How you can resist funding the government →
the tax resistance movement →
birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement →
Sander Katz
Mary Stone McDowell is a rare — perhaps unique — example of someone who took a war tax resistance stand during World War Ⅰ and was also part of the post World War Ⅱ revival of war tax resistance in America.
Miss Mary S. McDowell, Member of Society of Friends, to Face Trial.
Miss Mary S. McDowell, a teacher of Latin in the Manual Training High School,
was suspended from duty without pay
as a result of charges of
pacifism brought against her several weeks ago by the Board of
Superindendents.
The order suspending Miss McDowell, issued by
Dr. Gustave Straubenmuller,
acting Superintendent of Schools, was approved formally by the Board of
Education at its meeting. In the formal notice the cause for suspension is
given as “conduct unbecoming a teacher.”
Miss McDowell will be called before a special committee of the School Board
to show cause why she should not be dismissed from the service. No date has
been set for the trial.
Miss McDowell, who lives with her mother at
No. 20 Crooke avenue, Brooklyn,
is a member of the Society of Friends and declares that by reason of her
faith she conscientiously is opposed to war and all its activities. It is
alleged she repeatedly refused to sign loyalty pledges circulated among the
teachers and refused to take part in Red Cross work and Liberty Bond sales.
Miss McDowell has been a teacher in the public schools for thirteen years and, in the opinion of Dr. Straubenmuller, is “a very estimable woman and an excellent Latin teacher, with unfortunate views regarding the war.”
,
but 70 pacifists throughout the country, including a former school teacher in
Brooklyn, will refuse to pay Uncle Sam who, they say, is spending his money
preparing for a war.
The group has grown since
when about 40 pacifists, objecting to the “war preparations,” refused to pay
either all or a part of their taxes.
Mary McDowall of 555 Ocean
Ave., a Quaker who taught
Latin at Abraham Lincoln High School until her retirement five years ago, is
a member of the group, known as the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers.
“I’m Not Stingy”
Miss McDowall has withheld one-third of her total tax, claiming “at least
that proportion is used for war preparation.” The withheld amount, she points
out is donated to the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers).
“I don’t want the money I withhold,” she says. “I’m not stingy. I merely
won’t help in construction for war.
Miss McDowall’s Quaker principles caused her suspension from the faculty of
Manual Training High School in . She was
suspended for “disloyalty and insubordination,” having refused to take part
in the school’s patriotic aid program of World War Ⅰ.
She was cleared and reinstated in when it
was officially admitted that her Board of Education trial had been held “at a
time of great public excitement.”
Has Jaile[d] Confrere
The 70 “tax refusers,” in a statement issued at their headquarters, 2013
5th
Ave., Manhattan, announced
they “hail the courage of Katsuki James Otsuka,” who drew a three-month
Federal sentence and a $100 fine in Indianapolis earlier this month for
refusing to pay $4.50 in income taxes.
Otsuka also refused to pay the fine, choosing instead an additional sentence.
Among the organization’s Manhattan members is Sander Katz, 25, who served 19
months in jail for refusing to report for induction in World War Ⅱ and who
was sentenced to another year and a day for refusing to register under the
Draft Act.
Another Brooklyn Eagle article, from, I think,
around :
Mary S. McDowell, 74, retired public school teacher of 555 Ocean
Ave., wants it known that
again this year she is paying only two-thirds of her Federal income tax.
The reason, she advised during a call at the Brooklyn Eagle office, is that
she is opposed to war and refuses to finance the manufacture of war
materials.
“An estimated third of income tax collections goes for defense,” she said.
“So one-third of my tax payment, or what would be a third of it, I am giving
to a charity. I did it last year on my own initiative and this year I am
withholding one-third as a member of the ‘Peacemakers’.”
From its Manhattan office at 2013 5th
Ave. the Peacemakers issued a
press release in which it described itself as “a national pacifist movement”
and listed “27 men and 19 women in scattered parts of the United States” who
are not paying income taxes because they “refuse to finance war
preparations.” Miss McDowell is among those listed.
