The Lewiston Evening Journal for carried Westbrook Pegler’s column boosting the U.S. Senate candidacy of upstart Vivien Kellems against the New England Republican establishment. (Kellems ran as an “Independent Republican” but got fewer than 5% of the votes of the winning Republican candidate.) Kellems was a tireless tax resister whose exploits have been recounted here before. The Pegler column includes some interesting notes on other conservative tax resistance actions of the time:
Vivien Kellems has been flapping around in planes year after year, making speeches against the income and withholding taxes and inciting women to patriotic rebellion. Nobody knows the history of the income tax better. The real rebellion of the time is led by women. The Marshall girls, of Marshall, Tex., refused to pay the baby-sitters’ tax. Vivien flew down to give them counsel and now Mrs. Winifred Furrh, of Marshall, reports that only 20,000 households out of 50,000 in the Dallas Internal Revenue district have even filed returns under this section.
From Bethel, Vermont comes a carbon copy of a Social Security return, proudly sent by Lucille Miller, a rebel against the Communist invasion up there. Across the face runs the loud defi: “Go to Hell, you cheap parasites!” The amount was $5.07.
In Summit, Miss., Mrs. Mary D. Cain, the editor of the weekly Sun, refused to pay Social Security, closed her bank account, announced that her husband wasn’t responsible for her debts and dared John Snyder, the secretary of the Treasury, to do something.
Lucille Miller also did time for encouraging military draft evasion in . The judge in the case declared her insane and ordered her locked up, and she was captured under a storm of tear gas after a brief siege of her house and not released until she won a federal court order. She was later found guilty of “18 counts of counseling young men to evade the Selective Service Act” and given a two-year suspended sentence. The U.S. Court of Appeals turned down her appeal.
She published a zine, The Green Mountain Rifleman, which is usually described as “anti-communist” in the press of the day, but I’ve also seen it referred to as anti-semitic. Having not seen any copies myself, it’s hard for me to say.
Winifred Furrh was one of the “Texas housewives” whose case I covered .
Texas Housewives In Tax Revolt — Federal warrants for refusing to pay social security taxes on wages of domestic help are studied in Marshall, Texas, by housewives (seated, l to r.) Mrs. Virginia Whelan and Mrs. Winifred Furrh; and standing, Mrs. Carolyn Abney (left) and Mrs. Etheldrea Spangler. Mrs. Abney spoke for the group, which includes 14 others, when she announced a “wait and see” policy in the dispute, involving only $54. The warrants authorize seizure of property. (International Soundphoto.)
