London factory,
But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose
As encourage our own manufactory.
No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear;
Love your country much better than fine things;
Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion
To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.
Massachusetts patriots vowed in :
…that we will not, at funerals, use any gloves except those made here, or
purchase any article of mourning on such occasion, but what shall be
absolutely necessary; and we consent to abandon the use, so far as may be,
not only of all the articles mentioned in the Boston resolves, but of all
foreign teas, which are clearly superfluous, our own fields abounding in
herbs more healthful, and which we doubt not, may, by use, be found agreeable…
Rebecca Riots
The Rebecca Riots in Wales in
were notorious for the distinctive garb donned by the
resistance groups who would gather to tear down tollgates.
The leader of the party was usually a man dressed up in women’s clothing and
a large bonnet, sometimes wearing a long horse-hair wig or carrying a parasol,
who was given the name “Rebecca.” Rebecca’s followers also were men wearing
women’s clothes, or at least white blouses over their clothes, and sometimes
bonnets or other high-crowned hats, occasionally with fern fronds, feathers,
or other decorations on them. They would paint their faces black or yellow,
and sometimes drape their horses in white sheets.
In this case, the reasoning behind the costuming was not so much to express
public pride than for other purposes. For instance:
To disguise the participants so that the government would be less able to
take reprisals against them.
To resonate with ancient folk forms of grassroots vigilantism and protest
that had a similar character (cross-dressing, face painting, a carnival
atmosphere).
To intimidate toll gate keepers with their strangeness and reputation.
To create a figurehead for the movement that could be adopted and then
set aside by multiple people, so as to make the movement’s leadership
harder to target for reprisals.
To make the resistance more festive and carnivalesque and thereby
encourage participation.
To make it easier to identify fellow-resisters in the confusion of
late-night raids on dark country roads.
Badges awarded by the Women’s Tax Resistance League
The badge representing Holloway Prison that was awarded to women’s suffrage
activists who had been imprisoned.
Women’s suffrage activists in the United Kingdom awarded badges to resisters
who had been imprisoned for their resistance. Here is a description of one
such badge given to Kate Harvey:
The badge is cast in the form of a shield on which is depicted the entrance
to Holloway Prison. On the reverse is a card inscribed in a faint hand:
“Given to Mrs K Harvey By Women’s Suffrage After She Had Been In Prison For
Tax Resistance.”
These badges were the equivalent of medals for meritorious service. An
American woman who visited her counterparts across the waters observed:
It was a queer sensation in those days to look upon sweet and ladylike young
women… and to know that they had actually been prisoners. It was not long
before they were looked upon as something sacred, as those who had made
special sacrifices for the cause, and they wore badges to show that they had
been prisoners and in every place were given the post of honor until their
numbers mounted up to the hundreds.
Relics of the Glastonbury cows
Abby & Julia Smith refused to pay taxes to a local government that denied
women the vote and that took advantage of this by excessively taxing women’s
property in order to ease the tax burden on male voters and to redistribute
the money to male patronage recipients. In response, the government
periodically seized and auctioned off the Smith sisters’ cows (“Votey” and
“Taxey”).
Emblems made from hairs of the cows’ tails, woven into the shape of flowers,
and tied with ribbons emblazoned with the slogan “Taxation Without
Representation,” became popular adornments for supporters of the Smiths’ tax
resistance.
“I refuse to fund this war” stickers
In , an American anti-war group held a
“Stop Funding the War in Iraq” rally near the offices of a Congressional
leader.
A war tax resistance group was there to hand out stickers for people to wear
that read “I refuse to fund this war!” I was there and noted:
I figured a few people would take them and wear them without thinking much
about it, a few people would refuse to take them without thinking much about
it, and the remainder would have to think about whether they should start
refusing if they hadn’t already.
As it turned out, just about everyone we offered the stickers to was eager to
wear one, though it’s hard to tell which of these will put their money where
their mouths are. Hopefully a few, anyway, had that light bulb go on, and
then looked around and wondered “have all these other people wearing these
stickers started resisting their taxes?”
French cockades and militia uniforms in the Fries Rebellion
The Fries Rebellion in the United States took place about a decade after the
enacting of the United States Constitution, and shortly after the successful
French Revolution.
The United States government was under the presidency of John Adams, who
represented the more authoritarian, aristocratic, pro-English faction; the
faction out of power was more populist, democratic, and pro-French.
Tax resisters who participated in the Fries Rebellion sometimes signaled
their loyalty (and frightened the Adams government) by wearing French
tricolor cockades in their hats to demonstrate their affinity with the
democratic revolutionaries across the pond, and/or by wearing their old
American revolutionary militia uniforms to show their belief that their
current rebellion was more in harmony with the spirit of the American
Revolution than were the policies of the federal government.
Masks at the Carnival of Viareggio
The Carnival of Viareggio is today a parade and bacchanal, but it began with
a tax protest in which “a number of local citizens, as a sign of protest…
decided to put on masks in order to show their refusal of high taxes they were
forced to pay.”
Australian miners wear a red ribbon
Australian miners, who in were resisting
a license tax, held a “monster meeting” at which they passed a number of
resolutions, including these:
[A]s it is necessary that the diggers should know their friends, every miner
agrees to wear as a pledge of good faith, and in support of the cause, a
piece of red ribbon on his hat, not to be removed until the license tax is
abolished.
That this meeting… desire to publicly express their esteem for the memory of
the brave men who have fallen in battle [during “the late out-break”], and
that to shew their respect every digger and their friends do wear tomorrow
(Sunday) a band of black crape on his hat…
Taking pride in resistance
Many of these are examples of resisters showing pride in their
resistance. This can be a way of short-circuiting a traditional government
gambit used against tax evaders: to publish their names as a way of calling
them out as bankrupts or deadbeats. If the government tries to shame tax
resisters as irresponsible tax evaders, but the resisters have already
willingly made their resistance public, this government tactic loses its
force.
