Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
women’s suffrage movements →
American women’s suffrage movement →
Lucy Stone
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.
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw Puts
Her Little Yellow Car Up Against Boston Tea Party.
Let ’em Sell It for Taxes
She Has No Representation in Government, and She’ll Just Defy Their
Extortion.
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and her little yellow suffrage car Eastern Victory, she hopes, will go down into history with the Boston Tea Party as examples of unjust taxation.
Dr. Shaw issued a statement in Pittsfield, Mass., saying that she had never refused to pay any but an exorbitant tax unjustly levied on her, and that if her little yellow automobile, presented to her in New York two weeks ago, is sold for taxes it will be an altogether unfair discrimination against the 70-year-old President of the National Suffrage Association.
The trouble began in the Fall of , says the statement, when the Tax Assessor of Upper Providence Township, Delaware County, Penn., left at the house of Dr. Shaw at Moylan a large legal paper requesting her to make out a detailed statement of all her “personal property, mortgages, stocks, and bonds with minute details.”
Dr. Shaw replied that while she was illegally denied the right of participating in the Government of the State to ask her to make out a list upon which taxes were to be levied would be “heaping injury upon tyranny.”
“In the spirit of ,” as her statement reads, she “declined to be a party to an act which violated the national Constitution.”
So she returned the document unadorned.
Dr. Shaw did not violate any law in this act, her statement goes on to explain, for on the document itself was the statement that if for any reason the list was not made out by the person to be taxed the assessor should “learn the amount of the property and make out a reasonably fair statement.”
Did the baffled assessor do this!
Not a bit of it.
He boasted before witnesses who can be brought by Dr. Shaw, she says, that he would make the assessment so large that the suffrage leader would be compelled to make out the statement.
He assessed her for $30,000. Then comes the thing that Dr. Shaw and her friends think is just plain “cattishness.”
Waiting until the proper time to swear off an overassessment Dr. Shaw found herself out of the State on a lecture tour, but sent a representative with full power of attorney to act for her.
The Tax Commissioner refused to do anything about a reduction unless Dr. Shaw made out the declaration and then, to quote her:
“Unable to conceal the real animus of the situation the assessor sent out an absolutely false and misleading statement, declaring that as soon as Dr. Shaw had received the notice of assessment she had immediately rushed to the Commissioner and demanded that it be reduced, and she did nothing of the kind.”
That was not the end of the trouble between the suffragist and the Tax Collector.
Dr. Shaw did not pay the exaggerated tax on property she did not own, but she did change her legal address and sent in first one personal notice, then a second acknowledged by her lawyer, and a third in a registered letter to make sure of its reaching its destination, but no notice was taken of them.
The taking of the little yellow car in the absence of every one but a little maid from the house in Moylan is a part of the assessor’s attempt to make her pay the unjust tax, says Mr. Shaw, the car being a gift.
At the end of her statement, as a valedictory to the little yellow car which was presented to her on , and in which she had taken her first two weeks’ vacation in three years to learn how to run it, Dr. Shaw says:
“These men, living on the soil made sacred by the blood of heroes and heroines who fought some of the fiercest battles against the tyranny of taxation without representation, had caught so little of this heroic spirit themselves that they thought it was dead in others.
“In making the levy upon the car the officer stated to Miss [Lucy] Anthony’s maid that unless the tax was paid within five days the sale would be advertised.
“The sale will probably take place, and the little yellow motor named Eastern Victory will become famous when the history of the tyrannical and inconsistent attitude of this so-called republic shall be written.”
An article in the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger claimed that “some of the suffragists, it is said, will not support Doctor Shaw in the stand she has taken.
A young woman at the party headquarters in Media today said that she and other members could see no reason for the doctor’s attitude.”
The “Eastern Victory” did become a bit of a famous symbol, and was a hit at “Lucy Stone Day” :
Lucy Stone Day Observed By 1,000
Suffragists Erect Tablet to the Memory of Pioneer Fighter for Votes for Women.
Gather In East Orange
In 150 Automobiles, Visit House Sold in 1858 Because She Would Pay No Taxes.
Lucy Stone Day was observed by more than a thousand suffragists at East Orange, N.J., where a bronze tablet was unveiled on the little house in which Lucy Stone lived and which was sold, with its furniture, fifty-seven years ago for the taxes she refused to pay, because taxation without representation was tyranny.
Lucy Stone was born in , and was the first woman in Massachusetts to take a college degree.
She was graduated from Oberlin College in .
She headed the call for the first National Woman’s Rights Convention, held at Worcester, Mass., in .
About five years later she married Henry B. Blackwell and made a home in Orange.
It was here in that her household goods were sold to pay taxes, and when the sale was over, with Alice Stone Blackwell, one year old, on her lap, she wrote her burning protest.
Mr. Mandeville, Tax Collector, Sir:— Enclosed I return by 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.
Back to the Times article about Lucy Stone Day:
The units of the parade came from widely different sections.
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw made her début in the new yellow suffrage car, presented to her at at 505 Fifth Avenue by the National Woman Suffrage Association.
There were no ceremonies, but a crowd had gathered about the gaily decorated car and was so insistent that Dr. Shaw finally made a brief speech.
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt came down from the Empire State Campaign Committee rooms to inspect the new car and to congratulate Dr. Shaw, and then the car started for Orange.
Miss Edna V. O’Brien of Tarrytown was the chauffeur.
She, together with Miss Amie Hutchinson, were the chief instruments in raising the funds for this new car, named the Eastern Victory Ⅱ., and also for the original little Eastern Victory that was sold in Pennsylvania for the non-payment of taxes and bought in by suffragists and again presented to Dr. Shaw.
The new car seats five and bears the owner’s monogram.
Alice Stone Blackwell unveiled the tablet to her mother’s memory, but said her voice was not fitted for outdoor speaking and that she could best prove herself intelligent enough to vote by refraining from a speech.
The tablet bore the following inscription:
In , Lucy Stone, a noble pioneer in the emancipation of women, here first protested against their taxation without representation in New Jersey.
It was erected by the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association.
Dr. Shaw told how her grandmother, an Englishwoman, refused to pay tithes to the English church near her because she was not a member of it, and how year after year small pieces of her property were sold to pay the tithes.
Turning to Miss Blackwell, she said:
“It was on this very stoop that your mother rocked you in the cradle that was sold for taxes.”
There’s an example of how consciousness of the history and tradition of tax resistance was important for practicing resisters, and here’s another: In , Shaw set out her tax resistance theory, which was inspired in part by the tradition of Quaker war tax resistance:
Women’s Tax Fight Will Be Passive
Dr. Shaw Says Suffragists
Won’t Be “Militant” in Resisting Government Collectors.
Will Follow Quaker Plan
They Won’t Turn Pockets Inside Out While Government Picks Them, Suffrage
Leader Asserts.
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, President of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association, denied that “militancy” was involved in her appeal to suffragists to refuse to pay taxes until they obtain the right to vote.
Dr. Shaw asserted that she advocated only a passive resistance to the Government’s agents.
“I hold it is unfair to the women of this country to have taxation without representation,” she said, “and I have urged them to adopt a course of passive resistance like the Quakers instead of aggressive resistance.
I say to the Government, ‘you may pick my pocket because you are stronger than I, but I’m not going to turn my pockets wrongside out for you.
You will have to turn them out yourself.’
Since my letter was sent all over the country, I have received letters of encouragement and support from all directions.
I believe that the spirit of no taxation without representation that resulted in the Revolutionary War is inherent and just as actual in the women of the country as it was then in the men of the country.”
It was suggested to Dr. Shaw that she might have to pay a fine of from $20 to $1,000 if she refused to make returns to her tax assessor or failed to pay her assessments.
“Well, I will not pay the fine,” said Dr. Shaw.
“But suppose you should be held in contempt, what then?”
“I should go to jail, of course,” replied Dr. Shaw.
“And if you were put in prison for contempt for refusing to pay your tax assessments, would you start a hunger strike?”
Dr. Shaw was asked.
“Most assuredly, no,” she said.
“I should not thus destroy my health.
I’m of more worth to the suffrage cause while I’m in good health than I would be if I was starved.
Probably they will levy on some of my property and sell that.
