How you can resist funding the government →
the tax resistance movement →
birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement →
Mary S. McDowell
I like the “non-Communist demonstrators” bit.
From the New York Times (excerpt):
In a faint protest against tax funds going for military spending, ten non-Communist demonstrators picketed the office of the Third Internal Revenue District at 110 East Forty-fifth Street and reported that forty-one persons in the nation were refusing to pay part of their income taxes because of objections to arming.
The anti-war pickets at the Third District, who paraded , called themselves the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers with headquarters at 2013 Fifth Avenue.
They distributed leaflets saying that the “real crime in connection with the Bureau of Internal Revenue” is not corruption but collection of money for “preparations for mass murder — for a third world war.”
Among the forty-one Americans listed as refusing to pay part of their taxes as an anti-arms protest were the Rev. A.J. Muste and the Rev. George M. Houser, both officers of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group; James Peck, a restaurant worker, of 552 Riverside Drive, and his wife, and Miss Mary S. McDowell, a retired school teacher, of 555 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn.
Mr. Hoffman said his district had received “maybe a dozen” letters from taxpayers declaring that they were paying only 45 per cent of their taxes, to cover non-arms parts of the Federal budget.
The collector reported that the office would bill them for the rest and attach their property is [sic] necessary.
Some of these names are pretty new to me.
George M. Houser I think is still around, and you can find some stuff on line about him and his long career in activism.
In reply to your notice of that I owe… 246.28… I believe that war is wicked and contrary to our democratic faith… and it is also contrary to our Christian faith which teaches us to overcome evil with good.
Moreover, in the atomic age and in an interdependent world, even victorious war could only bring disaster to our own country as well as others.
War preparations and threats of atomic war cannot give us security.
True patriotism calls for world-wide cooperation for human welfare and immediate steps toward universal disarmament through the United Nations.
Accordingly, I still refuse to pay the 70% of the tax which I calculate is the proportion of the tax used for present and future wars.
The portion used for civilian welfare I am glad to pay.
Among James Peck’s other adventures in pacifist agitation included a three-year stint in prison as a draft resister during World War Ⅱ, piloting a sailboat into a nuclear weapons testing zone in the Pacific to try to disrupt the tests, engaging in the Freedom Rides and attempts to integrate restaurants in the South, and disrupting an event where President Lyndon Johnson was scheduled to accept the “National Freedom Award” from the U.S.-government funded group Freedom House to give him lip about Vietnam.
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.
In , Quaker Meetings were still wrestling with whether to go on the record in support of war tax resistance, and, if so, whether to do so in an explicit, uncompromising way, or one that played it safe and left a lot of wiggle room.
In an op-ed in the issue of the Friends Journal, Nadine Hoover urged Quaker Meetings to take a concrete stand opposing the payment of war taxes:
Should War Tax Resistance be a Corporate Testimony?
At New York Yearly Meeting in , I was given a message: The Spirit calls Friends to claim a corporate testimony against the payment of war taxes and participation in war in any form.
Of course, we have had a testimony against war since George Fox’s declaration to Charles Ⅱ in :
Our principle is, and our practices have always been, to seek peace, and ensue it, and to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all.
All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world.
Yet there is what British Friends in Quaker Faith and Practice call “Dilemmas of the Pacifist Stand” (24.21–24.26), which opens with a quote from Isaac Penington, :
I speak not against the magistrates or peoples defending themselves against foreign invasions; or making use of the sword to suppress the violent and evil-doers within our borders — for this the present estate of things may and doth require, and a great blessing will attend the sword where it is borne uprightly to that end and its use will be honourable — but yet there is a better state, which the Lord hath already brought some into, and which nations are to expect and to travel towards.
There is to be a time when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.”
When the power of the Gospel spreads over the whole earth, thus shall it be throughout the earth, and, where the power of the Spirit takes hold of and overcomes any heart at present, thus will it be at present with that heart.
This blessed state, which shall be brought fotth [in society] at large in God’s season, must begin in the particulars [that is, in individuals].
New York Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice, under which I currently reside, advises (p. 60–61):
Friends are earnestly cautioned against the taking of arms against any person, since “all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons” are contrary to our Christian testimony.
Friends should beware of supporting preparations for war even indirectly, and should examine in this light such matters as noncombatant military service, cooperation with conscription, employment or investment in war industries, and voluntary payment of war taxes.
When their actions are carefully considered, Friends must be prepared to accept the consequences of their convictions.
Friends are advised to maintain our testimony against war by endeavoring to exert an influence in favor of peaceful principles and the settlement of all differences by peaceful methods.