When local council governments in the United Kingdom tried to use this tactic
against Poll Tax resisters in the Thatcher years, the newspapers who published
the lists of “shame” found themselves on the receiving end of letters to the
editor from resisters who were outraged that they had not made the
list — insisting that their names be included too!
Here are some similar examples of people taking pride in their resistance or
in things incident to resistance:
When the Women’s Freedom League (a British suffrage group which refused to
pay taxes on the salaries of its employees), was threatened with a legal
writ by the government, it decided to auction the writ as a
fundraiser.
Greek tax resisters in Penteli (near Athens), who have been refusing to
pay the new taxes attached to their utility bills during the recent “won’t
pay” movement, hung their urgent “past due” notices from a Christmas tree
in the town square as ornaments.
When somebody asked Quaker Nathaniel Morgan whether he and his father had
“got anything” in the course of their war tax resistance (by which he
meant, did his Quaker meeting reimburse them for their losses when their
goods were distrained and sold), Morgan replied: “Yes, peace of mind,
which was worth all.”
Mark Wilks was arrested and sent to Brixton Prison for failing to pay his wife’s income taxes.
The case became a cause célèbre in the British women’s suffrage movement and an embarrassment to the British government and its tax authorities.
This is a good example of how careful study of the law can help tax resisters find and exploit flaws that hold the tax system or its enforcement arm up to ridicule, make them unworkable, or make them vehicles for additional resistance or propaganda opportunities.
Ethel Ayres Purdie, resident tax law expert of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, discovered the vulnerability.
The Income Tax Act, she wrote, “is a most fearsome piece of composition.
Its language is archaic and tautological, it rises wholly superior to punctuation, and proceeds breathlessly through one hundred and ninety-four clauses.”
But one of those clauses held a fatal flaw.
The “Married Woman’s Property Act” of was a reform that allowed married women to maintain control of their property rather than relinquishing it to their husbands’ control upon marriage.
But the earlier () Income Tax Act still considered the husband to be solely liable for the income taxes of both the husband and wife.
At first, when Elizabeth Wilks began resisting her income tax, the government responded by seizing and selling her property, but when this quirk in the law was discovered, tax resisters like Wilks protested that the government could not legally seize her property since as a married woman her taxes were legally owed by the him in the marriage.
So the government went after Mark Wilks instead.
Mark Wilks, for his part, insisted that he could hardly fill out an income tax return since he had no legal right to demand information from his wife about her income!
Besides, his modest income and lack of property in his own name meant that he could not afford to pay the taxes on his wife’s considerably larger income (he did pay the tax on the portion of their joint income that was attributable to his own income, though his income was low enough that by itself it would not have been taxable).
“I am informed that I am liable for taxes levied on her income,” he wrote “while at the same time the law places all her property entirely beyond my control.”
Meanwhile, the Women’s Tax Resistance League trumpeted the arrest of Mark Wilks and his indefinite imprisonment — “for non-payment of taxes not his own and due on an income over which he has no control and whose amount he can only guess at” — as proving their contention that not only should women resist the income tax, but that married women were not even legally obligated to pay it and those who were paying it were operating under a legal delusion.
The imprisonment of Mark Wilks was a propaganda coup:
For what do the arrest and imprisonment of Mark Wilks mean?
We are perfectly certain that it will not last long.
Stupid and inept as it has been, the Government, we are certain, will not risk the odium which would justly fall upon it if this outrage on liberty went on.
A Government which has much at stake and which lives by the breath of popular opinion cannot afford to ignore such strong and healthy protest as is being poured out on all sides.
To us, who are in the midst of it, that which seems most remarkable is the growth of public feeling.
In the streets where processions are nightly held, we were met at first by banter and rowdyism.
“A man in prison for the sake of Suffragettes!”
To the boy-mind of the metropolis, on the outskirts of many an earnest crowd, that seemed irresistibly funny; but thoughtfulness is spreading; into even the boy-mind, the light of truth is creeping.
If it had done nothing else, the imprisonment of Mark Wilks has certainly done this — it has educated the public mind.
Wilks was released after less than a month in prison, without official explanation, and without paying the tax.
A tax resistance campaign is almost always one that butts up against the law, and it can be helpful to have campaigners who know a thing or two about legal matters.
As Elizabeth Cady Stanton put it when she was considering a tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in America,
One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.
Today I’ll summarize some examples of how legal study and the assistance of attorneys have made a difference in tax resistance campaigns.
Poll Tax rebels in Thatcher’s Britain
Understanding the law and the legal process was important in the poll tax rebellion — to give confidence to resisters, to support targets of government reprisals, and to make the process of tax enforcement costly and unmanageable.
Anti-poll tax volunteer Danny Burns writes:
In Bristol when the court cases started, each person with a summons, who rang into the office, was logged and sent an information pack.
The same personal attention was given to people with notices from the bailiffs.
At the peak of the campaign, the Bristol office was staffed morning and afternoon five days a week by different volunteers.
, it was receiving over 200 calls a week.
… [The volunteers included] at least five court support workers…
In every part of England and Wales local groups mobilised to provide support for non-payers in the courts.
Tens, if not hundreds of activists in each region attended legal briefing sessions.
These were run both by activists and sympathetic local lawyers.
People were given ideas about how they might disrupt or delay the court proceedings.
These included simple things, like asking for a glass of water because their throat was dry, demanding to see the identity cards of everyone present in court, to fainting in court or arranging for fire alarms to go off.
People were told to demand their rights to see and read every document which was produced as evidence against them.
They were also given briefings on the basic technical arguments.
By , when most of the court cases had started, virtually every Anti-Poll Tax Union in the UK had trained at least two or three of its members to become conversant with the Poll Tax law.
Throughout England and Wales over a thousand people were trained to do court support work and could quote the relevant legislation.
This is unique in the history of popular campaigning.
The Anti-Poll Tax Unions hoped to use the legal precedent of McKenzie versus McKenzie (), which said that a person can “attend a trial as a friend of either party (to) take notes and quietly make suggestions and give advice to that party.”
