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“A One-Woman Tea Party”: Tax Resistance, Feminism, and Conservatism in the Life of Vivien Kellems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2015

Olivier Burtin
Olivier Burtin*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 162 - 190
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Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

For their helpful comments on previous drafts of this essay, I am grateful to Stephen Clay, Nicolas Delalande, Romain Huret, Kevin Kruse, Isaac William Martin, Ajay Mehrotra, Pauline Peretz, Denis Rousselier, Sean Vanatta, Benjamin Waterhouse, Mark Wilson, Julian Zelizer, and the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Policy History. Special thanks to Betsy Pittman of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut and to Margot Canaday for their research assistance.

References

NOTES

1. “Miss Kellems Announces her Own ‘Westport Tea Party’ As Tax Protest,” Hartford Courant, 19 January 1944.

2. Congressional Record—Senate, 18 February 1971, 3038.

3. See, for instance, Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York, 2012), 6–20.

4. Ida Walters, “Lonely Causes: At 77, Vivien Kellems Looks Ahead to Years of Battling the IRS,” Wall Street Journal, 7 January 1974; Barbara Carlson, “IRS Gets Vivien’s Sweetner,” Hartford Courant, 31 May 1970.

5. For a previous treatment of Kellems’s life, which left several dimensions of her career undocumented and did not use her personal papers, see Carolyn C. Jones, “Vivien Kellems and the Folkways of Taxation,” in Total War and the Law: The American Home Front in World War II, ed. Daniel R. Ernst and Victor Jew (Westport, Conn., 2002).

6. On tax resistance, see Huret, Romain, A Republic Without Taxpayers: American Resisters to Progressive Taxation from the Civil War to the Present (Cambridge, Mass., 2014Google Scholar); Martin, Isaac William, Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent (Oxford, 2013)Google Scholar; Delalande, NicolasHuret, Romain, “Tax Resistance: A Global History?” Journal of Policy History 25, no. 3 (July 2013): 301–7Google Scholar;Martin, Isaac William, “Redistributing Toward the Rich: Strategic Policy Crafting in the Campaign to Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, 1938–1958,” American Journal of Sociology 116 (July 2010): 1–52Google Scholar; Huret, Romain, “‘Une armée de délinquants fiscaux’? Les refus de l’impôt aux Etats-Unis au lendemain de la crise de 1929,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 56 (2009): 188–210;Google Scholar Isaac William Martin, Ajay K. Mehrotra, and Monica Prasad, eds., The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 2009); Julian E. Zelizer, “The Uneasy Relationship: Democracy, Taxation, and State Building Since the New Deal,” in The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History, ed. Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak, and Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton, 2003); David T. Beito, Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, 1989); Isaac William Martin, The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics (Stanford, 2008); David O. Sears and Jack Citrin, Tax Revolt: Something for Nothing in California (Cambridge, Mass., 1982).

7. “Rebuked for Call Not to Pay Taxes,” New York Times, 20 January 1944.

8. Charles F. J. Morse, “Income Tax Opposition Insists on Being Heard,” Hartford Courant, 10 August 1971.

9. On the NWP, see Becker, Susan D., The Origins of the Equal Rights Amendment: American Feminism Between the Wars (Westport, Conn., 1981)Google Scholar; Cott, Nancy, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1987)Google Scholar; Freeman, Jo, A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics (Lanham, Md., 2000)Google Scholar; Cobble, Dorothy Sue, The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton, 2004)Google Scholar; Rupp, Leila J.Taylor, Verta A., Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (New York, 1987)Google Scholar.

10. Philip M. Keohane, “Kellems Faints Crusade Fizzles,” Middletown (Conn.) Press, 4 November 1964, Folder: 1964 campaign, clippings and photos, Box 40, Vivien Kellems Papers. Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries (unless otherwise specified, all archives cited here are from this collection).

11. “It’s Liberation Day for Women,” Chicago Tribune, 26 August 1970.

12. On the rights revolution, see Tushnet, Mark, The Rights Revolution in the Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C., 2009)Google Scholar; Walker, Samuel, The Rights Revolution: Rights and Community in Modern America (New York, 1998)Google Scholar.