“I am a Quaker,” said Miss McDowell, the only Brooklynite on the Peacemakers’
list. “I have always been opposed to war. Not paying income tax is a
practical Way of expressing opposition to war.
“I was opposed to the first World War. I was teaching at Manual Training High
School then. Because of my expressed opposition I was fired. It wasn’t until
that I was reinstated as a
teacher.”
She was at Abraham Lincoln when she retired in
.
The Peacemakers’ list of tax rebels includes the names of the
Rev. A.J. Muste of 21
Audubon Ave., Manhattan,
described as secretary of the organization, and the
Rev. Ernest R. Bromley of
Wilmington, Ohio, named as chairman of the Tax Refusal Committee.
“One omission from the list,” the release explains, “is the name of Katsuki
James Otsuka, an earlham college student of Richmond,
Ind. He was released on
after serving nearly five months in the Federal Correctional Institution,
Ashland, Ky., for his
refusal to pay $4.50 income taxes. He was released even though he continued
to refuse to pay. His name does not appear because his imprisonment prevented
his earning a taxable income for .”
The Eagle covered her protest again in
:
Kansas Tax Conchies
Topeka,
Kan.,
(U.P.) — Kansas Internal Revenue officials
had two “conscientious objectors” on their hands today when Edith Aldis and
the Rev. Gerhard Friesen
defied Federal income tax laws on grounds that “too much of the money goes
for military armament.” Both have signed a statement issued by the tax
refusal committee of Peacemakers, a pacifist movement with headquarters in
New York.
A retired Brooklyn Latin teacher was one of 41 “Tax Refusers” across the
nation who deducted from their Federal returns — due
— percentages they said
would be used for present and future wars.
Mary S. McDowell of 555 Ocean
Ave., a Quaker who started
teaching in borough schools in and was
suspended from the school system for pacifist activities, in a letter to the local internal
revenue office said she was sending $237 — 60 percent of her return — to the
American Friends Service Committee, a charity, to keep herself from being
“involved in war preparations.”
The 76-year-old woman wrote: “All war is contrary to the essential principle
of Christianity and to the basic faith of democracy.” She inclosed a pamphlet
entitled “A Democratic Program for a Durable Peace” which she recently had
published.
, she said, she
deducted only 45 percent from her tax return. The increase this year, she
explained, was prompted not by inflation but by mounting Government spending
for rearmament.
Government Takes Lien
The income tax office , in a move to
collect the unpaid balance of her return, placed a lien on the elderly
ex-teacher’s pension.
A native of New Jersey, Miss McDowell attended Swarthmore College and taught
in Manual Training and Abraham Lincoln High Schools. She retired in
.
Her letter, in part, said: “I realize that I cannot entirely free myself from
being involved in war preparations; but I believe it is important to bear my
testimony in action as far as I can.
“Now that we are so largely devoting our men and our resources to war
preparations and taking part in an armament race, it seems clearer than ever
that our course may be leading toward world war and inconceivable slaughter
and destruction to our own country as well as the world.
“Accordingly, it would seem that not only religious pacifists, but all
intelligent true patriots should do everything in their power to halt
rearmament and vastly increase constructive activities looking toward
worldwide human welfare and durable peace.”
A 77-year-old former Latin teacher has taken a stand in which many of her
neighbors would like to join her ,
although for more personal reasons. Mary McDowell of 555 Ocean
Ave. has refused to pay her
income tax.
Member of the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers — a group of individuals
scattered over the nation who withhold that part of their tax which they
believe will be used for armaments — Miss McDowell held back 70 percent.
Each year the tally grows. In , the elderly
teacher said, she deducted only 60 percent from her return.
it was 45 percent. It is her
custom to contribute the deducted amounts to the American Friends Service
Committee.
The Quaker lady has been fighting a war against war nearly all her life. She
started teaching in Brooklyn in but was
suspended from the school system because of her pacifist activities during World War Ⅰ.
