Bernard Baruch -- documenting the merchant banker and war profiteer who owned Churchill -- financial architect of 20-th century wars and the great depression
Dick Eastman
in major events of the 20th Century, as discussed on the
Tom Valentine Radio Free America program, October 6, 2002.
The quotations are organized roughly by the dates of the
events described.
Here is Part One: 1907 - 1919
(Parts Two and Three will follow within 9 hours.)
(Googlegroups does not permit the full
70 pages to be posted in one sitting.
Dick Eastman
Yakima, Washington
eas...@bentonrea.com
Baruch owned Winston Churchill, as you will see, and
either controlled or removed American presidents that
thwarted his plans for big business economic centralization.
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1907 - 1911
Larry Abraham, Call It Conspiracy (Seattle: Double A Publications,
1985)
[Note: I choose quotations from this source to summarize these early
events
because it condenses the material so well. The same facts can be
found in
William Greider's Secrets of the Temple (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1987)
and G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island; A Second Look
at the
Federal Reserve 3rd ed. (Westlake Village: American Media, 1998)
By the turn of the century J.P. Morgan was already an old hand at
creating artificial panics. Such affairs were well coordinated.
Senator Robert Owen, a co-author of the Federal Reserve Act (who later
deeply regretted his role), testified before a Congressional Committee
that the bank he owned received from the National Banker's Association
what came to be known as the "Panic Circular of 1893." It stated:
"You will at once retire one -third of your circulation and call in
one-half of your loans ...."
[ House Banking and Currency Committee Hearings on H.R. 7230, 75th
Congress, March 2 and 19, 1938, p. 214)
Historian Frederick Lewis Allen tells in Life magazine of
April 25, 1949, of Morgan's role in spreading rumors about the
insolvency of the Knickerbocker Bank and the Trust Company of America,
which rumors trigered the 1907 Panic. In answer to the question: "Did
Morgan precipitate the panic?" Allen reports:
" Oakleigh Thorne, the president of a particular trust
company, testified later before a congressional committee
that his banks had been subjected to only moderate withdrawals...
that he had not applied for help, and that it was the [Morgans']
‘sore point' statement alone that had caused the run on his
bank. From this testimony, plus the disciplinary measures
taken by the Clearing House against the Heinze, Morse and Thomas
banks, plus other fragments of supposedly pertinent evidence,
certain chroniclers have arrived at the ingenious conclusion
that the Morgan interests took advantage of the unsettled
conditions during the autumn of 1907 to precipitate the panic,
guiding it shrewdly as it progressed so that it would kill off
rival banks and consolidate the preeminence of the banks
within the Morgan orbit.
The "panic" which Morgan had reated, he proceeded to end
almost single-handedly. He had made his point. Frederick Allen
explains:
"The lesson of the Panic of 1907 was clear, though not
for some six years was it destined to be embodied in
legislation: the United States gravely needed a central
banking system. ..."
The man who was to play the most significant part in providing
America with that central bank was Paul Warburg, who along with his
brother Felix had immigrated to the United States form Germany in
1902. They left brother Max (later a major financier of the Russian
Revolution) at home in Frankfurt to run the family bank (M.N. Warburg
& Company).
Paul Warburg married Nina Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb of
Kuhn, Loeb and Company, America's most powerful international banking
firm. Brother Felix married Frieda Schiff, daughter of Jacob Schiff,
the ruling power behind Kuhn, Loeb. Stephen Birmingham writes in his
authoritative Our Crowd: "In the eighteenth century the Schiffs and
Rothschilds shared a double house: in Frankfurt. Schiff reportedly
bought his partnership in Kuhn, Loeb with Rothschild money.
Both Paul and Felix Warburg became partners in Kuhn, Loeb and
Company.
In 1907, the year of the Morgan-precipitated panic, Paul
Warburg began spending almost all his time writing and lecturing on
the need for "bank reform." Kuhn, Loeb and Company was sufficiently
public spirited about the matter to keep him on salary at $500,000 per
year while for the next six years he donated his time to "the public
good."
Working with Warburg in promoting this "banking reform" was
Nelson Aldrich, known as "Morgan's floor broker in the Senate."
Aldrich's daughter Abby married John D. Rockefeller Jr. (The current
Governor of New York [ at the time of this writing, Nelson Aldrich
Rockefeller] is named for his maternal grandfather.)
After the Panic of 1907, Aldrich was appointed by the Senate
to head the National Monetary Commission. Although he had no
technical knowledge of banking, Aldrich and his entourage spent nearly
two years and $300,000 of taxpayers' money being wined and dined by
owners of Europe's central banks as they toured the Continent
"studying" central banking. When the Commission returned from its
luxurious junket it held no meetings and made no report for nearly two
years. But Senator Aldrich was busy "arranging" things. Together
with Paul Warburg and other international bankers, he staged one of
the most important secret meetings in the history of the United
States. Rockefeller agent Frank Vanderlip admitted many years later
in this memoirs:
"Despite my views about the value to society of great
publicity for the affairs of corporations, there was an occasion,
near the close of 1910, when I was as secretive - indeed as
furtive - as any conspirator. ... I do not feel it is any
exaggeration
to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion
of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal
Reserve System. [Vanderlip, Frank, "Farm Boy to Financier,"
Saturday Evening Post, February 9, 1935, p. 25]
The secrecy was well warrented. At stake was control over the
entire economy. Senator Aldrich had issued confidential invitations
to Henry P. Davidson of J.P. Morgan & Company; Frank A. Vanderlip,
President of the Rockefeller-owned National City Bank; A. Piatt
Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; Benjamin Strong of
Morgan's Bankers Trust Company; and Paul Warburg. They were all to
accompany him to Jekyll Island, Georgia, to write the final
recommendations of the National Monetary Commission report.
At Jekyll Island, writes B.C. Forbes in his Men Who Are
Making America:
"After a general discussion it was decided to draw up
certain broad principles on which all could agree. Every member
of the group voted for a central bank as being the ideal
cornerstone
for any banking system."
Warburg stressed that the name "central bank" must be avoided at
all costs. It was decided to promote the scheme as a "regional
reserve" system with four (later twelve) branches in different
sections of the country. Those present knew that the New York bank
would dominate the rest, which would be marble "white elephants" to
deceive the public.
Out of the Jekyll Island meeting came the completion of the
Monetary Commission Report and the Aldrich Bill. Warburg had proposed
the bill be designated the "Federal Reserve System," but Aldrich
insisted his own name was already associated in the public's mind with
banking reform and that it would arouse suspicion if a bill were
introduced which did not bear his name. However, Aldrich's name
attacked to the bill proved to be the kiss of death, since any law
bearing his name was so obviously a project of the international
bankers.
When the Aldrich Bill could not be pushed through Congress, a
new strategy had to be devised. The Republican Party was too closely
connected with Wall Street. The only hope for a central bank was to
disguise it and have it put through by the Democrats as a measure to
strip Wall Street of its power. The opportunity to do this came
with the approach of the 1912 Presidential election. Republican
President William Howard Taft, who had turned against the Aldrich
Bill, seemed a sure-fire bet for re-election, until Taft's
predecessor, fellow Republican Teddy Roosevelt, agreed to run on the
ticket of the Progressive Party.
August Hecksher, Woodrow Wilson; A Biography (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1991)
P. 238-239 On July 20, 1911, the New York press announced the
opening of Wilson headquarters at 42 Broadway. McCombs in an
interview indicated that a nationwide drive would be organized, based
on the support of Princeton alumni. Wilson was unhappy with the
publicity and told a reporter that there was in effect "no campaign."
The office would merely take care of answering mail and disseminating
information. But that summer and fall two figures entered the Wilson
circle, far more serious in what they implied for his political
fortunes than the establishment of any campaign headquarters.
The first was a tall, hatchet-faced Tennesseean who had come
to New York to make his way as a businessman. William Gibbs McAdoo
was no ordinary businessman, however. ...
[ The 1954 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 18, p. 4:
McAdoo, William Gibbs, American cabinet officer: b. near Mariett, Ga.,
31 Oct. 1863 ... Decended from a distinguished Southern family, ...
Was educated at the University of Tennessee, admitted to the bar in
1885 ... practiced law in Chattanooga till 1992, when he came to New
York and opened a law office. In 1898 he formed a law partnership
with Mr. William McAdoo (...no relation) who in 1910-1930 was chief
city magistrate, and had been assistant secretary of the Treasury
under President Cleveland. The partnership was disolved in 1903.
......... In 1902 he organized the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad
Companuy and raised 4 million dollars to connect New York City with
New Jersey by tunneling under the Hudson River. ... McAdoo's company
completed the project; the first tunnel being completed on March 8,
1904, and three more being finished in the next five years ...
McAdoo also began participating in activities of the Democratic Party,
and supported Woodrow Wilson in the 1910 gubernatorial campaign in New
Jersey. He became vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee
in 1912 and following Wilson's election to the presidency became
secretary of the Treasury, March 6, 1913. ]
Heckscher, cont., p. 238-239: He [McAdoo] met Wilson at Princeton in
1909, and the two got on well from the start. Wilson counted on him
for practical advice, and by the summer of 1911 he was rivaling
McCOmbs for first place in the direction of the embryonic, undeclared
campaign. McAdoo was cool while McCombs was subject to wild swings of
mood; unshakable where McCombs was easily discouraged; discreet where
McCombs was talkative. Above all McAdoo was ambitious for both Wilson
and himself. This strangely compounded man would play a leading role
in the Wilson administration, dreaming of being his successor. More
astonishing, given McAdoo's age (he was only seven years younger than
Wilson), he became Wilson's son-in-law.
The second recruit was very different from McAdoo and even
more important in the long run. In that autumn of 1911 a wealthy
Texan was staying at the Gotham Hotel in New York, a pause in the trek
that took him annually from his home in Austin to the watering places
of Europe. Edward Mandell House had always been interested in
politics, as a behind-the-scenes participant but not as a candidate.
...as he noted in an unpublished autobiography, "my ambition has been
so great that it has never seemed to me worth while to try to satisfy
it." A successful businessman, he kept an office which he rarely
visited, preferring tohave the important men of his day in Texas - the
politicians, lawyers, editors, educators - come to talk with him on
the shaded verandah of his spacious home. .....
Colonel House had stood aloof from the [William Jennings] Bryan
[populist Democrat] movement, awaiting the day when he could play a
prominent part in nominating a Democratic candidate more to his
liking. In 1910 .... he began to consider the rising star of Woodrow
Wilson. A meeting of the two was arranged at his hotel in
mid-November 1911. They talked for an hour. The Colonel decided
Wilson was the man to serve.
"Never before have I found both the man and the opportunity," he
noted shortly afterwards, and added, with what could only be described
with a condescending air, "I think he is going to be a man we can
advise with some degree of satisfaction."
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1912
Bernard M. Baruch, The Public Years (New York: Pocket Books, 1962)
Original edition: (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1960)
p. 5 This was my first convention and I enjoyed the show hugely.
Like all conventions, it was an exhausting carnival of sense and
nonsense, and like all conventions it had its special touch of drama.
In this case the drama lay in the drive to nominate Woodrow Wilson,
led by the amateurs Billy McCombs and the tall, explosive, voluble
William Gibbs McAdoo. They were the fighting professionals, including
the well-organized forces of Congressman Oscar Underwood of Alabama
and Congressman Champ Clark of Missouri, the leading contenders for
the nomination.
In spite of the maneuvering, however, it soon became clear that
one man was the key figure in the convention. Thrice defeated for the
Presidency, William Jennings Bryan, in a black alpaca coat, sat with
his Nebraska delegation, cooling himself with a palm-leaf fan, aware
of everything and waiting for his moment. The Nebraska delegation was
pleged to Champ Clark, but everyone knew that the Great Commoner was
against the coalition of party bosses and Wall Street financiers who
supported Clark and who, according to Bryan, had been having their way
in the party and expected to go on having it.
The high point of the convention drama for me, as it was for
everyone in the hot and smoky hall, came when Bryan rose to denounce,
as of old, the high priests of finance. Charles Hyde, New York City's
Chamberlain and one of Gaynor's aides, had gotten me a seat behind the
rostrum. From that vantage point I heard again the mighty voice
pouring out the oratory that was more in the style of my father's day
than in the manner of the new century. Bryan was absolutely
uncompromising. The Democratic Party must not nominate any candidate
"of the privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class," by whom he meant
such as J.B. Morgan, August Belmont, and Thomas Fortune Ryan.
I could not see Ryan where he sat in the Virginai delegation,
and I wondered how he was taking it. But then I saw him stand up,
stretch his long, thin neck, and raise his head in a proud, defiant
gesture. Here was a man who had been my good friend and business
associate in Wall Street; but now in this political world, so
different from the business world I knew well, I heard him being
characterized as someone with whom no decent person would be allied.
There is no doubt how the delegates took it. They hooted,
howled, moaned, threatened to lynch Bryan, fought in the aisles, and
waved fists in his face. Through it all Bryan thundred on,
unperturbed, until at last he came back to the platform, retrieved his
palm-leaf fan, mopped his brow, and by chance sat down beside me.
"There, that'll fix ‘em," I overheard him say.
It did indeed, "fix ‘em." Bryan's forces refused to give their
vote to Clark. As the ballotting went on, Clark's strength steadily
melted away and Wilson's grew......
At last, on the forty-sixth ballot, Wilson went over the top.
The amateurs had triumphed; Wilson was the nominee. Utterly weary and
impatient to be off, the delegates perfuctiorily nominated Thomas
Marshall of Indiana for the Vice-President as a reward to Tom Taggart,
the first of the state bosses to switch from Clark to Wilson. Then
the convention adjourned.
.....For the first time I had gotten a good close look at a
unique political institution - the nominating convention. .... I have
attended many since then, and for me the truly amazing thing about
them is that despite the circus side show and carnival aspects,
despite the second-rate men who at times are selected, so many
first-rate, even great men are chose.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Larry Abraham, Call It Conspiracy (Seattle: Double A Publications,
1985)
p. 54-55 The Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, was equally the
property of Morgan. Dr. Gabriel Kolko in his The Triumph of
Conservatism, reports: "In late 1907 he [Wilson] supported the
Aldrich Bill on banking, and was full of praise for Morgan's role in
American society." According to Lundbert: For nearly twenty years
before his nomination Woodrow Wilson had moved in the shadow of Wall
Street."
Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt proceeded to whistle-stop the
country trying to out-do each other in florid (and hypocritical)
denunciations of the Wall Street "money trust" - the same group of
Insiders which was financing the campaigns of both.
Dr. Kolko goes on to tell us that ,at the begining of 1912, banking
reform "seemed a dead issue. ... The banking reform movement had
neatly isolated itslef." Wilson resurrected the issue and promised
the country a money system free from domination by the international
bankers of Wall Street. Moreover, the Democrat platform expressly
stated: "We are opposed to the Aldrich plan for a central bank." But
the "Big Boys" knew who they had bought. Among the international
financiers who contributed heavily to the Wilson campaign, in addition
to those already named, were Jacob Schiff, Bernard Baruch, Henry
Morgenthau, Thomas Fortune Ryan, and New York Times pulbisher Adolph
Ochs.
The Insider's sheepdog who controlled Wilson and guided the
[central bank] program through Congress was the mysteious "Colonel"
Edward Mandel House, the British-educated son of a representative of
England's financial interests in the American South. The title was
honorary; House never served in the military. He was strictly a
behind-the-scenes wire-puller and is regarded by many historians as
the real President of the United States during the Wilson years.
House authored a book, Philip Drew: Administrator, in which he wrote
of establishing "Socialism as dreamed by Karl Marx." As steps toward
his goal, House, both in his book and in real life, called for passage
of an income tax and a central bank providing "a flexible currency."
....
In his The Intimate Papers of Colonol House, Professor Charles
Seymour refers to the "Colonel" as the "unseen guardian angel" of the
Federal Reserve Act. Seymour's work contains numerous documents and
records showing constant contact between House and Paul Warburg while
the Federal Reserve Act was being prepared and steered through
Congress. Biographer George Viereck [ Viereck, George S., The
Strangest Friendship in History (New York: Liveright, 1932)]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Alexander L George & Juliette L. George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel
House: A Personal Study, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,
1964)
p. 75 Edward Mandell House was born in Houston, Texas, on July
26, 1858. He was the seventh son of one of the wealthiest men in
Texas.