They should lend support to all that strengthens international friendship and understanding and give active help to movements that substitute cooperation and justice for force and intimidation.
NYYM
corporately advises against taking up arms against another person, yet more vaguely warns to “beware of” voluntary payment of war taxes.
The yearly meeting calls Friends to examine their own actions and “accept the consequences of their convictions” (emphasis is mine).
This is about individual conviction, not the corporate conviction we have against bearing of arms. We are squarely in the Penington tradition of advising Friends to testify against war by “endeavoring to exert an influence in favor of peaceful principles.”
We commit to the conversion of hearts and minds, one at a time, “seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all.”
Patience and persistence are employed in our participation with government.
As late as , it even seemed that our experiment would come to fruition.
Larry Apsey of New York Yearly Meeting called out, “the time is at hand.”
The Gandhian, civil rights, and women’s movements made it clear that patience and persistence were about to pay off; we were about to come into this blessed state, not just as a people, but as a nation.
What a far cry we are from that now!
Fruits of the Spirit are a significant test of discernment for Friends, a test that our path has failed.
We cannot put new wine into old wine flasks.
We cannot be in that blessed state and support a military for those who have not yet arrived.
We are called to choose, we are called to choose now, and we are called to choose as a people.
When we get quiet, every Friend I know says that payment of war taxes violates their conscience.
It’s been a long time since we acknowledged a new corporate testimony; this practice has fallen away.
So let us remember.
Friends experience a Living Presence among us and commit to being taught, guided, and shaped by the Living Spirit, placing great reliance on spiritual discernment.
Meeting for business was organized to test the spiritual discernment of its members, affirm or suggest further laboring, and support those suffering for conscience’ sake.
If a Friend’s testimony were affirmed, the question was, “Is this true for them alone, for others as well, or for all of us?”
If it were true for everyone, then it was a corporate testimony.
If we are quiet and ask the question, “Does the payment of war taxes violate my conscience?” and the response is yes for all of us, then, Friends, this is no longer a personal act of conscience but rather a corporate testimony of the meeting.
I am not suggesting we all do any particular thing.
I am asking a question of faith.
What we do about it will only be sought once we are clear on what we believe.
We may pay in protest, become vocal, or resist payment, but whatever we do, we do, not only as an individual, but also as a religious body.
The Spirit is calling us to unite in the Power of the Living Spirit to give life, joy, peace, and prosperity in the world through love, integrity, and compassionate justice among people and to acknowledge that paying for war violates our religious conviction.
It will be a long, hard, humble road, but it is the only road that promises a future for humanity.
Life will go on with or without us.
Let us stand up for our children and grandchildren and say we chose peace.
The response to Hoover’s plea — at least from the record of it we have in the Journal — was muted.
There was a single letter-to-the-editor from William Ashworth (who describes himself as a former war tax refuser) in the issue that began: “Friend Nadine Hoover asks us if war tax resistance should be a corporate testimony among Friends.
The answer is ‘no.’ ” Ashworth argues that because taxes are mixed, and not specific war taxes, there’s no grounds for refusal to pay; furthermore if we did refuse to pay, Congress would probably cut beneficial spending before military spending; and in addition there’s the familiar slippery slope argument wherein other churches might apply the Quaker precedent to refuse to pay for “family planning, education, environmental protection, and a host of other government services that we value.”
A feature on Lillian Willoughby in the issue mentioned her war tax resistance as follows:
By the time of [the] Vietnam [war], Lillian, a lifelong tax resister, had become well acquainted with the Internal Revenue Service; she liked to speak of herself as “educating the IRS.”
In one celebrated incident, after the IRS seized the Willoughbys’ car, the couple raised sufficient funds to redeem it at auction.
Indeed, they raised much more than enough, and so they could claim their car and a refund as well.
Lillian had brought a cake and lemonade to the IRS offices on the day of the auction.
Once their bid had been declared the winner, she staged a party outside the auction room; one or two of the agents shared refreshments with [PDF cuts off here].
When she was summoned to trial, she and another Quaker wrote a letter to the judge advising him that they would not rise at a judge’s entrance, although they meant no disrespect.
The bailiff instructed everyone to remain seated when the court came into session and the judge seemed predisposed to leniency.
When he asked Lillian to account for her actions, she gave what had become her standard statement, that “we [the United States] should not be making war on people, and we [Lillian and like-minded taxpayers] should not have to pay for it.”
The judge levied a $250 fine; she announced that she had no intention of paying it; he gave her 30 days to think it over.
As George put it many years later, “She’s still thinking about it.”