This person would be known as a “McKenzie friend.” McKenzie friends had no right to address the court, but they could advise the non-payer what to say.
In this way everyone would be able to offer technical defences and thereby delay the proceedings.
The campaign needed lawyers only in the most technical cases.
Lawyers were often seen as a liability, because they represented an individual client, and it was in their interest to get through the procedure as quickly as possible.
It was in the campaign’s interest for everything to proceed as slowly as possible.
Nevertheless, legal knowledge and guidance was essential.
This arrived with the creation of the Poll Tax Legal Group… [which] researched legislation and case law.
It set up a network of lawyers throughout England and Wales who could support the legal challenges of Anti-Poll Tax groups and produced over 30 accessible legal bulletins on the Poll Tax and a book called To Pay or Not To Pay.
These underpinned the legal needs of the movement and helped ordinary people to get to grips with the law they needed to use.
Delaying tactics were mixed with serious legal technicalities.
Councils were challenged for sending notices to the wrong addresses.
Given the rate at which people moved houses, it was difficult for the councils to keep up, and as a result many cases were dropped because people hadn’t received proper notice.
Big legal challenges were also made over “correct procedures.”
These came in the first few weeks and resulted mostly from the inexperience of councils in dealing with this sort of process.
The first day of Medina Council’s cases (on the Isle of Wight) is probably the most famous example.
The reminder notices were sent out with second class stamps, they consequently arrived late, people didn’t receive the statutory notice which they were entitled to, and the court threw out all 1,900 cases.
The council had to start again.
When police attacked an anti-poll tax demonstration in London, many of the demonstrators fought back, and hundreds were arrested.
Elements of the campaign leadership distanced themselves from the defendants, embarrassed to have the campaign associated with violence.
So other activists helped to form and coordinate an independent group — the Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign — with the following mandate:
The campaign will:
Unconditionally defend all of those arrested on .
Be controlled by and be accountable to the defendants
Be totally independent of any other organisation.
Seek support from the whole Anti-Poll Tax movement and all other sympathetic organisations.
Seek to co-ordinate the legal defence of all those arrested.
Seek to build a coherent picture of events of from the point of view of those arrested.
Publicise the points of view of defendants.
Raise money for a bust fund, controlled by the defendants to cover their legal and welfare costs.
Ensure that at all future Anti-Poll Tax events there will be proper legal cover and support for anyone arrested.
This will include an office and workers to visit places of detention and look after prisoners’ welfare.
Danny Burns again:
About a dozen people volunteered to carry out the court monitoring process.
They attended every hearing, systematically took notes of everything that was said, recorded the numbers of police officers and approached the defendants asking them to attend the now weekly TSDC meetings… By the summer, over 250 of the defendants had been contacted.
The TSDC ran advice sessions on prison, produced legal briefing notes and mailed out the minutes of the weekly meetings to every defendant every week.
A solicitors’ group was established with a core of three, but at the peak of early activity they managed to get over fifteen solicitors involved.
This proved important because the solicitors’ group managed to get hold of over 50 hours of police videos and handed them over to the campaign.
The police videos were crucial in getting a lot of people off, and a number of people in the campaign worked extremely hard editing videos and rejigging them for particular trials.
The solicitors’ group also got the Crown Prosecution Service to hand over a full list of all of the defendants and the names and addresses of their lawyers.
The lawyers were all contacted and, although many were initially reluctant to co-operate with the campaign, they soon realised that TSDC had a lot of information which their clients needed.
Every possible legal angle was pursued by the campaign’s legal team — down to legal definitions of what constituted a householder, making the councils prove that the person they had summonsed actually lived at the address, that they owned the property, etc., etc. We weren’t doing this because we had any illusions in the impartiality of the court system.
We knew that even though we were successful in finding various legal loopholes these would all be closed one by one and that the judges would be doing their best to facilitate the councils.
This was demonstrated most clearly when a judge in Swords invoked the Public Order Act to close several streets around the courthouse to prevent a protest outside it.
But by contesting every detail of every summons we could make the system unworkable.
There were tens of thousands of non-payers.
After several months the councils had only managed to get a couple of dozen cases through the courts.
Someone calculated that at the rate they were managing to proceed it would take them something like 220 years to process all the cases.
And it was costing them more in legal fees than they could ever hope to take back in charges — even if they managed to bully everyone into paying.
Any time the council did manage to get a court order, it was appealed — again the objective being to clog up the system.
George Cony’s aggressive lawyers
When Oliver Cromwell knocked the English king off his throne, he did so in part in the cause of Parliamentary democracy.
Upon assuming charge of the English government, however, he grew impatient with Parliament and decided to enact some taxes on his own.
One of Cromwell’s more radical supporters, George Cony, taking Cromwell at his word (Cromwell had said that “the subject who submits to an illegal impost is more an enemy of his country than the tyrant who imposes it”) decided to refuse to pay one of these arbitrary taxes.
Cony’s lawyers argued his case so successfully that Cony’s tax evasion case threatened to call the legal underpinnings of Cromwell’s regime into question.
The judges in the case seemed sympathetic, and Cromwell was so alarmed that he had all three lawyers imprisoned in the Tower of London until they repented, upon which the chief-justice who was hearing the case resigned.
Hugh Williams and the Rebecca rioters
Radical lawyer Hugh Williams was of great help to the Rebecca movement in Wales — some say he was more than a legal advisor, but one of the instigators of the movement, or even “Rebecca” herself!
One account says: “[Williams] did all the legal work for the rioters, also drafting various petitions for them.
He was a prominent member of the Chartist movement, acting as their solicitor, and he defended the prisoners at Welshpool Assizes in July, 1839, for taking part in the Chartist Riots.
He rendered similar services to the Rebecca prisoners gratuitously; but was eventually reported to the Lord Chancellor and struck off the Rolls.
He, however, continued to do a considerable amount of legal work, and whenever it became necessary for him to appear in court, he invariably employed [another attorney] to appear for him.”
His familiarity with the law and the legal process helped him help the Rebeccaites translate their grievances into formal petitions, which in turn helped the Rebeccaite “people power” movement effect change in government policy.