I don’t know what will happen.
A thousand dollars is a very heavy fine.
I do hope they won’t impose that much.
But if they do, I’ll just go to jail and serve my time.”
Here is Dr. Shaw’s letter to the suffragists:
The enactment of an income tax law has caused assessors to be more insistent in their demand that an accurate statement of all personal as well as real property shall be listed and returned within a specified time, in order that no property may escape the Government tax collectors.
Here women may make their passive protest and decline to aid the Government in levying upon them by refusing to render an account of their property.
In this manner we can show our loyalty to those who struggled to make this a free republic and who laid down their lives in defense of the equal rights of all free citizens to a voice in their own Government.
This is a time when we may utter again into the ears of an apostate republic the words of James Otis, that great champion of the liberties of the colonists, when he wrote:
The very act of taxing over those who are not represented appears to me to be depriving them of their most essential rights as free men, and if continued seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right.
For what one civil right is worth a rush after a man’s property is subject to be taken from him at pleasure without his consent?
If a man is not his own assessor, in person or by deputy, his liberty is gone or he is entirely at the mercy of others.
Let our protest be universal, and let every believer in justice unite in this mode of passive resistance and steadfastly refuse to assist the Government in its unjust and tyrannical violation of its fundamental principle that “taxation and representation are one and inseparable,” and thus prove ourselves worthy descendants of noble ancestors, who counted no price too dear to pay in defense of liberty and equality and justice.
Dr. Shaw explained that she had determined to start a movement for passive resistance of taxation directly as the result of the activities of her own tax assessor in the Upper Providence Township, Delaware County, Penn., which embraces the town of Moylan, where she lives.
Three weeks ago or thereabout her assessor sent her the usual pink assessment slips, and she disregarded them.
The Saturday before Christmas the assessor called and saw her secretary in the absence of Dr. Shaw.
Through her secretary Dr. Shaw was notified that she would have ten days within which to fill out and return the assessment slips.
She then returned the slips, refusing to give the information requested.
Suffragists Plan to Oppose Taxation Without Representation of Their Sex
Washington, . —
Resistance on the part of women of the country to the federal income tax law, despite the government’s announced attention to impose fines of $1,000 for each failure to report incomes will receive the encouragement of the Suffragists’ Congressional union, it is announced in a statement issued by the organization headquarters here.
Resistance to the law, it is declared, would be thoroughly justified from a moral standpoint.
The statement coming as it does upon the heels of the suggestion of the Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Woman’s Suffrage association, that the “unfranchised” women of the country decline to aid the government in collecting taxes upon their incomes, caused a mild sensation in congressional, treasury and suffragist circles.
The statement issued by the Congressional union declares that it does not plan to organize a widespread resistance to the income tax law, but adds: “If any society or individual, however, should refuse to pay income tax or to give information as to amount of income, the Congressional Union would have every sympathy with such action.”
Imposition of an income tax on women, the statement says, has made them realize afresh their helplessness under the government.
To tax the women without granting them representation, the statement asserts, would be an act of “intolerable injustice.”
“Resistance to the income tax law,” the statement further says, “would have excellent educational value, and would be thoroughly justified morally.”
It is stated in conclusion, however, that the union will not undertake to organize a protest against the law.
Mrs. Ellen Spencer Mussey, honorary dean of the Washington College of law, in a statement takes issue with suffragists who would accept Dr. Shaw’s advice of “passive resistance.”
“Women should remember that they receive the protection of the government,” said Mrs. Mussey, “and it is only right that they should contribute to the support of a system of law and order in which they share the benefit.
In addition to this reason, the income tax was enacted by the aid of legislators from equal suffrage states, and therefore suffragists should not hinder its operation.”
She urged upon woman, the duty of resisting taxation, so long as she is not represented.
It may involve the loss of friends, as it surely will that of property.
But let them all go: friends, house, garden-spot, 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 would grow out of it, will do more to set this question right, than all the Conventions in the world.
There are fifteen millions of taxable property, owned by women of Boston, who have no voice, either in the use or imposition of the tax.
So that, however they may revolt, and abhor the atrocious deed, they are compelled to aid in returning Thomas Sims to slavery, who in his life’s young prime, and yearning for liberty, had sought refuge in their city; and so also for any other atrocious deed the government may perpetrate.
We want, that our men friends, who are so justly proud of their “Declaration of Independence,” should make their practice consistent with it.
But if they will not do that, then let them blot from its page, the grandest truths their Fathers ever uttered — truths that the crushed soul of humanity, the wide world round, has leaped to hear.
But, sisters, the right of suffrage will be secured to us, when we ourselves are willing to incur the odium, and loss of property, which resistance to this outrage on our rights will surely bring with it.
Today is going to be all about tax resistance in the women’s suffrage
movement in the United States.
To start off, we take the wayback machine all the way back to
, when the
Daily Standard of Syracuse, New York, reported on
the National Woman’s Rights Convention (ᔥ). Excerpt:
Miss Anthony read an address to the Convention, written by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton. The scope of it was the duty of property-holding women to refuse
paying taxes, when not represented in Legislative bodies.
Lucy Stone said she wanted the woman who had wealth, nobly, heroically to
refuse to pay taxes. The issue would thus be made, of taxation without
representation. She appealed that this nation should be consistent in its
declaration that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the
governed. Make your practice consistent with your theory. She advised women
when the tax-gatherers came, to refuse, and if brought to justice to reply
that taxation and representation are inseparable, and keep saying so, in reply
to every question they asked. Boston Court House was hung in chains, and
Thomas Sims, in the
prime of his manhood, was cast down from the platform of freedom, to seethe in
the cauldron of slavery, and Boston women were taxed to defray the expenses.
From here, jump forward to , when
this short note hit the pages of The Mirror of
Bloomville, New York (ᔥ):
Lucy Stone refuses to pay her taxes at Orange,
N.Y., on the old
Revolutionary principle of “no taxation without representation,” and the
collector is about to levy on her goods.
In , the
American Union of Ellicottville, New York, noted
(ᔥ):
Sarah E. Wall, of Worchester,
Mass., refuses to pay
taxes. In a letter to a local newspaper she says: “If Massachusetts wants my
money voluntarily given, she can have it by striking one word from two clauses
of her State Constitution. So long as she deems it ‘inexpedient[’] to do that,
I deem it ‘inexpedient’ to pay taxes, and she will get them only by process of
law.”
Mrs. Dr. Lydia Hasbrouck, being
unrepresented, refuses to pay taxes at Wallkill. She was ordered to appear on
the high road with a shovel to work out the amount, and did so bearing a fire
shovel, greatly to the wrath of the authorities, between whom and herself
there consequently exists a terrible disturbance.
The Courier and Union of mocked an anonymous suffragette thusly:
A New York editor has seen a strong minded woman, a “Bloomer,” in the interior
of the State, and he says her port and costume made a strong impression upon
him. She wore a brown tunic, a brown vest, bifacations, a broad, coarse straw
hat, masculine boots (nines, he thinks, for her feet were very large) and
strange to say, carried in her arms a baby. It seemed odd that such a manly
looking being should be a mother, but so it was; and the newspaper man was
informed that, in contempt of the usages of decency, she was accustomed, when
the infant required sustenance in the street, to seat herself on the nearest
door step and administer to its wants from the maternal fountain. From all he
heard of the lady, she is certainly entitled to the merit of consistency. She
is an abolitionist, and a free lover, as such folks are. Her principles and
practices agree. When the road that runs by her residence requires repairing,
she turns out with her brother laborers and shovels dirt and cracks
stone. — She refuses to pay taxes on the ground that she has no vote, and that
taxation without representation is an outrage on civil liberty. — Consequently
the tax collector seizes her property (she has a small estate of her own,
independent of her husband), and sells it to the amount of his claim. On
general training days she has ever been promptly on the ground, armed and
equipped according to law; but, much to her chagrin, has never been able to
find a militia captain ungallant enough to put her through the faceings. Jury
duty she also considers a part of her duty; but the Courts “don’t see it.”…
The Naples [New York] Record gave us this brief
note in their edition
(ᔥ):
Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, of St.
Louis, indignantly refuses to pay taxes unless she is allowed to vote.