The article ends with Willoughby, at 89, facing trial for a civil disobedience action in protest of the Iraq War and contemplating how she would confront the system: “One thing was certain, she told her family as they sat in daughter Anita’s New York apartment : she would not pay the fine.
None of them seemed surprised.”
A review of Robert Turner Shaping Silence: A Life in Clay in that issue calls it “the story of a conscientious objector, a tax resister, a generous donor of his time, skills, and possessions,” among other things.
An obituary notice for Susumu Ishitani in the same issue noted that “[i]n , Susumu introduced tax refusal into Japan, and was one of six plaintiffs who sued the Japanese government over the issue of military spending.… , he was a member of Citizens Group of Conscientious Military Tax Refusers, sometimes serving as clerk.”
The annual gathering of the Northern Yearly Meeting approved a minute giving its interpretation of the Peace Testimony, which included this statement:
We will continue to stand and work for peace and justice.
We will continue to support those who for conscience’ sake refuse to participate in the military.
We support those who, for conscience’ sake, refuse to pay taxes for war.
We support those who are involved in nonviolent peacemaking.
A minute approved in by the South Berkshire (Massachusetts) Meeting quoted from the New England Yearly Meeting’s “Advice on Peace and Reconciliation,” which said:
Friends are urged to support those who witness to their governments and take personal risks in the cause of peace, who choose not to participate in wars as soldiers nor to contribute to its preparedness with their taxes.
Though the context in which this was quoted did not concern taxes, but merely an expression of “appreciation” for those Canadian Quaker organizations who were helping Americans who had fled to Canada to avoid military service.
A retrospective on the Friends World Committee for Consultation’s Peace Conference the previous year — which had been entitled “Friends Peace Witness in a Time of Crisis” — mentioned “ ‘Conscience and War Tax Witness’ with Rosa Packard” in a long list of “Other workshops.”
The issue included a review of Henry Climbs a Mountain — a children’s story based on Henry David Thoreau’s night in jail for tax refusal.
That issue also included an article about Mary Stone McDowell, who is the only person I know of who was a war tax resister through both World Wars (she was fired from her job as a teacher in part because she would not participate in urging her students to buy “Thrift Stamps” — a sort of junior version of the Liberty Bonds the U.S. government was using to fund its participation in World War Ⅰ).
Unfortunately, the brief paragraph about her war tax resistance is cut off in the PDF in the archives, but it ends “…income taxes each year and, according to Vernon Martin [a conscientious objector McDowell had helped], the IRS dutifully ‘attached part of her pitifully small teacher’s pension, out of which she also gave to charity.’ ”
At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).
Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about the “Great Forgetting” period in which the Quaker practice of war tax resistance seemed to all but disappear.
The Great Forgetting ()
In mentions of Quaker war tax resistance nearly vanish from the record.
When, during the Spanish-American & Philippine-American wars at , the U.S. government attached war taxes to rail tickets, to official documents like checks, and to inheritances, some Quakers were troubled by this and made some efforts to avoid the new taxes, but I only find occasional mention of these taxes, and nothing resembling official warnings from meetings or prominent publications that Quakers should not pay them.
A report in the Friends Intelligencer about the (Hicksite) Philadelphia Yearly Meeting noted that “[t]he ninth query called forth regret that Friends had not maintained a stronger and more consistent testimony against war, but had paid the war taxes without protest.”
Things were slightly better, but heading in the same direction, in England.
An newspaper article on how the Society of Friends was changing to conform more and more to the society around it, included the detail that “its dislike to war taxes is [now] so slight that one for the Egyptian war has not been refused by a dozen of its members!”
In 1901, Charles H. Fox had his property seized and sold at auction for his refusal to pay income taxes that had been boosted to pay for war expenses in South Africa and China.
This was considered unusual enough to prompt a number of newspaper articles.
Some of his friends bought the auctioned property and returned it to him, so even in this case, adherence to traditional Quaker practices with regard to war tax resistance was slack.
The London Yearly Meeting during issued a number of formal statements amplifying and reasserting its peace testimony, but none of these mentioned war taxes, and it would take a lot of work to read any encouragement for tax resistance between the lines of any of the statements.
That meeting’s “query” concerning the peace testimony in asked Quakers if they were “faithful in our testimony against bearing arms, and being in any manner concerned in the militia, in privateers, or armed vessels, or dealing in prize goods?”
A century later this language would have seemed archaic, and the advice no longer representative of how modern wars were fought and how citizens would be called on to support them.
