How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement → Maurice McCrackin

Yesterday I went to the library with my friend, the Techno-Pagan Octopus Messiah, who was doing some research on classical mythology. I didn’t have much to do myself except to admire the mild earthquake that hit just across the bay and rattled the books in their stacks, but in browsing I came across The Cold War and the Income Tax: A Protest by Edmund Wilson (1963). So today: a longish book review.

Wilson was an American literary critic and author who followed the familiar political arc of being an idealistic communist sympathizer who came to be disillusioned and horrified the more closely he looked at the Soviet experiment. “By 1940 when he finally published his epic history of socialism, To the Finland Station, seven years in the making, he had completely repudiated Russian socialism.”

His tax resistance was strangely half-hearted and muddled, and it’s strange to me that he devoted a book to it. The way he tells the story, “Between the year 1946 and the year 1955, I did not file any income tax returns.” Why? Not for any ideological or ethical reason. “I thought that this obligation could always be attended to later. I had no idea at that time of how heavy our taxation had become or of the severity of the penalties exacted for not filing tax returns.”

Wilson finally seeks out “an old friend of mine, an extremely able lawyer,” who told him that he was in danger of heavy fines and jail time and was in his opinion “in such a mess that he thought the best thing I could do was to become a citizen of some other country.” He instructed the lawyer instead to make out the returns for the years he had failed to file, along with a $9,000 down payment on whatever it was that he owed.

Subsequent chapters tell of Wilson’s struggles with what was already a labyrinthine and Kafkaesque IRS bureaucracy, which Wilson compares with those in the Soviet Union. The $9,000 he offers is laughably inadequate to pay what he owes, his fines, or even his eventual legal fees.

His troubles lead him to investigate the history of the income tax in the United States, and to write extensively on how the assumptions the IRS makes about how and when people earn income map poorly to the actual way a literary man like Wilson makes a living. He dives into the tax code and discovers that “[t]he question of what ought to be taxed and how much and which deductions ought to be allowed has reached a point of fine-spun complexity that — working in terms of a different set of values — recalls the far-fetched distinctions of medieval theology.”

And here what starts out looking like a literary man’s attempt to squeeze some wry observations out of an unfortunate and naïve encounter with the government at its bureaucratic best starts to turn. Wilson takes a long, hard look at the federal government’s budget and notices that huge hunks of it go to pay for wars past present and future and (this is 1963, remember) the program to put a man on the moon. After a brief detour to contrast the lunar project with a project he thinks underfunded and more valuable — to publish collected editions of some of America’s finest authors (Wilson’s a literary guy, remember) — he dives a little deeper into the military budget.

He’s shocked and alarmed at the sums spent to fuel the arms race with the Soviet Union, and upset also at how enthusiastically his government pursues chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons technology — what now gets lumped under the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” banner. He determines, finally, that

When the stakes in games become so serious — when everybody’s life is at stake — they ought not to be played at all, and the taxpayers should not support them. But the taxpayers do support them, and that is why we cannot halt these activities.

And later:

I have said that it was difficult to understand, in what we call our free world, how it can come about that a scientist who has been working on CBR [Chemical, Biological, and Radiological weapons] but is dubious about the morality of what he is doing should not find it in his power to resign. But how free are we citizens of this free world to resign from the gigantic and demented undertakings to which our government has got us committed?

He makes also an interesting observation about how because of the importance of these problems, and because of the difficult and compelling moral demands they make on us, they have paradoxically disappeared from conversation — a strategy similar to not talking about a family member’s drinking problem in the hopes that this will make it as though it never existed in the first place:

[T]he United States, for all its so much advertized comforts, is today an uncomfortable place. It is idle for our “leaders” and “liberals” to talk about the necessity for Americans to recover their old idealism, to consecrate themselves again to their mission of liberation. Our national mission, if our budget proves anything, has taken on colossal dimensions, but in its interference in foreign countries and its support of oppressive regimes, it has hardly been a liberating mission, and the kind of idealism involved is becoming insane and intolerant in the manner of the John Birch Society. Even those who do not give much conscious thought to what has been taking place are discouraged and blocked in their work or alienated from their normal ambitions by the paralyzing chill of a national effort directed toward a blind dead end which is all the more horrifying and haunting for being totally inconsecutive with their daily lives and inapprehensible to their imaginations. The accomplished, the intelligent, the well-informed go on in their useful professions that require high integrity and intellect, but they suffer more and more from the crowding of an often unavowed constraint which may prevent them from allowing themselves to become too intelligent and well-informed or may drive them to indulge their skills in gratuitous and futile exercises. One notices in the conversation of this professional class certain inhibitions on free expression, a tacit understanding that certain matters had better not be brought into discussion, which sometimes makes one feel in such talk a kind of fundamental frivolity.

Wilson then goes on to tell the stories of a few people who were unable to successfully silence the yelps of their own cognitive dissonance. He starts with a case that until now I was unfamiliar with: that of Major Claude Eatherly, who commanded the bomber group that dropped the atom bombs on Japan, capping 13 months of duty in World War Ⅱ. Shortly afterwards, he became horrified by what he had done, and hopeless at the possibility of repenting for or earning forgiveness for willfully extinguishing so many lives and causing so much pain. He tried speaking out with pacifist groups, sending parts of his paycheck to Hiroshima, writing letters of apology, and at a couple of points attempted suicide. At one point “he set out to try to discredit the popular myth of the war hero [by] committing petty crimes from which he derived no benefit: he forged a check for a small amount and contributed the money to a fund for the children of Hiroshima. He held up banks and broke into post offices without ever taking anything.” Eatherly was confined to the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Waco, Texas, from which he wrote:

Whilst in no sense, I hope, either a religious or a political fanatic, I have for some time felt convinced that the crisis in which we are all involved is one calling for a thorough reexamination of our whole scheme of values and of loyalties. In the past it has sometimes been possible for men to “coast along” without posing to themselves too many searching questions about the way they are accustomed to think and to act — but it is reasonably clear that our age is not one of these. On the contrary, I believe that we are rapidly approaching a situation in which we shall be compelled to reexamine our willingness to surrender responsibility for our thoughts and our actions to some social institution such as the political party, trade union, church or State. None of these institutions are adequately equipped to offer infallible advice on moral issues and their claim to offer such advice needs therefore to be challenged.

“Now, how is one to struggle against this situation?” asks Wilson. “Go on strike and refuse to pay taxes?” And much of the remainder of the book is devoted to people who decided to do just that. He is less interested in the people who are doing it my way (reducing income below the taxable threshold) and more interested in people like Dr. A.J. Muste, Eroseanna Robinson, Walter Gormly, and Rev. Maurice McCrackin all of whom confronted the IRS more directly and bore the brunt of its most vigorous enforcement efforts.

Wilson ends by asking: “And what is the author of this protest to do?”

I am not going to let myself be sent to Leavenworth, as Dr. McCrackin was. I have thought of establishing myself in a foreign country as my lawyer friend suggested and as I thought him rather absurd for suggesting. I do feel that I must not violate the agreement I have signed with the government to surrender for three years longer all the income that I take in above a certain taxable amount. My original delinquency was due not to principle but to negligence; but I now grudge every penny of the imposition, and I intend to outmaneuver this agreement, as well as the basic taxes themselves by making as little money as possible and so keeping below taxable levels. I have always thought myself patriotic and have been in the habit in the past of favorably contrasting the United States with Europe and the Soviet Union; but our country has become today a huge blundering power unit controlled more and more by bureaucracies whose rule is making it more and more difficult to carry on the tradition of American individualism; and since I can accept neither this power unit’s aims nor the methods it employs to finance them, I have finally come to feel that this country, whether or not I continue to live in it, is no longer any place for me.

Wilson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom the same year that The Cold War and the Income Tax was published, strangely. I haven’t been able to find on-line (and haven’t been back to the library to research) how Wilson’s attempts at income limitation worked out, or indeed whether he stuck with his plan at all after the book was published.

The documentary Paying for Peace: War Tax Resistance in the United States is now available on-line.

The film was made in 1991 by Carol Coney and features interviews with Brian Willson, Robert Randall, Holley Rauen, John Shibley, Karl Meyer, Ed Pearson, Vicki Metcalf, Ernest & Marion Bromley, Juanita Nelson, Maurice McCrackin, Randy Kehler, and Carolyn Stevens.

On the video, this film is sandwiched between segments of an earnest alternative media television program called “Alternative Views” that is, in this episode anyway, devoted to the October Surprise conspiracy theory. If you want to watch only “Paying for Peace,” skip ahead to about 16:20 and play through the 45-minute mark. Beware also the opening seconds of the video (outside of the documentary portion), which are marred by a high-pitched screech.

From the 29 May 1959 Milwaukee Journal:

Cleric Leaves Jail After Five Month Term in Tax Case

Lewisburg, Pa. — AP — A Cincinnati minister who went to jail rather than pay taxes to help finance the country’s military program, was freed Friday from the federal prison farm at nearby Allenwood.
The Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, known for his pacifist sentiments, served five months and four days at the farm, which is run in connection with the United States penitentiary at Lewisburg.
Specifically, he was charged with resisting payment of income taxes. He refused to pay them lest the money go towards support of the armed forces.
A small gathering of sympathizers, bearing printed signs of approval of what the clergyman did, greeted Mr. McCrackin as he was released.
“But everything was calm and peaceful,” said Warden Frank Hagan. “There was no disturbance at any time.”
The pastor said he was going back to Cincinnati. Another minister from that city, his identity undisclosed, was waiting for him with an automobile. They drove away poker faced.
Mr. McCrackin, pastor of St. Barnabas Presbyterian and Episcopol church, refused to accept the usual transportation money offered by the prison.

The next day’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune adds:

McCrackin wore the traditional inexpensive suit given to newly released prisoners.…
McCrackin was sentenced to a six-month term and a $250 fine last Dec. 12 in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. The charges against him were failing to answer a summons by the Internal Revenue service, which was investigating his failure to pay income tax.
With time off for good behavior, he would have been released April 29. However, he refused to pay his fine or have it canceled by signing the pauper’s oath, and therefore had to serve an additional 30 days.
The warden said McCrackin had been assigned to clerk duties at the penitentiary and at the prison farm prior to his release.

And the next day’s Milwaukee Journal adds a quote from McCrackin to the article: “I feel as strongly as ever. I am opposed to war and I believe that people who take that stand should act accordingly.”

In a follow-up article, McCrackin lashed out against the prison labor system, calling it “slave labor” and vowing never to participate in it again if he were to be imprisoned again:

McCrackin said he worked in the kitchen most of the time he was confined at the prison farm at Allenwood, Pa., and added that he had agreed to work “this time so I could see what it was all about.”

Maurice McCrackin was one of the movers and shakers of the early years of the modern American war tax resistance movement. Here are a couple of examples of the news coverage of his tax resistance actions. From the 24 November 1958 Gadsen Times:

Minister Will Not Pay Taxes For Military Use, May Be Forced To Spend 53^rd Birthday In Jail

Cincinnati (AP) — The Rev. Maurice Findley McCrackin will be 53 on Dec. 1. Where the pacifist minister will observe the anniversary is a problem. It may be in jail.
The neatly dressed, grey-haired minister is supposed to be in U.S. District Court here Monday to answer an indictment charging him with failure to answer an Internal Revenue Service summons on his income tax troubles.
But he has said he won’t show up. And if he doesn’t court observers say he’ll be laying himself open to a contempt of court citation and that could mean jail.
The fight between the Rev. Mr. McCrackin and the Internal Revenue Service has been going on for 10 years but it has only been in recent months that it got into court.
The minister long has refused to pay all of his income taxes because part of the money is used for military purposes.
“I have no fear of prison,” he said in an interview. “Being in jail has given me an insight into what confinement means.”
He referred to his recent several day stay in jail after he had to be carried into court and refused to stand or plead to the indictment. U.S. District Judge John H. Druffel ordered him confined to jail for a psychiatric examination. But psychiatrists found him mentally competent and he was released with a summons to appear in court Monday.
What does he feel would happen if everyone adopted his attitude and refused to pay income taxes because part of the money goes to the armed forces? How could the nation protect itself against aggressors?
“But don’t you see?” the minister replied. “Not many people feel deeply enough on issues to break the law. My critics are making civil law the norm of conduct. I am not in rebellion against law as such.
“I am rebelling against this particular law in which the government has become part of a system which is evil and which threatens the existence of humanity.”
His philosophy also was expressed in a statement two years ago. He said: “If I can say and believe that Jesus would support conscription, that He would throw a hand grenade into a group of men, that He would drive men out of a cave with a flame thrower, than I not only have a right to do these things, but as a Christian, I am obliged to do them.
“But if I believe that Jesus would do none of these things, then I have no choice if I am a follower of His but to refuse at whatever personal cost to support war. This means I will not serve in the armed forces, nor will I voluntarily give my money to help make war possible.”

Another article from the same day’s Gadsen Times brought readers more up-to-date:

Won’t Pay Taxes, Preacher Jailed

Cincinnati, Ohio (AP) — They jammed the courtrooms — newsmen, friends, young law students, churchgoers and the merely curious — to see what would happen to the minister who won’t pay taxes.
It was a full house Monday in U.S. District Court. But the defendant, the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, didn’t show up.
Court aides again went to find him. Once more, they had to lug the minister to their car and load him on a wheelchair for the trip to the courtroom. He gave no sign of help — or of resistance.
Once in court, the pacifist pastor sat in silence, answered no questions, declined to enter a plea or heed court-appointed lawyers.
The upshot was that Judge John H. Druffel sent the Rev. Mr. McCrackin to jail indefinitely for contempt of court.
The judge said the defendant had until Wednesday to sign bond papers and agree to appear in court to face an indictment. The minister is charged with ignoring a summons to a conference on his income taxes.
He is reported to have paid little or no income tax over the past 10 years. He says the money goes for weapons of war and he believes war the greatest evil.
The Rev. Mr. McCrackin said Monday night he’d rather stay in jail than sign. He made himself as comfortable as possible in his cell.
Judge Druffel said he took the step regretfully.
“You didn’t answer the summons,” said the judge. “You had to be carried to court. In the public press, you said you wouldn’t come in, and shouted your defiance to the court.
“Regretfully, we have no alternative but to hold you guilty of willful and deliberate failure to respond to the court’s summons.”
How long can the 52-year-old pastor of a Presbyterian-Episcopal church stay in jail?
Judge Druffel said: “There is no limit. If there were, he eventually could go free to continue ignoring and defying the authority of the court and you might just as well go out and haul down the Stars and Stripes.”

Druffel these days is not remembered for his fine quote about how “you might just as well go out and haul down the Stars and Stripes” but for his role in going above-and-beyond the call of judicial duty to drag his heels and refuse to enforce the racial desegregation of Ohio schools in spite of orders to do just that from higher courts. History can be so unkind.

From the 10 December 1958 Ocala Star-Banner:

Income Tax Troubles

Preacher Drops Fast, Decides To Eat Again

Cincinnati (AP) — A pacifist minister, thinner, pale and hollow-cheeked after a 15-day fast in jail, has started to eat again.
He’s the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, slated for trial next Friday on a charge he didn’t turn up for a conference on his income taxes.
He decided to end his religious fast at advice of the county jail doctor, who has examined him daily.
Dr. George Musekamp and another physician, Dr. W.D. Lotspeich, University of Cincinnati Medical professor, had advised the minister last Friday to break his fast.

Think It Over

The minister had said he would think it over.
The Rev. McCracken has refused to pay part or all of his taxes for 10 years because he says the money helps pay for arms and he believes war is evil.
A friend, Ernest Bromley, who visited the pastor yesterday, said he was in good spirits, and seemed in good health.
But Bromley brought bad news to the Presbyterian-Episcopal minister — Episcopal officials want some changes in the church-linked neighborhood house which the Rev. Mr. McCracken directs.
The suggested changes mainly center on the minister resigning his post as director, but not his pastorate.
Episcopal Bishop Henry Wise Hobson conferred with the neighborhood house board Monday night and a board spokesman said he gave them an ultimatum:

Work Out Something

“Get something worked out by the end of the month.”
The spokesman said that if no change comes by the deadline, the Bishop hopes to continue some program at the house, but without the minister or the governing board.
Bromley said, “He (McCracken) knew it (Hobson’s action) was coming, but it didn’t alter his mind at all in doing what he is doing now.
“But he was unhappy about the action because the neighborhood house program is something he’s put a great deal into and wants to see continued.”
Bromley is a former methodist minister at Bath, N.C., who got into somewhat similar trouble during World War Ⅱ when he said he refused to pay a federal auto stamp tax. He said he spent 60 days in Raleigh, N.C., county jail on that in 1942.
Richard Fichter, a Springville, Pa., farmer and friend of both the minister and Bromley, turned up here last Saturday to lend moral support.

Pickets County Courthouse

He’s been picketing the county courthouse daily since then in the current cold wave, with a sign saying, “I don’t support war taxes either” and “I support McCrackin’s 15-day fast in jail for peace.”
All three are members of a pacifist group here called the Peacemakers, who say they won’t pay part of all their income tax because some is used for war purposes.
Fichter said he’ll continue his picketing until someone else takes over. None has yet appeared.
Fichter said he was also a former methodist minister at Springville but was stripped of his church for his non-taxpaying views.

From the 11 December 1959 Toledo Blade:

Ohio Pacifist Minister Sued For $4,682 In Taxes

Cincinnati, Dec. 11 (AP) — The U.S. Government filed a civil suit yesterday against the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, in an effort to collect $4,682.38 in income taxes
The pastor has refused to pay income taxes for 1955, 1956, 1957 and 1958 because, he says, part of the money goes for military purposes. He served five months in a federal prison earlier this year for declining to answer an Internal Revenue Service summons in that connection.

From the 13 December 1958 Fredericksburg, Virginia Free Lance-Star:

Lawyers to Fight On For Pastor In Tax Case

Cincinnati (AP) — Stung by a scathing denunciation of their client by a federal judge, attorneys for a pacifist minister were ready today to fight on — whether their disciple of civil disobedience likes it or not.
The attack on the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin by Judge John H. Druffel came between the time a jury convicted the minister and the judge sentenced him to six months in a federal prison and fined him $250. Rev. McCrackin was convicted Friday of refusing to answer an Internal Revenue Service summons to discuss his refusal to pay federal income taxes.
Judge Druffel told the 53-year-old bachelor minister — still gaunt from a 15-day jail-cell fast:
“Your pious attitude is more or less of a false face.”
Then, after accusing Rev. McCrackin of being a “pacifist agitator” and of associating “with those of overwhelming Soviet sympathies,” the judge added:
“I don’t know of any more pious traitor than that.”
Although he was a court-appointed attorney who has served without pay, cocounsel Theodore M. Berry leaped to his feet in protest.
“As an officer of this court,” he shouted, “this court is guilty of a grievous error. There is not one iota of proof that Rev. McCrackin is a communist.”
Berry and his cocounsel, Prof. Fred G. Dewey of the University of Cincinnati, were asked immediately after court adjourned if they planned to appeal. Berry shot back heatedly:
“You’re damned right. What else can we do?”
Internal Revenue Service officials presented all the testimony for the prosecution; only a handful of character witnesses appeared for the defense.

Theodore Berry went on to be the first black mayor of Cincinnati.

From the 22 December 1958 Rock Hill Evening Herald:

Minister Taken To Prison For Refusal To Pay Taxes

Cincinnati, Ohio (AP) — The Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, 52-year-old pacifist minister who won’t pay his income taxes, was taken to a federal prison today to serve six months for refusal to respond to an Internal Revenue Service summons.
As in the past when confronted with law enforcement officers, the pastor of a merged Episcopal-Presbyterian church had to be lifted from his cell bunk and seated in a wheelchair. He was aroused about 5 o’clock and was on his way to the undisclosed prison at 5:30.
The Rev. Mr. McCrackin, who clashed with the law over failure to pay income taxes, has had to be carried into jail, into courtroom and out of them since his troubles reached a head several months ago. He refused to walk.
In keeping with policy, the name of the prison to which he was sent was not made public. In addition to the sentence, U.S. Dist. Judge John. H. Druffel fined him $250 for failure to respond to summons. A jury convicted him on Dec. 12.
The minister has refused to pay income taxes for years on the grounds that a part of the money goes for war purposes. The IRS issued the summons for him to talk over his income tax situation.

From the 27 December 1958 Reading Eagle:

Pacifist Pastor To Spurn Appeal

Preacher En Route To Federal Prison

Cincinnati, Ohio, Dec. 27 (UPI) — The Rev. Maurice McCrackin, pacifist pastor sentenced to six months in federal prison at Allenwood, Pa., says he does not want his sentence appealed.
The Rev. McCrackin was sentenced to the Allenwood prison camp after he failed to answer an Internal Revenue Service summons. The pastor has refused for years to pay his income taxes because part of the money would be used for war armaments.
McCrackin made known his views on appeal through a letter sent to the Rev. Ernest Bromley, who supported McCrackin in his struggle with the government.
McCrackin, head of the west Cincinnati-St. Barnabas Church, wrote the letter while en route to Allenwood. It was posted at Zanesville, Ohio, and received by Bromley yesterday.
He wrote: “I said I wanted to file no appeal, nor did I want steps taken to keep the door open, so an appeal could be perfected later
“I do not recognize any appeal on my behalf… My position is not changed. This is a moral, not a legal, struggle.”

As you may remember from an article I posted several days back, one of McCrackin’s lawyers had told the press that he planned to appeal McCrackin’s conviction.

From the 29 December 1958 Reading Eagle:

Minister’s Sympathizers Picket Prison Camp

Richard Fichter, left, Springville, and Dale Rogers, right, a native of Texas, are shown as they picketed the Federal Prison Camp at Allenwood, Union County, in protest over the imprisonment there of the Rev. Maurice McCrackin of Cincinnati, Ohio. The minister, who has refused to pay income taxes because the money is used for defense expenditures, was imprisoned for failing to obey a summons by the Internal Revenue Service to appear in court.

Pickets Support Jailed Pacifist

Two Carry Placards at U.S. Prison Farm

Williamsport, Dec. 29 (AP) — Sympathizers who promised to “do the same thing all over again” picketed the federal prison farm near here this weekend in support of the Rev. Maurice McCrackin of Cincinnati.
The Rev. Mr. McCrackin, a pacifist, is serving a six-month sentence for refusing to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service. He was brought to the prison farm last week.
The Cincinnati pacifist was sentenced in federal district court at Cincinnati Dec. 12 after refusing to pay income tax on the grounds that the money goes toward supporting military establishments.
The sympathizers who picketed the prison farm Saturday were Dale Rogers, a native of Texas who is a student at Lincoln University, near Oxford, Pa., and Richard Fichter, a former Methodist minister who now runs a dairy farm at Springville, Pa.
The pickets marched in sub-freezing temperatures carrying signs reading “McCrackin’s in Jail for Peace,” “80 Per Cent of Your Tax Dollar Pays for War,” “We Reject Taxes Too,” and “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
Federal prison officials would make no comment on the incident.

I haven’t found much else about Richard Fichter. There’s an interesting 1957 story in which he jumped on stage during a live broadcast of the game show The $64,000 Challenge and tried to read a statement beginning “America, I have a challenge. The Russians are ahead of you…” They bundled him off to a psych ward, and I haven’t been able to determine any more about the contents of his challenge. In 1957, Fichter had picketed the White House in behalf of an imprisoned draft resister.

Dale Rogers is even more of a blank to me.

What happened between the time when Peacemakers was leading the war tax resistance charge and 1982, when the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee was founded? There was another group, simply called “National War Tax Resistance,” that took the reins during the Vietnam War.

Here are some more excerpts from Robert Cooney’s and Helen Michalowski’s The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States about this transition period:

1965 was, as the CNVA Bulletin declared, “The Year of Vietnam.” Picketing and sit-downs across the country marked the announcement of the first US bombing of North Vietnam on February 7. These continued throughout the month and much effort was expended gathering signatures for a new appeal, the Declaration of Conscience, circulated by radical pacifist groups, urging civil disobedience. The Peacemakers group in Cincinnati organized a “No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee” calling for tax resistance. In December 1969 a separate group — War Tax Resistance, coordinated by Bob Calvert — was established and at the time included some 200 local tax resistance centers across the country.

A No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee has issued a call for people to refuse to pay for the war in Vietnam. Those of the signers who have taxes due will refuse to pay them, or some portion of them. "Whichever method one uses," the signers said, "we are determined to withdraw as far as possible our support from the war."

From the 4 March 1965 newsletter of the Syracuse Peace Council

Nonpayment of war taxes, practiced by Quakers and others, disappeared as a pacifist testimony soon after the Civil War and Thoreau’s famous stand against the U.S. foray in Mexico. It first reappeared in World War Ⅱ when a few widely scattered individuals refused to pay federal taxes on the grounds that there was no way to prevent a significant part of their money from being used for military purposes. One resister, Ernest Bromley, was prosecuted and imprisoned for his refusal. Many others began to inform the Internal Revenue Service that payment violated their principles.
The enactment during World War Ⅱ of a measure which required employers to withhold taxes from their employees caused particular difficulties for pacifists and led to the formation of Peacemakers in 1948. A Peacemaker committee promoted tax refusal and provided research, literature, action suggestions, and publicity for those in the tax resistance movement. Although many hundreds of people were refusing to pay income taxes during the 15 years following 1948, the government prosecuted and imprisoned only six: James Otsuka of Indiana, Maurice McCrackin of Ohio, Eroseanna Robinson of Illinois, Walter Gormly of Iowa, Arthur Evans of Colorado, and Neil Haworth of Connecticut. These imprisonments and the seizure of a few cars and houses by the IRS, served to highlight the tax refusal testimony and establish it as a major nonviolent principle and tactic.
Tax resistance, like other forms of opposition to the military, increased dramatically during the Vietnam War. In 1966 the federal government levied an additional tax on every private telephone, and in a rare moment of candor, admitted that the money would help subsidize the war in Indochina. Peacemakers, the War Resisters League, and other nonviolent groups urged refusal of this tax and in the following years countless thousands heeded their call. Under the leadership of Bob and Angie Calvert, War Tax Resistance was formed in 1969 as a separate organization to investigate all aspects and ramifications of conscientious tax refusal. During the war there were over 200 local war tax resistance centers, as well as a number of “alternative life funds” which rechanneled refused tax money back into the local community for constructive purposes. Many of these continued after the end of the war.
The tactic of claiming enough dependents so that no income tax would be withheld became more widespread as the Vietnam war continued. Often the tax refuser would make clear the moral grounds for the protest by listing, for example, “all the Vietnamese” as dependents. Refusing to pay for war by claiming excessive exemptions brought particularly strong response from the government. A number of people were prosecuted and imprisoned: Jim Shea, Karl Meyer, William Himmelbauer, Mark Riley, Ellis Rece, Carole Nelson, John Leininger, and Martha Tranquilli (a 64-year-old grandmother and nurse). The tax resistance movement continued after the war and grew to include both pacifists and non-pacifists who could no longer in conscience support the military priorities of the government.

Because so much of the tax paid the Federal Government goes for killing and torture, as in Vietnam, and for the development of even more horrible war methods to use in the future, I am not going to pay taxes on 1964 income

From the 4 March 1965 newsletter of the Syracuse Peace Council

As more and more tax money was directed toward the [Reagan era] military buildup, many activists revived interest in war tax resistance. Protests were organized each year, and individual resisters tried a variety of means to deny the government money for war. In April 1981, demonstrations were held in Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities and 24 people were arrested at IRS offices in New York City. The following year, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee was formed by the Center on Law and Pacifism, Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, WRL, Peacemakers and eighty local groups. Nineteen eighty-three featured the largest show of war tax resistance actions in ten years, including Ralph Dull, an Ohio farmer and tax resister since 1951, who drove a truckload of grain to the IRS office as payment for his taxes. The IRS instituted a “frivolous returns” penalty to discourage the filing of returns with any but the requested information, and some resisters began an insurance fund, pooling their resources to pay fines and interest charges levied against fellow tax resisters.

From the 21 February 1963 Victoria Advocate:

Ordination Set Aside

Cincinnati, Ohio (AP) — The Presbytery of Cincinnati has set aside the ordination of the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, a controversial pacifist who has served a prison sentence for refusing to pay income tax.
The action Tuesday night apparently finished a long dispute with the 57-year-old clergyman. McCrackin still has a congregation — the Community Church of Cincinnati he formed last summer after the presbytery declared vacant his pulpit at the West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas church.
That action came after the General Assembly had upheld his earlier suspension for defying civil law by refusing to pay federal income taxes.
McCrackin contends no true Christian can pay income tax because part of it is used for war-like purposes. He was convicted in 1958 for failure to heed an Internal Revenue Service summons to discuss his taxes, and was sentenced to six months in prison. He was released in 1959 and still refuses to pay income tax.

Many years later, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church reinstated McCrackin, admitting that it had acted in error by defrocking him.

Around the middle of April as the federal income tax filing deadline approaches, tax resistance articles hit the media frequently. Here are two examples from past years:

“Minister Refuses to File Tax Return” Ocala Star-Banner 14 April 1960: Maurice McCrackin again declares his war tax resistance.
“Others join Quaker tax protest” The Southeast Missourian 14 April 1983: Quaker Bill Strong thinks war tax resistance “is moving to the center” and notes recent support from Catholics. Irwin Hogenauer is also quoted.

From the 17 May 1961 edition of the Toledo Blade, fifty years ago today:

Ohio Pastor in Tax Fight Is Suspended

Presbytery’s Action in Cincinnati for Indefinite Period

Cincinnati, May 17 (AP) — The Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin was suspended from office and from communion by the Cincinnati Presbytery yesterday as the result of his long dispute with the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. McCrackin has refused to pay income taxes, contending that war is a sin and part of tax money is used for military purposes.
The suspension is for an indefinite period. Mr. McCrackin said that he was “shocked and disappointed” by the presbytery’s action and has appealed his case to the Ohio Synod.
Mr. McCrackin said he did not feel reasons for the presbytery’s decision “are consistent with the evidence and testimony presented during the trial’s session, nor in keeping with the historical position of the United Presbyterian Church.
“Where the commission admits my rights to freedom of conscience, freedom of the pulpit and freedom to pay or not to pay federal income taxes, at the same time it usurps the right to define the ways in which I shall exercise these freedoms.”
In Prison 5 Months
Mr. McCrackin served five months in a federal prison in 1959 for declining to heed a U.S. summons. At the time Mr. McCrackin, an admirer of Gandhi’s principles of civil disobedience, had to be carried bodily into Judge John H. Druffel’s U.S. District Court.
The presbytery’s statement, issued after almost 11 months of studying the case, said Mr. McCrackin was “guilty by sufficient proof of sin (1) of resisting the ordinances of God in that upon pretense of Christian liberty you have opposed the civil lawful powers and the lawful exercise of it; (2) publishing erroneous opinions and maintaining practices which are destructive to the eternal peace and order which Christ hath established in the church; (3) failing to obey the lawful commands and to be subject to the authority of the civil magistrates.”
Mr. McCrackin has continued to refuse to pay income taxes since his release from the federal penal institution at Allentown, Pa., in May, 1959. He was sentenced after he refused to plead, to cooperate with court-appointed counsel, or to enter the courtroom himself. His attorneys entered a plea of innocent on his behalf.
Obligations Cited
The presbytery told Mr. McCrackin that “you have shown every evidence of accepting the right of Christian liberty and a willingness to accept the consequences of such liberty.
“At the same time and at the point of this trial, you have given little evidence, if any, of accepting the obligations and responsibilities of Christian liberty.”
The presbytery’s committee of ministerial relations will supply the pulpit at West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas Church during Mr. McCrackin’s period of suspension.
The Ohio Synod will meet June 13–16 at Muskingum College. If it reviews and upholds the presbytery’s judgment, Mr. McCrackin can appeal to the general assembly of the church in Denver, in May, 1962.
Mr. McCrackin came to St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in 1945 when it was merged with West Cincinnati Presbyterian Church. He has ministered to the mixed congregation since.

In 1987 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church reinstated McCrackin, admitting that it had acted in error by defrocking him.

From the 30 May 1959 Milwaukee Journal:

Cleric Ends Tax Sentence

Serves Five Months

Lewisburg, Pa. — AP — A Cincinnati minister who went to jail rather than pay taxes to help finance the country’s military program was freed Friday from the federal prison farm at nearby Allenwood.
The Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, known for his pacifist sentiments, served five months and four days at the farm, which is run in connection with the United States penitentiary at Lewisburg.
Mr. McCrackin was sentenced to a six month term and a $250 fine last Dec. 12. With time off for good behavior, he would have been released Apr. 29. However, he refused to pay his fine, and therefore had to serve an additional 30 days.
A small gathering of sympathizers, bearing printed signs of approval of what the clergyman did, greeted Mr. McCrackin as he was released.
“But everything was calm and peaceful,” said Warden Frank Hagan. “There was no disturbance at any time.”
The pastor said he was going back to Cincinnati. Another minister from that city was waiting for him with an automobile.
Mr. McCrackin said of his stand on taxes:
“I feel as strongly as ever. I am opposed to war and I believe that people who take that stand should act accordingly.”
He also said he planned to conduct services Sunday at his old West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas church, an integrated Presbyterian-Episcopal church.

The Ocala Star-Banner published a follow-up a few days later:

Pacifist Minister Returns To Church After Prison Stint

Cincinnati (AP) — A controversial pacifist minister returned to his old church and old life here Sunday after a federal prison term, but there was one big change.
The old church-connected Neighborhood House once directed by the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin had been cut loose and set up as an independent corporation.
Close associates said the minister put much of his church work into building up the Neighborhood House.
The church is a joint Episcopal-Presbyterian venture. After the minister’s legal troubles cropped up, Episcopal Bishop Henry Wise Hobson decided to take over the Neighborhood House, owned by his diocese.
The Rev. Mr. McCracken gave his first sermon Sunday since release from a federal prison farm in Allenwood, Pa.
The Rev. Mr. McCracken, who says he won’t pay his income taxes because they help pay for war weapons, was released Friday after serving five months and four days of a six-month term.
He was convicted last Dec. 12 on a charge of ignoring a federal summons to a conference on his income taxes.

Earlier this year, I reprinted a news item about how the Cincinnati presbytery defrocked Reverend Maurice McCrackin in 1963 because of his war tax resistance.

In 1987 they changed their minds about that. From the 16 June 1987 Lawrence Journal-World (excerpts):

Biloxi, Miss. (AP) — Representatives of the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination… [met in t]he 199^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)… ¶ …and reversed a 25-year-old decision defrocking a peace activist.

Also Monday, the commissioners discussed “Presbyterians and Peacemaking: Are We Now Called to Resistance?”
The document, which makes no recommendations, includes discussion on how Presbyterians might work for peace, sections on tax resistance and civil disobedience.
Several local Presbyterian groups, complaining that the paper is one-sided and divisive, have asked that the paper be withdrawn or the study process broadened to include other viewpoints.
A committee refused to adopt those recommendations, saying the process was still going on and those views could be part of a final position paper already scheduled for discussion next year.

The assembly on Monday night voted unanimously to restore the Rev. Maurice McCrackin, an 81-year-old Cincinnati pastor, to the ministry.
McCrackin was defrocked in 1962 by the then-United Presbyterian Church (USA) because of his repeated refusal to pay federal income taxes that support the military.

I’ve reproduced a number of old news articles here concerning Maurice McCrackin, a mover and shaker at the birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement. Here are some of his own words on the subject, in the form of an address to the Cincinnati Presbytery (in which McCrackin was a pastor), while he was on trial for his tax resistance:

Pray for Peace but Pay for War?

I do not think of the defense in this trial as a defense of me as a person, but rather the defense of a principle and that, the right of a Christian, yes, a Presbyterian Christian to follow what he believes to be God’s will as it has been shown to him in Jesus Christ.
In June 1945 I was offered the position of co-pastor of the West Cincinnati St. Barnabas Church. Since the church was in a racially inclusive neighborhood and because of my deep interest in church union and cooperation, I gladly accepted the opportunity to share in this venture undertaken by the Episcopal and Presbyterian denominations, and began work in August of the same summer. Two months later we opened a settlement house at what was the St. Barnabas Episcopal Church building. Before the federation of the two congregations Negroes were not welcome at either church, and so children and teenagers came by the hundreds to enjoy the activities at the new settlement house. Soon we organized a community council and tried to come to grips with community problems. Ties in church and settlement house were growing strong and meaningful. Camp Joy opened to children of all races and creeds, and with integrated camping and a racially mixed staff, children and teenaged young people grew in self-awareness and in respect and love for one another.
All the while our community work was expanding, cold war tensions were increasing. Nuclear bombs were fast being stockpiled and reports were heard of new and deadlier weapons about to be made. Fresh in my mind were the bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the crowded, deprived areas of these two cities were people working as we were now working in Cincinnati to build a happier, healthier community. There were nurses, teachers, domestic workers, laborers, and secretaries. There were babies, children, young people, and adults living together, playing and working together, and praying together. The bomb fell and they, their institutions, their community organizations, all were destroyed.
It came to me that if churches, settlement houses, schools, if anything is to survive in Cincinnati or anywhere else, something must be done about the armaments race, a race which has always resulted in war. I preached against violence, against hatred, against wars, cold or hot. I preached about the dangers which the entire world faced and which had been made so vividly clear by renowned scientists. I was preaching, but what was I doing? We must build peace in our local communities; this we were doing but what about the international community? When I thought of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of other cities in so-called enemy countries, which we were preparing to incinerate with even more deadly and devastating weapons, I said to myself, “I can no more give consent to the committing of this terrible atrocity against cities in Japan, Russia, or any other country than I would give my consent to such acts of barbaric cruelty being committed against my friends and neighbors surrounding the church and neighborhood house.”
Long before, I had decided that I would never again register for the draft nor would I consent to being conscripted by the government in any capacity. Nevertheless each year around March 15 without protest I sent my tax payments to the government. By giving my money I was helping the government do what I so vigorously declared was wrong. I would never give my money to support a house of prostitution or the liquor industry, a gambling house or for the purchase and distribution of pornographic literature. Yet year after year I had unquestionably been giving my money to an evil infinitely greater than all of these put together, since it is from war’s aftermath that nearly all social ills stem.
Income tax paid by the individual is essential to the continuance of the war machine. Over 50 percent of the military budget is paid for by individuals through their income tax payments and 75 to 80 percent of every dollar they pay via income tax goes for war purposes.
Again I examined what the principle of personal commitment to Jesus meant to me. Through the years I have tried to achieve a personal relationship with Jesus. This is the burden of the Christian gospel, that Jesus can be known personally and that he can bring a saving power into a man’s life. For us Christians to know Jesus personally has reality only as we try earnestly to grow more like him “unto the measure of the stature of his fullness.” If we follow Jesus afar off, if we praise his life and teachings but conclude that neither applies to our daily living, what are we doing but denying and rejecting him? Jesus speaks with authority and with love to every individual. “Follow me. Take up your cross. Love one another as I have loved you.” What would Jesus want me to do in relation to war? What must I do if am his disciple? This was the conclusion I reached: If I can honestly say that Jesus would support conscription, throw a hand grenade, or with a flame thrower drive men out of caves, to become living torches — if I believe he would release the bomb over Hiroshima or Nagasaki, then I not only have the right to do these things as a Christian, I am even obligated to do them. But if, as a committed follower, I believe that Jesus would do none of these things, I have no choice but to refuse at whatever personal cost, to support war. This means that I will not serve in the armed forces nor will I voluntarily give my money to help make war possible.
Having had this awakening, I could no longer in good conscience continue full payment of my federal taxes. At the same time I did not want to withdraw my support from the civilian services which the government offers. For that reason I continued to pay the small percentage now allocated for civilian use. The amount which I had formerly given for war I now hoped to give to such causes as the American Friends Service Committee’s program and to other works of mercy and reconciliation which help to remove the roots of war.
As time went on I realized, however, that this was not accomplishing its purpose because year after year the government ordered my bank to release money from my account to pay the tax I had held back. I then closed my checking account and by some method better known to the Internal Revenue Service than to me, it was discovered that I had money in a savings and loan company. Orders were given to this firm, under threat of prosecution, to surrender from my account the amount the government said I owed. I then realized suddenly how far government is now invading individual rights and privileges: money is given in trust to a firm to be kept in safety and the government coerces this firm’s trustees into a violation of that trust. But even more evil than this invasion of rights is the violence done to the individual conscience in forcing him to give financial support to a thing he feels so deeply is wrong. I agree wholeheartedly with the affirmation of Presbytery made in February of 1958, that, “A Christian citizen is obligated to God to obey the law but when in conscience he finds the requirements of law to be in direct conflict with his obedience to God, he must obey God rather than man.”
Disobedience to a civil law is an act against government, but obedience to a civil law that is evil is an act against God.
At this point it came to me with complete clarity that by so much as filing tax returns I was giving to the revenue department assistance in the violation of my own conscience, because the very information I had been giving on my tax forms was being used in finally making the collection. So from this point on, or until there is a radical change for the better in government spending I shall file no returns.
The nations seem unable to agree on any negotiated disarmament, and certainly there is little hope that in the foreseeable future any will do so unilaterally. At no time in human history, therefore, has there been such an acute necessity for individuals to disarm unilaterally, to behave as moral and responsible human beings, and to do what they know to be right, beginning now. Some have said that this is the age of the common man. However, if we are to survive, it must become the age of the uncommon man. Unilateral, personal disarmament means that we will accept only work which contributes to the peace, welfare, and uplift of mankind. One by one people are responsible for the most horrible crimes. These are not bad people; they are good people, many socially concerned, pillars of church and society. Yet, with little or no inward protest they respond to the state’s demands to do all kinds of ghastly jobs — to perfect the H-bomb or the more terrible cobalt bomb, to work in laboratories to perfect still more deadly nerve gas or to help spawn insects which will be more deadly germ carriers. The state persuades these and others that they are not really responsible for what they are doing, that they are only small cogs in a big machine and if they have guilt it is so slight they shouldn’t worry over it.
Leo Tolstoy described this evil process of rationalization in his book The Kingdom of God Is within You. He asks, “Is it possible that millions of men can go on calmly committing deeds which are so manifestly criminal, such as are the murders and tortures they commit, simply from fear of punishment? Surely these things would not exist were not the falsehood and brutality of their actions hidden from all classes of men by the system of political organization. When such deeds are committed, there are so many instigators, participants, and abettors that no single individual feels himself morally responsible. The rulers of the state always endeavor to involve the greatest number of citizens in the participation of the crimes which it is to their interest to have committed. Some demand it, some confirm it, some order it, and some execute it.”
This evil chain of violence and death must be broken and it will be broken when enough individuals say to the state, “You may order me to do something I believe wrong but I will not execute your command. You may order me to kill, but I will not kill nor will I give my money to buy weapons that others may do so.” There are other voices that I must obey. I must obey the voice of humanity which cries for peace and relief from the intolerable burden of armaments and conscription. I must obey the voice of conscience, made sensitive by the inner light of truth. I must obey the voice heard across the centuries, “Love your enemies, pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you.” In obedience to these voices lies the only path to brotherhood and peace. And these are the voices I must obey.

Today, a couple of notes about Richard Fichter, who was one of those in the first generation of the modern American war tax resistance movement. First, from the 24 May 1952 Binghamton Press:

Methodists Dismiss Pastor Refusing to Pay Income Tax

Springville Minister Won’t Contribute To “Arms Race”

Scranton — (AP) — An executive session of the one hundred and second annual meeting of the Wyoming Conference of the Methodist Church has dismissed a 29-year-old minister because he refuses to pay income taxes.
The action was taken yesterday against the Rev. Richard M. Fichter of Springville, Pa., who was charged with six rural churches on a circuit in Susquehanna County of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
The dismissal was announced by the Rev. Dr. Roswell W. Lyon, superintendent of Mr. Fichter’s district. He said Mr. Fichter was given a chance last year to pay the taxes after he had repeatedly refused to do so.
Mr. Fichter, a deacon in the church, says he refuses to pay taxes as a “matter of Christian conscience because of the suicidal armaments race” the money would support. The Internal Revenue Bureau has filed a lien against him for back taxes. The amount due was not disclosed.
His dismissal was voted by the executive session which overruled a decision of the nine-man Board of Ministerial Training and Qualifications. The board voted 5-4 to accept Mr. Fichter as an elder, the final recognition given by the church. The later vote against Mr. Fichter automatically dismisses him from his charges, Dr. Lyon explained.

The next article gives a little more information about an intriguing Fichter tidbit I dug up a while back. From the 10 December 1958 Binghamton Press:

On “Duty” at Ohio Courthouse

Pa. Farmer Picketing To Aid Jailed Minister

Cincinnati — (AP) — Richard Fichter, a Springville, Susquehanna County, Pa., dairy farmer has started a one-man picket duty at county courthouse here.
Mr. Fichter drove 650 miles here in a rickety old car, to support a pacifist jail inmate who won’t pay taxes.
His placard, on one side, says: “I don’t support war taxes either.”
The other side says: “I support McCrackin’s 13-day fast in Jail for peace.”
Mr. McCrackin is the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, controversial minister sent to jail indefinitely for contempt because he refused to take any part in his U.S. District Court arraignment Nov. 24. He was Indicted on a charge of failing to heed a summons to a conference on taxes.
Refused Food
The pastor has refused any food since entering his cell, except to drink some water. On a doctor’s advice, he ended his fast yesterday.
Mr. Fichter, a wiry man, started his picketing Saturday. The Pennsylvania farmer, like the minister, is connected with a group here called the Peacemakers, who refused to pay part, or all their Income tax because it goes for war purposes.
Mr. Fichter was once a minister, serving a Methodist Church in Springville, a small rural community. But he said he was stripped of his church.
He said: “Fellow clergymen wouldn’t let me in as a ministerial member of the Wyoming Conference because of my refusal to pay taxes.”
Prepared Appeal
An attempt by Mr. Fichter to crash “The $64,000 Question” television show, no longer on the air, on Nov. 17. 1957, in New York City was cut short by show officials. He had prepared an appeal against paying taxes to buy nuclear weapons.
Mr. Fichter said he hasn’t paid his taxes in nine years. “The first year, they (Revenue Service) took it out of my bank.
“After that I didn’t file a return. Lately they’ve been coming out to the farm trying to get me to file. And they sent me a notice recently saying they’d like to file it for me — going to the banks and feed mills and so on, to get the figures.”
New troubles loom for Mr. McCrackin, minister of a com-Church in the west end of Cincinnati.
He also directs church-connected Neighborhood House. Episcopal Bishop Henry Wise Hobson has taken steps that may force out the minister as director.
Not As Minister
A house board spokesman said last night the bishop’s suggestions for a change are still somewhat loose, but that one suggestion was to have the minister step out as director — but not as minister of the church.
Ernest Bromley of nearby Sharonville, one of the leaders of the non-taxpaying Peacemakers and also a onetime Methodist minister in Bath, N.C., said he visited the minister in jail yesterday and found him in good spirits, “but he looks a little thinner from that fast.”
Mr. McCrackin is slated for trial in U.S. District Court here Friday.
Judge John H. Durffel last week ordered a new group of prospective jurors drawn for the trial.

One hundred years ago today Mark Wilks was arrested and sent to Brixton Prison for failing to pay his wife’s income taxes. The case became a cause célèbre in the British women’s suffrage movement and an embarrassment to the British government and its tax authorities.

This is a good example of how careful study of the law can help tax resisters find and exploit flaws that hold the tax system or its enforcement arm up to ridicule, make them unworkable, or make them vehicles for additional resistance or propaganda opportunities.

Are you sure you are not paying too much tax to John Bull? We have recovered or saved large sums for women taxpayers. Why not consult us? It will cost you nothing. Women Taxpayer’s Agency (Mrs. E. Ayres Purdie), Hampden House, Kingsway, W.C. Tel 6049 Central.

Ethel Ayres Purdie, resident tax law expert of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, discovered the vulnerability. The Income Tax Act, she wrote, “is a most fearsome piece of composition. Its language is archaic and tautological, it rises wholly superior to punctuation, and proceeds breathlessly through one hundred and ninety-four clauses.” But one of those clauses held a fatal flaw.

The “Married Woman’s Property Act” of 1882 was a reform that allowed married women to maintain control of their property rather than relinquishing it to their husbands’ control upon marriage. But the earlier (1842) Income Tax Act still considered the husband to be solely liable for the income taxes of both the husband and wife.

At first, when Elizabeth Wilks began resisting her income tax, the government responded by seizing and selling her property, but when this quirk in the law was discovered, tax resisters like Wilks protested that the government could not legally seize her property since as a married woman her taxes were legally owed by the him in the marriage. So the government went after Mark Wilks instead.

Mark Wilks, for his part, insisted that he could hardly fill out an income tax return since he had no legal right to demand information from his wife about her income! Besides, his modest income and lack of property in his own name meant that he could not afford to pay the taxes on his wife’s considerably larger income (he did pay the tax on the portion of their joint income that was attributable to his own income, though his income was low enough that by itself it would not have been taxable). “I am informed that I am liable for taxes levied on her income,” he wrote “while at the same time the law places all her property entirely beyond my control.”

Meanwhile, the Women’s Tax Resistance League trumpeted the arrest of Mark Wilks and his indefinite imprisonment — “for non-payment of taxes not his own and due on an income over which he has no control and whose amount he can only guess at” — as proving their contention that not only should women resist the income tax, but that married women were not even legally obligated to pay it and those who were paying it were operating under a legal delusion.

The imprisonment of Mark Wilks was a propaganda coup:

For what do the arrest and imprisonment of Mark Wilks mean? We are perfectly certain that it will not last long. Stupid and inept as it has been, the Government, we are certain, will not risk the odium which would justly fall upon it if this outrage on liberty went on. A Government which has much at stake and which lives by the breath of popular opinion cannot afford to ignore such strong and healthy protest as is being poured out on all sides. To us, who are in the midst of it, that which seems most remarkable is the growth of public feeling. In the streets where processions are nightly held, we were met at first by banter and rowdyism. “A man in prison for the sake of Suffragettes!” To the boy-mind of the metropolis, on the outskirts of many an earnest crowd, that seemed irresistibly funny; but thoughtfulness is spreading; into even the boy-mind, the light of truth is creeping. If it had done nothing else, the imprisonment of Mark Wilks has certainly done this — it has educated the public mind.

