The protest meeting , in spite of the numerous counter-attractions offered to the public, must be chronicled as one of our successes.
The resolution
That this meeting protests with indignation against the vindictive sentences passed on voteless women, and especially that on Mrs. Harvey, and demands that the Government accord equal treatment to men and women under the law and under the constitution,
was carried from each platform, and the crowd appeared entirely sympathetic.…
Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard made the first speech…
A sentence of monstrous injustice had been passed on Mrs. Harvey.
She refused to pay the insurance tax.
Let her point out the inequality of the sentences passed on insurance resisters.
Mrs. Harvey was sued for a count of ten weeks, amounting to 5s. 5d. To this was added costs and special costs, till it mounted to £17. For refusing to pay a license for a man-servant she was further fined £22. But a man who defaulted for thirty-one weeks and, moreover, deceived his servants into the belief that all was straight, was fined 15s. We realise, therefore, that this is vindictive.
Mrs. Harvey was fined not for refusing to pay her tax but for being a rebel.
Mrs. Harvey was a woman who devoted her life to the help of others.
During the dockers’ strike she had taken into her own home three of the dockers’ children and cared for them as if they had been her own.
For the sake of justice — for the sake of our country’s reputation — she asked the people to help.
“I ask all men — workers or not — to send a card to Mr. McKenna, demanding Mrs. Harvey’s release.
Work for the time to come, when men and women shall stand together to make the world better, purer, happier and holier than that in which we are condemned to live.”
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden-Sanderson’s point was that Mrs. Harvey was worth of the vote as a human being.
She had worked for the great movement of universal brotherhood.
Even caddies were striking now against the Insurance Act.
But the caddies would have a vote one day, and Mrs. Harvey never.
She objected, naturally, to obey laws made without her consent; and if ever there was a law which touched women equally with men, and left them, in fact, in a worse position than men, that law was the Insurance Act.
Resistance to taxation is no new principle.
Mr. Harry de Passe, speaking next, said: “I only wish more people would protest against this insurance tax, which has been imposed against the people’s will.
The sending of a good woman to prison for refusal to pay makes it clear to us that we are living under a Government of compulsion.
It is this principle of compulsion that we must fight.
As for those who had the vote, let them not use it for the furtherance of bureaucratic legislation.
Let the privilege and monopoly everywhere be abolished, so that the people may come into their own and be delivered from the control of the expert.”
Miss Amy Hicks, M.A., who took the chair on No. 2 platform, said that Mrs. Harvey had been sent to Holloway Prison for two months for refusing to comply with the Insurance Act, and for refusing to pay the license in connection with her gardener, on the ground that taxation and representation ought to go together.
Miss Hicks then read the following message from Mr. [George] Lansbury, who was too unwell to speak at the meeting:—
“Please say that I hope every man and woman who really believes in freedom and justice will not rest until Mrs. Harvey is released.
It is perfectly monstrous that the law should be administered in the iniquitous manner it has been in her case.”
Mr. John Scurr said he had come to protest against the action of the Liberal Government in respect to women… Mrs. Harvey, in company with the rest of women, either taxpayers or working women, had not been consulted as to the National Health Insurance Act.
Although that Act has placed a poll tax of 3d. or 2d. on every woman who works or employs labour at all, they have neither been consulted as to whether they desired that tax, what the amount of that tax should be, or what should be the benefits given under the Act; therefore Mrs. Harvey contended that, as she had not been consulted, she under no circumstances was going to pay that tax.
(Hear hear.)
… They have given Mrs. Harvey two months in the second division — (shame) — because she refused to pay a fine three times more than that inflicted on any man, and they called this justice!
The same motion was also carried by another meeting:
Tax Resistance.
The meetings at Bromley continue to be satisfactory, and at night’s gathering in the Market-square the resolution carried on Trafalgar-square was put to the assembled crowd, and carried with only four dissentients.
A good many people, however, refrained from expressing an opinion either way.