Thomas Willima House's fortune derived from vast sugar and
cotton plantations and banking. Too, during the Civil War, he owned
ships which, running the Union blockade both ways, plied between
Galveston and nearby West Indian and Central American ports. The
cargo from Galveston was usually cotton. The cargo on the return
voyage was munitions, clothing and medicine, which Thomas House sold
to the Confederate army. Blockade-running was a risky enterprise, but
a highly profitable one.
P. 85 [In his political life, before meeting Wilson, Colonel House]
assiduously abvoided the official recognition which could have been
his at any time during his [political] service in Texas.
With each successful campaign, his stature both in Texas and
in the national Democratic Party grew, and so did his desire to move
on to the larger stage of national affairs. The difficulty was that
during these years and for a decade afterwards, as well (with the
interruption in 1904), the Democratic Party in the United States was
dominated by William Jennings Bryan.
Bryan's ideas about currency seemed to House unsound. He did
not think that Bryan could be elected President, that his election
would be a desirable think for the country, or - and this was a
crucial consideration - that Bryan would be amenable to his advice.
Writing of Bryan, House declared: "I do not believe that any one ever
succeeded in changing his mind upon any subject that he had dtermined
upon ... I believe he feels that his ideas are God-given and ar not
susceptible to the mutability of those of the ordinary human being."
By 1896, House was eager to participate in a national election,
and the national leaders of the Democratic Party were eager to have
him do so. However, he remained aloof from the campaign because Bryan
was the Democratic presidential nominee. Bryan lost the election to
McKinley.
In 1900, Bryan was nominated once again. By this time, House
and the "Peerless Leader" were on cordial personal terms, having been
next-door neighbors in Austin during the winter of 1898-99. Close
personal association with Bryan only confirmed House's assessment of
the man and his potentialities. He found him "as wildly impracticable
as ever." Once more he declined invitations to participate in the
presidential campaign. Bryan lost again to McKinley.
p. 93 At four o'clock on the afternoon of Novermber 24, 1911,
Governor Wilson called on Colonel House at the Hotel Gotham in New
York City.
The two men liked each other immediately. "We talked and
talked. We knew each other for congenial souls at the very
beginning," House later recalled. The conversation was wide-ranging
and "we agreed about everything. That was a wonderful talk. The hour
flew away ... Each of us started to ask the other when he would be
free for another meeting, and laughing over our mutual enthusiasm, we
arranged an evening several days later when Governor Wilson should and
have dinner with me."
The second meeting according to House was even more
delightful. There was time for a more detailed exchange of views.
"It was remarkable. We found ourselves in agreement upon practically
every one of the issues of the day. I never met a man whose thought
ran so identically with mine ... I cannot tell you how pleased I was
with him. He seemed too good to be true."
The Governor called on House several times that winter, and
the initial rapport between them was strengthened. House later wrote:
"We found ourselves in such complete sympathy, in so many ways,
that we soon learned to know what each was thinking without either
having expressed himself.
"A few weeks after we met and after we had exchanged
confidences with men usually do not exchange except after years of
friendship, I asked him if he realized that we had only known one
another for so short a time. He replied, "My dear friend, we have
known one another always. And I think this is true."
The day after his first meeting with Wilson , House wrote
his brother-in-law, Sidney Mezes:
"We had a perfectly bully time. ... He is not the biggest man
I have ever met, but he is one of the pleasantest and I would rather
play with him than any prospective candidate I have seen ...
It is just such a chance as I have always wanted, for never
before have I found both the man and the opportunity.
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1913
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1914
August Hecksher, Woodrow Wilson; A Biography (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1991)
p. 336-339 For Woodrow Wilson, sitting at the bedside of his
daying wife, the war came not entirely as a bolt from the blue. From
his London post, Ambassador Walter Hines Page had perceptively
analyzed the European scene. The Anglo-German rivalry made war seem
inevitable, he wrote the President, except in those moments when he
"shared the feelings of most men that perhaps the terrible modern
engines of destruction would not, at the last moment, cause every
nation to desist." Colonel House had been abroad that spring of 1914
on his first fact-finding mission for the President. .. There was
bound to be and "awful cataclysm," he wrote: "whenever England
consents, France and Russia will close in on Germany." ...
The war's outbreak brought many problems that Wilson, under the
burden of bereavement, could leave to the initiative of his aides.
The Secretary of State [Bryan] dealt with the situation of American
citizens stranded in Europe; the Secretary of the Treasury, with the
mood of panic in the financial markets. But on the great issue,
defining and establishing of America's political and moral position,
he acted alone. That strict neutrality was essential he never
doubted.
.....
So now in the concept of neutrality, a course essentially
negative and expedient, he perceived ideal implications for his own
country and for a world at war.
.....
To the President and his colleagues it became quickly apparent
that neutrality was not merely a posture or a state of mind, but a
policy to be defined, a series of measures to be worked out. Was it,
for example, within the law and spirit of neutrality to permit private
bankers to make loans to belligerent powers? Bryan, convinced that it
was not, argued his case so forcibly that for a brief while Wilson
went along with him. Under pressure from McAdoo and Houston he then
reversed himself. To sell submarines to Britain was plainly
unneutral; but did that apply to submarine parts, or to submarines
manufactured in sections? After consideration, the President's
decision was that it did not.
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1915
Hansen W. Baldwin, World War I; An Outline History (New York: Harper &
Row, 1962)
p. 57 Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, had asked on
Christmas Eve, 1914: "Are there not other alternatives than sending
our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders?" Lord Fisher, the firery
First Sea Lord, who had been recalled at seventy-four to replace
Prince Louis of Battenberg, also favored "eccentric strategy," though
his eyes were chiefly on the Baltic.
The concept of forcing the Dardanelles grew in many minds,
but Churchill was its most persistent and prominent advocate. The
promised rewards were immense: the out-flanking of the Central Powers'
interior postion; the establishment of a secure supply line via the
Black Sea to Russia; virtual elimination of Turkey from the war; the
establihsment of a Balkin front; help to Serbia; perhaps collapse of
Austria-Hungary.
"The possession of the Dardanelles would have been
the richest prise in the world for the Allies. . . Admiral
von Tirpitz (German naval minister) stated in 1915, that
should the Dardanelles fall, then the World War has been
decided against us."
Such immense possibilities deserved careful planning and tremendous
coordinated effort. ...
A combined amphibious operation was discussed - and though the concept
was never wholly abandoned - it was shelved temporarily to permit the
navy to try to force a passage.
P. 60 On March 18, a grand assault was made and almost - but not quite
- the thing was done. Before 2 P.M. the Turkish fire slackened and
nearly died; the gunners were demoralized, some of the guns had been
wrecked, communications destroyed, fire control impaired, ammunition
nearly expended, less than thirty armor-piercing shells remained. But
with startling reversal fate deserted the English; in quick succession
the old French battleship Bouvet was sunk by a mine; Inflexible struck
another mine, and Irresistible still another. Later, Ocean was
fatally damaged by mine and shell fire. Irristible and Ocean were
abandoned in sinking condition in the face of the enemuy, as the
British withdrew. March 18, from grand beginning, drew on to puling
end, and it was now the army's turn.
A British expeditionary force, hastily assembled, numbered
initially about 78,000 men; its backbone, the Anzac (Austrailian-New
Zealand) Corps. They were opposed by the newly constituted Turkish
Fifth Army (astride the straits) of about 84,000 men, under von
Sanders. General Sir Ian Hamilton, an elusive "British poet-general,"
commanded the Allied expeditionary force.
P. 61-62 It was to drag on for months, but the first few days
determined the campaign's end. The beachheads, commanded by
dominating enemy heights, were fire-swept; the outflanking operation
intended to bypass the stalemate of the Western Front bogged down in
trench warfare. Both sides attacked again and again, with minor gains
but major losses. As the hot Mediterranean summer came on, the
invaders began to go down with sickness: malaria and dysentery more
than decimated the ranks. A Turkish destroyer torpedoed and sank the
British battleship Goliath on the night of May 12-13, and a German
U-boat torpedoed the Triumph and sank the Majestic. The Daredanelles
were becoming an open, seeping wound.
But the British had the bull by the tail; they reinforced defeat
and sent three more divisions to Hamilton. The Turks, too, built up;
the Turkish Fifth Army numbered thirteen divisions by August when the
British Army tried again. The August attacks, with a new landing at
Suvla Bay, took place from August 6-10, but the objective - the
dominating massif of Sari Bair, which the Anzacs had tried to reach in
April - was still denied to the Allies. The rest was aftermath and
predicament: how to face defeat and let go of the bull.
In September, one French and two British divisions were
shifted to Salonika; in October Hamilton was recalled and relieved by
General Charles Monro. But it was not until November 23, with
casualties from enemy fire and inexorable nature steadily mounting,
that evacuation was decided upon after Lord Kitchener had visited
Gallipoli. The evacuation began, in phases, in December, and despite
tremendous anticipated losses it was successfully completed by January
8-9, 1916. The evacuation, ironically, was more brilliantly
conducted by the British than any other phase of the campaign.
But no matter how the cake was sliced, it was a great defeat,
"the worst British defeat between Saratoga and Singapore." Some
489,000 Allied soldiers were engaged; 252,000 were casualties. Of
half a million Turks, 251,000 were killed, wounded or missing, died of
disease, or were evacuated sick. Gallipoli was a maker and breaker of
men and reputations: Kitchener's impeccable fame was tarnished, Lord
Fisher resigned in May, Churchill was out soon afterward, Hamilton was
done soldiering forever, except for memoirs and memories. But
Mustafa Kamal's star was on the rise; he was hailed as the "Savior of
Gallipoli." .....
P. 72. Nineteen-fifteen was a year of flowing blood and small comfort
for the Allies. In Britain, the star of Lloyd George was rising;
Herbert Asquith formed a coalition cabinet; Churchill went off to
fight in the trenches. Russia suffered her greatest casualties of the
war - perhaps two million killed and wounded; another 1,300,000 in
German prison pens. Serbia was overrun; the Salonika expedition
locked up in what Berlin scornfully called "their largest internment
camp."
The Central Powers had established a secure fortress, a
central position with continuous communications and lines of supply
from one partner to another. Gallipoli had been a disaster. The
Western Front, after more than two million casualties, was still in
stalemate . Townshend was beseiged in the blowzy Arab town named Kut
that few Englishmen had ever heard of. And the submarine was ravaging
the shippoing lanes. It had been a year of missed opportunities and
increasing hatred; slowly the comprehension of the meaning of Total
War was dawning on the world.
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1916
John S. D. Eisenhower, Yanks; The Epic Story of the American Army in
World War I (New York: The Free Press, 2001) p. 299
Planning for mobilization of American industry began gradually
starting early in 1916, after the sinking of the Lusitania. At that
time the Naval Consulting Board was set up for the Navy and the Kernan
Board for the Army. These boards made extensive survey of American
industry; the Naval Consulting Board alone surveyed eighteen thousand
industrial plants. American industrial leaders, while cooperative,
were determined that the needs of war should not be allowed to shut
out civilian consumption. The answer therefore, was a partnership
between government and industry.
Still a sense of urgency was lacking. The Army Appropriation
Act of 1916, which set up the Council of National Defense, did so in
the form of a rider to another act, not a main provision.
Nevertheless the council did come into existence. It consisted of six
cabinet officers who were directed to advise with the Commission of
Industrialists. The needs of industry were respected, of course, but
the nation's needs came first; even the industrialists appointed to
the committee were named by the President.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
August Hecksher, Woodrow Wilson; A Biography (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1991)
p. 397 A more mundane matter of business [than Senate Judiciary
Committee backing and full Senate approval of Brandeis as Supreme
Court justice] had to be settled before [the 1916 Presidential
election] campaign got under way, the question of party chairmanship.
McCombs [the pre-McAdoo, pre-House Wilsonian progressive
true-believer] had remained in the post, ineffectual, ill in body and
mind; and it was the nightmare of Wilson's supporters that he should
resist efforts to replace him. Wilson was convinced of his lack of
fitness, but still hesitated to break with a man who had been one of
his first political sponsors. A young Wilson supporter and admirer, a
debonair financier who had recently come to Washington and was
beginning to make his mark as a Democratic loyalist and a man of
princely entertainments, Bernard M. Baruch, was assigned the task of
managing McComb's withdrawal. Baruch passed his first test well. In
late April McCombs assured the President that he would quietly give
way to a successor. He had been got rid of, House remarked
jubilantly, "for all time."
Hansen W. Baldwin, World War I; An Outline History (New York: Harper &
Row, 1962)
p. 94-96 The year 1916 started with severe Allied reverses in the
outer theaters of the war. The Gallipoli evacuation was completed in
January; on April 29, Townshend, besieged since early December, 1915
in Kut al Imara in Mesopotamia by Turkish and Arab forces,
surrendered. Some 10,000 men - mostly of the Indian Army, but
including more than 2,000 Englishmen - were taken prisoner; 1,700
others had died, 2,500 had been wounded during the five-month siege.
It had been an epic of defeat; the men, decimated by disease, had been
on short rations for weeks, but as always in defeats, there had been
mismanagement, poor leadership, little strategic vision. And the epic
was tarnished by a last-minute attempt by the British government to
raise the siege by attempts to relieve Kut, which started in January
under General Fenton Aylmer and continued through April under General
George Gorringe, cost the British almost 22,000 casualties - double
the strength of the Kut garrison.
For most of the rest of 1916, Mesopotamia was quiescent, as the
British built up their strength and their supplies. In August a
general named Sir Stanley Maude assumed comand, and at last man and
opportunity had met. In December just before the rains came, he
started once again - with a superiority over the Turks of more than
two to one - a drive to the north toward the magic city of Baghdad.
...........
Meanwhile inthe Suez Canal-Palestine area, raid and counterraid,
buildup and construction featured most of 1916. General Archibald
Murry assumed command in Egypt in March, 1916; the maximum force there
of fourteen divisions was rapidly reduced, however, to four. The
British, toiling with intensity, had built another fortified area near
the canal, a strategic answer and a needlessly expensive one to the
Turkish attack on the canal in 1915. Then, painstakingly, the British
forces started to clear the Sinai peninsula of the enemy, a task which
had to be preceded and accompanied by immense logistic efforts,
including the laying of water pipelines, and the construction of a
railway and a road.
But the Germans and Turks were not dismayed. In the caldron
of the desert summer, Kress von Kressenstein led 15,000 Turks and
Germans across Sinai to Romani near the seacoast. Murray fought a
skillful battle (August 3-4) and repulsed the enemy handily, but the
Turks made good their retreat.
An Arab revolt against the Turks began in June in Saudi
Arabia; on June 9 the Arabs captured Mecca and in September, Taif.
By years end, the British had crossed the shifting sands of
Sinai, complete with their pipeline, railroad, and the road , and had
taken El Arish, evacuated by the Turks, and on December 23, Magdhaba,
with most of its 1,300-man garrison. The British defense of the Suez
Canal now stood on its "natural" frontiers - at the eastern boearders
of the Sinai peninsula.
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1917
Matthew Josephson, The President Makers; The Culture of Politics and
Leadership in an Age of Enlightenment 1896-1919 (New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Company, 1940)
p. 534-535 Edward Houise had once observed to Wilson that he
thought him too sensitive, too intelligent, and too refined to conduct
a war. But Wilson disclosed an unexpected side of his nature when he
held himself deaf to all appeals against official injustice during the
war. The time comes, he would often say, when one must shut his mind
and act.
.....