White supremacists in Reconstruction-era Louisiana
When white supremacists in New Orleans decided to actively withdraw their consent from the mixed-race Reconstruction government of “scalawags” and “carpet-baggers” there in , they formed “The People’s Association to Resist Unconstitutional Taxation” and declared a tax strike.
Fifty-eight New Orleans attorneys signed the following statement of support:
The undersigned attorneys at law, citizens of New Orleans, engage themselves, without compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all citizens, residents, or property-holders in this city, who shall desire their assistance in resisting the collection by municipal authorities of the taxes known as the “school-tax,” the “park-tax,” and the “metropolitan-police tax,” and other taxes the collection of which may be lawfully resisted.
The Smith sisters of Glastonbury
Abby & Julia Smith refused to pay taxes to a local government that denied women the vote and that took advantage of this by excessively taxing women’s property in order to ease the tax burden on male voters and to redistribute the money to male patronage recipients.
In response, the government periodically seized and auctioned off the Smith sisters’ cows (“Votey” and “Taxey”).
That failing to discourage the Smiths, the town decided to fight dirty, and the Smiths fought back legally in a way that brought further attention to their cause:
[A]n inconspicuous advertisement in the Hartford Courant announced the sale at public auction of fifteen acres of Smith pasture land on , a date contrived to fall just before the grass would be cut.
Though the sisters set out on that day with ample funds, the collector adroitly shifted the meeting place, and when the two women caught up with the auction, the gavel had just gone down transferring for $78.35 land worth nearly $2,000 to none other than a covetous neighbor who had tried for years to get possession of it.
Abby and Julia were daughters of a lawyer.
They brought suit against tax collector George C. Andrews on the grounds that he had violated a law which plainly stated that movable property must first be sold for unpaid taxes before real estate could be seized.
The case was tried in the home of Judge Hollister of Glastonbury, who gave a verdict in favor of the sisters and fined Andrews damages of $10. Threatening terrible consequences, Andrews appealed the case.
The new trial, which lasted three days in the Hartford Court of Common Pleas, had a farcical aspect.
There were misplaced records; there was distorted evidence.
The judge, in absentia, reversed the Glastonbury decision and decided in favor of collector Andrews.
At this point the Smiths’ lawyer backed out.
Abby and Julia, both now in their eighties, began the study of law with the intention of conducting their own case.
Happily a capable lawyer finally agreed to place a second appeal before the Court of Equity.
For two years a wide and sympathetic public followed this devious litigation.
Across the nation, even in England and France, editors and columnists lauded the Glastonbury cows in prose and poetry.
Reporters visited the town, drank tea in the elm-shaded farmhouse, admired the cows, polled public opinion in Glastonbury, and returned with highly flavored and often inaccurate stories.
With whatever condescension these reporters arrived, they seem, one and all, to have found the Smith sisters irresistible.
The hospitality, wit, and charm of the two elderly spinsters captivated the world beyond Glastonbury.
When the final verdict was made in their favor, in , women the country over rejoiced.
To be sure, Julia and Abby did not vote in Glastonbury, but from that time on their property was undisturbed.
The Greek “Won’t Pay” movement
The current Greek “Won’t Pay” movement, which is resisting a number of stealth taxes the government has added to things like utility bills and road tolls, has also carried its struggle into court — at one point winning an injunction that forbade the state power company from cutting the power of people who were refusing to pay the new utility bill tax.
Newly-enfranchised Pennsylvania women
When women in Pennsylvania won the vote, many discovered to their chagrin that they had also become subject to taxes to which they had previously been immune.
Thousands of them, deciding the package was not worth it, decided to refuse to pay.
And they were able to take advantage of a quirk in an law that did not permit the authorities to send women to prison (though they could imprison men) for tax refusal:
Nothing herein contained shall authorize the arrest or imprisonment for non-payment of any tax of any female or infant or person found by inquisition to be of unsound mind.
It took a few years for the state legislature to pass a law allowing for the jailing of women who refused to pay their taxes.
Maurice McCrackin’s lawyers
Not all legal help is helpful.
When American war tax resister Maurice McCrackin was convicted of refusing to cooperate with an IRS summons, he was following a strategy of complete noncooperation that he kept following right into the courtroom — where he refused to stand for the judge, refused to plead to the charges, refused to answer questions, refused to consult with his court-appointed attorney, fasted while behind bars, and had to be wheeled into and out from his court appearances because he wouldn’t walk there under his own power.
For the same reason, upon his conviction, he emphatically said that he was not interested in pursuing an appeal: “I said I wanted to file no appeal, nor did I want steps taken to keep the door open, so an appeal could be perfected later.
I do not recognize any appeal on my behalf… My position is not changed.
This is a moral, not a legal, struggle.”
One of the lawyers who had been assigned to defend him, however, convinced that the judge had betrayed bias against McCracken in his statements from the bench, said that he intended to appeal anyway.
“Constitutionalist” tax protesters
And then there are the “Constitutionalist” “show me the law!”-style tax protesters.
For years they have been bedeviling the IRS with their baroque, ever-evolving, quasi-legal arguments and pleadings based on the real Constitution, or common law, or tortured interpretations of excerpts from a variety of cherry-picked statutes and court rulings.
While they typically know just enough about the law to get into trouble, without knowing enough to get out again, there’s no question that they cause headaches a-plenty for the powers that be.
Alas, this does not seem to actually be their objective.
Instead, they seem convinced that they’re not just whistling Dixie, but they’re right, and if they can just figure out how to pick the lock of the court system with the right argument, they’ll be able to walk out free into a new world where their Constitution holds sway and the perverters of the true law are vanquished.
Alas, most of what they have discovered is an enormous and inventive catalog of things that don’t work, so in spite of all of their creativity and effort, they have given the rest of us little to work with.
But if you ever have a “that’s so crazy it just might work!” idea about going up against the IRS, you might want to research these folks first — they may have already tried it.