Sarah E. Wall, one of the Worcester women whose property is to be sold because
she refuses to pay taxes until she can vote, writes to the
Worcester Gazette: “The idea of the city of
Worcester and the state of Massachusetts leaguing to take from me the little I
possess, by the right arm of the law, to pay the salaries of men who are
fattening on the spoils of the government, in whoso fitness or unfitness I can
have no voice, has always struck me as exceedingly funny, more funny for me
than for the city of Worcester. For others, however, it has a more serious
meaning, those who by years of toil have consecrated a home, around which
cluster the holiest joys of the domestic circle, for them it is martyrdom in
the general sense of the term.”
On two papers (at least)
covered the tax resistance of Mary Anthony. Here, first, is the Syracuse, New
York, Evening Herald’s take:
Miss Mary Anthony of Rochester to Make a Test Case in the Interest of
Cause of Suffrage — Local Political Equalitists Sympathize.
The rebellion of Miss Mary Anthony of Rochester against paying her taxes has
caused a considerable amount of gossip among Syracuse women, and especially
among the suffragists of the city.
Miss Anthony, as is known, served a notice upon County Treasurer Hamilton of Rochester,
stating that she refuses to pay taxes any longer; that for more than forty
years she has paid taxes amounting in the aggregate to thousands of dollars.
She is, she states, a “citizen of the United States as well as of the State
of New York, and of sound mind and not disfranchised for any crime.” Because
she is refused the right of suffrage she is taxed without representation and,
therefore, she gave notice that she would refuse to pay taxes on the ground
that it is unjust, tyrannical, and unconstitutional.
Miss Anthony’s course is upheld by equal suffragists of Rochester and her
course ratified at a meeting of the club held recently in Rochester. Syracuse
suffragists are mainly in favor of Miss Anthony’s position, and express
themselves as follows:
Mrs. C.C. Hall — I think it is a good idea and if more women would make such
an attempt it would be a grand thing. I believe that women should not be
taxed without representation. I believe that women should have a vote and
voice in the making of laws. The
Rev. Anna Shaw has for years
protested against paying her taxes. If more women were alive to the fact and
protested against it the effect would be wholesome.
This course has been tried years ago. Susan B. Anthony was imprisoned some
thirty years ago because she refused to pay her taxes. The case was decided
against her. Of course, as to the outcome of the affair it will be difficult
to say, but it is a step in the right direction.
Miss Harriet May Mills — It is unjust for women to be taxed without
representation. Miss Anthony has all the ethics of democracy on her side. She
is simply doing what our forefathers did. We thought it a noble thing in
them, and so it is with her. We are so proud to boast of their achievements.
They stand for the same principle for which Miss Anthony is working to-day.
It is said that taxation and representation do not go together, because all
men vote regardless of whether they pay taxes or not, on most questions. That
is true, but it is also true that no tax-paying man is denied representation.
I admire Miss Anthony for her courage and her adherence to principle. It is
the principle upon which all government should stand — the consent of the
governed. As to the outcome, I have my opinion of what will happen, but I
don’t wish to express it.
Miss Ada Hall — I don’t approve of it myself. I should never want to take
that course. It doesn’t seem to me that the way to improve laws is to break
them, but I shall, of course, be interested as to the outcome of the matter.
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle put it this
way (excerpts):
These Things Discussed in Their Relations to Women.
Miss Anthony Talks
Miss Mary May Make Test Case of Her Refusal to Pay Tax Bill — Susan B.
Quotes the Words of the Forefathers.
When a reporter of the Democrat and Chronicle
called at the Anthony home last evening, Miss Mary and Miss Susan B. Anthony
consented to talk about the latest move which Miss Mary has made in the
political world, to have what she considers her rights as an American citizen
recognized.
When it was announced that Mary Anthony had written to the county treasurer
protesting against and refusing to pay her taxes, on the ground that it was
unconstitutional to tax her without representation in the government, it
created a sensation, and several women property owners are awaiting the
outcome with interest, with a view to following Miss Mary’s lead if there is
the slightest possibility of success or of furthering woman suffrage.
“Miss Mary, is it your intention to carry this matter into the courts?” was
asked by the reporter.
“That depends,” was the reply. “The main object of this protest is to arouse
agitation on this phase of woman suffrage, and get the public to declare
itself. But whether we shall carry it through to the end remains to be seen.
Of course, it is expensive, getting into litigation, and it may seem best to
avoid this, but we shall be governed by circumstances.”
“Miss Anthony,” said the reporter, “you have been quoted as stating that
taxation without representation is unconstitutional, and Miss Mary has implied
the same thing in her formal protest to the treasurer. I would like to know if
you have been correctly quoted.”
“I don’t think that I stated that taxation without representation is
unconstitutional, for I should not dare make such a statement without
referring to the constitution, but there has never been any question as to
representation being a correlative right of taxation. Taxation and
representation are inseparable. It is the basic principle upon which our
government is founded. It was the battle cry of our forefathers and a
principle of government which has been handed down to us from the
Revolutionary period.
“Our government is based upon the Declaration of Independence, and the
constitutions of all the states include that principle, if they do not make
the exact statement in words. The constitution of New York state says that
‘No member of this state shall be disfranchised, or deprived of any of the
rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the
land, or the judgment of his peers.’ The pronoun ‘his’ in this article of the
constitution, is interpreted to include only male citizens, but in other
places where it appears in the constitution, when they want to hang us, or
imprison us, or tax us, the pronoun ‘his’ or ‘him’ is interpreted to include
women. Therein lies the great injustice. Man has it all his own way, and he
interprets the constitution and twists and turns it to suit himself every
time, whether it is consistent or not. Why should ‘his’ or ‘him’ in one place
mean only male citizens, and in the other places include both men and women.”
Miss Mary S. Anthony, of Rochester,
N.Y., who not long ago
subscribed the last $2,000 needed to secure the admission of girls to the
University of Rochester, has notified the county treasurer that she will
refuse to pay her taxes, on the ground that she is not permitted to vote, and
that there should be no taxation without representation. Miss Anthony is a
sister of Susan B. Anthony. In Rochester alone 9,991 women pay taxes on
$28,672,974 worth of property.
To Miss Anthony’s plea it is objected, somewhat lamely, that the property of
minors, aliens, and idiots is taxed, although they are not voters. Minors,
aliens, idiots, and insane persons were taxed without representation in
, but that did not seem to our forefathers a
sufficient reason why sane adults should be taxed in the same way, and they
fought the war of the Revolution upon that argument. It is not likely that
Miss Anthony will get a favorable decision in the courts, but every such
incident educates the public and hastens the day of equal rights for women.
The Hudson [New York] Evening Register
editorialized as follows on :
There is a “No Vote, No Tax” league in Chicago composed of women who are
inclined to make trouble if women are not given the ballot.
The women who compose the league give it out that they are going to flatly
refuse to pay taxes until the electoral franchise is accorded them.
The right to vote and the duty to pay taxes have no relation to one another.
Thousands of foreigners who have not yet acquired the right to vote are
assessed taxes upon their property. Women who have not the right to vote are
also assessed taxes on their property and for the same reason, and that
reason is that they have the protection of the law both in their property and
personal rights, and should contribute to the public funds for maintaining
the government that protects them.
Women will never win the franchise on any such pretext as this.
There is no good reason why a woman should not be just as competent to vote
upon any public question as a man if she is intelligent enough to comprehend
it, but that she should claim the right to vote because she pays taxes is
claiming a right that is not accorded to the men, even men who own large
property and conduct large enterprises.
Under our constitution and laws the “No Vote, No Tax” agitation is the
essence of silliness. Woman suffrage cannot rest upon a different basis than
manhood suffrage.
The women have too many sound and logical arguments, to resort to unsound
ones.