Although he did not find it necessary to call together a
coalition cabinet, embracing leaders of both major parties - holding
that this would only hamper and embarrass his efforts - the President
did summon the leading financiers, industrialists, administrators, and
"best" minds to join in directing the hugely expanded action of the
war government. These manned the Council of National Defense and its
chief subdivisions, the War Industries Board, the National Food
Commission and Fuel Commission, the shippling and railroad boeards,
and the War Labor Board. Centralized control and integration of our
industries and economic resources, under a President who had
championed liberal doctrines, was carried out to an extent never
before known here, though under conditions which in most cases richly
favored their private owners. The railroads passed (temporarily) into
government hands, in March, 1918. In other vital industries
production schedules and consumption were controlled, prices were
fixed, usually at a very high level, by agreements with the
"Dollar-Year' men who directed the government's control boards.
The machinery of planning and control assumed a collectivist
form, and after a period of preliminary confusion, worked with
incredible energy under men like B. M. Baruch, Chairman of the War
Industries Board, Herbert Hoover of the Food Commission, Secretary
McAdoo, and Daniel Willard of the Railroad Administration, Edward
Hurley, Charles M. Schwab, and James Farrell of the Shipping Board,
and Dwight Morrow and Thomas W. Lamont, who were detailed to held the
Treasury in its huge wartime fiscal operations. Wilson supported his
administration "experts" as he supported the army and navy officers he
had placed in command. But neither in the military field nor on the
economic front at home did his leadership assume any distinctive form,
either by striking errors or triumphs of personal command. A
collective war machine, patterned after those built up in England as
well as in germany, functioned impersonally, sometimes with strange
effects. The President would be called in to determine points of
policy as they arose; but his main interest lay elsewhere, one might
say, beyond the war operations themselves.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
John S. D. Eisenhower, Yanks; The Epic Story of the American Army in
World War I (New York: The Free Press, 2001) pp.299-
The Council of National Defense wielded almost no power, however,
and it was soon succeeded by other, subordinate boards, the most
notable of which was the General Munitions Board, set up just before
the United States declaration of war. The success of the General
Munitions Board, was largely due to the efforts of its chairman, Frank
A. Scott, president of a company manufacturing high-grade machine
tools for both the Army and the Navy. .....
These preliminary preparations, though a great step forward,
proved inadequate to prevent confusion among both the government and
industry when war actually came. Much of the problem lay in the old
bugaboo, the independent bureaus, which conducted purchasing
independently despite progress made in bringing them under the
authority of all the chief of staff. No fewer than five (later 9)
separate authorities were all bidding against one another. In
addition to the Navy, other customers for war-related products
included the Shipping Board, the Rialroad Administration, and the Red
Cross, among many others.
The solution to the probelm would have to come from a
cooperative effort, and to administer the sharing, President Wilson
looked to a forty-seven-year-old native of South Carolina, Bernard M.
Baruch, much as he looked to George Creel to mobilize public opinion.
Baruch and Wilson had been friends for some time. Both were
progressives, ambitious men, and Southerners. To Wilson, Baruch
combined two ideal qualities: he was a Democrat who was also a Wall
Street financier. Since early summer of 1916, Baruch had already been
participating in an advisory capacity and by the spring of 1917 he
enlisted a group of former business contacts to administer raw
material purchases for the military. Soon he was appointed as
Commissioner for Raw Materials in the newly formed War Industries
Board.
The coordination of war purchasing may have evolved slowly,
but it was handled with remarkable success. All boards and
authorities operated with the power of the President behind them,
which included the power of commandeering. They established a
Priorities System, a Price-Fixing System, and a Conservation System.
So effective was the effort that twelve years later, General Hugh
Johnson [ future New Deal NRA leader, and attacker of Long and
Coughlin -DE], the officer so closely associated with it , could
rhapsodize in a memo to General Pershing:
"Whole strata of industry were integrated for the first time in our
history. Competition was adjourned. Industries learned to operate
in vast units. Patents and trade secrets were pooled. Hostility was
erased and cooperation was institutied. ...... Cooperation with
Government - so suspiciously regarded in the pre-war era - became
commonplace."
Hugh Johnson was an advocate, but he was also an expert. He
took great pride in declaring that the American war effort more nearly
reached president Wilson's ideal of an "entire nation armed" than did
that of any other belligerent nation, Germany included. In the
accomplishments he described, however, there was one serious caveat.
The full power of America's industrial mobilization was not geared to
take effect until the year 1919.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Robert Lewis Taylor, Winston Churchill; An Informal Study of Greatness
(Gerden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1952)
p. 54 A heartening aspect of his ministry [Minister of Munitions] was
that upon the first inkling of American intervention in the war,
Churchill displayed that practical view of his overseas cousins for
which he has always been noted. Ina ringing speech, he cried, "Bring
on the American millions! And meanwhile, maintain and active
defensive on the Western Front, so as to economize French and British
lives and to train, increase, and perfect our armies and our methods
for a decisive effort later." When the United States entered the war,
Churchill was given the job of equipping the American millions he had
spoken of, and he did it so well that afterwards General Pershing
presented him with the Distinguished Service Medal. He was the only
Englishman to wear the decoration. His assignemnt to prepare American
soldiers for combat brought him into contact with Bernard Baruch, who
was then chairman of the War Industries Board at Washington. They
developed a close friendship that has continued without interruption
to the present.
In the last year of the war Churchill committed himself to an
"anti-liberal" action that gave him his envied start toward becoming
the premier target of the left-wingers, or plotters against society.
... His first such unpopularity was gained in the strikes of 1918,
which were similar to the Communist-planned stoppages that swept
Asmerica in the recent war. Like President Truman in the later
crisis, Churchill threatened to end the strikers' immunity from
military service unless they returned to work. ....
When the peace came, it returned Churchill much of his lost favor.
... In the Government he soon consolidated his gains with such speed
that, as the Tories blinked, he found himself in the unprecedented
position of holding two offices - Secretary for War and Secretary for
Air. The protests that arose over this artistic coup shook the
Cabinet. The old epithet of "medal snatcher" was changed to
"portfolio collector." A Captain Wedgwood Benn, a Liberal M.P., arose
in Parliament and complained so testily that General Seely, the
Under-Secretary for Air, was suddenly convinced of Churchill's
villainy and resigned. ...
...In the last days of the war he had enjoyed the distinction of
crashing twice in the same day, a record still admired in aeronautics
circles.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
August Hecksher, Woodrow Wilson; A Biography (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1991)
As the structure of inter-Allied cooperation was being successfully
established [by House], Wilson moved to reorganize the war effort at
home. ... A moribund Council of National Defense became the crisis
oriented War Industries Board, first headed by Frank A. Scott and
then, in a dramatic maneuver, put under the direction of Bernard M.
Baruch. Overruling doubts, about the administrative capacities of the
flamboyant and wealthy speculator, Wilson was rewarded by the serivces
of a man intensely loyal and energetic, capable of swift decision and
not afraid of responsibility. Baruch's War Industries Board was in
overall charge of purchases by the government and the Allies; its
business was to see that manufacturers focused on goods essential to
the war effort, and, indirectly, to see that goods destined for
civilian use were made in ways least wasteful of labor and of scarce
raw materials.
McAdoo, in charge of war financing, was most visible in his
management of successive war bond drives.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
William Dudley, ed., World War I; Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego:
Greenhaven Press, 1998)
p. 171 War Bonds Can Be Raised Throught Bonds, William Gibbs McAdoo
(1863-1941)
An important question the United States faced after it
entered World War I was how to raise the enormous sums of money
necessay for its prosecution (the total direct cost of the war would
eventually amount to $35.5 billion, a greater sum than the entire
expenditures of the U.S. government in the first century of its
existence). Americans were divided on how best to raise this money.
The approach eventually favored by William Gibbs McAdoo, secretary of
the treasury from 1913 to 1918, was to obtain the bulk of the funds
through a series of goverment bond drives. McAdoo named the bonds
"Liberty Loans" and orchestrated a massive public relations campaign
that included posters, speeches by motion picture stars, and other
features designed to raise general public support for the war effort
as well as financial backing.
McAdoo announced the first of the Liberty Loans on May 14,
1917; a $2 billion offering of bonds with an interest rate of 3 ½
percent, exempt from federal taxes, and convertible to a higher rate
if the government raised interest rates for future Liberty Loans. The
following viewpoint is taken from a speech that McAdoo made one week
later before bankers and business executives in Des Moines, Iowa. ...
He maintains that such bond measures are the best way to finance both
the war effort and the credits and loans America has extended to the
Allies. [Reprinted from William Gibbs McAdoo, address entered into S.
Doc. 40, 65th Cong., 1st sess., May 21, 1917.
Wars can not be fought without money. The very first step in this
war, the most effective step that we could take, was to provide money
for its conduct. The Congress quickly passed an act authorizing a
credit of $5,000,000,000, and empowered the Secretary of the Treasury,
with the approval of the President, to extend to the allied
Governments making war with us against the enemies of our country,
credits not exceeding $3,000,000,000. Since that law was passed on
the 24th of April, less than a month ago - the financial machinery of
your Government has been speeded up to top notch to give relief to the
allies in Europe, in order that they might be able to make their units
in the trenches, their machinery which is there on ground, tell to the
utmost, and tell, if possible, so effectively that it might not be
necessary to send American soldiers to the battle fields. As a
result, we have already extended in credits to these Governments -
Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and Belgium - something like
$745,000,000, and we shall have to extend before this year is out, if
the war lasts that long, not $3,000,000,000 of credits, but probably
five billions or six billions. But it makes no difference how much
credit we extend, we are extending it for a service which is essential
... you're your own protection, if no other grave issues were involved
in this struggle.
Extending Credit
This initial financing was not an easy thing to do. The Congress
authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to issue, in addition to
bonds, $3,000,000,000 of one-year debt certificates. Their purpose is
to bridge over any chasms, so to speak, so that if the Treasury is
short at any time, because of extraordinary demands, we can sell these
temporary certificates, supply the need, and then sell bonds to take
up these certificates. We have been selling temporary debt
certificates in anticipation of the sale of these Liberty bonds. The
first issue of bonds, - $2,000,000,000, - has not been determined by
any arbitrary decision or judgement; it has been determined by the
actual necessities of the situation. It is the least possible sum
that we can afford to provide for the immediate conduct of the war.
We are trying to spread the payment for the bonds over as large a
period as possible, so that there shall be no interference with
business. This money is not going to be taken out of the country.
All of this financing is largely a matter of shifting credits; it is
not going to involve any loss of gold; it is not going to involve any
loss of values. These moneys are going to be put back into
circulation, put back promptly into the channels of business and
circulated and recirculated to take care of the abnormal prosperity of
the country, a prosperity that will be greater in the present year
than ever before in our history.
As we sell these bond, we take back from the foreign governments,
under the terms of the act, their obligations, having practically the
same maturity as ours, bearing the same rate of interest as ours, so
that as their obligations mature the proceeds will be used to pay off
the obligations issued by this Government to provide them with credit.
So you can see, fellow citizens, that in extending credit to our
allies, we are not giving anything to them. So far as that is
concerned, for the purposes of this war, I would be willing to give
them anything to gain success, but they don't ask that. They are glad
and greatful that the American government is willing to give them the
benefit of its matchless credit, a credit greater and stronger than
any naiton on the face of the globe. We give them credit at the same
price our government has to pay you, the people, for the use of its
money, because we do not want to make any profit on our allies. We do
not want to profit by the blood that they must shed upon the battle
field in the same cause in which we are engaged.
What can you do to make this loan a success? You have got to
work, gentlemen, to make this loan a success. America never before
was offered a $2,000,000,000 issue of bonds. This Government never
has had to borrow so much money at one time. The money is in the
country and can be had if you men will simply say that the Government
can have it. The annual increase of our wealth is estimated to be
fifty billions of dollars. You are asked not to give anything to your
Government, but merely to invest 4 percent of the annual increase of
wealth in this country, to take back from your Government the
strongest security on the face of God's earth, and to receive in
return for it 3 ½ percent per annum, exempted from all taxation, with
the further provision that if the Government issues any other bonds
during the period of this war at a higher rate of interest than 3 ½
percent every man who has bought a 3 ½ percent bond may turn it in and
get a new bond at the higher rate of interest. Could anything be
fairer than that? Could anything be more secure than an obligation of
your Government, an obligation backed not alone by the honor of the
American people - which is of itself sufficient - but backed also by
the resources of the richest nation in the world, a nation whose
aggregate wealth to-day is two hundred and fifty billions of dollars;
so that you take no risk, my friends, in buying these bonds.
This bond offering is not going to be successful of its own
momentum. Every man and woman in this country must realize that the
first duty they can perform for their country is to take some of these
bonds. Those who are not able to take some of these bonds ought to
begin saving monthly to take some of them; and if they can not save
monthly, or at all, they ought to make some man or woman who is able
to take some of these bonds subscribe. If you do that, my friends,
this first issue of $2,000,000,000 will be largely oversubscribed. It
depends, however, upon you. Your Government can not do what you can
do for your Government. A government is not worth a continental
unless it has the support of the people of the country. And one
thing that makes me glad - I ought not to be glad that there is a war
- but I can not help feeling a certain amount of reverent elation that
God has called us to this great duty, not alone to vindicate the
ideals that inspire us but also because it has, for the time being,
eliminated detestable partisanship from our national life and made us
one solid people. As one people, my friends, with such an ideal, the
Republic is invincible and irrestible, and there can be no doubt
whatever of the outcome. I want you to give a thunderous reply on the
15th of June - Liberty bond subscription day - to the enemies of your
country.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1991)
p.379 Haig's new offensive opened on September 20. Thirteen
days later, on October 3, he sent Churchill an urgent appeal for
6-inch howitzer ammunition. Any reduction of supply, he warned would
hamper his present advance. Churchill instructed the British Mission
in Washington to put the request to the the American War Industries
Board. The Commissioner on the Board in charge of raw materials,
Bernard Baruch, agreed to provide the shells required. Henceforth
Baruch and Churchill were to be in direct telegraphic contact,
sometimes daily. They had never met, but through their telegraphic
exchanges emerged a close working partnership.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Hansen W. Baldwin, World War I; An Outline History (New York: Harper &
Row, 1962)
The dying Turkish empire had one brief respite and tow great
defeats in 1917.
On the Caucasus front, the Russian pressure ended with the
Russian Revolution; from then until war's end, a few feckless Russian
soldiers in isolated detachments played inconsequential roles.
But in both Palestine and Mesopotamia the British reinforced
success. David Lloyd George, like Winston Churchill, believed in
eccentric strategy - attack on an enemy periphery - and in both
Palestine and Mesopotamia political objectives superceded military
ones.
The Palestine campaign stemmed from the militarily sound
concept of defending the Suez Canal by an advance across Sinai to the
strategic flanking position near El Arish. This was attained in late
1916 and in the first days of January, 1917. British air
reconnaissance, which aided the ground armies greatly in the Palestine
theater, placed the retreating Turks in early March in the
Gaza-Beersheeba area. Sir Archibald Murray, the British commander in
Egypt, was told to undertake a limited holding offensive to keep the
Turks busy. He moved to the attack on March 26 in the First Battle of
Gaza, with five reinforced divisions opposing about three Turkish
divisions. It was a near victory, but bad communications and
unwarranted assumptions led to failure, British withdrawal, and 4,000
casualties as against about 2,500 Turkish casualties.
Murray tried again on April 17, but this time against a
strengthened Turkish position. Another Turkish division had joined,
and Kress von Kressenstein, the wily German, had constructed mutually
supporting strong points. The result of a bloody frontal assault was
a severe British repulse, 6,400 British casualties, 2,000 Turks.
Murray was recalled, and there came to Palestine a redoubtable
general, nick-named "The Bull," who had commanded the Third Army at
Arras. General Edmund Allenby knew what he was doing, what he wanted
to do, and how. He injected new life into the British forces.
Allenby asked and got reinforcements, and spent the summer in
careful preparations. He was given two divisions from Salonika,
formed another from bits and pieces in the theater, and by fall seven
infantry and three cavalry divisions were ready. The Turks, too were
reinforced, but not strongly. Turkish divisions freed by the Russian
collapse had been formed into the so-called Yilderim ("Lightning")
Force under the German General von Falkenhayn, and some of these had
reached the Gaza front. But the British had at least a two-to-one
superiority.