Wilks was released after less than a month in prison, without official explanation, and without paying the tax.

A tax resistance campaign is almost always one that butts up against the law, and it can be helpful to have campaigners who know a thing or two about legal matters. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton put it when she was considering a tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in America,

One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.

Today I’ll summarize some examples of how legal study and the assistance of attorneys have made a difference in tax resistance campaigns.

Poll Tax rebels in Thatcher’s Britain

Understanding the law and the legal process was important in the poll tax rebellion — to give confidence to resisters, to support targets of government reprisals, and to make the process of tax enforcement costly and unmanageable.

Anti-poll tax volunteer Danny Burns writes:

In Bristol when the court cases started, each person with a summons, who rang into the office, was logged and sent an information pack. The same personal attention was given to people with notices from the bailiffs. At the peak of the campaign, the Bristol office was staffed morning and afternoon five days a week by different volunteers. Between February and May 1990, it was receiving over 200 calls a week. … [The volunteers included] at least five court support workers…

In every part of England and Wales local groups mobilised to provide support for non-payers in the courts. Tens, if not hundreds of activists in each region attended legal briefing sessions. These were run both by activists and sympathetic local lawyers. People were given ideas about how they might disrupt or delay the court proceedings. These included simple things, like asking for a glass of water because their throat was dry, demanding to see the identity cards of everyone present in court, to fainting in court or arranging for fire alarms to go off. People were told to demand their rights to see and read every document which was produced as evidence against them. They were also given briefings on the basic technical arguments.
By October 1990, when most of the court cases had started, virtually every Anti-Poll Tax Union in the UK had trained at least two or three of its members to become conversant with the Poll Tax law. Throughout England and Wales over a thousand people were trained to do court support work and could quote the relevant legislation. This is unique in the history of popular campaigning. The Anti-Poll Tax Unions hoped to use the legal precedent of McKenzie versus McKenzie (1970), which said that a person can “attend a trial as a friend of either party (to) take notes and quietly make suggestions and give advice to that party.” This person would be known as a “McKenzie friend.” McKenzie friends had no right to address the court, but they could advise the non-payer what to say. In this way everyone would be able to offer technical defences and thereby delay the proceedings.
The campaign needed lawyers only in the most technical cases. Lawyers were often seen as a liability, because they represented an individual client, and it was in their interest to get through the procedure as quickly as possible. It was in the campaign’s interest for everything to proceed as slowly as possible. Nevertheless, legal knowledge and guidance was essential. This arrived with the creation of the Poll Tax Legal Group… [which] researched legislation and case law. It set up a network of lawyers throughout England and Wales who could support the legal challenges of Anti-Poll Tax groups and produced over 30 accessible legal bulletins on the Poll Tax and a book called To Pay or Not To Pay. These underpinned the legal needs of the movement and helped ordinary people to get to grips with the law they needed to use.

Delaying tactics were mixed with serious legal technicalities. Councils were challenged for sending notices to the wrong addresses. Given the rate at which people moved houses, it was difficult for the councils to keep up, and as a result many cases were dropped because people hadn’t received proper notice. Big legal challenges were also made over “correct procedures.” These came in the first few weeks and resulted mostly from the inexperience of councils in dealing with this sort of process. The first day of Medina Council’s cases (on the Isle of Wight) is probably the most famous example. The reminder notices were sent out with second class stamps, they consequently arrived late, people didn’t receive the statutory notice which they were entitled to, and the court threw out all 1,900 cases. The council had to start again.

When police attacked an anti-poll tax demonstration in London, many of the demonstrators fought back, and hundreds were arrested. Elements of the campaign leadership distanced themselves from the defendants, embarrassed to have the campaign associated with violence. So other activists helped to form and coordinate an independent group — the Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign — with the following mandate:

The campaign will:

Unconditionally defend all of those arrested on March 31^st.

Be controlled by and be accountable to the defendants

Be totally independent of any other organisation.

Seek support from the whole Anti-Poll Tax movement and all other sympathetic organisations.

Seek to co-ordinate the legal defence of all those arrested.

Seek to build a coherent picture of events of 31/3/90 from the point of view of those arrested.

Publicise the points of view of defendants.

Raise money for a bust fund, controlled by the defendants to cover their legal and welfare costs.

Ensure that at all future Anti-Poll Tax events there will be proper legal cover and support for anyone arrested. This will include an office and workers to visit places of detention and look after prisoners’ welfare.

Danny Burns again:

About a dozen people volunteered to carry out the court monitoring process. They attended every hearing, systematically took notes of everything that was said, recorded the numbers of police officers and approached the defendants asking them to attend the now weekly TSDC meetings… By the summer, over 250 of the defendants had been contacted.
The TSDC ran advice sessions on prison, produced legal briefing notes and mailed out the minutes of the weekly meetings to every defendant every week. A solicitors’ group was established with a core of three, but at the peak of early activity they managed to get over fifteen solicitors involved. This proved important because the solicitors’ group managed to get hold of over 50 hours of police videos and handed them over to the campaign. The police videos were crucial in getting a lot of people off, and a number of people in the campaign worked extremely hard editing videos and rejigging them for particular trials. The solicitors’ group also got the Crown Prosecution Service to hand over a full list of all of the defendants and the names and addresses of their lawyers. The lawyers were all contacted and, although many were initially reluctant to co-operate with the campaign, they soon realised that TSDC had a lot of information which their clients needed.

The Dublin water charge strike

In the campaign against the Dublin water charge in the 1990s, the resisters used the legal system as another avenue of protest and resistance. The Secretary of the Federation of Dublin Anti Water Charge Campaigns recalls:

Every possible legal angle was pursued by the campaign’s legal team — down to legal definitions of what constituted a householder, making the councils prove that the person they had summonsed actually lived at the address, that they owned the property, etc., etc. We weren’t doing this because we had any illusions in the impartiality of the court system. We knew that even though we were successful in finding various legal loopholes these would all be closed one by one and that the judges would be doing their best to facilitate the councils. This was demonstrated most clearly when a judge in Swords invoked the Public Order Act to close several streets around the courthouse to prevent a protest outside it.
But by contesting every detail of every summons we could make the system unworkable. There were tens of thousands of non-payers. After several months the councils had only managed to get a couple of dozen cases through the courts. Someone calculated that at the rate they were managing to proceed it would take them something like 220 years to process all the cases. And it was costing them more in legal fees than they could ever hope to take back in charges — even if they managed to bully everyone into paying.
Any time the council did manage to get a court order, it was appealed — again the objective being to clog up the system.

George Cony’s aggressive lawyers

When Oliver Cromwell knocked the English king off his throne, he did so in part in the cause of Parliamentary democracy. Upon assuming charge of the English government, however, he grew impatient with Parliament and decided to enact some taxes on his own.

One of Cromwell’s more radical supporters, George Cony, taking Cromwell at his word (Cromwell had said that “the subject who submits to an illegal impost is more an enemy of his country than the tyrant who imposes it”) decided to refuse to pay one of these arbitrary taxes.

Cony’s lawyers argued his case so successfully that Cony’s tax evasion case threatened to call the legal underpinnings of Cromwell’s regime into question. The judges in the case seemed sympathetic, and Cromwell was so alarmed that he had all three lawyers imprisoned in the Tower of London until they repented, upon which the chief-justice who was hearing the case resigned.

Hugh Williams and the Rebecca rioters

Radical lawyer Hugh Williams was of great help to the Rebecca movement in Wales — some say he was more than a legal advisor, but one of the instigators of the movement, or even “Rebecca” herself! One account says: “[Williams] did all the legal work for the rioters, also drafting various petitions for them. He was a prominent member of the Chartist movement, acting as their solicitor, and he defended the prisoners at Welshpool Assizes in July, 1839, for taking part in the Chartist Riots. He rendered similar services to the Rebecca prisoners gratuitously; but was eventually reported to the Lord Chancellor and struck off the Rolls. He, however, continued to do a considerable amount of legal work, and whenever it became necessary for him to appear in court, he invariably employed [another attorney] to appear for him.”

His familiarity with the law and the legal process helped him help the Rebeccaites translate their grievances into formal petitions, which in turn helped the Rebeccaite “people power” movement effect change in government policy.

White supremacists in Reconstruction-era Louisiana

When white supremacists in New Orleans decided to actively withdraw their consent from the mixed-race Reconstruction government of “scalawags” and “carpet-baggers” there in 1872, they formed “The People’s Association to Resist Unconstitutional Taxation” and declared a tax strike.

Fifty-eight New Orleans attorneys signed the following statement of support:

The undersigned attorneys at law, citizens of New Orleans, engage themselves, without compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all citizens, residents, or property-holders in this city, who shall desire their assistance in resisting the collection by municipal authorities of the taxes known as the “school-tax,” the “park-tax,” and the “metropolitan-police tax,” and other taxes the collection of which may be lawfully resisted.

The Smith sisters of Glastonbury

Abby & Julia Smith refused to pay taxes to a local government that denied women the vote and that took advantage of this by excessively taxing women’s property in order to ease the tax burden on male voters and to redistribute the money to male patronage recipients. In response, the government periodically seized and auctioned off the Smith sisters’ cows (“Votey” and “Taxey”). That failing to discourage the Smiths, the town decided to fight dirty, and the Smiths fought back legally in a way that brought further attention to their cause:

[A]n inconspicuous advertisement in the Hartford Courant announced the sale at public auction of fifteen acres of Smith pasture land on June 20, a date contrived to fall just before the grass would be cut. Though the sisters set out on that day with ample funds, the collector adroitly shifted the meeting place, and when the two women caught up with the auction, the gavel had just gone down transferring for $78.35 land worth nearly $2,000 to none other than a covetous neighbor who had tried for years to get possession of it.
Abby and Julia were daughters of a lawyer. They brought suit against tax collector George C. Andrews on the grounds that he had violated a law which plainly stated that movable property must first be sold for unpaid taxes before real estate could be seized. The case was tried in the home of Judge Hollister of Glastonbury, who gave a verdict in favor of the sisters and fined Andrews damages of $10. Threatening terrible consequences, Andrews appealed the case.
The new trial, which lasted three days in the Hartford Court of Common Pleas, had a farcical aspect. There were misplaced records; there was distorted evidence. The judge, in absentia, reversed the Glastonbury decision and decided in favor of collector Andrews. At this point the Smiths’ lawyer backed out. Abby and Julia, both now in their eighties, began the study of law with the intention of conducting their own case. Happily a capable lawyer finally agreed to place a second appeal before the Court of Equity.
For two years a wide and sympathetic public followed this devious litigation. Across the nation, even in England and France, editors and columnists lauded the Glastonbury cows in prose and poetry. Reporters visited the town, drank tea in the elm-shaded farmhouse, admired the cows, polled public opinion in Glastonbury, and returned with highly flavored and often inaccurate stories. With whatever condescension these reporters arrived, they seem, one and all, to have found the Smith sisters irresistible. The hospitality, wit, and charm of the two elderly spinsters captivated the world beyond Glastonbury.

When the final verdict was made in their favor, in November of 1876, women the country over rejoiced. To be sure, Julia and Abby did not vote in Glastonbury, but from that time on their property was undisturbed.

The Greek “Won’t Pay” movement

The current Greek “Won’t Pay” movement, which is resisting a number of stealth taxes the government has added to things like utility bills and road tolls, has also carried its struggle into court — at one point winning an injunction that forbade the state power company from cutting the power of people who were refusing to pay the new utility bill tax.

Newly-enfranchised Pennsylvania women

When women in Pennsylvania won the vote, many discovered to their chagrin that they had also become subject to taxes to which they had previously been immune. Thousands of them, deciding the package was not worth it, decided to refuse to pay.

And they were able to take advantage of a quirk in an 1834 law that did not permit the authorities to send women to prison (though they could imprison men) for tax refusal:

Nothing herein contained shall authorize the arrest or imprisonment for non-payment of any tax of any female or infant or person found by inquisition to be of unsound mind.

It took a few years for the state legislature to pass a law allowing for the jailing of women who refused to pay their taxes.

Maurice McCrackin’s lawyers

Not all legal help is helpful. When American war tax resister Maurice McCrackin was convicted of refusing to cooperate with an IRS summons, he was following a strategy of complete noncooperation that he kept following right into the courtroom — where he refused to stand for the judge, refused to plead to the charges, refused to answer questions, refused to consult with his court-appointed attorney, fasted while behind bars, and had to be wheeled into and out from his court appearances because he wouldn’t walk there under his own power.

For the same reason, upon his conviction, he emphatically said that he was not interested in pursuing an appeal: “I said I wanted to file no appeal, nor did I want steps taken to keep the door open, so an appeal could be perfected later. I do not recognize any appeal on my behalf… My position is not changed. This is a moral, not a legal, struggle.”

One of the lawyers who had been assigned to defend him, however, convinced that the judge had betrayed bias against McCracken in his statements from the bench, said that he intended to appeal anyway.

“Constitutionalist” tax protesters

And then there are the “Constitutionalist” “show me the law!”-style tax protesters. For years they have been bedeviling the IRS with their baroque, ever-evolving, quasi-legal arguments and pleadings based on the real Constitution, or common law, or tortured interpretations of excerpts from a variety of cherry-picked statutes and court rulings.

While they typically know just enough about the law to get into trouble, without knowing enough to get out again, there’s no question that they cause headaches a-plenty for the powers that be. Alas, this does not seem to actually be their objective. Instead, they seem convinced that they’re not just whistling Dixie, but they’re right, and if they can just figure out how to pick the lock of the court system with the right argument, they’ll be able to walk out free into a new world where their Constitution holds sway and the perverters of the true law are vanquished.

Alas, most of what they have discovered is an enormous and inventive catalog of things that don’t work, so in spite of all of their creativity and effort, they have given the rest of us little to work with. But if you ever have a “that’s so crazy it just might work!” idea about going up against the IRS, you might want to research these folks first — they may have already tried it.

And every once in a while they rack up a courtroom victory — not often one that amounts to much in real terms, but it fuels the movement. One observer of the movement reacted to a twist of this sort by saying: “This is going to encourage thousands more people who were on the fence, who were paying taxes only because they were afraid they would be criminally prosecuted. If too many people do this, the tax system will collapse because it is based on people voluntarily complying.”

(I’m most familiar with the U.S. variety, but similar groups exist in Canada, the U.K., and probably elsewhere. Earlier this year in England, for instance, hundreds of Constitutionalist tax protesters stormed a courtroom where one of their number was on trial, whereupon they attempted to put the judge under citizens arrest, and began making their own rulings from the bench!)

When people are arrested, tried, or imprisoned for tax resistance, their comrades have sometimes used this as an occasion to hold rallies or other demonstrations. This shows support for the people being persecuted, demonstrates determination in the face of government reprisals, and can be a good opportunity for propaganda.

Here are some examples:

When Russell Kanning was convicted for leafletting at the IRS office in Keene, New Hampshire, supporters demonstrated at the jail, holding up “Free Russell Kanning” signs.

During the Dublin water charge strike, according to one organizer: “The campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up in force. … And when the first court appearances took place, over 500 people turned up outside Rathfarnham courthouse to support their neighbours. We marched to the courthouse, had stirring speeches, several songs including ‘You’ll never Walk Alone’ and ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and an amazing sense of our unbeatability.”
Sylvia Hardy, an elderly woman from Exeter, refused to pay her council tax, calling it highway robbery that the tax rates have risen by double-digits per year, while her pension rises at only 1.7% annually. When she was summonsed to court, she walked alongside banner-waving supporters and was met by a crowd of supporters outside the courthouse.
Another pensioner who refused to pay his council tax bill for similar reasons, David Richardson, was taken to court in 2004. About fifty supporters demonstrated outside, singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” for Richardson.
Brian Wright was the first person imprisoned for failure to pay Margaret Thatcher’s “Poll Tax” — 700 people held a rally outside the prison to show support. Other prisons holding poll tax resisters were later picketed by protesters.
When J.J. Keon, a Socialist from Grafton, Illinois, was jailed for refusing to pay what he contended was an illegal poll tax in 1910, Socialist Party spokesman Ralph Korngold came to town and gave a speech outside the prison urging people to join Keon in resisting and to ask why no rich tax dodgers were behind bars.
Maurice McCrackin was jailed for war tax resistance in 1958. While there, war tax resister Richard Fichter picketed the federal prison camp where he was held. Before that, he’d picketed the courthouse where McCracken was being tried.
When the IRS took war tax resister Ed Hedemann to court in 1999 to try to force him to turn over financial documents to the agency, some 25 supporters, waving signs and handing out leaflets, joined him to demonstrate outside the courthouse before the hearing.
Prior to war tax resister Frank Donnelly’s sentencing on tax evasion charges in 2010, dozens of supporters rallied outside the courthouse. One supporter noted that “[i]n addition to showing up at his sentencing, Donnelly’s friends in Maine threw three ‘Going-Away-To-Jail Parties’ for Donnelly in the days leading up to his prison sentence. In one party surprise, Donnelly cut into a fresh Maine blueberry pie, and he found a file baked into the pie.”

The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom was particularly noted for its courthouse and jailhouse rallies:

When Clemence Housman was jailed for failure to pay about $1 of tax in 1911 — with the authorities telling her that they were authorized to keep her in jail until she paid up, however long that took — the Women’s Tax Resistance League held a protest outside the prison, and “gave three rousing cheers for Miss Housman, which… it is hoped reached the lonely prisoner in her cell.” The league then organized a procession to the prison gates. The four mile walk, over muddy streets on a rainy day, ended in a surprising victory, as the government had thrown in the towel and released Housman — without getting a penny from her — after five days.
When a Women’s Suffrage wagon full of activists descended on the courthouse where Janet Legate Bunten was being charged with refusal to take out a license for her dog, the authorities panicked. “The court was twenty minutes late in taking its seat,” a sympathetic observer noted, “and it was freely rumoured that the reason of the delay was that more police were sent for to be in attendance before the proceedings began! There certainly was an unusual number present for so insignificant a court.”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League organized “a great gathering” to support Kate Harvey who was charged with ten counts of failing to pay national insurance taxes on her gardener’s salary. Following the sentence, they shouted “Shame!” to the judge, then held a “poster parade” to the town square and held a mass meeting there.

There are many ways to support tax resisters when they are targeted by the police or courts, including:

supporting the families of imprisoned resisters (see The Picket Line for 27 September 2012)
accompanying resisters to and from prison and visiting them while inside (see The Picket Line for 28 September 2012)
holding rallies outside the courthouse or prison (see The Picket Line for 3 October 2012)
attending their trials (see The Picket Line for 4 October 2012)
assisting their legal defense (see The Picket Line for 18 September 2012)
disrupting the trials or breaking resisters out of prison (see The Picket Line for 6 October 2012)

Another way to help resisters who are tangling with the legal system is to pay their legal fees or their fines. About a month ago I covered “mutual insurance” plans, with which tax resistance campaigns spread the cost of fines and other such costs over more resisters than just those explicitly targeted.

Today I’ll cover some examples of more ad hoc, after-the-fact generosity in a similar vein.

Sylvia Hardy

Sylvia Hardy, retired and living in Exeter, was upset that the cost of living increase in her pension was less than 3%, while her council tax was rising at a double-digit percentage each year. So she decided to stop paying.

A sympathizer paid her bill one year, and in response Hardy wrote to the city council to ask them not to accept any further donations in her name. Later, she was told that someone had called in by telephone offering to pay her whole bill, and she again refused, saying continued refusal was “the only way to get our voices heard.”

Nonetheless, when she was jailed in 2005, an anonymous sympathizer paid her outstanding taxes, and she was released after spending two days behind bars.

Old Holborn

Nick Hogan, a Bolton pub-owner, defied a new anti-smoking ordinance and openly permitted his patrons to light up. For this he was fined £3,000, and another £7,000+ in court costs. He refused to pay and was thrown in jail.

Hogan was set free the following month when a blogger going by the handle of “Old Holborn” dressed up in a Guy Fawkes mask and cape in order to remain anonymous and delivered a suitcase full of cash to prison to pay Hogan’s fine. The funds had been donated by thousands of people around the world who were sympathetic to Hogan’s fight.

“Carter”

A man named Carter (his other name has, as far as I know, been lost to history) refused to pay a $1 militia tax for conscientious reasons in 1901. For this, his town put him in jail and vowed to keep him there (at a cost to the town of $2.50 per week) until he paid up. He was stubborn, and stayed there at least 21 months.

A newspaper article about his case says, “[f]riends offered to advance the money to Carter, but he stubbornly refused to accept the money and pay the tax.”

Zerah C. Whipple

When Zerah C. Whipple was imprisoned for refusing to pay a militia tax, an anonymous donor eventually paid the tax and costs to have him released.

At an unexpected moment an entire stranger called at the prison and desired to know the amount of the tax and costs, which he paid, saying he knew the worth of Z.C. Whipple, and that his family for generations back had never paid the military tax, and he wished to save the State from the disgrace of imprisoning a person guilty of no crime.
The money was paid and the door opened, and his friend took the receipt to his children and said, “Keep this as a reminiscence that in 1874 your father paid this bill to release a young man from prison, that he might enjoy the rights of conscience.”

Mary McLeod Cleeves

When women’s suffrage activist Mary McLeod Cleeves was threatened with imprisonment for refusing to pay a carriage license tax, the suffragist newspaper The Vote noted that “Mrs. Cleeves has been beseiged by friends asking to be allowed to pay her fine; but like a true Suffragette, she refused.”

Annuity Tax resisters

Quakers, also a nonconformist sect, were largely in sympathy with the Annuity Tax resisters of Edinburgh, Scotland, but an editorial in one Quaker periodical chided those resisters for being eager to pay up to get their colleagues out of jail, rather than to embrace martyrdom like a good Quaker would:

We are principally induced to advert to this matter, on account of the means by which the liberation of the prisoners was effected — that of a public subscription. This, we consider to have been most objectionable. … we see nothing to commend, but every thing to reprobate, in the conduct of Dissenters in this matter. The movement may bespeak their sympathy for the sufferer, but we contend that it was both injudiciously expressed, and exceedingly ill-timed. Had the public subscription been deferred till after the prisoners had been liberated, in what we should consider a legitimate manner, and its object of course been different — to testify at once the sympathy of the subscribers, and to compensate for the injury sustained by the prisoners — there would have been no objection to the manifestation.

Did it not occur to the Dissenters of Edinburgh, that it was not from want of pecuniary ability that either of the prisoners allowed himself to be immured in jail? Or again, what was the difference between these individuals paying the tax themselves, and its being paid for them by public subscription? If it was wrong in the one case, it must be equally wrong, and a violation of principle, in the other. It has surprised us, that not one of the Dissenting Journals that we have met with has taken this view of the subject. In their joyfulness at the liberation of the prisoners, they seem to have lost sight entirely of the sacrifice of principle at which it was obtained.

Lessons from Thoreau, Maurice McCrackin, and Juanita Nelson

You’ll note that in many of the cases I mentioned, the offered money was an unwelcome gift — the resisters were not going to jail for lack of funds, but for principle.

The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real needs and desires. When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”

When the lawyers the court assigned to defend war tax resister Maurice McCrackin — who was refusing to cooperate with the court entirely, and who wanted no legal defense whatsoever — vowed to pursue an appeal of a verdict they thought was unjust, McCracken emphatically said that he was not interested in pursuing an appeal: “I said I wanted to file no appeal, nor did I want steps taken to keep the door open, so an appeal could be perfected later. I do not recognize any appeal on my behalf… My position is not changed. This is a moral, not a legal, struggle.”

Juanita Nelson tells a happier story: of the support she received in jail, where she had been taken in her bathrobe from her home. Her supporters took the time to learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:

Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted to come to me, since I would not go to them. I asked them what was uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed? They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself. I sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me to be dressed for my appearance in court. They were more concerned about the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was. They were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and readiness. I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them. The older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the clothes in a taxicab.
They left, and on their heels came another visitor. She had been told that in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more courtesy than I was according them. It was her assessment that the chief deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me and was willing to make concessions in that hope. But he had misjudged the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the men. She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I had started.
And she said. “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe. You look, well, dignified.”
That was my first encouragement. Everyone else had tended to make me feel like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that score. My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was deep. And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to try to emulate a more becoming state of mind. I reminded myself, too, that I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to greet kings and statesmen with ease. I need not be unduly perturbed about wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.

There are many ways to support tax resisters when they are targeted by the police or courts, including:

supporting the families of imprisoned resisters (see The Picket Line for 27 September 2012)
accompanying resisters to and from prison and visiting them while inside (see The Picket Line for 28 September 2012)
holding rallies outside the courthouse or prison (see The Picket Line for 3 October 2012)
attending their trials (see The Picket Line for 4 October 2012)
assisting their legal defense (see The Picket Line for 18 September 2012)
disrupting the trials or breaking resisters out of prison (see The Picket Line for 6 October 2012)
paying their legal fees or their fines for them (see The Picket Line for 8 October 2012)

Today I’ll finish off this series by mentioning some other examples of ways sympathizers, supporters, and organized campaigns have responded to the arrest, trial, or imprisonment of tax resisters.

Mass action in response to arrests

When elderly pensioner Sylvia Hardy was imprisoned for refusing to continue to pay her ever-rising council tax, supporters started a daily vigil outside Exeter Cathedral to bring attention to her plight. “Judging from the passers-by,” one said, “most people are fully aware of what’s happened to her and we’ve had a lot of sympathy and interest.”
When Australian miners refused to pay a license tax in 1854, they resolved that if any one of them were arrested: “it should be reported to the [tax resistance] committee by the nearest observer; they would immediately call a monster meeting, and the whole of the people would deliver themselves into custody.”
In 1921, Australian miners were at it again, this time resisting the income tax. They voted on a resolution that said, in part, that upon “any member being sent to prison for refusing to pay, that all unionists be called on immediately to stop work, and refuse to recommence until such member is released, or the garnished money is refunded.”
In Beidenfleth, Germany, between the World Wars, farmers were unable to keep up with their tax payments, and decided to strike rather than see themselves further impoverished. When fifty-seven were indicted for interfering with a tax seizure, hundreds of others who either had been involved with that action (or who wished they could have been), demanded to be tried alongside them:

[A] fever seemed to grip the countryside. From far and wide the peasants poured into Itzehoe, where the case was to be tried, with wild cries of self-accusation. The public prosecutor could not walk down the streets without being at once mobbed by powerful, earnest men begging him to lift the heavy weight of guilt from their shoulders and to restore their inner peace of mind by issuing a writ against them.

Honor prisoners

While people were desperately trying to get themselves indicted for tax resistance in Beidenfleth, those who succeeded were honored:

The Beidenfleth Heifer Case developed into a regular popular festival. Maidenly hands strung garlands about the necks of those enviable peasants who had achieved the honour of receiving a writ.
I’ve mentioned before the badges awarded by the Women’s Tax Resistance League to those who had gone to prison in the course of the campaign, and how those so awarded were given the place of honor at campaign events (see The Picket Line for 13 September 2012). It was also common for the League to throw luncheons or other such events to honor imprisoned resisters upon their release.
The annuity tax resisters in Edinburgh, Scotland, honored one imprisoned resister with “a piece of plate for his conduct on this occasion.” Another time, they passed the hat for contributions, which, when the money was given to resister Thomas Russell, he said: “We shall give it to the Annuity Tax League, to enable them to carry out their operations in the abolishment of the tax.”
A plaque on the Cass County, Missouri courthouse building honors the five county judges who were imprisoned for contempt for refusing to order the county to collect taxes to pay off fraudulent railroad bonds over a century ago.

Formal shows of support

When John Brown Smith, a lone Christian anarchist tax resister who was imprisoned for tax resistance for about a year between 1879 and 1880, a convention of “Liberalists” in Boston passed a resolution in support of Smith’s stand, saying: “That in suffering eight months’ imprisonment in the orthodox Republican hell of Northampton, rather than pay his taxes, John Brown Smith has shown discerning wisdom and invincible courage, which place him high among the world’s benefactors, and disclose a practical way to vanquish sanguinary forces without shedding innocent or vicious blood.”
One of the Cass County judges who went to jail for refusing to obey a higher court order to impose taxes on the county to pay for fraudulent railroad bonds, was elected to the state legislature by the citizens of the county while he was in prison.
When war tax resister Zerah C. Whipple was in jail for his stand, the Connecticut State Peace Society passed a series of resolutions in support. For example: “Resolved: That it is a great, previous, and sanctifying privilege of us all, to feel that in his bonds we are bound with him, and to pour our heart’s holiest sympathies into his cup of trial.”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League and allied organizations would pass resolutions in support of imprisoned resisters, send telegrams of congratulation to resisters who were being jailed for the cause, and hold meetings to especially commemorate and support their stand.

Petition the government for leniency

When a number of young Quaker men were imprisoned for failure to pay a militia exemption tax in 1778, David Cooper followed them to jail, and met with the officers who were holding them captive. He wrote:

I had much conversation with them; they appeared very moderate, but were very earnest for me to pay the fine, and not suffer our sons to be committed to prison. I told them they were aware that our religious principles forbade it; the young men were in their possession, and I had no desire to persuade them to deviate from what they believed their duty as officers required; but only wished them to use their power in a manner that would afford peace hereafter. It was a matter of conscience; they ought therefore to be very tender, and not use rigor. If they were committed I saw no end. They could never pay the fines without wounding their own minds, nor could their friends do it for them. They appeared friendly, and the young men being under the Sheriff’s care, he directed them to go home, and meet him at Woodbury at an appointed day. He afterwards sent them word they need give themselves no further trouble till he called for them. So the matter rested.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League would write letters of inquiry to government officials whenever one of them was imprisoned. For instance, when Kate Harvey was jailed, Charlotte Despard wrote to her representative in Parliament to point out the discrepancy between her cruel sentence and the wrist-slaps given to men for similar offenses. “I cannot believe, sir,” she wrote, “that you will permit this injustice to be done. … Mrs. Harvey is one whose time, service and money are given to the rescue of little destitute children, and to the help of those not so fortunately placed as herself. While such injustices as these are permitted by the authorities, can you wonder that women are in revolt?” League member Marie Lawson started what she called a “snowball” protest — a sort of chain letter that sympathizers were supposed to send to their friends that included a postcard-sized petition they could send to various government figures.
When American war tax resister Maurice McCracken was imprisoned, supporters sent a telegram to President Eisenbower, asking him to release the prisoner (they got a vague, noncommittal reply).
Somewhat related to this is that when the American Revolution broke out, one item on the agenda of the revolutionaries from North Carolina was the legal rehabilitation of the tax rebels who had been convicted at the end of the Regulator movement of 1767–71.

On this day in 1958 the government took war tax resister Maurice McCrackin to court for his refusal to produce records for the IRS. Here’s the photo, with the caption that accompanied it in the Binghamton [New York] Press a couple of days later:

**Hauled Into Court… Yep, Literally –** The Rev. Maurice McCrackin, who has refused to pay income taxes because part of the money goes for military purposes, again had to be carried into U.S. District Court at Cincinnati Monday. He again refused to plead to an indictment and was sentenced to jail for contempt. It was a repeat performance. Carrying the pastor are Deputy U.S. Marshal Ernie Damico, left, and Internal Revenue Agent Vincent Brennan.

Here is some more news about the case from the following month:

White House Reply About Pacifist Hit

New York (AP) — A clergyman said yesterday a White House statement concerning a pacifist Presbyterian Minister jailed in Cincinnati “doesn’t really deal with the issue.”
The comment came from the Rev. John Swomley of Nyack, national secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which describes itself as an interdenominational, anti-Communist pacifist organization.
Swomley was one of 13 ministers who, with Norman Thomas, veteran New-York Socialist, had appealed in a telegram to President Eisenhower to free the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin.
The Rev. Mr. McCrackin declines to pay taxes because, he says they help pay for war weapons and he believes war is evil. He was jailed for contempt and went on a fast that he continued until Tuesday. He will be tried tomorrow on income tax charges.
The petitioners said the jailing “takes on the appearance of persecution.”
The reply, signed by David W. Kindall, special counsel for the President, and addressed to Thomas, said: “In reply to the telegram from you and 13 ministers, dated Dec. 4, 1958, the Justice Department advises the contempt action against Maurice McCrackin was imposed on the Court’s own motion.
“Prompt action under indictment on charge of failure to obey summons insured setting trial for Dec. 12. 1958.”
The Rev. Mr. Swomley said the reply “told us what we already knew.”

Another photo accompanied an article about that trial:

**Pacifist Minister Wheeled Into Court –** The Rev. Maurice McCrackin, looking wan after a 15-day fast in jail, smiles as U.S. deputy marshals wheel him into Cincinnati court to face trial for failure to respond to an internal revenue service summons. McCrackin, a Cincinnati minister, has refused for years to pay a portion of his income taxes he figures go for war purposes.

Attorneys for Pacifist Minister Battle On, Despite Denunciation by U.S. Judge

Cincinnati (AP) — Stung by a scathing denunciation of their client by a federal judge, attorneys for a pacifist minister were ready today to fight on — whether their disciple of civil disobedience likes it or not.
The attack on the Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin by Judge John H. Druffel came between the time a jury convicted the minister and the judge sentenced him to six months in a federal prison and fined him $250. Rev. McCrackin was convicted Friday of refusing to answer an Internal Revenue Service summons to discuss his refusal to pay federal income taxes.
Judge Druffel told the 53-year-old bachelor minister — still gaunt from a 15-day jail-cell fast:
“Your pious attitude is more or less of a false face.”
Claims Red Sympathies
Then, after accusing Rev. McCrackin of being a “pacifist agitator” and of associating “with those of overwhelming Soviet sympathies.” the judge added:
“I don’t know of any more pious traitor than that.”
Although he was a court-appointed attorney who has served without pay, co-counsel Theodore M. Berry leaped to his feet in protest.
“As an officer of this court,” he shouted, “the court is guilty of a grievous error. There is not one iota of proof that Rev. McCrackin is a Communist.”
Berry and his co-counsel, Prof. Fred O. Dewey of the University of Cincinnati, were asked immediately after court adjourned if they planned to appeal. Berry shot back heatedly:
“You’re damned right. What else can we do?”
One-Sided Presentations
Internal Revenue Service officials presented all the testimony for the prosecution; only a handful of character witnesses appeared for the defense.
The entire trial was an off-beat affair. Through it all, Rev. McCrackin remained serene — and silent. He refused to stand in court, plead to the indictment, defend himself or help his attorneys. While he awaited the verdict, he read calmly from a book by Albert Schweitzer.
Only after the jury’s verdict — reached in only 19 minutes of deliberation — did he break his silence. Even then, he said only:
“There is one thing I’d like to say. It is my earnest prayer that the government will stop its war preparations and honor the consciences of those who would stop these evils.”
Judge Makes Offer
Before sentencing. Judge Druffel disclosed that only a week ago, at a pretrial hearing, he offered probation to the minister in return for a plea, of nolo contendre (no contest).
But the minister of Cincinnati’s St. Barnabas Presbyterian and Episcopal church refused to have anything to do with the legal fight.
Faced with complete lack of cooperation by their client. Berry and Dewey based almost their entire case on a contention the summons which Rev. McCrackin refused to honor was invalid, that it was issued by a person without authority to issue it.
While Rev. McCrackin has failed even to file income tax returns for 1955 and 1956 on grounds much of the money would have been used for armaments, the trial did not strike at the heart of this issue. It was concerned solely with his refusal to answer the summons to discuss his tax troubles.

A few years later the papers printed a more thorough, bylined recap of McCrackin’s activism:

Tax-Resisting Cleric Viewed As Crusader — or Crackpot

by Harold Harrison
Associated Press Writer

Cincinnati — (AP) – Some persons call him a “crackpot.” Some call him a “publicity seeker.” Others — more charitable — refer to him as an “idealist” or a “zealot.” And his close followers look upon him as a beleaguered crusader for universal peace and brotherhood.

Rev. Maurice McCrackin

That is the Rev. Maurice McCrackin, Cincinnati’s controversial Presbyterian minister whose passive resistance to income taxes for military purposes and in behalf of rights of Negroes three times have led him to jail.
The 56-year-old minister is a bland-appearing, mild-mannered man who has become somewhat of a headache, not only to law enforcement officers but his own Presbyterian church.
He is gray-haired, stands 5-feet 10½-inches tall and speaks in a well-modulated tone with none of the histrionics that usually are associated with persons who carry on such “crusades.”
A Bachelor
He is a bachelor and lives with a sister in the parsonage of the West Cincinnati St. Barnabas Church — a combined Episcopalian and Presbyterian church with both white and Negro members.
As of now, however, he is only a member of the choir of the church. The Cincinnati Presbytery several months ago forbade McCrackin from carrying on the regular duties of a pastor and an appeal is pending. That stemmed from his violation of civil law — refusal to pay income taxes.
“I sing in the choir and I attend church meetings” McCrackin said of his present status. He also visits the sick but only as an individual.
He explained his status this week after he returned from Brownsville, Tenn., where he served out a fine for loitering in connection with an appearance, in behalf of Negro sharecroppers who have been removed from their farms.
The Negroes claim they were evicted because they registered to vote in the 1960 election. Landowners claim contracts to farm the land were not renewed because of mechanization of farms and reductions in cotton crop acreage.
Refused to Eat
Many of the Negroes have been living in a “tent city.”
During 25 days of his stay in jail in Brownsville, Mr. McCrackin refused to eat in a passive resistance fast.
That was the third time McCrackin has been in jail.
However, a group of fellow-pastors reported Thursday their investigation indicated the Rev. Maurice McCrackin’s conviction in Brownsville, Tenn., was chiefly his own fault.
In a report to the Presbytery of Cincinnati, the group’s Church and Community Committee said:
“Mr. McCrackin’s refusal to testify on his own behalf and his refusal to accept legal counsel left the court little choice but to find him guilty in light of the evidence which was presented by the prosecution.
“Had Mr. McCrackin chosen to cooperate with authorities at any one of several points and certainly during his trial, there is reason to believe that since he did have a satisfactory explanation for his activities on the night of his arrest, he might not have been found guilty.”
Feels War a Sin
He first began to attract widespread attention in 1958 as a result of his long time refusal to pay income taxes because part ot the money goes for military purposes and he believes war to be a sin.
The Internal Revenue Service finally issued a summons for him to appear to discuss his income tax problems. He refused to honor it and was haled into Federal Court.
On that and subsequent appearances in court he refused to walk and had to be carried into the courtroom.
He refused to make any plea or statement and the then U.S. District Judge John H. Druffel sent him to jail for contempt of court. He refused to eat at that time.
Subsequently, he was carried into court again and Judge Druffel entered a plea of innocent for him. Smiling blandly, the minister refused to stand in court or cooperate with court-appointed attorneys and in December, 1958, he was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison and fined $250.
He served his time in a correctional institution in Pennsylvania.
Later, the government sought unsuccessfully to collect back income taxes from McCrackin’s share of his mother’s estate which he said he had renounced.
Tax Philosophy
It’s easy to arrive at either “crackpot,” “zealot”, or “crusader” description from McCrackin’s philosophy on income taxes.
“I believe if we would withdraw support from something we think is wrong, we couldn’t have wars,” he said. “If we begin to act unilaterally, we wouldn’t have them. If the people would withdraw funds we would change the policy of governments.
“It has been proven that the basis of keeping peace by terrorism never works. There always will be an explosion and this time it will be an explosion of extinction.”
McCrackin was asked what he felt would happen in other countries if the United States should abandon all military preparations.
“We hope there would be enough individuals that would say the same thing and that it would become part of a movement,” he replied.

One tactic that has been used from time to time by tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns is to attempt to make tax enforcement, or government reprisals against tax resisters, costly for the government — for example by clogging the jails or the court system.

If accomplished successfully, this can force the government into a checkmate, where if it fails to take action it loses, but if it takes action it loses. But by forcing resisters to throw themselves onto the gears of the machine, this tactic can be costly to them as well, and so this tactic can turn into a game of chicken (or a war of attrition).

Here are a handful of examples:

John Brown Smith was a British citizen living in Massachusetts. Not, as an alien, being entitled to vote, he decided to test the American “no taxation without representation” motto, and stopped paying his $2 poll tax. In 1879 the town threw him in jail. There he stayed… for almost a year! The town had to pay about $1.75 a week just to feed him.

The question of martyrdom in this case hinges on the board bill, for which the Town of Belchertown is liable. Some of the frugal tax-payers of Belchertown object to being assessed for their proportion of Smith’s weekly board bill. They think that they are the real martyrs, since they maintain in idleness a man who will nto pay a poll-tax, the proceeds of which would scarcely suffice to pay the cost of maintaining him one week in Northampton Jail. Some nobler spirits, however, express their willingness to pay their share of the cost of Smith’s prison fare until the crack of doom, if Smith should hold out so long, in order that the majesty of the law shall be vindicated. Smith, on his part, exultingly declares that he is better housed and fed than a majority of the voters of Belchertown who are paying his board. This aspect of the case detracts somewhat from the heroism of the martyr to the poll-tax. Nevertheless, as Smith adds that he would rather spend the rest of his days in jail than give up the principle for which he is contending, we may concede that he is a real hero, unaffected by the mercenary considerations of his board bill.

Smith was eventually released when someone came forward to pay his tax and fines (a total of $5.62) for him (leaving the government about $75 behind on the deal).
J.J. Keon refused to pay his poll tax in Grafton, Illinois, in 1910:

J.J. Keon, a Socialist of this city, is in the city jail, having the time of his life, so he says, because he is forcing the city to spend $125 to punish him for failure to pay a poll tax of $1.50… He says he finds nothing in the state constitution which makes a poll tax legal, so he insists that the city keep him in jail for six months, which is the longest term possible for his “offense.” He believes that it will not alter his principle and that it may make the city tired of forcing its male population to pay a poll tax.

“You’re losing $4.50 a day [Keon’s usual salary] while you are in jail,” pleaded the mayor. “In six months that will amount to more than $500.”
“Money is nothing to me when compared with a principle,” replied Keon. “And let’s see what I am costing the city. Meals, 150 days, at sixty cents a day, $108; night watchman, $5; chicken fence wire, $2; miscellaneous, $10. Total, $125. The entire poll taxes for the year are only $325.…”
You may remember the newspaper articles about Maurice McCrackin I posted last weekend, in which he refused to cooperate at his tax resistance trial — to the point even of having to be carried or wheeled into the courtroom.

Wage Tax Enforcement Has Officials Stumped. Provisions exist for enforcement but officials hesitate to use them; prosecution becomes major problem. — headline from the 15 March 1953 Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Sunday Independent

Resisters to an unpopular wage tax in Pennsylvania in 1953 discovered that if they refused to pay the tax entirely, the government could quickly hit them with fines or jail time… but if they paid some minimal fraction of the taxes due, the government couldn’t move against them without doing a complicated assessment first to determine how much extra was owed.

This could be a long and dreary legal procedure for a school district or council, especially if there is more than one such delinquent. Therefore, many residents are beating the wage tax levy by simply clunking a single coin on the tax collector’s desk.
Clogging the courts was an important tactic of the campaign to resist Thatcher’s Poll Tax. Danny Burns writes:

Bristol City Council issues summonses to 120,000 people, Leeds summoned 110,000 and the numbers in almost all other big cities were comparable. In order to get through this number of cases, councils had to hope that defendants wouldn’t turn up.…
The strategy of the Anti-Poll Tax Unions was to make sure that as many people as possible came to court. In law everyone had a right to have their case heard individually. The calculation was that even if only a small percentage of people had their cases heard, the courts would be blocked for years.
Initially, neither the councils nor the courts took the judicial procedure seriously because they didn’t expect anyone to turn up… South Tyndale Council summoned 3,500 to appear on two afternoons. A total of five hours was allocated to hear all these cases — an average of four secons per hearing. When people heard this they were furious, because it was obvious that both the council and the courts saw the process as rubber stamping exercise.…
The Anti-Poll Tax Unions publicised the strategy to block the courts, with leaflets and posters and articles in the local newspapers. Mass demonstrations were called for the first day of the hearings, and in some areas the courts were brought to a standstill. In Warrington on June 28^th 1990, 1,000 people took over the court and all the cases were postponed. Similar events took place in Southwark:

1,500 people, mostly women and children, turned up at Southwark court and occupied the building. It was absolute chaos, the courts couldn’t handle the numbers. The police were stopping people from coming into their own court cases. The crowds didn’t move until the court declared all 5,000 cases adjourned.

…People were given ideas about how they might disrupt or delay the court proceedings. These included simple things, like asking for a glass of water because their throat was dry, demanding to see the identity cards of everyone present in court, to fainting in court or arranging for fire alarms to go off. People were told to demand their rights to see and read every document which was produced as evidence against them. They were also given briefings on the basic technical arguments.
…Throughout England and Wales over a thousand people were trained to do court support work and could quote the relevant legislation.

Experience showed that the most effective way of wasting time, for those who were not familiar with the law, was to relate direct experiences of hardship. People talking in their own language about their own circumstances were much harder for the magistrates to dismiss than legal technicians. Many people made political speeches which lasted for as long as ten minutes, others outlined their financial circumstances. They all took up valuable time, and sometimes made a powerful and moving impact on the public gallery.

Using the government’s own defenses against it can be a powerful strategy. And I’ve even got an example in my archives of when the government managed to foil nonviolent tax resisters by using their own tactics against them. During the Salt Raids in the Indian independence campaign, a group of policemen blockaded the road in front of an assembly of salt raiders, and then sent another group to cut off their escape route. Then, rather than attacking the raiders, the police used satyagraha tactics to force a standoff:

“You cannot proceed.” the superintendent informed Mrs. [Sarojini] Naidu.
“We will not go back,” the poetess and leader replied. “We will stay here.”
“We are going to stay here, too, and offer Satyagraha ourselves as long as you stay,” the superintendent said, ordering his men to stand their ground.
They parleyed for a short time and then Mrs. Naidu ordered a chair brought from a nearby house. She sat down and wrote letters and talked jovially with her friends. Her followers squatted on the ground nearby, many of them engaged in spinning cloth.

Here are a handful of artifacts relating to the American war tax resistance movement circa 1967.

First, some relics that were filed alongside a letter from Herbert Sonthoff to W. Walter Boyd (though I think this filing may be arbitrary and that the letters are not related to each other):

An Open Letter ^*

At this late date it is pointless to muster the evidence which shows that the war we are waging in Vietnam is wrong. By now you have decided for yourself where you stand. In all probability, if you share our feelings about it, you have expressed your objections both privately and publicly. You have witnessed the small effect these protests have had on our government.
By April 15^th, every American citizen must decide whether he will make a voluntary contribution to the continuation of this war. After grave consideration, we have decided that we can no longer do so, and that we will therefore withhold all or part of the taxes due. The purpose of this letter is to call your attention to the fact that a nationwide tax refusal campaign is in progress, as stated in the accompanying announcement, and to urge you to consider refusing to contribute voluntarily to this barbaric war.
Signed:

Prof. Warren Ambrose Mathematics, M.I.T.

Dr. Donnell Boardman Physician, Acton, Mass.

Mrs. Elizabeth Boardman Acton, Mass.

Prof. Noam Chomsky Linguistics, M.I.T.

Miss Barbara Deming Writer, Wellfleet, Mass.

Prof. John Dolan Philosophy, Chicago University

Prof. John Ek Anthropology, Long Island University

Martha Bentley Hall Musician, Brookline, Mass.

Dr. Thomas C. Hall Physician, Brookline, Mass.

Rev. Arthur B. Jellis First Parish in Concord, Unitarian-Universalist, Concord, Mass.

Prof. Donald Kalish Philosophy, U.C.L.A.

Prof. Louis Kampf Humanities, M.I.T.

Prof. Staughton Lynd History, Yale University

Milton Mayer Writer, Mass.

Prof. Jonathan Mirsky Chinese Language and Literature, Dartmouth College

Prof. Sidney Morgenbesser Philosophy, Columbia University

Prof. Wayne A. O’Neill Graduate School of Education, Harvard University

Prof. Anatol Rapoport Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan

Prof. Franz Schurmann Center for Chinese Studies, University of Calif., Berkeley

Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgy Institute for Muscle Research, Woods Hole, Mass.

Harold Tovish Sculptor, Brookline, Mass.

Prof. Howard Zinn Government, Boston University

^* Institutions listed for informational purposes only

P.S. The No Tax for War Committee intends to make public the names of signers, hence if you wish to add your signature, early return is desirable. Contributions are needed, and checks should be made payable to the Committee.

The following page, dated 11 March 1967, shows a mock-up of the intended public advertisement showing the signers’ names:

The committee will publish the above statement with names of signers at tax deadline — April 15.
Send signed statements to: NO TAX FOR WAR COMMITTEE, c/o Rev. Maurice McCrackin, 932 Dayton St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45214.
For additional copies of this form, put number you will distribute and name and address on the following lines:
No. _____ Name ____________________
Address _________________________

Signers So Far

Meldon and Amy Acheson

Michael J. Ames

Alfred F. Andersen

Ross Anderson

Beulah K. Arndt

Joan Baez

Richard Baker

Bruce & Pam Beck

Ruth T. Best

Robert & Margaret Blood

Karel F. Botermans

Marion & Ernest Bromley

Edwin Brooks

A. Dale Brothington

Mrs. Lydia Bruns

Wendal Bull

Mrs. Dorothy Bucknell

John Burslem

Lindley J. Burton

Catharine J. Cadbury

Maris Cakars

Robert and Phyllis Calese

William N. Calloway

Betty Camp

Daryle V. Carter

Jared & Susan Carter

Horace & Beulah Champney

Ken & Peggy Champney

Hank & Henry Chapin

Holly Chenery

Richard A. Chinn

Naom [sic] Chomsky

John & Judy Christian

Gordon & Mary Christiansen

Peter Christiansen

Donald F. Cole

John Augustine Cook

Helen Marr Cook

Jack Coolidge, Jr.

Allen Cooper

Martin J. Corbin

Tom & Monica Cornell

Dorothy J. Cunningham

Jean DaCosta

Ann & William Davidon

Stanley F. Davis

Dorothy Day

Dave Dellinger

Barbara Deming

Robert Dewart

Ruth Dodd

John M. Dolan

Orin Doty

Allen Duberstein

Ralph Dull

Malcolm Dundas

Margaret E. Dungan

Henry Dyer

Susan Eanet

Bob Eaton

Marc Paul Edelman

Johan & Francis Eliot

Jerry Engelbach

George J. Etu, Jr.

