"No taxation without representation" in the American woman suffrage movement.

• Author: Tutt, Juliana

INTRODUCTION I. ACTION AND COMPLIANCE A. Calls to Action B. Action C. Compliance 1. Reluctance 2. Alternatives 3. Discouragement II. DEBATE A. Premise 1: Taxation Without Representation Is Tyranny B. Premise 2: Women Are Taxed C. Premise 3: Women Are Not Represented D. Conclusion and Corollary III. META-DEBATE A. Antis Against Taxpayer Suffrage B. Suffragists for Taxpayer Suffrage C. Antis for Taxpayer Suffrage D. Suffragists Against Taxpayer Suffrage IV. THE FEDERAL INCOME TAX CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION

A recent resurgence of "no taxation without representation" rhetoric has brought the motto to the forefront of American consciousness. The debate over voting rights continues for residents of Washington, D.C., where license plates bear the phrase "Taxation Without Representation." (1) Recent tax day protests employed Boston Tea Party symbolism, predictably sparking debate over the applicability of the "no taxation without representation" argument. (2) In a similar vein, a "Tea Party" was recently registered in Florida to compete against the more traditional political parties. (3)

These modern applications of the "no taxation without representation" argument inspire curiosity about past applications. How much impact has the argument historically had on broad social and political movements? This Note examines one such movement--American woman suffrage.

Given the continuing popularity of the "no taxation without representation" catchphrase, one might expect American woman suffragists to have pounced on every opportunity to deploy it. But although many suffragists occasionally mentioned taxation, it was certainly not a focal point of the movement as a whole. Extended discussion of taxation was relatively rare. Most "no taxation without representation" arguments were buried within laundry lists or reduced to simply those four words (or some simple variation) with no further explanation. And only a handful of suffragists leveraged "no taxation without representation" into tax resistance.

On the other hand, American suffragists had a long time to discuss and debate every aspect of their campaign--it was seventy-two years from the 1848 Seneca Falls convention to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Suffragists produced such a massive amount of printed material during this time that even a secondary argument resulted in a huge array of source material. Taxation was a minor aspect of the suffrage movement only relative to other arguments.

Consequently, it is somewhat surprising that taxation in the American woman suffrage movement has been treated at length in the literature only twice before: in Carolyn C. Jones's article Dollars and Selves: Women's Tax Criticism and Resistance in the 1870s, (4) and in a chapter of Linda K. Kerber's book No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship. (5) The former concentrates on the ways suffragists reformulated "dollars" arguments into "selves" arguments by metaphorically referring to pay inequity and household work, to take two examples, as "taxation." The latter is an insightful descriptive history of the taxation argument in the suffrage movement, using as its main example the Smith sisters' tax resistance. (6)

In this Note, I expand on this prior literature, focusing on why the taxation argument, which at first blush seems so promising, played such a (relatively) minor role in the American suffrage debate. (7) In addition to exploring this question, my research is important for several other reasons. First, the American woman suffrage movement provides a rich historical case study in the use of this rhetoric. The stories and arguments arising at the intersection of tax and woman suffrage are intelligent and entertaining, well worth study in their own right. These stories also provide a unique lens through which to view other important issues of the time, such as class, race, federalism, and, of course, tax and gender.

Finally, although I do not pretend to consider the entire corpus of woman suffrage primary material, I bring to light (in both the main text and the footnotes) numerous primary sources not discussed in prior scholarship. One major contribution of this Note is, in fact, the culling through of massive amounts of primary source material for taxation-based arguments and ideas. This Note, at its heart, organizes and analyzes the results of this effort. I therefore continue to fill the gap in the literature recognized by Jones and Kerber. (8)

The Note proceeds in four parts. In Part I, I examine real incidents of tax resistance. By exploring the limitations of the tax resistance strategy, I explain the scarcity of such incidents.