13. The literature on the conservative movement is vast. On the role of intellectuals, see Nash, George H., The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, Since 1945 (Wilmington, Del., 1996)Google Scholar; Burgin, Angus, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression (Cambridge, Mass., 2012)Google Scholar. On tax resistance, see note 6. On middle-class housewives, see Nickerson, Michelle, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton, 2012)Google Scholar; Brennan, Mary C., Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade Against Communism (Boulder, 2008)Google Scholar; Rymph, Catherine E., Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage Through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill, 2006)Google Scholar; Critchlow, Donald T., Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton, 2005)Google Scholar; McGirr, Lisa, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, 2001)Google Scholar; Jeansonne, Glen, Women of the Far Right: The Mothers’ Movement and World War II (Chicago, 1996).Google Scholar

14. For an introduction to the emerging literature on singles, see Kahng, Lily, “One Is the Loneliest Number: The Single Taxpayer in a Joint Return World,” Hastings Law Journal 61 (2010): 651–86,Google Scholar esp. part 3. On the Democratic Party and minorities, see Radosh, Ronald, Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964–1996 (New York, 1996)Google Scholar.

15. On populism, see Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York, 1998); Robert D. Johnston, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive-Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, 2003); “The Cathedral Messenger: Dedication Services of the David Clinton Kellems Memorial Pulpit,” Folder: Kellems, David Clinton, 1951–51, Box 1:10; Paul Hodge, “Vivien Kellems: She’d Rather Fight than Switch,” 1964; Jack Ahern, “Miss Kellems Doughty Battler in Long Fight for Own Views,” 1964, Folder: 1964 Campaign, clippings and photos, Box 40; Logan, “Grips and Taxes—II,” The New Yorker, 10 February 1951.

16. On Seligman, see Ajay K. Mehrotra, “Envisioning the Modern American Fiscal State: Progressive-Era Economists and the Intellectual Foundations of the U.S. Income Tax,” UCLA Law Review 52, no. 6 (August 2005): 1793–1866; “A Crusading Non-Conformist: The Vivien Kellems Story,” The Register Magazine, 11 June 1961, Folder: Articles newspapers, 1961, Box 57.

17. “Miss Vivien Kellems to Speak at Lakes’ Woman Club Dec. 6,” Mountain Lake News, 3 December 1939, Folder: Speeches, October–November 1939, Box 63; Frank E. Perley, “She Has Been Acclaimed the Leading Woman in American Industry,” Hartford Courant, 4 March 1945.

18. Peggy Haughney, “Advocates Women Be Electrical Stylists,” 1940, Folder: Clippings, 1940, Box 58. On women in the interwar period, see Lois Scharf and Joan M. Jensen, eds., Decades of Discontent: The Women’s Movement, 1920–1940 (Westport, Conn., 1983); Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s (Boston, 1982); Dorothy M. Brown, Setting a Course: American Women in the 1920s (Boston, 1987).

19. Speech for the Fairfield County Public Forum, Norwalk, Connecticut, 11 June 1937, Folder: Speeches 1935–37, Box 4; Naomi Doebel, “Reelection of Roosevelt Will Mean Fascism for U.S., Says Woman Industrial Executive,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, 14 October 1940; “Sees ‘Betrayal’ by Roosevelt,” 12 October 1940, Folder: Clippings, 1940, Box 58; James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–1939 (Lexington, 1967).

20. Spending number quoted in Kathleen Frydl, The GI Bill (Cambridge, 2009), 10. See also Sparrow, James T., Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government (New York, 2011), esp. 119–59Google Scholar; Carolyn C. Jones, “Mass-Based Income Taxation: Creating a Taxpaying Culture, 1940–1952,” in Funding the Modern American State, 1941–1995: The Rise and Fall of the Era of Easy Finance, ed. W. Elliot Brownlee (New York, 1996); “Predicts War Taxation Will Kill Business,” Chicago Tribune, 29 September 1943.