The meeting was under the auspices of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, the speaker being Mrs. Emma Sproson, who is now, we are glad to say, once more able to take up Suffrage work.
Bromley gave her a cordial reception.
Another item in the same edition concerns another meeting about tax resistance:
Tax Resistance.
A most enthusiastic meeting was held in the Market-square, Bromley, Kent, on night in connection with the imprisonment of Mrs. Kate Harvey for non-payment of her insurance tax and license on manservant.
Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson, of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, was followed by two Californian ladies, Mrs. [Eliza] Wilks and Mrs. [Laura] Grover Smith, both of whom enjoy the vote in their own country and voted in the recent election for President Wilson.
Both the American speakers supported tax resistance as one of the best methods of protesting against the present injustices to women.
The crowd throughout was entirely sympathetic and vigorously applauded the speakers.
Popular sympathy is obviously with Mrs. Harvey.
Mrs. Wilks is a Unitarian minister, and has worked for the Suffrage for fifty years.
Two charges of contravention of the Revenue Act were made at the instance of the Officer of Customs and Excise against Dr. Grace Cadell, 145, Leith-walk, Edinburgh, the well-known Suffragette, in the Midlothian County Justice of the Peace Court this afternoon.
The Clerk of Court read a letter from Dr. Cadell, dated from London, stating that as she was not a person in the eyes of the law it was impossible for her to appear personally.
Mr. Henry Seex, Officer of the Customs and Excise, stated that Dr. Cadell kept two carriages, and only held a license for one.
She had been told about it, and refused to take out the license.
A fine of £2, with the option of ten days’ imprisonment, was imposed.
The second complaint was that she had armorial bearings painted on one of her carriages, and had taken out no license for the same.
She had had armorial bearings painted on her carriage for years, but this year she had refused to take out the necessary licenses.
When remonstrated with she had only replied that she was a Suffragette.
A fine of £3 3s. was imposed, which included the license, with the option of ten days’ imprisonment.
An editorial by C. Nina Boyle in the same issue gave a criticism of government and taxation that was more radical than just the basic no-taxation-without-representation argument common to women’s suffrage tax resistance:
“False and Fraudulent Pretenses.”
People who “obtain money by false and fraudulent pretenses” frequently find themselves in the dock answering for their unhandsome doings before a jury of their fellow-men.
The ordinary man is supposed to have a prejudice against being defrauded; the law is supposed to protect him against it; the public is supposed to approve of such prosecutions and to be ready to assist the law in its pursuit of the misdemeanant.
What causes surprise, under these suppositious circumstances, is to note the very large class of persons who obtain money by false and fraudulent pretenses who never reach the dock at all, and the apathy of that other class which never makes any attempt to put them there.
The class known vaguely but comprehensively as “the authorities,” for instance, is never put in the dock to answer for its abuse of public trust and squandering of public money.
Yet it has earned that guerdon as fully and as conscientiously as the absconding clerk, the bogus company promoter, the false trustee, and the confidence-trick man.
Why do not “the authorities” reap the same reward as those other malefactors?
We wonder why not?
Mrs. Harvey is in Holloway because she will no longer consentingly give her money to dishonest trustees to handle for her.
She has been adjudged “guilty” of a crime which is in reality no crime, but a public service.
She has set an example of watchfulness in the nation’s interests that others would do well to follow.
She not only will not pay for what she may not choose; she will not pay for inferior goods, for bad service, foisted on her without her consent, by false and fraudulent pretenses.
What is it we pay for? In the taxes and duties levied on the population right down to the poorest and humblest of all — who pay through their tea and sugar and the very necessaries of life — there is a vested right to a good return and to honest and able management.
These paid servants of ours — the Cabinet, the House of Commons, the Army and Navy, the Civil Service — represent the skilled labour of national employment.
Some of them get the highest skilled wages paid.
It is only the exception when skilled work is given in return for those wages.
The legal advisers of the Government, one way and another, draw some £45,000 a year.