Mary C. Eubanks

Arthur Evans

Jonathan Evans

William E. Evans

Pearl Ewald

Franklin Farmer

Bertha Faust

Dianne M. Feeley

Rice A. Felder

Henry A. Felisone

Mildred Fellin

Glenn Fisher

John Forbes

Don & Ann Fortenberry

Marion C. Frenyear

Ruth Gage-Colby

Lawrence H. Geller

Richard Ghelli

Charles Gibadlo

Bruce Glushakow

Walter Gormly

Arthur Goulston

Thomas Grabell

Steven Green

Walter Grengg

Joseph Gribbins

Kenneth Gross

John M. Grzywacz, Jr.

Catherine Guertin

David Hartsough

David Hartsough

Arthur Harvey

Janet Hawksley

James P. Hayes, Jr.

R.F. Helstern

Ammon Hennacy

Norman Henry

Robert Hickey

Dick & Heide Hiler

William Himelhoch

C.J. Hinke

Anthony Hinrichs

William M. Hodsdon

Irwin R. Hogenauer

Florence Howe

Donald & Mary Huck

Philip Isely

Michael Itkin

Charles T. Jackson

Paul Jacobs

Martin & Nancy Jezer

F. Robert Johnson

Woodbridge O. Johnson

Ashton & Marie Jones

Paul Jordan

Paul Keiser

Joel C. Kent

Roy C. Kepler

Paul & Pauline Kermiet

Peter Kiger

Richard King

H.A. Kreinkamp

Arthur & Margaret Landes

Paul Lauter

Peter and Marolyn Leach

Gertrud & George A. Lear, Jr.

Alan and Elin Learnard

Titus Lehman

Richard A. Lema

Florence Levinsohn

Elliot Linzer

David C. Lorenz

Preston B. Luitweiler

Bradford Lyttle

Adriann van L. Maas

Ben & Sue Mann

Paul and Salome Mann

Howard E. Marston, Sr.

Milton and Jane Mayer

Martin & Helen Mayfield

Maurice McCrackin

Lilian McFarland

Maureen & Felix McGowan

Maryann McNaughton

Gelston McNeil

Guy W. Meyer

Karl Meyer

David & Catherine Miller

James Missey

Mark Morris

Janet Murphy

Thomas P. Murray

Rosemary Nagy

Wally & Juanita Nelson

Marilyn Neuhauser

Neal D. Newby, Jr.

Miriam Nicholas

Robert B. Nichols

David Nolan

Raymond S. Olds

Wayne A. O’Neil

Michael O’Quin

Ruth Orcutt

Eleanor Ostroff

Doug Palmer

Malcolm & Margaret Parker

Jim Peck

Michael E. Pettie

John Pettigrew

Lydia H. Philips

Dean W. Plagowski

Jefferson Poland

A.J. Porth

Ralph Powell

Charles F. Purvis

Jean Putnam

Harriet Putterman

Robert Reitz

Ben & Helen Reyes

Elsa G. Richmond

Eroseanna Robinson

Pat Rusk

Joe & Helen Ryan

Paul Salstrom

Ira J. Sandperl

Jerry & Rae Schwartz

Martin Shepard

Richard T. Sherman

Louis Silverstein

T.W. Simer

Ann B. Sims

Jane Beverly Smith

Linda Smith

Thomas W. Smuda

Bob Speck

Elizabeth P. Steiner

Lee D. Stern

Beverly Sterner

Michael Stocker

Charles H. Straut, Jr.

Stephen Suffet

Albert & Joyce Sunderland, Jr.

Mr. & Mrs. Michael R. Sutter

Marjorie & Robert Swann

Oliver & Katherine Tatum

Gary G. Taylor

Harold Tovish

Joe & Cele Tuchinsky

Lloyd & Phyllis Tyler

Samuel R. Tyson

Ingegerd Uppman

Margaret von Selle

Mrs. Evelyn Wallace

Wilbur & Joan Ann Wallis

William & Mary Webb

Barbara Webster

John K. White

Willson Whitman

Denny & Ida Wilcher

Huw Williams

George & Lillian Willoughby

Bob Wilson

Emily T. Wilson

Jim & Raona Wilson

W.W. Wittkamper

Sylvia Woog

Wilmer & Mildred Young

Franklin Zahn

Betty & Louis Zemel

Vicki Jo Zilinkas

Following this was a page explaining how to go about resisting:

Some Methods of Nonpayment

For those owing nothing because of the Withholding Tax.

Such persons write a letter to the Internal Revenue Service, to be filed with the tax return, stating that the writer cannot in good conscience help support the war in Vietnam, voluntarily. The writer therefore requests a return of a percentage of the money collected from his salary.

Note: Of course, the IRS will not return the money. However, the writer has refused to pay for the war voluntarily and has put it in writing. This symbolic action is not to be belittled since anybody who does this allies himself with those who will withhold money due the IRS.

For those self-employed or owing money beyond what has been withheld from salary.

Such persons write a letter to be filed with the tax return, stating that the writer does not object to the income tax in principle, but will not, as a matter of conscience, help pay for the war in Vietnam. The writer is therefore withholding some or all of the tax due.

Note: In all cases, we recommend that copies of these letters be sent to the President and to your Senators.

Remarks:

The Internal Revenue Service has the legal power to confiscate money due it. They will get that money, one way or another. However, to obstruct the IRS from collecting money due (by not filing a return at all, for example) seems less important to us than the fact that each is refusing to pay his tax voluntarily. With this in mind, many of us are placing the taxes owed in special accounts and we will so inform the IRS in our letters.

Willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail, together with the costs of prosecution. So far, the IRS has prosecuted only those who have obstructed collection (by refusing to file a return, by refusing to answer a summons, etc.). Usually, the IRS has collected the tax due plus 6% interest and possibly an added fine of 5% for “negligence”. The fact that the IRS has rarely, if at all, prosecuted tax-refusers to the full extent of the law does not mean they will not do so in the future.

Finally, an article from the December 1967 edition of The Capitol East Gazette:

Tax Refusal Urged by Group

Two thousand anti-war leaflets on telephone tax refusal were distributed in Capitol East on Saturday, Nov. 18, by members of CHOICE, a group of local residents who are withdrawing their support for the Vietnam war.
The leaflet explains that the 10% phone tax was enacted in April 1966 specifically to raise money for the Vietnam war.
According to CHOICE, the phone company will not remove a person’s telephone if he refuses to pay the tax. The company asks refusers to state why they are withholding the tax and then turns the matter over to the Internal Revenue Service.
According to CHOICE, there are presently 25 known tax refusers in the Capitol Hill area.
Those desiring CHOICE’s leaflet are asked to call LI 6‒9836.

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1961

By 1961, war tax resistance, or at least increased anxiety about paying war taxes, has surfaced in the Society of Friends, and we can see evidence of this in the pages of Friends Journal from that year.

Groping towards a “peace tax” plan

The war tax resister’s equivalent to the alchemist’s “philosopher’s stone” is the “peace tax” — which is capable of turning the leaden bullets of taxes for war into the golden promise of taxes only for the nice things. Like the philosopher’s stone, its existence has been theorized a great deal and demonstrated very little. In 1961, Friends began their search for the legendary beast.

In the 15 February issue is a mention that the Peace Committee of the Pacific Yearly Meeting had begun circulating a preliminary plan for something it called a “civilian income tax bill” in order “to sound out the interest of the peace movement before deciding whether to press for legislation, and specifically to get reactions to the stipulation that pacifists taking advantage of paying into the suggested alternative, UNICEF, would be willing to be taxed an extra five per cent. No other test of religious objection to military defense, such as is presently required of draft age C.O.s is proposed.” Egbert Hayes of Claremont, California, is given as the contact person for this effort.

A follow-up article in the 15 September issue draws the comparison between this effort and the ongoing effort of some of the Amish to win a conscientious objection from the social security system, but notes that “little support has been found [for conscientious objection to military taxation] from the newspaper writers and members of Congress who defended the Amish.”

In reply to the suggestion that conscientious citizens should have a right to “vote with their tax dollars” for alternatives to war, Senator Joseph S. Clark wrote that this “would cause great harm to our country’s fiscal system.”
He may have anticipated that those “voting” in such a way would be much more numerous than the members of small sects or groups, since many who do not think of themselves as pacifists might agree that there is a dangerous disproportion between the national expenditures for military threats and for the winning of world friendship.

Some thought had been given to the possibility that if “civilian” tax payers paid their money to UNICEF, Congress might simply reduce its own $12 million contributions to UNICEF and divert that money back to the non-civilian budget. Also:

The Claremont bill, better as a proof of sincerity than the questionnaire method used by draft boards (who are no experts in theology), calls for tax payments that are five per cent greater than the computed tax and for publication of names. The latter we could achieve now without waiting for an act of Congress. Willingness to take an unpopular stand before one’s community is a surer test of conscience than any judicial inquisition. And it is exactly the thing needed if we are to influence opinion.
As shown by many cases of war-tax refusers who have had property seized, there may be no real alternative to the payment of a required number of dollars by those of a certain income level. Some write a protest on their tax returns, but this kind of protest, like the secret ballot, is far from enough. As John Sykes pointed out in his book on The Quakers: A New Look at Their Place in Society, the prosperity and bourgeois status of the Quakers after their years of persecution silenced them in more ways than one. And they are not more silenced than thousands of their natural allies, unknown and isolated, having other religious or nontheistic backgrounds. It is not a Hamlet’s conscience that “makes cowards of us all,” but the structure of society with its oligarchy or power elite controlling most forms of employment and mass media.

The article continues in this vein for a while, explaining why it’s so difficult to stand up and dissent, and how even those who work up the courage to do so are so frequently drowned out, dismissed, or ignored.

[W]hy should not each Meeting, each local peace group, write its own statement, secure signatures from as many sympathizers as possible, and distribute copies? The actionists do not always take time for reasoning or for a dignified approach that will persuade people to hear their reasons. But they are right: reasoning is not enough. It takes the combination of reason and personal courage; it takes individual decisions which do not wait for either our own or enemy governments to disarm. We can rarely escape taxes, but we can speak.

There was another movement gaining interest in Quaker circles around this time, in which people were voluntarily taxing themselves one or two percent of their incomes and sending this money to the United Nations, which, at that time, was still seen by many people to have potential as a sort of global arbitrator or adjudicator that might “take away the occasion of war” (this in the face of the fact that the U.N. had recently authorized the U.S. war in Korea). I don’t see much evidence of overlap between the people advocating this and the people rekindling interest in war tax resistance, but the fact that this was in the air probably helped to shape the “peace tax” plans and redirection efforts that followed. One note in the 1 September 1962 issue does seem to suggest that war tax redirection was one motivation for people participating in this voluntary U.N. tax project:

An opinion of the legal department of the United Nations has made clear that gifts to the U.N. or to its specialized agencies are not tax-deductible.
Any checks sent directly to the controller of the United Nations should be marked for a specific program to avoid having them go to the general fund of the U.N. and thereby merely reduce the assessments of member governments.

Here’s another note of interest on this topic, from the 1 August issue:

The Friends Meeting at Pittsburgh, Pa., has expressed publicly its serious concern for the Amish farmer whose work horses were recently seized by the Internal Revenue Service for nonpayment of social security taxes. Friends see in this infringement upon an act of conscience a much broader threat against all those who will not cooperate with the government in support of war and preparation for war. They point to the alternative of voluntary payments to special U.N. funds in addition to income tax payments.

Maurice McCrackin

In 1961, the Presbytery of Cincinnati began defrocking the Reverend Maurice McCrackin, ostensibly because they thought his war tax resistance was unbecoming of a minister (some suspect it was his work against racial segregation that really raised the ire of his foes — his church was the first in Cincinnati to be integrated). The Friends Journal kept an eye on the case.

In the 15 February issue, a contributor notes that the racially-mixed children’s camp “Camp Joy” was having financial difficulty because of the church action against McCracken, the camp’s administrator.

The Camp Joy Committee has this past year purchased a 314-acre farm as a new site since in 1959 the Cincinnati Park Board refused to turn on the water at the previous site, which was Park Board property, because of the income-tax stand of two staff members.

It seems unlikely that a regional park board would actually have a policy of refusing to turn on the water for clients who were behind on their federal income taxes, so I’m giving the benefit of the doubt to those who suspect that animosity to his racial integration projects was probably behind the trouble.

The 1 March issue noted that “Almost every day brings to the Journal office fresh protests or statements opposing the military venture of the United States in Vietnam.” One of these came from McCracken:

Copies of an appeal to those who wish to withdraw their support from war (particularly the U.S. war in Vietnam) by refusing to pay all or part of their income taxes or by reducing their incomes to a nontaxable level are available from the No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee, c/o the Reverend Maurice McCrackin, 932 Dayton Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Incorporated in the appeal is a statement to which tax-refusers can sign their names and addresses. Signed statements sent to Maurice McCrackin before the April 15 tax deadline will be used by the Committee as the basis for releasing to the press on that day names and addresses of the signers. The Committee suggests also that copies of the statement be printed in publications, posted on bulletin boards, and read in meetings by those who have signed them.

The 15 March issue had a larger article about the Presbytery’s inquisition against McCracken. Excerpts:

The presbytery has shown inconsistency and indecision… In October, 1959, after Maurice McCrackin’s release from prison, the presbytery issued a statement of support, saying, “Rev. McCrackin has not broken his ordination vows. It is not the function of the presbytery to collect taxes, and we find the West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas Church and its pastor are bearing a strong witness to Jesus Christ.”

Maurice McCrackin was tried in a civil trial in 1958, but the charge was not his nonpayment of income tax for the past eleven years. He was charged only with not answering a summons to come to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He was carried into the courtroom because he would not walk, and he would not stand before the judge. On this charge he served a six-month term at Allenwood Federal Prison.

“All the while our community work was expanding,” he recalled in a sermon on the Sunday before the first hearing of the trial, “cold war tensions were increasing. Nuclear bombs were fast being stockpiled, and reports were heard of new and deadlier weapons about to be made. Fresh in my mind were the bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.… If churches, settlement houses, schools, if anything were to survive in Cincinnati or anywhere else, something must be done about the armaments race.… I preached about the dangers which the entire world faced.… I was preaching, but what was I doing?
“If I can honestly say that Jesus would support conscription,” he concluded, “throw a hand grenade, or with a flame thrower drive men out of caves to become living torches, if I believe he would release the bomb over Hiroshima or Nagasaki, then I not only have the right to do these things as a Christian; I am even obligated to do them. But if I believe that Jesus would do none of these things, then I have no choice but to refuse, at whatever personal cost, to support war.”

The charges are:

The Rev. Maurice McCrackin has resisted the ordinances of God, in that upon pretense of Christian liberty he has opposed the civil lawful power, and the lawful exercise of it…

He has published erroneous opinions and maintained practices which are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ hath established in the Church…

He has failed to obey the lawful commands and to be subject to the authority of civil magistrates, [all these actions being]… contrary to the Constitution of the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (Confession of Faith, chapter 20, paragraph 4, and chapter 23, paragraph 4).

Specifications of these charges include the withholding of income tax, the failure to file returns, and advocating that others do the same.

“I felt free,” said Maurice McCrackin, when he was in the grip of the criminal court. “I could not have walked. I doubt if my feet would have functioned. Had I walked I would have felt I was in prison, but in not walking I felt that I was free.… It may be that the authorities will again take possession of my body; but it is my earnest purpose, God being my helper, that no man, no circumstance, no place shall be allowed to take possession of my spirit and my conscience.”

In its 15 June issue, Friends Journal reported the Presbytery’s decision to suspend McCracken, and McCracken’s decision to appeal.

A follow-up in the 15 October issue noted “the strangeness of a verdict that acquiesces in the motivation of the defendant but in effect finds him ‘guilty’ for failure to test the income tax law in the civil court. The seeds of the presbytery trial go back three years,” according to Christian Century commentator Virgie Bernhardt, a Quaker, “to reactionary forces stirred up in the community by McCrackin’s integration activities.”

A further follow-up in the 1 November issue noted that McCracken’s appeal “to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the United Presbyterian Synod of Ohio” was accepted. The Commission “rebuked the Cincinnati presbytery for its ‘unduly severe’ judgment and the lack of proof that the minister had disturbed the peace of the Church, as the local presbytery had charged.” They told the local presbytery to try again.

The following year, in the 1 September 1962 issue, a brief notice mentions that the United Presbyterian General Assembly approved McCracken’s dismissal, and notes that 28 members of his church have split off from the Presbyterians as a result and have formed a new church under McCracken’s ministry.

It’s hard not to see all of this attention given to an internal battle in another church as a proxy for an anticipated controversy that was just beginning to stir in the Society of Friends.

(McCracken would return to the pages of the Journal to tell his own story in the 15 May 1980 issue.)

Other war tax resistance mentions

A report on the Switzerland Yearly Meeting in the 15 February issue read: “We were stimulated by the call to action and the living witness of several Swiss Friends who regularly refuse to pay their taxes for military expenditure and then bear the consequences.”

The 15 March issue includes a letter to the editor from J.H. Davenport in which he writes, “I would be glad if through the Friends Journal it could be made known that some Friends (at least one) regret that some members feel it right to participate in so-called ‘civil defense’ activities, ‘national defense’ contracts, and the payment of income taxes, the major portion of which goes to so-called ‘defense’ activities of the national government, especially when the name of Friends is used as a sort of endorsement. ¶ I have taken the liberty of painting in the word ‘SOME’ in front of the poster that I have been carrying during my lunch hour in front of the New York City Civil Defense headquarters. The poster now reads, more truthfully, ‘SOME Quakers say No to All War.’…”

The 1 June issue has one of the earliest mentions of a Quaker meeting formally encouraging war tax resistance:

Yellow Springs Meeting, Ohio, has been deeply concerned about support of the national defense policy through payment of federal income taxes. Some of the members have chosen to be conscientious tax refusers. The following is an excerpt from a statement approved by the Meeting in early March: “We recognize that payment of federal income tax, like service in the armed forces, is a demand which may properly move Quakers and other responsible citizens to take a position of conscientious objection.
“Provided their action is imbued with a spirit of humble honesty and loving social or religious dedication, we support both those who are conscientiously impelled to pay their taxes in full, and those who undertake conscientious resistance to war taxes. Such conscientious resistance may take many forms: refusing to pay part or all of the tax, refusing to file a return, working only at a job where no tax is withheld from wages, intentionally keeping one’s income so low that it is not taxable, resisting coercion by tax collectors, courts, and their agents, supporting other resistors and their families, and giving public testimony and witness. We feel that persons undertaking nonviolent civil disobedience should be prepared to accept the consequences.
“We urge Congress and the President to consider legislation permitting conscientious tax objectors to choose alternative service for that portion of their tax dollars which would otherwise be assigned to military purposes.”

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1980

There was plenty about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1980, but it seemed to involve tax resisting Mennonites as least as often as tax resisting Quakers.

The 1 January issue announced that the Center on Law and Pacifism was organizing a critical mass style tax resistance action:

The Center… has prepared and has available a “Conscience and Military Tax Resolution,” which may be signed by any conscientious objector to military taxes, witnessed (not necessarily notarized), returned to the Center. When officially notified by the Center that there are 100,000 such resolutions on file, the signer may carry out his or her resolve to withhold the military portion of the federal income tax. Alternatively, he or she may deposit the withheld taxes in an escrow account for the World Peace Tax Fund, pending passage by Congress of the WPTF Bill, deposit them in an alternative fund or donate them to some other peace purpose.

The 1 February issue was all about anti-war work, and it opened with an article on the history of Quaker war tax resistance by editor Ruth Kilpack. Excerpts:

[W]e should not suppose that this is a new concern among Friends and members of other Peace Churches, who, by the very nature of our faith, have a conscience tender to such questionings. For Friends, the searching extends back to the seventeenth century, when Robert Barclay, the English Quaker apologist, wrote in 1676:

We have suffered much in qur country because we neither ourselves could bear arms, nor send others in our place, nor give our money for the buying of drums, standards, and other military attire.

This was the so-called “Trophy Money,” that could be distinguished as such. But common or “mixed” taxes could not so readily be dealt with, since most Quakers believed it was their duty to pay taxes, and the part allocated to the military could not be separated out from the whole.
Today, like those earlier Quakers, we find ourselves in the same dilemma. Law-abiding citizens, we continue to find ourselves troubled by the demand that we pay taxes for purposes we cannot in conscience condone. We cannot pretend that we accept war as a legitimate function of the civil government which we support, and, just as some of our members have refused to serve in the armed services, many are beginning to question the contribution of our money for purposes we eschew for moral, humane, and religious reasons.
Quakers struggled with all these same questionings in the mid-eighteenth century and the period prior to the American Revolution. One of the most articulate on the subject of war taxes was Samuel Allinson, a young Friend from Burlington, New Jersey, who in 1780 wrote “Reasons against war, and paying taxes for its support.”

The Samuel Allinson essay “Reasons against war, and paying taxes for its support” can be found in the book American Quaker War Tax Resistance.

Thus, in words written exactly 200 years ago, he deals with the question of “a remnant who desire to be clear of a business so dark and destructive, that we should avoid the furtherance of it in any and every form.” He describes it as a “stumbling block to others, [which] ought carefully to be avoided,” and sees such avoidance as advancing the Kingdom of the Messiah, that “his will be done on earth as it is done on heaven; a state possible, I presume, or he would not have taught us to pray for it.”
Further, says Samuel Allinson,

We have never entered into any contract expressed or implied for the paym[en]t of Taxes for War, nor the performance of any thing contrary to our Relig[ious] duties, and therefore cannot be looked upon as disaffected or Rebellious to any Gov[ernment] for these refusals, if this be our Testimony under all, which many believe it will hereafter be.

And finally, Samuel Allinson points out that even though earlier Friends paid their taxes (including that going to the military), that is no good reason for our continuing to do so.

It is not to be wondered at, or an argument drawn against a reformation in the refusal of Taxes for War at this Day, that our Brethren formerly paid them; knowledge is progressive, every reform[atio]n had its beginning, even the disciples were for some time ignorant of many religious Truths, tho’ they had the Company and precepts of our Savior…

Friends, we find ourselves in the very position of the Friends being addressed by Samuel Allinson two centuries ago. For myself, I cannot think it is by sheer accident that I have stumbled upon his words now. Neither is it by accident that a growing “remnant” of Friends are awakening to the ambivalence we feel in what we profess and what we practice regarding our involvement in the awesome “stumbling block” of nuclear warfare in our own age. Friends in the past responded to the threats of the age in which they lived according to the light they had. We of our generation have been given even greater light, and we must respond accordingly. Given our heritage, if we don’t respond, who will?

In the meantime, I ask you to think on these things and, to paraphrase George Fox’s advice to William Penn, “Pay thy tax as long as thou canst.”

In the 15 February issue, Keith Tingle told readers that they should know “how easy it is to do” war tax resistance… at least in his experience:

My own experience in military tax resistance has been rewarding thus far. By claiming a tax credit for conscientious objection to war on my income tax form, I was refunded $260 from my 1977 taxes. Now that the IRS has discovered its mistake, I am resisting through federal tax court the recollection of this money. My appearance in tax court has been reported favorably in three local newspapers, providing an opportunity to publicize the Quaker peace testimony, the history of war tax resistance, the economic impact of military spending, the pacifist position on the military draft, the concept of the World Peace Tax Fund, and the legal assistance offered by the Center on Law and Pacifism.
This has been accomplished with a total expense of about $30 and about thirty hours of time. I have enjoyed the dedicated support of the Committee on War Tax Concerns of Friends Peace Committee and the legal guidance of lawyer Bill Durland at the Center on Law and Pacifism…

The 1 March issue noted that conscientious objection to military taxation was on the agenda at the Kent General Meeting in Canterbury, England — though from the sound of it, this was mostly in a theoretical way: presenting the argument that such a thing was a logical and practical counterpart of conscientious objection to military service.

That issue also reported on the case of Cornelia Lehn, an employee of the General Conference Mennonite Church who was trying to convince her employer to stop withholding federal income tax from her salary:

There was a “neither yes nor no” vote on this request by the 500 delegates present. Those who favored a strong tax resistance program did not Nor did those who wanted members to unquestioningly pay taxes as a Christian duty. There was a feeling, however, that neither side really lost. Thirty percent of the delegates were ready for the conference to take action in “some sort of civil disobedience and tax resistance” and it was hoped the number will grow.

I’m struck by this last phrase — “it was hoped the number will grow” — which makes a pretty clear editorial statement of sympathy for those who favored corporate resistance by the Conference and antipathy for “those who wanted members to unquestioningly pay taxes as a Christian duty.” At this time, few if any Quaker Meetings or organizations were willing to go out on that limb, in spite of strong urgings from Quaker war tax resisters that they do so. But I don’t remember the Journal betraying an editorial bias when it reported on this debate in Quaker institutions.

One case in point is a report on the New England Yearly Meeting in which the lukewarm statement is made that “We approved a minute asking New England Friends to give prayerful consideration to non-payment of war taxes.” The New York Yearly Meeting went so far as to “discuss” a “minute on Refusal of Taxes for Military Purposes” and to note that it “was to be commended for consideration by all monthly meetings and individuals.”

The 1 October issue had a followup in which the General Conference of the Mennonite Church was proposing launching a lawsuit in which it would seek a judicial ruling to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation, while at the same time it would increase its efforts to pass the “World Peace Tax Fund” legislation.

Maurice McCracken had a piece of autobiography in the 15 May issue. Naturally, it touched on his tax resistance:

I had decided that I would never register again for the draft nor would I consent to being conscripted by the government in any other capacity. In contradiction to this position, each year on April 15 I was letting the government conscript my money. Thus I was voluntarily helping the government do what I vigorously declared was wrong.…
Realizing this inconsistency, I decided that in good conscience I could no longer make full payment of my federal taxes. At the same time, I did not want to stop supporting civilian services supported by the government. So, in my 1948 tax returns I continued to pay the small percentage allocated for civilian use. The amount that I formerly had given for war purposes I hoped now to give to such causes as the American Friends Service Committee and to support other works of mercy and reconciliation which help remove the roots of violence and war.
As time went on I realized, however, that this was not accomplishing what had been my hope; for year after year the IRS ordered my bank to release money from my account to pay the money I had held back. I then closed my bank account, and at this point it came to me with complete clarity that by so much as filing tax returns I was giving the IRS assistance in the violation of my own conscience, because the very information I was giving on my tax forms was being used in finally making the collection. There is something else that those who withhold a portion of their tax on conscientious grounds should realize. The IRS does not practice line budgeting. All that it collects goes where the government wants it to go, which in ever-increasing proportion goes to finance wars, past, present and future. Since 1952 I have not filed any tax returns, nor since that year have I paid any federal income tax.
On December 12, 1958, on charges growing out of my refusal to pay this tax, I was given a six-month sentence, which I spent at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, which is run by the Lewisburg penitentiary.
Some two years my release from Allenwood, in May of 1959, the Presbytery of Cincinnati, on charges quite unrelated to the real issues, suspended me as a minister. In May, 1962, this action was upheld by the General Assembly, the highest court of the denomination. In February of 1963 the presbytery declared my ordination to the ministry no longer valid, making a highly questionable presumption that they could cancel out whatever spiritual grace the Holy Spirit had bestowed on me when I was ordained at a meeting of Chicago Presbytery back in 1930.
For nearly eighteen years our congregation has been a member of the National Council of Community Churches. I have been accepted as a minister in full standing, and whatever validity my ordination had back in 1930, is, for them, still valid.

A note in the 15 April issue recognized 86-year-old Pearl Ewald’s persistent activism: “Pearl Ewald continued her activities for peace, civil rights and war tax resistance, despite a recurring heart condition. She has been arrested and jailed more than once for stubbornly refusing to discontinue her witness. On one occasion, although desperately in need of medical attention, she refused to be admitted to a hospital, because it was a segregated institution.”

That same issue mentioned the case of Mennonite war tax resister Bruce Chrisman, “who was convicted 3 December 1979 of failure to file an income tax return in 1975, was sentenced January 2 to one year in Mennonite Voluntary Service,” to which I can only think: “Please don’t throw me in the briar patch, Your Honor!”

“I’m amazed,” said Chrisman. “I feel very good about the sentence. The alternative service is probably the first sentence of its kind for a tax case. I think it reflects the testimony in the trial and its influence on the judge.” Chrisman could have been sentenced to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine.

A letter from Mildred Thierman in the same issue challenged Friends:

Could we now unite this year in sending a flood of personal declarations to President Carter and our government, saying that we can no longer, in conscience, allow part of our taxes to be used for the purchase of annihilating weapons? Can we back this up by joining together in significant numbers to withhold whatever portion of our income tax fits our circumstances, in order to make our protest noticed?

A review of Conscience in Crisis: Mennonites and Other Peace Churches in America, 1739–1789, Interpretation and Documents in the 1 June issue, summarized its version of the history of Quaker war tax resistance this way:

Testimony against participation in the military and refusal to pay Trophy Money — the English tax to raise money for military regalia (arms were, by law, furnished by the individual soldiers) — were traditional Friends’ observances by the beginning of the period covered by Conscience in Crisis.…
…Friends and other Peace Church members were, by and large, loyal subjects. They paid taxes “for the King’s use” — including the royal decision to make war.

Friends began to question payment of taxes more broadly. The essential issue, according to the authors, was that “the individual is responsible for the actions of his government in a free society.” Israel Pemberton, John Pemberton, John Churchman, John Woolman, and nineteen other Friends petitioned the Assembly on the issue of taxes in 1755:

…Yet as the raising Sums of Money, and putting them into the Hands of Committees, who may apply them to Purposes inconsistent with the peaceable Testimony we profess, and have borne to the World, appears to us in its Consequences to be destructive of our religious Liberties, we apprehend many among us will be under the Necessity of suffering rather than consenting thereto by the Payment of a Tax for such Purposes…

By the time of the 1757 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sessions, Friends decided not to discuss the issue of “mixed” taxes because of a significant lack of consensus. Yet, Friends were increasingly beginning to question less direct forms of support for war not traditionally inconsistent with the peace testimony.

War tax protest — Thoreau Money — Why Pray for Peace and Pay for War? — Defend freedom with nonviolent action — Use this phony money in refusing to pay that 60% of your federal taxes that goes for war. — This money is as phony as the “security” our “defense” dollar buys. — Issued by C.N.V.A., C.N.V.A.-West, and New England C.N.V.A. — an illustration from the 1 October 1980 issue of Friends Journal

In the 1 October issue, Alan Eccleston wrote of his calling as a peacemaker, and how that manifested for him. Excerpts:

For me personally, the witness to peace has led to war tax resistance. Over the past six years of this witness I have been — and still am — strengthened by others who are not, themselves, war tax resisters.

The witness of war tax resistance is one that raises fear. We have been conditioned to fear the Internal Revenue Service as something nearly equivalent to a ruthless secret police, in its imagined power to terrorize. Most of us, unwilling to admit, even to ourselves, that fear alone would block us from a spiritual witness, find other reasons for willingly paying to produce weapons that can annihilate all humankind.

Based on my own experience, I would say fear imagined is greater in most people than fear actually experienced, and that this is by a factor of ten, at least — maybe 100. Fortunately, borrowing from each other’s experience and knowing others will be there to help us, we can find the courage to move ahead. Then comes the surprise. With dread and foreboding we make our stand. Then, gradually, we become aware that a great weight has been lifted from us. That nagging, cumbersome burden of blocking from consciousness our own complicity with this evil has fallen away. We are lighter, more open, more truthful. We are free, at last, to speak truth to power.

When this affirmation is truly clear in our lives, it will be seen and felt by the president and by Congress. As in 1940, when C.O. status was incorporated in the Selective Service Act, the tax laws will then be amended to create C.O. status for taxpayers and a “World Peace Tax Fund.” That legislation, approved by the world’s leading arms supplier, will move the world one step closer to peace. That portion of our population (approximately four percent during the Vietnam War) which is pacifist would then contribute to peace, not war, and these contributions would total in excess of $2.3 billion every single year — year after year. For the first time in history, peace programs would have a significant budget. The funds could be used to support: a National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution; research to develop and evaluate non-military, nonviolent solutions to international conflict; disarmament; retaining workers displaced by conversion from military production; international exchanges for peaceful purposes; improvement of international health, education and welfare; and education of the public about the above activities.

The Friends General Conference in 1980 drafted “A Statement of Conscience by Quakers Concerned” and collected signatures. The statement said, in part:

We advocate conscientious refusal to register for the draft and wish young men of draft age throughout the United States to know that if, after thoughtfully considering the reasons and consequences, they refuse to register, we will give them practical and moral support in every way we can, even though our willingness to do so may result in our prosecution, fines and possible imprisonment for disobeying a man-made law that leads us in the direction of war.

Mary Bye wrote in response that although she signed the statement, it felt to her to be something “like a hollow gesture.”

[M]aybe we [adults] should make sure about the beam in our adult eyes before we concentrate on the motes in those bright young eyes of the nineteen- and twenty-year-olds.
“[W]hat would be our reaction to young Quakers pointing out that since it takes money as well as men to fight a war, they encourage Friends beyond draft age to refuse war taxes?

Finally, the 1 December issue presented the case of Ruth Larson Hatcher. Excerpt:

Not wishing to contribute tax money for war-making purposes, she managed for years to have an income just sufficient for survival but not large enough to require payment of taxes. Then in 1974 a friend persuaded her to accept the management and bookkeeping of a children’s art center. Conscientious and religious beliefs caused her to oppose acceptance of insurance benefits under Social Security, as well as the payment of taxes for war. Her claims for exemption under various sections of the Internal Revenue code of 1954 as well as under the First and Fifth Amendments were routinely rejected, until a Supreme Court judge approved her use of Form No. 4361. It seems that this form (and another previously ignored by the authorities) had been used by an Amish sect to avoid the taxes (and payments) of the social security system. Although the Court of Appeals handed down the opinion that exemptions were enacted to accommodate individuals commanded by their conscience or their religion to oppose acceptance of insurance benefits, it refused to accept that this was the exact status of petitioner Ruth Hatcher.

It’s a little unclear what took place here, but it sounds like this is saying that the courts left an opening for people who were not members of sects that qualified for an exemption from the social security system but who held similar beliefs to gain the same exemption. Interesting if true. I was able to find the appeals court decision that ruled against Hatcher, and the earlier Tax Court decision to the same effect, and the District Court decision that affirmed the Tax Court decision. I was not able to find any record of Supreme Court action on the case, but I did find some other cases that cited the Appeals Court decision as precedent, which seems to suggest that the Supreme Court didn’t overturn it (as the above excerpt implies).

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1981

War tax resistance remained very much on the agenda at the Friends Journal at the beginning of the Reagan era of aggressive military build-up in 1981.

A letter from Jenny Duskey in the 1 January issue read, in part:

I belong to a community of disciples called Publishers of Truth. Our testimony is that Christ’s disciples can have no part in war or preparation for war, and that this means not joining the military or being drawn into legally designated “alternatives” to conscription even when the law demands, as well as not paying taxes destined for military use when we can refuse them.

“Publishers of Truth” (see also the advertisement pictured in ♇ 26 July 2013) was centered around Larry and Lisa Kuenning, who came to prophesy an emerging paradise on Earth, centered on Farmington, Maine. I’m tempted to do some further research in this direction, but am afraid of getting lost in some interesting by-ways. Lisa Kuenning was a collaborator with Timothy Leary, and for a time an important figure in the psychedelic renaissance. Last I checked, the Kuennings were running Quaker Heritage Press, which specializes in reprints of old Quaker books.

The 1 February issue had an in-depth article by Richard K. MacMaster on Christian Obedience in [American] Revolutionary Times, that included a discussion of Quaker responses to war taxes and militia exemption taxes. Excerpts:

The Pennsylvania Assembly voted on the last day of June 1775 to recommend to conscientious objectors “that they cheerfully assist in proportion to their abilities, such persons as cannot spend both time and substance in the service of their country without great injury to themselves and families.” This would be a subsidy to poorer Associators, men who could not supply themselves with a musket and bayonet and needed help from their neighbors. It was a far cry from the kind of nonpolitical relief work that the sects had in mind.
The Continental Congress did not help matters when it decreed in July 1775 that members of the Peace Churches should “contribute liberally in this time of universal calamity, to the relief of their distressed brethren.” Were these distressed brethren the poor of Boston or poor families in their own neighborhood or George Washington’s makeshift army camped on the hills overlooking Boston harbor?
The Peace Churches took the Congressional resolve as a last-minute reprieve and insisted that their contributions were for the poor, even though the money would be turned over to the County Committee. “For we gave it in good faith for the needy,” a Lancaster County Brethren pastor explained, “and the man to whom we gave it gave us a receipt stating that the money would be used for that purpose.”
The Lancaster County experience was repeated in other Pennsylvania counties and in other colonies where Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites were numerous. Most communities tried voluntary contributions, but in Frederick County, Maryland, and Berks County, Pennsylvania, the committees levied fines on men of military age who did not drill with the Associators.
The nonresistant sects had fallen into a trap. No matter how they labeled them, the authorities understood their voluntary contributions as donations to the war chest. And if contributions failed to come voluntarily, they were already preparing for compulsory payment of money as an equivalent to military service.
Time was running out on the Peace Churches by the autumn of 1775. Soon after the October elections, military associators began petitioning the Pennsylvania Assembly that

some decisive Plan should be fallen upon to oblige every Inhabitant of the Province either with his Person or Property to contribute towards the general Cause, and that it should not be left, as at present, to the Inclinations of those professing tender Conscience, but that the Proportion they shall contribute, may be certainly fixed and determined.

These petitions asked much more than an increased tax assessment on the conscientious objectors. The petitions explicitly stated that every member of the community had an obligation to make some contribution to the common cause; the additional tax would be a concession to those who could not meet that obligation on the field of battle.
The Peace Churches rightly put their case on the high ground of religious freedom. Quakers expressed their “Concern on the Endeavours used to induce you to enter into Measures so manifestly repugnant to the Laws and Charter of this Province, and which, if enforced, must subvert that most essential of all Privileges, Liberty of Conscience.” They asked the Assembly not to infringe the solemn assurance given them in Penn’s Charter, “that we shall not be obliged ‘to do or suffer any Act or Thing contrary to our religious Persuasion.’ ”
The revolutionary government rose to the challenge. All sixty-six members of the Philadelphia Committee proceeded in a body to the Assembly chamber to present their response to the Quaker address to the Speaker of the House. The same day, the Assembly heard petitions from the Officers of the Military Association of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia and from a Committee of Privates. They first narrowly construed the grant of religious freedom in the Charter and threw out of court the sectarian contention that religion was more than a Sunday worship service.

We cannot alter the Opinion we have ever held with Regard to those parts of the Charier quoted by the Addressors, that they relate only to an Exemption from any Acts of Uniformity in Worship, and from paying towards the Support of other religious Establishments, than those to which the Inhabitants of this Province respectively belong.

The representation from the Committee of Privates went still further. They insisted that “Those who believe the Scriptures must acknowledge that Civil Government is of divine Institution, and the Support of it enjoined to Christians.” Quakers ought not to question what governments did, according to this Committee of Privates, but simply obey; God had ordained the powers and thereby gave sanction to every action of the state. The lines were thus clearly drawn between the sectarian view of supremacy of conscience and the secular view of the primacy of the state.
The Mennonites and Church of the Brethren simply set down the limits of what they could do in good conscience. Their petition made little difference to the course of events. The day after the Mennonite and Brethren statement was read the Pennsylvania Assembly voted to require everyone of military age who would not drill with the Associators “to contribute an Equivalent to the time spent by the Associators in acquiring the military Discipline.” Later in November 1775, the Assembly imposed a tax of two pounds and ten shillings on non-Associators, which would be remitted for those who joined a military unit. Under new pressure from the Associators they raised the tax to three pounds and ten shillings in April 1776.
The Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention incorporated the principle of taxing conscientious objectors as an equivalent to military service in the Declaration of Rights they adopted. It made explicit what most Patriots already believed:

That every Member of Society hath a right to be protected in the Enjoyment of Life, Liberty and property and therefore is bound to Contribute his proportion towards the Expence of that protection and yield his personal Service when necessary or an equivalent… Nor can any Man who is conscientiously scrupulous of bearing Arms be justly compelled thereto if he will pay such equivalent.

Participation in warfare was a universal obligation, in their view, falling equally on every citizen; those who could not fight must pay others to fight in their place.…
The Assembly and the Convention clearly intended to make the Peace Churches pay for war and imposed the tax as an avowed equivalent to military service.… Religious pacifists carried the whole burden of the tax. But a tax imposed on conscientious objectors as an equivalent to joining the army and intended for the military budget definitely infringed on the religious liberty guaranteed by William Penn’s Charter. The war tax issue thus arose in a context of freedom of conscience curtailed for those whose Christian faith forbade their “giving, or doing, or assisting in any Thing by which Men’s Lives are destroyed or hurt.”
Maryland and North Carolina followed Pennsylvania’s example in levying a special tax on conscientious objectors; the North Carolina law made payment the grounds for exemption from actual service with the army. Virginia and several other states required conscientious objectors to hire substitutes to take their place whenever their company of militia was drafted for combat duty. Special tax assessments for military purposes passed every state legislature as the war dragged on. And the rapidly depreciating Continental and state paper money that fueled a run-away inflation was itself a war tax. Wherever Quakers, Mennonites, or Brethren lived, the problem of paying for war soon caught up with them
Could a valid distinction be made between military service and war taxes? The Reverend John Carmichael, Scottish Presbyterian pastor in Chester County, Pennsylvania, had little sympathy with the nonresistant sects who refused to pay war taxes, but he saw no distinction between fighting and paying the cost of war.

In Rom 13, from the beginning, to the 7^th verse, we are instructed at large the duty we owe to civil government, but if it was unlawful and anti-Christian, or anti-scriptural to support war, it would be unlawful to pay taxes; if it is unlawful to go to war, it is unlawful to pay another to do it, or to go do it.

Some Brethren, Mennonites, and Quakers agreed that no real distinction could be made and consequently refused to pay taxes levied for military purposes. In his 1775 sermon, Carmichael spoke of Mennonites “who for the reasons already mentioned will not pay their taxes, and yet let others come and take their money, where they can find it, and be sure they will leave it where they can find it handily.” They would not resist the tax collector in any way; but they could not cooperate in wrongdoing by voluntarily paying war taxes. The law took this practice into account and permitted collectors to seize the property of those would not pay their own taxes.
Quakers officially discouraged payment of war taxes and militia fines. Many Friends went to jail for their refusal and still a larger number allowed the authorities to take horses, cattle, furniture, farm implements and tools to pay their taxes. They refused to accept any money from the sale of their goods over and above the tax and fine. In the Shenandoah Valley and in other Quaker communities, their neighbors found rare bargains when the sheriff sold a Quaker farmer’s property for taxes and purposely kept the bidding low. Virginia Yearly Meeting protested to the authorities about the sale of slaves, freed by their Quaker masters in defiance of the law, who were taken up and sold to pay their former masters’ war taxes.
Refusal to pay taxes for military purposes had a close parallel in Quaker refusal to pay taxes to support an established Church; they accepted the right of civil government to appropriate money for either purpose, but denied that civil government could coerce their consciences, even at the cost of jail sentences. This was a minority position among English and American Friends, even after John Woolman prodded their conscience on war taxes. Woolman’s influence can be seen in a circular letter issued by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1755, when Braddock’s defeat left Pennsylvania exposed to French and Indian raids and the Assembly ordered new taxes for mounting a fresh campaign. The 1755 tax was a general one, including military appropriations with all the other functions of civil governments, but Friends agreed “as we cannot be concerned in wars and fightings, so neither ought we to contribute thereto by paying the tax directed by the said act, though suffering be the consequence of our refusal.” The issue in 1775 was much clearer: the taxes were levied entirely for military purposes and intended as an equivalent to military service. With the passage of years, Friends had the meaning of nonresistance in much sharper focus and a much greater number accepted the challenge of faithful discipleship.
Mennonites also responded to the challenge by refusing to pay war taxes. When the Pennsylvania Assembly passed an act in 1777 to require a tax of three pounds and ten shillings from everyone of military age who refused to turn out with the militia, Mennonite opinion was divided. Christian Funk, bishop in the Franconia congregation, allowed payment of the tax and tried to convince his brother ministers. But refusal to pay war taxes had taken deep roots in the Mennonite tradition by 1777. The mere rumor that Funk permitted payment of the tax was enough to bring complaints against him at the time of preparation for the Lord’s Supper in the autumn of 1777 and to lead to his ouster from the ministry. All of the preachers and a great many other Mennonites in eastern Pennsylvania opposed payment of the tax. Andrew Ziegler, bishop in the Skippack congregation, spoke for them, when he declared: “I would as soon go into the war, as to pay the three pounds ten shillings if I were not concerned for my life.” Zeigler and others could see little difference between fighting and paying for war.
In the face of a long-standing tradition of paying taxes without questioning the purpose of the tax, men of faith testified from their own conscience that for them there could be no distinction between refusing to fight and refusing to pay for war. These Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers willingly accepted the penalty for their conscientious objection to war taxes in imprisonment and loss of property far in excess of the tax. Their action reminded their brethren of the need for careful discrimination in rendering to Caesar the things that are really Caesar’s. They refused to let a majority vote in the legislature be their conscience and rejected the easy way of confusing Caesar’s will with the will of God.

In the same issue, Bill Durland of the Center on Law and Pacifism reviewed the attempts to get a sympathetic court hearing in the United States for the argument that conscientious objection to military taxation is a Constitutionally-protected right of citizens. He described the founding of the Center in December 1977 by himself, Robert Anthony, Bruce & Ruth Graves, Barbara & Howard Lull, Peter Herby, and Richard McSorley, and then described the various avenues of appeal the group was pursuing in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Anthony put his legal argument this way: to be compelled to pay war taxes “would force [him] to accept a creed, and practice a form of worship foreign to his convictions, and to establish as the only normative religious belief and practice, that adhered to by most Christian denominations, i.e., that it is both a Christian and an American duty to fight in just wars and pay for them.” The Supreme Court wasn’t interested.

The Center tried again with the Graves’ case, asserting that the First Amendment’s assertion that “Congress shall make no law… prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]” means that the governmental interest in having an efficient and uncomplicated tax system is trumped by the citizen’s right to a religious practice that forbids funding war. Again, the Supreme Court turned up its nose.

The Center then made an attempt with the Lulls & Peter Herby as petitioners. As the First Amendment arguments had failed to make any headway, this time they made a Hail Mary pass with a Ninth Amendment argument. “This amendment recognizes that there are certain fundamental, inalienable rights not enumerated in the Constitution which the people possess that are preexisting to any constitution, are inherent in the individual, and are not subject to divestment either partially or completely by the state. These rights have also been called ‘natural’ and are those held by an individual in a state of absolute liberty. In contracting to enter into a state of society, the people collectively, and the person individually, only divest themselves of those natural rights which they expressly relinquish by enumeration.”

Nice try, but the Supreme Court yet again denied cert.

The article notes that in addition to First Amendment-based arguments, “each of the three cases raised at the Federal Court level a compelling legal position based on International Law and, in particular, the Nuremberg Principles.” (Not compelling enough, apparently.)

An article in the same issue, by William Strong, profiles war tax resister Bruce Chrisman. Excerpts:

[H]e cannot pay that portion of his federal taxes that he knows will be used for preparations for war. For that, he is serving a criminal sentence that includes one year of humanitarian service without pay, three years of probation, a fine of $2,400 for court costs, and the payment of all back taxes due. He deems this result a moral victory, however — the sentence could have been up to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Over the years Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s minutes have reflected the repeated return of the war tax concern. In 1979 a striking, sensitive minute was approved. The unity reached at that time calls upon “all Friends to continue to search themselves deeply on their responsibility to separate themselves from preparations for war.” Where does that searching lead? “We encourage dialogue between conscientious war tax refusers and other concerned people struggling with the issue of paying war taxes. We seek to build a community of deeply committed persons.” Friends offer their real support — spiritual, moral, legal, and material — to that growing community, and close the minute by reaffirming:

Our strength and our security are derived from our belief in the reality of a loving God and the oneness of that of God in all people. In order to say yes to this belief, we must seriously consider saying no to payment of war taxes.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s “War Tax Concerns Support Committee” works to carry out that minute. Its mandate is broad, from war tax refusal and resistance, questing for administrative (IRS) and judicial relief, to a spectrum of wholly positive approaches. The committee seeks “legislative relief” in pursuing the World Peace Tax Fund law that proposes alternative service for war taxes, for conscientious objectors to monetary conscription.

In the war tax concerns section of our Peace Testimony, as in most fields of Quaker endeavor, certain Friends are ’way out front. They have been going down a committed road for years. George and Lillian Willoughby, Bob Anthony, Lorraine Cleveland, and Robin Harper in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting come to mind. “Not to worry” — most of us are beginners, and we don’t need to catch up.

What stride do we take this year — or this quarter — in the Light? We tackle the big issues by taking the next step, getting a bit more involved.
Saying “no” to that small, lingering, now two percent Vietnam War telephone tax, which does indeed produce a billion dollars in direct war taxes, is one such step. Adjusting our withholding so that we take more control of our tax payments, with more options, is another. Or do we match what the government requires of us in war taxes with comparable contributions to peace organizations? Everyone ultimately decides his own next step, but often it comes out of shared, caring discussion with other Friends, “wrestling as I am, with the harder questions of our faith and practice.”

That issue also had a few short notes that mentioned war tax resistance:

“In Japan, COMIT (Conscientious Objection to Military Tax) is planning to sue the government for breach of constitution by taxing for war.”
“In Switzerland, 300 people belonging to the group ‘Pour une Politique de Paix Active’ refused to pay their military tax or some part of the duty levied for national defense.”
“[N]ine members of the Pacific Yearly Meeting Peace Committee testified ‘against rendering unto Caesar that which is God’s’ by declaring their solidarity with those Friends who refuse to cooperate with war taxes and draft registration. Some seventeen others present at the yearly meeting also signed the statement.”
“A statement from Orange County Meeting asks: ‘If we recognize our involvement in militarism through the payment of taxes used for military purposes but do not act to end such involvement, then are we not hypocritical to tell Friends faced with registration to refuse military service?’ ”

The 1 March issue included a mention that the Australian Yearly Meeting was pursuing its own Peace Tax Fund plan “as a method of allowing taxpayers to direct a proportion of their tax to peace purposes instead of military spending.”