21. On the situation of small businesses during this period, see Blum, John Morton, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York, 1976), 124–31Google Scholar; Brinkley, Alan, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York, 1995), 192–94Google Scholar; Eyal-Cohen, Mirit, “When American Small Business Hit the Jackpot: Taxes, Politics, and the History of Organizational Choice in the 1950’s,” Pittsburgh Tax Review 6, no. 1 (2008): 12Google Scholar; U.S. Senate, Sub-Committee of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, Investigation of Disclosure of Information Obtained Through Censorship, 4 December 1944, 78th Congress, Hearings, 330; Kellems Products, Inc., “Comparative Statement of Operations for the Years Ended December 31, 1939 and 1938,” Folder: Balance sheets, 1939, Box 25; Perley, “She Has Been Acclaimed the Leading Woman in Industry”; “Washington ‘Bureaucracy’ Assailed by Vivien Kellems: War Effort and Business Hampered, She Declared,” Stamford (Conn.) Advocate, 28 July 1942, Folder: Speeches 1941–43, Box 63.

22. Jacqueline Hunt, “Kellems Puts Her Beauty Care on an Efficiency Basis,” 1942, Folder: Misc. clippings, 1935–36, 1940–42, Box 63; Vivien Kellems to Caroline Lexow Babcock, 12 June 1942, Folder: National Woman’s Party, 1941–45, Box 35; Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 51–82.

23. “Vivien Kellems Announces Her Own ‘Westport Tea Party’ as Tax Protest,” Hartford Courant, 19 January 1944; Kellems to Collector of Internal Revenue, 15 December 1943, Folder: Ads and Internal Revenue Service, 1943, Box 26; Vivien Kellems to Mrs. W. N. Holmes, 28 February 1944, Folder: Attacks by congressman Coffee regarding Von Zedlitz, 1944, Box 5.

24. Phillips-Fein, Kim, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York, 2009), 3–25Google Scholar; Beito, Taxpayers in Revolt; Mark R. Wilson, “The Advantages of Obscurity: World War II Tax Carryback Provisions and the Normalization of Corporate Welfare,” in What’s Good for Business: Business and American Politics Since World War II, ed. Kim Phillips-Fein and Julian E. Zelizer, 16–44 (Oxford, 2012); Martin, “Redistributing Toward the Rich”; “Abolish 200 Useless U.S. Bureaus, Fire 2 Million, Urges Miss Kellems,” Saint-Louis Post Dispatch, undated, Folder: Tax strike, 1944, Box 63.

25. Wall, Wendy, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford, 2008), 103–59;CrossRefGoogle Scholar “A Crackpot Idea,” Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer-News, Folder: Tax strike, 1944, Box 62; “Business Woman Won’t Pay Taxes; Asks Following,” Chicago Tribune, 19 January 1944; “Will Not Pay Tax, Miss Kellems Says,” New York Times, 19 January 1944; “Woman War Plant Head Defies Income Tax,” Los Angeles Times, 19 January 1944; “Rebuked for Call Not to Pay Taxes,” New York Times, 20 January 1944; “Calls for Business Revolt: Vivien Kellems, War Producer, Balks at Paying the Income Tax,” Washington Post, 19 January 1944. For the local editorials, see Folder: Editorials on tax strikes, 1944, Box 63.

26. The origins of the leak were revealed years later. Andy Logan, “Grips and Taxes—I,” The New Yorker, 3 February 1951; Irwin Ross, “Vivien Kellems,” New York Post, 24 August 1952; “Vivian Kellems [sic]—Spontaneous or Inspired Critic?” Congressional Record-House, 31 March 1944, 3369–71; Kellems’s relationship with Zedlitz had been the subject of investigation by the bureau as early as 1941, see Summary Memorandum, SAC, to John Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI, and James P. McGranery, Assistant to the Attorney General, 9 April 1945, Vivien Kellems, Count Frederick Karl von Zedlitz, Bureau File 0927235–000–65–36847, Section 3 (574929). Kellems was quickly cleared of all doubts, but the last report on Zedlitz’s everyday activities was filed only on 27 December 1946, see Report, 27 December 1946, Frederick Karl von Zedlitz, with aliases, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 0927235–000—65–36847, Section 3 (574929).

27. Logan, “Grips and Taxes—II,” 47; Vivien Kellems to Louisa Flint, 27 June 1946, Folder: Kellems to Louisa Flint, c. 1946, Box 2:58.

28. Gerstle, Gary, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2001), 128–237Google Scholar; “Morgenthau Aids Kellems Suit Defense,” San Francisco Chronicle, 15 June 1946.