The Attorney-General, besides his £7,000 a year, is entitled to charge a daily fee when put on to a job.
The other is only a waiting fee.
The result has been that one of the Government’s chief measures had to be withdrawn because it was not in order and did not comply with the rules; and a few days before the close of the Session a Government amendment of more than ordinary importance, affecting the shameful taxing of married women’s incomes, had to be dropped for the same reason.
These two measures both were of deep importance to women.
One was to have an amendment granting to women the rights of their citizenship; the other was to give them relief from an entirely illegal form of levying taxes on their incomes.
Both attempts at remedying injustice failed because of the incompetence of the Law Officers of the Crown.
Women are still to be refused the benefits of the Married Women’s Property Act when it comes to taxation, and over two millions of unlawful booty are still to be collected and disposed of by those guilty of false and fraudulent pretenses.
No wonder Mrs. Harvey goes to prison sooner than let them spend money of hers!
The President of the Board of Trade draws £5,000 a year.
He has under him inspectors who hold inquiries and make reports, and occasionally a Commission is appointed to make a special report.
Such a report was made, at great expense, about two years ago.
It was then pigeon-holed — a common fate of reports.
Then the Titanic went down, and another Commission sat.
This one cost upwards of £30,000. The Attorney-General cut in and drew his fees, and the Solicitor-General did likewise.
Then it transpired that there had been the former Commission and that its report had been pigeon-holed.
Had its report been carried out, the mortality from the Titanic disaster would in all probability have been less.
The public paid for both Commissions, both reports; and it paid more — the list of casualties.
The Board of Trade is conducting another inquiry now.
Major Pringle is inquiring into the Aisgill disaster, just as three years ago he inquired into the Hawes Junction disaster.
The recommendation made then was that electricity rather than oil-gas should be used for lighting.
The railway boards smiled courteously; the Board of Trade responded in kind; the same recommendation will now be made again.
Women and children have paid with their lives for the false and fraudulent dealings of the Board of Trade, whose duty it is to maintain and to introduce safeguards up-to-date for those who travel by land and by water.
Small wonder that some women are refusing to pay these “wicked and slothful servants.”
There was a fire at Messrs.
Arding and Hobbs.
Nine girl children were roasted to death on the roof or smashed to pulp on the pavement.
It transpired that young lads monkeyed around among the piled heaps of celluloid with gas-rings and blazing sealing-wax.
L.C.C. inspectors had said nothing; the manager pooh-poohed fire-drill as farcical.
No report of this scandalous neglect ever reached the L.C.C. through its inspectors.
There was another fire at John Barker’s. Five more girls frizzled to death in that outbreak; and it transpired that only a trifle over 500 of the thousands of London firms that keep young employees on the premises had complied with the L.C.C. regulations of , regarding precautions against fire.
Women are only allowed to vote in proportion of one to every seven men in local government; they cannot turn out these inspectors, and can bring but little influence to bear, for the elections are run on party lines.
The power above the L.C.C. is the Cabinet.
No London County Councillors have been put in the dock.
The Cabinet is composed of persons who at divers and sundry times perambulate the country with their cohorts of supporters and parasites, telling the gullible public, with an unparalleled effrontery of bluff, that in their hands the finances, interests, and persons of the community will be safe.
Other sets of politicians also go on circuit giving this a flat denial and upholding their own peculiar political pills and potions and panaceas.
Sometimes the winners call themselves Unionist, sometimes Liberal; they are equally false and fraudulent in their pretenses.
They draw large salaries for themselves, secure office, titles and pensions for their following; make shameless inroads for their own advantage into the public purse entrusted to their keeping, and misadminister the bulk with a recklessness only equalled by its ineptitude and inefficiency.
Commissions sit eternally, for no apparent object but to enable commissioners to draw fees.
The Housing Commission that sat at Birmingham denounced the “back-to-back” design; but houses are still built on the “back-to-back” plan in Birmingham.
The Poor Law Commission presented a Majority and a Minority Report.