The 15 March issue noted that a “Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes is preparing a packet of study materials to provide information on the biblical basis of war taxes and the World Peace Tax Fund… together with suggestions for personal and political action.”

Maurice McCracken wrote in to the 1 April issue to chide anti-war activists for their timidity. Excerpts:

Indeed it is a feeble gesture to do what we do not believe in; even though we protest doing it. The only valid protest is resistance and complete noncooperation with what we believe to be wrong.

[A] law… threatens anyone who advises a young man not to register for the draft with the same penalty as the non-registrant — a possible prison sentence of five years and a possible fine of $5,000. In the draft registration resistance movement I find that considerable time is spent on how to counsel young men about registration so it will not appear that we are actually advising them not to register. Why this hesitancy and timidity?
I not only advise young men of draft age not to register. I urge them not to register.

This military juggernaut which threatens to destroy all human life and all animal and plant life on the planet must be stopped. It must be resisted at the point of not filing a federal income tax return and of not registering for the draft. A thief-says, “Your money or your life.” The Pentagon says, “Your money and your life!” I refuse to give either one! Won’t you join me?

In the 15 April issue, E. Raymond Wilson tried to envision a “Quaker Peace Program” that would be adequate to the challenges of the 1980s. He advocated working toward a more powerful U.N., drastic disarmament, global economic/social development with an emphasis on underdeveloped areas, and active reconciliation of global adversaries. Much of this work would involve lobbying and other pleading with powerful people whose inclinations are largely in the opposite direction; but there was also a nod toward conscientious objection:

Friends should seriously consider the recommendations of the Second New Call to Peacemaking Conference that individuals should withhold all or part of their income tax going to military and war appropriations, now estimated at more than forty-eight percent of the budget controlled by Congress.

War tax resistance came up at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1981. War tax resister John Beer wrote down some questions that people had about resisting, and in a Friends Journal issue the following year, Bill Strong (of the Meeting’s “War Tax Concerns Support Committee”) answered them. The questions were:

“If we refuse $100 of our federal war taxes and give it to some organization working for peace, what steps will the IRS take?”
“What options do we have in dealing with the IRS actions?”
“Is the initial letter we send with our tax return, stating the reasons for our tax refusal, important in terms of the subsequent legal proceedings?”
“Should we get help from a lawyer or tax refusal group in composing the letter?”
“What kind of advice can you provide which will allow us to profit from the experience of those who are already refusing to pay war taxes?”
“What happens to persons who refuse war taxes year after year?”

Some excerpts from the answers give a window into how war tax resistance was practiced by Quakers and by Meetings:

Both at Celo (NC) Meeting and at Central Philadelphia Meeting members asked others to share their examination or audit with IRS agents. The first was in the refusers’ home, the latter in a federal office building.…

One Friend has been refusing for 23 years. His witness continues and collection is still in the future, so much of the obligations of the early years have lapsed. Another Friend, whose refusal goes back even further, has had the funds due taken at irregular intervals from her checking account.

A report in the 1 October issue noted that the Lake Erie Yearly Meeting in June had “considered a minute on war tax concerns” based on queries from the New Call to Peacemaking Conference:

“If we believe that fighting war is wrong, does it not follow that paying for war is wrong? If we urge resistance to the draft, should we not also resist the conscription of our material resources?” The minute concluded: “We reassert the historic peace witness of the Society of Friends. We commit ourselves to wrestle with the contradictions between our testimony and our government’s tax regulations. To continue quiet payment for war preparations is to the conditions for war.” Each meeting was urged to appoint a representative to the World Peace Tax Fund.

Finally, the 1 August issue brought a meditation on “the peaceable kingdom” by Susan Furry. She believed that the Kingdom of God, the peaceable commonwealth, was “at hand” as Jesus said it was, and that it was the duty of Christians to “begin to live there.” She reflected on how she came to include war tax resistance in her vision of how to carry this out:

…I felt that I had to begin to look into the question of war tax resistance. This led to a long period of study and self-examination. To me, becoming a war tax resister meant making a final commitment to pacifism, and I didn’t do it lightly. It took a lot of prayer and thought and the help and support of many people in my meeting to bring me to a point of clearness, where I know, solidly and comfortably, that this action is right for me.
Since then I have found myself being led not only to resist war taxes for myself but also to speak about it to others and to offer counsel and support to those who are considering this action. I have helped prepare a packet called “Quakers and War Taxes” which is on sale at my meeting and have been involved in setting up the New England Friends Peace Tax Fund, an escrow fund for tax resisters under the care of my yearly meeting: I’ve been given a lot of encouragement to continue and to grow in my tax resistance activities through the support of others in my meeting, many of whom are not tax resisters themselves but friends who recognize that it is the right thing for me to do. I’ve found that obedience to the divine leading I have felt in this matter has brought me closer to God, has given me new courage, and has opened me to further leadings.
In practical terms, war tax resistance seems to be a futile, irrational, and perhaps risky undertaking. I think by now I’ve probably heard all the possible arguments against it. The only answer I can really give is, “This is something I must do, to be faithful to my conscience and my understanding of God’s will.” For it is part of the foolishness of God, which is wiser than human wisdom, as Paul tells us in First Corinthians. It requires me to acknowledge my dependence on God’s guidance and strength. I don’t know where my action will lead in practical terms, but I trust God to make use of it; I don’t know what the consequences will be for me personally, but I trust God to help me to face them.
In one way or another, perhaps, peacemaking may bring all of us to that place of acknowledging our dependence on God. For me it has come through tax resistance. For another it may come through the old dilemma about Hitler or through an experience of physical violence on the street. In any case one comes to a place where one has to say, “I don’t know what will happen, but I place my trust in the God of love and accept the consequences.”
In coming to rely on God more, I have begun to learn that God really is dependable. I have felt God working through the beautiful support I have received from many individuals and from my meeting. I’ve been to tax court twice and was sustained by a powerful sense of God’s presence. I’ve faced the certainty of financial loss and found that it doesn’t trouble me as much as I feared it would.
However, I still worry about the future; I haven’t reached the point where I can really leave it all in God’s hands. Sometimes I even wonder about going to jail. Right now the government isn’t prosecuting many war tax resisters, but it is always a possibility. My actions are not very unusual; there are over forty war tax resisters in my meeting alone and many more in New England. I know many people who have sacrificed more and taken greater risks for peace than I have. But I have learned that when you follow God one step down the road, God usually asks you to take another step. Who knows what God may ask of me in the future? I have friends who have gone to jail for conscience’ sake, and I wonder if I could face that if it came to me.
My action in refusing to voluntarily pay taxes for war is largely symbolic — like the early Christians who refused to put a pinch of incense on Caesar’s altar. Is it worth the risk to make a symbolic gesture? Such questions take me back to the Christian roots of my faith. I know that my way of thinking about these things and the language I use do not work for everybody, but these are the symbols which make sense to me, so I must use them.

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1992

There was a great deal about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1992, in part because of the occupation of the Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner home which the IRS was trying to auction off, and in part because of the IRS suit against the Journal to try to force it to pay its editor’s resisted taxes, and in part because of the Peace Tax Fund bill’s first congressional hearing.

A note in the January issue pointed out that politicians were playing a name game that had apparently fooled some Quakers into thinking that the telephone excise tax had been transformed into something benign:

The telephone tax continues as a source of money for military expenditure, contrary to recent confusion about its status. The tax, which was due to expire in December 1990, was extended under the Act for Better Child Care. Those who proposed the act were searching for a way to finance their new program and seized upon the telephone tax as their “new” source of money. However, the phone tax revenues continue to go into the General Fund, as always, and are not earmarked for the child care programs. More than 50 percent of the General Fund is used for military expenditure. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee recommends that conscientious resistance to the telephone tax continue, as it can have a powerful impact if enough people are involved.

That issue also had a follow-up on the “Alternative Revenue Service” protest:

In 1991, the Alternative Revenue Service reports that individuals redirected $104,740 of their federal income taxes away from the military to areas of human need. The total includes $12,898 redirected through the ARS, $38,416 redirected by Alternative Funds, and $53,426 that individuals redirected to social action and relief programs. The Alternative Revenue Service campaign is designed to educate taxpayers about how their federal income tax dollars are used. The service provides the EZ Peace Form, which participants can use in registering their opposition to military spending at the time they file their taxes. The service reports that 70,000 EZ Peace Forms were distributed nationwide last year. This year’s form is simplified, with clearer instructions.

The February issue brought the news that the Peace Tax Fund promoters had finally managed to get a Congressional Committee hearing for their bill, which was scheduled for that Spring. “The hearing will be informational to determine the need for such legislation, not a preparation for floor action. The need is assessed from the testimony of both individuals and religious bodies. The hearing will support the bill by providing a permanent public record, by lending it legitimacy, by possibly attracting more serious consideration from prospective cosponsors, and by providing a record of congressional scrutiny. The hearing will be brief, not lending itself to extended exchanges. However, written testimony can be added and will become part of the official record.”

A follow-up in April described the latest Peace Tax Fund bill as one that “would amend the Internal Revenue Code to permit qualified conscientious objectors to have part of their federal taxes — that part equal to the military portion of the federal budget — to be paid into a fund for peace-related projects.” It encouraged readers to submit “written testimony for the official hearing record,” to publicize and perhaps attend the hearing, to contact Congressional representatives and encourage them to attend and to support the bill, and to donate money to the cause.

The August issue described how the 21 May hearing before the House Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures went — “the first actual hearing held since a Peace Tax Fund Bill was first introduced in Congress 20 years ago.” Excerpts:

“If we give the right to a person to withhold their body from a war as a conscientious objector, that person should be able to withhold his money as well.”
So spoke Sen. Mark Hatfield in his lead-off testimony…
…Several hundred spectators from across the country packed the hearing room. Many attended as concerned individual taxpayers. Others came as members of religious denominations and peace groups long associated with the Peace Tax Campaign. Three chartered buses, one from Lancaster, Pa., two others from Philadelphia, swelled the numbers by some 150 supporters. When the last of them filed in from a late-arriving bus to find all spectator seats occupied, Chairman Charles Rangel stopped the hearings momentarily, inviting standing-room only observers to move forward and to occupy empty seats normally reserved for officials and the press. Many did so. Veterans of peace demonstrations, several parents holding small children, young bearded men in simple dress, older couples from the peace churches created a colorful patchwork as they mixed with congressional aides, heads of foundations, and Capitol bureaucrats in business suits.
…Over 2,300 letters in support of the Peace Tax Fund Bill were bound in large volumes and set on a front table to be presented to the committee. From 50–100 such letters a day continued to arrive as of the time of the hearing.
Following the introductory testimony of Mark Hatfield, lead sponsor of the bill (S.689) in the Senate, there were also presentations by four members of Congress: Andy Jacobs (lead sponsor of the bill in the House), Nancy Pelosi, and John Conyers.…
…[A] panel of religious leaders testified. One, Thomas Gumbleton, Roman Catholic bishop from Detroit, and past president of Pax Christi, pointed out that two of the first leaders of the church, John and Peter, said that sometimes it is necessary to obey God before obeying the law. How much better it would be, Gumbleton said, for COs to be able to pay all their taxes, knowing their money would be used for life-affirming purposes.
William Davidson, retired Episcopal bishop of western Kansas, a CO in World War Ⅱ, has actively opposed war since 1939. “Having lived past draft age, I have been saddened and conflicted each year having to pay taxes to support war,” he said. The Episcopal Peace Fellowship has consistently supported war tax resistance as a religious witness.
John A. Lapp, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, Akron, Pa., spoke on behalf of the three historic peace churches (Mennonites, Quakers, and Church of the Brethren). The issue of war-related taxes is one of religious freedom, Lapp said. “Many of us feel the pain of having our religious institutions serve as tax collectors for war.”

During committee questioning, Representative Jacobs asked Rabbi [Phil] Bentley [with the Jewish Peace Fellowship], “Is [passage of this bill] going to give rise to requests for similar legislation from people who don’t want their money going for a golf course?”

…[Friends Journal] editor-manager Vint Deming, associate editor Melissa Elliott, typesetter Susan Jordhamo, and board members Robert Sutton and Sam Legg joined several hundred other citizens in packing the hearing room…
The hearing was informational, to give legislators material to use in future considerations, rather than to schedule the bill for action. As such, it gave supporters a chance to formally present the case, get testimony in the written record, and show the depth and breadth of people’s interest in the bill.
The pace of this legislative process is frustratingly slow, but, for many of us, the hearing was a heartening experience. There, we heard people testify in a formal legislative setting to our most deeply held beliefs. One activist-participant said, “All my life I’ve been on the side that opposes government decisions. It was a weird experience to see all those peace movement people in the same room with legislators. I’ve never seen anything like that before, nor ever imagined it. It gave me a different vision of what might be possible.”
The Peace Tax Fund Bill has come a long way since its introduction in 1972, with many technical refinements, and it has a long way to go in gathering widespread support. On May 21 we witnessed one small step in validation, acknowledgment of our beliefs, and moving the dream closer to reality. Perhaps one day we will look back, as do those who watched the process of legalizing conscientious objection, and be glad we were involved in making it legal to follow our beliefs with our money-as well as with our bodies.

“This is not a political issue, but a moral issue of conscience,” responded Bentley…
Jacobs, in response, thanked the Rabbi and others of religious conscience who had testified. “I am a sponsor of this bill,” he said, “but I am not a pacifist.” He called to mind one of his favorite movies, Friendly Persuasion, and the lines spoken toward the end of the film: “It’s good to know that somebody is holding out for a better way of settling things!”
Terrill Hyde, tax legislative counsel for the Department of the Treasury, presented the Bush Administration position opposing the PTF. She mentioned “problems of complexity, confusion, and increased administrative burden,” sure to arise if the bill were passed. There would be no deterrent either, she said, to restrain taxpayers from inappropriately claiming CO status. If taxpayers were allowed to designate the uses for which their tax dollars were spent, “our entire budgetary process would be undermined.” There would likely be loss of revenue to needed federal programs.
Others, however, presented differing views. Several speakers argued that there would likely be substantial increases in revenue as a direct result of the bill. Many who currently refuse to pay a portion or all of their taxes would gladly pay. Also, large costs resulting from IRS efforts to collect from tax resisters would be avoided. Answering the criticism of how the act might increase paperwork and administrative costs, several people testified to the simple nature of the bill and of the tax filing process.
As to IRS claims that the bill raises possible legal questions, a panel of two law specialists responded. Mark Tushnet, professor of law at Georgetown University, said, “A nation that wants to protect the religious freedom of its citizens can reasonably be expected to enact legislation to enable the freedom to be expressed.” It seems perfectly appropriate, he concluded, that such legislation be enacted. “It is needed in addition to the Religious Freedom Act.”
Philadelphia, Pa., attorney and war tax specialist Peter Goldberger agreed. “Legislation of this kind has a noble history in our country,” and he quoted from a 1790 letter from then-President George Washington to Philadelphia Quakers. The nation’s laws, Washington wrote, must always be “extensively accommodated” in cases of individual conscience.
Alan Eccleston, a Quaker and an organizational development consultant from Hadley, Massachusetts, told about how, in his own tax witness, he has endured penalties, punishments, and the threat of losing his home. The IRS has a lien on his house right now. “Conscience must be taken into account. Spiritual values are real. They are not to be treated as incidental or expendable to fit the needs of the state. This is what the First Amendment is all about.”
Ruth Flower, legislative secretary of Friends Committee on National Legislation, emphasized that the Peace Tax Fund Act would not offer an escape to those who do not wish to pay their taxes, because they would have to pay the same amount either way. It would, however, provide a legal way out of violating one’s religious beliefs in order to comply with the laws of the land.
Her point was born out by Patricia Washburn, who gave perhaps the most moving testimony of the hearing. She talked about the challenge presented to each of us, and to her personally, in Micah 6:8: “…what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love constantly, and to walk humbly with your God?” Walking humbly requires us to acknowledge the seeds of violence in our own hearts, rather than projecting them onto someone else. “Loving constantly” can be a discouraging and difficult task, especially in today’s climate of distrust and alienation.

“I am not opposed to paying taxes, but I find no alternative form of tax payment… Thus, I see no current alternative to withholding the military portion of my taxes… I pray that my witness is done in love and that it will help to build a bridge across the chasm of violence and fear.”

After the hearing and following the press conference, [Marian] Franz [executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund] gave a brief workshop on lobbying for the bill. She pointed out that the testimony would now be entered in written record and could be referred to in the future. She added, “the fact that we got a hearing is absolutely amazing.” Many other pieces of legislation have not yet been so lucky, and the demand is great. “If all members of the committee had been present, they all would have been deeply moved, and we would be a lot further down the road.”
Franz encouraged people, when lobbying, to talk in terms of conscience, as defined by Pope John ⅩⅩⅢ, who said, “Deep inside, each one of us finds a law that we did not put there. It tells us to do this and shun that.” That is what puts the issue of paying taxes for war in the arena of religious decisions and touches on every individual’s right to follow their faith — whether they are housewives, bureaucrats, lawyers, teachers, or politicians.
That is why it is important to keep trying to open doors and ears and minds. Marian Franz has a suggestion for how to approach people: “Talk to aides and legislators as though you’re sharing something personally. You will often find that when you are talking about conscience, people are moved deeply.”

The February issue also plugged “Good Use: Songs of Peace, Tax & Conscience” — “a tape of War Tax Resister Songs, featuring Charlie King, Luci Murphy, Geof Morgan, Lifeline, and others. It was produced by Don Walsh, who donates the royalties.”

The lead editorial (by Vinton Deming) in the March issue concerned the ongoing Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner case:

Finding Affinity

Randy Kehler and his wife, Betsy Corner, have been tax resisters since 1977. They have given the tax money instead to a variety of groups doing constructive community work. Since 1989 the IRS has been trying to sell their house in Colrain, Mass., in an effort to collect $25,896 in back taxes — but it hasn’t been easy.
First of all, there’s been a growing tax resistance movement there in Franklin County. Bob Bady and Pat Morse, for instance, had their house seized and auctioned in 1989. (They still live in the house, however, and the buyer hasn’t taken possession.) Shelburn Falls dentist Tom Wilson had his dental license revoked when he refused to cooperate with IRS. (He continues his practice, however; even the local sheriff remains one of his regular patients).
So when the word got out that IRS planned to auction Betsy and Randy’s house, supporters in large numbers turned up on the announced day to oppose the sale. There were lots of signed bids (such as an offer to clean the teeth of an IRS agent, others pledging to do community work or to be peace activists for life) — but no cash buyers came forward. Not a one.
So, in November 1991, IRS upped the ante. Betsy, Randy, and daughter Lillian, 12, were given an eviction notice. When Randy decided to stay, he was held in contempt and tossed in the county jail for 6 months.
This didn’t go unnoticed by friends and neighbors, however. A sign-up sheet got circulated, and volunteers committed themselves to stay in the house around the clock. There’s been a continuous presence there since December 3. Groups from as far away as Washington, D.C., have signed up to come and help out. In early January, members of Mount Toby (Mass.) Meeting formed such an affinity group for a week.
Meanwhile, Randy stays in jail and makes the most of his time there. He has made friends with many of the prisoners, has organized a chess tournament, and does what he can to interpret his tax witness. Allan Eccleston, member of Mount Toby Meeting, has been approved as the meeting’s official minister and visits Randy twice a week.
So what’s next? IRS has scheduled another auction, this time out of the area in Springfield, Mass. — in the hope, it seems, of attracting a buyer for the house, someone who doesn’t know about this whole chain of events. Randy will not be there to talk about it, but lots of his friends will. Even if the house is sold, the issue will be far from over. The house is part of a land trust (Randy and Betsy own the house but not the land on which it stands) — and there’s the likelihood of a continuing nonviolent presence in the house to welcome any potential new buyer.
How might Friends respond? I asked this question in late January of Francis Crowe, long-time head of the American Friends Service Committee office in western Massachusetts and a supporter of Randy and Betsy. She suggests:

Form an affinity group to help sustain the presence in the house. (To be scheduled, contact Traprock Peace Center…

Funds are also needed to support the action (checks made out to “War Tax Refusers Support Committee”…).

Letters to the editor on the subject of taxes and militarism are always helpful.

More sponsors are needed in Congress for the Peace Tax Fund bill.…

At a rally last fall in support of Betsy and Randy, Juanita Nelson — who, with husband Wally, has been a tax refuser for decades and is known to many Friends — offered these words by Goethe: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has Genius, Power, and Magic in it.” Good advice as another tax season is upon us, when many of us seek to find our way on this difficult question of taxes for war.

In a later issue, David Zarembka reported in a letter-to-the-editor about how the occupation / blockade of the Kehler/Corner home was proceeding:

On Feb. 12, federal marshalls arrested seven members of the Flowing River Affinity Group who were occupying the Kehler/Corner home and removed the furniture into storage. At 2 p.m. that same day, the IRS sold the house to the highest bidder in an auction for $5,400. The seven affinity group members were released from jail later in the afternoon. So was Randy, who had served two months of his sentence.
Do not think, however, that Betsy and Randy have lost their home in an exotic cause! As soon as the federal marshalls left the house, an affinity group reoccupied it, and other groups, including one from Washington, D.C., of which I am a member, have continued to occupy the house on a 24-hour basis. Affinity groups, which occupy the home for a week each, have been organizing since late 1989, but new ones are still being formed…
The “buyers,” a young couple with a two-month-old son, have visited the house several times but have not as yet forced the issue. They are consulting with their lawyers. Betsy and Randy have become members of the Colrain Neighbors Affinity Group, which will occupy the home for the week beginning April 16. They and their twelve-year-old daughter, Lillian, will move back into their home when they can comfortably live there once again.
I would hope that this action would lead Friends to consider how their cooperation with the federal tax collection process — even those who are symbolic tax resisters or those who force the IRS to take their taxes from them — allows the present military system to thrive.

A report in that issue on the Canadian Yearly Meeting that had taken place the previous Fall noted that:

Canadian Yearly Meeting, in its role of employer, was asked to refuse to remit that portion of its employees’ taxes that will be used to support the military. Concern was expressed by the yearly meeting’s trustees, who would bear the legal results of such actions. Although the yearly meeting came close to supporting a minute for this action, it agreed to seek clearness with the trustees and monthly meetings and return to this issue next year.

The May issue was largely devoted to war tax resistance. It began with an editorial from Vinton Deming concerning his war tax resistance and the response of his employer, the Journal. Excerpt:

From the outset, I knew it wasn’t a very practical thing to do. The government was too powerful, and all the tax laws were against me. I’d just end up paying much more in the end, so why not choose a better way to work for peace? A good letter to my congressman, for instance, or a tax vigil at the federal building on Apri1 15.
But this was in the late 1970s. Our war in Vietnam was just over, but the Cold War continued. As the Reagan years unfolded, with still larger military expenditures and big cuts in domestic programs, I became even more clear: I must resist as fully as possible the payment of taxes for war.
The Journal board was always supportive of my witness. It refused twice to honor IRS levies on my wages. In doing so, Friends openly accepted the possibility of being taken to court one day and fined severely. The board wrote to IRS: “Our position of noncompliance to the requests of the Internal Revenue Service is not an easy one. We do not question the laws of the land lightly, but do so under the weight of a genuine religious and moral concern.”
Well, as they say, “What goes ’round comes ’round.” This February, Friends Journal was told by the U.S. Justice Department to pay up or we’d be taken to court.…
I am grateful for the steadfastness of the Journal’s board of managers. Since the board first addressed the tax issue in 1979, it has been faithful to the Quaker peace testimony. The road has been an uncertain and confusing one at many points, but Friends have shown courage in continuing.
In my own personal war tax journey, these words by John Stoner have served to guide: “We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God.”

Sam Legg, clerk of the Friends Journal Board of Managers, gave his take on the Deming situation and on why the Journal had decided to throw in the towel and pay the IRS’s demands. Excerpts:

[F]rom 1979 to 1983… Vinton refused to pay any federal taxes. Each tax year he sent a blank 1040 along with a letter to the president explaining his opposition to war and his unwillingness as a Friend to pay for it. Since there was no Peace Tax Fund, Vinton reasoned, he would instead contribute the money to worthwhile projects and see that it was used for peaceful purposes. In 1987, the IRS served a levy on Friends Journal for $22,714.16, Vinton’s taxes for the period, plus interest and penalties. The IRS asked Friends Journal to withhold part of Vinton’s salary each month, but the Journal Board refused, writing that “We… are in support of Vinton Deming’s conscientious witness.”
In early February of this year, Friends Journal received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice reminding us of the levy on Vinton’s salary and asking us to try to “resolve this matter short of litigation.” That is, to pay the original assessed amount plus interest and a possible 50 percent penalty on the total. We were given until Feb. 28 to respond.
If we were to continue refusing to honor the levy, an immediate court action would follow. The 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Smith vs. Oregon, as Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the American Friends Service Committee have learned, teaches us that there is no way we could win such a case in court, nor could our assets be protected from seizure. More troubling, this seizure could make others who are not involved in our decision, undergo unwelcome investigation. Finally, a court case offers IRS the opportunity to set a legal precedent requiring the payment of the 50 percent penalty (which a sympathetic judge excused in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting case last year). We fear that the inevitable negative decision could establish that precedent and thereby restrict other individuals’ or groups’ religious freedom. And so, most reluctantly, the Friends Journal Board has agreed to negotiate with IRS and to pay the least amount IRS will accept ($31,300) as settlement of this claim.
Our painful recognition of failure is heavy upon us. We have to accept that our witness in its present form can no longer serve a useful purpose. We can hope Vinton’s action and our support will have brought the issue of tax refusal to the attention of others, thereby becoming a part of the tradition of citizen pressure that in the long run eliminates or diminishes social evils such as slavery and war.
Our protest is on record. What we will do now is support the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1991… which aims to reestablish the first amendment religious rights lost in the Smith vs. Oregon decision. We also urge support for the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill… which makes the same witness, but provides money to finance peace-enhancing projects. (Needless to say, if there had been a Peace Tax Fund in 1979, Vinton’s taxes would have been paid gladly, and there would have been no need for an IRS levy.) We ask all those who share our concerns to join in these legal approaches to the continuing effort to convince ourselves and others of the futility of armed conflict and the necessity of finding other means to resolve human disputes.
The immediate financial challenge to the Journal is a very real one. In a year in which we already face a substantial budget deficit, the payment of such a large lump sum adds an enormous burden. Vinton has engaged to repay the Journal through payroll deductions over time. We have been heartened as well, as word of our tax witness spreads, to receive gifts of support from our readers. One contributor writes: “I hope everyone at the Friends Journal can be made aware of Friends’ approval of [your] Board action. To help this happen, I encourage the Journal to go as public with the story as is consistent with respect for Vint’s privacy and the Journal’s limited resources. I am convinced that other Friends will wish to help financially when so informed.” For such words, and unexpected gifts, we are most grateful.

Readers wrote in with their feedback about the Journal’s decision, and some of their letters were printed in the July issue:

Duane Magill wrote to “applaud” and “sympathize” with the Journal’s stand. “As a war tax resister myself for the past quarter of a century, I have had some brushes with the IRS myself and know what it is like. I also appreciate your giving publicity to the subject. I know that not many Quakers take this position, and giving the matter this extensive coverage just might encourage more to take this stand.”
Yvonne Boeger wrote in on behalf of the Live Oak (Texas) Meeting to say that the meeting had recently “discussed the importance of war tax resistance as a means of witnessing to Friends’ long-standing opposition to all forms of war and violence” and that the Meeting was supportive of the Journal’s (and Deming’s) action. “We send the enclosed check as a token of our support and solidarity in Friends’ resistance to war. Thank you for the example you have set for us all.”
Lillian and George Willoughby wrote to express gratitude for the Journal’s “courage in standing in support of Vint Deming.” They wrote: “Most important is the example of a Quaker religious employer providing support to staff who endeavor to live according to Friends’ teachings. The Journal has run considerable risk and incurred heavy expenses. We enclose our check as a demonstration of our support. We think that many other Friends will want to help carry the financial burden of this witness.”
An editorial note in the letters column expressed “thanks to all those who have sent checks!” and a later editorial note (in the December issue) said that they had received “$8,000 from individuals and meetings, $7,000 from a Sufferings Fund of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,” and almost $4,000 from Deming himself.

Mennonite war tax resister (and, according to his author bio, “itinerant prophet and spiritual retreat leader”) John K. Stoner wrote about the call he got from an IRS employee. Excerpts:

We talked for about ten minutes, as I explained why Janet and I had said “no” to paying the full amount of our income tax. The man could not understand why anyone would invite the collection pressures of the IRS upon themselves by withholding some taxes. But by the time the conversation was over, he was a little closer to understanding that this was, for us, a matter of faith and a question of the practice of our religion.
It was a Mark 13:9 kind of experience of being called before the authorities, “before governors and kings,” because of Jesus, as a testimony to them. By the sound of Mark 13, Jesus expected this kind of thing to happen regularly to his followers. Mark 13 is a good text to remember when everybody around you is quoting Romans 13.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams organization is promoting symbolic war tax refusal as a way to make a clear witness in the matter of war taxes. Taxes for Life is a plan to have taxpayers redirect to education an amount equivalent to 1 penny for every billion dollars in the military budget. For tax year 1991 this is $3.03, which can be mailed to Christian Peacemaker Teams… Listen to your conscience when you pay your taxes. Write a letter of witness to the IRS, with copies to Congress and your local newspaper. Redirect some taxes to education through CPT.
If the IRS calls, tell them that it makes you a little bit nervous to break their law and that you do not enjoy being harassed by the collectors of blood money. Go on to say that you are far more apprehensive, however, about breaking God’s law. Tell them that you hear God’s warning rising up from the bulldozed mass graves of Iraqi conscripts, fathers and husbands, and the nightmares of their children. Explain that you are really afraid to harden you heart to the cry of the victims and that you have decided you will not take their blood upon your hands.

Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner applaud a group of supporters outside their former home

When Randy Kehler was thrown in prison on contempt of court charges for refusing to vacate the home that had been seized by the IRS, he prepared a statement that he hoped to read. The court denied him permission to address it. The Journal printed the statement he’d hoped to have made, which is a good thing: it would be a shame if such an articulate statement was left to sit unread in a file folder somewhere.

My refusal to give up our home is not an act of contempt or defiance of your court order. I regard it as an act of conscience and also an act of citizenship. The two go hand in hand. The first obligation of responsible citizenship, I believe, is obedience to one’s conscience. Obedience to one’s government and to its laws is very important, but it must come second. Otherwise there is no check on immoral actions by governments, which are bound to occur in any society whenever power is abused.
I want to assure you, however, that I am not someone who treats the law lightly. Even when a particular law seems at first to have no clear purpose or justification, I try to give it — that is, give those who created and approved it — the benefit of the doubt. In an ideal sense, I see law as the codification of those rules and procedures by which the members or citizens of a community, be it local or global, have agreed to live. A decent respect for one’s community requires a decent respect for its laws. At their best, such laws express the conscience of the community, causing conscience and law to coincide.
The international treaties and agreements that my wife, Betsy, and I cited in the legal documents recently submitted to, and rejected by, this court are wonderful examples of the coincidence of law and conscience. These agreements, each one signed by our government, include the United Nations Charter, which outlaws war and the use of military force as methods of resolving conflicts among nations; the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use or threatened use of weapons that indiscriminately kill civilians and poison the environment; and the Nuremberg Principles, which forbid individual citizens from participating in or collaborating with clearly defined “crimes against humanity,” “war crimes,” and “crimes against peace,” even when refusal to participate or collaborate means disobeying the laws of one’s government.
These international accords — which, as you know, our Constitution requires us to regard as “the Supreme Law of the Land” — are at least as much affirmation of conscience, rooted in universal moral standards, as they are statements of law. Betsy and I regret that you chose to deny our request for a trial, which would have allowed us to argue the relevance of these international laws before a jury of our peers.
Even in the absence of such laws, however, I believe that citizens would still have an affirmative obligation to follow their conscience and refuse to engage in or support immoral acts by governments. It is not true, as is commonly thought, that if large numbers of people put conscience ahead of the law and decided for themselves which acts of government were immoral, civilized society would break down into violence and chaos — that is, greater violence and chaos than there is now. In fact, the opposite would likely occur. There would likely be greater compliance with those laws that are fundamentally just and reasonable — in other words, most laws — and there would be greater public pressure to abolish or reform those laws (and policies) that are unjust or unreasonable.
There would be exceptions for the worse, of course. In the name of conscience, certain individuals would, no doubt, do some terrible things and cause much injury and death, which happens now. On balance, however, the historical record is clear: from the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade, to Stalin’s purges, Hitler’s Holocaust, the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and our own devastation of Vietnam and Iraq, far more killing and suffering, has resulted from people following “legal” orders and obeying the law than from people refusing to do so in obedience to conscience.
My own refusal to kill (which led me to spend nearly two years in federal prison rather than cooperate with the Vietnam draft), Betsy’s and my refusal to pay federal taxes used for killing (which caused the IRS to seize our home), and now our refusal to turn over our home in lieu of taxes, are all acts of conscience. It has not been easy for us to deliberately violate the law in these instances, and in so doing incur the anxiety and disapproval of some of our friends and family, as well as the scorn and censure of many members of the community. We are painfully aware that even though we do pay our town and state taxes, and even though we have given away to the poor and to the victims of our war-making in other countries every cent that we have withheld from the federal government, nevertheless we are still regarded by some as irresponsible and not contributing our fair share.
These are times, however, when all of us are confronted with difficult choices. Betsy and I, and many others like us, feel we must choose between knowingly and willingly paying for war and killing, and openly and nonviolently breaking the law with respect to federal taxes. Our consciences compel us to choose the latter.
For me, the issue is larger than simply the taking of another human life, or even the instance of a particular war in which many lives are lost. I have increasingly come to see the larger issue as war itself. Whereas there has always been a moral imperative to end war and refrain from killing, today the imperative is much greater. Today the logic of peace, the logic of nonviolence, is also the logic of survival.
It is impossible to dis-invent today’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and so-called conventional weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, we have no alternative but to effectively abolish war. This is the one essential adaptation the human species must make — and, I firmly believe, can make — if life as we know it is to continue.
War today is the scourge of the planet. It is tragic enough that war is daily claiming the lives of people, maiming more, leaving orphans and widows, and destroying homes, schools, and hospitals — to say nothing of the irreplaceable treasures of human civilization destroyed in Baghdad last year and in Dubrovnik over the past several months. What makes war today even more tragic, more horrible, are the incalculable economic, social, and environmental costs that go along with it. Instead of using our human and material resources to produce food, medicine, housing, schools, and other desperately needed commodities, the world’s nations, led by our own, are annually spending trillions of dollars to purchase more and more weapons of even greater destructive capability. The hundreds of millions of children, women, and men whose lives are ravaged by poverty, hunger, and homelessness — around the world and here in the States — are as much victims of our addiction to war and militarism as are those who are hit directly by the bullets and bombs.
While the awful gap between the rich minority and the poor majority of the world’s people grows wider and wider, war’s assault on the earth — the earth that sustains us all — becomes more savage and less reversible with each new armed conflict. The severe and longterm ecological damage to the Persian Gulf region that resulted from only a few weeks of war last year is just the tip of the iceberg. The cumulative impact of the many smaller, less publicized wars elsewhere around the globe is no less severe and, ultimately, no less threatening to the well-being of people everywhere, including the United States. Furthermore, here at home, where ecological damage to our own environment is proceeding at a frightening pace, the single largest polluter by far, producing more toxic and radioactive waste than any other single entity, is the U.S. military.
I am not at all suggesting that our country bears sole responsibility for the global state of affairs. But we bear a good deal of it, and therefore any steps we take to move away from war will have great influence upon other countries around the world. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had the most powerful armed forces in the world, the most sophisticated weaponry, and by far the largest number of military bases outside our own borders. Since World War Ⅱ, we have used our military might to bomb, invade, or otherwise intervene in more countries around the world than any other nation. We were the first to develop the atomic bomb, and we are the only nation ever to use it. For years we have led the Soviets in atomic test explosions, and we ani continuing these tests even though Soviet testing has stopped. In addition, we have long been the world’s largest arms merchant, today supplying 40 percent of the entire overseas arms market.
We have been told that all of this is necessary for our security, but the opposite is true. This military colossus we have created has greatly undermined our security — by creating more enemies than it destroys, by wasting our precious resources and poisoning our environment, by degrading our democracy with “national security” secrecy, covert actions, and official lying, and by undercutting our highest Judeo-Christian values with the insidious doctrine of “might makes right.”
Betsy’s and my actions that have brought us to court are testament to our belief that there is another way for us to live in the world, and another way for us to resolve our conflicts with our fellow human beings. It is a way that is rooted in the best of our values: the values of generosity and justice, of human dignity and equality, of compassion and mutual respect. The seeds of this alternative way — the way of nonviolence that Dr. Martin Luther King tried to teach us — already exist within our society, and within each person. We have only to honor and nurture those seeds, individually and collectively. This is a prescription based not on wishful idealism, but on practical necessity. It is our only real hope for survival.
The transformation required cannot be accomplished without our accepting some measure of personal responsibility for the mess we are in. It would be futile to expect our government, or any other, to initiate it. In any event, we cannot afford to wait. The transformation must begin with us. Because we profess to be a self-governing people, it is all the more our responsibility.
We can exercise this responsibility by means of the choices each of us is called upon to make. For example, we can choose to speak out publicly against governmental practices and priorities that we know to be wrong. Many of us can also choose not to hand over to the federal government some part of our tax money — instead redistribute it to those in need, until such time as those in need become our government’s first priority. And each of us can choose to continue leading lives based on materialism, consumerism, and environmental exploitation, or we can find ways of living based on simplicity, sharing, and respect for the Earth. The choices we make as individuals will determine the choices we make as a nation.
This is, no doubt, a dangerous and ominous time to be alive in the world. Yet it is also a very exciting time to be alive. People all over the world, despite the opposition of their governments, are taking initiative to bring about momentous and long overdue changes. These winds of change are sweeping the planet, and they are not likely to stop at our borders.
If the people of Prague and Moscow can overthrow Soviet communism and bring about democracy and human rights; if the people of Soweto and Johannesburg can abolish South African apartheid and establish an egalitarian, multi-racial society; then, I feel sure, it is equally possible for us to dismantle U.S. militarism and replace it with attitudes and institutions of nonviolence.
It is my great hope, my silent prayer, that Betsy’s and my struggle to see that the fruits of our labor are used for nurturing and healing, rather than for killing and war, will somehow contribute to that process.

A support group prepares to occupy the house

Following this, Christopher L. King had a piece promoting the Peace Tax Fund. He described it as the brainchild of David Bassett, who some twenty years before had come up with the idea of allowing taxpayers to perform “alternative service” money the way conscientiously objecting draftees could with their labor. King wrote that he was surprised to find little awareness of the bill in Quaker circles and described some of the work that he and his comrades were doing for the bill.

Those of us who meet each month and a quiet group of supporters in the surrounding communities believe in our consciences that war and militarism are wrong. We don’t believe they should be the major tools of our foreign policy. We sympathize with citizens like Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner of Colrain, Massachusetts, who have chosen to pay no taxes because they are pacifists.
We empathize with those brave souls who choose alternative lifestyles so they can keep their income below taxable levels. It often means their children must learn to sacrifice at an early age. It means stepping out of the mainstream culture.
Most of us don’t want to change our lifestyles radically or go to jail for our beliefs. Some might argue that if we are true to our faith, we have no other choice. On the other hand, there is a need to resist the fundamental tyranny that requires that we must become rebels if we wish to stand firmly for peace.

King’s article was pretty vague on the mechanics of what the Peace Tax Fund bill would actually accomplish, and it was written as if there were no reason why a conscientious objector to paying to war might not find it a satisfactory solution.

The July issue included a brief review of the video Paying for Peace: War Tax Resistance in the United States, which was produced by Carol Coney. Excerpt:

Among those interviewed are Brian Willson, a war tax resister and Vietnam veteran who in 1987 was run over by a train while blocking munitions shipments at the Concord naval weapons plant in California. Also interviewed is Maurice McCrackin, a minister who was sentenced to jail for war tax resistance in the early 1950s; Ernest and Marion Bromley, who have lived under the taxable income level to avoid paying taxes for military purposes; and Juanita Nelson, an early civil rights organizer who was the first woman to spend a night in jail for war tax resistance.

The August issue included an op-ed from Allan Kohrman suggesting Quakers ought to be more patriotic, perhaps singing “God Bless America” during their Sunday meetings, and in particular should rethink their permissive attitude toward civil disobedience and war tax resistance. “Many Friends seem to define civil disobedience as breaking any law they feel is morally wrong. Some will not pay war taxes, testifying that God has called them to resist. I would argue that paying taxes is a basic responsibility of citizenship, a function of my almost mystical relationship to my country. God calls me to pay my taxes much as God calls others to resist them.” That’s what “an almost mystical relationship to my country” will get you, I guess.

Another note in that issue concerned two Quakers in Germany — Christa & Klausmart Voigt — who had been prosecuted for war tax resistance. “About 40 Friends from all over Germany attended the hearing, which was overseen by five judges.” Klausmart had “placed his money in an account for a peace tax initiative,” and at press time they were still awaiting the court’s decision.

There was another note about the Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund in the October issue, which described it this way: “When a request for assistance comes in, the committee that oversees the fund takes it under consideration, then notifies people who have agreed to participate of the amount each would need to contribute to cover the tax resister’s penalty and interest debt. Contributions are not used to cover the tax liability itself. The fund is administered in cooperation with the North Manchester (Ind.) Fellowship of Reconciliation.”

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 (1943–1959)

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 1955 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 18^th 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 1948. “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 1959. 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.”

A United Press International dispatch from this date in 1959:

Six Refuse to Pay Tax on War Making Grounds in State

Philadelphia (UPI) — A perennial refusal to pay taxes on the grounds the money goes for war purposes bobbed up again today as the midnight deadline for income tax returns neared.
The Peacemakers, described as a nation-wide movement based on Gandhian concepts of non-violence, announced 73 of its members signed declarations of non-payment of taxes. Sixteen were from the Philadelphia area.
The signers included David Gale (3509 Hamilton St.) Philadelphia, a member of the crew of the Golden Rule, the 30-foot pacifist ketch which attempted to sail into the U.S. nuclear testing zone in the Pacific last year.
Rev. Maurice McCrackin, a Presbyterian minister, and Rev. Theodore Olson, a Baptist minister from suburban Fallsington, also were listed as signers of the non-payment pact.
McCrackin is at an Allenwood, Pa., federal camp serving the last weeks of a six month term for refusal to pay federal income taxes. Olson was released last Dec. 23 from the county jail at Cheyenne, Wyo., after serving four months for his attempt to impede construction of the first U.S. international missile base.
The Peacemakers is the group which called for non-cooperation in a civil defense drill scheduled for next Friday.
In announcing the non-payment declaration, the group said “war-making has come to be the major activity of the federal government.”
“The staggering tax load placed on the American people is staggering only because of military expenditures which take four-fifths of the tax dollar,” the declaration said.
“The sharp upward trend of expenditures for high-powered bombs and long-range missiles greatly increases the possibility that mankind will be extinguished. We dissent, and want our lives to be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

Some war tax resistance news that has scrolled by on my screen in recent days:

Erica Weiland, at the War Tax Talk blog, has uncovered a case of successful war tax resistance from the archives of NWTRCC’s newsletter. The anonymous resister in question filed income tax returns, refused to pay the amount “owed,” and then began to watch those unpaid amounts disappear behind the statute-of-limitations curtain and beyond the reach of the IRS. The resister made some attempts to make collection more difficult — not owning big-ticket property, setting up a “gift annuity” and outright giving money away to make current assets less-collectible, moving accounts from bank to bank — but in part it seems to be IRS negligence or laziness that gets the credit. Good enough for government work!
Canada’s Globe and Mail published an obituary for Eldon Comfort, a World War Ⅱ vet who became an anti-war activist. It quotes from a letter he sent to the minister of revenue in 2008:
Today, modern technology has introduced weapons of mass destruction. Their cost is staggering. … So, in a very real sense when I pay my income tax, I am complicit in the deployment of such armaments.
I am, therefore, claiming conscientious objection to the conscription of my tax for military purposes. The percentage of the federal budget designated for DND is deemed to be 8.1 per cent, so I have reduced my income tax by that amount. This portion is being directed to Conscience Canada’s peace tax fund.
When the Canadian military operations were restricted to peacekeeping (in its restricted sense), to search and rescue, and to succour during national natural disasters, I had no quarrel with paying my taxes in full. When the priority for the resolution of conflict, once again, becomes a peaceful and diplomatic enterprise, I shall resume full payment.
Greg Slepak recognizes that by paying his taxes he becomes complicit in what the government does with his tax money, but he has chosen a different approach to that of conscientious war tax resisters. Instead of no longer paying for the government’s misdeeds, he has identified one of the victims of these misdeeds and attempted to compensate him in proportion to how much he’d victimized him. “To such a person, I have a sense of… indebtedness, as though I owe him something. After thinking on it, I realized there might be some truth to that.”
I recently became aware that a biography of Maurice McCrackin has been put on-line, including a chapter that covers his introduction war tax resistance and the early days of the Peacemakers group. His tax resistance began, according to the book, when Wally Nelson noticed the pacifist minister removing toy guns and other war toys from those in a donation pile, and told him: “Do you ever think that next March 15 [then the income tax filing deadline] you’ll be paying for real guns?” The next chapter covers his imprisonment for refusing to cooperate with an IRS summons. Another chapter concerns his removal as a minister by officials of his Presbytery who were upset about his war tax resistance.
Matt Hisrich at the Quaker Libertarians blog takes issue with Quaker organizations who frame their opposition to government military spending in terms of reallocating that spending to other government priorities. Excerpts:
This approach puts forth the false notion that national governments sit atop vast reserves of wealth that should be spent on nonviolent rather than violent ends.…
National governments cannot spend new wealth without either issuing new debt (that will have to be repaid) or extracting it directly from taxpayers through the implicit or explicit threat of violence. If Quakers (or anyone else for that matter) want to be known as “Champions of Peace,” it would be better to strive toward a reduction in the war spending that seeks to keep funds in the hands of individuals to peacefully pursue their own ends instead of merely shifting line items in national budgets. The former focuses on individual and local empowerment, and the latter focuses on somehow “winning” in the national political game.

From the 1 February 1965 issue of The Militant:

Pacifists Refuse To Pay Taxes to Aid U.S. Wars

Cincinnati — Twelve people prominent in the anti-war movement issued a statement on Jan. 22 that they would refuse to pay taxes on their 1964 income.
They gave as their reason “because so much of the tax paid the federal government goes for killing and torture as in Vietnam, and for the development of even more horrible war methods to use in the future.”
“We issue this statement,” they said, “not only to make known our own intentions, but also to call upon others to consider this manner of stopping their money from going to what they do not want.”
Those who want to sign the statement are asked to send their names to No-Tax-for-War-in-Vietnam Committee, c/o Rev. Maurice McCrackin, 932 Dayton St., Cincinnati, Ohio.
The signers of the statement include: Dave Dellinger, an editor of Liberation; Neil Haworth, national secretary of the Committee for Non-Violent Action; Maurice McCrackin, pastor of the Community Church in Cincinnati; A.J. Muste, dean of the pacifist movement and leader of many action projects; and Harry Purvis, peace spokesman and candidate in the New York area.

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 the last half of the 20^th century.

Here, for example, from the April, 1951 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 March 15 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 March 15. 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. 3^rd 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. 3^rd St., Parkville, Mo.; Sandy Katz 232 W. 29^th 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. 15^th 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 January, 1951 issue:

Tax Petition

On Saturday, December 9, 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.

This is the twenty-eighth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal of the (Old) Mennonite Church.

When I hit 1987 in the archives it seemed to me that I started seeing a lot more mentions of how “our tax dollars” were financing this or that government-sponsored horror, but much less followup from there about how such a thing might lead one to resist paying. Maybe that was seen as an obvious corollary by then, or maybe some people had abandoned the idea of war tax resistance as impractical and had just become resigned to complaining. It’s hard to tell from the record.

That’s not to say there wasn’t war tax resistance content. Plenty of it. The “Taxes for Peace” war tax redirection fund, run by the Mennonite Central Committee’s (U.S.) Peace Section, announced it’s annual drive in the 17 February 1987 issue. The fund would be redirecting money to the Lancaster County (Pa.) Peacework Alternatives Project, and announced that they had redirected $4,600 to a project to aid victims of violence in Guatemala the previous year.

A curious story, “The parable of the taxpayers” by John F. Murray appeared in the 27 March 1987. It was a sort of updating of the “parable of the talents” from the Bible. It included a character who was a war tax resister but the parable chided him for hiding his money away from the tax collector rather than spending it on good churchly stuff. Perhaps this indicates that this was one stereotype of war tax resisters — as miserly sorts — that was prevalent in Mennonite circles.

The emerging war tax resistance movement in Japan took the offensive in 1987, according to this 27 March article:

A Mennonite pastor is among 22 Japanese tax resisters who have sued the government for what they say was an “unconstitutional” collection of their taxes in 1980. The 22 are all members of Conscientious Objection to Military Tax (COMIT), and 12 of them are Christians — including Michio Ohno, a Mennonite pastor in Tokyo. The 1980 government action involved the seizing of the bank accounts of Ohno and two others. The 22 charge that Japan’s so-called Self-Defense Forces is a violation of the post-World War Ⅱ constitution, which forbids the country to have an army, navy, and air force. So, they charge, the collection of taxes for the military is also unconstitutional.