Allenby attacked the Beersheba-Gaza position on October 31;
Beersheba was captured by dusk after a mounted cavalry charge by an
Austrailian brigade, and Gaza fell on the night of November 6-7. It
was victory, but incomplete; the Turks held tenaciously to the key
communications junctions which covered their retrat. Both retreat and
the pursuit were governed by an arid land's most precious commodity -
water.
The way to Jerusalem was now open. From a defensive holding
operation, the Palestine campaign had grown into a major offensive;
Jerusalem had become a glittering political and psychological prize
for the war-weary British people. Allenby had brought victory to a
people starved for victory; on to Jerusalem!
Supply and communications favored the British. The Turks
depended upon a 1,300-mile railroad lifeline, with wood-burning
locomotives; the British had organized well their land routes across
Sinai, and above all, they possesed the inestimable advantage of
command of the sea. The result was inevitable.
On December 8, Allenby launched an assault with four divisions
against Turkish positions which stretched from the Mediterranean,
north of Jaffa, to angle back southward in the Judean Hills in front
of Jerusalem. The Turkish lines bent and brok; on December 9 they
retreated from Jerusalem; the Holy City was at last in British hands.
In a few days the rains came, and the campaigning season was over.
The Palestinian campaign - fought by illiterate Turkish
askars, Indian sepoys, rambunctious Austrailians, Oxford dons, and
Prussian junkers, and supplied by man-back, donkeys, camels, mules,
horses, railroads, pipelines, and ships - was aided by an Arab revolt,
incited, inspired, and organized by British pounds and promises, and
by the tortured genius of a young British archaeologist, T.E.
Lawrence. During 1917 Lawrence and his Arab bands - mostly camel
moumnted - harried, cut off, and immobilized Turkish forces along the
so-called Hejaz railroad in Arabia. During Allenby's advance into
Palestine, Lawrence and his irregulars covered the British right
flank, made raids and reconnoitered, and supplied invaluable
information about Turkish dispositions. Lawrence was one of that
vanishing breed, an intellectual romantic, who was at the same time a
man of rugged action, with a natural eye for terrain and an aptitude
for soldiering. The Arab revolt and Lawrence, though important, were
ancillary to Allenby's success' and Lawrence will live more for a book
than a battle - his immortal Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
In Mesopotamia, the prize of Bagdad lured British armies
ever northeward; Sir Stanley Maude with a quarter of a million men
(less than half of them combat troops) far outnumbered the riddled
Turks. The battle was as much one of supply as of bullets. River
craft in large numbers, laborers, and animals of all kinds formed
Maude's lifeline to the sea.
Maude, after stubborn resistence and delay caused by
torrential rains, finally cleared the enemy from Kut al Imara, the
Shumran bend and Asiziyeh (March 4), which was developed as an air
base for fourteen British planes. Halil had one 11,0000-man corps in
front of Baghdad -attempted to make a stand at Diyala, but he was
outmaneuvered and far outnumbered.
The city of the Arabian Nights fell after small-scale
fighting on March 11, and a dream of "Drang nach Osten" - the
Berlin-to Baghdad railway - was ended. ........
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
John Pearson, The Private Lives of Winston Churchill (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1991)
p. 159-160 Ever since childhood, Churchill had been turning to
aggression to dispel depression. Now he found in art the ideal way of
sublimating his aggression. And he learned, too, to curb his
anxieties, to cope with "Black Dog" as best he could, and to wait.
Then, in the early summer of 1917, patience and painting were
rewarded. The new Prime Minister, Lloyd George, summoned his old
colleague from misery and exile. On July 12, 1917, Churchill was
readmitted to the Cabinet, and his task suited his energies - if hot
his original ambitions. The "man of war" as Baldwin called him, was
made Minister of Munitions.
....
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1918
John Pearson, The Private Lives of Winston Churchill (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1991)
p. 160-162 On a peaceful afternoon in 1918 a group of Royal Flying
Corps mechanics waited by a staff car on the perimeter of a former
meadow, now officially a "flying station," just outside the Surrey
village of Godstone. Less than a hundred miles away across the
english Channel the last throw of the German High Command was about to
be bloodily repulsed by the Allied armies on the western front, but
none of this disturbed the rural calm of a Saturday afternoon in
southern England.
......Before the propeller had stopped, a bulky figure in a
sheepskin coat had heaved himself out of the passenger cocpit and the
car had started off to pick him up. The driver knew from experience
that Churchill was invariably in a hurry.
Forty minutes earlier, Churchill had been driven in a very
large Rolls-Royce to the aircraft from his headquarters at the Chateau
Fouquienberg, just behind the Allied lines near Amiens. Her referred
to the place as "Chateau Fuck and Bugger," and the Rolls had been
specially lent him for his spell in France by his great friend
"Benny," Duke of Westminster. "You might tell Winston in answer to
his wire that I only have a shut Rolls at present, if that's any use
to him," Westminster told Churchill's secretary when he asked if he
could lend him an open Rolls on his appointment as Minister of
Munitions in Lloyd George's government in July 1917.
It seemed a typically casual arrangement, but the use of this
personal Rolls-Royce exemplified the optimistic and flamboyant mood
with which Churchill undertook his duties as the war was ending.
After the personal disaster of Gallipoli, the months spent recovering
from deep depression, and active service at the front, he was back
where he knew he belonged - in power. His morale and confidence
seemed entirely restored now that he was once again in office. His
task, as Lloyd George knew when he appointed him, was one that matched
his ingenuity and boundless energy. Present at every major battle to
ensure that the guns had their munitions, he was a warlord once again.
He loved the role, bullying the generals and thriving on the breath
of battle. Half seriously, Clementine had called him "a Mustard Gas
fiend, a Tank jugggernaut and a Flying terror," but at least he was no
longer the gray-faced husband she remembered, with the doom of the
Dardanelles across his brow.
......
.....The chance arose to buy a farmhouse of their own in the Sussex
farming country near East Grinstead. It was called Lullenden and
seemed as peaceful and romantic as its name. ......
........During the two years Churchill actually owned it, it
was still very much Lullenden Farm, and Sarah simply called it "a
small farm outside East Grinstead." But small it was not. ...
.... There were seven bedrooms, a dining room to seat eighteen,
and a galleried seventeenth-century drawing room. Lloyd George, Sir
Ernest Cassel, the press rporietor Lord Ridell, and the American
lawyer, diplomat, and businessman Bernard Baruch were among the
weekend visitors.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1919
Lt. Colonel Richard Stockton, 6th, Inevitable War (New York: The Perth
Company, 1932)
P. 516-517 .... Speaking of the World War, Mr. Bernard Baruch,
Chairman of the 1918 War Industry Board, said, "Had the war gone on
another year our whole civil population would have gradually emerged
(as wardrobes and inventories became exhausted) in cheap but
servicable uniform. Types of shoes warn were to be reduced to two or
three. The manufacture of pleasure automobiles was to cease. Flaps
from pockets and unnecessary trim in clothing would have disappeared.
Steel had already been taken out of women's corsets.
"The conservation program was, of course, much broader than this.
It affected practically the whole field of commodities . . . We had
gasless, meatless, sugarless, fuelless days, and in ways and methods
too numerous to mention we were greatly increasing the supply for
essential uses by cutting off supply for nonessentials." [Army and
Navy Register, June 27, 1931]
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Eliot Asinof, 1919; America's Loss of Innocence (New York: Donald L.
Fine, Inc., 1990)
p. 90-91 Wilson landed in Brest on the thirteenth of the month,
exactly as he had arranged in December at his first arrival.
(Numbers, it seemed, were one of his more bizarre passions, and
thirteen was his favorite. Because of the thirteen original colonies
and the stripes of the flag? Because of the thirteen letters in his
name? Because others thought it to be unlucky? ) On this thirteenth,
however, Wilson took a far greater trouncing than he was prepared for.
In his absence, his dear friend, Colonel Edward House, had permitted
the detachment of the league from the preliminary treaty as a
concession to the other conferees. The preliminary treaty dealt
exclusively with economic and military matters. The resolution of the
more complicated, and controversial league covenant was to be withheld
for the final treaty that would be drafted later.
Wilson was stunned. When he emerged from his cabin after a
meeting with House, his wife Edith reported that "he had aged ten
years. ... I look back on that moment as a crisis in his life .. From
it date the long years of illness." Said Wilson: "House has betrayed
everything I have worked for...."
.......The significance of the scene lay in the fact that it could
have happened, that the fate of nations lay in the neurotic
complexities of such a relationship. What, one might ask, was House
doing there in the first place? No one had elected him. He had never
held political office. The Senate had not approved his appointment.
What forces had arranged that such enormous power be placed in his
hands?
.....Bernard Baruch, one of Wilson's highly respected economic
advisers ... once heard House ejaculating at the glories of his
position: "Isn't it thrilling to deal with the forces that affect the
destiny of the world.!"
<><><><><><><><><><><><><>
__________, The United Nations Conspiracy (_________)
Colonel Edward Mandell House was President Woodrow Wilson's closest
and most influential adviser. A powerful behind the scenes
manipulator, House had enormous influence in shaping Wilson's domestic
and foreign policies to support economic collectivism and political
internationalism. As noted by one biographer:
"For all his might, Wilson could not stand alone. In every fruitful
enterprise he borowed the Colonel's brain. I shall not impute feet of
clay to the idol. I concede they are living flesh. But they are not
his own. Woodrow Wilson stalks through history on the feet of Edward
Mandell House."
Colonel House wrote the first draft of the League of Nations
covenant and, in September, 1917, convinced President Wilson to
commission a group of "intellectuals" to devise terms for peace and
draft a program for a world government. The group, later known as The
Inquiry, consisted of some highly talented individuals, many of whose
names later became household words as prominent journalists, top
government officials and influential academicians. For instance:
"Sidney Menzes, House's brother-in-law and president of the City
College of New York, was named director. James T. Shotwell was in
charge of historical geography and then of the library. There was
[sic] Christian A. Herter, later to become Secretary of State, and
Norman Thomas, a Marxian Socialist. And the secretary was a gentleman
named Walter Lippmann ....
"And then there were a couple of brothers, enterprising chaps -
Allen Welsh Dulles (later Director of the Central Intelligence Agency)
and John Foster Dulles [later Secretary of State]."
President Wilson drew heavily upon the work of the Inquiry in
formulating his famous Fourteen Points program which was presented to
Congress on January 18, 1918, as a peace strategy to save the world.
The group incorporated various peace proposals and the League of
Nations covenant into the document, which the United States rejected
first on November 19, 1919, and again on March 20, 1920.
American internationalists expected the frustration and
dissruption generated by World War I to condition the American people
so the United States could be enticed into the League of Nations as an
alleged means of avoiding future wars.
However, by the spring of 1919 it had already become clear that
the League would face serious , possibly fata, opposition in the
United States Senate. Colonel House and a few of his followers
therefore began laying groundwork for a long-range effort to condition
Americans to accept eventual United States membership in the
supranational organization steeped in their particular brand of
collectivist internationalism. If World War I couldn't do it then
perhaps some later conflict could, for as Alexander Hamilton had
recognized decades earlier:
:Safty from external danger is the most powerful director of
national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will after a time,
give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and
property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on
a state of continual danger, will compel the nations the most attached
to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which
have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be
more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less
free."
On May 30, 1919, Colonel House and his associates met with some
like-minded Englishmen at the Majestic Hotel in Paris. The British
participants subsequently established the Royal Institute for
International Affairs (RIIA), while the Americans returned to the
United States and founded the American Institute for International
Affairs (AIIA). The AIIA subsequently merged with the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR), a languishing discussion group which had been
formed in New York, during the war. The merger was formally
incorporated in New York City on July 29, 1921. According to Hamilton
Fish Armstrong, who served for fifty years (until October, 1972) As
managing editor of the CFR's influential quarterly, Foreign Affairs,
"Besides taking the Council's name, they gained the financial backing
of it s public-spirited membership. They also acquired a locus,
something vital if they were to continue functioning collectively and
not as individuals dispersed in academic and other centers. .....
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1920
Dick Eastman
> Here are the references documenting Bernard Baruch's role
> in major events of the 20th Century, as discussed on the
> Tom Valentine Radio Free America program, October 6, 2002.
HERE IS THE SECOND INSTALLMENT OF REFERENCE QUOTATIONS
IN SUPPORT OF THE HISTORY OF BERNARD BARUCH, CHURCHILL,
WOODROW WILSON, FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT AND 20-CENTURY
HOT WARS, COLD WARS, CRASHES AND DEPRESSIONS FOR THE
PROFIT OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN CRIMINAL FINANCIAL ELITES.
But first note that a radio broadcast on this subject
can be heard (with RealPlayer):
------------------------------------
Last night (Sunday 10/6) Radio Free America had a two hour broadcast
on Bernard Baruch -- the man whose history we MUST understand to make
sense of today's war profiteering.
I contributed, but RFA listeners from all over the country (check
those different dialects of American English!) added critical new
details.
http://www.rfausa.com/Audio1/audio1.html
Also on the Radio Free America homepage, on the bottom right -- is the
entire 73 pages of Baruch references with complete relevant-passage
quotations that can be downloaded. (AVAILABLE ALSO ON THE
uk.politics.crime NEWSGROUP -- where your additions, corrections etc.
are welcomed and will be discussed by American and British
anti-globalists and populists -- with the inevitable heckling as well,
alas.)
http://www.rfausa.com/Audio1/audio1.html
---------------------------------------
THE BARUCH REFERENCES
1 9 2 1 -- 1 9 3 9
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1921
Murray Rothbard, America's Great Depression, 2nd ed. (Kansas City:
Shed and Ward, Inc., 1972)
p. 198-200 The next year, 1921, saw determined and well-organized
efforts toward a nationwide cotton cartel. The American Cotton
Association, The Cotton News, and other groups urged an acreage
reduction of up to 50 per cent for cotton, and South Carolina
officially proclaimed a "Cotton Acreage Reduction Day." Acreage was
reduced considerably, and this, joined with a poor crop, lowered the
supply greatly; but cotton prices rose less than proportionately to
the fall in output, thus frustrating the cartellists once again.
....
A precedent had been set by the wartime Food Administration Grain
Corportaion, which had fixed high prices of wheat in order to
stimulate production and had itself distributed the wheat available.
Furthermore, the Hoover European food relief program of 1919, widely
trumpeted as a humanitarian gesture, was also a means of getting rid
of "surplus" farm products and thus bolstering food prices. - But the
drive for compulsory price support had not begun in earnest. It
reached major imporance in the "equality for Agriculture" movment,
launched in the fall of 1921 by george N. Peek and General Hugh S.
Johnson and backed by the powerful support of Bernard M. Baruch. The
idea was that since industry was protected by tarriffs, agriculture
might as well join in mulcting the consumer. The governmetn was to
maintain domestic farm prices at a high level, buying the unsold
surplus and selling it abroad at lower, wold -market levels. Both
Peek and Johnson had direct economic interests in farm subsidies as
head of the Moline Plow Company, manufacturers of agricultural
machinery.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1925-1928
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929, 3rd ed. (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972)
p. 14 In 1925, under the aegis of the then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Mr. Winston Churchill, Britain returned to the gold
standard at the old or pre-World War I relationship between gold,
dollars, and the pound. There is no doubt that Churchill was more
impressed by the grandeur of the traditional, or $4.86, pound than by
the more subtle consequences of overvaluation, which he is widely
assumed not to have understood. The consequences, nonetheless, were
real and severe. Customers of Britain had now to use these costly
pounds to buy goods that still reflected wartime inflation. Britain
was, accordingly, an unattractive place for foreigners to buy. For
the same reason it was an easy place in which to sell. In 1925 began
the long series of exchange crises... There were also unpleasant
domestic consequences; the bad market for coal and the effort to
reduce costs and prices to meet world competition led to the general
strike of 1926.