Neither have been acted on, and Mr. John Burns is now upholding and extending the crying evils that the Commission sat to remedy.
The Commission on the Jury System sat for months and months; its report gave no relief to sufferers and no promise of justice; but even what it did recommend goes unheeded.
The Divorce Commission’s Report is waste paper; its only result, a private member’s Bill, with no ghost of a chance to obtain time or consideration, let alone a third reading.
The legal advisers help the Cabinet to frame laws, and the legal members of the House discuss and amend them, with the result that no one knows what they mean until other legal gentlemen, or the same ones, have been paid a second time to discuss them before a judge and jury, who must also be paid to say what they eventually do men.
The public pays three times over in this business of law-making; is it any wonder that some women are rising up to say they will pay no more until they have power to ensure more efficiency?
Nay, is it not far more amazing that they have not done so long ere this?
The Government is the Great Fraud of the age.
It and its supporters, with their false and fraudulent pretenses, cannot even govern.
No one will pretend, in this the twentieth century, that “government” is rightly interpreted as mere coercion, repression, or exhibition of force.
Government that is good, government, above all, that claims to be “representative,” must be based on the goodwill of those governed.
The Government does not exist for one set or one class or one portion alone.
No matter who elects it, no matter what its name, party or politics, all the community has an equal claim on it.
Unrest in any direction should enforce on a Government the duty, the necessity, of immediate attention to that unrest, and an endeavour to remove the cause in some fashion that will allay the unrest without causing undue friction elsewhere.
None of our governments do this.
It is the fashion in governing circles to allow unrest to simmer, boil over and create uproar and outrage; upon which police, military, and specially enrolled forces are most improperly burdened with the task of quelling riot and keeping order.
Governments that cannot govern, that delegate their proper functions to subordinate institutions, that prate of the voice of the people and the mandate of the people and the welfare of the people, but heed none of these things until driven to do so by outbreaks of violence; that keep office but neglect their work; that take pay and do not earn it, are an anachronism.
They obtain and keep their power by a system of false and fraudulent pretenses; and just as it is said in our little wars that “regrettable incidents” will continue to occur until one or two generals have been hanged, so lives will be sacrificed, children demoralised, and the people robbed wholesale, until some of the “managing directors” of our national firm make their appearance in the dock charged with obtaining money by false and fraudulent pretenses, or some other charge that will properly describe their crime.
Meanwhile women should not pay their national contributions; Mrs. Harvey will not do so; the goods are not worth the money.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League has decided to hold a protest meeting in
Hyde-park at , to express indignation at the imprisonment of Mrs. Kate
Harvey, who has for conscientious reasons refused to subscribe to the tyranny
of unrepresentative government. The speakers will be Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton
Parkes, Mr. H.W. Nevinson, and others.
we are holding an Indignation
meeting at Caxton Hall, the indignation expressed to be generally against the
Government, non-representation, mis-representation and imprisonment of
voteless women, and particularly against the sentence of two months’
imprisonment in the second division, which Mrs. Harvey is now serving in
Holloway because of her refusal to comply with the regulations of the
Insurance Act passed over the heads of women without consulting women. The
speakers will be Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard, Mrs. Kineton Parkes (of the
Women’s Tax Resistance League), Mrs. Mustard, and Mr. John Scurr. The chair
will be taken by Miss Nina Boyle at . Admission is free, and there will be no reserved seats. This
is the first of a series of political meetings to be held by the Women’s
Freedom League during the Parliamentary recess.…
At a public meeting held in Market-place, Bromley, Kent, on
, the following resolution was put
and carried with one dissentient:— “This meeting expresses deep indignation
at the imprisonment of Mrs. Harvey for non-payment of Imperial taxes, demands
her immediate release, and further demands that the Government act in
accordance with its own principles, and introduce a measure for Votes for
Women without delay.”
Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, reminds
us that Miss [Ethel] Sargant, the first woman to be appointed president of a
section of the British Association, is a keen Suffragist, and has worked for
the National Union for many years, being president of their Tunbridge Wells
Branch. She is also a tax-resister, and had goods seized and sold by public
auction in Cambridge this spring, and is sister to Mrs. [Mary] Sargant
Florence, the well-known decorative artist, one of the founders of the
Women’s Tax Resistance League.
A splendid open-air meeting, to protest against Mrs. Harvey’s imprisonment,
was held on at the Mound. We were
fortunate in having in the chair
Dr. Grace Cadell, who is
herself at this moment a “concrete example” of the form of militancy for
which Mrs. Harvey is suffering.
Dr. Cadell’s inability to
“appear personally” in court, as she is not a person, has been greatly
appreciated locally, but fortunately it does not extend to Suffrage
platforms!…
The release of Mr. Mark Wilks, under precisely the same circumstances as the release of Miss [Clemence] Housman — that is to say, after a futile imprisonment, a series of defiant suffrage demonstrations, and with no sort of official explanation — is a triumph for the Women’s Tax Resistance League, the W.F.L., and the various men’s association[s] that helped to conduct the protest campaign.
It is more than a triumph; it is an object lesson in how not to do things.
To incarcerate a helpless and innocent man for his wife’s principles, knowing that that wife was one of a movement that never strikes its colours, was foolish on the face of it.
(That it was also unjust is a matter which we recognise to be of little consequence in the eyes of those who make and administer our law).
But to let him out without rhyme or reason seems foolishness of so low a degree that it is only to be described as past all understanding.
One is reminded of the genial duffer who protested that he might be an ass, but he was not a silly ass.
Our highest authorities are not so particular about their reputations as the stage idiot.
The Pity of It.
Yet we are all set wondering what is behind it all.
Is it a contempt so great for the intelligence of the public on which they batten which makes our rulers so unconcerned about even the appearance of wisdom or consistency?
Or is it sheer contempt for women which makes them bully, badger, and torture in turns, and then dismiss the matter as of not sufficient importance to pursue?
It is too easy and flattering a solution to determine that ministers have been impressed by the women’s resolute defiance.
It hardly accounts for the milk in the cocoanut.
Nothing, for instance, would have been easier than to give Mrs. [Mary] Leigh and Miss Evans first-class treatment, and keep them in durance for months and years!
The release of the latter lady at the same time as Mr. Wilks points, we sadly fear, not to an intelligent appreciation of the gathering forces of progress and humanity, but a cruel and callous disregard of wisdom, righteousness, and decency.
If this be “representative” government, it is a sorry testimonial to the worth of the [sic] those represented.
Terminological…?
No tale appears too farcical to present to the tax-payers on behalf of the Government.
One explanation that has been seriously offered, with a view to relieving the Chancellor of the Exchequer from any odium that may be incurred by those responsible for the Wilks imbroglio, is as follows: “The Chancellor knew nothing of the case.
His official correspondence followed him during his recent Welsh peregrinations, missing him everywhere, and only catching him up on his return to London, where he at once ordered a meeting of the Board of Inland Revenue, on whose report (unpublished) he acted promptly.”
Now this is a little too thin.
Wanted, a Good Lie.
The political and militant organiser of the W.F.L., who pens these lines, has to confess with emotion that during recent wanderings in the fastnesses of the Land of George, certain correspondence, re-addressed to divers and sundry humble cottages in mean streets, did indubitably go astray.
But the political and militant organiser is not a world-renowned personage who on occasion has been reduced to the Royal necessity of travelling incognito.
The more than Royal progress of the Carsons and the Georges does not lend itself to these subterfuges; and we feel inclined to give the Chancellor the advice addressed by a too intelligent master to a schoolboy of our acquaintance, whose effort at explanatory romance was not convincing: “No, no, George, my lad; that doesn’t sound likely.
Run away and think of something better.”
In consequence of the release of Mr. Mark Wilks, a sprightly account of which appeared in The Evening Standard, the proposed demonstration on Trafalgar-square was not held by the Women’s Tax-Resistance League .