In the
Western Mail of Perth, Australia, ran this story:
American suffragists are beginning to adopt tax resisting as a means of
protest against their exclusion from the State franchise. The case of Miss
Lucy Daniels, a Vermont property owner, has attracted a good deal of
attention. Miss Daniels, who has a summer house at Grafton, Vermont, has put
the authorities in a dilemma by refusing to pay taxes while, as she says,
denied representation. Last year some of her bank stock was seized, and sold,
but the bank refused to honour the sale, and continues to send Miss Daniels
the dividends. It appears that the transfer of national bank stock is
controlled by Act of Congress, and is not subject to control by Vermont or
other State laws. The purchaser of the stock. Miss Daniel’s nephew, has done
nothing to enforce his claim, but, as the authorities received more for the
stock from him than the amount of taxes due, they may be content to let the
knotty point as to legal ownership rest. What proceedings, if any, they will
take to recover this year’s taxes is not apparent.
The laws on the Statute Book, Miss Daniels maintains, show that the lawmakers
recognise that the person who pays the bill is the person who must “have the
say.” So far has this conviction been carried that “pocket-book rights” have
been permitted to override, on the statutes, motherhood rights. Yet men are
ignoring these same pocket-book rights in the case of women, making them pay
without letting her say. This makes Miss Daniels “tired,” and the tax-testers
are wondering what will happen next.
Suffragist Leaders Assert They Have Hundreds of Followers
They Are Encouraged
Congressional Union Will Back All Individuals Who Refuse to Pay — Statement Causes Mild Sensation in Washington
Washington, . —
Resistance on the part of women of the country to the federal income tax law
despite the Government’s announced intention to impose fines of $1,000 for
each failure to report incomes will receive the encouragement of the
Suffragists Congressional Union, it is announced in a statement issued by the
organization headquarters here.
Resistance to the law, it is declared, would be thoroughly justified from a
moral standpoint. The statement, coming as it does upon the heels of the
suggestion of the Rev.
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw,
president of the National Women’s Suffrage Association, that the
“unenfranchised” women of the country decline to aid the Government in
collecting taxes upon their incomes, caused a mild sensation today in
congressional, treasury, and suffragist circles.
The statement issued by the Congressional Union declares that it does not
plan to organize a widespread resistance to the income tax law, but says:
“If any society or individual, however, should refuse to pay income tax or to
give information as to amount of income the Congressional Union would have
every sympathy with such action.”
“Helplessness of women”
Imposition of an income tax on women, the statement says, has made them
realize afresh their helplessness under the Government. To tax the women
without granting them representation, the statement asserts, would be an act
of “intolerable injustice.”
“Resistance to the income tax law,” the statement says, “would have excellent
educational value and would be thoroughly justified morally.” It is stated in
conclusion, however, that the union will not undertake to organize a protest
against the law.
The suffragist leaders assert that they have hundreds of followers pledged to
fight the income tax.
Mrs. Ellen Spencer Mussey, honorary dean of the Washington College of Law, in
a statement to-day, takes issue with suffragists who would accept
Dr. Shaw’s advice of “passive
resistance.”
“Women should remember that they receive the protection of the Government,”
said Mrs. Mussey, “and it is only right that they should contribute to the
support of a system of law and order in which they share the benefits.
“In addition to this reason, the income tax was enacted by the aid of
legislators from equal suffrage States and, therefore, suffragists should not
hinder its operation.”
The Washington Times led their article with Mussey’s criticism, and continued as follows (ᔥ):
Treasury officials pointed out that the provisions of the income tax are
plain, and that the penalty clause is sufficiently stringent to prevent women
from attempting to evade payment of the tax. The law provides that any person
liable to make the return or pay the tax “who shall refuse or neglect to make
a return at the times specified in each year shall be liable to a penalty of
not less than $20 nor more than $1,000.”
Guilty of Misdemeanor.
And it is further provided that any person who “makes any false or fraudulent
return or statement with intent to defeat or evade the assessment shall be
made guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be fined not exceeding $2,000 or be
imprisoned not exceeding one year, or both, at the discretion, of the court.”
Miss Alice Paul, of the Congressional Union, when asked as to the attitude of
Washington suffragists on the question of resistance raised by
Dr. Shaw, declared that “women
shouldn’t be taxed unless they have a voice in making the laws.
“If it were possible to resist the measure, undoubtedly we would,” she added.
Members of Congress expressed interest in the letter written by
Dr. Shaw, which was addressed
to the “unfranchised American women.” Congressman Frank D. Mondell, of
Wyoming, one of he first suffrage States, declared that he “is not a believer
in militancy whether It be active or passive as suggested by
Dr. Shaw.”
Includes All Persons.
He declared that Congress had enacted the income tax law and that all persons
whose incomes are above the exempted amount are required to make returns to
the tax collectors and pay the tax.
"Any refusal to make returns, as suggested by
Dr. Shaw, would, of course, be
a refusal to obey the plain letter of the law,” he said.
The Treasury Department has not indicated whether it will take official
notice of
Dr. Shaw’ suggestion by making
reference, to it in instructions to income tax collectors.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle impatiently commented on
the case as follows (ᔥ):
The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw
refuses to pay her taxes without the vote. This is the limit of militancy in
this country. The refusal points an argument and maims or kills no one. If a
friendly sheriff can be induced to sell out
Dr. Anna under spectacular
auspices it will advertise the cause far more, than hit-or-miss
bomb-slinging. But if the sheriff is not friendly, these tax matters drag
over such a long period that they wear out the patience of a press agent.
Dr. Shaw’s Plan to Demand
Representation Meets With Approval in Quaker City.
Philadelphia, . —
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw’s appeal
to the women suffragist property owners of the country to resist taxation
without representation met with sympathy yesterday in this city, but without
promise of definite action.
All the women of the Suffrage party holding property who could be reached
declared their complete sympathy with
Dr. Shaw’s refusal to give the
Tax Collector of Moylan, Delaware County, an appraisement of her property.
None of them would say they would follow her example here.
Dr. Shaw’s appeal carried
particular weight, because she is president of the National Suffrage
Association, and is the trusted leader of the party in the United States.
“It’s all right for those who are brave enough to do it.”
This and similar comments greeted the proposition to refuse Tax Collectors
any help in making assessments, was submitted to the women of Philadelphia
yesterday through Dr. Shaw.
“It has my entire sympathy.” declared Miss Mary Winsor, of Haverford.
“Fine! Splendid!” applauded Mrs. George Morgan, of 4418 Osage avenue, one of
the prominent members of the Suffrage party.
Mrs. Henry C. Davis, of 1822 Pine street, with the blood of her Quaker
ancestry flowing through her veins, was all she needed to promote her to
indorsement of tax resistance.
“It’s the same principle against which my forbears protested,” she said.
“They didn’t have to levy a war tax, because the Quakers didn’t believe in
war. Resistance to taxation without representation has my entire sympathy.”
The New York Call added this note to their coverage
of the tax resistance call:
Denver, . —
Colorado suffragists declared today as a whole that they will refuse to pay
an income tax because the law is “man-made and unfair.”
, Anna Shaw followed
through on her promise to resist, and the Hudson [New
York] Evening Register reported (ᔥ):
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president
of the National American Woman Suffrage association, has refused to list for
taxation her property in Pennsylvania. She declares that thus she intends to
prove the impotency of women’s position under existing laws. She will be
assessed by a man she had no voice in choosing, punished by a judge she didn’t
choose, and will lose her estate at the hands of a sheriff she never helped
select but must help to pay. She refuses to pay her income tax also for the
same reason, and when asked to fill out a blank stating the amount of her
income and from what source it was derived, wrote instead on the official
sheet her declaration of principles: that taxation without representation is
tyranny.
The New York Call called upon Joseph E. Cohen to
give the standard order sensible liberal tut-tutting, in “Militancy in America”:
If there is one thing more than another which throws the conservative papers
into hysteria, it is the idea of militancy upon the part of woman
suffragists.
They are accustomed to regard the ordinary channels of politics as something
with very little sting to it (which is not unjustified from their experience
with the Republican, Democratic, and reform parties). The act of the lawless
reaches home; it is personally effective.
Experience teaches that “propaganda of the dead” [sic] — where peaceful methods are at hand — is not direct action, but direct
reaction. It is not the shortest way to the object desired: it is a boomerang.
But where no peaceful methods may be used, what are those who desire
political right to do? The answer is in England.
And if the situation in America were identical with that in England, then the
same methods would come to the front in this country. Not all the preaching
of all the opponents of woman suffrage would stop it.
