Association of Real Estate Taxpayers

Last updated March 12, 2019

The Association of Real Estate Taxpayers (ARET) was an organization of real-estate taxpayers in Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. Between 1931 and 1933, it organized one of the largest tax strikes in American history. The group had been founded in 1930 by several wealthy real-estate owners.

Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in Illinois and the third most populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,716,450 (2017), it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States. Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the United States, and the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often referred to as "Chicagoland." The Chicago metropolitan area, at nearly 10 million people, is the third-largest in the United States; the fourth largest in North America ; and the third largest metropolitan area in the world by land area.

Cook County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is the second-most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles County, California. As of 2017, the population was 5,211,263. Its county seat is Chicago, the largest city in Illinois and the third-most populous city in the United States. More than 40% of all residents of Illinois live in Cook County.

The chief demand of ARET was that local and state governments obey a long-ignored provision of the Illinois Constitution of 1870 requiring uniform taxation for all forms of property. John M. Pratt and James E. Bistor charged that the failure to assess such personal property as furniture, cars, and stocks and bonds was not only illegal but left owners of real estate with excessive burdens. ARET's program also included support for sweeping rate reductions in the general property tax and retrenchment in local governmental spending.

John Morgan Pratt was a tax resistance leader, activist in the Old Right, publicist and newspaper man. Along with James E. Bistor, he led what was probably the largest tax strike since the Era of the American Revolution.

James Eugene Bistor was a tax resistance leader, and real estate operator and broker. Along with John M. Pratt, he led the probably the largest tax strike since the Era of the American Revolution.

ARET functioned primarily as a cooperative legal service. Each member paid annual dues of $15 to fund lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of real-estate assessments. The suits, when finally filed, took the form of a 7,000-page, two-foot-thick book listing the names and tax data for all 26,000 co-litigants.^[1]

The radical side of the movement became apparent by early 1931 when ARET called for taxpayers to withhold real-estate taxes (or “strike”) pending a final ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court, and later the U.S. Supreme Court. Mayor Anton Cermak and other politicians desperately tried to break the strike by threatening criminal prosecution and revocation of city services.

Anton Joseph Cermak was an American politician who served as the 34th mayor of Chicago, Illinois from April 7, 1931 until his death on March 6, 1933 from complications of an assassination attempt 23 days earlier.

ARET's influence peaked in late 1932, with a membership approaching 30,000 (largely skilled workers and small-business owners.) By this time, it had a budget of over $600,000 and a radio show in Chicago. But it suffered a demoralizing blow in October 1932 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case it had brought. Buffeted by political coercion and legal defeats, and torn by internal factionalism, the strike collapsed in early 1933.

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Tax resistance in the United States has been practiced at least since colonial times, and has played important parts in American history.

References

↑ Gross, David M. (2014). 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns. Picket Line Press. pp. 24,125. ISBN 978-1490572741.

David T. Beito, Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
Gross, David M. (2014). 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns. Picket Line Press. pp. 24, 125, 217. ISBN 978-1490572741.

David T. Beito is a historian and professor of history at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression (1989); From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890–1967 (2000); The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society (2002); and T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer (2018) which was co-authored by Professor Linda Royster Beito of Stillman College). It is a biography of civil rights leader, surgeon, entrepreneur and self-help advocate, T. R. M. Howard, who was a mentor to Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer, and was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Harper's Magazine, and other publications.

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[1] Gross, David M. (2014). 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns. Picket Line Press. pp. 24,125. ISBN 978-1490572741.