The main issues which have been brought forward by this new phase of the struggle are:— “That the present irregular method of administering the Income-tax and Married Women’s Property Acts amount to a penalty on matrimony; that the relief afforded to persons of limited income is unjustly and illegally filched from them; and that the Tax Resistance campaign has for one of its objects the determination to secure to the public one million and a half of money which is at present improperly diverted from the pockets of the people to the Government coffers.
It took a woman expert — Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie — to fathom the real meaning of the law as it is administered to-day; and it is some considerable time since she expressed the opinion, and was laughed at by male legal experts for so doing, that the situation which actually arose was possible.
At Bolton.
A tax-resistance meeting was held at Bolton on , at which Mr. Isaac Edwards presided, the speakers being Miss Hicks and Mrs. Williamson-Forrestier.
The meeting was a public one, explaining the policy and principle of Tax Resistance, and was well attended.
The goods of Mrs. Fyffe, hon. treasurer of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, member of committee of the Horsham and South Kensington Branches of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, and hon. secretary of the London “Common Cause” Selling Corps, have been seized for tax resistance, and will be sold on , at Whiteley’s Auction Rooms, Westbourne-grove.
A procession will form up at Roxburghe Mansion, Kensington-court, at and start at going to the corner of Westbourne-grove and Chepstow-place, where a Protest Meeting will be held.
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, and others will speak.
The procession will then go on to the sale.
It is hoped that as many members of the Freedom League and other Suffragists as can will support Mrs. Fyffe by walking in the procession and attending the sale.
Mrs. Fyffe, who is an ardent Tax Resister, was presiding at a meeting of the Kensington branch of the National Union (London Society) at her own house, when the bailiffs arrived to distrain on her goods.
It was a novel experience for the non-militant ladies!
Pleasant Amenities.
Mrs. Louis Fagan, summoned at West London Police-court for non-payment of taxes in respect of motor-car, man-servant, and armorial bearings, had quite a merry dialogue with the presiding genius, Mr. Fordham, who waxed — might one say waggish?
— during the encounter.
After refusing to discuss her “conscientious objections” — while in no way belittling them — he imposed a penalty of 20s. and 2s. costs in respect of the man-servant; £10 2s. costs in respect of the motor-car; and 2s. 6d. for the armorial bearings.
Mrs. Fagan represented that her conscientious objection included fines as well as taxes, and he expressed regret at having no alternative to offer save imprisonment.
“I shall sentence you to a month,” he said, “but you won’t do it, of course — you ladies never do.
If I really wanted you to have a month, I should have to call it five years!”
With such little pleasantries the affair passed off in the happiest manner; and Mr. Fordham was equally obliging in fixing the time for the distraint on Mrs. Fagan’s goods “at the earliest possible moment,” to suit the lady’s convenience.
The goods were seized on ; and all Women’s Freedom League members who know anything of the way in which the sister society organises these matters should attend the sale in the certainty of enjoying a really telling demonstration.
Mr. Lansbury’s Chivalry
At a meeting held in the Hackney Town Hall on to demand the release of Mr. Mark Wilks, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks and the Rev. Fleming Williams, who were received with enthusiasm, both addressed the audience, and a resolution of protest was carried unanimously.
The stirring speech given by Mr. [George] Lansbury contained valuable hints for Suffragists.
“Parliament,” he said, “did not do more for the cause of the women because the women did not make themselves felt sufficiently.
If, instead of remaining Liberal, Conservative, or Socialists, they went on strike against the politicians, they would get what they wanted.
“Many years ago, Mr. Lansbury continued, he had believed in the honesty of politicians, and in the sincerity of political warfare, but much water had flowed under the bridges since then, and many new ideas had gone through his head.
What was of most importance to the women of this country was not politics — whether Tory or Liberal — but the emancipation of their sex.
“The imprisonment of Mark Wilks, though it might be a laughing matter to the daily Press, was no laughing matter for the man imprisoned.