But the situation is not the same in America. Consequently, it is very
debatable if the suggestion made by
Dr. Anna Shaw, to refuse to
pay the income tax, is a good one.
It is no longer true that taxes are the basis upon which suffrage is to be
had. If only those who pay taxes directly were given the vote, the largest
part of the population would be disfranchised.
And we do not think Dr. Shaw
would care to place herself with those limited suffragists who think only
those should vote who pay taxes.
Still less so would she care to be put in the position of advocating that
only such as pay an income tax should have the right to vote.
If extra legal methods are considered advisable in this country, then they
should be such as may be adopted by all women, irrespective of economic or
other restrictions.
That is to say, the fight on the income tax, from whatever source it comes,
is a fight upon the part of people of means — not the masses.
And the Woman Suffrage Association only too recently, at the national
convention, placed itself upon record as being a working woman’s movement as
much as any one else’s, to now adopt tactics in which the great body of women
can take no part and for which they can have no sympathy.
So far as the income tax itself is concerned, it may indeed be taken to be a
democratic measure, or a progressive measure. To be sure, it is only an
auxiliary of the tariff bill and not independent of it. Its purpose is not to
establish the broad principle of taxing the well to do according to their
ability to pay, which is the right basis for an income tax. The purpose of
the present law is merely to secure to the government such revenue as is lost
by shifting the tariff schedules.
More than that, the woman suffrage movement would be in a rather awkward
plight if it were to be taken for granted that
Dr. Shaw and those who favor
her quarrel with the income tax do so for the same reason they favor woman
suffrage. If woman suffrage were favored for the same reasons that the income
tax is opposed, then something would be wrong with woman suffrage.
Turning the thing around, there is no connection between the suffrage
movement and the income tax. The income tax is a measure to reach the
wealthy, and those who oppose it must do so because they are against popular
government.
That Dr. Shaw and the women
generally should feel resentment toward President Wilson and the Democratic
party for sidestepping the ballot for women, is quite natural and to be
commended. However much one may welcome certain acts of the present
administration, the fact remains that these have been done in the general
plan to offset the real democratic movements of the time, both for
democracy in politics and industry.
The women have every reason for carrying on a vigilant campaign in their own
behalf, and placing no reliance in the old parties. But the fight on the
income measure is not a necessary part of such a campaign.
Better work would be done if the same spirit and energy were thrown toward
securing measures of relief for the working women.
The Casa Grande Valley [Arizona] Dispatch on
reported:
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw sent out
from Pittsfield,
Mass., a statement
regarding her refusal to pay the “exhorbitant” personal tax “unjustly” levied
upon her by the assessor of Delaware county, Pennsylvania. Her statement
reads in part as follows:
“In the tax assessor of
Upper Providence township, Delaware county, Pennsylvania, left at the house
of Dr. Shaw a four page, legal
size, pink sheet requesting that she make out a detailed statement of all her
personal property including bonds, stock, mortgage,
etc., giving in
minute details the name and character of each.
“Dr. Shaw has always believed
in the contention of the Colonies that ‘taxation without representation is
tyranny’ and has consistently protested along this line when paying her
taxes. But when, in addition to imposing an unjust tax, the government
demanded that when she make out the list upon which the taxes were to be
levied, she respectfully declined, stating that the very act of taxing a
citizen of the United States while arbitrarily depriving her of
representation was a violation of the National Constitution which declares
that the ‘privileges and immunities [of] the citizens of the United States,
shall not be abridged or denied by the United States nor by any State.’
“For the State of Pennsylvania to deny to women citizens of the United States
the right to participate in the government is in direct violation of this
fundamental law of the land.
“Furthermore when the state demands that the citizen thus illegally denies
her rights, shall in addition be the state’s accomplice in this
unconstitutional act by making out a list upon which taxes may be levied,
this is heaping injury upon tyranny. In the spirit of
Dr. Shaw declined to be a
party to an act which violated the National Constitution. She returned the
document without making out the list.
“But in declining to make out the list,
Dr. Shaw did not violate any
law for the document stated that if for any reason the person failed to make
out the list, the assessor should prepare it, but added that in doing so he
should as far as possible learn the amount of property in order to make a
reasonably fair statement.
“Dr. Shaw has witnesses who
are willing to testify to the fact that instead of complying with this
reasonable provision of the law, the assessor declared he took no pains to
inform himself, and boasted that he would make the assessment so large that
it would compel Dr. Shaw to
make a statement. He therefore assessed her taxable personal property at
$30,000.00. Had the assessor, as he was legally bound to do, sought to
ascertain the value of Dr.
Shaw’s personal property he could easily have done so, and if upon this
information he had levied taxes she would have paid them as she always does
all other taxes, namely, under protest against the tyranny of taxation
without representation.”
“We don’t vote, and we don’t propose to pay,” is ultimatum of the teachers in Independence, Mo.
Kansas City, . —
Women teachers in the schools of Independence,
Mo., today announced they
would refuse to pay taxes until given the right to vote. The teachers said
they had been notified they were assessed $50 each and must pay taxes on that
amount.
Angered at what she called taxation without representation, Miss Anna Baskin,
teacher in the Columbia school, together with several other teachers, took
the war path to let men know they could not dominate women in any such
manner.
“They don’t let us vote and we are not heads of households and we don’t
propose to pay taxes,” said Miss Baskin. “When they give us suffrage, then we
will be glad to bear our share of the expense of the government.”
New Society Publishers began in to bring out a “Barbara Deming Memorial Series” of books meant to highlight women involved in nonviolent action.
The first book in the series was You Can’t Kill the Spirit by Pam McAllister, which included a chapter on women tax resisters, and another separate section on the Igbo Women’s War, which was also a tax resistance campaign in part.
Here are some excerpts from this book:
Injustice, Death and Taxes: Women Say No!
The world just didn’t make sense to thirty-two-year-old Hubertine Auclert.
On the one hand she was considered a French citizen expected to obey the laws of her country and to pay property taxes.
On the other hand, she was denied the citizen’s right to vote simply because she was a woman.
The male rulers couldn’t have it both ways, Auclert decided.
She began plotting a way to unhinge the system.
On election day in , Auclert and several other tax-paying women of Paris initiated the first stage of the action.
They stomped past a line of startled men and presented themselves for voter registration.
They demanded that they be recognized as full citizens of France with rights as well as responsibilities.
They demanded an end to the injustice of taxation without representation.
The men were amazed: there was nothing wrong with the system’s inconsistencies as far as they were concerned!
The women were turned away.
It was time for stage two.
Taking advantage of the publicity the women had generated, Auclert called for a women’s “tax strike.”
She reasoned that, since men alone had the privilege of governing the people and allotting national budgets, men alone should have the privilege of paying taxes.
“Since I have no right to control the use of my money,” she wrote, “I no longer wish to give it.
I do not wish to be an accomplice, by my acquiescence, in the vast exploitation that the masculine autocracy believes is its right to exercise in regard to women.
I have no rights, therefore I have no obligations.
I do not vote, I do not pay.”
During the tax strike, Auclert was joined by twenty other women — eight widows and the rest, presumably, single women.
When the authorities demanded payment, all but three of the women ended their participation in the strike.
The remaining women continued to appeal the decision.
But when law enforcement officers attempted to seize their furniture, Auclert and the others gave in.
They decided they had done the best they could to call attention to the injustice.
Auclert was not the first woman to organize against the taxation of women without government representation.
Mid-nineteenth-century United States saw a number of women’s rights tax resisters.
In … Lucy Stone decided to publicize the injustice of government taxation of women who, because they were denied the vote, were without representation.
, Henry David Thoreau had spent a night in jail for his refusal to pay the Massachusetts poll tax, an action he had taken in opposition to the U.S. war with Mexico.
Now Lucy Stone decided to use the same tactic to publicly draw attention to women’s oppression as voteless taxpayers.
When she refused to pay her taxes, the government held a public auction and sold a number of her household goods.
Like Lucy Stone, [Lydia Sayer] Hasbrouck’s radicalism led her to become a tax resister, refusing to pay local taxes in protest against the denial of her right to vote.
A tax collector, so the story goes, managed to steal one of Hasbrouck’s Bloomer outfits from her house and advertise it for sale, the proceeds to go toward the taxes she owed.