Her defiance of the tax collector, Miss McDowell calls “the new patriotism.”
The popular idea, she said, holds up the soldier as a model of patriotism
but, against this, she matches her own method of “trying to prevent a
disaster to one’s country.”
Each year the U.S.
Government refuses to be persuaded and places a lien on her teacher’s
pension. Each year Miss McDowell tries, in the same way, to express her
belief that “war or threats of war cannot bring security.”
The Tax Refusers, she said, “strive not only to avoid assisting in
preparations for war, but also to point out constructive courses of action,
that will bring durable peace through human welfare, disarmament and solution
of world problems.”
Miss McDowell believes the great day of permanent peace “will come like
Spring,” suddenly but only as a result of slow preparation and a multitude of
just such efforts as her own small token resistance to the tax collector.
, McDowell was at it again, and
the Eagle was there:
Mary McDowell, 78, retired high school teacher of 555 Ocean
Ave.,
figured out her
Federal income tax.
It came to $300.
She promptly sent a check for $90 as her tax to the Internal Revenue Bureau.
“I’m paying only 30 percent of my tax,” she said
.” I refuse to pay the 70 percent
which goes for war purposes.”
She calls her tax defiance “the new patriotism.”
Miss McDowell is a member of the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers — a
group of individuals scattered over the nation who each year withhold part of
their tax which they believe will go for armaments.
she has withheld part of
her tax.
Each year the Government refuses to go along with her and it places a lien on
her teacher’s pension.
She is a Quaker and has been fighting against war all her life.
“War is contrary to Christian principles and is contrary to democratic
ideals,” she contends.
’s Picket Line
was all about Mary McDowell, but it also briefly mentioned three people
involved in the early years of the modern American war tax resistance movement
whom I hadn’t heard of before: Sander Katz, Edith Aldis, and Gerhard Friesen.
You’d think a name like “Sander Katz” would make for easy Googling, but in fact there is a “Sandor Katz” who is well-known today for, for instance, his fine do-it-yourself guide Wild Fermentation.
Google tends to want to assume you’re just misspelling his name if you try to hunt for “Sander Katz.”
Katz is listed as the editor of a collection of Freud’s essays “on war, sex,
and neurosis” with an introduction by
Paul Goodman.
He is also listed as one of two editors of Complex: The
Magazine of Psychoanalysis and Society (and he’d occasionally
contribute articles as well, for example: “Comparative Sexual Behavior: Is
orgasm for the human female normal?”). He was also on the editorial committee
of a magazine called Alternative that published
and was associated
with the “Non-Profit Association of Libertarians” and the “Committee for
Non-Violent Revolution.” Other members of that committee included war tax
resisters David Dellinger, Ralph DiGia, and Roy Kepler.
In , the syndicated columnist
Robert Ruark spent
several column inches denigrating Katz, who had just been sentenced to a one-year prison term for refusing to register for the
military draft (and then Ruark put out
another column’s worth when Katz was released eight months later).
“I know something about this particular rugged individualist,” Ruark wrote,
“who served 19 months in jail during the last war for refusal to report for
induction. His name is Sander Katz, and he is one of the long-hairs who stroll
the [Greenwich] Village streets, lost in reverie and a turtle-neck sweater.”
Katz was imprisoned because he said he opposed the draft on “social, political,
and philosophical grounds” and the law at that time only recognized
conscientious objection for religious reasons.
, Katz, along with several dozen
others, burned his draft card during a “Break With Conscription Committee”
demonstration in New York City. , Katz was arrested, along with several others, for picketing
at a draft registration center.
I found a few more newspaper articles about Edith Aldis, all based on the same
template. The Long Island Star-Journal of
for instance, which also
mentions Gerhard Friesen:
Topeka,
Kan.
(UP) — Kansas
Internal Revenue officials had two “conscientious objectors” on their hands
today when Miss Edith Aldis and the
Rev. Gerhard Friesen defied
federal income tax laws on grounds that “too much of the money goes for
military armament.”