29. After her friend Caroline Babcock left her position as NWP executive secretary in 1947 to protest its authoritarian leadership, Kellems ceased paying her dues; on politics, see also Vivien Kellems to Caroline Lexow Babcock, 12 June 1942, Folder: National Woman’s Party, 1941–45, Box 35; on the schism within the NWP, see Rupp and Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums, 28–31; on the Minute Women, see Carleton, Don E., Red Scare! Right-Wing Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism, and Their Legacy in Texas (Austin, 1985), 111–22Google Scholar; Kellems to Drew Pearson, 9 April 1947, Folder: Curfew law fight 1947, clippings and letters, Box 31.

30. Jones, “Mass-Based Income Taxation”; Brownlee, W. Elliot, Federal Taxation in America: A Short History (Washington, D.C., 2004), 107–43Google Scholar; Sparrow, Warfare State, 119–59; Witte, John F., The Politics and Development of the Federal Income Tax (Madison, 1985), 110–30Google Scholar; Kellems, Toil, Taxes, and Trouble, 63–64.

31. Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–1960 (Urbana, 1994)Google Scholar; Harris, Howell John, The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (Madison, 1982)Google Scholar. For an introduction to the voluminous literature on the second Red Scare, see Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston, 1998). Percentage quoted in Sparrow, Warfare State, 246.

32. Kellems, Toil, Taxes, and Trouble, 20–29.

33. Vivien Kellems to the Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder, 30 April, 31 July, and 15 December 1948; Vivien Kellems to the President, 16 June 1948, Folder: Vivien Kellems and David Kellems (Kellems Co.) v. United States of America, undated, 1949–51, Box 24; on the financial difficulties, see Vivien Kellems to Jesse Randolph Kellems, 14 October 1949, Folder: Kellems, Jesse, 1940–49, Box 1:40; Court transcript, 23 January 1951, Folder: Court transcript: Vivien Kellems et al. v. United States of America et al., 1951, Box 29; Kellems, Toil, Taxes, and Trouble, 151.

34. Sylvia Porter, “Kellems vs. U.S.,” New York Post, 3 May 1948; Vivien Kellems to Charles Caulfield, 25 August 1949, Folder: Offers of help on Withholding tax, 1948–51, Box 32; Vivien Kellems to Louisa Flint Kellems, 18 February, 26 February, 1 March, 31 May 1948, Folder: Kellems to Louisa Flint, c. 1948–49 Box 2:60; “New Blast Hurled by Vivien Kellems,” Los Angeles Times, 9 June 1951; Bess M. Wilson, “Liberty Belle U.S. Rally to Attack Federal Abuse of Citizens, Constitutional Violations,” Los Angeles Times, 18 November 1951.

35. “Petticoat Army Goes Forth to War,” The News-Sentinel (Ind.), 7 May 1952, Folder: Liberty Belles clippings, 1952, Box 61; Belles Membership records are not complete, as the California chapter kept separate records. See folder: Liberty Belles names, c. 1953, Box 37; Vivien Kellems to Mr. Horace W. Peters, 27 August 1953, Folder: Tax exempt status, Box 37; Florence Farrell, “Liberty Belles Present Program in El Segundo,” El Segundo (Calif.) Herald, 1 May 1952, Folder: Liberty Belles clippings, 1952, Box 61; Vivien Kellems to Blaisdell, 25 July 1952, Folder: Liberty Belles Inc., California, 1953, Box 37; on right-wing female activism in this period and the tradition of “clubwomen,” see Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism; Brennan, Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace; Rymph, Republican Women, 131–87; McGirr, Suburban Warriors.

36. On the Marshall housewives, see Huret, A Republic Without Taxpayers, chap. 6; on the CCG and the ATA, see Martin, “Redistributing Toward the Rich”; on bookstores, see Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism, 142–48; Kellems, Toil, Taxes, and Trouble, 155.

37. On Chodorov and Lee, see Huret, American Tax Resisters, chap. 6; Vivien Kellems to Robert D. Kephart, 9 July 1973, Folder: Washington D.C.–Massachusetts, 1973, Box 22:462. For Kellems’s correspondence with Chodorov, see Folder: Correspondence Delaware–Georgia, 1952–53, Box 9:204; “Letters Praise Utah Governor for Tax Stand,” Chicago Tribune, 15 October 1955; “Tax-Dodging Governor,” Washington Post, 10 October 1955; for a picture of Kellems on the “Answers for Americans” show, see Box 27; “Vivien Kellems. Friday, Channel 8 (TV),” 29 October 1954, Folder: Gubernatorial campaign, 1954, Box 37.