John K. Stoner promoted war tax resistance just before (U.S.) tax day:

To pay or not to pay war taxes

Nine to five

by John K. Stoner
Members of the Mennonite Church in the United States contribute $9 to the federal government for military purposes for every $5 they contribute to the local church for the cause of Christ.
Nine to five is the proportion of military support to local church support. Nine to five is also a traditional eight-hour workday. The fruit of our labor is paying for the arms race.
The nine-to-five calculation is based on 1984 figures from the current Mennonite Yearbook, p. 190. The contributions given by U.S. Mennonite Church members through the congregational treasury in 1984 totaled $57,269,704. This figure does not include individual gifts that were not channeled through the congregation. The estimated military tax paid by the same people in 1984 was $105,800,000.
Stanley Kropf, churchwide agency finance secretary, estimates that the pretax income of Mennonite Church members in 1984 was $1,602,600,000. I have calculated a 12 percent tax rate paid on that income, with 55 percent of the taxes going to past and present military costs, including a portion of interest on the federal debt attributable to inflationary military spending. I believe that these figures are correct within a margin of 5–10 percent.
No great concern?
Maybe it isn’t a matter of great concern. Some say that the government is responsible for what it does with tax monies. We are not accountable.
Bernard Offen, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, thinks differently. His letter of war-tax protest came across my desk recently, and I share it as a stimulus to reflection on our war taxes in 1987:

The guards at Auschwitz herded my father to the left and me to the right. I was a child. I never saw him again.
He was a good man. He was loyal, obedient, law-abiding. He paid his taxes. He was a Jew. He paid his taxes. He died in the concentration camp. He had paid his taxes.
My father didn’t know he was paying for barbed wire. For tattoo equipment. For concrete. For whips. For dogs. For cattle cars. For Zyklon B gas. For gas ovens. For his destruction. For the destruction of 6,000,000 Jews. For the destruction of 6,000,000 Jews. For the destruction, ultimately, of 50,000,000 people in World War Ⅱ.
In Auschwitz I was tattoo #B‒7815. In the United States I am an American citizen, taxpayer #370‒32‒6858. I am paying for a nuclear arms race. A nuclear arms race that is both homicidal and suicidal. It could end life for 5,000,000,000 people, five billion Jews. For now the whole world is Jewish and nuclear devices are the gas ovens for the planet. There is no longer a selection process such as I experienced at Auschwitz.
We are now one.
I am an American. I am loyal, obedient, law-abiding. I am afraid of the Internal Revenue Service. Who knows what power they have to charge me penalties and interest? To seize my property? To imprison me? After soul-searching and God-wrestling for several years, I have concluded that I am more afraid of what my government may do to me, mine, and the world with the money if I pay it… if I pay it.
I do believe in taxes for health, education, and the welfare of the public. While I do not agree with all the actions of my government, to go along with the nuclear arms race is suicidal. It threatens my life. It threatens the life of my family. It threatens the world.
I remember my father. I have learned from Auschwitz. I will not willingly contribute to the production of nuclear devices. They are more lethal than the gas Zyklon B, the gas that killed my father and countless others.
I am withholding 25 percent of my tax and forwarding it to a peace tax fund.

Offen gives permission to reproduce or publish his letter and says he may be contacted at Sonoma County Taxes for Peace, Box 563, Santa Rosa, CA 95402.
No simple answer. What is the answer to the war-tax dilemma? I offer no simple one. I simply identify a challenge to our faith which will not go away. And I think it is helpful to have some idea of how much money, and in what proportion, we are giving to the death machine.
St. Augustine said, “Hope has two sisters: Anger and courage.” Beautiful women, these, in an age of despair.

That prompted a 5 May 1987 letter to the editor from Lester L. Lind:

Thank you for printing the article by John Stoner, “Nine to Five”… It is good but uncomfortable for us to be reminded of our involvement in military and war-related activity. I wonder how much longer the Mennonite Church can remain so silent and still carry the distinction of being a peace church. In a democracy, silence gives consent. In light of Scripture, our history, and the present reality that Stoner points out, how can we Mennonites give our consent to spending so much for war?
Withholding federal income tax for conscience’ sake is still a lonely and often misunderstood act, even within the church. True, there are individuals and small segments of the Mennonite Church who have taken positions similar to the Stoners. But I long and pray for the time when such actions of civil disobedience will be strongly supported and encouraged by the majority of Mennonites.

A war tax redirection ceremony and tax day protest was covered in the 15 April 1987 issue:

A woman holding envelopes hands a piece of paper to another woman who is holding several sheets of paper. Both women are outside on a sidewalk, wearing jackets. A mailbox is visible behind them. — Michigan group gives war-tax money to the poor.

On the income-tax deadline of Apr. 15, a group of 11 people in Kalamazoo, Mich., called “Partners in Peace” gave a public witness to their beliefs in front of the post office. They mailed their income-tax returns minus the amount they calculate is used for military purposes — 50 percent.
Instead the group gave that amount — which together came to about $5,500 — to five local agencies that assist the needy. Here Partners for Peace member Karen Small gives a check to Marcia Jackson of Loaves and Fishes.
The group, which includes Mennonites, also conducted a short worship service with singing, prayer, and testimonies by several participants. Onlookers were given printed statements and pens with the inscription, “If you pray for peace, should you pay for war?”
This is the second year the public witness has been conducted. Winfred Stoltzfus, a Mennonite doctor who is a member of the group, said he and others are being “harassed” by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, which is seizing bank accounts and portions of their paychecks.

The existence of a mutual aid fund for war tax resisters was made known to readers of the 28 April 1987 issue:

“Even if you are not a war tax resister, you can help those who are,” say a group of Christians who operate the Tax Resisters Penalty Fund. Based in North Manchester, Ind., it helps resisters when they suffer financial loss through the seizure of penalties and interest by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The fund, started in 1982 as a project of the local chapter of Fellowship of Reconciliation, is currently trying to broaden its base of support because of the increasing number of requests for assistance. More information is available from the North Manchester Fellowship of Reconciliation…

While war tax resistance seemed mostly a U.S. phenomenon during the Vietnam War era (and this led to some chagrin when Canadian Mennonites felt like they were being dragged into disputes about it), Canadians were also getting in on the act by this time (19 May 1987):

Canadian war-tax resisters hold first national conference

Conscience Canada, a Victoria, B.C.-based organization objecting to Canadian military taxes, held its first national conference recently. Several participants reported that they sent the military portion of their taxes to Peace Tax Fund — a trust account administered by Conscience Canada which is not approved by the government.
Member of Parliament James Manley told the participants how they could be more effective in lobbying their MPs. Motions favoring peace tax legislation were introduced in the House of Commons by Manley in 1983 and 1985 and by MP Simon De Jong in 1986.
Reporting on war-tax resistance in the United States, Robert Hull, a Mennonite who chairs the Washington, D.C.-based National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, said his group has enlisted 55 representatives and four senators as sponsors of peace tax legislation in the U.S. Congress.
“Conscience Canada is part of a movement in 17 countries, from Finland and Spain to Australia and New Zealand,” said Edith Adamson, the organization’s coordinator.

And the 18 August 1987 issue noted:

Study packet on militarism in Canada from Mennonite Central Committee Canada. It includes pamphlets, articles, and a fact sheet. The packet helps Canadians struggling to discern a faithful Christian response to militarism, including the issue of whether or not to pay war taxes. It is available for a suggested donation of $3 from Information Services at MCC Canada…

David Charles wrote a commentary for the 9 June 1987 issue in which he went on at length about the horror of nuclear war and said “Some have even come to recognize our complicity in the situation through silence and the payment of war taxes.” And: “Our continued silence to a government that is not merely content to collect tax but is mortgaging the entire country to pursue a ridiculous ambition is conveying a message of acceptance.” But his suggested response was hilariously pathetic:

We can write on the bottom of our tax returns that our money is to be used to build peace, not more arms.

In the 30 June 1987 issue, Edgar Metzler wrestled with “Following Christ in a militaristic world” and tried to nudge the Mennonite Church toward a bold decision:

For an increasing number of Christians the conscription of their taxes for military purposes is becoming a problem of conscience as clear as the conscription of their bodies for military service. The question will not fade away. Are the excuses offered by Nazi collaborators or Iran-contra conspirators that someone else is making the decisions that much different than washing our hands of responsibility for how the state uses the resources God has given us?
Challenge and action.
The study suggested by MCC and the militarism resolution — “Growing in Stewardship and Witness in a Militaristic World” — which will be considered by the General Assembly at Purdue 87 arose directly out of the struggle of conscience about war taxes by some members of the church. The proposed resolution is intended to alert us to the broad scope of this challenge and suggest appropriate actions.

The decision, bold or not, would be adopted at the Mennonite Church General Assembly on 9 July 1987: “Growing in stewardship and witness in a militaristic world” Here are some excerpts that concern taxes:

Let us expand our support for proposed Peace Tax Fund legislation in both the United States and Canada, recognizing that legal recognition of conscientious objection to payment of taxes destined for military use will require the same patient persistence which resulted in legal recognition of conscientious objection to military service.

Let us prayerfully examine the practice of church organizations withholding and transmitting income taxes of church employees who themselves are conscientiously unable to pay taxes for military use. As part of that effort, we will participate in a conference planned for February 1988 for Mennonite, Brethren, and Quaker employers to share their experiences relating to tax withholding and conscience and to develop a strategy for relief of this ethical dilemma.

Let us continue to support those whose conscience prevents them from paying taxes destined for military use or from registering with the U.S. Selective Service System.

A report from the conference, carried in the 28 July 1987 issue, carried the ominous quote “Personally, I think the Peace Tax Fund is a way out of this” as a way of excusing why the Mennonite Church seemed to be waffling rather than taking any committed stand:

A statement on “Growing in Stewardship and Witness in a Militaristic World” was approved more quickly. It offers suggestions to congregations for ways to counter the increasingly pervasive “evil” of militarism in North America and around the world.
Ed Metzler, who presented the statement, said one of the best ways Mennonites can oppose militarism today is by supporting the campaign for “Peace Tax Fund” legislation in both the United States and Canada. Metzler, who is peace and social concerns secretary at Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries, said this would permit conscientious objection to war taxes in the same way that Mennonites and others won the right to conscientious objection to war. He called to the podium the executive director of the campaign in the U.S. — Marian Franz, a Mennonite. “Conscience is contagious,” she said, “and peace concerns are spreading far beyond the historic peace churches.”
Approval of the statement did not end the discussion on militarism. Especially after Mennonite Board of Missions president Paul Gingrich reminded the delegates that his agency is still waiting to hear what it is supposed to do about employees who request that taxes not be withheld from their paychecks so that they can resist war taxes. “I wish this body would act on this,” he said.
Metzler agreed, pointing out that the Mennonite Church General Board “ducked the issue” by calling for a general statement on militarism. “We wish the issue would go away,” he said, “but it won’t.” Moderator-Elect Lebold defended General Board inaction, noting that the church is deeply divided on the subject. “Personally, I think the Peace Tax Fund is a way out of this,” he said.
Nondelegate Ray Gingerich, an Eastern Mennonite College professor who is a war tax resister, challenged the notion of having to wait on the government to make legal a matter of conscience. Many delegates seemed to agree, and by majority vote, they instructed General Board to take immediate action on tax withholding and give a clear answer to MBM and other agencies seeking guidance.

The 21 July 1987 issue carried an interview with Thomas L. Shaffer (a Catholic law professor). Excerpt:

Q:
Are you a pacifist?

A:
Well, I think so. It is an odd question for a 53-year-old person because nobody’s asking me to wreak violence on anybody else. We are all very fortunate to have that little dialogue about paying over the coin to Caesar because otherwise we 53-year-olds, if we thought of being pacifists, would have to think of financing nuclear weapons. I guess that little dialogue lets us out, or at least in some people’s minds it does. But I figure that by now the taxes I paid have bought a lot of destructive weaponry, if I am paying my share.

The Church of the Brethren (Anabaptist cousins of the Mennonites) also held their annual conference. The 4 August 1987 issue reported:

An agenda item on “taxation for war” prompted little debate, since a study committee said the church has written enough about war-tax resistance, and that it is time for members to study seriously what has been written.

That issue also carried this news:

Church asks forgiveness of antiwar activist defrocked 25 years ago

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has publicly asked the forgiveness of an 81-year-old Cincinnati minister who was defrocked by a regional church body 25 years ago for his antiwar activism. Maurice McCrackin, pastor of the nondenominational Community Church of Cincinnati, was deposed from the ministry by the Cincinnati Presbytery in 1961 after he refused to pay the portion of his income taxes that would go for military spending. Meeting in Biloxi, Miss., the denomination’s highest governing body, the General Assembly, formally confessed error in removing McCrackin from the ministry and endorsed an action taken in May by the Presbytery of Cincinnati restoring him to clergy status.

The attempts to get the Mennonite Church to take risks on behalf of war tax resisters got the goat of of Elmer S. Yoder, who wrote the following for the 20 October 1987 issue — again suggesting the Peace Tax Fund as a way of sidelining the problem:

Whose conscience is to be respected?

The concluding appeal by a delegate at Purdue 87 to “respect the individual conscience” in regard to church institutions not withholding “war taxes” failed to address a key question. The appeal sounded simple and persuasive, on the surface, but it is much more complex and far-reaching. Whose conscience is to be respected? The conscience of the individual employee of an institution or the collective conscience of a board of directors, or perhaps even General Assembly?
The corporation is a legal entity and owes its continued existence to statutory provisions. The centralized management of the corporation can and does express the collective conscience of the institution. Our major church institutions are incorporated and directed by boards. The directors have been charged with the optimum operation of the institutions. The institutions (corporations) are faced with options different from those of an individual in respect to a refusal to pay the tax in question.
An individual refusing to pay what he considers is the war tax would be confronted by an agency of the government. The result might be the placing of some financial restrictions upon him, or additional legal action, such as seizure of property, or in extreme cases, imprisonment. Noncompliance by a church corporation would almost certainly result in governmental measures amounting to a substantial loss of freedom. This loss could well include its legal base to perform the objectives and purposes included in its charter and given by the Mennonite Church.
An individual Christian respecting the conscience of a war-tax resister suffers no detrimental consequences legally. A trustee of a church institution is in a completely different situation. By consenting with fellow trustees not to withhold the tax in question, he and the trustees are inviting various restrictions on the institution via legal action.
Legal alternatives of not withholding the war tax have been researched thoroughly by the General Conference Mennonite Church, without finding any legal recourse. This means that trustees of church institutions would engage in civil disobedience by not withholding from any employee’s salary the part of the tax he protests, but in addition, would push the institution into a morass of legal restrictions and extended court procedures that would severely hamper the operation of the institution or drain its resources through protracted legal fees.
This is not a plea to act only on the basis of potential consequences. The call to faithfulness supersedes consequences. But faithfulness in great diversity of understanding, such as the war tax issue and the legal consequences, is difficult to achieve. It is not in the interests of brotherhood to create or foster an institutional versus individual conflict, but neither is it proper or ethical to evade the issue of an institutional conscience. In church institutions that conscience is molded by the larger brotherhood and those directly charged for the operation of the institutions — the trustees.
Nearly 100 years ago, the Mennonite Church began forming institutions (corporations) to carry out more effectively its tasks of nurture, education, and evangelism. The institutions have served well and have contributed in many ways to the mission of the Mennonite Church. Shall this servant role of the institutions continue? Trustees of the institutions can, by openly defying the law over an issue on which such a diversity of opinion exists within the Mennonite Church, shackle the institutions, rather than performing as stewards.
Perhaps the time is coming, in the United States, when the church may again need to preach, to teach, and to evangelize without the legal entity of the corporation. Perhaps there again will be the time for the fabled school with the professor on one end of a log and the student on the other. The church corporation, which makes possible educating larger numbers, would be conspicuously absent, because of legal ramifications. But, in my opinion, that time is not yet.
Perhaps, rather than urging a course of action which would eventually eliminate faculty and staff positions in the institutions, the energies and efforts devoted to this should be channeled into making possible a legal alternative, such as the Peace Tax Fund. Devoting one’s energies to making it possible for larger numbers to step out and take advantage of the Peace Tax Fund certainly would be preferred to potentially reducing the church institutions into ineffectiveness.

The “New Call to Peacemaking” initiative was still active, but seemed to be deemphasizing war tax resistance. It is not until the penultimate paragraph of this 20 October 1987 story that war tax issues are mentioned:

Some of New Call’s limited resources do go to renewing the vision within the historic peace churches. In February a conference will be cosponsored with the Quaker War Tax Concerns Committee on the challenge to church organizations from employees requesting their federal taxes not be withheld so they can exercise their conscience in relation to war taxes.

This letter to the editor, from Edgar Metzler, appeared in the 3 November 1987 issue:

Thank you for sharing Ike Glick’s courageous decision of conscience to resign from a company that might be involved in military contracts (Oct. 13). All of us in North America are inextricably involved in an economy addicted to huge military expenditures. Ike’s conscience challenges especially all of us who think that the taxes we pay to build weapons of war are something for which we have no responsibility. Our stewardship teachings tell us it is God’s money. How we use that resource surely must be a matter of conscience as much as the way we use our God-given talents in our occupations.

In the late 1950s, the Gospel Messenger covered the war tax resistance of Maurice McCrackin, and the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference took on the issue of war taxes and decided to try to work out some form of legalized conscientious objection to military taxation with the government.

Church of the Brethren: Gospel Messenger

The 27 December 1958 edition of Gospel Messenger introduced Maurice McCrackin’s war tax resistance:

Pacifist Clergyman Indicted

A Presbyterian pacifist minister who has refused for ten years to pay part of his federal income tax he felt was for war purposes, was indicted by a grand jury in Cincinnati, Ohio, for failing to answer a summons from the Internal Revenue Service. He is the Rev. Maurice McCrackin of West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas church, a racially integrated mission congregation jointly supported by the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio and the Cincinnati Presbytery. Recently twenty-eight ministers requested the two groups not to yield to pressure for the minister’s removal from his church.

This follow-up comes from the 17 January 1959 issue (source):

A Presbyterian pacifist minister who refused to pay part of his federal income tax he felt would be used for war purposes has been sentenced to serve six months in a federal prison camp in Pennsylvania. Following his conviction thirteen clergymen appealed to President Eisenhower to intervene in the sentence.

A somewhat more in-depth news brief appeared later in the same issue (source):

Pacifist Minister Jailed for Contempt

Maurice F. McCrackin, a pacifist minister who has refused to pay the part of his federal income tax he felt would be used for war purposes, was convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to jail for an indefinite period after ignoring a summons from the Internal Revenue Service.
Mr. McCrackin is pastor of the West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas church, a mission congregation jointly supported by the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio and the Cincinnati Presbytery. He has refused to pay income taxes for the past ten years because some of the money goes for military purposes.

And this update comes from the 31 January issue (source):

Clergymen Ask President’s Intervention for Imprisoned Minister

Thirteen clergymen appealed to President Eisenhower to intervene in the “persecution” of a Presbyterian pacifist minister who has refused to pay part of his federal income tax he felt would be used for war purposes. In a message sent by the Fellowship of Reconciliation the clergymen asked the President to bring Mr. McCrackin’s case immediately to the attention of the Justice Department and urged that he be freed of the contempt conviction so the charges may proceed “in orderly fashion” to try him on the tax charges.
W. Harold Row, secretary of the Brethren Service Commission, was one of the twelve Protestant ministers who signed the appeal. The message stressed that the signers were not associating themselves with the position Mr. McCrackin had taken or with the means he employed to appeal to the conscience of his fellow citizens to renounce war.

A letter-to-the-editor in the 28 March 1959 issue took inspiration from McCrackin’s stand (somewhat mangled source):

Objection to War Taxes

In the Jan. 17 issue, you questioned the way the tax dollar is spent, and in another section you mentioned the plight of Rev. Maurice McCrackin, imprisoned for not paying the war taxes. To me it seems that McCrackin and others like him are pointing the way out of a basic dilemma for all who profess to be pacifists, namely how to effectively oppose war when tax dollars are taken from us that go four fifths for war.
It is time that the Church of the Brethren and the other peace churches come out in favor of conscientious objection to war taxes and alternative service for the dollars we get for our labors in the form of giving an identical amount or more than the amount of taxes to the Brethren Service Commission, CARE, and other such organizations that are doing the needed job that the war-minded government of the U.S. refuses to do: help the needy and suffering and undeveloped people all over the world.
The early Brethren did not pay taxes for war, and we are a poor shadow of our forebears if we let our dollars be spent to maintain the cancerous military machine of the United States. ―John Forbes, Castañer, Puerto Rico

Jeanne Jacoby of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was in turn inspired by Forbes, in her letter in the 2 May issue (source): “I sincerely believe that we Brethren should oppose war taxes. If we oppose war and preparation for war, why should we pay money for war.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the war tax issue came up at the Annual Conference that year, though the focus seemed to be on trying to convince the government to accommodate conscientious objection to military taxation rather than on taking action in the here and now. From the 18 July 1959 issue (source):

From the Brethren Service Commission came a recommendation to the Board urging that the Church of the Brethren begin making explorations with agencies of government in order to find some acceptable alternative for persons who, because of religious training or belief, are conscientiously opposed to the payment of the portion of their income taxes that goes for military defense. It was pointed out that there is a growing interest among Brethren in finding such an alternative and that there is an increasing concern with regard to the large amount of tax money that is used for war preparation and various forms of military defense. The Board recognized this interest and approved the recommendation that came to it. It was pointed out that the difficulties confronting such a proposal would be extensive, but that a start should be made. The church will attempt to work with other organizations having a similar concern, but if necessary, the church will proceed by itself to try to find some alternative to paying war taxes.

This evidently gave the editor of the Messenger permission to be somewhat more forthright about advocating war tax resistance. In an 1 August 1959 editorial (source), Kenneth Morse wrote:

August 6, the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb, should not pass without every Christian deciding to take personal responsibility for some form of protest or non-violent action against the continuing arms race. Some concerned persons have kept vigil at launching bases, others have demonstrated against policies by engaging in “walks for peace,” others have refused to pay taxes for war purposes.

W.A. Ogden of Grace Seminary (Indiana) wrote an article on “Separation” for the 12 September 1959 issue of The Brethren Missionary Herald in which he set out his idea of the Brethren orthodoxy on how the Christian ought to behave toward the state. When it comes to war bonds: “We recognize that there are many areas, such as purchasing bonds, war stamps, and so forth, which the individual must settle alone with his God.”

In the 12 July 1958 issue of The Brethren Evangelist, Percy C. Miller reviewed the chapter on the Civil War from Rufus Bowman’s The Church of the Brethren and War (source). He summarized the Brethren position on war taxes and related issues this way:

In the early days of the war, some of the Brethren hired substitutes. The church members preferred to pay fines instead of using the system of substitutes. But the records do not indicate that the Brethren clearly recognized the inconsistency with their peace position of employing substitutes or paying heavy war taxes to keep free from participation in armed conflicts. The Society of Friends protested continually against war taxes. The Brethren and Mennonites took the position that they [sh/c?]ould pay what the government required. The brethren felt that the gospel required the payment of fines and taxes. They based their opposition to war upon the teachings of Jesus but related their opposition more to the overt acts of war than to the whole war system. They felt that the Brethren Church, for Biblical reasons, [sh/c?]ould not use the sword, but that the civil government, likewise because of Biblical reasons — “for the punishment of evildoers” (Ⅰ Peter 2:14) — might have to use material force.

In 1961, suddenly Brethren couldn’t stop talking about war tax resistance.

By 1961 war tax resistance had gone from heresy to something that was considered one possible appropriate Christian response to runaway militarism. Take, for example, this mention in passing from Ralph E. Smeltzer’s long essay on “The Church and the World” in the 21 January issue of Gospel Messenger:

When the Christian conscience and the demands of the state conflict, as many feel in the case of military service, taxes for military purposes, and defense jobs, the Christian must follow his conscience.

A lengthy war tax resistance letter-to-the-editor on war tax resistance led off that column in the 25 February issue (source). The page scan (here and elsewhere in this volume) is difficult to read in parts, but I’ll try to restore it as best I can:

Taxes for War Purposes

The three of us, two ministers and a layman, have come to the conclusion that we can no longer pay Federal income tax for war. This may seem an astonishing stand; but much more astonishing is our general Brethren complacency about paying income tax.
In colonial times and during the Revolutionary War there was much tax refusal by Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren. An irate critic of the Church of the Brethren charged, “They not only refused to take up arms to repel the savage marauders and prevent the inhuman slaughter of women and children, but they refused in the most positive manner to pay a dollar to support those who were willing to take up arms to defend their homes and their firesides, until wrung from them by the stern mandates of the law. They did the same when the Revolution broke out. They might at least have furnished money. But no; not a dollar!” It is not certain whether this writer referred to taxes or only to the substitutionary sum paid in lieu of the militia draft. In either case the Brethren then had an alert ethical sensitivity about turning over their money for war.
In the belief that many Brethren are becoming troubled about paying income tax, we submit for fraternal consideration the following statement on income tax refusal.
Because the per capita U.S. military expenditure rose from less than $8 in 1938 to $268 in 1958,
Because approximately 75% of the Federal budget for the past several years has been annually appropriated for military purposes,
Because the government has been spending less than one million dollars yearly on the problems of disarmament, in contrast to $47 billion on arms, a ratio of one to forty-seven thousand,
Because there is so little national conscience about what nuclear war would mean for man, what it would be under God,
We find ourselves constrained by the love of Christ to refuse paying Federal income tax and instead are giving a corresponding amount, plus no less than 20%, to UN or other peacemaking programs.
We reject, as blasphemy against Christ, the prevailing readiness to exterminate hundreds of millions, or even all mankind, in order to “defend our values, our faith.” Since modern technological warfare is much more dependent on huge amounts of money than on manpower, we believe that refusal to turn over our bodies is not enough; we can no longer turn over our dollars for the present rush t[o our] mass annihilation. Let West an[d East] really take total disarmament a[s our] goal, and not merely toy with it [under] the pressure of world public o[pinion] as till now.
We do not discount the cons[tructive] aspects of Federal activity, a[nd we] welcome governmental endeavo[rs that] do make for peace. But with t[he best] prospects for disarmament fadi[ng fast] and the population of East and [West] mostly unaware of the imminen[ce of] and the certainty of disaster if [these] policies continue, we are impe[lled to] income tax refusal as a way of [calling] others to hear God’s warning: [“I have] set before you this day life and [good, and] death and evil. Therefore choo[se life,] that you and your descendant[s may] live, loving the Lord your God, [obey]ing his voice, and cleaving to [Him.”]
Those interested in discussi[ng this] difficult issue should write Dal[e] [Auk]erman, Bechlinghoven bei [?] Glueckstrasse 3, Germany. [Dale] Aukerman, John Forbes, and [Jerry] Royer.

That letter got an enthusiastic reply from Dale Rummel in the 22 April issue (source):

Church Should Take a Stand

I read the letter on “Taxes for War Purposes,” by Dale Aukerman, John Forbes, and Jerry Royer in [the] Gospel Messenger for Feb. 24[. I] feel that they are trying, const[ruc]tively, to reach the answer [to the] problem that has been plaguing Christians since the two world wars. I would like to see Annual Conference take action along the line[s of] their statement.
Our government can crush individuals when they take a stand which is “illegal.” But if an organization like our whole Brotherhood took this stand and backed up [the] individuals who carried it out, [there] is much more chance for its [doing] some lasting good. I believe, [also] that if we take this stand [other] denominations will join us in it[.]
This is no time for the Brethren to become fearful and cowardly [and] be afraid to step forward and [go] where we know it is right to [go]. Let us, with God’s guidance, go [for]ward, regardless of the phy[sical] consequences, in what we know [is] right.

A note in the 5 March issue (source) said that the Michigan district conference had asked the Annual conference to “study the possibilities of making the pacifist movement a political force in our country” by, among other means:

Attempting to work out a proposal for an alternative tax arrangement, so that the taxes of those who object to war on conscientious grounds may be used for peaceful and constructive goals of government.

In the 25 March issue, J. Robert Boyer encouraged his readers to take more courageous stands for their faith, and not like Peter deny Christ three times before the cock crows. One example he gives of when one might take a stand: “Will you send your tax money to Cape Canaveral, where missiles are launched to kill the enemy?”

The following letter from Charles E. and Cleda P. Zunkel appeared in the 27 May issue (source):

No Tax for War Purposes

In keeping with our pronouncements concerning war, the last of which was made at the 1957 Annual Conference at Richmond, Va., we Brethren have encouraged our young men to seek alternative service, in lieu of military service. Our young men, who have followed our teaching, have borne most of the brunt of this course of action. Have we, their parents, kept faith with them, as we have continued to pay our income tax money, 75% of which has gone for the support of military preparedness and war? I think we have not.
Some of our young men have challenged us to action, by appealing to us to cease paying the 75% of our income tax which goes to military purposes. It seems high time that we oldsters make our witness for peace, as we have asked our youth to make theirs.
My wife and I have been spurred to action by this appeal of our youth, and by the recent appeal of our President for $2 billion more to be added to an already staggering sum for military might.
The accompanying letter was sent to the Internal Revenue Service and to our President to clarify our position. It seems to us that we are called upon to make clear our faith and our action, in keeping with our historic understanding of the life and teachings of our Lord.
Director of Internal Revenue,
Richmond, Virginia.
President John F. Kennedy
White House
Washington, D.C.
Dear Sirs:
Since the late 1920’s we have been conscientious objectors to war, in the settlement of international disputes. We believe in the historic faith of our church, The Church of the Brethren, that “all war is sin. We, therefore, cannot encourage, engage in, or willingly profit from armed conflict at home or abroad. We cannot in the event of war accept military service or support the military machine in any capacity.”
Believing as we have, we have had guilty consciences as we have seen our nation increase its military preparedness. We have been aware that approximately 75% of all our income tax money has been spent for war, preparation for war, or mainten[ance] of military might. In 1938 the [total] military expenditure was $8 [per] capita; in 1958 it had risen to [$268] per capita.
From time to time, as we [have] filed our income tax returns, we [have] in letters to the government, [pro]tested this use of our money. [We] suggested that there be some [pro]vision whereby these funds now [used] for military expenditures be used [for] peaceful pursuits, such as the fee[ding] of the hungry of the world [and] the aid to underprivileged [people] through technical assistance.
Thus far, our protests have [not] been regarded. On Wednesday, March 29, 1961, our local newspaper carried the notice that you, President Kennedy, were asking for $2 [billion] more than the amount already [pro]posed for military defense, ma[king] a total asking of $43,794,300,000[.]
Recently, we learned that two [nu]clear scientists warned the Nat[ional] Education Association in its co[nven]tion that we in the United States already have enough manufact[ured] fissionable material to blot ou[t all] life from the face of the entire [earth] and leave it pock-marked and vo[id like] the face of the moon.
In all good conscience, we ca[n no] longer give 75% of our income [tax] money for the support of mil[itary] might. We are not opposed to pa[ying] tax, but rather, to paying tax for [that] purpose. We feel as guilty as if [we] were giving our lives in the pro[gram] of the military method of settling international disputes.
Therefore, we are filing our income tax report as usual, paying [the] full tax for 1960, but paying [only] 25% of the tax due for the first [quarter] of 1961. The other 75% of our [income] tax will be given in quarterly [install]ments to the church, in addition [to] the 15% or more we already [give.]
We hope the time may [speedily] come when such vast military expenditures may cease, and the [money] so spent may be used to relieve [the] suffering and need in our world. [We] hope, further, that in the [mean] time some alternative tax plan [may] be worked out whereby conscientious objectors may give their [tax] money to peaceful pursuits, just [as] young men may serve in alternative service in lieu of the military service.

The Gospel Messenger editor, Kenneth Morse, endorsed peace protest in general in his editorial, and war tax resistance as one possible protest: “Consider also the personal decision of the moderator of Annual Conference and his wife with regard to taxation for war purposes… It is always easy to criticize the stand that others take. But please note that some have at least taken a stand.”

A response from Jack Kline, however, in the 15 July issue, took issue with tax resistance on the usual render-unto-Cæsar grounds (source): “I think it well to protest the high military expenditure. But the type of letter that was written to Mr. Kennedy and to the Internal Revenue Department I think does not show good grace. I am a bit embarrassed that leaders in our own church would write that type of letter and refuse to pay taxes which our Lord distinctly told the Jews, under a military occupation, they should pay.”

There was another dissent, from John L. Mohler, in the 22 July issue (source). His objection was more on the grounds of democratic political theory: “[B]y participating on the economic life of our national community and accepting our incomes from it, we obligate ourselves to payment of the tax which, by democratic procedures, a majority of our citizens have imposed upon us.” Mohler felt that if you were going to conscientiously object to the taxes on your income, you should do so by refusing the income in the first place: “It seems to me that, in the case of refusal to pay taxes, the removal [of the dissenter from the democratically-chosen endeavors] should precede and prevent acceptance of the income on which the tax is paid.” But he didn’t think that was such a great idea either. He felt that the tax resister’s quest to morally isolate himself from the decisions of the democratic polis was futile, and that he should instead accept his share of guilt for those decisions and begin from there.

On the other hand, Virgil Rose, in a letter in the 16 September issue (source) “was moved with deep spiritual elation” by the news of Brethren war tax resisters. Rose tried to contradict some of the arguments against war tax resistance. For example, the individual contribution to the modern war budget, he says, dwarfs the tiny head tax in Judea that Jesus spoke of, and so they cannot be directly compared; and the idea that he straightforwardly counseled the payment of a tax to Rome contradicts the whole point of the render-unto-Cæsar parable. Rose also wasn’t impressed with Mohler’s democratic theory, though as I interpret it, it seems they were talking past each other on this point (Mohler responded in the 28 October issue). His conclusion:

Let us not shrug off the pricks of conscience that disturb us as we witness the courageous decisions these Brethren are marking. What defense have we before God if knowingly and without protest we supply money to buy instruments for the destruction of our fellow men?

Russ Montgomery also chimed in, in the 30 September issue (source). “I would like to congratulate [Charles Zunkel] on the courage to take such a stand. When such bold action is taken by leaders it seems to make them worthy of the name.”

The 24 June issue brought an update about Maurice McCrackin (source):

Presbytery Suspends Minister Who Refused to Pay Income Tax

The Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, pacifist Presbyterian minister who for some twelve years has refused to pay a major portion of his income taxes, has been suspended indefinitely by the Cincinnati Presbytery from his ministry. Mr. McCrackin has been pastor of the West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas church, a racially integrated mission congregation supported jointly by the Cincinnati Presbytery and the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio.
A spokesman for the Presbytery explained that Mr. McCrackin was suspended not for his stand on income taxes but for disobeying the law by ignoring a summons from the Internal Revenue Service, an offense for which he served a six-month prison sentence. Many of the minister’s parishioners were reported sympathetic with his refusal to pay most of his income taxes on the ground that they were used for military purposes and that war is a sin.

The lead editorial in the 8 July issue (Morse again) again promoted conscientious tax resistance:

Make Some Concessions to Conscience

Just about the time that Valentine Byler, an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania, was ready to start his spring plowing, the Interal Revenue Service seized his three work horses and sold them at auction. The reason was that Byler, who is conscientiously opposed to Social Security, had refused to pay a self-employment tax for that purpose.
Many members of the Amish sect regard Social Security as a form of insurance, and they are opposed to it. They have consistently refused to accept its benefits and do not take a Social Security number. While agreeing to the normal taxes on their property, they object to paying the Social Security tax required of farmers.
Thus we have another of those ironical situations in which the government finds itself [ba]nishing some of its most thrifty and self-reliant citizens. Fortunately, as a result of the Byler case, several bills have now been introduced in Congress which would allow persons who are conscientiously opposed to Social Security to be excused from participating either in its support or its benefits.
We hope that some legal provision can be made for the benefit of those independent persons who have such scruples. Many of us who would argue in favor of Social Security and even urge that it become available to more people still recognize the rights of conscience. We respect the integrity of citizens who, like the Amish, may have some unique ideas as to how they contribute to the general welfare.
At the same time, is it not just as reasonable for the federal government to give some consideration to the scruples of citizens who are conscientiously opposed to paying taxes for war purposes? A friend who is employed in the Treasury Department tells us it should not be too difficult for Congress to set up a general fund for nonmilitary purposes to which the tax payments of peace-minded citizens could be directed. This would not satisfy all the concerns raised by taxprotesters, but it might at least provide an alternative more acceptable than the present arrangement.
A wise government should be able to find some way of conserving the conscientious contributions of citizens who cannot conform to policies they regard as wrong but who still desire to serve in constructive ways.

In the 2 December issue, an S. Mohler (no idea if there’s any relation to the John Mohler referred to above) wrote in (source). This letter began by saying that “in recent years I have read about a few Brethren suffering imprisonment for refusing to pay income taxes, because of the government’s military use of them.” I think this cannot be factually correct, as there were not very many Brethren war tax resisters at this point, and I don’t know of any who had yet been imprisoned for it. Be that as it may, Mohler continues by saying that such “imprisonment for nonpayment of income taxes can be honorably and approvedly avoided” by increasing tax-deductible charitable contributions to the point where you do not owe taxes. Mohler suggests that this is the method he or she has been using for “the past ten or fifteen years.”

Andrew R. Shelly, of the Board of Missions in the General Conference Mennonite Church, wrote in to second that suggestion, in the 30 December issue (source). “Why should we not adjust our lives so that we can give very much more and at the same time materially reduce that which we pay directly to the war effort?” (See ♇ 5 September and 9 September 2018 for Shelly’s contributions on this theme to the Mennonite Gospel Herald.)

The Brethren Evangelist was much more restrained in its coverage. They did publish this wire service piece about Maurice McCrackin in the 5 August issue (source):

Presbytery Suspends Minister Who Wouldn’t Pay Income Taxes

Cincinnati, O. (EP)— A pacifist Presbyterian minister who for some 12 years has refused to pay a major portion of his income taxes, has now been suspended indefinitely by the Cincinnati Presbytery. The move not only halts his ministry but prevents his receiving communion in the church.
The Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin has been pastor of the West Cincinnati-St. Barnabas Church, a racially integrated mission congregation supported jointly by the Cincinnati Presbytery and the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio.
An Episcopal diocese spokesman explained that although the mission is a co-operative project in its religious program, disciplinary jurisdiction rests with the Presbytery since Mr. McCrackin is an ordained Presbyterian clergyman.
A spokesman for the Presbytery said that Mr. McCrackin has appealed this suspension to the Presbyterian Synod of Ohio, but it was reported unofficially that his only hope for reinstatement would be a formal declaration to the Presbytery that he would pay his income taxes in the future.
It was explained that Mr. McCrackin was suspended not for his stand on income taxes, but for disobeying the law by ignoring a summons from the Internal Revenue Service, an offense for which he served a six-month prison sentence.
Presbytery has been studying the case for nearly a year.

I did not notice any mentions of war tax or war bond refusal in The Etownian, The Pilgrim, the Brethren Missionary Herald, or Bible Monitor in 1961.

The war tax resistance debate raged in the letters-to-the-editor column of the Gospel Messenger in 1962 (though other Brethren periodicals ignored the issue entirely so far as I could see).

In one of the letters from 1961 that I noted yesterday, an S. Mohler had recommended that people who had conscientious scruples about contributing their taxes to military spending should increase their charitable giving to the point where they no longer owe taxes. In the 13 January 1962 issue, Rollin E. Pepper threw some cold water on that suggestion (source), noting that the law limits the amount of charitable deductions that a taxpayer can claim.

The debate continued in the letters column of the 20 January issue, in which Charles W. Wampler said “it would be impossible to run a government allowing such action [tax resistance] by its citizens” (source).

I expect that if the government would allow people to pay tax only for the things that they approve the majority of the people would pay much less tax. Some might even find excuses not to pay any tax.
Certainly no good Brethren would want to follow a course that would destroy our government even though it is not perfect.

A 27 January editorial from editor Kenneth Morse tried to put the critics of tax resistance on the defensive:

[Regarding] the stand taken several months ago by a Brethren minister who refuses to pay taxes to be used for war purposes. Several of our readers were quick to disagree with him, but hardly any one came forth with a more constructive way of witnessing against the use of tax money for destruction.

You say you do not like the idea of tax refusal, mass demonstrations, or such public protests against the drift toward annihilation? Then show us a better way to witness.

O.E. Gibson wrote in to the 17 February issue to promote civil disobedience against military taxation as a way of pressuring the government to accommodate such conscientious objection (source):

One Way God Works

May I sum up my thinking about one’s refusal to pay tax money to our government for the support of the big military build-up (one half to three fourths of the total of one’s income taxes assessed)?
Men bearing arms were the essential part of a war machine in all history up to within a few years ago. But recently money has become the essential in plans using guided missiles, etc.
The government came to recognize the consciences of men who were unwilling to bear arms to take life only after some fearless ones were willing to defy the government and accept imprisonment to prove their convictions. These men caused our laws to be changed. What had been considered wrong came to be recognized as right. For similar reasons it can hardly be expected that our government will change its laws to exempt money (allow it to be held back) without being morally forced to do so by conscientious objectors being willing to bear the consequences — probably imprisonment.
History, both Biblical and secular, has borne out this general principle — at critical times governments must be disobeyed if truth is to be vindicated and right standards more generally accepted. This is one way that God works in history.

In the 24 March 1962 issue, a reader (whose name is unfortunately obscured in the page scan) wrote in to recommend that conscientious objectors to military taxation try voluntary simplicity instead (source). Excerpts:

I believe those who wish to withhold income tax would admit that their “way of life,” materially speaking, is supported by the military economy.

I think a more constructive way, and the only consistent practice of withholding such money, is to reduce the standard of living, individually and voluntarily, to more of a subsistence level. This would mean such a drastic reduction in salary that there would be no income tax due. It would also mean revising our standards of living, materially speaking, such as mode of travel and home conveniences to what would be necessary if the military preparations and expenditures were suddenly and drastically curtailed.

The writer said that he himself lived economically, but he did not personally practice nor actually advocate this living-below-the-tax-line procedure. He merely put it forward as being in his opinion more consistent than war tax resistance.

The debate continued to rage. In the 14 April issue, [Jeanne?] Lee Jacoby wrote (source):

On Tax Refusal

I am a firm believer in the refusal to pay war taxes or, more appropriately, the percentage of income taxes which is used for war. How many Brethren can conscientiously sit back and look at the missiles going up, wasting millions of our hard-earned dollars when there are so many other worthwhile projects for which we ought to be putting our money?
For example, why couldn’t the government use our percentage of the tax for the Peace Corps? To me this is a wonderful experiment which I hope will continue for a long time. Also, there are millions of tons of surplus food stored in our warehouses going to waste, and all that is needed is the money to send it to the starving people of the world. Besides, if America needs allies so badly, there is no better way of obtaining them.…
How great is our concern? Should we stand for something we know is wrong? We refuse to bear arms. Ought we consent to doing something like this which may prove to be even more destructive?

The General Brotherhood Board put forward a report on “the church’s historic peace position” in 1962 (source). It tiptoed around the war tax resistance issue this way:

During the last few years, several voluntary agencies have been exploring with the government the possibility of an alternative tax arrangement. The Brethren Service Commission has been working with the Friends and the Mennonites in the preparation of such a proposal. We urge the Brethren Service Commission to continue its efforts to develop an acceptable proposal for an alternative tax arrangement.

Ralph Detrick announced his resistance in a letter published in the 16 June 1962 issue (source):

Caesar’s Due Portion

Following are excerpts from a recent letter I sent to President Kennedy, Senator William Proxmire, and the Internal Revenue Service.

I did not pay the $7.20 balance due on my income tax this year.… I protest the payment of a tax which supports the military machine and its false security. There is nothing positive about the level of military involvement to which our country has devoted itself. It is time to reverse this trend. I take my stand in opposition to the direction our country is going and instead give my support to a peace-making organization. I am sending $9.00 to the World Health Organization of the United Nations.… My voice may be small, but it is only when many such voices respond openly to the higher loyalty of God’s supreme law of love, that we as a nation may become a leader in peace rather than in weapons of war.

I often question the wisdom of this action. I am ignorant of the long-range implications of this witness. But where does the Christian draw the line at compromise? Christians compromise out of necessity, and in some cases perhaps the ends justify the means. Yet, there is also a great need for the person who tries to hold compromise at a minimum on certain issues in order that the plumb line of Christ may bring these issues into focus and reveal their evils. When the federal budget is pitted against this plumb line, its evils — nuclear testing, the “military-industrial complex,” the waste created by Pentagon pressure — are revealed, creating an issue with which I do not wish to compromise.
Should the day arrive when Caesar’s budget becomes more in tune with God’s law of love, I shall be more than happy to render him his due portion.

A report on the annual conference, from the 28 July issue, reported (source):

William Smith, a representative on Standing Committee from Pennsylvania, expressed disappointment that the [General Brotherhood] board had not offered more help to persons who were disturbed by some of the issues involved in paying taxes to be used for war purposes. Yet with one amendment, largely editorial in nature, the original statement [see above] was adopted by the delegate body.

In the 18 August issue, Charles Zunkel wrote in with an update on his family’s war tax resistance, and how they had backed out of it into more of a mild symbolic protest:

Witness by Designation

A little over a year ago, my wife and I decided we should refuse to pay the 75% of our federal income tax which was used for purposes of war. We so announced to the Internal Revenue Department, the President of the U.S., and to our church through the Gospel Messenger. [see yesterday’s Picket Line]
Following that announcement, we had communication from the U.S. Treasury and the Department of Internal Revenue, and much with members of our own church and some other denominations. All of the communications from the federal government were most considerate and courteous, a thing we did not always experience with our own Brethren.
The Department of Internal Revenue carefully acknowledged our conscientious scruples but reminded us that Mr. A.J. Muste had lost his case of conscientious tax refusal in the federal tax court, and urged us to pay ours. In continuing correspondence we reaffirmed that we were not opposed to the payment of tax, but rather to the use to which it was put. We asked if we might designate it for United Nations, Peace Corps, or Food for Relief, all of which are in the federal budget. We were told that Internal Revenue did not have authority for the use of the tax money, but rather for its collection.
In discussing the matter with many friends and members of our families, we decided to test out the Internal Revenue on the designation of the tax money. Accordingly, in paying our third quarter’s payment, we made one check for the 25% undesignated and for the 75% for three quarters, designated in the lower left-hand corner of the check — “For Peaceful purposes: U.N., Peace Corps, etc.” The checks were cashed without any communication or question. Since that, we have continued to write two checks, each quarter, designating the one in the fashion indicated.
We took this course of procedure, realizing that eventually the tax would be collected and with an additional 6% penalty. The federal government will withdraw the tax due from the checking account, if funds are sufficient, or will confiscate property and sell it to secure the amount due. Rather than make more money available for war purposes by confiscation and penalty, we decided to witness our protest by designated check. Thus far, we have not tried to probe to discover whether the designated money was channeled as designated for United Nations, Peace Corps, etc. That we may still do at a later date.
We believe the witness can made by designation, at least until we can find some more effective way.

The 25 August issue reported on the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., including its decision to uphold the suspension of war tax resisting minister Maurice McCrackin (source).

I. Wayne Keller wrote in to the 22 September edition to decry the lawlessness of war tax resistance, and the Messenger’s “tacit, if not expressed approval” of it (source). He wasn’t too fond of protests either: “Carrying placards and walking in a public place are the methods of radicals, pressure groups, rioters, and anarchists. Because they are, the Christian should not use them.”

Keller was joined by L. Wade Bollinger in the 6 October, who said that in a democracy “we the people are indeed ‘Caesar’ ” and so we should not be resisting our taxes but exercising our democratic franchise to help direct them (source).

Robert Fritter penned a lengthy rebuttal to these points of view in the 20 October issue (source). Excerpt:

So aware were the early Christians of their primary loyalty to the laws of God rather than man’s laws when the two conflicted that for 300 years they were persecuted for disobeying the laws of the land.
They would not worship the emperor, nor would they take part in war. They would not bow down to the military state because they knew that it was a stupendous and terrifying god of destruction which froze men into fearsome obedience while proclaiming to be their only salvation. Those who refuse to pay income tax which feeds the insatiable hunger of this false god of 20^th century America also refuse to pay homage to the same god.

A brief report on the Mennonite World Conference from the same issue (source) noted:

A Mennonite professor closed the conference with a speech in which he suggested that Christians who oppose the world power struggle and nuclear weapons might consider withholding payment of taxes which would be spent for military purposes. Dr. Edward G. Kaufman, professor of religion and philosophy at Bethel College in Kansas, said this would be an effective means of preventing nuclear war, but he conceded most people would not adopt his plan.

Harley J. Utter, in the 10 November issue, thought that war tax resisters were disregarding all of the nice non-military things the government spends our taxes on. He also wasn’t a fan of protests: “show-off demonstrations are wrong, that is walks for peace and the like.” (source) John Forbes wrote in to the same issue, saying in part: “Thanks be to Bro. Charles Zunkel, whose witness against paying taxes for military purposes should inspire all of us to go and do likewise.”

The Church of the Brethren stood firm and refused to honor an IRS levy filed against pastors Louise & Phil Rieman in 1987, and the church’s Messenger magazine also brought news of war tax resisters from other denominations.

There were several passing references to war taxes in the early 1987 issues of Messenger, but it wasn’t until the August/September issue that there was anything substantial. That issue brought a brief update on Presbyterian war tax resister Maurice McCrackin (source):

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has publicly asked the forgiveness of an 81-year-old Cincinnati minister who was defrocked 26 years ago for his anti-war activism. The Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, pastor of the non-denominational Community Church of Cincinnati, was deposed from the ministry by the Cincinnati Presbytery in 1961 after he refused to pay the portion of his income taxes that would have gone for military spending. The denomination’s General Assembly in June formally confessed error and endorsed an action to restore him to clergy status.