Both have signed a statement issued by the Tax Refusal Committee of
Peacemakers, a pacifist movement with headquarters in New York.
Miss Aldis said she paid 10 per cent of her taxes, the amount estimated for
use for non-military spending. Friesen said he would pay only direct taxes on
the “principal of the thing,” because other levies are “a part of the plan to
destroy our country.”
I found a few more things about Friesen as well.
I even saw one mention of his war tax resistance (too brief to quote, alas) that said that he had begun resisting in !
Her father, she said, “was ahead of his time” in advocating war tax
resistance and speaking out at Mennonite conferences against profiteering
from the war economy. “His conscience would not let him support the military.”
She said her father would have approved the
action by the General Conference Mennonite Church to honor employee Cornelia
Lehn’s request to not have her income taxes withheld from her paychecks.
The Friesens practiced war tax resistance by living simply, giving generously,
and usually not earning enough to owe taxes.
Although as a youth she was embarrassed by her father’s outspokenness to
audiences unreceptive to his message, Martha embraced her parents’
convictions about Christian discipleship and peacemaking and taught them to
her children. She files tax returns but usually has a zero taxable income due
to living simply and giving 50 percent of her income to charity. She has also
advocated for the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund legislation.
Bethlehem,
Pa.
(AP) — In an action primarily protesting
U.S. military
policies, the General Conference Mennonites has became [sic.]
the first mainstream Christian church to refuse to withhold federal taxes
from employees’ paychecks.
Delegates to the church’s international convention
voted 1,128 to 457 to authorize
church officials to violate federal law by refusing to withhold federal taxes.
A denomination spokesman said the church has tried for four years to secure
legislative, administrative, and judicial approval for its employees to refuse
to pay their taxes as a protest against the use of the money for military
hardware.
A group of Quakers — the American Friends Service Committee — also has
refused to withhold taxes, according to Margaret Bacon, a spokeswoman for the
Philadelphia-based group. The AFSC provides world-wide relief and works for social change.
But Dean M. Kelley, director for religious and civil liberty of the National
Council of Churches, said none of the council’s 31 member denominations had
previously refused to forward employees’ taxes to the federal government.
The 66,000-member General Conference Mennonite Church and the 93,000-member
Mennonite Church are holding their international meetings this week at Lehigh
University. The conferences are the first time the two churches have ever met
together.
Larry Cornies, news director for the General Conference Mennonites, said the
church has been considering the issue of tax withholdings for five years.
The catalyst came in , when Cornelia Lehn,
then director of children’s education for the church, asked the church to not
withhold taxes from her paycheck, Cornies said. She has since retired to
British Colombia.
, the church has decided a
U.S. Supreme Court
test case would be unsuccessful and a tax withholding bill could not get
through Congress, he said.
Cornies said a bill to let taxpayers earmark their taxes for a World Peace Tax
Fund, to be used only for peaceful purposes, “doesn’t look like it’s got much
of a chance.”
The National Council’s Kelley said the only denominations considering refusal
to let taxes be withheld are the “peace churches” — the Mennonites, the Church
of the Brethren, and the Quakers.
“Most of the mainline denominations are not pacifist,” he said.
The Mennonites decided not to approach the Supreme Court after the justices
ruled against an Amish employer from New Wilmington,
Pa., who had refused to
withhold Social Security taxes from Amish employees.
“Then it gratuitously added something to the effect that ‘if we let this take
place, people would be able to insist that they were entitled to withhold
paying of taxes on expenditures they object to, such as war and armaments,’ ”
Kelley said.
The (Lexington, North
Carolina) Dispatch carried this shorter and slightly
different version of the report:
Bethlehem,
Pa.
(AP) — To
protest funding of
U.S. military
activity, the General Conference Mennonites have voted to refuse to withhold
federal taxes from employees’ paychecks.
Dean M. Kelley, director for religious and civil liberty of the National
Council of Churches, said the
66,000-member General Conference Mennonites are the only denomination
belonging to the council ever to have taken such action.