38. On the collapse of the Belles, see Vivien Kellems to Mr. Horace W. Peters, 27 August 1953, Folder: Tax exempt status, Box 37; “Liberty Belles Battle over Primary Backing,” Los Angeles Times, 7 March 1952; “Liberty Belles Protest on Werdel Move Grows,” Los Angeles Times, 8 May 1952; “Liberty Belles Widen Rift on Werdel Slate,” Los Angeles Times, 9 May 1952; “Leader Quits Liberty Belles in New Dispute,” Los Angeles Times, 20 May 1952; “Minutes of the Liberty Belles Board of Directors,” 7 April, 18 September, 2 December 1952, 7 February, 10 March 1953, Folder: Liberty Belles, Inc. minutebook, 1952, Box 37; on Manion, see Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 81–86; on Wedemeyer, see Schoenwald, Jonathan M., A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (New York, 2001), 27–32Google Scholar; Griffith quoted in Martin, Rich People’s Movements, 128.

39. “GOP Presses Vivien Kellems to End Goldwater Broadcasts,” New York Times, 27 September 1964; “GOP Policy Makers Eye Kellems Show,” Hartford Times, 29 September 1964, Folder: 1964 campaign, clippings and photos, Box 40.

40. Ida Walters, “Lonely Causes”; Jack Zaiman, “Vivien Fights for Single Girl,” Hartford Courant, 15 April 1969.

41. Kessler-Harris, Alice, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Oxford, 2001), 170–202Google Scholar; McCaffery, Edward J., Taxing Women (Chicago, 1997), 25–97Google Scholar; Jones, Carolyn C., “Split Income and Separate Spheres: Tax Law and Gender Roles in the 1940s,” Law and History Review 6 (October 1988), 259–310Google Scholar.

42. Robert O. Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s (New York, 2012); Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York, 2008); Ruth Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930–1965 (Ithaca, 2000); Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York, 1992).

43. Brownlee, Federal Taxation in America, 129–34; Zelizer, Julian E., Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945–1975 (Cambridge, 1998), 283–311Google Scholar.

44. Zaiman, “Vivien Fights for Single Girl.”

45. Robert Waters, “McCarthy Goes to Bat for Vivien,” Hartford Courant, 4 June 1969; Stan Simon, “IRS Chief, Vivien Bury Hatchet—Briefly,” Hartford Courant, 25 April 1972; U.S. Congress, House Committee on Ways and Means, Tax Treatment of Single Persons and Married Persons Where Both Spouses Are Working, 10 April and l May 1972, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., Public Hearings, 95–98, 112–15, 121–22; Vivien Kellems to “Dear Browbeaten, Discriminated Against, and Impoverished Taxpayer,” Folder: 1969–71, Tax, Box 42. Capitals in the text; U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Finance, Tax Reform Act of 1969, 26, 29, 30, September, 1, 2 October 1969, 91st Cong., 1st sess., 4875–91; Robert Waters, “Vivien’s Tax Bill Loses in Senate Vote by 66–25,” Hartford Courant, 11 December 1969; “Vivien Says Tax Rate Vote Moral Victory,” Hartford Courant, 12 December 1969.

46. Matthew D. Lassiter, “Inventing Family Values,” in Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, ed. Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer (Cambridge, Mass., 2008); Ronald Radosh, Divided They Fell.

47. Barbara Carlson, “Women to March, Strike, and Boycott,” Hartford Courant, 26 August 1970; Carlson, “Men Asked to March for Women’s Rights,” Hartford Courant, 9 August 1970; on law and order, see Michael W. Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 2005); Gwen Gibson, “A Connecticut Yankee in Tax Court,” Los Angeles Times, 30 September 1971; “She Vows Appeal: Tax Court Judge Ousts Claim by Vivien Kellems,” undated, Folder: Newspapers, 1973–74, Box 47.