Abby Kelly Foster had always been an active worker and speaker for women’s rights, but, in , at the age of sixty-three, she was newly inspired.
She had just heard about Julia and Abby Smith, two sisters in neighboring Connecticut, who were refusing to pay the taxes on their farm in order to protest the denial of suffrage to women.
This was just the sort of nonviolent direct action that appealed to Abby.
Her husband, Stephen, agreed.
That year, they refused to pay their taxes on their beloved “Liberty Farm” in order to give voice to the urgency and justice of women’s suffrage.
When they refused again in , the city of Worcester, Massachusetts took action.
The farm was seized and put up for auction to the highest bidder.
Letters of support for the Fosters’ tax resistance poured in from the progressive leaders of the day.
Boston abolitionist Wendell Phillips wrote, “Of course I need not tell either of you at this late day how much I appreciate this last chapter in the lives full of heroic self sacrifice to conviction.”
Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton sent words of encouragement.
William Lloyd Garrison, a pacifist abolitionist, wrote, “I hope there is not a man in your city or county or elsewhere who will meanly seek to make that property available to his own selfish ends.
Let there be no buyer at any price.”
Unfortunately, Osgood Plummer, a politically conservative neighbor, bid $100 for the farm, but he retreated when Stephen Foster chided him.
Later, Plummer wrote a letter to the local newspaper explaining that he had only wanted to teach the Fosters a lesson about obeying the law.
With no other bidders, the deed to Liberty Farm reverted to the city.
For the next few years, Abby and Stephen lived with the fear and uncertainty of losing the farm, but they continued their tax resistance until Stephen’s ill health became an overriding concern.
In , the Fosters ended their protest and paid several thousand dollars to save the farm.
The point had been made.
In , the Women’s Tax Resistance League of London published a little pamphlet entitled Why We Resist Our Taxes… “The government of this country which professes to be a representative one and to rest on the consent of the governed, is Constitutional in its relation to men, Unconstitutional in its relation to women,” wrote Margaret Kineton Parkes, author of the pamphlet.
Parkes did not mean all women, however.
She hastened to reassure the reader that the tax resisters were not in the least radical but only fair-minded, concerned with votes only for women householders, certainly not for all women.
The League, she claimed, was about passively resisting the unconstitutional government ruling England.
Because they had been granted the municipal vote, women tax resisters were more than willing to pay local “rates,” and they promised they’d have equal willingness to pay “imperial taxes” as soon as they were granted the parliamentary vote.
The London tax resisters devised a new way to reach beyond those already enlightened members of the public who attended suffrage meetings.
They began making suffrage speeches at public auctions, a tactic that had unexpectedly good results.
Many people were converted to the suffrage cause once they had the chance to hear the argument from the resisters themselves.
The auctioneers not only permitted the women to make their speeches, but sometimes actively invited the speeches and even addressed the cause in their own words.
One auctioneer who openly supported the tax-resisting suffragists ended his remarks by saying: “If I had to pay rates and taxes and had not a vote, I should consider it a great disgrace on the part of the Government, but I should consider it a far greater disgrace on my part if I did not protest against it.”
Since the granting of suffrage, women’s tax resistance has most often been undertaken to protest a government’s military spending or its involvement in a specific war — such as the U.S. war in Vietnam.
For part of her life, Barbara Deming was a war tax resister.
In her essay “On Revolution and Equilibrium,” she explained the rationale for this form of nonviolent noncooperation.
Words are not enough here.
Gandhi’s term for nonviolent action was “satyagraha” — which can be translated as “clinging to the truth…” And one has to cling with one’s entire weight… One doesn’t just say, “I don’t believe in this war,” but refuses to put on a uniform.
One doesn’t just say “The use of napalm is atrocious,” but refuses to pay for it by refusing to pay one’s taxes.
At , Juanita Nelson threw on the new white terry cloth bathrobe she’d recently ordered from the Sears-Roebuck catalog and answered her door.
Two U.S. marshals informed her that they had an order for her arrest.
What a way to start the day.
Juanita and her husband Wally, who was out of town that day, had not paid withholding taxes nor filed any forms for , so it was, in one sense, no big surprise that the government wanted to see her.
“But even with the best intentions in the world of going to jail,” she later wrote, “I would have been startled to be awakened at 6:30 a.m. to be told that I was under arrest.”
She explained to the bright-eyed government men that she would be glad to tell the judge why she was resisting taxes if he’d care to come see her.
Then she proceeded to explain why she would not willingly walk out of her door to appear in court.
I am not paying taxes because the overwhelming percentage of the budget goes for war purposes.
I do not wish to participate in any phase of the collection of such taxes.
I do not even want to act as if I think that anyone, including the government, has a right to punish me for an act which I consider honorable.
I cannot come with you.
The government men were not moved.
They called for back-up assistance while Juanita considered her situation.
Should she get dressed?
Would getting dressed be a way of cooperating?
Quickly she called a friend on the phone to let others know what was happening to her, and just as quickly she was surrounded by seven annoyed law enforcement officers.
There was a brief exchange about her still being in her bathrobe, and one uncomfortable officer asked her whether or not she believed in God.
She answered in the negative.
(“He did not go on to explain the connection he had evidently been going to establish between God and dressing for arrest,” Juanita later reported.)
Suddenly, a gruff, no-nonsense officer said, “We’ll just take her the way she is, if that’s the way she wants it.”
He slapped some handcuffs on her and lifted her off the floor.
In maneuvering her into the government car, he apparently tried his best to expose the nakedness under her bathrobe while another officer tried to cover her.
As the car carried her into the heart of Philadelphia, she tried to think.
“My thoughts were like buckshot,” she wrote of her experience, “so scattered they didn’t hit anything or, when they did, made little dent.
The robe was a huge question mark placed starkly after some vexing problems. Why am I going to jail?
Why am I going to jail in a bathrobe?”
The only thing she was sure of at that moment was that, until her head cleared, she would refuse to cooperate with her jailers.
When the car stopped, she was yanked from the back seat, carried into the federal court building, dragged up a flight of stairs, and thrown behind bars.
[S]everal friends stopped by to visit her.
(Her phone call had been a good idea.)
The first visitors were two men, tax-refusing pacifists like herself.
They thought it best, for the sake of appearances, to go to court in the proper clothes.
They offered to get some clothes for her, and she agreed — just in case she decided she’d feel more at ease in them.
After the men left, a woman friend stopped by.
“You look like a female Gandhi in that robe!”
she said.
“You look, well, dignified.”
Juanita grinned.
When they finally came for her, Juanita, still refusing to walk, was wheeled into the courtroom in her bathrobe.
The clothes the men had brought were left behind in a brown paper bag.
The judge gave her until to comply with the court order that she turn over her financial records or be subjected to a possible fine of $1000, a year in jail, or both.
Juanita Nelson went home.
came and went.
Many Fridays came and went.
The charges were dropped and she heard nothing more.
Every now and then, the Internal Revenue Service sends her a bill or tries to confiscate a car, but so far the government has met a wall of nonviolent noncooperation.
They should have known when they saw Juanita in her bathrobe: nothing will make her pay for war.
Most people who take any notice of my position are appalled by my lawbreaking and not at all about the reasons for my not paying taxes.
Instead of trying to make me justify my civil disobedience, why do they not question themselves and the government about a course of action which makes billions available for weapons, but cannot provide decent housing and education for a large segment of the population?
Like the ascetics of old, Eroseanna (Rose or Sis) Robinson was singularly unburdened by material possessions.
She had no bank account, owned no real estate, and when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tried to seize her personal property, they found that all she had was an ironing board, a clock, a quilt, and some clothes.
Robinson took seriously her membership in Peacemakers (an organization founded in to promote radical, nonviolent direct action).
She had been a war tax resister since the early fifties, filing no statements of income and ignoring the various notices and certified letters sent by the IRS.
In , thirty-five years old, single and black, Robinson was a skilled artist and athlete; creative, too, in finding ways to live in the United States without paying for the U.S. military.
She tried to keep her earnings below the taxable level and for a period managed to spend less than $3 per week for food.
She also arranged to earn a withholding-free income from several different work situations.