A Quaker group, the American Friends Service Committee, also refuses to
withhold employees’ federal taxes.
A spokesman for the pacifist General Conference Mennonites said the church
has tried for four years to secure legislative, administrative, and judicial
approval for its employees to refuse to pay their taxes as a protest against
use of the money for military hardware.
Delegates to the church’s international convention
voted 1,128 to 457 to authorize
church officials to violate federal law by stopping the withholding of federal
taxes.
Larry Cornies, news director for the General Conference Mennonites, said the
church began considering the issue in , when
Cornelia Lehn, then director of children’s education for the church, asked
that taxes not be withheld from her paycheck. Ms. Lehn has since retired to
Canada.
Gene Harris, spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service in Philadelphia, said
of the Mennonite’s vote: “It’s a violation of the law. If they actually do
that, they could be prosecuted in court. It’s happened before and the
IRS has
won the case. But they would have to be audited first.”
According to the Toledo Blade, it was
, not , when
the Conference began mulling over war tax resistance. Here is an article from
their edition:
Bluffton,
O. — The General
Conference Mennonite Church, holding its 41st
triennial conference here, passed a resolution
calling for “serious study
of civil disobedience and war tax resistance during the next 18 months.” The
vote was 1,178½ yes to 453½ no.
The conference Monday rejected a proposed amendment to the resolution that
would have allowed the denomination as an employer to refuse to withhold the
so-called “war portion” of an employee’s income tax, if the employee
requested it, during the 18-month study period.
The denomination employs about 50 persons at its Newton,
Kan., headquarters, Lois
Barrett, spokesman, said.
The resolution was drafted because one employee at the headquarters, Cornelia
Lehn, had requested that the
war-tax portion of her taxes not be withheld from her salary, making it
possible for her to “follow her conscience in this matter.”
The “war portion” refers to the percentage used by the Government for military
purposes, according to the resolution.
I haven’t yet visited any archives that hold material from the Peacemakers,
that group that coordinated the early modern American war tax resistance
movement beginning in the . But while I
was following another thread, I found the following article which gave the most
complete membership run-down of the tax refusal committee of Peacemakers that I
have yet seen:
43 Pacifists Won’t Pay U.S. Tax in Arms Protest
Special in The [Philadelphia] Inquirer and New York Herald Tribune
New York, . — Forty-three pacifists throughout the United States
declared that they would refuse to
pay all or a part of their Federal income taxes this year as a protest against
the Nation’s military expenditures.
The group, including a number of Quakers, conscientious objectors, and several
who have refused payment of taxes before, issued a statement through
Peacemakers, [a] national pacifist group with headquarters here, in which they
said:
“Believing that men are accountable for their actions, and that laws requiring
immoral acts should not be obeyed, we have after serious consideration
determined upon a course of civil disobedience with relation to the income tax
laws of the United States.”
Headed by Pastor
Forty-one of the tax refusers acted under a tax refusal committee of
Peacemakers, headed by
Rev. Ernest Bromley, of
Wilmington, O. Their
statement was issued by
Rev. A.J. Muste,
secretary of the organization, and also secretary of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. Mr. Muste, former director of the Presbyterian Labor Temple,
and one-time president of the defunct Brookwood Labor College at Katonah,
N.Y., has long been
known in the labor movement, and as a pacifist and campaigner against military
conscription.
Two additional persons were listed as tax refusers in a statement issued on
behalf of 11 Philadelphians by Walter C. Longstreth, Philadelphia lawyer. The
other nine were all included in the Peacemakers list.
Some Withhold 36.4 Pct.
Mr. Muste, who said he personally would refuse to pay any income taxes
, as he did
, declared that some of the signers would
follow his course of action; while others will withhold the 36.4 percent
estimated by the Bureau of the Budget as that portion of tax money expended
for military purposes.