The following page brought this news:

Tax resisters’ fund issues 11^th appeal

Since 1983, more than $40,000 in tax-resistance fines has been covered by a network of people who contribute to a “Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund (TRPF).[”] The fund, which aids those who refuse for conscientious reasons to pay taxes for war, issued its 11^th appeal for funds in April.
Founded in 1983 by Dave Leiter, then coordinator of the North Manchester Fellowship of Reconciliation, in Indiana, the TRPF provides financial and moral support to war-tax resisters, allowing those who do not directly resist war taxes to support those who do.
War-tax resisters resist funding militarism by refusing to pay all or a portion of their income taxes. They are not tax evaders, says the TRPF committee, because they do not use withheld money for personal benefit. Many channel the withheld taxes to organizations that work for peace and justice.
Using US federal budget figures, the committee says that 62 percent of income tax monies go to pay for current and past military expenses.
Since 1982, the Internal Revenue Service has levied $500 in penalties on deductions it considers “frivolous,” including war-tax deductions.
Resisters submit requests for reimbursements of such charges to the Penalty Fund. The TRPF does not pay the original tax burden — only penalties and interest.
Between two and four times annually, requests are evaluated and tabulated by a committee of eight people, and an appeal is sent to supporters of the fund. The amount of the appeal is shared equally by supporters.
The 11 appeals issued since 1983 have ranged from $1 to $15 per supporter. The fund has about 570 supporters and has given more than $40,000 to more than 80 war-tax resisters, according to the committee. The next appeal goes out this month.

The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund is still in operation today and still operates much as described in the above article.

At the 1987 Annual Conference, the committee that had been set up to yet again study the war tax issue and make recommendations announced “that it was choosing not to write a new statement on the issue of conscientiously opposing paying taxes that go for military purposes.” Instead, they recommended that Brethren go back and study the previous reports issued by previous committees, and heed the calls from previous conferences to seriously study the issue. (source)

The Church of the Brethren stood firm against an IRS levy in 1987, as reported in the January 1988 issue:

Tax resistance action results in IRS levy

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a tax levy on funds the General Board holds for Phil and Louise Rieman, co-pastors of the Ivester Church of the Brethren, Grundy Center, Iowa. The action is a response to the Riemans’ tax withholding as a conscientious objection to paying taxes that are used for war.
The levy requires the General Board to take money held on their behalf from the Pastor’s Housing Fund and send it to the IRS. If the board fails to do this, the IRS has declared its intention to levy the board’s bank accounts and take the amount plus a 50-percent penalty.
The Executive Committee voted November 11 not to send the required amount and to file a protest letter that supports the Riemans’ right to engage in tax resistance. The committee also told the IRS that the Pastor’s Housing Fund is of such a nature that the government does not have the right to levy against it.

In February, representatives from Brethren, Mennonite, and Quaker groups had come together for a three-day conference about war taxes, sponsored by a “New Call to Peacemaking.”

Peace churches meet, discuss war taxes

“People who express opposition to war need to consider conscientious objection to paying for it,” stated Chuck Boyer, General Board peace representative, after returning from a three-day discussion of war tax issues.
Thirty-six historic peace church members — Brethren, Mennonites, and Friends — including Boyer, and Julie Garber, of the Manchester Church of the Brethren, North Manchester, Ind., met February 15–17 to discuss issues surrounding withholding of war taxes.
Prior to that consultation, 18 leaders from the historic peace churches met to discuss how best to work together for peace. It was the first meeting of the heads of the peace churches in more than 10 years.
The simple fact that the leaders met and got to know each other better was the highlight of the meeting, said Donald E. Miller, general secretary of the Church of the Brethren.
In addition to Miller, General Board executives Joan Deeter, Melanie May, and Roger Schrock; board chairwoman Anita Smith Buckwalter; and church historian Donald F. Durnbaugh represented the Brethren.
Both meetings were sponsored by New Call to Peacemaking, a cooperative peace church organization.
The war tax consultation focused on options and consequences for church agencies that refuse to withhold employees’ federal income taxes. One Mennonite and two Quaker agencies already have policies of breaking the law by not withholding federal taxes of employees who oppose paying the military portion of their taxes.
The Church of the Brethren has not dealt directly with this issue, said Boyer, since no General Board employees have asked that their taxes not be withheld. At the St. Louis Annual Conference, however, the larger issue of corporate civil disobedience will be discussed.
Of greater interest to the Brethren was lengthy discussion of the US Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress. Consultation participants agreed to organize a group of leaders to visit Washington, D.C., to register concerns about tax withholding and to support the bill.
Boyer has begun organizing “Six-by-Six” clubs of Brethren to promote the bill. Groups of six will visit their legislators in Washington or at local offices six times to promote the bill.…
The Peace Tax Fund bill would allow conscientious objectors to put the portion of their taxes that would support the military (presently about 53 percent) into a special fund to promote peaceful programs. Conscientious objectors could then pay all their taxes without violating their consciences.

The March 1988 issue reported on the policy the General Board of Friends United Meeting had adopted of refusing to withhold taxes from the paychecks of employees who were conscientious objectors to military taxation (source). The June issue followed by reporting on a similar action by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (of Friends), which decided “to withhold but not forward to the Internal Revenue Service the estimated military portion of its employees’ federal income taxes” (source).

The May 1988 issue brought the news that the Church of the Brethren General Board’s Executive Committee “is studying whether the board can withhold the telephone excise tax as a protest against military expenditures” (source).

The July 1988 issue reported that the Mennonite Church was jumping on the bandwagon too: “The General Board of the Mennonite Church has recommended that church agencies honor the requests of employees who wish to withhold payment of taxes used for military purposes” (source).

That issue also reported on the Brethren Revival Fellowship, which was trying to prod Brethren back in a more conservative direction (source). It quoted their newsletter on the tax resistance issue: “We believe that those who are loyal to Christ are bound by the biblical mandate to respect the government of the land in which they reside, and should pay their taxes when due. What the government does with the money is no longer their responsibility.”

The Catholic News Archive has a pretty good catalog of issues of the Catholic Worker. Today I’ll present transcriptions of some of the material on tax resistance from the 1951–70 span.

These include several essays by Ammon Hennacy (these formed the raw material out of which he composed his autobiography, so if you have read that, you’ll see some familiar phrases and stories), as well as other writings by and about conscientious tax resisters, including long works by Ernest Bromley, Eroseanna Robinnson, and Karl Meyer. The articles fill in some interesting details about the evolution of the American war tax resistance movement during this period.

First, Ammon Hennacy, in the January 1951 edition:

Picketing

“How are you going to get people to put up the sword? My son died in Korea. I know you didn’t kill him. God bless you,” said an elderly woman as I was picketing the post office in Phoenix, Dec. 18, in response to Truman’s “emergency” declaration. The woman had seen my big sign which read:

“Put up thy Sword.
He that taketh the Sword
Shall Perish
by the Sword”
Jesus’ words.

On the reverse of this sign was a picture of a pot colored green with a sign on it—Capitalist. Opposite was a red kettle—Communist. Underneath was the caption: “The Pot Calls the Kettle Black.” I carried my old tax refusal sign as a sandwich in front. It read:

75%
of your Income Tax
Goes for War.
I have refused
to pay Income Taxes
for Seven years.

The reverse sign hanging on my back read:

Reject War.
Use Gandhi’s
Weapon of
Non Violent
DIRECT ACTION.

I attended mass at St. Mary’s before picketing and prayed for wisdom during my day which I feared would be more disturbing than my previous marches. In another church that morning a CW priest said mass for the success of my witness for peace. I had notified the City Manager and the tax man that I would picket against the war emergency. Ginny Anderson, whose C.O. husband Rik varityped my leaflet and made the above signs, stood on one corner to hand me extra literature and be my “lookout” for trouble. Byron Bryant, Catholic anarchist, home on Christmas vacation from his duties as professor of English at a western university, stood on the other corner. There was an unusual amount of people going and coming. Ne one advised me to go back to Russia or called me a Communist. As is usual in picketing most people were afraid to be seen taking a leaflet. If one person took a leaflet all others in line took it and if the first one refused so did all the others. Negroes and Mexicans and Indians always took the leaflet and many times a Catholic Worker. My leaflet read as follows:

What’s All The Shooting About?

It’s about men who put money ahead of God. It’s about young men on both sides misled into dying and killing each other. It’s about rationing, inefficiency, dictatorship, inflation, and politicians stealing a little more than usual.
War is what happens when one nation prepares to defend itself against another nation that prepares to defend itself. World War Ⅰ and World War Ⅱ did not end war nor make the world safe for democracy.
Neither will this one.
There just isn’t any sense to war! What can we do about it? If the politicians think one person is important enough to become a soldier, a munition maker, a bond buyer, or an income tax payer, then one person is important enough to
REFUSE to become a soldier,
REFUSE to make munitions,
REFUSE to buy bonds, and to
REFUSE to pay income taxes.
War does not protect you—it will destroy you!
You cannot overcome Communism with bullets. It can be overcome by each person doing what he knows in his heart to be right. The way of Jesus, of St. Francis, of Tolstoy, and of Gandhi teaches us to love our enemy, to establish justice, to abolish exploitation, and to rely upon God rather than on politicians and governments.
If you are a Christian, why not follow Christ? You might as well die for what you believe in as for what you don’t believe in. If you must fight, fight war itself. Don’t be a traitor to humanity!
Wars will cease when men refuse to fight.
(No “Johnny come lately" to the peace movement, I served 2½ years in prison for opposing World War I, 8½ months of it in solitary confinement in Atlanta Penitentiary. And since more than three-fourths of one’s income tax goes for war purposes, I have refused to pay my income tax for more than seven years. Nor did I register for the draft in either world war. I am a Christian Anarchist, a follower of Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Gandhi, and invite your serious consideration of their examples.)

“Extra, extra, all anarchists to be shot at sunrise,” shouted the good-natured news man stationed in front of the post office as I passed by. The one who had led the fight against me in August and later became my friend had left town. When a later edition told of a bank robbery in Tucson he shouted as I passed: [“Extra, extra, Gandhi robs a bank.” (missing from this article, but included in a later reprint —♇)]
A woman looked at my sign and asked if I did not know that Jesus told Peter to sell his clothes and buy a sword. I answered: “yes, but when Peter showed him the sword which he had Jesus answered ‘that is enough,’ and when Peter used this sword to cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest Jesus did not say to cut off the other ear but said ‘put up thy sword. He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword’.” As the woman walked on she shouted back: “Jesus called for a sword so he could perform a miracle. He never said ‘put up thy sword.’ You better read your Bible.”
Somewhat different was a teen age boy who pointed to an ad of the Marines and said that meant more to him than my sign or my leaflet which he had just read. I told him that if he believed that way—and he was to leave next month—that he should do what he thought was right. He refused to take a CW although he was a Catholic and went to St. Mary’s. I hoped that he would return safely and could then confer with the priest as to the possibilities of being a pacifist Catholic. It was not his fault that he had never heard the pacifist message before. We parted in a friendly spirit.
One gruff fellow asked, “What have you got there?” I answered, “It’s either very good or very bad; depends on how you look at it; better read it and see.” He smiled and went his way reading the leaflet.
A Catholic anarchist woman walked with me for a bit and was going to come after 3 p.m. and take Ginny’s place. While Byron and I went for lunch the Catholic banker whose bank had been robbed spoke to Ginny. Although the CW says “Starve the Bankers and Feed the Poor” he reads the paper and has visited me before on the picket line. Another Catholic anarchist woman came and missed us because of the following incident.

The Cops

We had only brought along 500 leaflets and now at 3 p.m. they were nearly all distributed. Many had stopped with kind words and no one had openly insulted us. Two good natured policemen came up in a squad car and said they were having too many complaints about my picketing. They read my signs and leaflet. I told them that what I was doing was clearly subversive and that the FBI and the tax man had priority over them in my case and they ought to confer with them. One cop did so while the other asked me questions. Meanwhile people crowded around and watched my signs. I saw my tax man as he came near, and an FBI man. The police wanted to know what had been done when I had been arrested for picketing before. I told them that I had been released and had picketed 7 more days without being bothered. They conferred with headquarters and suggested that Ginny and I accompany them to the police station. Here we waited about an hour while detectives and police looked over the signs and leaflet and asked questions. I offered a CW to one police captain but he refused it saying that no Catholic paper could support such unpatriotic actions as mine. I asked him if he knew Father Dunne and he said he did. I advised him to call him up and see what he said about myself and the CW. (Later Fr. Dunne told me that the man had called him.)
Byron had phoned a Catholic attorney, friend of the CW, who spoke to Chief Clair. The latter told us we could go but I had better not picket for I might cause a riot and then charges of disorderly conduct, loitering, or other charges would be proferred against me. I told him that I had been able so far to handle individuals and crowds. He shrugged his shoulders inferring that I would be on my own. I said that I had been on my own all my life and another half hour (it was now 4:30) was not much to worry about. Before I left I told him that I would picket again on March 14^th. He replied, “That is another day.”
We went back and gave away our few remaining leaflets. Postal employees looked out of the windows and saw that the police had not stopped us. (One of the calls had come from an ultra-patriotic postal employee, although another employee to whom I had offered a leaflet early in the morning had refused it and about 2 p.m. had asked for one, and after reading it praised me for my stand.)

Ammon Hennacy, in the June 1951 edition:

Life at Hard Labor

“I don’t wear a label; I’m for all good causes,” replied the young ex-conscientious objector who, passing through Phoenix, had called the local paper to find my address, and had found me this evening as I was caretaker of Jersey cows at the sale of purebreds at the State Fair grounds. Many write to me or come to visit me who are drawn by different phases of my philosophy, so to save time I try to find out if their bias is Catholic Worker, I.W.W., pacifist, anarchist, vegetarian, life on the land, or tax refusal. This slogan of not wearing a label is fine, I told my new friend, for a young person in search of the truth, but at his age of 31 he ought to begin to have ideas that led to some definite belief and action. I admitted that for the average person of bourgeois tendencies to look at the Republican and Democratic parties and to think that wearing their labels was meaningless was a sign of progress. Like the housewife in the days when women did the baking at home who put the initials “T.M.” on the top crust of one pie, meaning “Tis Mince”; and the initials “T.M.” on another pie crust, meaning “Taint Mince,” labels surely do not have any meaning.
The thought behind my friend’s no label attitude seemed to be a desire to approach as many people as possible, on the street, in buses, at dances, etc., and to make friends and influence people by not scaring them with such words as pacifist or anarchist, but to rattle half-truths and half criticisms as a build up for “all good causes” and as a monkey wrench toward the status quo. This is a mass approach; mine has been to get the individual in this mass, if possible, to think. I remember forty years ago when well meaning friends told me that to use the word “Socialist” was defeating my purpose, and that some word such as “Progressive" that did not have such ill omen should be used. My reply then was that whatever word was used to designate a belief that word would always have a bad meaning to those who were being denounced. Today the word Socialist only means collaboration with war and has lost all its class conscious meaning. Even many timid anarchists whom I know prefer the word “Libertarian” for fear they will be called bomb throwers. I go on the principle of never being on the defensive, so when I am called a bomb throwing anarchist I tell the accuser that the government is the biggest bomb thrower with its A and H bombs.
I told my young friend that he could always get a crowd to applaud mild criticism of war and for the lowering of taxes and raising of wages, but that this same crowd would really follow the blazing torch of super demagogues who spoke of “the great native intelligence of the common man,” and who never meant to catch the bird but were adept in the case of putting salt on its tail. I pointed out that spiritual power was the strongest force in the world and that beside it all the two penny political victories did not mean a thing. Too many of us dissipate our energies by being “for all good causes” and never develop or use this spiritual power. And then we wonder why we become tired radicals and why warmongers rule the world. We refuse to use our strongest weapon, but at the ballot box where we are invariably outnumbered a million to one, we choose our weakest weapon.
As I was helping a farmer polish the horns of his cows he said he had heard that I was an educated man and implied wonderment as to my being a day laborer. I explained my plan of working at day work on farms in order that no withholding tax for war should be taken from my pay. He wanted to know more about these ideas and for the next hour he heard the words anarchism and pacifism undiluted by “all good causes” and departed with the current CW and my promise to mail him future copies. In contrast another farmer wanted me to go back to Russia if I didn’t like this country.
The cows for sale were listed in a catalogue with pedigrees and a record of their production of butter fat. The manager of the sale was discussing with one farmer about certain unregistered and non pedigreed cows which are called “grades,” and many times these cows give more and richer milk than the purebred stock. But there is no guarantee that a heifer from such a cow will be a good producer; more than likely a throwback of scrub stock.

Culls

In Albuquerque I worked for two men who specialized in extra fancy chickens. At one place I gathered eggs each hour from a trap nest, and marked the number of the chicken, taken from a leg band, on the egg she had just laid, and also in the record book. Those who did not produce a great number of eggs were thus culled out. “Why feed the culls?” my boss said. Each day a dozen or more hens would die of “blow-outs”; which meant that the very efficient egg producing machine had overstepped itself. The mediocre hens lived longer and did not blow-out. At a dairy in Albuquerque where I worked, my job was to go to any of the eight corrals and in the mud and manure drive the next string of cows to the barn to be milked. Nearly every night a calf would be born in this wet and cold discomfort and my job was to carry it to a warm stall after the milking was done. Very few of these calves, coming from cows that were “grades,” died. Later I worked for a multi-millionaire who had highly priced purebreds. My job was to keep a fire in a stove in the barn at night and to feed these calves egg with specially prepared milk. Yet the death rate among these purebreds made my boss groan. Tuberculosis and Bangs Disease (premature birth of calves) seems also to be more prevalent among the inbred purebreds. Super efficient bankers jump out of windows when red ink instead of black ink records their business schemes. Efficient assembly line workers go berserk and often a supposedly steady bus driver leaves his route and drives right on to Florida to escape his treadmill of efficiency. At its best our system is efficient only in turning out quantity and at its worst it is trying to bomb us to death. Very expensive garden tools these days are held together only by the paint on the handle and are of very inferior design and workmanship.
When I was a social worker in Milwaukee in the thirties we were often derided by well to do Republicans for “coddling the culls” when we helped the poor. And from time to time I have heard radicals who were especially scientific and eugenic minded look upon the ideals of Jesus and Gandhi as perpetuating the life of the unfit and the misfit. Although I helped in the formation of the CW House of Hospitality in Milwaukee in 1937 I will admit that my interest in the CW was limited then to its pacifist and anarchist slant and that I felt this coddling of the bums was not so important. Since, however, my study of Tolstoy and acquaintance with Peter and Dorothy, and my ten years as an actual laborer, rather than a radical theorist with a good job, I have come to view this whole matter in different light. The conversation about grades and purebreds that night and my meeting with the young rattle-brain who was “for all good causes” helped me to clarify my ideas along this line.
In this age of the assembly line, of super-markets and super advertising schemes; and of Service Clubs to put a little holy oil of goodness on this theft, the illusion persists that this is a scientific and efficient age. Yes, we produce, but for what? If somehow we do have bums, poor housing, ill-health, new diseases, and poverty these can only be attended to by Community Funds, Heart, Cancer, and Give a Dime Campaigns; pensions and social security payments by the state. Charity Incorporated has no room for Houses of Hospitality where there is no record of aid given or even the name of the recipient. “They won’t work if you keep on feeding them! They sell the clothing you give them around the corner for booze!” say the well fed parasites who also neither work nor help the poor except perhaps in a very dim and distant contribution to a fund, much of which goes for overhead. The idea of these professional do-gooders is to “give coals and treacle” to the poor, as Shaw said, and to keep them out of sight in order that the rich may not be reminded of the filth and degradation which is the foundation of their wealth. Good social workers are told not to “become emotionally involved” with their clients. Again, the mechanistic approach.
The CW breaks through all this sham. Instead of living in fine apartments to which we can repair after witnessing the other side of the tracks, we who accept Lady Poverty have given up worldly goods, insurance, and much of our privacy. This cull in the breadline; this drunk or prostitute; this maladjusted and perhaps lazy man—all of these may not be improved a bit by our help. Ours is not a success story; the Way of the Cross was also a failure. He at least might have led a rebellion against the Roman State instead of dying on the Cross and forgiving His enemies.
Where are we to look for those who are going to bear the Cross today? It is true that St. Francis, Tolstoy, Malatesta, Kropotkin and Gandhi left their inheritance and choosing voluntary poverty were able to accomplish much. We also print the word and deliver the lecture to the purebreds. We make no mistake in thinking that because a man is ragged that he is holy, for if he is avaricious he is as much a slave to money as is the rich man. (My banker friend Brophy jokingly told me that he would have to write a defense of the rich for the CW. I told him that he would end up contradicting himself and that the best defense of the rich could be obtained by giving a couple of drinks to a poor man on the street.) The Old Pioneer [Lin Orme, Jr.] tells of stopping at a stand in the desert recently and being charged 15¢ for a soft drink. “This is 300% profit for you” he told the proprietor. “I’m not in business for my health” said this greedy and seedy defender of the capitalist system. The Old Pioneer also tells of 25¢ being charged for one common needle in the old days when everything coming into Phoenix had to be hauled from Maricopa Wells station beyond South Mountain. “The freight is what costs” was the alibi of the greedy merchant. Neither do we consider the product of the purebreds. Tommy Manville, the dear old DAR ladies, the useless royalty of Europe, and our own inbred Duponts and intellectuals who have nearly without exception prostituted their talents toward the making of bombs. There is some hope that among the bums we may find a John the Baptist to carry on the work when we have gone, but there is little hope from politicians whose integrity has already been purchased and from the super educated to whom a doctors degree, a deep freeze and a television set mean more than fighting for a lost cause.
How will we then come to a sensible way of life? Without war work we would have a terrible depression. Hardly a person but whom will gladly earn this blood money! Hardly a person but whom will pay taxes for more bombs! The rich will not give up their riches and the poor will not give up their pensions; (the young will not help the aged; preparing to “keep up with the Jones’.”) The froth at the top has little right to scorn the scum at the bottom; meanwhile we who do the work of the world support them both. The Old Pioneer remarked recently that Jefferson’s plan of not having great wealth inherited was the right idea. This reminds me of the old Russian proverb: “Do not lay up your money for your son, for if he is any good he can make his own money; and if he is not any good he will lose it.” So in our writing, our picketing, our speaking, our help to the poor in Houses of Hospitality, we must need show our sincerity by our voluntary poverty. No one would think of bribing us for by our lives we have established the fact that we need nothing. We need not fritter our time by building up “all good causes,” which accept the tyranny of the state. When they are ready for it the rich, the bourgeois intellectual, the bum, and even the politician may have an awakening of conscience because of the uncompromising seeds of Christian Anarchism which we are sowing. To all of these we make our appeal and from all it is not impossible to gain a few adherents for that time “when each shall give according to his ability and receive according to his need.” For what does all our bookkeeping mean but a denial of this ideal?
Johnny Olson came back from a sojourn in Texas. In a splurge of affluence he bought five mouse traps and set them around our house. He caught the whole population which consisted of three mice. While I as a pacifist vegetarian would not cause the death of Brother Mouse yet as an anarchist I have no right to deny Johnny the right to catch them… The old mules, belonging to a neighbor, which I have used for plowing the garden these five years are now muleburger. They were not killed in time for the new government regulation which allows equine meat in weiners.
My friend Joe Craigmyle, nonregistrant, and one-cylinder vegetarian and anarchist, runs a fruit stand and at times I have helped him pick oranges and grapefruit in groves where he has purchased the crop. Even in the month of May when the new fruit is on the trees the last year’s crop is still sweet and juicy. As with apples the fewer fruit on the tree the larger. There is not generally time to thin out the fruit but many drop off before maturity. An orange or grapefruit may look fine but if it is light in weight it is pithy and is discarded right there at the tree. The load is graded as to size when we return to the stand. Coming home from work the other night in Joe’s truck we were discussing the idea of responsibility and of my reference in a recent CW article to the woman who called on every one else to remove the dead cat from the road. I remarked that I had seen a dead cat on the lateral that Sunday morning but being in a hurry to catch a bus did not practice my anarchist idea of responsibility in removing it. However, in the evening upon my return it was still there despite hundreds of cars and dozens of people on the road that day, so I took care of it. Just then we both saw to the right of us a two-by-four with four spikes sticking up. I said that this would soon give someone some trouble. By that time we were a quarter of a mile beyond it. “I’ll back up and you can throw it in the ditch,” said Joe. In my mind, then, Joe, who has not been much of a man of action, rose from a one-cylinder to a two-cylinder anarchist.

Molokons

Recently I went to the federal court as a young Molokon who lives a few miles down the lateral had been out on $5,000 bail for refusing to report to the army. Dozens of other young Molokons in the vicinity had been given CO status. Whether the draft board lost his CO questionnaire or thought they ought to get hardboiled I do not know. I had phoned a local lawyer who had handled Craigmyle’s refusal to register case and he promised to come to court but did not do so. His excuse being that he couldn’t do anything about it. Judge Ling set Oct. 7^th as date for a trial and the Molokon will get a lawyer from Los Angeles. The Old Pioneer tells of in 1917 when he went to the court commissioner with about fifteen Molokons who had refused to register. Two of them worked for him and he arranged for bail. They asked him if they could sing and pray. The Old Pioneer doubted if they could but asked the commissioner about it. “Hell no, this is a court,” was the answer. “You’d better let them sing and pray and not look foolish for they’re going to do it whether you give permission or not,” said the Old Pioneer to the commissioner. So they sang and prayed. Now they register and do not sing or pray in court.
Today, May 15^th, I received a notice I owe $2.15 interest and penalty on my $192 tax bill for 1951 and unless paid within ten days my property and wages will be attached. This is an old run-a-round and I am not worrying. Today I ate the first Irish potatoes this year from our garden. The persimmon tree which the Old Pioneer’s daughter-in-law gave me last winter now bears fruit. Watermelon, eggplant, tomatoes, squash, peppers and onions are doing fine. I am irrigating tonight and soon will come irrigating maize.

An excerpt from “Poverty is to Care and Not to Care” by Dorothy Day, from the April 1953 issue:

Our whole modern economy is based on preparation for war and that is one of the great modern arguments for poverty. If the comfort one has gained has resulted in the death of thousands in Korea and other parts of the world, then that comfort will be have to be atoned for. The argument now is that there is no civilian population, that all are involved in the war (misnamed defense) effort. If you work in a textile mill making cloth, or in a factory making dungarees or blankets, it is still tied up with war. If one raises food or irrigates to raise food, one may be feeding troops or liberating others to serve as troops. If you ride a bus you are paying taxes. Whatever you buy is taxed so you are supporting the state in the war which is “the health of the state.”

The argument may go this way, but we still can choose what seems to us the most honorable occupations, which have to do with human needs. We can choose the kind of work most necessary to do, and if possible where there is no withholding tax for war. Ammon Hennacy in working by the day, at hard farm labor, has not paid income tax for years. One can so cut down one’s standard of living that no income tax is required; families with many children pay no income tax. One can protest in many ways this contribution to the atom and hydrogen bomb. If one owns property the government then can take a lien on it. If one has money in the bank, the government can confiscate it. So truly such protest as this calls for the most profound poverty and a voluntary doing without property.
All this is by way of saying that poverty is no longer voluntary, no longer a counsel, but something which is laid upon us by necessity.

Ammon Hennacy, in the October 1953 issue:

Hiroshima Fast

“I got a letter from one of my sons in Korea this morning. My three other boys will go to jail before they go to another foolish war. God bless you for your sign about war; that’s just what it is: murder,” said a woman to me as I was on my 8-day picketing and fasting. She referred to my sign:

DRAW THE LINE AT MURDER
REFUSE TO GO TO WAR.

In contrast a man went by with his wife and said: “Drop dead!”
“Can’t do it, Mister,” I replied.
Rik had done a beautiful job on my leaflet, printed in the July/Aug. CW, on blue paper. I was nearly out of Feb. CW’s containing my tax statement so did not give out any unless people asked for them.
Now for the first time in my fasting I went to Mass and Communion each morning. I had worked until after dark for several nights in order to finish work that I had planned, and up until Wednesday noon. I had eaten my last full meal Tuesday noon and only toast bread until I commenced my fast at 4 p.m. Wednesday. I had written the following note, enclosing my blue leaflet, to 165 of the clergy in and around Phoenix. And as usual I had notified the police, the FBI, and the tax man, of my picketing, telling them that what I was doing was clearly subversive, but no worse than it ever was. “Please pray for the success of my fasting and picketing in this the 10^th year of my open refusal to pay income taxes for war, if you can in conscience do so. My attitude may appear too radical but I feel that something as radical as the Sermon on the Mount is needed in this wicked world. I too believe in a personal religion but if in matters of social concern I act just as unbelievers act, then I am a fraud. If you have time stop and say hello to me as I fast and picket in front of the old YMCA.”
I had sent my leaflet air mail to the Mayor of Hiroshima and to Manalil Gandhi in Phoenix, South Africa. I received but one answer which was from a leading Methodist minister, who did not agree with my ideas but who praised my stand. I knew beforehand of the approval of the half dozen priests who appreciated the CW. As usual the Associated Press sent a favorable factual message on the wire about my activities and the local radios reported it each day, one announcer even reading my entire leaflet. But the local dailies, per their policy, refused to “dignify” themselves by mentioning my name.
I started the fast weighing 142 pounds. The scales also poured forth a slip with the dubious information that read, “Don’t always follow the line of least resistance.” The first day I lost 2 pounds and the second day which was exceptionally hot I lost 5 pounds. I slept that night for 14 hours and awoke refreshed.
One friend who was an usher in a Catholic Church and also a veteran, had always been cordial to the CW, but he felt that the plan of the American Legion to take the profit out of war and make the big shots who make war go to war was a better method than my tax refusal and picketing. I told him that I was winning my battle against the government each day and while this was only a step forward, his way was no more than conversation about it. I said that this method stood as much a chance of succeeding as a butcher putting vegetarian signs in his window. That those who make money and fame out of war would never stop. It was up to us to refuse to take part in war.

Fasting

Now on the third day I was weak but never a bit hungry. Several people on park benches nearby told me of a young man who had gone on a 62 day fast. They said he ate his lunch at the park. That day I introduced myself to him and found he had suffered from arthritis, stomach ulcers and chronic nightmare. He went to my friend Dr. Shelton in San Antonio and after 40 days of nothing but water to drink, all of the accumulated toxic poisons had been washed out of his body and he commenced to get stronger. He was entirely cured at the end of 62 days. Of the 25,000 people taking fasts there in 30 years only one person had endured a longer fast; that being 68 days. A priest in Phoenix had taken a 30 day fast there and had been cured. My friend had lost 57 pounds but had gained it all back again. I visited with him each noon and envied his vegetarian diet of pears and grapes. He had been raised a Catholic but believed in no religion at present. He was interested in my ideas and felt he would never go to war but he did not feel that it was his job to propagandize about it.
Other friends I met told me of a man in Phoenix whom I knew who had been given up by the doctors because of tuberculosis of the kidneys. He had read in some book that in ancient Egypt those with such trouble had laid in the hot sands. Egypt was too far away so he came to Arizona and for 6 months literally lived in the sand. He was entirely cured. He is a strict vegetarian these past 20 years and in good health.
The Mormon wife of a friend of mine told me of her grandfather who in the old days had several wives. At the age of 86 he discovered that he had diabetes. He fasted 68 days at home and cured himself and lived 9 more years in good health. But Mormons are used to disciplining themselves so his fast was not as difficult for him as it would be for the regular flabby American.
My other sign read: “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” HIROSHIMA WAS A-BOMBED AUGUST 6. 1945, JUST 8 YEARS AGO TODAY. As penance I am Fasting these 8 days IN MEMORIAM.
This was enclosed with a black border. The six story Veteran’s Bureau was across the street and many men in uniform went by. One soldier asked me what kind of lies I was peddling. I told him I was peddling no lies, but the right side of a very important question; that he had better read it and see what it was all about. He read it as he walked along. Another soldier did the same. Generally soldiers refuse to take the leaflet or tear it up.
Near quitting time on the next to last day a young fellow whose appearance marked him as of the nervous intellectual type, and not a rowdy, stopped and asked me if this was my sign that I was carrying. I told him that it was. He said that I had better call the police for he was going to take the sign and tear it up and dance on it for no Communist could carry such a sign in his town. I told him that I was not a Communist; that I was a Catholic and an anarchist. He replied that he was a Catholic. I asked him what parish he belonged to and it was mine also. I inquired if he had been at mass the last Sunday and if he noticed me selling CW’s in front of the church. He had been to last mass and had not noticed me. I told him that if he had looked closer he would have noticed a candle burning before the Blessed Mother for the success of my intention in this picketing and fasting. He didn’t believe it. I asked his name and he told me but would not give me his address. I said I did not believe in the police and if he got any pleasure out of tearing signs he could do so. He took them and tore them off the standard and danced on them there on the sidewalk. He refused to take a copy of my leaflet or of the CW, muttering “Communist, Communist.” I advised him to see our parish priest and get straight on the matter of the CW. He promised to do so. I then called the priest and told him of what had just happened. He did not remember the name of my patriotic friend.
I wanted to see the AP man on another matter so went to the newspaper office. Here I saw my friend with my signs telling a reporter about the Communist he had found. I recognized the reporter from pictures I had seen of him but I had never met him. The reporter said that I was not a Communist for they all knew of my picketing activities for years. The patriotic Catholic said he was a veteran from Korea and repeated that no one could carry such signs in his town. The reporter said he was a veteran of two wars and he had fought for just such things as the freedom of Hennacy to carry his signs and picket; that if the young man did not like my signs he could do as the pickets in front of the White House in the Rosenberg case did: get other signs and picket the pickets. The reporter also said that I was standing up for the freedom which was true Americanism, and although he disagreed with my ideas, that the patriotic young man was acting like a Communist or a Fascist in denying me freedom. He picked up the signs saying, “Here Hennacy take your signs; they are yours, not his.” The young man said he would take them away from me. I replied that I was too tired carrying them anyway and would simply give out my leaflets the next day as Rik was away and I had no cardboard to make new signs. The young man said he would come down next day and tear up any signs that I had. The reporter told him that he was breaking the law and he was lucky he opposed such a person as Hennacy who would not take him to court. I left him still arguing with the reporter. The AP carried this story and it was reported over the radio. Some of the newspaper men wanted me to prefer charges against my assailant to make a more exciting story. I refused to do so, explaining my Gandhian principle of non-violent resistance to evil and that as an anarchist I could take no recourse to law under any circumstances. The next day the young man did not show up. I phoned my priest and he had not come around to ask about the CW.

To Maryfarm

All during my picketing the employees of the tax office, including the three Catholic tax men whose job it had been to get my tax money, were cordial. There was not a mean look from anyone in that office. This was the first time this had happened. Several friends came and walked around the line with me. Only about a dozen people tore up my leaflet. Many stopped and cordially approved of my picketing. About half a dozen grunted disapproval. There was not as much traffic as there had been other years at the postoffice. I had not met the new head of the tax office so as I finished my fast I introduced myself to Col. Wood and expressed my appreciation of the cordial attitude of his coworkers toward my picketing. He asked me the difference between a Communist and an Anarchist and seemed to understand my explanation.
Ginny and her boys came up and broke the fast with me around 3:30 on the last day as we all drank juices at the juice bar. I left for New York on the 4 p.m. bus. I had bought more fruit than I could eat but I nibbled at it on the way. In Prescott, I phoned the former head of the tax bureau in Phoenix and talked to his wife, Mrs. Stuart, Democratic National Committeewoman. They own the Prescott “Courier.” She was pleasant as usual and told me that they had a story on my fast that day. Soon I was with Platt and Barbara Cline in Flagstaff and now I could eat mashed potatoes and other soft food. Platt made a recording of my experiences. He had a fine Third Mesa basket which I took to New York for Dorothy. The next evening I spent with Hopi friends in Winslow and by Saturday I was visiting with Msgr. Garcia in Albuquerque and my good friend Rev. Soker of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church there. Reagans had moved to Arkansas and the letter I had sent to Al and Catherine Reser must have gone astray or they had moved, for I couldn’t find them. By Sunday morning I was in Sante Fe welcomed by Peter and Florence van Dresser. They had a meeting for me that afternoon. I did not have time to go to El Rito to see their Organic House heated by solar heat and with windmill for power. I will stop there on my way back when I visit my daughter Carmen. Carmen is with her sister Sharon for a retreat at Mt. Shasta. I visited the nearby Trappist monastery and spoke to two monks who are CW fans and had lunch with the nursing sisters where I had spoken last year.
As I left Tuesday evening I was pleased to see a good factual writeup on the front page of the daily New Mexican. This paper goes to nearby Los Alamos, so perhaps for the first time those who make the bomb could learn of opposition to it. A social worker told me that there were more maladjusted children from the homes of Los Alamos workers than from any other strata of people from the state. The gloom of this blood money thus defiles the next generation. A few days with my family in Cleveland and I arrived at Maryfarm, with Father Casey. I understood more this year than last and read some Catholic literature that I should have read long ago. It is too soon to evaluate the effect of this spiritual retreat upon me. Just now I am at Dave Dellinger’s at Glen Gardner, N.J., proof-reading my autobiography.

Some excerpts from an Ammon Hennacy article in the April 1954 edition:

…Wally Nelson came to take me to Sharonville to spend the night with tax-refusers Ernest and Marion Bromley. We disagree on my frankness to the authorities but we have the same aim.

The afternoon and night was most pleasant as I became acquainted with Fred Schulder, age 79, who had written in the anarchist paper Liberty in the 1880’s before I was born. He is not religious in the accepted sense, but takes the CW. His son Horace Champney took me to Brookville to an area meeting of Peacemakers where Ralph Templin, Clay Marks, and others whom I knew held forth in a discussion about tax refusal and the picketing which they would do in Cincinnati this March.

Some excerpts from an Ammon Hennacy article in the May 1954 edition:

Max Sandin, old time tax refuser, and one of we seven veterans of jails in World War Ⅰ who also refused to register in World War Ⅱ renewed old time memories with me.

Jim Ward had asked me in Chicago what live meant to me now that I was a Catholic and I had listed the seven things which seemed to me now in 1954 the most important, and I talked this over with Father Casey. Here they are: (1) Voluntary poverty. (2) The Sermon on the Mount. (3) Pacifism, with its absolutist meaning as evidenced in tax refusal. (4) The Mass. (5) To Work and not be a parasite. (6) Anarchism. (7) Vegetarianism, which includes no tobacco, alcohol or medicine. This is for myself and not meant for others. Each has to go at his own speed and in his own way.

We drove to Grasston to see old man Paul Marquardt and found him reading his Bible. He told us of the time when his children had been sent home from school with a card telling the family to save fat for the war. Marquardt immediately withdrew the children from the school saying that each morning he prayed “give us this day our daily bread,” and he was not going to save bread or fat or anything for a war. He told also of the priest in nearby Pine City, who, in instructing his confirmation class said, “Have faith like the Marquardts.” To have this honor in your home town is indeed an honor.

From the March 1956 edition:

Individual Income Tax: War’s Chief Supporter.

Of the income of the Federal Government 48% comes from individual income taxes which we pay; 30% comes from corporation taxes; 15% comes from excise taxes; and 7% other sources

By Ernest Bromley
The Administration’s proposed budget, recently announced, asks for a billion dollar increase for “new weapons of unprecedented strategic and tactical importance” in order to give this nation “the greatest military power in its peacetime history.” Diagrams of the proposed income and expenditures emphasize two things: (1) The chief source of federal revenue is the individual income tax, (2) The chief national expenditure is military (including bomb stockpiling and new terror weapons). Both things have been true for these eighteen years, but one is always struck anew with each announcement of them.
So minute a portion of the tax money is being spent for any socially acceptable activity that it seems to be only an illusion to consider that one’s Federal taxes go to anything constructive. (Actually, the only way one can support the better enterprises is to bypass the Internal Revenue Bureau completely and find ways to contribute to these causes directly.)
The war build-up touches the individual much more directly and intimately at the income tax point than it does anywhere else. Almost two-thirds of every tax dollar goes to build H-Bombs, Guided Missiles, Germ Warfare, Conscript Armies, etc.—thirty-five times as much as for schools, roads, and health combined. (Can there be any doubt about what the Federal government’s major activity has come to be?) It is almost unthinkable that more people (especially more pacifists) have not declined to bolster this monstrous drive to destruction; that they have not at this major point stopped the flow of their funds through the book-keeping which takes most of what they pay and channels it into what they abhor; that they have not by-passed the present tax set-up and given their valuable, held-back funds to something worthy of support. Will we wake up too late?
The first, and major, encumbrance to keeping one’s tax money and using it for something decent is the withholding set-up. Trying to be a tax refuser in a withholding job is a good deal like being a pacifist in the army. In each case you have already placed yourself well within the system; and in each case the very first step is to take yourself out of the system. The real, creative possibilities on these fronts begin to open up only after this step of separation has been taken. The fact that such separations are difficult to carry out makes them no less imperative. Because the withholding situation presents problems, is there no advice that can be given to the average working person about the business of non-cooperating with income tax payments? I would advise: Stop paying income taxes (whether you file a form to this effect or not).
For some people this will, of course, mean that they will have to leave their present jobs and take employment that is not affected by withholding. Here we sometimes tend to lose sight of the fact that there is probably no type of socially useful work (individual or organizational) being done under the withholding tax set-up which cannot also be done outside it. And, too, this raises the important question of what social usefulness really is. Can “socially useful” firms or organizations remain socially useful to any real degree when their one rigid requirement is that the first portion of a worker’s earnings be set aside for war? Can a “socially useful” person remain socially useful in his job to any real degree when, in order to do with one hand the work of building a better society, he has first to do with the other hand the work of destroying it (like a church constructing a brothel)? Conscientious workers in such employment may reason after a while, as some have, that the effect of this operation is that they are working in a munitions factory part of the time.
Men go to prison rather than join the armed forces and support conscription. Should not the people with these principles (especially the people not subject to any draft) face the imperative of sacrificing a little economic security (or convenience), especially when not facing it means continuing to pay substantial sums of money for terrifying weapons and conscript armies?

Ernest Bromley lives in Sharonville, Ohio, with his wife, Marian and family. He keeps his earnings below the amount where any tax has to be paid. Around 1942 he refused, when a Methodist minister in North Carolina, to purchase an automobile tag (not a license), for his car and did three months in jail. His wife worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the leading pacifist group in this country, and quit her job rather than pay the withholding tax for war which this and all other peace organizations take from their employees. He has been head of the tax refusal committee of Peacemakers. He supplements his income by an apiary in his garden. I have visited there several times and respect the effort which he and his wife are making to live up to their ideals. They live a few miles from the Grail farm at Loveland, Ohio. The Jehovah Witnesses and the Catholic Worker are two groups where all work for their keep and no salaries—and no taxes—are paid. This basis of voluntary poverty could be approximated by others if they wished to make the necessary adjustment between faith and works and try to live in community.—A.H.

Excerpts from an article by Ammon Hennacy in the March 1956 issue:

For the first time since 1943 when the withholding tax began I have not earned enough money to owe the tax man anything. I only made $310 lecturing and as my Autobiography is not copyrighted and I want no royalties from it, the sales go to pay for the printing and whatever is left over will go to the CW. There is no status [sic] of limitations on income taxes so I owe for 12 years. I told the tax man that I would not be foolish enough to tell him where I was going to lecture so he could be there and get the money. There is practically nothing that I have to buy as all of us here at the CW work for our keep. However, if I was to purchase anything in a store and give the cashier a $5 bill for a dollar purchase the tax man, if he were present, could garnishee the change from the cashier right then without any legal proceeding.
In this idea of tax refusal there are ways by which pacifists have to act according to their web of circumstances. Some, like Ernest Bromley, limit their earnings to the amount they are allowed because of dependents and have no tax to pay. Others like Rev. George Hauser, because of being ordained in the clergy, do not have a withholding tax taken from their pay, but at the end of the year make a statement of their earnings. Then the amount of tax is taken by garnishee from the pay with added penalties. There are others who have an income from securities and do not work for wages and who keep their money in a bank where the tax man comes and gets it.
There are millions of people who dislike paying taxes and who may write a letter to the government about it, but they pay. There are others like Governor Lee of Utah who put a certain amount of the tax due which comes from income other than wages in a bank and dare the tax man to sue to get it. But the government always will evade a moral issue, so it is likely that the Governor’s money will be taken the same as others who keep money in banks.
I plan to picket the tax man here in New York City for one day, Friday, April 13^th, and then fast and picket the 11 days from Aug. 6^th through the 16^th in penance for the bomb we dropped at Hiroshima 11 years ago. The T men have interrogated me and what they want to do about my tax arrears is up to them. With more H bomb tests scheduled for the spring by politicians and militarists it is increasingly the responsibility of the individual pacifist to think and to act about being a part of this terrible destruction planned by those who will soon be asking for votes because they have “kept us out of war.”

An excerpt from an Ammon Hennacy article in the May 1956 issue:

The coming atomic tests now scheduled for May 8 and the air raid drill for July 20 are a challenge to all Christians. We intend to demonstrate against this “pinch of incense on the altar to Caesar.” This with our non payment of income taxes for war and a refusal to be a part of the war system is positive evidence that we are trying to understand and practice the Sermon on the Mount.
The argument that the idealist hears from the opportunist is that we are not practical. I submit that our program of the one-man-revolution is the most practical of all. Others who believe in bullets and ballots must gain a majority before they can begin to practice their beliefs and thus postpone indefinitely anything but conversation about their views. We do not need to wait upon others for we have seceded about 90% from this exploitative system and are already practicing our ideals.

An editorial from Dorothy Day the following month reflected on the hydrogen bomb test among other things, and included this note:

Those who can take such stringent courses as tax refusal can give their services rather than be put on payrolls and beg their way to supply their daily needs if they can find agencies willing to work with them on these terms. Or they can embrace voluntary poverty and manual labor as a life of penance and mortification.
The harvest is great and the laborers are few. No fear of unemployment in this field.

An unsigned book review in the April 1957 issue included this:

These publications [Thomas Merton’s The Silent Life and Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality] will be of special interest to novices in the religious life or those contemplating such a move but laymen who read them should keep in mind that while there is much contained in them from which any Christian can benefit still the “techniques” of attaining union with God proper to the monk are not always the same for those “in the world.” Anyone who has lived under the Benedictine rule, and all the monastic orders of the Western world have felt the impact of Benedict’s spirit and legislation, knows the position of the concept of obedience in his thought. It is just about the most important single element and no one can be a good monk unless he is willing to give up his own will and like Jesus become “obedient unto death,” and the whole monastic observance is organized to serve this end. But the layman, living as he does most often in a society where “the prince of this world” and his spirit prevail, has the duty to cultivate, rather, the virtue of rebellion in order to be obedient to God. It is in rebellion too that we can imitate St. Benedict who fled the corrupt Roman society of his day, whose only concern was “to please God alone.” The monastic life is a judgement on the life of the “world” and in its light the “world” stands condemned. In this way the monk practices the virtue of rebellion. For those in the “world” there must be rebellion also if they are not to be counted “of it.” They must rebel against materialism by embracing voluntary poverty and giving all they possess over and above the absolute necessities to those who have not the necessities, they must rebel against war and its causes by conscientious objection and tax refusal, they must combat that selfish middle class individualism and fear of giving of self by embracing community in one form or another. Rebellion is the first step in any attempt at conforming to Christ; it begins at baptism when the neophyte formally renounces Satan—et omnibus operibus ejus.

More from Ammon Hennacy, in the December 1957 issue:

Richard Fichter, whose article appears in this issue, had been dismissed from the Methodist ministry in Pennsylvania because of his energetic anti-war and tax refusal stand. I had never met him but he had bought several of my books and distributed the CW and had attended various picketing demonstrations. He and his wife have three small children and live on a farm with twenty cows to attend to. All radicals have to make the decision when to follow Caesar and when to follow Christ. 75,000 followers of Gandhi went to prison and someone besides the British government took care of their families. Many bourgeois minded pacifists thought it was wrong for a CO to go to CPS camp or prison and leave a family behind. Richard wrote to many papers about the evils of atomic war and little attention was paid to his views. So one Sunday he came to New York City and in the midst of a nation wide broadcast on television he jumped to the stage and shouted his message. He thought that this would gain attention and the papers would print his views in full. Instead he was locked up in Bellevue for mental observation. I visited him there and met his wife and brother and two Methodist ministers who were his friends. Later his brother and Parents came to visit us at the CW from their home in Ohio. When the government comes to a pacifist and says you must register for the draft, pay taxes for war, sign a loyalty oath, or when a Congressional Committee wants you to tell on others, then if you do not follow the best you know and refuse absolutely, you are following less than you know and will live to regret your timidity. But to leave farm and family to try to tell your message to those who do not want to hear it is not wise and does not make a witness with the dignity which no doubt inspired Richard in the lives of Thoreau and Gandhi. A radical who has faith knows like Thoreau that “one on the side of God is a majority.” And when his neighbors think he is queer and out of step he can reply like Thoreau that he “is listening to a different drummer.” He is not frustrated if all are against him. He does not need the applause of the multitude for he will be content when “two or three are gathered together.”

Ammon Hennacy, in the March 1958 issue:

Tax Refusal

Leland Olds of Yellow Springs, Ohio has refused to pay income taxes and as a result his house worth $9,000 has been sold by the government for the less than $200 taxes due. He can regain the property within a year by paying the tax with interest. This action, together with the sale of a car belonging to Walter Gormly and of Arthur Emery of Iowa, are the only cases I know of where the government has taken property of tax refusers. At times they have garnisheed wages and taken money from bank accounts. They got $5 from a farmer I was working for in Arizona who paid it out of his own pocket rather than take it from my wage, and the tax man also took my picketing sign saying he would sell it to the highest bidder. I never heard of anyone buying it. I still owe taxes for 12 years and will picket the tax office here on Aug. 6 for 13 days unless I am in jail on the air raid drill. Then I would fast in jail.

