THOUGH ANIMUS TOWARD tax increases was a key reason for the American Revolution, historians have not shown much interest in the topic in other contexts. One reason may be that the history of tax revolts, much like the history of mutual aid or of nonunion workers during strikes, cannot easily be subsumed under the most popular analytical categories, such as economic class. So Linda Upham-Bornstein’s “Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender”: Taxpayers’ Associations, Pocketbook Politics, and the Law During the Great Depression is a welcome sign.
Upham-Bornstein, a historian at Plymouth State University, begins in the 19th century. The taxpayer leagues of the Gilded Age charged that political corruption had produced (as one group put it) “the reckless expenditure of the people’s money.” These organizations divided sharply along regional lines. In the Northeast, Gilded Age tax resistance groups were generally nonpartisan and had few