It was a jolly hard thing for Mr. Wilks.
He believed that if the working-class women of this country could be got to realise that his was no mere fight for a vote, but a fight for their complete emancipation, they would soon get this sort of thing altered.”
Resistance in Scotland
The Glasgow Herald tells us that:— “Dr. Grace Cadell, Leith, has, as a protest against the non-enfranchisement of women, refused to pay inhabited house duty on a property belonging to her in Edinburgh.
Several articles of her furniture have been poinded to meet the amount of the tax, about £2, but so far the authorities have not taken these away.”
We are also expecting news of the distraint on Miss Janet Bunten’s property for the same reason.
Miss Bunten, Hon. Sec. of the Glasgow Branch, has already lost goods in this manner, and has also been sentenced to imprisonment for refusal to pay dog license or fine in default.
The other day a woman, an utter stranger to me, came into the office to seek advice.
She was a pale, worried little creature, and had a little blind child.
Her trouble was that she had had to leave her husband on account of his brutality — he seemed to be a thoroughly bad lot — and had returned to her parents with the child.
She never saw her husband, nor received any money from him, but he was getting her Income-tax repaid to him.
Her income was very small, and she needed it all for herself and her child, and asked how this procedure could be stopped and the money obtained for her own wants.
I could only tell her that nothing could be done, as the law held that her income belonged to her husband, on hearing which, she broke down and sobbed bitterly, saying she had thought that women might be able to help her.
These are cases one hears of every week, but the Press remains conveniently silently about such, and reserves all its sympathies for the “wronged” husband.
These repayments often amount to quite respectable sums, perhaps as much as £40 or £50, for a three years claim.
I must say that personally it is terribly distasteful to me, when I have recovered tax deducted from a married woman’s income, to be obliged to draw the cheques in favour of her husband, though morally the money is hers.
Yet this is what I am forced to do for my own protection, as, if I handed the money to its real owner, I should still have to pay it to the husband in addition.
He could sue me in the County Court for it, or I might perhaps be charged with “feloniously misappropriating” his money, if I dared to hand it to the wife.
The isolated case of Mr. Wilks is a relatively small matter when compared with numerous cases of defrauded wives.
Mr. Wilks, being released, will have saved £40 by imprisonment, and lots of these wives would joyfully do a few weeks in Holloway, if thereby they could save their money.
What we want to do is to get the law altered, and the Married Women’s Property Act recognised by the Crown, so that marriage shall not involve the brand of “idiocy” and a financial penalty for a woman.
But there seems to be a general impression abroad that the only injustice lies in Mr. Wilks being imprisoned, and not in the law being as it is; and that as he has been got out, that will be the end of the whole thing, and nobody need trouble about it or make any further fuss, unless and until another husband finds himself held liable for tax on his wife’s income, and put in prison for not paying it.
Whether people are Suffragists or Anti’s or neutrals, it is equally to their interest to get the law brought up-to-date.
The Anti husband of an Anti wife might quite as easily find himself in Mr. Wilks’ position, and “tax-resistance” has nothing to do with it, because Income-tax on a wife’s income may be demanded from a husband quite without his wife’s knowledge.
There is a case going on at the present time where 2s. 8d. is being demanded from a man for Income-tax on some Consols which the authorities state are held by his wife.
She has never been asked to pay it, and is not even aware that it is being demanded from him.
He disputes paying it on the ground that he has no evidence that she possesses any Consols, as he has never asked her anything about her means and never intends to do so.
He has formally appealed against the charge, and at the hearing of the appeal his wife’s name was not mentioned, nor her existence even referred to, as the Consols in question are legally deemed to be in his possession.
This husband will doubtless be put in prison in due course.
He contends, quite logically, that if he is held liable for the tax on one of his wife’s investments, he ought to be held equally liable for the tax on all of her other investments, and while the whole position remains so unsatisfactory and anomalous he will pay nothing and do nothing, but will remain simply passive.