Given the limitations of tax resistance, suffragists instead devoted energy towards formulating an airtight taxation-based argument for woman suffrage. Because "antis" carefully fought back against every link in the logical chain of this argument, (9) suffragists were forced to develop complex defenses and responses. Part II analyzes this debate. Ultimately, I arrive at the same conclusion as many of the debaters: the taxation argument leads logically only to taxpayer suffrage, not universal suffrage.

In Part III, I examine the meta-debate in light of this weakness: Should suffragists use the "no taxation without representation" argument? Or does taxpayer suffrage halt progress towards universal suffrage? Neither suffragists nor antis could agree on where they should stand with regard to taxpayer suffrage. This uncertainty necessarily weakened even further the impact of the "no taxation without representation" argument.

Finally, in Part IV, I recognize the potential and actual changes wrought in the taxation debate and meta-debate by the advent of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, which legitimized the federal income tax. Before this, most references to "taxes" are to state and local property taxes. I show how the emergence of the federal income tax significantly strengthened suffragists' taxation arguments, and posit that taxation therefore became a much more important argument in the last few years before suffrage was obtained. To my knowledge, this wrinkle has not yet been discussed in any other scholarship.

1. ACTION AND COMPLIANCE

   Some suffragists took the "no taxation without representation" sentiment at face value: being denied the right to vote, they refused to pay their taxes. I use the term "tax resistance" to refer to such outright refusals to pay taxes owed. Suffrage leaders occasionally called for widespread tax resistance and often praised those who heeded the call. Despite this, tax resistance was a fairly unusual phenomenon. In this Part, I describe tax resistance efforts and explain the many factors that made real tax resistance uncommon.

   1. Calls to Action

      Based on the simple proposition that there should be no taxation without representation, (10) woman suffragists attempted to inspire women to engage in tax resistance. In 1852, two particularly strong calls to action came from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone at the third National Woman's Rights Convention. A letter from Stanton emphasized the nobility of tax resistance while recognizing the "suffering" tax resisters were bound to face:

      Should not all women, living in States where woman has a right to hold property, refuse to pay taxes, so long as she is unrepresented in the government of that State? Such a movement, if simultaneous, would no doubt produce a great deal of confusion, litigation and suffering, on the part of woman; but shall we fear to suffer for the maintenance of the same glorious principles, for which our fore-fathers fought, and bled, and died. Shall we deny the faith of the old revolutionary heroes ... by declaring in action, that taxation without representation is just? Ah! no; like the English Dissenters, and high-souled Quakers, of our own land, let us suffer our property to be seized and sold--but let us never pay another tax, until our existence as citizens, our civil and political rights, be fully recognized. (11) Stone also emphasized the need to endure the severe hardships of tax resistance in order to achieve the suffragists' goals:

      [I] urge[] upon woman, the duty of resisting taxation, so long as she is not represented. It may involve the loss of friends, as it surely will that of property. But let them all go: friends, house, garden-spot, all. The principle at issue requires the sacrifice. Resist; let the case be tried in the courts; be your own lawyers; base your cause on the admitted self-evident troth, that "taxation and representation are inseparable." One such resistance, by the agitation that would grow out of it, will do more to set this question right, than all the Conventions in the world.... ... [S]isters, the right of suffrage will be secured to us, when we ourselves are willing to incur the odium and loss of property, which resistance to this outrage on our rights will surely bring with it. (12) Similar calls to action are scattered throughout the documented history of the movement, (13) although later statements usually did not point out the dangers of tax resistance with the force of these early examples, perhaps because these dangers were already known, or perhaps because of the dampening effect of such reminders.

      The 1873 centennial of the Boston Tea Party provided a particularly meaningful opportunity to urge real tax resistance. At the New York Woman's Suffrage Society's celebration of the occasion, Lillie Devereux Blake urged women to refuse to pay their taxes, expressing a desire for an "anti-tax association in [New York] City which would guide them to this issue." (14) Indeed, local antitax leagues were springing up across the country, from San Francisco (15) to Chicago. (16)

   2. Action

      These cries for action did not go entirely unheeded. There were several women who decided to flatly refuse their tax collectors' demands. Stone took her own advice in 1858...