And every once in a while they rack up a courtroom victory — not often one that amounts to much in real terms, but it fuels the movement.
One observer of the movement reacted to a twist of this sort by saying: “This is going to encourage thousands more people who were on the fence, who were paying taxes only because they were afraid they would be criminally prosecuted.
If too many people do this, the tax system will collapse because it is based on people voluntarily complying.”
(I’m most familiar with the U.S. variety, but similar groups exist in Canada, the U.K., and probably elsewhere.
Earlier this year in England, for instance, hundreds of Constitutionalist tax protesters stormed a courtroom where one of their number was on trial, whereupon they attempted to put the judge under citizens arrest, and began making their own rulings from the bench!)
Individuals can demonstrate their support for tax resisters in various ways.
Sometimes just dropping them a line can be a good pat-on-the-back. Here are
some examples of ways in which people and groups have given their thumbs-ups
to tax resisters:
When the
IRS
seized Amish farmer Valentine Byler’s horses to cover his unpaid social
security taxes, Byler received dozens of letters of support from around
the country, with sentiments like:
“I congratulate you on having the intestinal fortitude to stand up for
your beliefs.”
“Your courageous stand for your religious principles is to be
commended.”
“I am sincerely sorry this has happened.”
When the “Texas housewives” banded together to refuse to withhold social
security taxes from the wages of their domestic help, Vivien Kellems
(another American conservative tax resister) sent a telegram of
support.
When Utah governor J. Bracken Lee started resisting his federal income tax
to protest what he felt to be unconstitutional federal spending, he got
hundreds of letters and postcards of support from across the country
(including, again, one from Vivien Kellems). Among the messages:
“Good for you — both for having the courage to stand up to this
tax-despotic government of ours and its paid press, and for being
right.”
“When a man of your stature comes out as you have on such a vital issue
it rekindles the hopes of the American people that all is not lost and
that there is still a chance.”
The [U.S.]
National Woman Suffrage Association put forth resolutions at their
conventions of in
praise of resisters Julia & Abby Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, and Sarah
E. Wall.
When the government tried and failed to auction off goods seized from a
tax resisting doctor in the Dutch West Indies in
, “[a] cheering crowd carried the
physician about shoulder high.”
When the Wyoming Conference of the Methodist Church dismissed a minister
for being a war tax resister, another minister, James Gail Garst, resigned
from the Conference in protest.
At NWTRCC gatherings, one regular activity is for the
attendees to sign cards of support to send to resisters who have suffered
property seizures, liens, levies and other such government reprisals for
their resistance.
Some tax resistance campaigns have accompanied their resistance with petitions to the government asking it to change its policies or to rescind the tax.
Here are some examples:
Some 14,000 American Amish petitioned Congress, putting aside that sect’s usual reluctance to participate in political affairs and asking the government to exempt them from the Social Security program, participation in which they felt was anti-Christian.
At the same time, some Amish were actively resisting the tax and suffering from government reprisals.
Congress eventually did carve out an exemption for the Amish and certain other sects.
American Quaker meetings frequently petitioned state legislatures when those bodies were considering laws that would force conscientious objectors to pay a fine or to hire a substitute — neither of which Quakers felt they could conscientiously do.
Here are two examples: from and .
On one occasion, American Quakers successfully petitioned the government to call off unscrupulous tax collectors who were seizing their property to pay such fines, in amounts that far exceeded the amount of the fine, and keeping the surplus (or sometimes the whole amount) for themselves.
In several Quakers wrote to the Pennsylvania Assembly to tell them they would be unwilling to pay a tax that body was contemplating for “purposes inconsistent with the peaceable testimony we profess.”
African-American entrepreneur Paul Cuffee petitioned the Massachusetts legislature in and to complain that he was not permitted to vote, although he was a taxpayer — and he backed this up by refusing to pay.
His petition arrived at a time when the state Constitution was in flux, and may have helped influence its drafters to omit a clause restricting voting to white citizens.
The Benares Hartal in , began with “the people deserting the city in a body, and taking up their station halfway between Benares and Secrole, the residence of the European functionaries, about three miles distant.
A petition was presented to the magistrate, praying him to withdraw the odious impost, and declaring that the petitioners would never return to their homes until their application was complied with.”
Before launching the Bardoli tax strike, representatives from the Indian civil disobedience movement petitioned the government, asking patiently for the concessions they would later demand via satyagraha.
The Rebecca Rioters, with their pseudonymous campaign of midnight toll-gate destruction, had the government nearly begging them to present a list of grievances they could at least pretend to address.
Many groups of Welsh farmers did meet and draft lists of grievances.
A London Times reporter gained the confidence of one Rebeccaite assembly, and set out their grievances in the form of a Times article describing the meeting.
Another group of farmers met to draft a petition of their grievances which they sent to a government representative via a trusted intermediary.
On at least one occasion a group of parishes had petitioned the Turnpike Trust that ran one of the offending toll gates to remove it, before it was destroyed by Rebecca and her daughters.
During the 17th century Croquant tax rebellions in France, the rebels carefully worded petitions to the king that assumed his benevolence and that the tax hikes must have been snuck past his royal highness by deceitful advisors.
In , nonconformists in Massachusetts successfully petitioned the King to free imprisoned resisters to a tax meant for the establishment church there, and to affirm that Quakers should not have to pay taxes to maintain the ministers of another church.
Abby Smith addressed the Glastonbury town council in to explain why she would not be paying her property tax to politicians who took advantage of her voteless state.
A newspaper obtained and publisher her speech, saying that “Abby Smith and her sister as truly stand for the American principle as did the citizens who ripped open the tea chests in Boston Harbor, or the farmers who leveled their muskets at Concord.”
Soon the Smith case became a cause célèbre nationwide.
During the Annuity Tax struggle in Edinburgh, Scotland, “40,000 citizens of Edinburgh petitioned the House of Commons for [the Tax’s] abolition.