Then, and since, gold when it escaped from Britain or Europe came
to the United States. This [flow of gold to the US] might be
discouraged if prices of goods were [unattractively high] and interest
rates [i.e., returns on investment] were low in this country. [Making
the US a poor place in which to buy and invest, i.e., a poor place to
purchase with gold or lend gold.] In the spring of 1927, three
August pilgrims - Montagu norman, the Governor of the Bank of England,
the durable Hjalmar Schact, then Governor of the Reichsbank, and
Charles Rist, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of France - came to the
United States to urge an easy money policy. The Federal Reserve
obliged. The rediscount rate of the New York Federal Reserve Bank was
cut from 4 to 3.5 per cent. ... The funds that the Federal Reserve
made available were either invested in common stocks or (and more
important) they became available to help finance the purchase of
common stocks by others [i.e. margin account loans]. So provided with
funds, people rushed to the market.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Lionel Robbins, The Great Depression (New York: Macmillian, 1934)
p. 52-53 The situation seems to have been roughly as follows. By
the spring of 1927 the upward movement of business in the United
States, which started in 1925, showed signs of coming to a conclusion.
A moderate depression [ i.e. a recession] was in site. There is no
reason to suppose that this depression would have been of very great
duratikon or of unusual severity. It was a normal cyclical movement.
Meantime, however, events in England had produced a position
of unusual difficulty and uncertainty. In 1925 the British
authorities [i.e., Churchill's authority as Chancellor of the
Exchequer] had restored the Gold Standard at a parity which, in the
light of subsequent events, is now regarded to have been too high.
The consequences were not long in appearing. Exports fell off.
Imports increased. The Gold Standard was in peril. The effects of
over-valued exchange made themselves felt with greatest severity in
the coal trade. Throughout 1926 there raged labour disputes, which
were the direct consequence of these torubles - first the general
strike, then a strike in the coal-fields which dragged out for over
six months, still further endangering the trade balance. By 1927 the
position was one of great danger. International assistance was
sought. And in the summer of that year, partly in order to help us,
partly in order to ease the domestic position, the authorities of the
Federal Reserve System took the momentous step of forcing a regime of
cheap money. A vigorous policy of purchasing securities was initiated
[ i.e., ‘open market purchases' conducted exclusively at the New York
Federal Reserve Bank that puts new supply of dollars into the loanable
funds market in exchange for the governement securities purchased.]
On this point the evidence of Mr. A.C. Miller, the most
experienced ,member of the Federal Reserve Board, before Senate
Committee on Banking and Currency, seems decisive:
" In the year 1927 ... you will note the pronounced increase in
these
holdings [Federal Reserve holdings of United States securities] in
the
second half of the year. Coupled with the heavy purchases of
acceptances
[i.e. with more injection of new loanable money as the Fed buys
debt instruments]
it was the greatest and boldest operation ever undertaken by the
Federal
Reserve System, and in my judgement resulted in one of the most
costly
errors committed by it or any other banking system in the last 75
years.
[Senate Hearings pursuant to S.R. 71, 1931, p. 134]
"What was the object of Federal Reserve Policy in 1927?
It was to bring down money rates, the call rate among them,
because of the international importance the call rate had
come to acquire. The purpose was to start an outflow of
gold - to reverse the previous inflow of gold into this
country. [ibid. P.154]
The policy succeeded. The impending recession was averted. The
London position was eased. The reflation succeeded. Production and
the Stock Exchange took on a new lease of life. But from that date,
according to all evidence, the situation had gotten out of control
By 1928 the authorities were thoroughly frightened. But now the
forces they had released were too strong for them. In vain they
issued secret warnings. In vain they pushed up their own rates of
discount. [Note: the discount rate is the rate at which the Fed lends
to member banks, it is a much weaker instrument for the control of
money supply, available loanable funds, and interest rates than is
the more weighty and direct open market purchase or sale of securities
by the New York Federal Reserve Bank -DE] Velocity of circulation,
the frenzied anticipation of speculators and company promoters, had
now taken control. With resignation the best men in the system looked
forward to the inevitable smash.
Thus, in the last analysis, it was deliberate co-operation between
Central bankers, deliberate "reflation" on the part of the Federal
Reserve authorities, which produced the potential energy that was the
worst phase of this stupendous fluctuation. Far from showing the
indifference to prevalent trends of opinion, of which they have so
often been accused, it seems that they had learnt the lesson only too
well. It was not old-fashioned practice but now-fashioned theory
which was responsible for the speculative excesses of the American
disaster.
Murray Rothbard, America's Great Depression, 2nd ed. (Kansas City:
Shed and Ward, Inc., 1972)
[President Herbert] Hoover had been one of the earliest proponents of
a Federal Farm Board to aid cooperative marketing associations ...
And so it was not surprise, that as Presidential candidate, Hoover
advocated support for farm cooperatives and promised the farm block
that he would soon institute a farm-price support program. As soon as
he took office, he fulfilled both promises. In June 1929, the
Agricultural Marketing Act was passed, establishing the Federal Farm
Board.
...The Federal Farm Board was furnished with $500 million by
the Treasury and was authroized to make all-purpose loans, up to a
twenty-year period, to farm cooperatives at low interest rates. The
Board could also establish stabilization corporations to control farm
surpluses, and bolster farm prices. Essentially it was a Sapiro-type
cartel, this time backed by the coercive arm of the federal
government. Hoover appointed, as chairman of the FFB, Alexande Legge,
president of International Harvester Col and long-time protege of
Bernard M. Baruch. International Harvester was one of the leading
manufacturers of farm machinery, and therefore Legge, like George
Peek, had a direct economic interest in farm subsidization. Other
members included .... It is clear that the Board was dominated by
representatives of the very farm cooperatives that it was organized to
favor and support. Thus, the Hoover Administration established a
giant agricultural cartel, directed by government, and run by and for
the benefit of the cartellists themselves.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1929
Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendevous with Destiny
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1990) p. 60 With Hoover, "the
great engineer," in the White House, the possibility that Roosevelt
might become president seemed remote indeed. The stock market crash in
October, 1929, changed all that. While Roosevelt had expected a
future depression, he had no idea in the summer of 1929 that an
economic crackup was impending. He was aware of the continuing
distress of the farmers, but did not attach significance to the fact
that construction had been down for the three years and freight-car
loadings declining, nor did he know that some insiders like Bernard
Baruch, who had been on of the nation's most successful investors,
were quietly liquidating their holdings in the great bull stock
market.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
John Pearson, The Private Lives of Winston Churchill (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1991)
p. 225 ... on to Hollywood, where Churchill was feted as something
of a star himself. They were also lavishly entertained by William
Randolph Hearst at his legendary castle at San Simeon. Always
thoroughly at home with press proprietors, Churchill made something of
a hit with the megalomaniac publisher, and agreed to write for him.
Randolph took advantage of San Simeon to lose his virginity with some
rapdily forgotten female guest of Hearst's.
If Churchill was aware of Randolph's escapades, he tactfully
ignored them, and so, up to this point, the trip had been a great
success. For Churchill, however, this visit to America had a gloomy
ending. Throughnout the summer he had played the stock market,
confident that he would come back with a fortune. Gambler that he
was, he was speculating on tips from one of his millioniare admirers,
the financier Bernard Baruch, and ignoring advice of brother Jack to
play it safe. After Hollywood, he also enjoyed himself visiting
battlefields of the Civil War (on which he was something of an
expert), but he reached New York in time to witness a ruined
speculator throwing himself from a window on Wall Street.
The Crash of 1929 had come, and Churchill's savings and his rash
investments vanished overnight. He returned to England not in triumph
but on the edge of ruin. He was to keep himself afloat only by
prodigious efforts as an author and journalist, living over the next
few years, "from mouth to hand."
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
William Manchester, The Last Lion; Winston Spencer Churchill
1874-1932; Visions of Glory (New York: Dell Trade Paperback, 1984)
(Copyright 1983 by William Manchester)
p.824 On August 3, 1929, the Empress of Austrailia steamed out of
Southampton bound for Quebec. Among its first-class passengers were
Churchill; his brother Jack; Randolph, now eighteen; and Jack's young
son Jonny. ... The Daily Telegraph had agreed to pay him [2,500
pounds] for ten articles on his trip. In additon, [1,000 pounds] in
World Crisis royalties had arrived before he left London, and a sale
of utility shares had brought him another [ 2,000 pounds]. He
invested every shilling he could spare in the New York stock market.
Financial security, he wrote Clementine from the ship, was "a
wonderful thing."
........ The Canadian Pacific had put a stenographer-typist at his
disposal for the journey across the continent, and Bernard Baruch had
persuaded Charles Schwab to lend Churchill his private railway car,
with double beds, private bathrooms, a parlor, a dining room (which
Winston converted into an office), kitchen, servant's quarters, a
refrigerator, fans, and a radio. ... "The wireless is a great boon,
and we hear regularly from [Horace] Vickers [his broker] about the
stock markets. His news has, so far, been entirely satisfactory."
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social
History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 (Garden City, Double Day,
1979)
p. 322 At noon on Sunday, October 6, Bernard Baruch's private rail
car, hooked to the express from Chicago, glided into Grand Central
Station in New York. Baruch had traveled to Chicago to collect the
Churchills, all four of whom were now suntanned following their stay
in California. There they had been guests of William Randolph Hearst,
who messmerized them with the opulence and eccentricity of his
life-style.
In a letter home to Clemmie, Winston Churchill described
Hearst to his wife as "a grave simple child - with no doubt a nasty
temper -playing with the most costly toys," including two charming
wives," a reference to Mrs. Hearst and Marion Davies, Hearst's
mistress.
As usual, Churchill kept Clemmie fully informed on his
financial affairs. In one "windfall," resulting from his New York
broker investing for him on margin instead of purchasing shares
outright as Churchill expected, he made 5,000. In another whim, he
made 1,000 by speculating in the stock of a furniture firm called
Simmons; Churchill was particularly taken by its advertising slogan:
"You can't go wrong with a Simmons mattress."
Between amusing Baruch with his perceptive observations on
Hollywood and its stars - Churchill thought Charlie Chaplin "bolshy in
politics and delightful in conversation" - he carefully questioned his
host about dabbling further in the market.
Baruch explained why he ad adopted a cautious position.
And yet, just as Richard Whitney had predicted to the reporter,
the Great Bull Market had now seemingly shaken off its fetters and was
rampaging on more strongly than ever.
On the New York Stock Exchange on Saturday, U.S. Steel had
leaped ahead almost $8 a share. General Electric's surge was even
more dramatic; it went up 10 points. American Tobacco achieved one of
the most spectacular rises of all - a wonderous $38 a share. The Dow
Jones industrial average regained more than 16 points during the
dramatic turnabout.
In San Francisco there was near-record trading in Transamerica
and other issues. IN Chicago some brokers were said to have sent
their clerks out to buy gargle to ease their sore throats from
shouting. Balimore, Boston, and Hartford were swept by a wave of
trading that often equaled the volume of earlier in the year.
In St. Louis, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis-St.
Paul, the urge "to get into the market reached what one hard-pressed
broker described as "an epidemic."
Along thousands of miles of private wires went the cheerful news
"the big boys" were behind this new wave of buying.
With a flair that few could match, John J. Raskob encouraged the
thought. Throughout Saturday he talked up his media contacts. Percy
Rockefeller, the Du Ponts, Van Sweringens, and Billy Durant helped
reinforce his message.
After Saturday's market closed there were few Americans
unaware that, in the words of one reporter, "a financial revival equal
in fervor to anything the Bible Belt can produce" was under way.
Across the nation, still more hopefuls threw up their jobs,
packed their bags, bid their families and friends fairwell, and headed
for New York.
A radio commentator said, with considerable justification, Wall
Street had "taken on the appearance of a Gold Rush."
The train that brought Baruch's private car into Grand Central no
doubt carried at least a few more speculators who quickly headed
downtown to get the first glimpse of their Klondike.
Even an investor as seasoned as Baruch could not but be
surprised by the amazing about-face the market had made.
Some Wall Street brokerage houses called in their staff this
Sunday to change the tone of their market letters from somewhat somber
caution to renewed optimism. And once again the phrase "organized
support" was heard in the Street.
P. 359 [Black Thursday, October 24 - 11:45 a.m.: following a
brief official welcome by Richard Whitney (at 9:50 a.m.) Churchill is
looking down on NYSE trading floor from the visitor's gallery. ]
Not unaccustomed to being present at moments of high drama, Churchill
cooly observed a scene that seemed to him "one of surprising calm and
orderliness .. There they were ... offering each other enormous blocks
of securities at a third of their old prices and half their present
value, and for many minutes together finding no one strong enought to
pick up the sure fortunes they were compelled to offer." [Letter to
wife, Clementine]
- But whatever he thought about the day's decline in values of
the American stock he himself held or what he may have said about his
loss to Percy Rockefeller, whose guest he now was, Churchill decided
never to put into public print.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929, 3rd ed. (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972)
p. 74-75 The best reassurance on brokers' loans was in the outlook
for the market. If stocks remained high and went higher, and if they
did so because their prospects justified their price, then there was
no occasion to worry about the loans that were piling up.
Accordingly, much of the defense of the loans consisted in defending
the levels of the market. It was not hard to persuade people that the
market was sound; as always in such times they asked only that the
disturbing voices of doubt be muted and that there be tolerably
frequent expressions of confidence.
...
The official optimists were many and articulate. Thus in June,
Bernard Baruch told Bruce Barton, in a famous interview published in
The American Magazine that "the economic condition of the world seems
on the verge of a great forward movment." He pointed out that no
bears had houses on Fifth Avenue. .....
pp. 103-106 Thursday, October 24, is the first of the days which
history - such as it is on the subject - identifies with the panic of
1929. Measured by disorder, fright, and confusion, it deserves to be
so regarded. That day 12,894,650 shares changed hands, many of the at
prices which shattered the dreams and hopes of those who had owned
them. Of all the mysteries of the of the stock exchange there is none
so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks
to sell. October 24, 1929, showed that what is mysterious is not
inevitable. Often there were no buyers, and only after wide vertical
declines could anyone be induced to bid.
The panic did not last all day. It was a phenomenon of the
morning hours. The market opening itself was unspectacular, and for a
while prices were firm. Volume, however, was very large, and soon
prices began to sag. Once again the ticker lagged more and more. By
eleven o'clock the market had degnerated into a wild, mad scramble to
sell. In the crowded boardrooms across the country the ticker told of
a frightful collapse. But the selected quotations coming in over the
bond ticker also showed that current values were far below the ancient
history of the tape. The uncertainty led more and more people to try
to sell. Others, no longer able to respond to margin calls, were sold
out. By eleven-thirty the market had surrendered to blind relentless
fear. This, indeed, was panic.
Outside the Exchange in Broad Street a weird roar could be heard.
A crowd gathered. Police Commissioner Grover Whalen became aware
that something was happening and dispatched a special police detail to
Wall Street to insure the peace. More people came and waited, though
apparently no one knew for what. A workman appeared atop one of the
high buildings to accomplish some repairs, and the multitude assumed
he was a would-be suicide and waited impatiently for him to jump.
Crowds also formed around the branch offices of brokerage firms
throughout the city and, indeed, throughout the country. Word of what
was happening, or what was thought to be happening was passed out buy
those who within sight of the board or the Trans-Lux. An observer
thought that people's expressions showed "not so much suffering as a
sort of horrified incredulity." Rumor after rumor swept Wall Street
and these outlying wakes. Stocks were now selling for nothing. The
Chicago and Buffalo Exchanges had closed. A suicide wave was in
progress, and eleven well-known speculators had already killed
themselves.
At twelve-thirty the officials of the New York Stock Exchange
closed the visitors gallery on the wild scenes below. One of the
visitors who had just departed was showing his remarkable ability to
be on hand with history. He was the former Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Mr. Winston Churchill. It was he who in 1925 returned
Britain to the gold standard and the overvalued pound. Accordingly,
he was responsible for the strain which sent Montagu Norman to plead
in New York for easier money, which caused credit to be eased at the
fatal time, which, in this academy view, in turn cuased the boom. Now
Churchill, it could be imagined, was viewing his awful handiwork.
There is no record of anyone's having reproached him. Economics
was never his strong point, so (and wisely) it seems most unlikely
that he reproached himself.
In New York at least the panic was over by noon. With the gallery
closed, "organized support" now appeared.
