Stateside With Rosalea Barker: New Hampshire

The ninth state to ratify the US Constitution, New Hampshire gets a picture just because. I took the photo out of the window of the bus taking me to Boston to catch a train to DC back in September 2007, after spending a week in a small town in the White Mountains.

Lovely New Hampshire! What other state could literally lose face and refuse to erect a plastic face—as one out-of-stater suggested—to replace it? The visage I refer to is the Old Man of the Mountain, a granite outcrop created by glacial activity, and which was famous, his Wikipedia entry says, “largely because of statesman Daniel Webster, a New Hampshire native, who once wrote:

“‘Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.’”

The Old Man of the Mountain is the state emblem, featured on license plates and the logos of state agencies such as the New Hampshire Department of Corrections, which recently added a handy inmate locator to its website. You could search it for the whereabouts of Ed and Elaine Brown, who were much in the news in the summer of 2007 for refusing to pay their federal taxes. (Your search would be in vain, of course, since it was a federal crime.)

According to this news story, Brown justified his actions to reporters by saying, “The world belongs to the creator. It doesn’t belong to man. It doesn’t belong to the United States government. It doesn’t belong to me. It doesn’t belong to you.” There is a comprehensive collection of news stories about the couple—both in their 60s—at this website. After a months’ long siege, the Browns were finally taken into custody in October, 2007, when a law enforcement officer wearing a plastic face infiltrated their compound. Not literally wearing a plastic face, of course, just pretending to be a supporter.

New Hampshire’s motto is “Live Free or Die,” and its citizens are famously independent in their outlook.

The State of New Hampshire doesn’t tax people’s wages, nor does it have a general sales tax. In fact, the US itself had no income tax until 1913 because the Constitution expressly forbade collection of any direct federal tax unless it was done so according to the number of people who lived in each state.

The Sixteenth Amendment changed that. New Hampshire at first rejected the amendment, but 36 other states ratified it, that being the requisite three-quarters of the states then in the Union for it to take effect. Of the six states that subsequently ratified, New Hampshire was the last to do so.

This link takes you to a facsimile of the very first 1040, an IRS form still in existence today, but vastly more complicated; a form which—at the time of writing—people all over the US are filling out in order to meet the April 15 tax-filing deadline. The 1913 facsimile shows that the highest tax bracket—for people with incomes over $500,000—was 6 percent. A handy-dandy tax calculator at Moneychimp shows that even the people in the lowest tax bracket pay a whopping 10 percent to the federal government nowadays.

(If you’re disappointed I wrote about someone tilt’n at windmills, instead of about Tilton, you can read about that town here. Timetable Mabel! Miss America! A replica of the Arch of Titus! A clash of municipalities! A town benefactor in high dudgeon even after death! This place is cookin!)

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

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