But when the meeting revisited and reworded this query, instead of moderninzing the language and adding more relevant specifics, they instead replaced the query with a vague generality:
Are Friends faithful in maintaining our Christian testimony against all war, as inconsistent with the precepts and spirit of the Gospel?
To which it was easy to answer “sure!” because it didn’t seem to ask anything specific.
In an “American Friends’ Peace Conference” was held in Philadelphia at which presentations were made over three days on the subject of peace, anti-war activism, international arbitration, and related topics.
The papers presented at the gathering were later published.
I looked through them to see how the subject of war tax resistance was treated at this gathering and found exactly one mention of war taxes in the entire book, from Haverford College’s president Isaac Sharpless, speaking on the question “To What Extent Are Peace Principles Practicable?”:
It is impossible to avoid giving aid and comfort to wars and warlike tendencies unless one goes to a desert isle and lives by himself.
Even if we do not join the army we pay taxes for its support.
I do not know that any peace man omitted to write checks after the opening of the Spanish War because stamps were necessary to make them legal, and these stamps were expressly a war tax.
That’s why I call this period the Great Forgetting.
It isn’t that war tax resistance was formally rejected, or that it had become too onerous and had to be abandoned, it’s more as though it was lost in a sort of collective amnesia.
(This is especially perplexing in Isaac Sharpless’s case, as he had written a history of the Quaker governance of the Pennsylvania colony, and certainly knew plenty about Quakers who had refused to pay war taxes without retreating to a desert isle to do so.)
By the beginning of the 20th Century, in a variety of debates concerning resistance to “church rates” and the Education Act by nonconformist Christians in the U.K., I begin to see references to Quakers that take for granted that they do not resist war taxes.
Arguments along the lines of: “Just because you are conscientiously opposed to funding the state religion doesn’t mean you can just stop paying a tax.
I mean, look at the Quakers.
Everybody knows how conscientiously opposed to war they are, and they never refuse to pay their war taxes.”
(The forgetting came even earlier to Australia.
An anti-war writer there in advocated war tax resistance this way: “The English Quakers refuse to pay Church rates for conscience sake, and it is time for tax-payers who disapprove of such wars as the Affghan, the Kaffir, the Chinese, and the New Zealand war to make a stand for conscience, and refuse to pay income-tax.”
In other words: Quakers were not an example of war tax resisters, but an example of tithe resisters that war tax resisters could be inspired by when developing their own variety of tax resistance.)
But although Quaker war tax resistance had mostly gone dormant in England and the United States (and evidently, Australia, if indeed it had ever gotten a foothold there), I see occasional signs that it had not entirely died out.
Some Quakers in the far outposts of the Quaker world were keeping the flame lit and reminding Friends elsewhere that there was an alternative to sorrowful resignation in the face of war taxes.
A edition of The Friend noted that the harsh enforcement of military conscription on the European mainland had reduced the ranks of Quakers there, but also said that “One Friend in Norway has been imprisoned five times for refusing to pay the ‘blood-tax.’ ”
In Switzerland, in , pacifist Pierre Cérésole began to refuse to pay his military tax.
He was not yet a Quaker, but would later convert, and would help to reintroduce war tax resistance to the Society of Friends through his influence on Dutch Quakers Beatrice Cadbury and Kees Boeke.
The Boekes began resisting taxes in .
They made waves with their radical and uncompromising testimony against war and against violent coercion of any sort.
In the United States, The Friend of Philadelphia quoted a report from its London namesake on the Boekes, but astonishingly headlined the article “Testimony-Bearing of the Seventeenth Century Type” — seemingly ignorant of all of the Quaker war tax resistance that had happened in the 18th and 19th centuries!
More evidence that an uncanny Forgetting had taken hold.
An English Quaker wrote in that he believed “no Friend, so far as is known, has declined to pay his war taxes, so called.
Even the Friends who during the South African war [probably the Second Boer War, ] permitted the authorities to distrain upon their goods rather than pay the (then) war tax, and the still larger number who refused for years to pay education rates [a conflict about tax money going to sectarian education that peaked around ], have seen their ways to pay the much larger war taxes of today without demur.”
This is the case even though draft boards in the U.K., in order to test the sincerity of people applying for conscientious objector status, would sometimes ask them if they were using any luxury products like tea, coffee, cocoa, matches, tobacco, or movies, all of which had a war tax applied to them.
Quakers who attended these hearings in the support of their own applications for conscientious objector status were thereby getting a long-overdue sermon on the connection between conscientious objection and war taxes, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
When the United States entered World War Ⅰ, it adopted a new war funding method: rather than relying entirely on taxes, it encouraged citizens to invest their money in “Liberty Bonds” — that is, to loan the government the war money at interest.