At twelve o'clock reporters learned that a meeting was convening
at 23 Wall Street offices of J.P. Morgan and Company. The word
quickly passed as to who was there - Charles E. Mitchell, the Chairman
of the Board of the National City Bank, Albert H. Wiggin, the Chairman
of the Chase National Bank, William C. Potter, the President of the
Guaranty Trust Company, Seward Prosser, the Chairman of the Bankers
Trust Company, and the host, Thomas W. Lamont, the senior partner of
Morgan's. .... The elder Morgan was dead. His son was in Europe. But
equally determined men were moving in. They were the nation's most
powerful financiers. ...
...A decision was quickly reached to pool resources to support
the market. Thomas Lamont met with reporters. .... "There has been
a little distress selling on the Stock Exchange." He added that this
was "due to a technical condition of the market" rather than any
fundamental cause, and told the newsmen that things were susceptible
to betterment." The bankers, he let it be known, had decided to
better things.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
William Manchester, The Last Lion; Winston Spencer Churchill; Alone
1932-1940 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1988)
p. 14 -15 ... men who have amassed fortunes while he has struggled
year after year with creditors, hold enormous appeal for him. That
was Bracken's charm.
It also explains, in part, Winston's fondness for Baruch, though
Baruch's appeal is broader. He is American, he is Jewish, he
recognizes the menace of an aggressive Germany, and Churchill is
indebted to him for an extraordinary act of shrewdness and generosity.
Winston was badly hurt in the Wall Street Crash three years ago. Had
it not been for Baruch, however, it would have been much worse; he
could have spent the rest of his life in debt. He is not a born
gambler; he is a born losing gambler. In New York at the time, he
dropped into Baruch's office and decided to play the market, and as
prices tumbled he plunged deeper and deeper, trying to outguess the
stock exchange just as he had tired to outguess roulette wheels on the
Riviera. In Wall Street, as in Monte Carlo, he failed. At the end of
the day he confronted Baruch in tears. He was , he said, a ruined
man. Chartwell and everything else he possessed must be sold; he
would have to leave the House of Commons and enter business. The
financier gently corrected him. Churchill, he said, had lost nothing.
Baruch had left instrucitons to buy every time Churchill sold and
sell whenever Churchill bought. Winston had come out exactly even
because, he later learned, Baruch even paid the commissions.
<><><><><><><><><>
William Manchester, The Last Lion; Winston Spencer Churchill
1874-1932; Visions of Glory (New York: Dell Trade Paperback, 1984)
(Copyright 1983 by William Manchester)
p. 826 ..... On the evening of "Black Tuesday," when the stock
market, honeycombed with credit, collapsed of its own weight, sixteen
million shares changing hands, he dined at Bernard Baruch's Fifth
Avenue mansion. The other guests were bankers and financiers. When
one rose to toast their British visitor, he adressed the company as
"former millionaires and friends."
The next morning Churchill heard shouts below the Savoy-Plaza
apartment and looked out, he wrote , to find that ‘under my window a
gentleman [had] cast himself down fifteen storeys and was dashed to
pieces, causing a wild commotion and the arrival of the fire brigade."
....
.....Wall Street investors had lost over thirty billion dollars,
almost as much as the United States had spent on World War I. Later
he would realize that this "Economical Blizzard," as he came to call
it, was responsible for turning all England into "one vast soup
kitchen," driving the country back off the gold standard, doubling the
number of British unemployed, and radicalizing politics throughout
Europe, especially Germany.
<><><><><><><><><><>
Baruch's New York Mansion 1055 Fifth Avenue
Baruch made his initial millions speculating in copper stocks.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1930
John Pearson, The Private Lives of Winston Churchill (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1991)
p.225 Following the loss of office, the loss of so much money was a
bitter blow. The optimistic years were over, and Churchill was badly
hit by a midlife crisis. Harold Nicholson was shocked when he saw him
in January 1930 - very changed from when I last saw him. A white
round face like a blister. Incredibly aged. ... His spirits have also
declined and he sighs that he has lost his old fighting power.".....
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
--------, Freedom From Fear, loc. cit.
p. By the spring of 1930 many observers were cautiously optimistic.
Hoover himself, in a statement that would later haunt him, proclaimed
to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on May 1, 1930: "I am convinced we
have passed the worst and with continued effort we shall rapidly
recover." The following month he told a delegation from the National
Catholic Welfare Conference that their pleas for further expansion of
federal public works programs were "sixty days too late. The
depression is over."
Given available information, and given the scale against which
the events of late 1929 and early 1930 could then be measured, these
statements were not as outrageous as they appeared in retrospect. The
wish for recovery might have been father to the thought, but
circumstances lent the idea a measure of plausibility. The stock
market had by Aptril 1930 recouped about one-fifth of its slippage
from the speculative peak of the preceding autumn. Some rural banks
had begun to crack, but the banking system as a whole had thus far
displayed surprising resilience in the immediate wake of the crash;
deposits in operating Federal Reserve member banks actually increased
through October 1930. The still sketchy reports on unemployment were
worrisome but not unduly alarming. Major employers were apparently
abiding by their pledge to maintain wage standards, and private
industry as well as local and state governments had publically acceded
to Hoover's request to accelerate construction projects.
But the reality, still only obscurely visible in the meager
statistical data that the government could then muster, was that the
economy was continuing its mystifying downward slide. Buy the end of
1930 business filures had reached a record 26,355. Gross national
product had slumped 12.6 percent from its 1929 level. In durable
goods industries especially, production was down sharply: as much as
38 per cent in some steel mills, and about the same throughout the key
industry of automobile manufacturing, with its huge employment rolls.
Despite public assurances, private business was in fact decreasing
expenditures for construction; indeed, in the face of softening demand
it had already cut back construciton in 1929 from its 1928 peak, and
it cut still further in 1930. The exact number laid-off workers
remained conjectural; later studies estimated that some four million
laborers were unemployed in 1930..
Yet most Americans in 1930 saw these developments less clearly
than did later analysts and evaluated what they could see against the
backdrop of the most recent experience with an economic recession in
1921. Then GNP had plummeted almost 24 percent in a single year,
twice the decline of 1930. Unemployment was somewhat larger in
absolute terms in 1921 than in 1930 (4.9 million versus 4.3 million)
and significantly larger in percentage terms (11.9 percent versus 8.9
percent). Americans could justly feel in 1930 that they were not -
yet- passing through as severe a crisis as the one they had endured
less than a decade earlier. This perception of the gravity of the
crisis, joined with the recurrent belief that its momentum had been
arrested and the corner turned, as had happened so swiftly in 1921,
inhibited Hoover from taking any more aggressive antidepression fiscal
action in 1930. Nor was he yet coming under any significant pressure
to do more. He stood securely in mid- 1930 as the leader of the fight
against the depression and he seemed to be winning - or at least not
losing. Hoover, predicted the powerful Democratic financier and
economic sage Bernard Baruch in May 1930, would be "fortunate enough,
before the next election, to have a rising tide and then he will be
pictured as the great master mind who led the country out of tis
economic misery."
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1931-1933
Murray Rothbard, America's Great Depression, 2nd ed. (Kansas City:
Shed and Ward, Inc., 1972)
On all other aspects of the Hoover New Deal, the President blossomed
rather than faltered. The most important plank in his program - the
RFC - was passed hurriedly in January by the Congress. The RFC was
provided with government capital totalling $500 million, and was
empowered to issue further debentures up to $1.5 billion. Hoover
asked none other than Bernard Baruch to head the RFC, but Baruch
declined. At that point, Hoover turned to name as Chairman one of his
most socialistic advisers, the one who originally suggested the RFC to
Hoover, Eugene Meyer, Jr., and old friend of Baruch's. For the first
five months of its life, the lending activities of the RFC lay
shrouded in secrecy, and only determined action by the Democratic
Congress finally forced the agency to make periodic public reports,
beginning at the end of August. The bureaucratic excuse was that FRC
loans should, like bank loans or prvious NCC loans, remain
confidential, lest public confidence in the aided bank or business
firm be weakened. But the point is that, since the RFC was designed
to lend money to unsound organizations about to fail, they were weak
and the public deserved t lose confidence, and the sooner the better.
Furthermore, since the taxpayers pay for government and are supposed
to be its "owners," there is not excuse for governmental
representatives to keep secrets from their own principals. In a
democracy, secrecy is particularly culpable for how can the people
possibly make intelligent decisions if the facts are withheld from
them by the government.?
P. 245-247 ...In September [1931], Gerard Swope, head of General
Electric, far surpassed the radicalism of his old public-works
proposal by presenting the Swope Plan to a convention of the National
Electrical Manufacturers Association. The Plan, which garnered a
great deal of publicity, amounted to a imitation of fascism and an
anticipation of the NRA. Every industry was to be forcibly mobilized
into trade associations, under Federal control, to regulate and
stabilize prices and production, and to prescribe trade practices.
Overall, the Federal Government, aided by a joint administration of
management and employees representing the nation's industry, would
"coordinate production and consumption." ...the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce endorsed this socialistic plan in December by a large
majority, as a means of employing Federal coercion to restrict
production and raise prices. Leading the march for approval was the
new President of the U.S. Chamber, Henry I. Harriman, of the New
England Power Company. Harriman wrote, in his report of the Chamber's
Committee on the Continuity of Business and Employment, that "We have
left the period of extreme individualism. ... Business prosperity and
employment will be best maintained by an intelligently planned
business structure." With business organized through trade
associations and headed by a National Economic Council, any dissenting
businessmen would be "treated like a maverick. ... They'll be roped,
and branded, and made to run with the herd." The president of the
National Association of Manufacturers wanted to go beyond the Swope
Plan to forcibly include firms employing less than fifty workers.
...
Furthermore, former Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo
proposed a Federal "Peace and Industries Board" to adjust national
production to consumption ..... The historian Charles A. Beard
denounced laissez-faire and called for a Five Year Plan of industrial
cartels headed by a National Economic Council. And the popular
philosopher Will Durant called for naitonal planning by a national
economic board, ruling over boards for each industry. Supreme Court
Justice Louis Brandeis suggested complete state control of industry on
the legal ground of public convenience and necessity.
.....
One of the most important supporters of the cartelization idea
was Bernard M. Baruch, Wall Street financier. Baruch was influential
not only in the Democratic Party, but in the Republican as well, as
witness the high posts the Hoover Administration accorded to Baruch's
proteges, Alexander Legge and Eugene Meyer, Jr. As early as 1925,
Baruch, inspired by his stint as chief economic mobilizer in World War
I, conceived of an economy of trusts, regulated and run by a Federal
Commission, and in the spring of 1930, Baruch proposed to the Boston
Chamber of Commerce a "Supreme Court of Industry." McAdoo was
Baruch's oldest friend in government; and Swope's younger brother,
Herbert Bayard Swope, was Baruch's closest confidant.
P.338n Henry I. Harriman, another contributor to the drafting of the
NRA, also turned up as a leader in the agricultural Brain Trust of the
New Deal. Another Baruch disciple, and a friend of Swope's, General
Hugh S. Johnson, was chosen head of the NRA (with old colleague George
Peek as head of the AAA). When Johnson was relieved, Baruch himself
was offered the post. See Margaret Coit, Mr. Baruch (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1957), pp. 220-221, 440-442; Loth, op.cit., pp. 223ff.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendevous with Destiny
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1990)
p. 103 Others plastered a red label on Roosevelt''s agricultural
experts, or denounced them as professors who had no knowledge of farm
realities. They ignored the fact that while M.L. Wilson, who had
developed the domestic allotment idea, did indeed teach at Montana
State, he was also running a Montana wheat ranch. Both Secretary of
Agriculture Wallace and Assistant Secretary Tugwell, incessantly
derided as dreamers, had earlier roots in agricultural business. .. He
placated conservatives by announcingin advance that he would appoint
Bernard Baruch''s lieutenant George Peek to be head of the new
Agricultural Administration (AAA).
<><><><><><><><><><><>
_______, Freedom From Fear, loc. cit.
p. 118 - 121
If Roosevelt had a plan in early 1933 to effect economic recovery,
it was difficult to distinguish from many of the measures that Hoover,
even if sometimes grudgingly, had already adopted: aid for
agriculture, promotion of industrial cooperation, support for the
banks, and a balanced budget. Only the last item was dubious.
Roosevelt had pledged himself in the electoral campaign to fiscal
orthodoxy and had denounced Hoover's budget deficits, but doubts about
the strength of Roosevelt's own commitment to fiscal discipline
persisted. Hoover worried that FDR would unleash the hounds of
inflation, inflicting on the United States the kind of monetary
calamity that had befallen defeated Germany scarcely a decade earlier.
The German hyperinflation of 1923, as well as the more moderate but
still unsettling doubling of American prices between 1914 and 1920,
was still fresh in his memory. Those examples put sound-money men on
their guard. Moreover, Roosevelt was a Democrat, and the Democratic
Party, since at least the time of William Jennings Bryan in the late
nineteenth century, had been home to a large proinflaitonary
constituency. Based mostly in the chronically indebted agricultural
regions of the South and West, the inflationary element in the
Democratic Party was a never-dormant dog roused to noisy life by the
Depression crisis.
.....
From all sides pressure played upon FDR to commit himself to this
or that Depression remedy or structural reform. His passive
non-committal posture in these preinaugural days, along with the ever
deepening crisis, guaranteed the wild plurality of policies that would
be pressed upon him and the sometimes desperate fervor with which they
would be urged.
Pressure came first of all from his won political staff, the body
of economic and legal experts assembled during the campaign and known
colloquially as the Brain Trust (originally styled as the Brains
Trust). .....
Over the course of several weeks, Roosevelt appeared to find the
counsel of three of these academic visitors particularly congenial.
In addition to Moley, they were Rexfod Guy Tugwell, a Columbia
University economist, and Adolf A. Berle Jr., a professor at Columbia
Law School. Together with longtime Roosevelt political confidante
Samuel I. Rosenman, cousel to the governor, Basil "Doc" O'Connor,
Roosevelt's law partner, and the financier Bernard Baruch's colorful
protege, Hugh Johnson, they constituted what Roosevelt called his
"privy council" until a New York Times reporter coined the name
"Brains Trust" in September.
....First, the Brain Trusters agreed that the causes as well as
the cures of the Depression lay in the domestic arena. It was futile
and pernicious to seek remedies, as Hoover had done, in the
international realm.
Second they all considered themselves inheritors of that
tradition of progressive thought best expressed in Charles Van Hise's
classic work of 1912, Concentration and Control: A Solution of the
Trust Problem in the United States. Both Berle and Tugwell in 1932
were in the process of making important contributions to that
intellectual tradition with works of their own. Berel, together with
Gardiner C. Means, published The Modern Corporation and Private
Property in 1932, a book that argued for a redefinition of property
rights and more vigorous government regulation of the economy.
Tugwell's Industrial Discipline and the Governmental Arts appeared in
1933. The thread that bound these several treatises together in a
common intellectual lineage was the argument summarized in Van Hise's
title: that concentration of economic power in huge industrial
enterprises was a natural and beneficial feature of modern, advanced
societies; and that these enormous concentrations of private power
necessitated the creation of commensurately powerful public controls,
or governmental regulatory bodies. Berle and Tugwell carried Van
Hise's thinking a step further when they argued that it was
government's right and responsibility not merely to regulate discrete
economic sectors but to orchestrate the economy's various parts
according to an overall plan.
Third, these ideological commitments implied hostility to what
the Brain Trusters identified as "the Wilson-Brandeis philosophy" of
trust-busting, or what Moley mocked as the quaint belief "that if
America could once more become a nation of small proprietors, of
corner grocers and smithies under spreading chestnut trees, we should
have solved the problems of American life."
The Brian Trusters regarded Louis Brandeis as Woodrow Wilson's
"dark angel," the man whose trust-busting advice, Tugwell thought, had
mischievously derailed the early twentieth-century reform movement and
stalled the development of appropriate industrial policies for nearly
two decades. ...