The town council, the magistrates of Canongate, the Merchant Company, the Anti-state-church and the Anti-annuity-tax Associations, all exerted themselves with the legislature and the government to procure its repeal…”
The hut tax war in Sierra Leone was preceded by petitions from a variety of groups there asking the government to rescind the tax, and explaining why the tax was felt to be particularly offensive.
In this case, the petitioning may have backfired, as the government stubbornly pushed forward with the tax, but, forewarned of opposition by the petitions, it “came to the conclusion that the exercise of force, peremptory, rapid, and inflexible, was the element to be relied on in making the scheme of taxation a success.”
A tax resistance campaign can benefit its recruiting efforts, engage public sympathy, and constrain the response of the government, by getting a good spin out in the media.
Here are some examples:
The Bardoli tax strike was media savvy, both in terms of national establishment media, and in terms of local, down-to-earth outreach methods:
“A campaign like this could not be carried out without a publicity department,” wrote Mahadev Desai.
“The peasants could not be asked to subscribe to daily papers or even to the weekly Navajivan, and outside papers could at best give an outside view of the campaign.
… The arrangement was to issue a daily news bulletin and publish Sjt. Vallabhbhai’s speeches in pamphlet form and to distribute them free to the agriculturalists all over the taluka.
… The arrangement answered most admirably, the villagers waiting anxiously for the patrikas every morning and devouring the contents with avidity.
All the Gujarati and almost all the English dailies of Bombay reproduced them verbatim, and as the movement gathered force, every important town and village in Gujarat began to get copies of the bulletin with the result that over and above ten thousand copies distributed in Bardoli, four thousand copies were subscribed to by places outside.”
In the course of describing the organizational structure of the nonviolent resistance army, Mahadev Desai noted: “[U]nder these officers were privates ready to march anywhere and everywhere, at any hour of the night and day, and ready to do the lowliest of duties, from carrying a message to drawing water from the well.
… The round of duties of most of them began often as early as 3 A.M., when they started with their orders for the day to the various villages where they would distribute the daily news bulletins issued by the Publicity Bureau.
… All were to go amongst the peasants, acquaint themselves with their needs and difficulties, cheer them up, and explain to them the instructions of the Chief.”
Mahadev Desai continues: “And at the head of them all the Sardar, ever on the move, without haste and without rest, ever vigilant, his iron discipline ever unrelaxed, paying the penalty of his exclusive prerogative — speech-making — often at midnight, and often at three or four places in a day.”
… “The Bardoli victory was not won by a miracle.
It was the inevitable fruit of patient and incessant toil, the inevitable result of the teaching that the Sardar wore himself out to impart day in and day out.
During the first two months he gave three days in the week to Bardoli, but as soon as the Ahmedabad Municipality released him, all his waking hours were given to the people of Bardoli, the day usually beginning at 5 P.M. and ending at 2 A.M., with four or five speeches a day on average.”
The case of Valentine Byler, an Amish man who refused to participate in the American Social Security system for conscientious reasons, was notable for how it played out in the media.
Part of this was due to the clumsy heavy-handedness of the IRS, which seized Byler’s horses out from under him literally as he was working his field.
Asked about this, the IRS Chief of Collections said: “Plowing never occurred to me.
I live in an apartment.”
The frame of thoughtless-urban-bureaucrats vs. godly-heartland-people attached itself to the story, and editorialists across the country who were already skeptical of welfare state policies jumped on it.
“What kind of ‘welfare’ is it,” wrote the New York Herald Tribune, “that takes a farmer’s horses away at spring plowing time in order to dragoon a whole community into a ‘benefit’ scheme it neither needs nor wants, and which offends its deeply held religious scruples?”
Byler got letters of support from around the country.
And Congress eventually felt enough of the pressure that it carved out an exception for the Amish exempting them from the Social Security law.
Abby and Julia Smith, who were taxed excessively by an unscrupulous local government for which they, as women, had no voice in electing, knew how to make their struggle attractive to the news media.
Julia prepared a speech for the town council, which fell on deaf ears — but she then released it to the editor of a nearby newspaper, which reprinted it and compared the sisters’ actions to those American Revolutionaries who fought for the principle of “no taxation without representation.”
An accompanying editorial concluded: “It will not be creditable if Abby Smith and her sister are left to stand alone… to fight the battle of principle unaided.”
Sure enough, they found support — rhetorical and practical — from many quarters.
“[M]uch of the nation’s interest in the Glastonbury case was the work of Abby,” wrote Elizabeth George Speare in recapping the case, “who willingly took pen in hand to keep her public informed.
Though she once reminded a Toledo editor that she could not give quite so much time to answering such distant requests, she seems to have welcomed every opportunity to recount, in her pungent style, a tale which lost nothing in constant retelling.”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League in Britain made sure to have speeches and propaganda ready to deliver at any events — such as tax auctions — that the media might cover.
Such speeches might form the core of an overtaxed reporter’s coverage of such an event.
When Dora Montefiore barricaded her home against the tax collector in , she recalled:
In a bailiff had been put in my house, a levy of my goods had been made, and they had been sold at public auction in Hammersmith.
The result as far as publicity was concerned was half a dozen lines in the corner of some daily newspapers, stating the fact that Mrs. Montefiore’s goods had been distrained and sold for payment of income tax; and there the matter ended.
When talking this over in with Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, I told them that now we had the organisation of the W.S.P.U. to back me up I would, if it were thought advisable, not only refuse to pay income tax, but would shut and bar my doors and keep out the bailiff, so as to give the demonstration more publicity and thus help to educate public opinion about the fight for the political emancipation of women which was going on.
They agreed that if I would do my share of passive resistance they would hold daily demonstrations outside the house as long as the bailiff was excluded and do all in their power outside to make the sacrifice I was making of value to the cause.…
…From the day of this simple act of closing my door against the bailiff, an extraordinary change came over the publicity department of daily and weekly journalism towards this demonstration of passive resistance on my part…
On the morning following the inauguration of the siege, Annie Kenney and Theresa Billington, with other members of the W.S.P.U., came round to see how we were getting on and to encourage our resistance.