Others on the list issued by the Peacemakers were:
Ross Anderson, of Portland
Ore.; B. Bargen, of Newton,
Kas.; Marilyn Blaise, religious
education director, New York City; Marion Bromley, of Wilmington,
O.; Lindley Burton, of Bryn Mawr,
Pa.; Horace Champney, of
Yellow Springs, O.; Miriam Keeler
Cornelius, labor economist, Washington
D.C.; Aleck
D. Dodd, clergyman, of Toledo, O.;
Margaret E. Dungan, of Wallingford,
Pa.; William Bacon Evans,
of Morrestown, N.J.;
Caleb Foote, of Arden, Del.;
Hope Foote, of Arden, Del.;
Marion C. Frenyear, clergyman, of Plainfield,
Mass.; Robert C. Friend,
religious education director, of Schenectady,
N.Y.; Walter Gormly, of
Mt. Vernon,
Ia.; J. William Hawkins, of
Winters, Calif.; Ammon
Hennacy, of Phoenix, Ariz.;
George M. Houser, of New York City; Sander Katz, of New York City; Raymond E.
Kinney, of Los Angeles; Emily Longstreth, of Philadelphia; Walter Longstreth,
of Philadelphia; Mary Bacon Mason, of Newton Center,
Mass.; Milton Mayer, of
Chicago; Mary McDowell, of Brooklyn,
N.Y.; Wallace Nelson, of
Cincinnati; James Peck, of New York City; Paula Beck, of New York City;
Caroline Philips, of Wilmington,
Del.; Lydia Philips, of
Wilmington, Del.; Grace
Rhoads, of Moorestown,
N.J.; Francis B. Riggs,
of Cambridge, Mass.;
Valerie Riggs, of Cambridge,
Mass.; Igal Roodenko, of
Bronx, N.Y.; Max Sandin,
of Cleveland; Laurence Scott, of Kansas City,
Mo.; Ralph Templin, of Yellow
Springs, O.; Louise Thomas, of
Cherry Valley, N.Y.; Mrs.
Caroline Urie, of Yellow Springs,
O.; Beverly White, of Wichita,
Kas..
Many of these names I’ve encountered before, but several were new to me.
There were fewer than 3,000 people living in Yellow Springs, Ohio at the time,
and three of them were among the 43 public war tax resisters in the United
States. I wonder what that was all about.
While I wasn’t paying attention, someone scanned in many back issues of Friends Bulletin, the journal of the Pacific Yearly Meeting and Pacific Coast Association of Friends.
This has allowed me another window onto the state of American war tax resistance, Quaker war tax resistance in particular, in .
Here, for example, from the issue, is an article on an early Peacemakers tax refusal pledge that includes a complete list of signatories, including several I hadn’t heard of before:
Tax Refusal
On there were among those who did not pay their Federal income taxes the following 59 persons who joined together to support a statement distributed by the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, 2013 Fifth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. Reverend Ernest Bromley is chairman of this subcommittee of Peacemakers: A.J. Muste is secretary of Peacemakers.
A part of their statement is: “Feeling that war must inevitably come unless something drastic is done by individuals to show their unwillingness to go along with war-making policies of their governments, we the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal income taxes due .
For some of us this means that we will not pay that percentage which corresponds to the nation’s outlay for militarism; for others of us it means we will not pay even the first cent for the maintenance of a government whose main business is preparation for annihilation…”
The signers were: Ernest and Marion Bromley, Golay Rd., Gano, Sharonville, Ohio; Lindley and Emma Burton, Low Buildings, Bryn Mawr, Pa.; Horace and Ava Champney, 512 Phillips St., Yellow Springs, O.; Sara Chase, 1525 Sutter St., San Francisco, Calif.; Samuel and Clarissa Cooper, 214 Eastbourne Terr., Moorestown, N.J.; Dorothy DaPonte, Rte. 4, Box 374, Mobile, Ala.; Margaret E. Dungan, Wallingford, Penna.; Arthur Evans, Awbury, Penna.; Rebecca Winsor Evans, Radnor, Penna.; Fyke Farmer, Bellevue Dr., Nashville, Tenn.; Rev. Marion Frenyear, So. Hartford, N.Y.; Henry and Beatrice Dyer, Yellow Springs, O.; Walter Gormly, 412 N. 3rd St., W., Mt. Vernon, Iowa; Konrad Halle, 76 Pinehurst Ave., New York 33, N.Y.