Pressure to invest in these bonds was enormous — how many bonds you were willing to purchase was seen as a quantitative proxy for the quality of your patriotism — and refusal to purchase bonds was seen as being tantamount to treason.
Although the bond purchases were ostensibly voluntary, vigilante mobs were not above using violent coercion to force sales, or even, at times, to steal property directly from recalcitrant citizens.
I have found dozens of examples of reprisals of various sorts being taken against people who refused to buy Liberty Bonds.
Most of them involve Mennonites, whose Quaker-like pacifism would not permit them to buy war bonds.
(Many American Mennonites were also of German ancestry and had Germanic names, which probably didn’t help them avoid trouble.)
Others involve socialists and other political radicals who saw World War Ⅰ as being an example of workers fighting workers for the sake of capitalists.
Notably absent are Quakers, with one important exception: Mary Stone McDowell.
McDowell was fired from her teaching job in part for her refusal to promote war bonds to her students.
(The New York Times used the occasion to editorialize that Quaker teachers should all resign their positions since their pacifist views clashed with the proper patriotism that ought to be taught in school.)
McDowell would resurface as a war tax resister in the years after World War Ⅱ as part of the new “Peacemakers” movement and so would help begin the thaw in the Great Forgetting that would eventually lead to a renaissance of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends.
Here I should note that there’s a discontinuity in the material I’ve been drawing on for my research.
The ease of search and the ready availability of on-line books and magazines and newspapers and other archival materials through Google Books, Internet Archive, and many other such platforms, has made research like this much easier than in times not long past.
But much material published is not as available due to copyright issues.
For many such documents, it is difficult to even determine who the copyright holder is, and so the creators of the on-line archives have not made this material as available.
So it’s possible that the seeming absence of evidence of Quaker war tax resistance in the period should not be interpreted as evidence of absence.
At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).
Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about how the Quaker practice of war tax resistance began to reemerge after the Great Forgetting period.
The Thaw ()
In the Great Forgetting period, Quakers endeavored to overlook that war tax resistance had been an important part of putting the Quaker peace testimony into practice.
But during World War Ⅱ and the opening decade of the Cold War, a largely Christian pacifist war tax resistance movement began to coalesce, which included Quakers, but the most prominent members of which belonged to other denominations.
This movement set the stage for the coming renaissance of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends.
A few of the earliest tax resisters of this period were Quakers.
I’ve already mentioned Mary Stone McDowell, who carried on her resistance from the World War Ⅰ period (the only such example I’m aware of).
There was also Arthur Evans, who was resisting perhaps as early as 1943, making him one of the earliest adopters of war tax resistance in this Thaw period.
But institutionally, the Society of Friends still had little interest in the subject.
In the American Friends Service Committee, a major voice of the practical side of the Quaker peace testimony, put out an influential booklet: Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence.
It mentions war tax resistance only once, and in an 18th century historical overview context, not as an example of a contemporary method of speaking truth to power in search of alternatives to violence.
This is in spite of the fact that the committee that produced the booklet included among its members the war tax resisters A.J. Muste and Milton Mayer.
Instead, the leadership in advocating for war tax resistance and in organizing the fledgling modern war tax resistance movement largely came from outside the Society of Friends.
Some of the more prominent war tax resistance promoters in this important period were Dorothy Day (Catholic) & Ammon Hennacy (often Catholic), A.J. Muste (sometimes-Quaker, but bounced around a lot), Maurice McCrackin (Presbyterian), Ernest Bromley (Methodist, later a Quaker), Ralph DiGia (not religious as far as I could tell), and Milton Mayer (Jewish, later a Quaker).
The work of this emerging group of resisters helped to encourage the remaining Quaker war tax resisters and to remind Quakers that war tax resistance wasn’t only something of the legendary past but was an available testimony to them in the present.
The thaw in the Society of Friends had begun.
One of the first examples of this thaw was a particularly dramatic one.
When four Quaker conscientious objectors in the United States were put on trial for evading the Korean War draft, the judge told them:
“If you are not willing to defend this country, you should leave.”
They took that advice seriously, and began to look for an alternative.
They chose Costa Rica, a country that had abolished its standing army in .
“We wanted to be free of paying taxes in a war economy,” recalls Marvin Rockwell, one of the emigrants.
Seven Quaker families left the U.S. to found the community of Monteverde, Costa Rica, in .
Rockwell later told a Friends Journal reporter:
“I do not feel bad at all paying taxes in Costa Rica.
The largest item in the tax budget is for education.”
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.
