Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW : 1888 - 1954), Wednesday 13 November 1912, page 7


"THE REVOLT OF MAN."

AGAINST PAYING WIFE'S INCOME

TAX.

Mr. G. B. Shaw was the chief speaker at a meeting held in Caxton Hall, London, by the Women's Tax Resist-ance League last month, "to protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay the taxes

on his wife's earned income." Sir John Cockburn was in the chair. Mr. Shaw said that this was the be-ginning of the revolt of his own un-

fortunate sex against the intolerable henpecking which had been brought up-on them by the refusal by the Govern-ment to bring about a reform which

everybody knew was going to come, and the delay of which was a mere piece o senseless stupidity. From the unfortu-

nate Prime Minister downwards no man

was safe.

He know of cases in his boyhood where women managed to make homes for their children and themselves, and then their husbands sold the furniture, turned the wife and children out, and got drunk. The Married Women's Property Act was then carried, under which the husband retained the respon-sibility of the property and the woman had the property to herself. As Mrs. Wilks would not pay the tax on her own income Mr. Wilks went to gaol. "If my wife did that to me," said Mr. Shaw, "the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife. (Laugh-

tor.) It is indefensible."

Women, he went on, had got com-pletely beyond the law at the present time. Mrs. Leigh had been let out, but he presumed that after a brief in-terval for refreshments she would set fire to another theatre. He got his living by the theatre, and very prob-ably when she read the report of that speech she would set fire to a theatre where his plays were being performed. The other day he practically challenged the Government to starve Mrs. Leigh, and in the course of the last fortnight he had received the most abusive letters which had ever reached him in his life. The Government should put an end to the difficulty at once by giving women the votes. As he resumed his seat

Mr. Shaw said--"I feel glad I have been allowed to say the things I have, here to-night without being lynched."

A resolution protesting against the imprisonment of Mr. Wilks was unan-imously carried. Mr. Zangwill wrote, expressing sympathy with the protest, and said, "Marrying an heiress may

be the ruin of a man."