48. “Open Letter to Secretary John B. Connally,” Washington Post, 17 March 1971; Prudence Brown, “Single Woman Fights the System,” Newsday Business, Folder: Connecticut, 1971–72, Box 59; “Tax Rebel Again in Ring—For the Unmarried Millions,” The Atlanta Journal, 22 January 1970, Folder: Clippings, Taxes, 1969–70, Box 58; Robert Waters, “High Court Bars Kellems’s Appeal,” Hartford Courant, 10 October 1973.

49. On the wave of antitaxation protests, see Martin, The Permanent Tax Revolt; Huret, A Republic without Taxpayers, chap. 7; on the IRS, see John A. Andrew III, Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon (Chicago, 2002); for her mail, see boxes 44–48; “Vivien Kellems, Recipient of The Register’s Connecticut Citizen of the Year Award for 1970,” The New Haven Register, 3 January 1971, Folder: Connecticut, 1971–72, Box 59.

50. House Committee on Ways and Means, Tax Treatment of Single Persons; U.S. Congress, House Committee on Ways and Means, General Tax Reform, 23 March 23, 1973, 93rd Cong., 1st sess., 2949–3001; House Committee on Ways and Means, Tax Treatment of Single Persons, 10 April and 1 May 1972, 9–11; House Committee on Ways and Means, Tax Treatment of Single Persons, 25; Clarence Petersen, “Pay an Estimated 20% More: Singles Protest ‘Unfair’ Income Taxes,” Chicago Tribune, 7 February 1974; Sylvia Porter, “The Single Taxpayer,” undated, Folder: Columnists, 1971, Letter Sylvia Porter, Box 44.

51. Zelizer, Taxing America, 283–311; “Vivien Sees Wilbur Mills As Her ‘Biggest Obstacle,’” Naugatuck (Conn.) News, 25 March 1971, Folder: Connecticut, 1971–72, Box 59. See the rundown of her interactions with him from 28 April 1971 to 14 June 1972, Folder: Washington D.C., 1972, Box 21:450. See also folder: Correspondence Wilbur Mills, 1973, Box 47; Folder: Wilbur Mills, 1974, Box 48; “Single People Are Taxed Unfairly,” Dublin (Ga.) Courier-Herald, 3 September 1969, Folder: Clippings, Taxes, 1969–70, Box 58; Wilbur D. Mills to Vivien Kellems, 27 June 1972, Folder: Wilbur Mills, 1974, Box 48.

52. Lynn Sherr, “Unwed Taxpayers, 28 Million, Claim It’s Discrimination,” Macon (Ga.) Telegraph and News, 12 April 1970, Folder: Clippings, Taxes, 1969–70, Box 58; House Committee on Ways and Means, Tax Treatment of Single Persons, 85; Kellems to Sylvia Porter, 28 August, 14 September 1971, Folder: Columnists, 1971, Letter Sylvia Porter, Box 44; Kellems to Ms. McConihe, July 11, 1972; CO$T Accounting, Volume 1, Number 3, August 1972, Folder: CO$T, 1972, Box 44; “Tax Reform Group Needs Support from Taxpayers,” The News-Chronicle (Pa.), 15 December 1972, Folder: CO$T, 1973, Box 47; House Committee on Ways and Means, Tax Treatment of Single Persons, 25–32. Another issue that complicated the debate and contributed to the defeat of the campaign to abolish the singles penalty was the emergence of the “marriage penalty,” a by-product of the 1969 Tax Reform Act. In situations where both spouses worked and earned roughly the same income, they now paid more taxes than the same unmarried working persons living together. During the 1972 hearings, opponents of the singles penalty testified alongside those opposed to the marriage penalty, making it even harder for the former to make a compelling case, see McCaffery, Taxing Women, 58–85; Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity, 170–202.

53. Paula Auclair, “Kellems’s Taxes to Total 1 Million,” Hartford Courant, 15 April 1978.

54. Larry R. Williams, Confessions of a Radical Tax Protestor: An Inside Expose of the Tax Resistance Movement (Hoboken, N.J., 2011), 46–48; Kauffman, Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle American Anti-Imperialism (New York, 2008), 185–87; Larson, Tax Revolt: U.S.A.! Why and How Thousands of Patriotic Americans Refuse to Pay the Income Tax (Washington, D.C., 1973), 19–41; Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 1973), 85; Julian E. Zelizer, “Rethinking the History of American Conservatism,” Reviews in American History 38, no. 2 (June 2010): 367–92.