P. 126 Conspicuous among the conservative voices heard in these
weeks was that of Bernard Baruch, head of the War Industries Board in
Woodrow Wilson's government and the consumate Democratic Party
insider. A fabulously wealthy Wall Street speculator, Baruch lavished
money on Democrats whom he deemed sympathetic to his own big-business
outlook. He was said to have contributed some $200,000 to the 1932
campaign; Roosevelt thought that he "owned" at least sixty
congressmen. His advice to FDR was Spartan in its stark simplicity:
"Balance the budgets. Stop spending money we haven't got. Sacrifice
for frugality and revenue. Cut governmetn spending - cut it as
rations are cut in a siege. Tax - tax everybody for everything."
Pp. 177 - 180 Recovery remained maddeningly elusive. "Balance"
still seemed the key. Following the Hundred Days, Roosevelt counted
primarily on two measures to effect the equilibrium between industry
and agriculture thought to be essentail to economic health. One was
an unorthodox and controversial gold-confiscation scheme, aimed at
depreciating the dillar and thus easing debt burdens, particularly for
farmers. The other was an elaborate scheme to micromanage the farm
sector through the newly created Agriculture Adjustment
Administration.
For much of 1933 and 1934, however, both monetary and
agricultural policy were overshadowed by the aggressively publicized
endeavors of another agency: The National Recovery Administration.
Though it was created virtually as an afterthought on the one
hundredth day of the special congressional session that ended on June
16, 1933, the NRA almost instantly emerged as the signature New Deal
creation. "In some people's minds," Frances Perkins later observed,
"the New Deal and the NRA were almost the same thing."
The NRA owed much of its towering profile in the public mind to
the extravagfantly colorful personality of its chief, Hugh S. Johnson.
Raised in frontier Oaklahoma, Johnson was fifty-one years old in
1933, a West Point graduate who rose to the rank of brigadier general
before resigning in 1919 to pursue a business career. His seamed and
jowly face floridly testified to the rigors of the professional
soldiers's life as well as the ravages of drink. Melodramatic in his
termperament, mercurial in his moods, ingeniously profane in his
speech, Johnson coujld weep at the opera, vilify his enemies, chew out
his underlings, and rhapsodize about the virtues of NRA with equal
flamboyance. On accepting his appointment in June 1933 he declared:
"It will be red fire at first and dead cats afterward" - one of the
printable specimens of his sometimes mystifyingly inventive prose.
..... His model was the War Industries Board (WIB) of 1917-1918,
chaired by his idol and business associate Bernard Baruch. Johnson
himself had served as director of the WIB's Purchase and Supply
Branch, representing the military purchasing bureaus to the various
commodity sections of the WIB. Frankin Roosevelt had also conjured
the World War experience in announcing the NRA's birth on June 16. "I
had part in the great cooperation of 1917 and 1918," the president
declared, and he called on the country to recollect the war crisis and
the spirti of national unity it evoked. "Must we go on in many
groping, disorganized separate units to defeat," the president asked,.
Extending the military metaphor, "or shall be move as one great team
to victory.?"
But if the NRA was patterned on the War Industries Board, a
crucial element was missing: the war. To be sure, a psychological
sense of crisis prevailed in 1933 that was comparable to the emergency
atmosphere of 1917; the difference was not mood but money. The
federal government had borrowed over $21 billion dolalrs in just two
years to fight World War I, a figure that exceeded the sum of New Deal
deficits from 1933 down to the eve of World War II. The National
Industrial Recovery Act that established the NRA had also authjorized
the Public Works Administration to borrow $3.3 billion for
pump-priming expenditures to infuse new purchasing power into the
economy. NRA and PWA were to be like two lungs, each necessary for
breathing life into the moribund industrial sector. But as Herbert
Hoover had discovered, it took time, lots of it, to start up
construction projects of any significant scale - time for site
surveys, architectural designs, and the engineering studies to be
completed before actual construction could start. ....
If Johnson, the would-be maste economic organist, found himself
seated at a magnificent musical instrument that lacked wind-box or
bellows, he nevertheless proceeded to bang away at the keyboard of the
NRA with missionary zeal and maniacal energy. There was no truer
believer in the philosophy of industrial coordination that NRA was
charged with implementing. "I regard NRA as a holy thing," he said.
He credited his mentor, Bernard Baruch, with the best formulation of
the NRA's economic creed. "The government has fostered our
over-capacitated industrial combinations, and even encouraged these
combinations to increase production," Baruch explained to a Brookings
Institution gathering in 1933.
"But it seems public lunacy to decree unlimited operation of a
system which periodically disgorges indigestibel masses of
unconsummable products. In today's desperate struggle for the scant
remaining business, cost and price have become such factors that, in
the unstable fringes which surround each industry, a few operations
have taken the last dangerous step in economic retrogression - the
attainment of low costs by the degradation of labor standards ....
Lowering wages - lower costs - lower prices - and the whole vicious
cycle goes on."
The NRA, in Baruch's and Johnson's view, could arrest thei cycle
by government-sponsored agreements to curb ruinous overproduction,
allocate production quotas, and stabilize wages. The last item was
particularly important. If there was any defensible economic logic in
NRA at all, it consisted in the idea that recovery could not come
about so long as shrinking payrolls continued to leach purchasing
power out of the ailing economy.
The essence of Baruch's and Johnson's thinking resided in their
shared hostility to competition. "Murderous doctrine of savage and
wolfish competition," Johnson called it, "looking to dog-eat-dog and
devil take the hindmost," had impelled even humane and fair-minded
employers to slash wages and lay off workers by the millions. In
contrast, Johnson intoned, "the very heart of the New Deal is the
principle of concerted action in industry and agriculture under
government supervision."
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1936-1938
John Pearson, The Private Lives of Winston Churchill (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1991)
p.268 - 270 The letter [daughter] Sarah had written Clementine had
been carefully worded to appeal to her heart. "Please don't be
worried - please don't be sad. I will keep you fully informed of my
whereabouts and plans. ... My love to you, darling Mummy." She even
added a P.S. begging Clemintine to use her calming influence upon her
husband. Please make Papa understand."
However, once the elopement was splashed across the papers,
there was no chance of Churchill understanding. The battle was
joined.
.....
Just as Sarah was steaming off aboard the S.S. Bremen with the
scandal in the daily papers, a far greater scandal was bout to burst.
King George V had died in January 1936, and had been succeeded by his
son Edward, who was King but had not yet been crowned. That fall the
love affair between Edward VIII of England and his married mistress
Mrs. Wallis Simpson of Baltimore, Maryland, was on the point of
turning from an open society secret into the gravest crisis to afflict
the monarcy since the far-off days of George IV. ...
There was in fact some striking similarities between the
royal love affair and Sarah's: both involved unmarried adults bent on
union with twice-married foreigners who themselves were in the throes
of divorce; both marriages, in different ways, appeared unsuitable,
and in both Churchill felt impelled to intervene. What is facinating
is the extraordinary differences in his behavior toward his daughter
and his King.
.......
When the story broke in the Express, Churchill was still in
France, but he promptluy ordered Randolph, of all people, to
Southampton in his place, sent him a first-class ticket on the Queen
Mary, and told him to bring his sister to her senses and safely home.
.......
......As the Queen Mary docked, he was met by his
anxious-looking sister and half the press corps in New York.
"I'm here to take Sarah home. It simply won't do," he
blustered.
"But does she want to go?" somebody asked.
"That makes no difference. Sarah's too young to know her own
mind."
But Sarah emphatically did know her mind - and Randolph
returned to England empty-handed. This did little to affect the
resolution of his father, who had now returned to Chartwell from the
fortresses of France; the light of battle in his eye, Churchill was
set to fight this homegrown skirmish to its bitter end.
Through his old New York friend the financier Bernard Baruch,
who had been in touch with Sarah, highly paid lawyers were secretly
engaged to set legal barriers against the marriage, and private
detectives started dredging up anything unpleasant they could find in
Vic Oliver's past. Sarah's appeals by telephone to Clementine - and
to her father's deeply sentimental nature - made no difference.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Roy Jenkins, Churchill (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)
p. Neither this nor a potentially highly profitable two-month
American lecture tour, which he was negotiating for the autumn, was
sufficient to offset a second series of devastating New York stock
exchange losses wich the recession of 1938 had just cost Churchill.
Stocks which he had bought for over ,18,000 had fallen to a value of
barely ,5,700, a loss in modern terms of about ,375,000. In spite of
what should have been expert advice from Bernard Baruch and others,
Churchill was a singularly unfortunate Wall Street speculator.
These losses made him take the grave step of putting Chartwell
definitely (as it appeared) on the market. .....
Happily he was once again spared the trauma. Another "white
knight" came over the horizon. He was Sir Henery Strakosch, like so
many of both the good and bad figures of the first half of the
twentieth century, an Anglo_south African financier. He was a near
contemporary of Churchill's who had established himself many years
before as a banker and as a wquiet public figure (member of a Royal
Commission in the 1920's , adviser to several international
conferences) and knighted as early as 1921, without any apparent
intervention from Churchill. Later he was the chairman of the
Economist .
In 1938, building upon an acquaintanceship with Churchill based mainly
on supplying him by correspondence with detailed and authoritative
facts about the effect of rearmament upon the German economy, and
activated, it appears, by no motives beyond a firm anti-Nazism and
personal admiration, he saved Chartwell for Churchill.
Skakosch did this indirectly and in a somewhat complicated way.
He arranged through Brenden Bracken that he would taek over all of
Churchill's American stocks at the price Churchill had originally
paid for them (which was nearly three times their current value) and
hold them without risk to Churchill for at least three years, with the
right to make switches and paying Churchill interest at the rate of
about ,800 a year. What happened at the end of three years is not
recorded. Skrakosch had recouped some of the losses which he had
voluntarily accepted. By the Spring of 1941 not only was the main
house at Chartwell closed, Churchjill Prime Minister and Britain's
position, before the entry into the war of either the Soviet Union or
the United States, still semi-desperate, but British-owned American
assets were (with compensation) requisitioned. IN 1938, however,
Strakosch's intervention was immensely beneficial to Churchill.
Chartwell was again withdrawn from the market.
P. 543 Throughout the late spring and summer of 1939 Churchill
was torn by conflicting desires and thoughts. First he believed that
the government had at last accepted the policy which he had been urgin
for several years. Bracken, always the faithful mouthjpiece, informed
Bernard Baruch on 18 April: "Winston has won his long fight. Our
government are now adopting the policy that he advised three years
ago, and Churchill himself defined this policy (to Lord Lytton) as ‘a
Grand Alliance on the basis of the Covenant of the League......
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendevous with Destiny
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1990)
p. 192 Roosevelt [in January 1936] faced the prospect of a sharp
decline in farm prices, something that could be fatal to him in the
election. Several weeks earlier at Warm Springs, theinfluential
Bernard Baruch had impressed him by remarking that if he could keep
commodity prices up that would do more than anything else to reelect
him. The basic question was what form the new farm program should
take. He adapted a relatively simple device, to modity a
little-noticed piece of existing legislation, the Soil Conservation
Act, passed the previous year. Under its authorization, the AAA
achieved the same ends of reducing overproduction by contracting with
farmers to take part of their acreage out of the major crops,
ostensibly to improve the fertility of the soil. It was an effective
scheme, and one in keeping with Roosevelt''s fundamental interest in
conservation."
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Encyclopedia of American History (Pleasantville: Reader's Digest
Association, Inc., 1975)
1) Nye Committee
2) Neutrality Laws
-------
Nye Committee
Senate Munitions Investigating Committee, chaired by North Dakota Sen.
Gerald P. Nye, 1934-1936/ Investigated influence of U.S. munitions
makers on U.S. entry into W.W. I /Major impetus for Neutrality Laws.
1935-37
American isolationism ran at full tide during the mid-1930's as
millions of Americans, remembering the failure of World War I to bring
lasting peace in Europe, approved virtually any legislation that
promised to keep the U.S. from being drawn into an overseas conflict.
The findings of the Senate Muntions Investigating Committee (better
known as the Nye Committee, after its chairman, North Dakota Senator
Gerald P. Nye) did much to reinforce isolationist views. Established
in April, 1934 to look into rumored abuses by the Munitions Industry
during the pre-World War One period, the Nye Committee held almost two
years of headline-producing hearings that offered dramatic proof that
many arms manufacturers had made unconscionably high profits out of
wartime carnage and that some had sought to tilt national policy
toward aiding the Allies. But the Nye hearing produced evidence that
was not conclusive in showing that these so-called merchants of death
had unduly influenced President Woodrow Wilson or that the interests
of mysterious "international bankers," lay behind U.S. entry into the
war. Nonetheless, the Nye Committee's findings provided ammunition for
those who persuaded Congress to enact the Neutrality Laws, of 1935,
1936 and 1937 -- designed to preclude any American involvement in a
future global war.
---------
U.S. production of heavy munitions never met demand, and financier
Bernard M. Baruch arranged with Britian's minister of munitions,
Winston S. Churchill, that medium and heavy arms would be supplied by
British industry, in an arrangement whereby the British would not take
a profit, but that any and all cost overruns would be paid by the
United States.
Long after the fighting ended, the U.S. Senate Munitions Inquiry (the
Nye Committee) unearthed much evidence of war profiteering in the
industry. The investigation and its exposes
(add accent mark) strengthened public support of the neutrality laws
(1935-39) which prohibited sales of arms to other nations. But World
War II brought the transformation of the U.S. into the "arsenal of
democracy," with virtually every American industry engaged in some way
with the war effort. By the end of the conflict the U.S. had produced
some 300,000 airplanes, 86,000 tanks, 71,000 new naval ships and 55
million tons of merchant shipping. Development of nuclear weapons
began with the top-secret Manhattan Project of World War Ii and its
awesome aftermath. Intensive development of nuclear missile systems
follow Korean War, beginning in 1953 with the introduction of both the
U.S. Army's Nike missile and the Air Force's Matador. Five years later
the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was fired,
and the Navy tested its first Polaris missile, designed to be fired
from a submarine. ...
----------
NEUTRALITY LAWS
Acts to keep U.S. out of foreign wars; passed, 1935-39/ Banned
commerce with belligerents, abandoning neutral rights/ Provisions
eased the permit U.S. aid to Britain and France at start of W.W. II.
The series of neutrality laws passed between 1935 and 1939 were
designed to keep the U.S. out of any future foreign wars. In large
part a response to national disillusionment with World War I, the
legislation was spurred by the findings of the Nye Committee
(1934-36), which suggested that U.S. capitalists -- notably munitions
makers -- had profited greatly from the horrors of the First World
War. If there were not profits to be made from war, the proponents of
the neutrality laws reasoned, thenthe U.S. would not be drawn into
foreign entanglements. Further, if the defense of Neutral Rights would
lead the nations into war, as was the case in World War I, then
neutral rights should be abandoned.
The first act was passed after Italy attacked Ethiopia in 1935, in
1935, and new laws followed in 1937 and 1939 with the onset of the
Spanish Civil War and World War II. The acts prohibited the shipping
of arms or the granting of loans or credits to belligerents; barred
U.S. citizens or vessels from entering designated combat areas;
forbade the arming of merchant ships; and empowered the President to
require of transfer of title and cash payment before the export of any
goods to a warring nation.
Critics of the legislation, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
argued that the acts ecouraged aggression by failing to distinguish
between attacker and attacked. As the Nazis swept across Europe, the
provisions of the 1939 act were eased to permit the sale of arms and
munitions to England and France, first on a "cash and carry" basis,
then on credit. American vessels were eventually permitted to enter
combat areas and merchant vessels were armed. In early 1941 the
Lend-Lease Act was passed, permitting the transfer of U.S. weapons
food and equipment to the Allies with several naval engagements
against German submarines -- a long step toward American entry into
the war later in the year.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Robert A. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent; American Entry into World
War II (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1965)
pp. 34-35
The passage of the Spanish arms embargo was the prelude to full scale
Congressional aciton on neutrality legislation in 1937. The original
act, extended in 1936, was due to expire in 1937. The original act,
extended in 1936, was due to expire on May 1, 1937. Congress had
only four months to arrive at a final decision on the complex issues
it had dodged in the last session. The basic goal, keeping the nation
out of any major European war that might occur, had not changed, but
there were still a bewildering variety of solutions being advocated
inside and outside of Congress. The basic features of neutrality
adopted in 1935 and 1936 - ht impartial arms embargo, the ban on
travel, the prohibition of loans to belligerent governments - were not
in question. The debatable issue was to what extent the nation was
willing to sacrifice its export trade in goods other than arms if war
came to Europe. By early 1937 the United States was slowly climbing
out of the depression and was looking forward to complete economic
recovery. The task confronting Congress was to frame a neutrality act
that would insure peace without endangering prosperity.