Even with the little money she made, Robinson regularly sent sums greater than the taxes she owed to groups that worked for peace and social justice.
On , federal marshals descended on Robinson at a community center in Chicago and demanded she come with them.
When she refused, they carried her bodily out of the center and to the district court where she was seated on a bench before a judge.
She refused to accept the services of a lawyer and asked instead that they lay aside their roles as judge and defendant and speak to each other as two people with genuine concerns.
When the judge agreed, Robinson talked.
“I have not filed income taxes,” she said, “because I know that a large part of the tax will be used for militarization.
Much of the money is spent for atom and hydrogen bombs.
These bombs have a deadly fallout that causes human destruction, as it has been proved.
If I pay income tax, I am participating in that course.
We have a duty to contribute constructively to life, and not destructively.”
After making this statement, she was handcuffed, put in a wheelchair because she refused to walk, and taken to jail.
The next day she was wheeled into court again, where she encountered a different judge.
This judge ridiculed her and her supporters who were standing in a vigil in front of the courthouse.
He accused her of having an attitude of “contumacious criminal contempt.”
He committed her to jail until she would agree to file a tax return and show records of her earnings.
Not only would she not agree to file a tax return, she also would not agree to cooperate in any way with the prison system.
She would not walk.
She would not eat.
She did agree to see one visitor one time — her friend Ernest Bromley, a radical pacifist and member of Peacemakers, who had come to see her in Cook County Jail.
He wrote while she dictated a message for all her supporters on the outside:
I see the military system and jail system as one thing.
I don’t want to give up my own will.
I will not compromise by accepting a lawyer or by recognizing the judge as judge.
I would rather that no one try to make an arrangement with the judge on my behalf.
I ask nothing from the court or the jail.
I do not want to pay for war.
That is my main concern.
Love to everyone.
On , Robinson was again wheeled into court.
It was clear that she would not compromise her principles to spare her own discomfort.
The judge sentenced her to jail for a year and added an extra day for “criminal contempt.”
On , she was moved to the federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia.
There she continued her fast, though prison officials began to force-feed her liquids through a tube inserted into her nose.
She refused to cooperate in any way with her own imprisonment nor did she try to send letters through the system of prison censorship.
Ten members of Peacemakers, including long-time activist Marjorie Swann, set up their tents just beyond the gates at Alderson and issued a press release on .
They explained that they were there to show support for Robinson and that most of them intended to fast just as she was fasting.
They invited anyone who wanted to talk to stop by the gate where they were camping.
The pacifists propped up signs along the stretch of dusty road — “No Tax for War,” “Peace Is the Only Defense,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and “Rose Won’t Pay Income Tax.”
After fasting for , Robinson was suddenly and unconditionally discharged from prison on .
The judge who ordered her release said Robinson had become a burden to the prison medical facilities, adding that he felt she had been punished sufficiently.
He didn’t mention the picketers camped outside.
When Robinson was released from prison late afternoon, the first thing she saw was a huge banner held high by her friends — “Bravo Rose!”
A number of women have become war tax resisters in reaction to a specific war.
Mary Bacon Mason, a Massachusetts music teacher, became a war tax resister in after World War Ⅱ.
She told the government she would be willing to pay double her tax if it could be used only for aid to suffering people anywhere, but would accept prison or worse rather than pay for war.
The only possible defense, she said, is friendship and mutual help.
Of World War Ⅱ she said:
I paid a share in that cost and I am guilty of burning people alive in Germany and Japan.
I ask humanity’s forgiveness.
In , Caroline Urie of Yellow Springs, Ohio, bedridden and elderly, gained national attention and inspired many people to consider war tax resistance when she withheld 34.6 percent of her tax.
She sent an equivalent amount as a donation to four peace organizations and wrote an open letter to President Truman and the IRS
Now that the atomic bomb has reduced to a final criminal absurdity the whole war system, leading quite possibly to the liquidation of human society, and has involved the United States in the shame and guilt of having been the first to exploit its criminal possibilities, I have come to the conclusion that — as a Christian, Quaker, religious and conscientious objector to the whole institution of organized war — I must henceforth refuse to contribute to it in any way I can avoid.
Eighteen years later, and in response to a new war, another woman from Yellow Springs, Ohio, Doris E. Sargent, wrote to the Peacemakers newsletter with a new war tax resistance tactic.
She noted that the government had reintroduced a federal tax attached to telephone bills.
The money was earmarked specifically for U.S. military expenses.
Sargent proposed a radical response — that all those who demanded an end to the fighting in Vietnam ask the phone company to remove their phones in protest.
If everyone who opposed the war were willing to make such an extreme sacrifice, real pressure could be put on the government.
Then Sargent suggested a less extreme idea — that people keep their phones and pay their bills but refuse to pay the federal tax.
Phone tax resisters could send a note with their bills each month, stating that the protest was not directed at the phone company but at the government which was using the phone tax to support war.
The idea caught hold, and phone tax resistance became a popular way to protest the war in Vietnam.
It is still used as a form of war tax resistance.
The war in Vietnam turned many people into war tax resisters.
Pacifist folksinger Joan Baez set an example as a tax resister early in the war years by withholding 60 percent of her income tax.
She was instrumental in persuading countless others to follow her example.
In , she explained:
We talk about democracy and Christianity — and we try out a new fire-bomb.
We talk about peace and we move thousands more men and weapons into Vietnam.
This country has gone mad.
But I will not go mad with it.
I will not pay for organized murder.
I will not pay for the war in Vietnam.
In , life-long Quaker Meg Bowman wrote a letter to the IRS to explain why she had decided once again not to pay her federal income tax.
“Do you carefully maintain our testimony against all preparations for war and against participation in war as inconsistent with the teachings of Christ?”
― Query, Discipline of Pacific Yearly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
The above quotation is from the book that is intended to give guidance to members for daily living.
The book repeatedly stresses peace and individual responsibility.
It is clear to me that I am not only responsible for my voluntary actions, but also for that which is purchased with my income.
If my income is spent for something immoral or if I allow others to buy guns with money I have earned, this is as wrong and offending to “that of God in every man” as if I had used that gun, or planned that bomb strike.
When I worked a five-day week it seemed to me that one-fifth of my income went to taxes.
This would be equivalent to working one full day each week for the U.S. government.
It seemed I worked as follows:
Monday for food.
I felt responsible to buy wholesome, nourishing items that would provide
health and energy, but not too much meat or other luxuries, the world supply of which is limited.
Tuesday for shelter.
We maintain a comfortable, simply furnished home where we may live in
dignity and share with others.
Wednesday for clothing,
health needs and other essentials and for recreation, all carefully
chosen.
Thursday for support of causes.
I select with care those organizations which seem to be acting in such a
way that responsibility to God and my brother is well served.
Friday for death,
bombs, napalm, for My Lai and overkill.
I am asked to support a
government whose main business is war.
Though the above is oversimplified, the point is clear.
I cannot work four days a week for life and joy and sharing, and one day for death.
I cannot pay federal taxes.
I believe this decision is protected by law as a First Amendment right of freedom of religion.
If I am wrong it is still better to have erred on the side of peace and humanity.
Sincerely, Meg Bowman
“The only thing of which I’m guilty is financially supporting the war in Southeast Asia against my better judgment until ,” said Martha Tranquilli when she was charged with the criminal offense of providing false information on her income tax forms.
At , Tranquilli stood on the steps of the state capitol building in Sacramento, California and addressed the 100 supporters who had gathered.
After a short Unitarian service held on her behalf, the aging white woman with a long gray braid told them in her calm, soft voice that she envisioned the day when scientists and workers would join in refusing to pay war taxes or do war work.
I was very much afraid of going to prison, but I think I have overcome that fear.
I plan to read, write letters, and meditate as much as possible.
I’m going to try my best to make an adventure out of this thing.
One after another, friends and strangers attending the rally came up to embrace Tranquilli and offer words of encouragement.
After some spirited singing, they accompanied her to the federal building where she turned herself in to the federal marshals.
Hers was a media image made to order.
“63-Year-Old Tax-Resisting Grandma Goes to Jail” shouted the headlines, and the war tax resistance movement didn’t mind the national publicity Martha Tranquilli generated.
