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Show firm deposits its funds, to take out of those funds twice the amount of the total employees' withholding tax, plus interest at almost 15 per cent and turn the money over to the government without even going to court or having any semblance of a trial. The government thus collected the amount of the withholding tax Three Times, once from the employees themselves and twice from Miss Kellems by coercing the bank to pay it out of her account without the due process of law guaranteed by the constitution. consti-tution. This is not a question of whether wheth-er or not we believe in the income in-come tax, nor a question of expediency ex-pediency in one form or another of collecting the tax. II is a question ques-tion of whether any citizen of Ihe United Stales shall be subject lo Ihe indignity of coercion thai marks a totalitarian stale, or whether even the Federal Government shall respect Ihe Constitution of Ihe Uniled Slales and so recognize Ihe right of every citizen lo due process of law. Miss Kellems has rendered the American people a great service at serious risk and cost to herself. her-self. She is fighting for a basic principal and has drawn the issue clearly and sharply. If the American people value their heritage of Freedom and want to stop the cancerous invasion in-vasion of Federal power into their private lives, they will im mediately write to their Congressmen Con-gressmen and Senators in Washington Wash-ington and insist that Miss Kellems Kel-lems be given the fair trial she requested of the Secretary of :he Treasury, to test the law in wr courts. IT TOOK A WOMAN TO DO IT By Dr. Alfred P. Haakie A lovely little lady in Connecticut Con-necticut has dared to do what thousands of men wanted to see done but lacked the sheer nerve to do. It took a woman to challenge the insidious growth of unrestricted unre-stricted Federal power in one place where such a challenge would really hurt. How far shall the Federal Government be permitted to go in entering our homes and pri-'vate pri-'vate affairs, perhaps opening our mail and listening to telephone tele-phone conversations, dipping its fingers illegally into our private purses, or forcing us to serve as government agents and collectors col-lectors against our will? Vivien Kellems, vivacious, patriotic and deadly-in-earnest woman industrialist of Sauga-tuck, Sauga-tuck, Connecticut, says the Federal Fed-eral Government has already gone too far, and that it is time to test the legality of forcing employers to withhold income from their employees and, as agents or collectors for the government, turn the money over to the Treasury Department. Depart-ment. So she announced in effect that she would no longer1 be a party to violating an important constitutional right. She wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington, telling him that she would no longer collect the income tax from her employees, and suggested that the Secretary bring legal suit against her in the same orderly fashion in which the Federal Government has cooperated with labor leaders lead-ers in testing a provision of the Taft-Hartley law. Miss Kellems kept her word. Her employees made their returns re-turns and paid their income tax ;n accordance with the law. The difference was that Miss Kellems Kel-lems did not withhold the money from her employees and so force them to pay it to the government through her without ever seeing the money they paid in taxes. Instead she paid her employees their entire wages so they could pay their own income taxes, which they did. But, the government refused to grant Miss Kellems the same consideration it granted to others, oth-ers, and also recognize her right to due process of law. Instead, agents of the Federal Government Govern-ment tried to get the Kellems management to sign self-incriminating documents. When that failed the government coerced the bank in which Miss Kellems' |