They were still chatting from the pavement outside, while I stood on the steps of No. 32 Upper Mall, when there crept round from all sides men with notebooks and men with cameras, and the publicity stunt began.
These men had been watching furtively the coming and going of postmen and tradesmen.
Now they posted themselves in front, questioning the suffragists outside and asking for news of us inside.
They had come to make a “story” and they did not intend to leave until they had got their “story.”
One of them returned soon with a loaf of bread and asked Annie Kenney to hand it up over the wall to my housekeeper, whilst the army of men with cameras “snapped” the incident.
Some of them wanted to climb over the wall so as to be able to boast in their descriptions that they had been inside what they pleased to call “The Fort”; but the policeman outside (there was a policeman on duty outside during all the six weeks of a siege) warned them that they must not do this so we were relieved, in this respect, from the too close attention of eager pressmen.
But all through the morning notebooks and cameras came and went, and at one time my housekeeper and I counted no less than twenty-two pressmen outside the house.
A woman sympathiser in the neighbourhood brought during the course of the morning, a pot of home-made marmalade, as the story had got abroad that we had no provisions and had difficulty in obtaining food.
This was never the case as I am a good housekeeper and have always kept a store cupboard, but we accepted with thanks the pot of marmalade because the intentions of the giver were so excellent; but this incident was also watched and reported by the Press.
When I read stories from newspaper archives about the tax strike in Beit Sahour during the first intifada, I’m struck with how much more sympathetic the English-language press was toward the Palestinian people at that time.
They are depicted as human beings, with families and aspirations, and their grievances are taken seriously and explored and analyzed and given credence.
The contrast with the coverage in today’s media is stark.
Beit Sahour was a high water mark of sorts.
This can partially be explained by the fact that most of the resisters were Palestinian Christians, and so did not trigger the anti-Muslim bias that shapes much of the English-language reporting from the area — one news account made much of the fact that the Israeli military had seized “Christian crosses carved of olivewood and the statuettes of the Good Shepherd and the Madonna” from one resister.
But the resisters were also very deliberately media savvy: they stuck to nonviolent tactics, which, besides being tactically sensible under the circumstances, also made the draconian Israeli crackdown seem particularly bullying; and they used slogans, like “no taxation without representation” that could not help but fall on sympathetic ears in the English-speaking world.
Another article noted that when the Israeli military lifted its siege of Beit Sahour, “hundreds of residents gathered at a central intersection to celebrate and to escort journalists to homes and shops from which troops had seized goods.”
During the campaign against Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax, the very name “poll tax” was a propaganda coup.
Thatcher had launched the tax under the benign name “community charge,” but the opposition movement used “poll tax” right off the bat, and the name stuck.
That name had resonance with anti-poll tax campaigns of the past, dating back as far as the rebellion of Wat Tyler.
The movement also pitted the government against pensioners, the disabled, student nurses, families with live-in elderly relatives, and other such victims that made for a sympathetic media narrative.
“Stories like this flooded both the national and local media,” writes movement historian Danny Burns.
“One minute the focus was on the nurses, next on the disabled, then on the pensioners.”
The IRS includes a publicity strategy with their enforcement actions, and grades itself with how much publicity it gets when it cracks down on a tax evader, thus “sending the message to taxpayers that violations of the Internal Revenue Code and related financial crimes are being investigated and prosecuted.”
Since the IRS is already doing the work to make sure the press is aware of the action, and of course giving out their own spin, it makes sense for tax resisters to be prepared with their own message.
“Never let a lien, levy, seizure, auction, summons, Order to Show Cause, or indictment pass without taking the opportunity to publicize opposition,” advise the authors of the book War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military.
“The IRS is very sensitive to adverse public opinion.
It is probably the most disliked agency of the government.
You may be surprised at the amount of support and sympathy you will get from the general public and media when struggling against the IRS — if you take care to organize properly.”
NWTRCC has some ideas on how to make a bigger media splash, including propaganda leaflets, props & costumes, theatrical protest ideas, penny polls, tax form burnings, bake sales, banners, vigils, and so forth.
a women’s suffrage meeting was held, shortly after Susan B. Anthony was convicted by an all-male jury of the crime of voting while female.
Lillie Devereaux Blake addressed the assembly about the case, and added:
, American women’s suffrage activists were talking about the tax resistance of Abby Kelley, Sarah Wall, and Marietta Flag, as well as the earlier action of the Smith sisters.
Here are some examples:
Worcester,
Mass.,
. — Stephen and Abbie
Kelley Foster, with Miss Sarah Wall and Miss Marietta Flag, refused to pay
taxes because ladies cannot vote. Their property is advertised for sale
. A covention to protest against
the law is in session here . The
Smith sisters, of Glastonbury, were present this morning, and made addresses.
Mrs. Eliza K. Churchill occupied the chair temporarily this morning, and
Major William Harlow, of Worcester, acted as Secretary.
Rev. C.A. Chase, of
Providence; Major Harlow, Stephen Foster, Miss Julia Smith, of Glastonbury,
and others spoke in favor of woman suffrage. Both the Smith sisters were
present. The attendance promises to be large this afternoon and evening.
, the
New York Daily Graphic published
a “telegraphic flash” to bring us up-to-date:
The estates of S[tephen] S[ymonds] and Abby Kelly Foster, Sarah Wall, and
Marietta Flagg, who refuse to pay taxes until women can vote, were offered
for sale by the Tax Collector of Warcester [sic],
Mass.,
to pay the taxes of
. The last named was bought in by a friend,
but no one bid for either of the other estates. The sale has been adjourned
until .
How swiftly doth one woe follow upon the heels of another! Scarcely has the
woman’s temperance movement got well under way before a female anti-taxation
movement comes treading upon its heels. Abbie Kelly Foster, Sarah Wall, and
Marietta Flagg, of Worcester, have refused to pay their taxes because women
are not allowed to vote. Their property has been sold.