Tranquilli was opposed to the Vietnam War and all the suffering the war was inflicting on the people of Vietnam, the people of the United States, and on the earth itself.
She had therefore decided to withhold the 61 percent of her income taxes (amounting to approximately $1,100) which she believed would go to pay for the war.
It was in Mound Bayou, Mississipi that Martha was tried and sentenced for tax fraud in .
Like other war tax resisters, Tranquilli withheld her taxes by listing unusual dependents.
Tranquilli listed seven peace organizations as dependents, including War Resisters League, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Friends Service Committee.
(Another war tax resister in claimed 3 billion dependents, explaining to the IRS that he felt the population of the earth depended on him and on others to refuse to pay war taxes.
That case went to court and the tax resister was acquitted by a court of appeals of the charge of willfully filing a false and fraudulent W-4 form.)
Tranquilli was found guilty of tax fraud, but the judge was reluctant to send her to jail and indicated he’d give her a suspended sentence if she would only apologize and promise not to do it again.
When Tranquilli refused this offer she was sentenced to nine months in prison and two years probation.
The Mississippi Civil Liberties Union helped her appeal the case and, while the appeal was pending, she moved to California.
Both the Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her case.
On , after making national headlines and being cheered on by supporters, Tranquilli began her stay at Terminal Island Prison in San Pedro, California.
She quickly got involved in the life of the prison community…
After her release, Tranquilli wrote to a friend: “Be sure to say that I did not suffer in prison.
It was a learning experience.”
Tranquilli continued her tax resistance as well as her work for peace and justice until her death in .
For Mason and Urie it was the Second World War.
For Baez, Bowman, and Tranquilli it was the war in Vietnam.
it is the U.S.-backed war against Nicaragua that motivates many new war tax resisters.
In in Brooklyn, New York, tax resister Donna Mehle wrote an open letter to the IRS which was published in the local newspaper.
She cited a religious basis for her tax resistance, protesting the war against Nicaragua.
The decision to come into conflict with the laws of my country is very difficult, but it is a decision rooted in my Christian faith.
As a Christian, I am called to affirm life and reject violence… My commitment to tax resistance deepened in the past year when I travelled to Nicaragua.
There I saw first hand the effect of my tax dollars ($100 million in Contra Aid ).
I vowed to myself and to the Nicaraguan people I met that I would not be complicit in the U.S. backed Contra war, a war which targets innocent civilians and children.
Mehle informed the IRS that she intended to redirect the money she would have owed in taxes to an alternative fund “which supports life-affirming projects in New York City.”
In , some women in the United States proposed a specifically feminist perspective on war tax resistance.
In New York City, the Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance distributed a brochure which read in part:
We can’t keep working for disarmament, for women’s rights, including an end to lesbian oppression, and for racial equality while paying for a male-dominated government which impoverishes and exploits us now and threatens to eliminate the world’s future.
On , this group performed street theater on the steps of Federal Hall.
Some of the women dressed up as pieces of the federal budget “pie” while others, dressed as waitresses, explained the military menu to passersby and handed out leaflets.
In Canada in , sixty-eight-year-old Edith Adamson made headlines with her tax resistance.
A lifelong pacifist and the coordinator of the Peace Tax Fund Committee of Canada, Adamson was one of approximately sixty Canadians who hoped to prevent the government from using their money to make war.
Not that Adamson and the others wanted to keep the money for their own use: they wanted to redirect their dollars into a peace tax fund.
With the adoption of the new Charter of Rights in the Canadian Constitution, there was a guarantee of freedom of conscience.
“This means,” Adamson explained for news reporters, “that the government should provide a legal alternative to war taxes for those who object to killing on religious or ethical grounds.”
Since , Canadian war tax resisters — who call themselves “Peace Trusters” because they trust in peace, not war — have petitioned their government to develop a peace tax fund which would allow citizens the option of directing their money away from the military budget.
They asked for a simple tax form which would allow taxpayers to check whether they want a portion of their taxes to go for warmaking or peacemaking.
In , Edith Adamson explained her involvement:
In a nuclear war, you wouldn’t have a chance to be a conscientious objector.
And, being an old lady, I wouldn’t be drafted, so it seemed the peace tax fund idea was a sound way to get at the root of the problem.
I not only want to exempt myself from the killing, but I want to try to influence the government to look at this problem — and other people as well to examine their consciences.
A nuclear war would involve everybody and mean total destruction and I couldn’t just hide under my little exemption and stay alive.
This peace tax would be an extension of conscientious objector status for the military.
It’s more appropriate today because war now depends more on money than on personnel; it only took twelve men to drop the bomb over Hiroshima, but it took millions, perhaps billions of taxpayers’ dollars in Canada, Britain, and the United States to develop that bomb.
By there were approximately 440 Peace Trusters in Canada who were withholding a portion of their taxes and putting that money into a peace tax fund.
They had agreed to waive the interest on this money in order to pay the court fees involved in taking on a test case to establish the legality of the peace tax fund.
The claimant Jerilynn Prior, a physician and Quaker originally from the United States where she was also a tax resister, now lives in British Columbia.
In a press release, Prior said that paying for war violates her freedom of conscience and religion.
This deep conviction rises from my commitment to work for peace.
I try to live my life that way — as a mother, a physician, a teacher, a woman, a citizen of this world community.
It would be hypocrisy to voluntarily allow my tax contribution to be used for war or the military or pamphlets about bomb shelters…
Each of us can work for peace in our own life, with our own resources, and in our own way.
This tax appeal is the way I must work for peace.
Nigerian women used song in to ridicule, protest, and pressure a man and, by extension, the system he represented.
In , women streamed into Oloko, Nigeria from throughout Owerri Province.
Word had been sent via the Ibo (Igbo) women’s network that it was time to “sit on” Okugo, the arrogant warrant chief of the Oloko Native Court.
“Sitting on a man” was the figurative expression given a traditional process of punishment during which women gathered in front of a man’s home to sing songs which outlined the women’s grievances or insulted the offender.
The women would dance and sing all day and all night, and sometimes, for the most serious and unrepentant offenders, give added impetus to their words by dismantling the roof of the hut until the man promised to cooperate.
On , the women prepared as their mothers and grandmothers before them had prepared for the traditional settling of grievances: they bound their heads with ferns, smeared their faces with ashes, and put on the short loincloths tradition ordained.
Each woman picked up a sacred stick wreathed with young palm fronds.
These sacred sticks were necessary for invoking the spirit and power of their female ancestors.
Thus attired, they massed on the district office to “sit on” Okugo until he got the message.
Just days before, the women had met in the market to discuss the new taxation rumors.
They remembered that , after promises to the contrary, the British had taken a census and begun collecting taxes from the men.
The women were worried that taxes would soon be imposed upon them as well, especially since a district officer had ordered a new census in which they and their property would be counted.
At the marketplace meeting the women had agreed to spread the alarm and act if any of them were approached for information.
And could anyone doubt their cause for alarm now?
Just Warrant Chief Okugo had approached Nwanyeruwa, a married woman.
He had asked to count her goats and sheep.
She had spat back an insult, “Was your mother counted?”
In anger, Okugo had attacked Nwanyeruwa who had immediately set in motion the women’s network.
Now the women were ready to act.
Nwanyeruwa’s name became the watchword, Nwanyeruwa herself the catalyst.
Carrying their sacred sticks high, thousands of women marched on the district office.
They danced.
They sang songs of ridicule and protest, they chanted, and they demanded Okugo’s cap of office, taking from his head the symbol of his authority over them.
A British officer who witnessed the event claimed that the cap, tossed into the crowd of women, “met the same fate as a fox’s carcass thrown to a pack of hounds.”
After several days of such protest, the women secured written assurances that they were not to be taxed.
They also succeeded in having Okugo arrested, tried, and convicted of physical assault and of unnecessarily worrying the population.
When the news of this victory spread through the women’s networks, thousands of other women throughout the region organized to “sit on” their local warrant chiefs.
The protest spread to Aba, a major trading center along the railway.
The women in Aba, like those in Oloko, dressed in their traditional ferns, ashes, and loincloths and carrying the sacred sticks to invoke the mothers, gathered to dance, sing, and demand the cap of the warrant chief.