Gerald Haynes, R.R. No. 3, Freeport, Maine; Ammon Hennacy, Rte. 3, Box 227, Phoenix, Ariz.; Rev. George Houser, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Woodbridge O. Johnson, Jr., 106 W. 3rd St., Parkville, Mo.; Sandy Katz 232 W. 29th St., New York 1, N.Y.; Ruth C. LaBarrer, 6 Nutt Ave., Uniontown, Pa.; Sarah B. Leeds, 28 E. Main St., Moorestown, N.J.; Walter and Emily Longstreth, 140 N. 15th St., Philadelphia 2, Pa.; Mary Bacon Mason, 31 Pleasant St., Newton Center, Mass.; Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, 1111 Dayton St., Cincinnati 14, O.; Mary S. McDowell, 555 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn 26, N.Y.; Rev. A.J. Muste, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Ax Nelson, 501 Benvenue, Los Altos, Calif.; Wallace and Juanita Nelson, Golay Rd., in Gano, Sharonville, O.; Ray and Jean Olds, Yellow Springs, O.; Raymond F. Olds, Monterey, Mass.; Storrs F. Olds, Monterey Rd., Great Barrington, Mass.; Jim Otsuka, Rte. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Mrs. Gordon Parker, 1401 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.; Mabel G. Parker, 1804 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.;
James and Paula Peck, 552 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y., Miriam Pennypacker, 6420 Drexel Rd., Philadelphia 31, Pa.; Grace Rhoads, Box 90, Moorestown, N.J.; Elizabeth and Edward C.M. Richards, Nur Mahal, R.D. 3, West Chester, Pa.; Francis and Valerie Riggs, 23 Coolidge Hill Rd., Cambridge 38, Mass.; Margaret Schauffler, 100 S. Cedar St., Oberlin, O.; Robert and Marjorie Swann, R. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Ralph and Lila Templin, Box 125, Yellow Springs, O.; Caroline F. Urie, 128 S. Walnut St., Yellow Springs, O.; Ellen Winsor, Radnor, Pa.; Abraham and Jean Zwickel, P.O. Box 232, Pismo Beach, Calif.
And here’s an early example of a plea for a “peace tax”-style accommodation for conscientious objectors to military taxation, from the issue:
Tax Petition
On , in Whittier, Calif., there was combined with the annual meeting of the southern California office of the Fellowship of Reconciliation a program sponsored by the Peace Board of California Yearly Meeting.
One of the results of the day is the following petition:
To the Congress of the United States of America
We the undersigned citizens of the United States of America believe:
That present tensions between the free enterprise and communist group of nations are the result of reliance upon military force as an instrument of political determination;
That the threat or use of such force can never result in a just or mutually satisfactory resolution of these tensions;
That the labor and material expended in building up military might would have and still might lead to a peaceful and mutually satisfactory solution if used instead indiscriminately to rebuild the homes and industries destroyed in the last war.
We further believe:
That the military way violates the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and the Golden Rule by which a Christian must live.
That to supply the means to induce of compel another to do that which we cannot do is equally a violation of those Commandments.
Therefore relying on our Constitutional Bill of Rights which our nation is this week honoring, and the Right of Petition thereby guaranteed, we humbly pray your august body that you pass legislation exempting all of like religious belief from income tax to be used in support of military establishment and substitute the use of that portion of our tax which is to our total tax as the amount used for military is to the national total, to that committee of the United Nations seeking a peaceful abatement of these tensions, thus giving the citizens of the United States the opportunity of paying taxes for the support of war or peace according to the dictates of their own conscience.