At the hearing of the appeal two highly-paid Special Commissioners, drawing, I believe, at least £1,000 a year each, sat to consider the matter.
There was also present a Surveyor of Taxes, who had come up on purpose from Brighton at the public expense, the appellant and his legal representative (myself).
This gentleman and I wasted our valuable time, and the three Revenue officials wasted their time (and the public’s money) for upwards of an hour, discussing a matter involving 2s. 8d., and the existence or non-existence of some Consols which none of the persons present knew anything about.
There were also one or two clerks who took everything down; and altogether it was a most amusing demonstration of the methods of the Circumlocution Office, and the sublime art of How Not To Do It.
Numbers of married women invest their money in order to escape from the anomalies of the Income-tax Act, so some day we may see an equal number of husbands being called upon to pay tax on these investments (which they know nothing about), and ultimately getting locked up sine die.
When men in considerable numbers begin to feel the shoe pinching, probably some serious effort will be made to amend the law.
A number of members of the Women’s Tax Resistance and Men’s League rallied at Messrs.
Harding’s sale-rooms, Wilton-street, Victoria, , to support Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan in her protest on behalf of unrepresented tax-payers.
A diamond ring has been impounded, and was the first item on the catalogue.
Mrs. Fagan took advantage of the opportunity afforded to make a very telling statement of her position in respect of paying for the upkeep of unrepresentative government.
The ring was brought in by Miss [Gertrude?]
Eaton, and the “protestors” repaired to a handy pitch, where a street-corner meeting was held at which Mr. Sergeant presided, and Mrs. Fagan spoke again from a dog-cart decorated with the brown and black of the W.T.R.L. Mrs. Fagan called attention to the fact that she was not an habitual offender by stating that her recent appearance before Mr. Fordham was the first, and that it was the women who were not in such urgent need of the vote who were coming out to fight for the right to help the others.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes made one of her lucid and logical appeals, and the following resolution was passed:— “That this meeting protests against the seizure and sale of Mrs. Louis Fagan’s goods, and is of opinion that the tax-paying women of this country are justified in refusing to pay all Imperial taxes until they are allowed a voice in deciding how those large sums of money shall be spent.”
The light relief was supplied by an irate dame who scolded Mrs. Fagan for not keeping to her place “in the home,” which brought down on her devoted but misguided head the remark that if that was how she felt, it was strange that she should not be there herself instead of at the meeting.
Sold at the Cross.
A “roup” was held at Mercat Cross of the seized goods of Dr. Grace Cadell, of Leith-walk, Edinburgh, who is also “out” against taxation without representation.
Dr. Cadell and her friends arrived on the scene of action in a decorated dray, and a large crowd assembled, which was addressed at the sale and at a subsequent meeting in Parliament-square, by the undaunted resister, and by Miss M. Burn Murdock.
To-Day’s Sale.
Mrs. Fyffe’s goods will be sold for Tax Resistance , at Whiteley’s Auction Rooms, Westbourne-grove, about A procession will start at from Roxburghe Mansion, Kensington-court, to Westbourne-grove, where a Protest Meeting will be held at the corner of Chepstow-place, and the speakers will be Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Louis Fagan, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Rev. Charles Baumgarten (Rector of St. George’s, Bloomsbury), and Mr. Laurence Housman, if he arrives in time from the North.
Mrs. Fyffe hopes that all who can will come and walk with her and attend the meeting and sale.
Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.
…
At the monthly meeting of the Executive Committee of the Men’s League the following resolution was passed on the motion of Dr. Drysdale, seconded by Mr. J.M. Mitchell:—
“The Executive Committee of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage desires to record its sympathy with Mr. Mark Wilks in his imprisonment, and to point out that this imprisonment is the logical outcome of the law of coverture and of the non-recognition of women as responsible citizens.
In the interests, therefore, of men as well as women, it calls for the immediate enfranchisement of women, and for such alteration of the law as shall put women on an equality with men, as regards both the rights and duties of citizenship and responsibility before the law.”