Karl Meyer, in the April 1960 issue:

Stepping Up the Agitation

Dear Bob or Dorothy or whoever is holding things down there while we are all out making angry and urgent faces at the giants of the impersonalist order.
I was very encouraged to receive the March issue and to read your letter to the California legislature, even as I was preparing to step up the agitation in support [of] Rose Robinson and tax refusal.
On March 10 I began to hand out a new leaflet outside the Federal Building which has been the focus of our protest. After outlining developments in the case. I wrote, “There are some of us who believe, as she does, that it is wrong to pay taxes for war. We have refused as she refused, to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service in the collection of taxes. And, beyond this, we encourage everyone to do the same. If she deserves to be in prison we deserve to be there too. Therefore I ask from the judge, the United States Attorney’s office, the Internal Revenue Service and all taxpayers and supporters of military preparations, a share in the judgment against her. We have said very simply that your preparations for nuclear war, and therefore your war taxation, are criminal beyond any measure of crime that man has known before. And you have said that our dissent from the idea and action of military preparedness is criminal. The question of which is right is urgent for the future of all men. We have shown a readiness to ratify the truth of our conviction at the risk of imprisonment and hardship. The integrity of justice asks either that Rose Robinson be released, or that all who share her stand be imprisoned with her. That is why I ask the officials and the people for a decision in my case consistent with their decision in hers. How can one person be imprisoned for taking a stand, while others who take the same stand and, what is more, advocate and promote it in the marketplace are left free? I ask the officials and the people involved to release Rose Robinson, but if they will not do that, I ask them to prosecute me for refusing to cooperate with Internal Revenue Service and for advocating that all people do the same.”
The third person who came out and took this leaflet was Judge Robson. I had already mailed him a copy with a covering letter in which I said, “…By presenting this nuclear issue as an issue of imprisonment and freedom, we approach by an analogy the core of what it really is: that is, an issue of life and death for all of us… I hope therefore that you will not regard this leaflet distribution and this request for a share in the judgment against Rose Robinson as something impertinent, but as an attempt to enunciate forcefully the terms of a public discussion of a crucial issue, as well as to bear witness to a very strong conviction that it is wrong to participate in modern war in any way.”
We encouraged Rose by our vigil, visits and letters. In court she thanked us for that. I feel responsible to every one man insurrection to make it a two-man insurrection, so that it may become a three-man insurrection and finally a revolution of enough men.
It is at the critical moment when we recognize our responsibility to one another that we realize our responsibility to mankind and to God. That is what Jesus told us. We see war coming on, bearing down on us, a visible monument to an immensity of sin. Our voices have not reflected the horror we have seen. Our voices have not challenged the supremacy of crime in the actions of men. We were glad enough if a government preparing for World War Ⅲ, was yet benevolent in this decade until war comes, glad enough if our protest could be free from suffering. We are still accomplices because we have whispered at the moment when we should have shouted. We ought to throw up the challenge of Tolstoi and Thoreau, to keep all just men in jail or give up war and slavery.
Here we are making faces at the giants of the impersonalist order, but what we do not forget is that a face turned in urgent desperation to them is a face turned in hope to God. Our work is primarily a prayer.
Early last week two men were standing on the step of the Federal Building watching me as I passed my leaflets and commenting to each other. I recognized one of them. It was deputy U.S. Marshal Wheeler, the man who put the chains on me last summer at Mead, Nebraska. I stepped up to him and said, “Hello. Mr. Wheeler. Will you take a leaflet?” “Yes, Karl,” he said, “I’ll take that. I see that you are still here passing them out.” And so I was, and I realized that the children of this world are too wise to be consistent. Last summer he put me in chains for standing on a grass covered knoll near a missile base. Last month they gave Rose Robinson twelve long months and a long day. Who can say what they will do tomorrow when I walk up the steps and into the building and have a try at handing the leaflet to taxpayers lined up outside the Federal Internal Revenue office.
In Christ,
Karl Meyer
Chicago Catholic Worker

An announcement in the July 1960 issue:

Prayer, Fasting, and Tax Refusal

Ammon Hennacy will picket the office of Internal Revenue at Varick and West Houston Streets in New York City from August 6^th through the 20^th and will fast at this time as a penance for our dropping the bomb at Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, and for our continued atomic activities. He has openly refused to pay income taxes during 12 years while working in the fields in the Southwest, or while lecturing, as 83% of the income tax goes for war. He will picket from 9 to 5 on weekdays. Readers in New York are invited to keep him company, and anyone sympathetic can help by praying and fasting according to his capacity.

The same issue also included an article from Eroseanna Robinson, borrowed from The Peacemaker:

Rose Robinson Tells of Her Arrest and Prison Experiences

It was January 26^th, a cold grey Tuesday, and I got off the city bus in a hurry because I was late for work. My arms were straining with the packages I’d bought downtown. They were things for the Play Club mostly, and food. I hadn’t had any lunch, except a couple of cashews and some fudge nibbled at on the bus. I was quick-stepping toward Bethlehem Community Center compelled by two nagging realizations. I was late and I was hungry. I had a conference with my supervisor set for two o’clock. It was already ten after. Well, I’d just have to talk and eat at the same time. I stopped, late as I was, at the corner store and bought some buttermilk. Actually, I already had an abundance of food — vegetable soup, swiss cheese sandwich and what not. But for a change, I had a little extra money and for the rest of that year, certainly, I was going to be earning a little more than usual. For the first time in my seven years of tax refusal, I wouldn’t have to budget so closely. Eating was as good a way as any to celebrate. I was vexed with myself to be so busy. First the conference. Then group preparation. Then the Play Club children’s time. I’d have to do a lot of phoning after that for the parents meeting that night. I took the hall steps quickly when I got inside the building and rushed into the front office, I said “Hi” to the secretary. She had a peculiar look on her face. My supervisor and the girl workers were also in the office. I spoke to them but everybody kept looking at me strangely and nobody said anything. “What’s wrong with all of you?” I asked. “I’m not that late. It’s only 2:15.” Then the secretary said, “Rose, there’s somebody to see you.” She was nodding across the hall toward the library. Somebody to see me. I didn’t want to see anybody with all I had to do. I wanted to put down my arm-racking bundles and have my conference and eat. The fact is that I never had that conference and I didn’t eat for 115 days because a short, stocky, authoritative man in a grey uniform came toward me out of the library. Behind him was a man I knew. He’d come to my home several times and to Bethlehem Center only a week before. He was Mr. D.L. Turner, deputy collector for the Internal Revenue Service. The first man said, “Erozee-yanna Robinson?” and I said correctly “Eroseanna,” and he snapped his right hand open sidewise showing his badge. “I have a warrant for your arrest," he said. “Come with me.” For eight months the government, through its agents, had hammered link upon link several visits by the deputy collector, registered letters, a subpoena, a certified court order, telephone calls, throughout, to my home and work, a call to my sister, Adrienne, at her work, a visit to my job — until at last, they had reached the handcuff-end of the chain, putting my wrists into them so tightly that they cut, and lugging my body, in deliberately ungainly fashion, away to jail.
My body was lugged and dragged around many times after that because I refused to walk to jail or trial or any place authorized by the courts. And throughout the whole of my incarceration, the practices upon which government power pivots came into sharp focus. One is the coercion of the individual to unquestioningly submit to authority imposed by the government, the other is the deliberate misrepresentation of any individual who might take exception to such authority. This whole pattern is disguised as the democratic process’ and, in recent years, has frequently been labeled ‘freedom’ and ‘truth’. Actually, respect for the right of the individual to examine policies of government — which certainly affect us all — is a myth. And taking exception to policy, as in my own case — even though that exception be a denouncement of violence, waste, psychological intimidation, misrepresentation of truth, and preparation for wholesale destruction — can constitute a felony.
When the individual is willing to be fodder for such an organ, it is partly out of desire for reward but largely to escape punishment. And submission to such authority is no guarantee of either. So, when the deputy marshal told me he was there to arrest me, I told him that was his affair and was of no concern to me, and started up the 2^nd floor stairs to my office.
I recognized that I was going to be forcibly involved and I was alert to a point of high tension. But still, I knew I was faced with a choice of being arrested or of arresting myself. I knew then that my arrest was to be his affair, since he had not the conscience to do otherwise, and later, that or the ten or so others who answered his telephone call for help when I refused to go with him voluntarily. I wasn’t going to contribute my body for incarceration anymore than I would contribute federal income taxes for militarization. This would be giving sanction to the government’s inflicting punishment upon the individual. But just as militarization is evil, so too is the punitive institution.
The government has prepared a glossy brochure about Women’s Federal Prison at Alderson, West Virginia. They call their penal process ‘rehabilitation’! This is a calculated misuse of the term. They proceed due south of rehabilitation. Such downgrading of human beings — infantile treatment of the women, the frequent apathy toward the physical ailments of inmates, the absurd restrictions — is anything but preparation for constructive living. This was equally true of the Cook County Jail.
This maltreatment of prisoners would be bad enough if done out of ignorance. But attempts at concealment of the facts by all levels of government personnel, with restraint of information and with lies, reveals the hypocritical state of such authority.
I’ve learned, since my release from Alderson, that a number of lies in regard to me and treatment of me were given to the Press by the wardens of both the County Jail and the prison and by the U.S. marshal. I will recount some in a later issue, but let me state a few of these now and set the facts in order:
Rose was arrested and taken to the Clerk’s office of the county jail.
I wasn’t taken to any office, but was carried upstairs and dumped on a bed in the incorrigible cell of the “Hole.” The Hole is usually reserved for narcotics addicts who are breaking the habit. It was overheated because addicts in that condition are always cold. They vomited all day and all night and in between they talked in the lewdest profanity. The Hole is a four part unit — 1 larger room about 9′×12′ and 3 tiny cells, removed from the outer door, about 4′×8′. The grey speckled floors were stone, the clay colored walls, iron. The larger section had four iron beds with mattresses and bedding. A bed in each of the little cells took up half the width. There’s a seatless toilet in each. The two outer ones had windows that opened (but that were kept closed because the addicts complained of being cold). Only one of these boasted a sink. Two cell doors remained open usually, while the one in which I was put was locked. In that cell, the window was nearly opaque with dirt and with heavy screening, and iron bars were on the outside. It could not be opened. Under it, going full blast always, was a radiator. The only way I could get relief from the heat, and a breath of cool air, was by lying flat on the floor on my stomach and inhaling of the stream that flowed under the hall door from several feet away. The iron bed had a wafer-thin mattress on it and was so short that my head and feet stuck out simultaneously beyond its borders. I was given a clean sheet and a blanket. To get some sleep at night, I tilted the bed up on one end out of the way and put the mattress on the floor. I slept fitfully with my head resting on stone, under the toilet. Whenever a toilet in an adjacent cell was flushed, the substance would back up into the others. This kept me jumping up throughout the night, reflushing the one over my head. The radiator boiled away, where my feet were, all night long. I didn’t wash for 3½ days because I was told I couldn’t use the facilities without begging. Frequently the matron put food for me on the floor.
Rose proceeded to take off her clothes and to remain thus in the cell.
I was forcibly undressed by two matrons after refusing to give up my own clothes. Then I was manually searched all over and forced into a striped cotton dress that was ripped in two places. All my clothes — even shoes — were taken from me. The next morning I was told repeatedly that I would be left in jail to rot unless I got dressed and walked out to go to court. I refused. About an hour later, without explanation, my clothes were given back to me. Another hour passed, and when I refused to walk out, I was dragged from the cell, up the steps, into a wheelchair and hauled off to court. When I returned, the nurse had trouble removing my clothes by herself, so she didn’t bother to take any more than my skirt. I fashioned another by doubling a sheet and wrapping it around my middle. I refused to put on the striped dress she’d provided. On the fifth day, after I’d been dragged from my prayers and put in isolation cell of the so-called hospital (a dingy white-painted dormitory), the nurse, who proved to be sympathetic and courteous, offered me a nightgown which I accepted. I wore this to bed and whenever I washed my own clothes.
Rose took exercises unclad.
Silly. I always wore the above-mentioned.
Rose, therefore, had to jump into bed when the warden and a reporter from the Daily News came to interview her. She told her story, said the reporter, who “quoted” her in the News.
How reluctant I’ll be to believe anything printed in the daily papers from now on. No reporter was ever admitted to quarters where I was confined. And such quotes are out-and-out lies. Moreover, I neither saw nor talked to the warden until the last day when, under his supervision, I was dragged from the cell and carted to the U.S. hospital.
Rose left the cell to go downstairs and see a boyfriend, but she wouldn’t go to see her parents.
During my incarceration I walked out of the immediate confines 3 times — once at Alderson when I helped carry a sick inmate to the hospital car, once to my release and one other time, at the Cook County Jail. And I went to talk to Rev. Ernest Bromley, editor of The Peacemaker. At first I hesitated. And then I decided that too few people knew my views on tax refusal and the like, so this was to me a fine chance to express these views through the newspaper. I then resumed my plan to see no one unless they were admitted to the area where I was confined. My mother was admitted and I welcomed her.
The other inmates were sneaking Rose candy bars during her fast. The warden, head matron, priest and others had proof.
This’s the first time in my experience that fantasy has become proof. I ate nothing throughout my whole time in jail and nobody crammed anything down my throat. After my removal to the U.S. hospital I ate nothing. I drank no water the first 3½ days of jail, very little — spasmodically — in-between, and none the last 9 days before force-feeding. I did not wish to crave things that could be withheld from me, because emotional control meant freedom.
Rose enjoyed being fed through a tube in her nose. She didn’t struggle.
At Alderson, I didn’t struggle. I gave voice protest and continued whatever I was doing. In the beginning at the U.S. hospital in Chicago, I had struggled, nonviolently against four men and two women. It took them 20 minutes to turn me over and stretch me out and another 20 minutes to get me tied, hand and foot to the bed, in a straitjacket. I couldn’t do much moving in that state, but they further secured me with a restraining blanket made of bulky canvas. Then they tightened a rope across my chest. It was in the mid-eighties in that room and no air was stirring. I had trouble breathing. I was miserable. But they had an easy time force-feeding me. By the next morning I was aching all over. One of the doctors came in and asked me how I felt. I felt terrible, I said. Would I struggle if he let me out? I’d thought about that overnight. How easy it was for them to force food into me—how uncomfortable it was for me. Besides this, I was 37 lbs. below normal weight and very weak. If I could keep them from having power over me, struggle I would. But I knew I couldn’t keep up even the kind of effort I’d made the night before, and neither did I have the control yet to remain lying in one position for a long period of time. So, I told the doctor, no. Did I want to be untied? Yes. So, he walked away and left me like that for several hours more. I stayed, thus restricted, for nearly 24 hours. The night before, when they inserted the tube, the other doctor had jammed it into my nose, letting it stop at my throat. I tried desperately to get my breath but I kept choking. I could see the doctor’s face, looking like a great wax mask—with expensive eyes—magnified enormously. He watched me as though I were a specimen under glass. I gagged three times and he watched me. “Alright now, breathe,” he said this steadily, “through your mouth”. Of course I did, and, in one movement, he jammed the tube down to my stomach. Blood bubbled from my nose and mouth. It continued for hours, after that. My nose and throat were inflamed and sore for 4 days. My nose remained sore and ran constantly, and I sneezed again and again throughout 12 days of force-feeding. The doctor at Anderson was considerate and gentle in this. He used a smaller tube and put it down by degrees. There was very little irritation. My nose did run for weeks though, and always when I talked. I sneezed, because the tube was left there all the time. I plugged up the nostril with cotton to keep the thing from wriggling. I slept with it and otherwise lived with it for 76 days and nights. That made a total of 88 days of force-feeding.
Rose was being well-fed, gaining much weight, and was getting 3000 calories per day.
For nine days at Alderson, I was force-fed 2 pints of water with 5% sugar and 2 pints of a mixture of egg, molasses, sugar, salt, water, evaporated milk and orange juice. After that the mixture was doubled and the sugar-water eliminated. When I was removed to solitary confinement, the mixture was cut 25%. Then it was cut a second time. I was carried to solitary 25 lbs. underweight. Taking measurement of myself revealed I hadn’t gained a pound. Limited exercise wore me out. To keep from losing, frequently I’d spend long hours in bed. Hospital aides (inmates) told me the mixture contained very little protein and an abnormally high amount of molasses, salt and orange juice. Long before they told me this I’d started drinking lots of water because I was feeling irritation from the acidity. I was drinking as much as 15 glasses of water each day. Sometimes I felt a little feverish and my face would swell. That was when the prison staff would compliment me on how nice and fat I was getting. Only when friends came to the prison, asking after my welfare, did the aides tell me the protein had been increased noticeably but that the molasses and salt and orange juice remained high. Again, before they told me this, I’d already noticed my measurements were increasing normally. When I was released, I was 10 lbs. underweight.
Rose liked the feeding.
I was forced-fed in a ragged pattern. The aides and nurses came any time between sun-up and 9:30 at night. I overcame feelings of weakness usually through prayer, and sometimes, as I said before, by just climbing into bed. Food was left as an enticement throughout most of my confinement. An aide who felt sorry for me told the head nurse I wasn’t getting enough nourishment. “That’s impossible.” said the nurse. After that they left a glassful of the stuff on the dresser. Often I was spattered with the stuff, whenever the tube came off the syringe. So, too, were walls, ceiling, floor, draperies bed, bedding — everything in the cell. And usually it was left where it landed. I made a practice of going on with whatever I was doing. At first, the nurses carried or sat me into position for force-feeding. Sometimes the aides would lurk, pitcher and syringe in hand, waiting for me to halt so that they could pour the stuff down easily. After I was moved to solitary, the aides were ultimately told to walk away if I didn’t sit down right away, so sometimes my stomach was left empty. One day I accidentally got a hole in the tube. The doctor refused to let the aides cut it, and he decided that neither did he have the time to leave the hospital to change it. I wasn’t fed for 25 hours.
Rose was given considerable freedom of movement.
When this was said, I was in solitary confinement in the maximum security cottage, one of only two with bars on the windows and with locked outer doors. I remained there for 27 straight days in full confinement. The last 31 days, the cell door was opened from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.
And so the lies went and there are more — most skillful — all paid for with federal income tax. Lies. The Official order of the prison day, and at Alderson, the green grass grew all around. For the grounds were lovely to look at — lovely its trees, its broad lawns and gay spring flowers, lovely the birds singing outside the cottages where wires crawled through the walls like snakes, so that every word that every inmate spoke day or night was listened to and taken down on a tape recorder. There weren’t any secrets. Next time, I’ll tell about the alleged psychiatric and medical examinations at Alderson and about the marshal’s predictions about what the inmates would do to me when they found out I wouldn’t work. Also, I’ll tell about a time of weakness. One morning, for a moment, I was in a turmoil. Daily discipline, including prayer exercises, helped me to regain strength.

More from Karl Meyer, in the November 1960 issue (excerpts):

Since September 1958 I have had a small house of hospitality, five rooms where I have lived with nine or ten people who were sick, poor, orphans, old, travelers or needy of other kinds.
Since December 1958 I have sought some way to work for the support of my responsibilities to this house and not pay federal income taxes for the support of militarism.
In March 1960 I quit my job where taxes were withheld and resolved not to pay withholding tax anymore and went to jail for 54 days in solidarity with tax refuser Eroseanna Robinson, who had just been imprisoned here in Chicago.
After my release I began a search for work without taxes. I experimented with self-employment in odd jobs and in tutoring. I tried to persuade employers to pay for my work in the form of a direct donation to St. Stephens House, without withholding tax. I received an opinion from a lawyer that Internal Revenue Service had ruled that this type of arrangement with a charitable organization was legal for hospitals, so I applied at a number of hospitals, but was turned down. I looked for part time work paid for in cash. Nothing worked, particularly me.
Being under the firm impression that only one’s relatives could be claimed as dependents for the purpose of withholding exemptions, I complained bitterly to my pacifist brethren that, in fact, I had nine dependents but was unable to claim them for non-tax purposes. Not one of these experts on tax resistance set me straight.
On October 25, after five months of frustration, I checked on the Internal Revenue Service definition of dependents. This is how it reads: “To qualify as your dependent… a person (a) must receive more than one-half of his support from you for the year, and (b) must-have less than $600 gross income during the year… and (c) must not be claimed as an exemption by such person[’]s husband or wife, and (and) must be a citizen or resident of the United States… and (e) must (1) have your home as his principal residence and be a member of your household for the entire year, or (2) be related to you…”
I counted four people in my household, in addition to myself, whom I could claim for dependency exemptions. I discovered that all along I might have been earning $3000 per year without a cent of withholding tax. I could have kicked myself all the way down Clark St.
We need more small houses of hospitality “to shelter the homeless at a personal sacrifice” instead of delivering them to the City and the State to be supported by taxes, on the street or in the jails. We believe that housing the unemployed, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and the aged and, last of all, visiting the prisoners are parts of a total Gospel of Peace. If we do these things, we can also starve the tax collector, by feeding the poor. We can build “a new society in the shell of the old,” a City of God, and swing wide its gates to let the King, and his ambassadors, enter in triumph.
Not all of the poor who come to our door come in the embassy of God. Several nights ago one of the men came with two drop-cloths and a gallon of turpentine “from the job” and asked permission to leave them here and stay the night himself, and I, in all innocence, agreed to this. The next morning, two painters arrived, with a policeman, demanding the drop-cloths, which had been stolen from them and traced to our house. I turned over the drop-cloths, but the policeman also demanded that I turn over the thief. When I declined to do this, he said that he would take me to the station and book me for possession of stolen property. The painters agreed to sign a complaint against me, because, they said, not only had the cloths been stolen, but also, some paint had been spilt and now they would have to pay for it out of their own pockets. However, perhaps if I would reimburse them for the spilt paint, they would find it in their hearts to forget about the complaint. How much paint was lost, asked the policeman? Ten dollars worth. Now, half a gallon of paint may have been spilt, but how could anyone have spilt ten dollars worth? Still I had to take their word for it or they would surely have taken me to the station and signed the complaint, so in the end I paid and they went away satisfied with their take, all of which goes to prove the old moral: one good theft deserves another, or no use taking a fall over spilt paint. After the danger had passed, I found the thief under a bed in the farthest corner of the back room. He said he was sorry. And I said he sure as hell should be. And after a little of that he left.
I did reap an unexpected reward for my ordeal however, for that morning the most shiftless character in the house, out of an excess of sympathy and generosity, offered to press my trousers for me.
I might also say that some of the “rich” even come to our door as ambassadors of God. There is one man who comes from time to time and leaves things that we need (clothing, furnishings or household items) inside the door. He just opens the door, puts them inside and goes away. For almost two years he has been doing this. He used to come perhaps once a month, but recently he has taken to coming much more frequently. For a long time we knew nothing about him because we never saw him come, but several times recently, when the door was locked, he knocked and handed in his gifts when the door was opened and then left very quickly. I have always respected his anonymity, because I remember from my childhood the story of the shoemaker and the elves: the elves used to come at night and make shoes for the shoemaker, but one night he tried to catch them at their work and they disappeared and never returned again. (After the story I told above, let me hasten to say that there is always a ticket with the things that this man brings so that I know they are not stolen.)
During the voter registration period, one man from the neighborhood came in and asked, “Is this a registration office?” And I looked at the crucifix on the wall and the picture of Ammon Hennacy and said, “No, it isn’t.” The Democratic precinct worker for our building came in to see if we were registered, and she told me that I am going to vote under the name of Geoffrey Thornton, because he is registered but she can’t find him anywhere in the building. She needs votes but this is one she won’t get. Three young Catholic workers have said they may join me in the work here soon. If they do, we will be well staffed to carry out the Green Revolution program I outlined in my last letter.

The next article concerns Laurence Hislam, a war tax resister who is new to me. It comes from the March 1962 issue:

Catholic Pacifist Jailed in England Father of Five Refuses Civil Defense Tax

By Robert Steed
My friend Laurie Hislam, who resembles Ammon Hennacy in many ways, was recently sentenced to a term in jail far refusing to pay his Civil Defense rates. He served two months last year for taking part in the civil disobedience campaigns of the Committee of 100 which protested the British involvement in the nuclear arms race.
I was in court with Laurie in Octeber of 1960 when he first appeared on this charge. When he put on bis best suit, cranked up his car (a huge, old London taxi), which finally had to be pushed down a hill to get it started, and drove to town where other friends were waiting in court I was expecting fireworks but the magistrate put a damper on the proceedings and said he would allow no speechmaking. He said a note would be made of the tax refusal, and went on to the next hearing. Laurie said the court would probably send someone around to the house and want to take away a table or a few chairs and auction them off for the amount owed (the former owner having the privilege of bidding for them too) and debated whether any kind of resistance should be offered and if so what kind. When I left a few days later nothing had happened and a month after that when we met at the Spode House PAX Conference it was still the same. And now more than a year later I have heard in a letter from Laurie’s wife, Winifred, that he is serving time for the offense.
Lest I give the impression that Laurie became a radical in middle-age I should also say that he declined to serve in World War Ⅱ and instead of showing up for his physical went off on a tour of England and Scotland selling anarchist literature for Freedom Press. When he got back to London after a year on the road the police picked him up but the army doctors found something wrong with one of his feet and rejected him.
In the intervening years he has become a Catholic, gotten married and moved to the Cottswolds in the west of England near Gloucester where he and his wife built their house with their own hands and are raising five beautiful daughters. The whole family is vegetarian. Here is the text of Laurie’s leaflet explaining his position which was distributed in the Stroud area:
Why I Am In Jail
I have just commenced serving a term of imprisonment imposed by the Stroud (Glos.) Magistrates, and I believe it is important that it should be clearly understood by the members of the community on whose behalf the Magistrates have officially acted, why this has happened.
For the past two years I have refused to pay the portion of the Local Rate (roughly 1 penny in the pound) allocated to “Civil Defense.” My reasons are as follows:

There is not even any pretense of preparation to protect the people of Stroud in the event of war.

According to Government spokesmen, there is no known means of protecting the population against nuclear attack.

Even if “Civil Defense” could be effective (which I do not believe possible) I would still feel bound to refuse to pay for it, since “Civil Defense” is an essential part of the preparation for a war in which millions of innocent people would be brutally killed or maimed.

I believe that those who support “Civil Defense” have been deceived by the Government into believing that they are helping to save life and assist the injured, whereas in fact by their acceptance of the need for “Civil Defense,” they have given their tacit agreement (in certain circumstances) to the waging of nuclear war and its unimaginably terrible suffering.

Worst of all is the hypocrisy attached to “Western” propaganda, which says, in effect, the Russians are the atheistic barbarians and we are good people trying to protect Christianity and democracy, whereas, in fact we and the U.S.A. are prepared to collaborate with the Russians in the ultimate blasphemy of destroying the whole of creation.

A so-called policy of which this is the logical result can never be justified, and I appeal to everyone who reads this statement to seriously consider his or her position. Examine your conscience and ask yourself the question: Am I willing to lend my support, either actively or (as the majority, unfortunately do) by my silence, to the preparation for nuclear war? (Remembering that “Civil Defense" is part of the insidious mental conditioning for war-acceptance.)
If we give our silent agreement to Lord Home’s recent boast of our ability to annihilate all Russia’s cities (even in revenge) we have committed murder in our hearts. You can no longer remain silent and still hope to retain your integrity. I may be forcibly silenced for a time, but I ask you to speak out fearlessly against the crime which is being prepared by the world’s leaders. Above all—speak out for the children and babies of the world who rely upon you for protection. You cannot give protection by preparing for war — a war in which there can be no defense — only revengeful slaughter on both sides.
Laurence Hislam,
Brownshill,
Stroud, Glos.

This next comes from the September 1963 issue:

Tax Refusal

Handbook on Nonpayment of War Taxes; published by the Peacemakers’ Movement; 35 cents; 52 pages; available from the Peacemakers (1208 Sylvan Ave., Cincinnati 41, Ohio)

Reviewed by James Forest.
For all those who have ever felt a deeply responsive chord struck upon reading or re-reading the story of 10 just men saving the city, this book on conscientious tax-refusal should be meaningful.
The book is divided into a number of sections: there is a good collection of fairly brief quotations by a wide range of tax-refusers, a chapter on the philosophy and history of this particular form of conscientious objection, considerable material concerning the inherent legalities/illegalities, descriptions of the basic forms of refusal (surprising variety) and, most important, a substantial collection of “personal experience” sketches. The reader might find it useful to see a tightened version of the major contents:
Philosophy
Nonviolence begins with personal disarmament: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hate, let me sow love.” It is not a partial disarmament. At least that isn’t the goal. It is a serious and concerted effort to shred the rhinoceros hide which makes us either witting or unwitting enemies to other men. (I recently had the opportunity to hear a young woman describe the effect her first long term contact and participation in a nonviolent project — in this case the Walk to Cuba — had on her. She spoke of the sensation of peeling off layer upon layer of dead skin, of feeling the wind for the first time.) What is it the pacifist says? I refuse to be your enemy. I refuse to be your enemy so much that I will fight for you, fight with you, fight with love to see justice done — even at personal risk. The Great Commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” I cannot be free until you are free. I cannot be comfortable or safe or satisfied until these things are common property.
It is not necessary to quote here statistics offered in the book on where taxes go. We all know. A good deal of it goes to the arms race in all its continuing facets. I don’t think it would make much difference if it were only a little. There is nothing more moral in contributing a nickel to a child’s death than in giving a dollar for the cause. But the plain fact is that more than half that money goes for that purpose, and we do give it.
Said one woman, Miriam Nicholas, deciding this was one contribution she would be unable to make, “…the government expects me to help pay for weapons that could destroy all life on this earth.” “This I must not give,” said Wendal Bull, finishing a similar statement. “You may be imprisoned, but that is sometimes more honorable,” Ross Anderson stated. “If I can’t stop other people’s killing.” Milton Mayer decided, “I must stop my own.”
What Is the Law?
The legal aspects of tax refusal are complicated and inevitably vary from case to case. It is, of course, a punishable offense to refuse all or part of one’s taxes. It is also an offense not to submit the required documentation. Any noncooperation with the Internal Revenue Service is illegal. The penalty can be as high as a $10,000 and a year in jail plus the cost of prosecution.
In practice, for reasons which one can easily understand, no such sentence is ever meted out. In fact few tax-refusers ever find themselves in front of a judge at all. It is interesting to draw some quick statistics from the 41 cases detailed in the handbook (there is some slight overlapping): Four lost their jobs (two were Protestant ministers). Six were jailed, average sentence served being about three months. (Those jailed, it should be noted, refused any alternatives: put no money in the bank so that it couldn’t be seized, held no volatile property in their own names, etc.) Nine had property or funds seized. (The government, when it desires to seize anything, prefers funds; attempts to garnish salaries or draw from cheeking and savings accounts are most common. As a last resort it may seize property for public auction, such as a house.) 29 received no punishment and had no property or funds seized. That is not to say there was no intimidation, that the going was easy. It wasn’t. But the simple truth is, or at least has been, that there are still relatively few tax collectors, district attorneys or judges who wish to play a modern version of Pilate’s role. We can be glad there remain many (perhaps even a growing number) who do not feel justice is served by stale coercion of conscience.
Forms of Refusal
There are, and this I didn’t realize, several distinct forms of tax-refusal, each with its own sub-variations. The first and probably most well known is absolute nonpayment.
Absolute Refusal
To practice absolute nonpayment it is necessary either to earn an income too low to be taxable (Citizens and residents, under 65, can figure as nontaxable any income which is below the number of members in the family times $600. Thus a family of three would be tax exempt if it made less than $1,800 in the course of a year), or, if is is impossible or philosophically repugnant, to earn a taxable income where one is not subjected to withholding tax, such as by having one’s own business or forming one with others of similar concern. Ammon Hennacy, though he owes $1,300 in back taxes, is for the present in the first group, earning less than a taxable income. Karl Meyer was in the latter group until he discovered he could count all the members of St. Stephen’s house of hospitality as dependents (as long as they had lived in the hospice from the beginning of the year and received half or more of their subsistence from him). Persons interested in both tax refusal and running a small house of hospitality might find this an ideal solution.
Partial Refusal
For persons who are having taxes withheld from their incomes there is the opportunity of refusing to pay the balance due, or part of it.
Others, whether they have taxes withheld from their earnings or not, sometimes choose to pay only the percentage which they feel is used for peaceful purposes — 30% to 40%. UNESCO seems to be one of the frequent recipients of the balance.
A third form of partial refusal includes persons such as Franklin Zahn, who annually withholds a “token ten dollars.” These believe that the minimum one can do is to refuse a symbolic sum. “Ten dollars is large enough to be noticed,” Zahn says, “but small enough to avoid excessive penalty.” The “token ten,” he suggests, could be given to some constructive project and the IRS so notified.
(The book also relates Zahn’s refusal, beginning in 1951, to pay that portion of his telephone bill which was a federal tax, at the time 49¢ monthly. He explained this action to the telephone company, saying “My refusal to pay this tax is part of a larger rejection of all participation in defense activities.” Before long his telephone was removed. His resultant letter of explanation to friends, an apology, is a document worth reading: “Three times I have refused the monthly telephone war tax of 49¢ (15%) and now [garbled text omitted ―♇] is no more, as of November 14, 1951. I regret much of the inconvenience of this fails on you, and offer my apologies to you and others who thus suffer from my act of conscience. When irked, please consider: 1. Somewhere in the world there may be one less bullet killing a human being. 2. The $3.74 saved monthly will be used for CARE parcels. 3. If it actually is the narrow choice I feel it to be, you would prefer me to be connected with my highest conscience than with a mere gadget.”)
Conclusion
Finishing the handbook, I am reminded of a brief epigram of James Baldwin contained in The Fire Next Time. “To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.” How we admire action and commitment! St. Francis strikes off to the Holy Land with his nonviolent “Army of Love,” an army, as Clement of Alexandria would call it, “which sheds no blood.” And we applaud this, one of the few moments of sanctity which occurred during all the Crusades, one of the few a Christian can recall with pride. St. Maximillian refuses to serve in the military and shortly dies under the executioner’s axe. The Cure d’Area, as a young man, changes his name and flees to the mountains rather than be conscripted. Before death he recalls this, saying be never felt his conscience burdened by it. And on and on. Thank God the list is endless. No editorializing is needed on lives like these. Somehow they change the question. It is no longer Should I be a tax-refuser? It becomes How can I be anything else?
It is fitting to end this discussion with a quotation the book provides from Milton Mayer:
“The power to stop war is not in my hands, and never will be. The only power that is in my hands is to stop killing my fellowmen. A thousand, or two thousand, or fifty thousand people refusing to go on killing via the tax method may save the old way of life; fewer than that were required to save Sodom. But if a new way of life is the condition of the revolution to which we are called, then we must find it in our hearts, and when we do that we will stop killing our fellowmen and, best of all, stop justifying our doing it. If I can’t stop other people’s killing, I must still stop my own.”

Another book review from the November 1963 issue:

The Cold War and the Income Tax

The Cold War and the Income Tax, by Edmond Wilson; Farrar, Straus and Company; 1968; 118 pp.; $2.95.

Reviewed by James Forest.
Edmund Wilson’s most recent book is a small volume which carries the subtitle “A Protest.” Indeed it is that: a forceful, plain-spoken broadside at the cold war and the related income tax, and though it is not without blemish, it ought to provide at least an awakening for a great many.
What Mr. Wilson has done is to tell a simple, and at times homely, tale that began with carelessness (or more likely unadmitted and ingrained Yankee independence) and concluded with a monumental decision, at least for our timid age: a modified refusal to pay income taxes.
Much of the book is devoted to a detailed account of the original carelessness, fascinating in the sense that a common experience of almost everyone is seen in the sharp relief of Mr. Wilson’s prose — the utterly frustrating encounters with the rule-book bureaucrats, who seem always the same whether it is a hospital clinic or the army or a tax office that houses their working hours, or no matter what their ideology may be.
In Mr. Wilson’s case, his long encounter was precipitated by almost, dedicated indifference to taxes.
Until 1946 taxes were no problem to him, as they were automatically withheld by his various employers. But after that year he began to devote himself to fulltime independent writing, and of course there was no withholding. Six years went by, no taxes were paid, no returns filed, and though he tells us he occasionally thought about the eventual necessity of paying up, he was unaware of the astounding severity the law applies for even minor neglect. When at last he spoke to a lawyer friend, saying he might need some assistance in preparing his returns, the lawyer was flabbergasted and immediately urged Mr. Wilson to establish citizenship outside the United States before it was too late. But even the author of To the Finland Station can be naive, and he couldn’t believe it would be more convenient to change countries than negotiate a debt. He insisted on settlement, gave the lawyer a check and told him to begin his work. “You’re a brave man,” his lawyer told him.
The Years That Followed
It would be of little value to outline the years that followed 1955, when the arduous work began. He must often have wished he had followed his friend’s advice and tucked himself away in a friendlier economy, where if he were paying taxes, at least it wouldn’t be for war. It took Mr. Wilson five years and two lawyers to settle the case.
At some unspecified point, Mr. Wilson’s instinctual annoyance emerged into a time of probing the meaning of his experience, the inadequacies of the collection system and, most important, the uses the money was being put to. His discoveries are carefully outlined—translating the noble sounding verbiage of the Administration’s Budget in Brief (which says in part, “The Federal Government’s final responsibility is to help safeguard the peace and security of the free world. This is our largest category of expenditures… Expenditures devoted to national security… space programs… and the continuing cost of past wars amount to 79% of the administrative budget…”), translating this into the facts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of napalm and phosphorus bombs, of disease, warfare. The latter two are of particular interest, because, (despite protest demonstrations at Ft. Detrick, Md., the U.S. research-development center for chemical and biological weapons) there is little popularisation of these methods of warfare, though it is admitted that napalm bombs are being used in Vietnam — as they have been widely used elsewhere — and there is evidence that disease weapons are also being employed. For instance, water supplies in South Vietnam have been poisoned in areas where both civilians and Vietcong rebels use the same well, killing some Vletcong, but also many non-combatants who were merely thirsty.
About napalm: It is, Mr. Wilson writes, “a kind of jelly saturated with gasoline, which is ignited by the bursting of the bomb. Its great advantage is that it sticks to whatever it touches… Its effect on human beings has been described by a BBC correspondent in Korea: ‘In front of us a curious figure was standing a little crouched, legs straddled, arms held out from his sides. He had no eyes, and the whole of his body, nearly all of which was visible through tatters of burned rags, was covered with a hard black crust speckled with yellow pus. A Korean woman by his side began to speak, and the interpreter said: “He has to stand, sir, cannot sit or lie.” He had to stand because he was no longer covered with skin…’ ” The BBC correspondent goes on to explain, however, that he would rather be killed by napalm than phosphorus or flame throwers.
Toward Inspired Derangement
The material on disease warfare (often termed bacteriological, biological or chemical) is on much the same level, though not so grossly horrifying, as we do not see it translated into eye witness accounts. Involved is the same degradation of any value system. For as one military man, Admiral Mahan, puts it, every advance in the use of lethal weapons, beginning with firearms, has been denounced as cruel. He goes on to point out that shells with asphyxiating gases could produce “decisive results.” Says Philip Noel-Baker, in his book The Arms Race, “All the leading governments have them now.” And in 1955 the Chief Chemical Officer of the United States Army announced that even “mental derangement might be deliberately inspired” by this form of weaponry.
As Mr. Wilson observes, “Human life since Stalin and the Nazis has been something that few people in the East or West any longer care much about.” Or as Robert Pickus, Turn Toward Peace executive, observed: “We support policies that would make Genghis Kahn vomit, and yet we turn out for Church every Sunday.”
Of course the question is, what can we do about all this? To Catholic Worker readers this is no new question, as we have been fighting this a long time.
Mr. Wilson outlines the general steps of tax refusal (see detailed article on this subject in the September 1963 Catholic Worker [Forest’s review, see above]) and describes the course of two more well known refusers, Dr. A.J. Muste of the Committee for Nonviolent Action and Liberation magazine, and the Rev. Maurice McCrackin, active in the civil rights effort and the Peacemaker movement.
He goes on to describe his personal response, which is to keep his income below taxable levels. (It is a fact, though it is not mentioned in this work, that Mr. Wilson has assigned all royalties of this book to use in the peace movement.) He has decided not to go to jail, however, and will move to another country before allowing this to occur. But he is determined to withdraw his support:
“When the stakes in games become so serious — when everybody’s life is at stake — they ought not to be played at all, and the taxpayers should not support them.”

The following article, from the April 1964 issue, announces the formation of the “War Tax Protest Committee,” a group I hadn’t heard of before. I’m guessing it was an early, regional form of the group “National War Tax Resistance,” which came together in 1969.

Tax Refusal

The War Tax Protest Committee was formed February 18 to bring together West Coast conscientious objectors to income taxes for war and war preparations. The aim of the committee is to heighten public awareness of uses to which tax monies are put and to suggest alternatives to the submissive payment of such taxes. A range of activities around the April 15 tax deadline is being planned, including an all-day picket of IRS regional headquarters in San Francisco, a press conference, and a public meeting.
Founders of the War Tax Protest Committee include Ammon Hennacy, Roy Kepler, Mark Morris, Britt Peter, Ira Sandperl, Barton Stone, Sam Tyson, and Ida and Denny Wilcher.
The War Tax Protest Committee welcomes all persons involved in war tax protest — from total refusers to those who include a letter of protest with their return.
Creation of this new committee took place at the Committee for Nonviolent Action-West weekend seminar on Conscientious Objection to Income Taxes for War Preparations at Forest Farm in Marin County, February 14 to 16. The new committee, however, will have no organisational tie with CNVA-West, which is furnishing it with office space.
c/o CNVA-West P.O. Box 5983, San Francisco 1, Calif.

The May 1964 issue reprinted a letter from Joan Baez announcing her income tax resistance:

Tax Protest

Joan Baez, American folksinger, has refused to pay that 60% of her 1963 income tax which goes for military expenditures. She sent the following letter to the Internal Revenue Service explaining her action:

Dear Friends:
What I have to say is this:
I do not believe in the weapons of war.
Weapons and Wars have murdered, burned, distorted, crippled, and caused endless varieties of pain to men, women, and children for too long.
Our modern weapons can reduce a man to a piece of dust in a split second, can make a woman’s hair fall out or cause her baby to be born a monster. They can kill the part of a turtle’s brain that tells him where he is going, so instead of trudging to the ocean he trudges confusedly towards the desert, slowly, blinking his poor eyes, until he finally scorches to death and turns into a shell and some bones.
I am not going to volunteer the 60% of my year’s income tax that goes to armaments. There are two reasons for my action.
One is enough. It is enough to say that no man has the right to take another man’s life. Now we plan and build weapons that can take thousands of lives in one second, millions of lives in a day, billions in a week.
No one has a right to do that.
It is madness.
It is wrong.
My other reason is that modern war is impractical and stupid. We spend billions of dollars a year on weapons which scientists, politicians, military men, and even the President all agree must never be used. That is impractical. The expression “National Security” has no meaning. It refers to our Defense System, which I call our Offense System, and which is a farce. It continues expanding and heaping up, one horrible kill machine upon another, until for some reason or another a button will be pushed and our world, or a good portion of it, will be blown to pieces. That is not security. That is stupidity.
People are starving to death in some places of the world. They look to this country with all its wealth and all its power. They look at our National budget. They are supposed to respect us. They do not respect us. They despise us. That is impractical and stupid.
Maybe the line should have been drawn when the bow and arrow were invented, maybe at the gun, the cannon, maybe. Because now it is all wrong, all impractical, and all stupid. So all I can do is draw my own line now. I am no longer supporting my portion of the arms race.
Sincerely Yours,
Joan C. Baez

Karl Meyer was back for the January 1967 edition:

War Escalates, Tax Refusal Called For

“The future will be different, if we make the present different.” ―Peter Maurin

By Karl Meyer
I have been refusing to pay Federal income tax, or to file tax returns, since 1960. Finally, on December 13^th, after several visits, an Internal Revenue Service agent sent me returns for the years 1962, 1963 and 1965, which he had prepared and filed without my cooperation or consent, claiming a total of $1,099.12 in back taxes and penalties for those years. Since 1958 we have shared the greater part of our personal income with people who have no income, through the house of hospitality, and since 1960 I have claimed an appropriate number of exemptions on the withholding tax slips which one must file with one’s employers in order to hold a job, but I.R.S. did not recognize these exemptions, because I refused to file a return or to substantiate a claim to such exemptions in their conversations with me.
My resistance to Federal taxes is not based on legalities, but on moral opposition to militarism, and I will maintain it in spite of legalities and without taking refuge in them. I will never pay the tax that is claimed, even if I must become a pilgrim from job to job in order to avoid the attachment of my wages. (A national list of income-tax refusers is being collected for April 15 publication, by the No Tax for War Committee, c/o Rev. Maurice McCrackin. 932 Dayton St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45214. Last year’s list included the names of Dorothy Day, Martin Corbin and Ammon Hennacy among a list of two hundred.)
But I am not writing about this because I expect a mass addition of Catholic Worker readers to the list of income-tax refusers (it is not that easy to resist so thoroughly the demand of the state). I mention it as background to a more modest effort that we have also been promoting. Since September we have been advocating a first step toward denying to the government funds to carry on the war against the Vietnamese people, refusal to pay the 10% excise tax on telephone service. This tax had been reduced to 3% as of January 1, 1966 and was scheduled to expire altogether, but it was restored in March 1966. The rationale for our campaign to refuse the tax is based on the words of Congressman Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and administration floor leader for the legislation which restored the tax, who stated directly at the outset of debate on the measure, “The bill, H.R. 12752, is intended first and foremost to provide additional revenues to help finance the expenditures required to sustain our operation in Vietnam!” (Congressional Record, Feb. 23, 1966.) Further along he declared, “I believe it is clear that it is the Vietnam, and only the Vietnam, operation, which makes this bill necessary,” and a third time, “I have stated, and I state it again, that it is the extraordinary expenses attributable to our operation in Vietnam that are responsible for the Ways and Means Committee reporting this bill.”
The Chicago Workshop in Nonviolence, Peacemakers, the Committee for Nonviolent Action, The War Resisters League, and other groups supporting the campaign have already collected several hundred names of people who are refusing the tax, but not yet in the numbers for which I had hoped. It is not that any danger is involved in the act. In no case has telephone service been terminated, because, under the regulations, the ultimate responsibility for collecting the tax lies with the I.R.S., not with the telephone companies, which are only required to bill for it. And the I.R.S. so far has done practically nothing to collect from any of the phone-tax refusers. This is understandable when you realize that the amounts of money are so very small, that it took I.R.S. six years to get around to trying to collect over a thousand dollars from a publicly acknowledged income-tax refuser like myself, and that they have never succeeded in collecting from Ammon Hennacy or numerous other tax refusers.
For the individual, the telephone tax by itself seems an insignificant amount of money, though the Johnson administration is counting on it, together with a 1% automobile excise tax increase, to raise $1.2 billion in fiscal 1967, which would pay for about twenty days of killing in Vietnam at current rates of spending. For the individual, telephone-tax refusal is a small step, but for many it is a significant step, because for the first time they are acknowledging in action that if they had the free choice they would refuse to contribute to the activities of the federal Government, because its military activities outweigh its positive tax-supported programs. And if they admit that they are involuntary participants in such a great evil, they must face the issue of struggling in the society for the freedom to do what they believe is right, even by going outside of the law. But in going outside of the law they are taking back for themselves a basic responsibility for the order of society, which they had hitherto reposed in the state and the law. They are facing the issue of ultimate personal responsibility for society and the needs of others as we have faced it in the houses of hospitality and the Catholic Worker movement.
These are some of the implications of civil disobedience; of recognizing that the majority of citizens organized in the state, have failed man so badly, that we must struggle to build a whole new way of life that will be able to be human. I remember how often Ammon Hennacy has spoken of the people who were “pacifists between wars,” which he says is like being “vegetarians between meals,” and now it is possible to speak of those who oppose the war but pay their phone tax at “pacifists between telephone calls,” because with each ten-cent telephone call another penny joins the stream of Federal revenue that flows inexorably to Vietnam. It is true, friends, that with a first small step like phone-tax refusal, we are trying to coax people down the primrose path to the one-man revolution. The future will be different only if we change our lives. The act is small, but the meaning is large: this war is not our war, and we are willing to struggle to be on the side of life.

In the October 1969 edition, Karl Meyer explained in-depth how to stop income tax withholding by claiming excessive dependents and how tax redirection could be used to nourish alternative institutions. (This would not be good advice to follow today, as the IRS has new punitive tools at its disposal.)

Through Effective Tax Resistance:

A Fund for Mankind

By Karl Meyer
Let us speak of a clearcut solution to two prevailing ethical concerns which are shared by many stable, wage-earning citizens who are in the peace movement today. On the one hand, we see a perverse system of national priorities which devotes most of our federal tax contributions to militaristic purposes which we abhor. We want our money to be used positively to fulfill social needs. On the other hand, we see young men of draft age resisting war and conscription concretely by refusing to participate, and suffering the consequences: imprisonment or exile. We wish to support them and to align ourselves with them in a real way.
Let me affirm that it would be very practicable for us to get together in our own resistance movement to prevent the conscription of our money by the military and to create a Fund for Mankind to support the things we believe in and provide mutual aid in the difficulties that might come as a consequence of our resistance.
The Vietnam War may draw towards a conclusion in the months to come, yet we have already been warned by spokesmen of the government, if not by the history of the last twenty-five years, not to expect huge amounts of money to be freed for the solution of domestic problems. There are plenty of military boondoggles waiting in the wings, promising that military expenditures will command the stage for many years to come. We should either seize our destiny in our own hands or stop crying about our involuntary complicity in the militarization of society.
I promise to show how we can stop paying for militarism and instead pay into an alternative fund and use it according to our own moral and political judgments.
At the outset, we must directly contradict the widespread notion that refusal to pay federal income tax is merely a form of personal witness and a purification of conscience, which because of inherent obstacles cannot emerge as a general action of resistance to the Vietnam War, militarism, and imperialism. Instead, let us affirm that tax resistance can be the most promising basis for a movement of constructive social action, as well as resistance to the evils of war and the wastefulness of the arms race.
Right away we come to the heart of the issue, because people say, “Our taxes are withheld at the source and paid by our employers without our consent.” This is the fallacy which must be resolutely laid to rest. Your consent is given whenever you fill out and sign a new W-4 Employees Withholding Exemption Certificate. The proper use of this form and of the early income-tax return are the keys to effective tactics of widespread tax resistance.
Let me therefore outline these tactics for Everyman in nine easy steps:

Obtain a new W-4 form from your employer. On lines 4 and 5 claim as many extra dependents as is necessary to prevent the withholding of any tax (ten or twenty or five hundred thousand or thirty-five million if you wish). Sign the statement, “I certify that the number of withholding exemptions claimed on this certificate does not exceed the number to which I am entitled.” (Entitled by whom? We cannot have a moral revolution as long as we supinely acknowledge that we are entitled to do only what can be drained by the Internal Revenue Code and Regulations. We must explicitly reject the standards and definitions specified by a blind bureaucracy and instead affirm definitions that spring from our own consciousness of human solidarity. We must affirm that our obligation to the victims of United States militarism entitles us to claim as many exemptions as may be necessary to prevent the payment of taxes in our name.) Submit the new form to your employer. He is not responsible under law for the legality or accuracy of our claim, nor is he authorized to alter your claim. He is advised, but not required by law, to report to the Internal Revenue Service if he believes that your claim exceeds the number of dependents to which you are entitled.¹ It is only if you fill out no W-4 form that he may withhold the taxes without your consent.²

Write a letter to the I.R.S. stating that five hundred thousand American soldiers are depending on you to bring them home, or that thirty-five million Vietnamese are depending on you to stop supporting the war, that consequently you cannot accept the narrow definitions of human interdependence specified by I.R.S. regulations, that you therefore affirm your right to claim enough exemptions to forestall the collection of war taxes, and you have recently filed a new W-4 form with your employer in accord with this affirmation. This will put you on record as an open and principled tax resister, and may provide you with some defense in case of prosecution for making a fraudulent claim, since fraud implies an element of concealment, deception, and bad faith.³ But in writing to them, I would advise you not to name your employer, since this would only facilitate possible attempts by the I.R.S. to harass or intimidate you or your employer.