Miss Marietta Flag — we suppose she is a miss — is awfully mad over the sale
of her property in payment of taxes which she refused to meet. She calls the
Sheriff “an insignificant duplication of Benedict Arnold.” This is hard on
Arnold, who was a notorious friend of women. Miss Flag, so to speak, nails
herself to the mast on this tax business, and floats defiantly in the faces of
“those horrid men.” She declares herself “one of the minute-women of the new
Revolution.” We stand in sympathetic union with Miss Flag, and assure her many
a successful battle has opened less hopefully.
The Smith sisters, who refused to pay their taxes in Connecticut, and had
their cows seized and sold, have received a donation of $500 from their
female sympathizers.
I had not heard of Marietta Flagg before, and wondered why. Her story ends
sadly :
Mrs Marietta Flagg, who has been prominent in Worcester,
Mass., as a remonstrant
against the taxation of woman’s property without conceding the right of
suffrage, died recently in the State Lunatic Asylum.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There were a few scattered mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in .
A obituary notice for Kenneth Hilbert Champney in the issue noted:
He volunteered printing services for the Peacemakers, a group dedicated to nonviolence, to start a newsletter.
Ken believed in resisting the income tax in order to oppose military spending.
He withheld what he judged to be the military portion of the taxes on his employees, continuing this practice even under threat from the IRS.
He kept his own income low enough and his charitable contributions high enough to stay under the taxable limit year after year.
In later life, Ken devised an investment system that enabled him to avoid paying income taxes.
Kyle Chandler-Isacksen promoted war tax resistance in an article in the that asked the reader to imagine the taxpaying process as if it were more of a personal encounter with the government, or with its embodiment, “General Sam.”
The about-the-author note below the article read:
Kyle Chandler-Isacksen and his family have been war tax resistors for the past five years by living below the poverty line.
They are the founders of Be The Change Project, an urban homestead devoted to family learning and service in a low-income neighborhood in Reno, Nevada.
David and Jan Hartsough had a letter-to-the-editor in the issue (which I’ve already covered, in the Picket Line).
That issue also had brief review of a children’s book based on the tax resistance of American women’s suffrage activists Abby & Julia Smith.
Merry Stanford, in an article on the conscientious use of money, alluded to her war tax resistance:
By the time I was a young mother and attending Quaker meeting, my life had taken several surprising turns, and my resources were very scarce.
Living on a poverty income in order to resist paying war taxes, I didn’t consider myself someone who had much to share with others.
That issue also contained a review of the NWTRCC-produced documentary Death & Taxes.
Excerpts:
The film puts a human face on the subject, telling and showing the stories of those whose ultimate protest against war is their refusal to pay for it.
The resisters are sincere, some even joyful, and their clarity of conscience is inspiring.
They are folks with whom one would want to have more conversation, and the film will have its greatest use as a discussion starter for classes and study groups.
We live in an era when many taxpayers are objecting to the way their tax dollars are spent.
Some taxpayers object to paying for publicly funded health care, public universities, public employee pensions, prisons, research, foreign aid, or for social security.
How to sort out which public sector activities are moral and which are immoral is not a question the film does much to answer, however, I have no doubt that the people interviewed have given this subject thoughtful attention, but one needs to go beyond the film to probe more deeply.
Refusal to pay taxes is a rather blunt instrument, except in the few cases where a tax or surtax has been specifically put in place to pay for a military undertaking.
The film barely addresses this social complexity.
The New York Times published an interesting piece on “Raising a Moral Child” that spotlights some of the current thinking on how children learn to become ethically engaged.
The summary is that it is important to praise and guide children with an eye to making them value their own characters and to understand how their behaviors form their characters.
Another data point that suggests the practical value of an Aristotle-style “virtue ethics” approach.
Those of us committed to fomenting tax resistance would be wise to keep our eyes on the research of those committed to encouraging tax compliance, as their conclusions often have mirror-images that will be useful to us.
The latest in this series is a paper by Richard Lavoie entitled Vox Clamantis in Deserto: The Role of the Individual in Forging a Strong Duty to the Tax System.
Excerpt:
Societies exhibiting high tax morale typically maintain stable levels of
high tax compliance over time (establishing a societal “taxpaying
ethos”) as these underlying foundational attitudes become enshrined as
self-maintaining social norms. However, if the underlying social norms
begin to erode over time, a society historically exhibiting a strong
taxpaying ethos can quickly flip into a non-compliant one once a tipping
point is reached.
With the exception of some aberrational sub-groups, the United States
typifies a society with a strong taxpaying ethos. However, in recent
decades the social norms forming the foundation of this ethos appear to
have weakened. Scandals at the Service have weakened its public image.
The rise of the tea party movement has questioned the efficacy and role
of government, as well as promoting the highly questionable proposition
that Americans are currently “overtaxed.” Politicians, who should defend
the government that they were elected to run, often act to undermine its
legitimacy and advocate for steep spending cuts in addition to tax
reductions.
These forces, among others, threaten the very foundations of our tax
system by undermining our historical societal faith in the fairness of
our tax system and the obligation to fund necessary government services.
The Tax Foundation has drawn up a map that purports to show how cigarette smuggling in the United States is correlated to the tobacco tax rates in those states.
So, for instance: “New York is the highest net importer of smuggled cigarettes, totaling 56.9 percent of the total cigarette market in the state.
New York also has the highest state cigarette tax ($4.35 per pack), not counting the local New York City cigarette tax (an additional $1.50 per pack).
Smuggling in New York has risen sharply since 2006 (+59 percent), as has the tax rate (+190 percent).”
The phone security consultants “pindrop” have done some back-of-the-envelope calculations on the massive ongoing criminal operation in which American immigrants are shaken down over the phone by people masquerading as IRS agents. They estimate that 450,000 people were targeted by this scam in alone.
Pindrop also posted their analysis of how the scam works, and even some excerpts from a recording of one of the calls.
Some links that have clanked past my browser in recent days:
Catherine McKenna has been documenting the filthy state of the streets in her neighborhood and now says she will refuse to pay council tax until the Croydon Council gets its act together and starts providing decent services in return.