Taking these first two steps should forestall the withholding of any tax from your wages.

On April 15^th (fifteen and a half months after the beginning of your no-tax year) you are required by law to file an income-tax return. File and complete an honest return, but don’t do it the way they want it. On line 3B of form 1040 U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, enter the same number of dependents previously claimed on your W-4 form (if thirty-five million, enter that number on line 3B). Attach a schedule stating the moral grounds of your claim: the universal interdependency of man. For line 11C, multiply the total number of exemptions claimed by six hundred dollars. Fill out the rest of the form, showing no tax owed, and send it in.

Wait a few more taxless months while the I.R.S. gets around to figuring out your form, disallowing your numerous exemptions, and sending you a “proposed adjustment” of your income tax liability. You have another taxless month to request a District Conference to discuss the “proposed adjustment.”⁴

If agreement is not reached at the District Conference, you may appeal to the Appellate Division of the Regional Commissioner’s Office.⁴

All steps up to this point can be easily taken without the aid of an attorney and without much cost or inconvenience to yourself.

If agreement cannot be reached with the Appellate Division, a statutory notice of deficiency will be sent to you; you will then have ninety days to appeal to the Tax Court of the United States, but if the I.R.S. believes that assessment and collection of the tax deficiency will be jeopardized by delay, it may proceed to assess and collect the tax in the meantime, pending your appeal to the Tax Court and decision by it, and any further appeals to the United States Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, if you choose to pursue such appeals. So a number of time-consuming bureaucratic steps must be gone through before the I.R.S. can make its final assessment of the tax due and begin the process of attempting to collect. The whole process must be repeated for each taxable year. I do not see how the I.R.S. can reach the collection stage in less than two years from the date when you first began to frustrate the withholding of taxes.

Even if you chicken out and pay up at that point, you will have cost them more than it was worth and made them wait at least two years to get their money. But above all, you will have expressed concrete convictions clearly and registered effective short-term resistance against any particular war or Defense Department program that happens to be the primary current target of the resistance movement. If you want to go beyond this and keep struggling, as I have done, there are further effective steps to prevent the collection of the assessments by wage attachment or seizure of assets:

Take your cash out of banks you have used in the past. If you have so much money that you have to be afraid of keeping it in the mattress, you should probably start thinking of what that money says about your aspirations towards human brotherhood. In the meantime, you could distribute it into several banks you have not used before and be careful not to write checks in payment of bills whose payment could easily be traced by the I.R.S. (such as telephone and utility bills). I have used an account in this way for several years, but I could do without it easily enough.

If you are not strongly tied to your current place of employment, you can switch jobs as soon as the I.R.S. arrives to collect from your wages by levy and take a few simple precautions to make it a little difficult for the I.R.S. to discover your new place of employment. They are so bogged down and incompetent that it doesn’t take much to throw them off the trail for several years. I changed jobs in September 1967, and they haven’t found out my new job yet, though they have tried through numerous visits, phone calls, notes left under the door, and other perfunctory attempts.

In preparation for the eventual confrontation, you can begin early to have real property which you use, such as houses and automobiles, owned and registered in the names of persons who will not be liable for payment of income taxes.

These and similar steps have worked for me and for a number of other individuals around the country for many, many years. I have used this method of tax resistance, or variations, of it, for the last ten years. In that time, I have paid no federal income tax of any significance. I have devoted the greater part of my total income to sharing with other people through Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality. The I.R.S. is many years and hundreds of dollars behind in its attempts to collect from me, and has indeed collected nothing from me so far, though it has prepared returns for the years 1962, 1963, and 1965, and is trying to collect over eleven hundred dollars from me.
Here is the strength of tax resistance. If you don’t play by their rules, the cost of collecting will in many cases exceed the successful collections. The process of assessing and collecting taxes in the face of intelligent resistance is an immensely complicated bureaucratic operation, which frequently gets bogged down for incredible periods of time. The due process of law involved in the arrest and conviction of an induction refuser under Selective Service law is child’s play when compared to the due process involved in the collection of taxes from the intelligent tax refuser. So we have an effective tool at hand for resisting the demands of war and the arms race, if we will only seize the courage to act.
Positive Side
Now we turn to the constructive side of this action. If we pool all of the tax money that we did not pay in locally administered funds, we can create a model for a future in which men can regain direct control of their common institutions and effectively deny their consent to governmental programs they believe to be evil.
In each community or region we can set up a common fund. Each contributor will have one vote, as in a cooperative. The members will meet from time to time to set priorities and guidelines for administering the fund and to elect a committee to administer it according to their guidelines.
Part of the fund can be held as a reserve, which can be invested in low-interest loans to socially useful projects. In case of needs these loans can be liquidated in order to compensate members of the fund, up to the amount of their contribution, for personal losses and needs resulting from successful tax collections by the I.R.S. The reserve funds can also be used to provide legal defense for members who might be prosecuted under the tax laws, and to provide aid for the families of those who might be convicted and imprisoned or suffer other needs as a result of conscientious tax refusal. Thus through mutual aid the members of the fund will be protected from personal hardships arising from their stand, and together they can develop a most valuable sense of community and solidarity, that could immeasurably strengthen the whole peace movement.
Assuming that successful collections by the I.R.S. would always lag far behind the ongoing contributions to the fund, the greater part of receipts could be disbursed in the form of direct grants for ail kinds of socially useful organizations and projects. Assuming that the federal-income-tax contributions of most people in the movement probably far exceed their voluntary political, organizational, and charitable contributions, we could expect that the tax alternative funds could become one of the most substantial sources of money for the projects and purposes in which we most strongly believe. But beyond that we could hope that our experience in mutual aid through these cooperative funds would bear fruit in the development of ashrams and communities for closer economic and social cooperation; for it is when our constructive action and our resistance to evil become for real that we will see the need and value of mutual aid and begin to create cooperative alternatives within the competitive society in which we live.
If we ignore or neglect the great potential of tax resistance joined to constructive action, we must be deaf to history and blind to experience.
Deaf to history. Do we not know that tax resistance has been one of the greatest sources and strategies of revolutionary movements throughout history? Has not history shown that taxation is a process requiring the general consent and cooperation of the populace? Has it not been shown that when numbers of people reject a government by withdrawing their consent from the elaborate bureaucratic process of taxation, that government is in deep trouble? Did not the French Revolution begin with tax resistance? Was not the Estates General called into session by the King because he found it impossible to raise sufficient revenue for the operation of his government? Was not tax resistance the slogan and rallying cry of the American Revolution: “Taxation without representation is tyranny!”? Does not the Boston Tea Party, an act of resistance to taxation, stand in our historical tradition as a model for the actions of the Baltimore Four, the Catonsville Nine, the Boston Two, the Milwaukee Fourteen, the D.C. Nine, and the Chicago Fifteen? Did not Thoreau fashion the cornerstone of American resistance theory out of his own experience as a tax resister? Was not Gandhi’s largest and most significant campaign of civil disobedience, the Salt March, based on the strategy of tax resistance?
Blind to experience. Can we not see what the I.R.S. knows full well: that even where the public gives general consent to the process of taxation it is always and everywhere a grudging and tentative consent, a resentful and querulous consent, a fragile consent that must always be nursed and safeguarded by positive public relations? Why has the I.R.S. trodden so lightly in prosecuting principled tax refusers, usually concentrating instead on ineffectual attempts at collection? Is it not because there exists among the public at large a greater reservoir of grievance, a potential of sympathy for tax resisters, and, what is more, a vast subliminal potential for tax resistance and evasion, that only needs to be aroused by news of widespread tax resistance?
Let us learn from the experience of the draft-resistance movement and the telephone-tax-refusal campaign, a few years ago, many people regarded draft refusal as a personal witness of the solitary conscience. Today it has taken on the dimensions of a social movement. It is, however, restricted by the narrow age and sex range of those who are subject to conscription, and even more restricted by the narrowness of the draft as a single focus of action.
In the telephone-tax-refusal campaign we measured the potential dimensions of a tax-resistance movement. In the summer of 1966, we started the campaign for nonpayment of the ten-per-cent federal telephone excise tax, which had just been restored by Congress explicitly to help in meeting the rising costs of the Vietnam War. The July 1969 issue of WIN magazine quotes from a Wall Street Journal story reporting that eighteen thousand people refused to pay their telephone tax last year. This resistance tactic caught on quickly and spread rapidly with little organizational effort, because it was a direct and simple action which any telephone subscriber could easily carry out. But after flaring up briefly, interest in this tactic gradually subsided, though thousands no doubt continue to refuse to pay the tax. Enthusiasm for the action could not be maintained, because it was not resistance for real. It was, rather, the first token of a spirit of resistance, which at the time could find no practical channel for deeper development.
When we can combine real war tax resistance with the tremendous constructive potential of a Fund for Humanity, we will have raised a banner to which all honest and courageous men of conscience can repair.

Note: I want to acknowledge the contributions of Brad Lyttle, Sidney Lens, and several young members of the draft-resistance movement whose names are unknown to me. Recent discussions with them helped greatly in stimulating and formulating the ideas for the article, which has also been distributed in mimeographed form by the founders of the Chicago Area Alternative Fund (C.A.A.F), 1209 West Farwell, Chicago, Illinois 60626. (Tel: 764-3620). We have begun. Join us!
Notes and References

Internal Revenue Regulations, Paragraph 31.3401 (e)-1 (b) — “The employer is not required to ascertain whether or not the number of withholding exemptions claimed is greater than the number of withholding exemptions to which the employee is entitled. If, however, the employer has reason to believe that the number of withholding exemptions claimed by the employee is greater than the number to which such employee is entitled, the district director should be so advised.”

Internal Revenue Regulations, Paragraph 31.3401 (e)-1 (a) — “…If no such certificate is in effect, the number of withholding exemptions claimed shall be considered to be zero…”

Internal Revenue Code, Section 7201. ATTEMPT TO EVADE OR DEFEAT TAX. “Any person who willfully attempts to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.”

Internal Revenue Code, Section 7205. FRAUDULENT WITHHOLDING EXEMPTION CERTIFICATE OR FAILURE TO SUPPLY INFORMATION: “Any individual required to supply information to his employer under section 3402 who willfully supplies false or fraudulent information, or who willfully falls to supply information thereunder which would require an increase in the tax to be withheld under section 3402, shall, in lieu of any other penalty provided by law (except the penalty provided by section 6682), upon conviction thereof, be fined not more than $500, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” (Section 3402 is the section which provides for withholding of income taxes.)

INSTRUCTIONS — Unagreed Income, Estate, or Gift Tax Cases — U.S. Treasury Department — Internal Revenue Service — Publication No. 5 (Rev. 8-64)

Internal Revenue Code, Section 6861. Jeopardy Assessments of Income, Estate, and Gift Taxes.

Meyer had a followup in the January 1970 issue:

Clarification On Tax Withholding

By Karl Meyer
December 12, 1969
Dear Mike and Allen:
I was pleased to receive your inquiry about our “Fund for Mankind, Through Effective Tax Resistance” (Catholic Worker, Oct.–Nov. 1969). Yours is one of dozens of serious inquiries from all over the country, and the fourth so far from the Minneapolis area alone. Jim Dunn (19 Sidney Place S.E., Minneapolis, Minnesota) has already started an alternative fund and has reprinted my article as a leaflet. Dennis Richter (Hope House, 2603 14th Ave. South) has begun by claiming forty million exemptions on his W-4 Withholding Exemption Certificate. This has tremendous educational value, but we don’t know yet the effective results of this experiment. One person in Chicago tried this mass approach and it did not work. He claimed three and a half billion dependents, the entire population of Spaceship Earth. His employers, on the advice of their tax attorneys, rejected his W-4 form, on the grounds that it was not correctly filled out because it would be impossible under the rules to have that number of legally qualified exemptions — a trenchant argument we must confess. They also pointed out that their payroll computer program could not handle that number of exemptions. Two digits, or a maximum of 99, would be all the computer could handle. This leaves him nowhere, since his only recourse would be to appeal to the Internal Revenue Service or the courts for support of his right to claim three and a half billion, and it is obvious enough that he would get no support from that quarter.
Does my article give the impression that I advocate claiming such great numbers of exemptions as a practical step, or that I myself have used this approach and succeeded? If it does, that impression should be corrected before it leads us down the blind alley of ineffectual protest. I myself have always claimed the minimum number of exemptions necessary to prevent the withholding of tax (between six and twelve in my case) and the same modest approach is used by all those I know of who are successfully using the exemption method of tax resistance at present. The idea of claiming hundreds of thousands, millions or billions of dependents makes for a beautiful protest and a glorious expression of fraternal solidarity. I introduced this idea in my article, and I certainly hope that a certain number of bold souls like Dennis will experiment with it; but I proposed it with tongue in cheek, and I would be the first to predict that it will not work in very many cases. Most employers, on their own initiative or on the advice of I.R.S., will probably reject such a W-4, and those that don’t may fire you. It would be a fine educational protest, but if the idea is protest, that could also be expressed by picketing the personnel office during your lunch hour to ask them to stop withholding taxes.
If the purpose is actually to prevent the withholding of tax, the most practical way to proceed is to claim the minimum number of exemptions necessary to achieve that objective! This number can be found by dividing your weekly salary by $13.50, or dividing your projected annual salary by $700, or by consulting the tables and rules in Circular E, Employers Tax Guide, available to the public at your local office of I.R.S.
The minimum number of exemptions necessary for most people will be between six and twenty. If your employer should question the number you claim, you may wish to save him the embarrassment of being implicated in your action by simply stating, “This is the number of exemptions to which I believe I am entitled.” Since you are the person responsible for the number which you claim, it is not necessarily incumbent on you to offer your employer a more elaborate explanation. In our group, some people have explained to their employers the entire basis of their claim; others have filed the new W-4 with their employer without further explanation; some have written to I.R.S., or other officials of government, stating the entire basis of their claim; others have taken the action without informing the state directly. These choices must be made on the basis of personal inclinations and circumstances of employment.
You ask about the chances of prosecution for tax evasion or fraud. No principled tax refuser has been indicted or prosecuted for violation of tax laws within my memory or knowledge. A few have been imprisoned briefly for contempt of court for refusing to reveal information about their income and assets. The I.R.S. has concentrated exclusively on attempts at assessment and collection, rather than prosecution. With the rapid development of this campaign, I predict that this policy will be changed. If pressed to do so, I could name a man whom I believe to be a prime candidate for aggressive prosecution. But it would be impossible for me to predict what pattern of criminal prosecution may emerge as this campaign grows and develops. I do predict that many people in this movement will eventually be subjects of intensive efforts by I.R.S. to assess and collect income taxes that they have not paid. Ten years ago I popularized the aphorism: “If you can’t do time, don’t commit crime,” which was taught me by Marshal Raab as he drove me to the penitentiary. Today I am in a position to coin a new variation of this maxim for our time: “If you can’t stand heat, don’t put your hand in the fire.”
If people want to start out easy and test the temperature before they go all the way they might begin by not paying the ten-percent federal excise tax on telephone service or they might try claiming just one extra withholding tax exemption. Most important of course is to band together in small local alternative-fund groups for mutual aid and the sharing of experiences.
Over the years I have developed quite a tolerance for heat of all kinds so I was not dismayed on Halloween when Agent Roy Suzuki of the I.R.S. telephoned at my place of employment, which he had at long last discovered, and very graciously demanded payment of $46.60 in taxes, penalties, and interest for the year 1965, a small part of a bill for more than a thousand dollars, going back to 1962 that I.R.S. has been unsuccessfully trying to collect for a long time. After I stated that I would not pay he came over immediately and served my employers with a levy against my wages which they reluctantly honored by deducting $48.60 from wages due to me. These events inspired the composition of the following ballad, which is currently leading the hit parade of the tax-resistance movement:

Some Enchanted Taxmen

Some enchanted evening
You may meet a stranger,
You may see him come to you
Across the crowded room,
Then pull put his badge
And ask for your wage;
If you don’t go along,
He will not argue long.
He will be a taxman,
He will be insistent,
He will bring a levy
To place against your wage,
And when he is done
He’ll go back to his boss,
And give a report like this:
Suzuki:— Who would believe it,
Who would say it’s so?
I found him at Follett’s,
I collected dough.
His boss:— Oh, Suzuki,
How did you know? Now that you’ve found him,
Never let him go!
Suzuki:— Forty-six dollars,
All for the war,
I’ll go back again soon,
I will grab some more.
His boss:— Oh, Suzuki,
Try going slow,
Don’t scare him off too fast,
Don’t let him go.
Suzuki:— l have worked so patiently,
I have tried so long,
My, but that man’s
Conscience is strong.
Boss:— Don’t get sentimental,
Remember he’s your foe,
Now that you’ve found him,
Never let him go.
Suzuki:— I’ll go back tomorrow,
Shortly after dawn,
I’ll levy on his wage again;
But he will be gone.
Boss:— Buck up, Suzuki,
Don’t let it get you down,
We have lots of agents,
Snooping round the town.
Suzuki:— They will never nail him,
They’ll never collect,
Why should we waste our time,
Breaking our necks?
Boss:— The war must go on you know
And we must be paid,
The arms race must be financed
And profits be made.
Suzuki:— We will never make it
With guys like that Meyer;
Why not quit and go to work;
Our proceeds would be higher.
Boss:— Roy, that’s not the spirit
Of I.R.S., you know;
Once you have found one.
Never let him go!

A few days later I quit my job, and since then I have been earning part of our livelihood by part-time and irregular labor, while spending most of my time on the important work of developing the tax-resistance campaign. I have to thank Roy Suzuki for having given me the incentive and the opportunity to do this. To coordinate a countrywide campaign for tax resistance and to provide literature and counseling we have established a center called War Tax Resistance/Midwest (1339 North Mohawk St., Chicago, Illinois 60610) which is sponsored by the Nonviolent Training and Action Center, the Chicago Area Draft Registers and the Chicago Catholic Worker. We will have a basic leaflet based on my article in the Oct.–Nov. 1969 CW, as well as reprints of the article itself. For a single copy of each, send us a stamped, self-addressed envelope. For quantities the price will be a dollar for fifty, or two dollars for a hundred, plus a dollar for each additional hundred in one shipment. We hope that people will send a few extra dollars to help with the organizing costs and that new tax resisters and alternative funds will earmark a small percentage of their tax savings to contribute to the organizing work.

The February 1970 issue reported on the death of Ammon Hennacy on January 14. Ernest Bromley added a tribute, which included this summary of his tax resistance activity:

I, like so many others, knew Ammon by reputation long before I met him in person. He was one of the pacifist tax refusers during World War Two, at a time when I could count them on the fingers of one hand. He was in Arizona during those years, working as a day laborer in the fields. To the few of us who made up the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, which began in the spring of 1948, he is memorable, not only because the number was still very small but mainly because he was simple, direct and dramatic. He saw that the government got none of his tax at the source (through withholding), he refused the total amount of income tax, he took steps so that the tax man could not garnishee money from his employer, and he went straight to the tax man and to the people with the message that he would not pay for the weapons or the soldiers. He was basic, cryptic, humorous. When the tax collector asked him if he thought he could change the world to his point of view, he answered, “Of course not. but I’m damn sure it won’t change me.” Then, referring to his contest with the government, he said, “Every day I win and every day the government loses.”
He once told a tax man, “Peter could return to his nets, but Matthew could not return to his tax collecting.” It was in World War One, while doing time in Atlanta Penitentiary for opposing the war, that he read the Bible and became a Christian. He was also turning from socialism to anarchism. It was not however, until the early 1950’s that he joined a church. Soon he wrote his first book. The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist. Later he revised this book, calling it in the new form The Book of Ammon. While in Arizona he wrote a column in the Catholic Worker, entitled “Life at Hard Labor.” He managed by doing day labor in the fields and irrigation ditches, to contribute financially to the education of his two daughters by his first marriage.
After moving to New York in the early 50’s he became one of the associate editors of the Catholic Worker with Dorothy Day. In 1961 he moved to Salt Lake City and began a "House of Hospitality.” Borrowing the language of Robert Frost in one of his poems “Build Soil — A Political Pastoral,” Ammon spoke early and often of the “one-man revolution — the only revolution that is coming.” He felt that the only way to change society is for each to become a radical and responsible person. He detested dependence on government, state, institutions. He wished to live as the early Christians did. He did not join organizations or participate much in conferences or committees. Most of the actions he took were solitary ones.
After leaving Arizona he travelled several weeks of each year, going to homes of friends. Innumerable opportunities opened up to him to talk to small groups of people. Many young idealists got their inspiration from a first contact with Ammon Hennacy. He was always quick in tongue and caustic in comment. He could state his views briefly. Once when asked why he refused to pay Federal taxes, he said “Jesus wouldn’t make atom bombs. Why should I pay for them?”

And Karl Meyer wrote, in part:

[I]n thirteen years, I spent only a few hours in his company; so I know nothing of him that is not amply recorded in the Book of Ammon and his columns. The only original thing that I can tell is what he has written in my spirit.
In closing I want to remind you that Ammon wouldn’t pay taxes that go for war. In his last letter to me (November 17, 1969) he wrote, “I think your idea of claiming a million dependents is o.k. for a joke between you and the tax man, but to consider it for a group of people is not being a bit realistic. Hardly half a dozen in this country would have nerve enough to do it for fear of losing their jobs.”
That was the main fault Ammon had: he never had faith that other people would be radicals, would change their lives and live the revolution. But I remember a pipsqueak boy of twenty once, who didn’t want to lose his job, who wanted to take bail and get a lawyer and a long continuance. And one summer day that boy went down to Chrystie Street, and that was the day that he met Hennacy.
That’s why I have faith that a lot of people are not going to go on paying taxes for another five years of national murder; and anyone who really wants to stop can send me a couple of stamps for our leaflet entitled “Common Sense for Every Concerned Taxpayer — You Can Stop Paying War Taxes Now,” or send a dollar for fifty copies.

Here are some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance, from sources other than Catholic Worker, from the 1947–71 span:

First, a typed news dispatch from “M. Massiani,” Paris Correspondent for the National Catholic Welfare Council (U.S.) News Service, dated 4 August 1947:

Priests and People of Vendee, France, Protest Tax on Christian Schools and Refusal of State Aid

Paris, July 28. — A delegation of 20,000 citizens from various parts of the Department of Vendee, one of the most Catholic regions of France, appeared in the town of La Roche-sur-Yon, where a number of priests were on trial for refusing to pay a tax exacted on entertainments and theatrical productions given to aid in supporting the free Christian schools of the Department.
A large group of priests and directors of Christian schools purposely decided to refuse payment of this tax and made public announcement of the decision in order to protest what is regarded by the people of the Vendee as a highly inequitable situation; the state taxing the people to support unneeded public schools, refusing to grant a subsidy to aid in maintaining the Christian schools, and at the same time taxing entertainments held to raise money for support of the Christian schools.
It is pointed out that in Vendee public schools are practically empty. The Christian schools, on the other hand, are educating the vast majority of the children of the region, saving the state more than 200 million francs in school taxes annually. Yet whenever Catholics hold a festival to raise funds for support of their schools, the state intervenes to collect part of the receipts.
It is hoped that in refusing to pay this tax, public attention will be called to the injustice and the need of a state subsidy to help support the Christian schools, such as is granted in other countries, including Belgium and Holland.
Bishop Antoine Cazaux of Lucon, who went to La Roche-sur-Yon to testify in behalf of the defendants, stated that his priests are neither rebels nor evaders, and that the court, in order to judge equitably, should take into consideration the unjust situation that exists with regard to education. Many thousands of people were in the streets outside the courtroom.
Decisions were rendered in only two of the cases, the defendants being acquitted on procedural grounds. The other cases were postponed. The action of the court caused anti-religious groups and newspapers, particularly in Paris, to demand that new suits be instituted and that the law be applied with severity.
In the Diocese of Lucon, two-thirds of the children attend the 461 primary religious schools. In six large districts, 13,757 children out of 15,183 are enrolled at the Christian schools. In two other districts, the number of pupils in the public schools is only three per cent of the total. In 41 settlements in the Department, with a population of 40,000, there are no public schools.

A National Catholic Reporter editorial (signed by editor Robert C. Hoyt) in the 3 January 1967 issue recommended that men refuse military service, concluding that in Vietnam, “we are killing people and destroying a culture without adequate justification, without a rationale that meets the minimum requirements of morality. That imposes obligations on all of us. We believe that anyone who despairs of a political solution has a right and duty to search for more effective ways, including civil disobedience and tax refusal. We have a responsibility to the rest of the world, to history, to God that nobody else can bear.”

In its 4 February 1970 issue, that paper published a lengthy article on the war tax resistance movement:

Protesters turn to taxes to fight against the war

By Gary MacEoin
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, NEW YORK— Protesters against the Vietnam war are turning to the withholding of taxes as a way of fighting against the war.
A national campaign against the payment of taxes used for the war is being organized and its goal is to involve “tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in conscientious tax refusal.”
The campaign is spearheaded by the War Tax Resistance, an organization founded last summer which draws support from a broad spectrum of pacifist groups. Its headquarters is in New York and it has offices in Philadelphia and Chicago.
Resistance spokesmen say they hope to have “at least a phone, an address and a contact person” in each of the principal 50 to 100 cities in the nation by mid-February. Groups organized around such regional centers are to focus their tax resistance efforts on demonstrations on March 2 and April 15.
“We picked the March 2 date more or less arbitrarily,” said Bradford Lyttle, clean-shaven and soft-spoken coordinator of War Tax Resistance. “That’s about the time that thousands of accountants all over the country hang out signs offering to help prepare tax returns. We want to provide an option for those who want not to pay.”
The choice of April 15 is more obvious, he said. “It is both the final day for filing tax returns and the start of the Spring offensive of the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.”
Lyttle, 42, works out of an office in Lower Manhattan (339 Lafayette Street). It is also the home of the New York GI Coffeehouse, the Jewish Peace Fellowship, the Catholic Peace Fellowship, the War Resisters League, Win magazine (hippie-pacifist), and Liberation magazine (David Dellinger’s voice). Between them, they occupy the two top floors of a three-story cold-water walk-up not far from the Catholic Worker.
Organized resistance to paying war taxes is not new, dating from 1948, Lyttle said. The War Tax Resistance is trying to give the idea broader appeal by modifying the totally pacifist position that its forerunners had adopted.
Lyttle, who himself is a pacifist, said the new approach was developed by a New York teacher, Norma Becker, who recruited a group of sponsors which included Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky, Tom Cornell, Dorothy Day, Dave Dellinger, Allen Ginsberg, Stewart and Charlotte Meacham, Grace Paley and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
“The result,” says Bradford Lyttle, “was a new emphasis. Instead of stressing the total pacifist tradition as the others had done, we decided to concentrate on two more immediate and obvious reasons: the horrors of the war in Vietnam, and the misuse of the taxpayers’ money by the government to the extent that it was neglecting national priorities.
“And instead of calling on sympathizers to pay no taxes whatever, we appealed to them to make a token withholding, if only $5, without of course ceasing to urge those who had the moral courage to go further.”
War Tax Resisters chose as their prime targets the 10 per cent surtax and the 10 per cent federal excise tax on telephone service — two taxes more clearly linked to Vietnam than any others.
Both War Tax Resistance and other organizations distribute literature explaining the various ways — some legal, some doubtful, some illegal — for nonpayment of federal taxes. The first War Tax Resistance leaflet was prepared for the antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C., last Nov. 15, and 10,000 copies were handed out there.
“The act of war tax resistance creates a confrontation between the government and the conscience of the citizens,” this pamphlet states. “We believe that the right of conscientious objection to war belongs to all people, not just to those of draft age… Do whatever makes sense to your conscience. But do it.”
Among the ways to avoid paying taxes, the first is to earn an income so low as not to be taxable. This means for the single person under 65, an earned income of less than $900 annually. Yet a considerable number of pacifists choose this method.
Another form of protest is to refuse to pay the percentage of the tax that goes for war. More than two-thirds of the federal budget pays for wars, past, present and future. This is the amount some withhold. Others refuse to pay the proportion of the federal budget (23 per cent) directly allocated to Vietnam, while others hold back a token amount.
According to Internal Revenue Service figures, 73 million Americans paid their income taxes in full last year, while 1,025 refused to pay all or part in protest against the Vietnam war. The 1,025 protesters was an increase from 592 the previous year.
IRS counted 10,511 cases of refusal to pay the telephone tax in the first nine months of 1969, down from 14,396 in the same period of 1968. Several factors combine to make the telephone tax the attractive target it has become.
For one thing, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. has handled the situation with kid gloves. So long as the protester makes it clear to the company with each payment that the amount withheld is the tax portion, it will not cut off a phone. Printed forms are made available by the resistance groups to facilitate this notification. What the telephone company does is simply to report to IRS the fact of nonpayment and the amount.
IRS also is anxious to keep the situation as cool as possible, but it wants at the same time to maintain whatever pressure is necessary to dissuade the hesitant from joining the movement. Back in 1967, the first step was to send the defaulter a “notice of preliminary assessment” which enabled him to demand a hearing. Because of the number of cases involved and the small amount in each, the IRS quickly eliminated this step and moved immediately to Form 17-A or some other “notice of final assessment.” This notice contains a threat to seize property to collect a debt.
Ralph Di Gia of War Resisters League is one who has been through this process several times.
Early in 1969, for example, the IRS computer at Andover, Mass., sent him Form 17 demanding payment of $2.25 owed as telephone tax. Next a New York agent wrote him, then called on him in his New York office. After checking with Di Gia’s landlord and the building superintendent to establish his political views, the agent tried to place a lien on his salary at the War Resisters League, but the League refused to cooperate.
After another confrontation with Di Gia, which merely established that it was “the principle,” not the $2.25, that was at issue on both sides, the agent located Di Gia’s bank account and collected the $2.25 plus 6 per cent interest. Under the IRS code, it can take money from a bank account without a court order in payment of taxes due by the account holder.
Apparently the discovered account was then fed into the computer, because another section of IRS moved quickly to seize the entire balance in payment of income tax. And as of last month, the IRS located a savings account recently opened by Di Gia in another bank and collected yet another telephone tax bill. But Di Gia insists that he doesn’t mind.
“The issue isn’t withholding money from the government,” he says. “They’re going to get it ultimately. But I made a few collection agents think about what their job’s about, and now IRS is going to have to realize that there are people who aren’t afraid to resist. They got the tax, but they had to come and get it, like when the agents had to go to the fields in France for collection.”
Unpaid taxes, whether telephone or income, can result not only in seizure from a bank account but also a lien on salary or the attachment and sale by auction of some property, usually an automobile.
In addition, some banks make a service charge — as high as $10, reportedly each time a lien is placed on an account, and the resisters suspect that IRS is pressuring banks to do this as a deterrent. Such a fee every month would make telephone tax refusal impractical for most people. But actually, the load on the IRS is such that it usually moves against any given individual only at much longer intervals.
Everyone who refuses to pay any taxes he owes is actually exposing himself to heavy penalties, and the resistance literature spells out this danger very openly. Simple “willful failure to pay” is punishable by fine up to $10,000 and a year in jail, plus the cost of prosecution. Similar or greater penalties are available for a variety of related offenses.
Although the offense of counseling or urging others not to pay taxes would seem greater than the simple act of withholding, the law on this point is somewhat ambiguous and apparently has never been tested in the courts.
There are few, if any, cases of conscientious tax refusers being jailed for not paying taxes or filing returns. Most of the small number of cases on record have resulted from related non-cooperation with the courts, such as ignoring a court order to disclose financial records.
In addition, it would appear that prosecutions have been initiated by local collectors who did not first check with headquarters. Current IRS policy on this issue apparently stops short of court action.
The most distinguished American to go to jail for refusal to pay taxes was Henry David Thoreau, the essayist, poet and naturalist. He spent only one night in confinement, because a neighbor paid the tax, but the experience inspired his essay on Civil Disobedience, espousing the doctrine of passive resistance. It deeply influenced Gandhi and has become the bible of the resistance movement. One passage is found to be particularly relevant by today’s resisters:
“When… a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the Country to overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.” The reference is to the Mexican War of 1846–48.
About half a dozen have been jailed in the past 20 years. Juanita Nelson was arrested in Philadelphia in 1959, threatened with a year in jail and $1,000 fine if she did not disclose certain financial information, but in fact was held only some hours.
Maurice McCrackin, arrested in Cincinnati in 1958, was given a mental test, imprisoned “indefinitely” on a contempt charge, then sentenced to six months and a $250 fine. James Otsuka got 90 days and a $140 fine in Indianapolis, in 1949. Eroseanna Robinson, sentenced to a year and a day in Chicago in 1960, was released unconditionally after 93 days. Walter Gormley got 7 days in Cedar Rapids in 1960.
And in the first such imprisonment in several years, Neil Haworth of New London, Conn., got 60 days in 1968 for refusal to produce records. He had served six months in 1959 for “committing civil disobedience at a missile site” near Omaha. And in 1962, he was a crew member of Everyman Ⅲ, a boat which sailed to Leningrad to protest the Russian nuclear tests.
Those who have refused to pay federal taxes and have got away with it include the Catholic Worker settlement houses and the settlement house of the New England Committee for Non-Violent Action. “We pay local taxes,” says Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker, “and we let the IRS people examine our records, but we pay them nothing.” The New England group says that IRS has spent thousands of dollars going through their bills and receipts, without collecting a penny.
War Tax Resistance is now urging citizens “to sue the government to refund all your taxes on the grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral purposes.” The main value of such suits to date has been the publicity.
Professor Donald Kalish, chairman of the philosophy department at UCLA, filed a suit to recover his telephone tax but it was dismissed by the District Court. He appealed, and the appellate court has agreed to hear his appeal.
The most important case to date is that of Walter C. Pietsch, of Rego Park, N.Y., a 33-year-old administrative employee in a hospital. Last year, he instituted “a class action” for an injunction to enjoin IRS from collecting the 10 per cent surtax and all other taxes used to propagate the war, and also for a declaration that the Vietnam war was unconstitutional. A class action, if successful, would provide the same remedy for all taxpayers.
Pietsch, who served in Korea, “is not against all wars, just this one.” The surtax he withheld was $190.84. “The amount is insignificant,” he said, “It’s the principle I’m fighting for.” After a preliminary hearing in the Brooklyn federal district court on Dec. 19, written arguments were submitted on Jan. 2, and on Jan. 6 the case was dismissed on a motion by the defendants. An appeal was filed immediately.
Although the Vietnam war is the direct issue on which tax resisters are concentrating, many of them insist that the campaign has escalated into something much bigger — the war mentality behind much of United States foreign policy. “Maybe it’s a hang-up,” says Ted Webster, administrator of the Roxbury War Tax Scholarship fund, “but I personally have a great feeling of urgency, it seems the logic behind bombing North Vietnam can be so easily applied to China. The influence of the Pentagon on policy, and the political expediency of yielding to it seems so obvious, I see the need to rapidly escalate resistance, or there will be a greatly expanded war — maybe with China — within one to three years.”

Another National Catholic Reporter article, from the 10 April 1970 issue, asked “In the name of God, how did Milwaukeeans get so radical?” A section of it covered tax resisters:

One area in which a number of community members are discussing is tax resistance. Some say they have claimed as many exemptions as were needed to keep from paying any federal taxes used to finance the war.
[Richard W.] Zipfel, who is defense committee chairman for the Chicago 15, Feit and Father Robert W. Dundon, a Jesuit, have sent a letter to the Wisconsin Telephone Co. stating they are refusing to pay the federal telephone tax on their phone bills because “we can no longer tolerate our nation spending more than $75 billion on the military while our cities die.”
The letter, dated Jan. 7, added that “even if the present war ended, our policies would quickly create another Vietnam.”
Their resistance gesture is significant, they said, because the tax was argued through Congress as a specifically Vietnam war tax. They have reserved a reply from the utility saying their letter was being forwarded to the government.
“I do believe in the legitimacy of the magistrates,” [Michael] Cullen said. “In paying property taxes, I believe in the state.
“I’ll render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but when Caesar decides to take what is God’s, or if Caesar decides to look like God or act like God, I won’t render to Caesar.
“You only render to what is legitimate and what is human, and what is for the common good. War destroys humans.”

Milwaukee’s Casa Maria Catholic Worker House still looks to be something like a hotbed of war tax resistance, at least relative to the current national lull. Lincoln Rice of Casa Maria is the current NWTRCC coordinator. I recognize the names of war tax resisters Roberta Thurstin and Don Timmerman among their volunteers as well.

From the Pittsburgh Catholic, 17 April 1970:

Five say they won’t pay taxes

Five local clergymen handed in their income tax forms at the Federal Bldg. downtown on Wednesday with the announcement they were withholding a portion in protest to the Vietnam War.
Joining them in the protest at the Internal Revenue Office there were several dozen local lay members of War Tax Resistance, an organization whose members carried out withholding actions in a number of cities Wednedsay (April 15), the last day for filing income tax returns. It is headquartered locally at 3601 Blvd. of the Allies.
The clergymen issued a statement denouncing the Vietnam war as immoral and stating other means of protest had been futile. “Now we must do more than talk. The time is now that we must act,” they said.
They included three priests active in civil rights causes here: Fr. Donald C. Fisher of St. Francis de Sales, McKees Rocks; Fr. Donald W. McIlvane, St. Richard’s, Hill District; and Fr. John O’Malley of St. Joseph’s, Manchester. Also taking part was Fr. Bernard Survil of St. Hedwig in Smock, Greensburg Diocese.
Protestant clergy included Rev. Oscar L. Arnall, a Lutheran, Rev. Thomas Whitcroft, an Episcopalian, and Rev. William S. Richard, a Presbyterian, signed the statement but weren’t present.
The clergymen announced they were withholding 25 per cent of their income tax, the proportion of the national tax that is estimated goes for the Vietnam war, they said. Some said they would pay the money into local community action programs suffering because of the amounts given to the Vietnam war.
“We are conscious of our obligation to pay taxes, but we are equally conscious of our obligation before God to refuse to cooperate with evil,” the clergymen said.

The National Catholic Reporter, in its 19 March 1971 issue, printed the following letter from Robert Calvert of War Tax Resistance:

Tax resisters suggest: “Stop paying for it”

To The Editors:
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos… young people by the hundreds of thousands are rebelling in disgust and anger against the squandering of lives and resources in an immoral and illegal war. They are risking their freedom, careers and often their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.
We, as participants in war tax resistance, are resolved to confront our own complicity in war, waste and callousness. We resolve to end to the extent possible our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death more than life.
For every dollar which the administration expects to spend in fiscal year 1971, 64.8 per cent will go for wars — past, present and future. Of this amount, 48.4 per cent will go for current military expenditures, including Vietnam. (The administration has not revealed the exact costs of the Indochina war.) Another 17 per cent will go to health, education and welfare; 18.2 per cent for other expenditures.
The deadline for paying income taxes is close, April 15. Many who read this letter will owe the federal government money. Don’t pay. War tax resistance is being supported by numerous civil rights, anti-poverty and peace organizations in our call to help end the war by widespread tax refusal. Widespread tax refusal does more than force the government to spend much money to try to collect unpaid taxes. It confronts the government with the political fact of massive non-cooperation with its war-making policies.
We need to dramatize war tax resistance and to expand it from an act of individual conscience to a nationwide demonstration of collective civil disobedience.
On April 2–4, the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice — which includes such groups as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Welfare Rights organization, the American Friends Service committee and the Fellowship of Resistance — is calling for a nationwide “Tribute in Action to Martin Luther King.” The theme is “Freedom from Hunger, War and Oppression”; the event will be observed by hunger marches, fasts, teachins, demonstrations and religious services.
War tax resisters will relate to these events in a real way. We are asking people to refuse to pay $10 to $50 or more of their federal income taxes, and to publicly turn this money over to a local community group on April 2, 3 or 4. We will thus take our tax money out of the hands of the government and put it into the hands of the people. If we work hard thousands of dollars can be rechanneled to the people. We can not wait for the government to change priorities. We must change them ourselves.
Find out what actions are being planned in your city or region and build a demonstration dramatizing the transfer of funds to useful community programs. A possible action: Rally at the IRS office where people put their tax money into a container of some sort. The money is then carried to the main event and is turned over to the designated local community group.
There also will be actions at Internal Revenue Service offices across the country on April 15. We will publicly submit our 1040 forms to the IRS with all or part of our taxes deducted. This is a simple action and serves as an extension of the April 2–4 observance.
If no action appears to be under way in your community, contact the nearest war tax resistance center or the People’s Coalition office (1029 Vermont avenue, Washington, D.C.). Information about the WTR center nearest you, and about other forms of tax resistance, may be obtained from War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette street, New York, N.Y. 10012; telephone (212) 477‒2970.
Thousands are already engaged in these acts of peaceful, conscientious civil disobedience. If you engage in any of the above acts of civil disobedience we strongly urge you to write a letter to the IRS setting forth the reasons for the steps you have taken. Keep a copy.
Although there is a penalty for openly refusing to pay federal taxes (Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code — a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail, plus the costs of prosecutions) no war tax resisters have been prosecuted under this law. The only war tax resisters arrested have been those who have filed “fraudulent” W-4 forms, refused to file any income tax form, refused to present financial statements to the courts when ordered to do so. There have been prosecutions and convictions based on Section 7203 but none for openly refusing to pay for conscientious reasons, as far as we know.
We invite all Americans to join us in some form of war tax refusal. We must now take a stand by refusing to support the governments destructive policies with our bodies, our skills and our money.
Robert Calvert
New York, N.Y.

Editor’s note: The writer is a member of the Working Committee of WTR. Among sponsors of the organization are Dorothy Day, Joan Baez, David Dellinger, Arthur and Cathy Melville, the Rev. Richard J. Neuhaus, Rabbi Michael A. Robinson, Noam Chomsky, Peter Seeger and Theodore Roszak.

An op-ed from Eugene C. Bianchi, in the 28 May 1971 National Catholic Reporter:

“Maybe next year…”

To resist or not to resist

Two TV tableaus recently jarred me into fresh appreciation of how my tax money fosters the insanity of Vietnam.
In one film, helicopter gunships swooped down on a truck convoy; thousands of rounds of computer-directed cannon fire pierced the night. There goes at least one year’s withholding tax, I thought. But the commentator saw this military exercise as a demonstration of admirable killing efficiency. It was so orderly and precise; nothing out of place, except perhaps some Vietnamese flesh and bone.
The second scene showed men carefully loading bombs into B52s. The calm reporter noted how effectively these marvels of American know-how worked. The big bombs tore open huge craters and sent waves of damaging concussion. The antipersonnel bombs spewed thousands of body-ripping nails. As I viewed the distant puffs of smoke, I mused about how many income tax returns it took to accomplish such a feat.
It’s appalling how resigned we are to this insane use of our financial resources. Yet my and your tax money is closely related to the terrible statistic from the Kennedy subcommittee about 325,000 Indochinese, civilian deaths in recent years. Many more are maimed and driven from their homes. When I drop that IRS envelope through the red and blue bomb bay of the mail box, I wonder how many sad faces I’ve put behind the fences of relocation camps, how many children I’ve separated from parents. If Mr. Nixon is a prime candidate for war crimes according to the Nuremberg principles, we have all in some degree had our hands on the tax trigger.
Yet my courage rarely equals my insights. I also tell myself that some tax money goes for good causes. But the spirit of Ammon Hennacy, that holy maverick against war, won’t let me be content with such dodges. The whole Catholic Worker crowd stares up at me from their penny paper. I finally summon up the mouselike courage of refusing to pay the telephone war tax. At least that will cost the government more in time and bother than they’ll eventually get from me.
Maybe next year around income tax time, I’ll be brave enough to risk other concrete gestures. The words of Thoreau won’t go away: “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bill this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure as it would be to pay them and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
War tax resistance, though only a small act before the mighty state, could have broad effects if it became more widespread. It has the educational effect of conviction in action. Such tax resistance is illegal; but the war, by an ever-growing consensus, is enormously more illegal and immoral. Even token refusal to pay war taxes confronts the government with a concrete statement about its brutal policies. Tax resistance also awakens conscience to active non-complicity, to a new level of sensibility. For the situation is overwhelmingly clear: Tax money can be as killing as the weaponry it buys.
Since some risk is involved in tax resistance, it is worth reading a brochure or two about it. These can be easily obtained from a number of peace action groups, such as the War Tax Resistance (339 Lafayette St., New York 10012; or War Resisters League-West, 833 Haight St., San Francisco 94117). A Catholic group, Ammon’s Tax Associates (Box 1744, Indianapolis, Ind. 46204) is striving to awaken church institutions to their responsibilities for supporting conscientious tax resisters, as an extension of the church’s respect for conscientious objectors.
Perhaps the American church will end its complicity of silence with the warmakers when enough of us try to stop our own complicity in war taxes.

Prof. Warren Ambrose	Mathematics, M.I.T.
Dr. Donnell Boardman	Physician, Acton, Mass.
Mrs. Elizabeth Boardman	Acton, Mass.
Prof. Noam Chomsky	Linguistics, M.I.T.
Miss Barbara Deming	Writer, Wellfleet, Mass.
Prof. John Dolan	Philosophy, Chicago University
Prof. John Ek	Anthropology, Long Island University
Martha Bentley Hall	Musician, Brookline, Mass.
Dr. Thomas C. Hall	Physician, Brookline, Mass.
Rev. Arthur B. Jellis	First Parish in Concord, Unitarian-Universalist, Concord, Mass.
Prof. Donald Kalish	Philosophy, U.C.L.A.
Prof. Louis Kampf	Humanities, M.I.T.
Prof. Staughton Lynd	History, Yale University
Milton Mayer	Writer, Mass.
Prof. Jonathan Mirsky	Chinese Language and Literature, Dartmouth College
Prof. Sidney Morgenbesser	Philosophy, Columbia University
Prof. Wayne A. O’Neill	Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
Prof. Anatol Rapoport	Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan
Prof. Franz Schurmann	Center for Chinese Studies, University of Calif., Berkeley
Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgy	Institute for Muscle Research, Woods Hole, Mass.
Harold Tovish	Sculptor, Brookline, Mass.
Prof. Howard Zinn	Government, Boston University

How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement → Maurice McCrackin

Cleric Leaves Jail After Five Month Term in Tax Case

Minister Will Not Pay Taxes For Military Use, May Be Forced To Spend 53rd Birthday In Jail

Won’t Pay Taxes, Preacher Jailed

Income Tax Troubles

Preacher Drops Fast, Decides To Eat Again

Think It Over

Work Out Something

Pickets County Courthouse

Ohio Pacifist Minister Sued For $4,682 In Taxes

Lawyers to Fight On For Pastor In Tax Case

Minister Taken To Prison For Refusal To Pay Taxes

Pacifist Pastor To Spurn Appeal

Preacher En Route To Federal Prison

Minister’s Sympathizers Picket Prison Camp

Pickets Support Jailed Pacifist

Two Carry Placards at U.S. Prison Farm

Ordination Set Aside

Ohio Pastor in Tax Fight Is Suspended

Presbytery’s Action in Cincinnati for Indefinite Period

In Prison 5 Months

Obligations Cited

Cleric Ends Tax Sentence

Serves Five Months

Pacifist Minister Returns To Church After Prison Stint

Pray for Peace but Pay for War?

Springville Minister Won’t Contribute To “Arms Race”

On “Duty” at Ohio Courthouse

Refused Food

Prepared Appeal

Not As Minister

Poll Tax rebels in Thatcher’s Britain

The Dublin water charge strike

George Cony’s aggressive lawyers

Hugh Williams and the Rebecca rioters

White supremacists in Reconstruction-era Louisiana

The Smith sisters of Glastonbury

The Greek “Won’t Pay” movement

Newly-enfranchised Pennsylvania women

Maurice McCrackin’s lawyers

“Constitutionalist” tax protesters

Sylvia Hardy

Old Holborn

“Carter”

Zerah C. Whipple

Mary McLeod Cleeves

Annuity Tax resisters

Lessons from Thoreau, Maurice McCrackin, and Juanita Nelson

Mass action in response to arrests

Honor prisoners

Formal shows of support

Petition the government for leniency

White House Reply About Pacifist Hit

Attorneys for Pacifist Minister Battle On, Despite Denunciation by U.S. Judge

Claims Red Sympathies

One-Sided Presentations

Judge Makes Offer

Tax-Resisting Cleric Viewed As Crusader — or Crackpot

A Bachelor

Refused to Eat

Feels War a Sin

Tax Philosophy

An Open Letter *

Signers So Far

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1961

Groping towards a “peace tax” plan

Maurice McCrackin

Other war tax resistance mentions

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1980

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1981

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1992

Finding Affinity

The Thaw (1943–1959)

Six Refuse to Pay Tax on War Making Grounds in State

Tax Refusal

Tax Petition

To the Congress of the United States of America

To pay or not to pay war taxes

No great concern?

Michigan group gives war-tax money to the poor.

Minister Will Not Pay Taxes For Military Use, May Be Forced To Spend 53^rd Birthday In Jail

An Open Letter ^*

Tax resisters’ fund issues 11^th appeal