It was Bernard M. Baruch, the financier and confidant of
presidents, who came up with the cash-and-carry formula to keep the
United State neutral without sacrificing the profits of foreign trade.
In magazine articles in 1935 and 1936 Baruch argued that it was the
shipment of goods to belligerents, not the sale, that involved risk to
the nation. Therefore, he suggested the cash-and-carry principle -
"We sell to any belligerent anything except lethal weapons, but the
terms are ‘cash on the barrel-head and come and get it.'" [Bernard
Baruch, "Neutrality," Current History, XLIV (June 1936), 43.] Baruch's
ingenious plan was designed to avoid repetition of the incidents that
had let to the war in 1917. When American goods were sold to a
belligerent, title to the exports would pass immediately into the
hands of ht epurchaser, who would not be permitted to transport them
in American ships. By keeping American ships, goods, and citizens off
the high seas in time of war, Baruch hoped to guarantee the
continuation of American foreign trade without the risk of war. His
formula was technically neutral, but it would always operate in favor
of the belligerent with large cash reserves and control of the sea.
But this limitation did not bother most Americans, who desired a
policy where nothing was ventured and a great deal could be gained.
The cash-and-carry scheme won the favor of both the administration
and the advocates of strict neutrality. Roosevelt liked the plan
because it worked out in favor of England and France, the nations with
sea power, and against Germany. When Senator Pittman introduced a
comprehensive neutrality bill in January 1937, based on cash-and-carry
principle, the administration endorsed it and had a similar measure
introduced in the House. Senator Nye had no objections to the Beruch
plan. He preferred a total embargo on all trade with belligerents,
but he realized that such a measure could not be passed and thus he
was willing to accept cash-and-carry as a reasonable compromise.
However, Nye and others who shared his views insisted that the Pittman
bill contained too many provisions granting discretionary power to the
President. They pressed for amendments to the administration measure
which would compel the President to impose automatic restrictions on
American trade in time of war. The conflict between discretionary and
mandatory features dominated the debate in Congress.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
William Manchester, Alone 1932-1940, loc. cit.
P. 419 Chamberlain believed war ministers unnecessary because
he remained convinced that he had brought Englishmen peace in their
time, and this became clear as debate over establishment of a ministry
of supply - first proposed by Churchill three years earlier, on April
23, 1936 - approached its climax. Without such a minister, an
economic czar empowered to mobilize British industry and provide a
national arsenal, future recruits would lack rifles, even uniforms.
It was no longer enough for a nation to spring to arms. Artillery,
tanks, and warplanes, decisive in modern war, must also be there. ...
.....
To Churchill the need for the new ministry was compelling. That
same week he had risen in the House of Commons to propose an amendment
calling for its immediate establishment: .... The rapid production of
munitions, he declared, should have begun long ago, and on a scale
immensely greater than anything the War Office now contemplated.
HMG's reply was that a ministry would seriously dislocate British
industry, that it was wiser "to trust to cooperation than to
compulsion." The House was still Chamberlain's and Winston's rebuff
was stunning. Not 50 MPs. But just two - Bracken and Macmillan -
joined him. Berlin rejoiced. ‘GREAT DEFEAT OF CHURCHILL!" read one
German headline. Another trumpeted: "CHURCHILL'S INTRIGUES COLLAPSE /
EVEN DUFF COOPER AND EDEN COULD NOT BE ROPED IN."
As late as March 2, 1939, the prime minister's own secretary for
war, Leslie Hore-Belisha, told him that if the government was serious
about defending the country, something had to be done to arm and equip
fighting men, and Britain's industrial titans would listen to no one
without a seat at the cabinet table. Wearily the P.M. cut him off in
mid-argument.
Yet the Ministry of Supply had become inevitable , and presently
even Chamberlain knew it. In April 1939, after the German occupation
of Prague, his panel of industrialists - the men he admired most and
had sought to shield from bureaucracy - reported that their chief
recommendation, an urgent question to be met squarely "at the first
possible opportunity," was "the establishment of a Ministry of
Supply." Brendan Bracken wrote Bernard Baruch: "Winston has won his
long fight. . . . No public man of our time has shown more foresight,
and I believe that his long, lonely struggle . . . will prove to be
the best chapter in his crowded life."
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins; An Intimate History (New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1948)
p. 113 ...Near fatal illness drained him of all personal ambition
and converted him into the selfless individual who rendered such great
service to the President during the war years.
Early in March 1939, Hopkins was still feeling worn out and spent
from that "touch of flu" and he was glad to accept an invitation from
Bernard Baruch to spend a few days at Hobcaw Barony near Georgetown,
South Carolina. Baruch's huge plantation was near the coast, at the
confluence of the Pee Dee and Waccamaw Rivers, a beautiful and largely
wild place, full of live oaks, Spanish moss, magnolias, camellias,
azaleas, many kinds of game and fish - and the serene wisdom, the
overwhelming prestige and unshakable self-confidence of its owner. In
the cultivation of his own political garden, Hopkins could do no
better than seek out the advice and counsel (and, above all, the
support) of Bernard Baruch, who held title of Elder Statesman Number
One longer than any man had since Thomas Jefferson.
But when Hopkins visited Hobcaw, Baruch was not inclined to give
much attention to political prospects or business conditions at home.
His concern was with the gathering calamity abroad. He scoffed at a
statement made on March 10 by Neville Chamberlain that "the outlook in
international affairs is tranquil." Baruch agreed passionately with
his friend, Winston Churchill, who had told him, "War is coming very
soon. We will be in it and you [the United States] will be in it.
You [Baruch] will be running the show over there , but I will be on
the sidelines over here." (That last prophecy proved inaccurate.)
Baruch talked to Hopkins of the realities of the situation as he had
seen them in Europe and reported them privately to Roosevelt the
previous year; he talked of the amount of misinformation that was
being collected and transmitted by our official representatives in
Europe; he talked of the woeful state of our unpreparedness and of the
measures that had been taken to meet production problems in the First
World War. Years later, Baruch said: "I think it took Harry a long
time to realize how greatly we were involved in Europe and Asia - but
once he did realize it, he was all-out for total effort."
Dick Eastman
references with complete quotations revealing the role of Merchant
Banker Bernard Baruch, controller of Presidents and Prime Ministers
and architect of wars, hot and cold, of market crashes and New Deals
and the US-Russian arms race.
Radio broadcast discussing this material can be heard at:
http://www.rfausa.com/Audio1/audio1.html
Radio Free America (RealPlayer works nicely)
Dick Eastman
Yakima, Washington
(I'll be happy to send anyone who asks, a more readable version,
in either WordPad or WordPerfect format, with highlighting
of critical passages and easy readability.)
======
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1940
James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt; The Soldier of Freedom 1940-45 (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970)
The President seemed to retain his usual debonair optimism about the
naiton's capactiy to produce in the pinch. A crucial potential
bottleneck was steel. Late in 1940 he asked Stettinius to assess
steel capacity; when Stettinius's man Gano Dunn, working with the
steel industry predicted a surplus of ten million tons of steel in
1942, Roosevelt canonized the report by devoting a whole press
conference to it and accepting its findings. Dunn had to issue a more
pessimistic report withing five weeks.
Watching these happenings through skeptical pince-nez was a
veteran of World War I mobilization struggles. Bernard Baruch had
long enjoyed a friendly relation with the President, who paid the old
Wilsonian every compliment except following his advice. For months
Baruch's advice had been simple and flat: centralize all controls -
allocations, priorities, price-fixing - in one agency, with one boss.
Many editorial writers agreed; so did many high administration
officials. Stimson too, had urged this move, on the ground that
someone clearly in charge would feel the "sting of responsibility."
Morgenthau wanted his chief to set up a Cabinet-level department of
supply to run the whole mobilization program. Everyone seemed to want
a czar - especially if he himself could be the czar.
Roosevelt would have none of it. It was impossible to find
any one "Czar" or "Poohbah" or "Ahkoond of Swat," he had said in
explaining the OPM to reporters, and only amateurs thought otherwise.
Under the Constitution only one man - the President - could be in
charge. But as spring 1941 approached, it was clear that the
President, with his other multifarious responsibilities, could not be
the co-ordinating head of defense production. Yet he would not budge.
Clearly he had deeper reasons - reasons distilled from his diverse
tactics of moving step by step, avoiding committments to any one man
or program, letting his subordinates fell less the sting of
responsibility than the goad of competition, thwarting one man from
getting too much control, preventing himself from becoming a prisoner
of his own machinery, and above all, keeping choices wide in a world
full of snares and surprises ..... Pp. 52-53
Baruch complained that Hopkins was like a jealous woman in keeping
others away from Roosevelt; everyone else had to "play him in a
triangle." P. 60
[Roosevelt] corresponded and/or talked with an amazing variety of
people .....Bernard Baruch, of Lafayette Park P.62
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendevous with Destiny
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1990)
p. 391 After meeting with Churchill, Roosevelt moved the United
States cautiously, step-by-step, into undeclared naval war against the
Germans in the North Atlantic. At the same time the embargo against
Japan was quietly heightening the likelihood o hostilities in the
Pacific. Over several months the nation moved to the brink of global
war. ...Through much of the summer he had been engaged in a crucial
and difficult struggle with the isolationist bloc in Congress to
obtain authorization to keep draftees and others on active service
longer than twelve months. ...On the day after the Atlantic conference
ended, Roosevelt was victorious, but only by a single vote, 203 to
202, in theHouse of Representatives. Draft extension was deeply
unpopular, and polls both before and after the Atlantic conference
indicated that about 75 percent of the American people wanted to stay
out of war with Germany and Japan. Yet Roosevelt seemed to be carrying
60 percent with him in his gradual moves toward undeclared conflict.
Publication of the poll results may in itself have created something
of a "bandwagon effect," intensifying support for him. With opinion
behind him, Roosevelt could grapple through the next month with
problems of increasing defense production. Lord Beaverbrook, the
British minister of supply, came to Washington after the conference
and emphasized that American production must accelerate enormously.
Roosevelt, resisting strong pressure to appoint a production czar --
Baruch or someone like him -- to speed sluggish armament programs, was
receptive to an armed forces proposal urging a threefold increase in
production. He asked Stimson, Knox, and Hopkins to provide him with
specifications.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins; An Intimate History (New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1948)
p. 280 Actually, Lend Lease in itself provided no overwhelming
difficulties in the beginning. ... There were seven billion dollars
to spend but the weapons to buy were not coming off the assembly lines
fast enough nor were there enough ships to carry them overseas even
when they did. This was a time when one of the most important words
in the American language was "bottleneck," and the most formidable
bottleneck of all was created by the ancient principle that you cannot
eat your cake and have it: the nation could not meet the reality of
wartime demands for production while maintaining the illusion that it
was still "at peace." There existed an Industrial Mobilization Plan
which, in the words of Bernard M. Baruch, its principle author, was
designed to enable the country "to pass from a peace to a war status
with a minimum of confusion, waste and loss." But - the thinking
behind this and all other plans before 1940 was based on the
assumption that a nation passed from a peace status to a war status as
quickly and as decisively as one passes from one room to another. No
provision whatsoever had beem made for the maze of corridors, blind
alleys and series of antechambers - labeled "Phony War," "cash and
carry," more than mere words," "Lend Lease," etc. - which the United
States was compelled for the first time in its own or any other
nation's history to traverse between September 1, 1939, and December
7, 1941.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1941
Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms; A Global History of World War II
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. 729n
In a letter of July 9, 1941, Bernard Baruch had warned Roosevelt not
to trust Keynes, referring to very bad experiences at the Paris Peace
Conference of 1919. In his reply of July 11, the President, who was
generally not inclined to put his thoughts on paper, wrote, "I did not
have those Paris Peace Conference experiences with the "gent" but from
much more recent contacts, I am inclined wholly to agree." FDRL, PSF
Box 177, Bernard Baruch.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><>
The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, loc. cit.
P. 181 -182 I carried to the President a suggestion from Ben Cohen
that instead of setting up something in the nature of a War Insudsries
Board of the last war, every Cabinet officer be left free to select
business advisers of his own who would work with him. This would make
these business advisers subservient to the government instead of the
Government's being a tail to the businessman's kite. They would be
relatively ineffective except as advisers because they would not be
working together in one group. The President said that he had to do
something to take care of Bernie Baruch, who was to have lunch with
him on Saturday but that he didn't know how he was going to handle
him. The newspapers representing big business have already begun to
pound for "competent, efficient" businessmen being called to
Washington and given charge of the preparedness program. This
pressure is going to be terrific and I pointed out to the President
that it was important to get somethign started while there was still
time.
Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendevous with Destiny
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1990)
Pp. 418 , 421-422 [After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor] "....
The clashes of the jousting "war lords of Washington" were
spectacular. So too were the related clashes in Congress, the press,
and radio. The struggle was over the drive to meet production goals,
and it also reflected the fundamental schism over the nature of the
war. Was it to be fought to restore the old order, or to attain the
idealistic future Rooseveltfrom time to time proclaimed? ...
Roosevelt, who symbolized the issue as the advocate of a better world,
sought nevertheless to bridge the schism by insisting that the
immediate overriding concern of the United States was to win the war
... The specifics of the postwar world could be thrashed out later.
The urgent and instant need was to raise production as high as
possible. Already Roosevelt had proposed figures at what the army and
the Office of Production Management regarded as the upper limit, a
total of $55 billion. Lord Beaverbrook, in charge of British
production, sat with him on Christmas night, 1941, until one in the
morning, urging still larger output. He talked, Donald Nelson, in
charge of supply allocations, remembers, "in what seemed at the time
to be fantastic figures." Roosevelt accepted them at once, 45,000
tanks and 60,000 planes -- 10,000 more than the projection of a year
and a half before. The increased output, Roosevelt told his
administrators, must come through curtailing civilian production. Only
35 percent of the steel was going into war use, compared with 75
percent in Britain; he wanted to take 60 percent of steel, and 50
percent of all industrial capactiy. To achieve top production,
Roosevelt needed to replace the makeshift, inefficient war agencies
with new, more effective ones. A consensus was forming that the nation
needed a single director to serve as Baruch had during the First World
War, but possessing greater power than then. For some days Roosevelt
clung to the concept of three directors, this dispersing power. He was
wary and manipulative toward the prestigious, conservative Baruch, who
had headed the War Industries Board under President Wilson. Throughout
World War II, Baruch exercised influence from the Carlton Hotel and a
park bench across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. Roosevelt
courted Baruch enough to keep him out of the opposition, and followed
similar tactics with the Republican Willkie. .... ...Roosevelt did
establish the War Production Board (WPB) with a single director,
Donald Nelson, an amiable Democrat and a Sears, Roebuck executive.
Nelson, as Roosevelt wished, was sympathetic toward New Dealers and
tried to aid some business, but he could not decide how much steel and
other scarce materials the military should receive compared with the
civilian economy and make his decisionsstick. It was with the Army
that Nelson''s troubles gradually intensified, and repeatedly more
serious conflicts came before the President. Rosenman witnessed
Roosevelt spending hours and days deciding disputes between the WPB
and the army. ... ...With a strong allocation plan and two decisive
lieutenants, Nelson by September 1942, could run the War Production
Board more effectively. He brought in Eberstadt and Charles E. Wilson,
president of General Electric. It was not an entirely effective
system, but despite the inevitable minor problems and strident
conflicts, Roosevelt finally had a basic production in place. By 1943
it was so successful that the focus could turn toward questions of
cutbacks and even limited reconversion to civilian needs. Roosevelt
did little more than preside over these changes and insist that the
quarrels not become too public and disruptive. The effective
innovations had to come from below.
When the quarreling became too strident, between the army and the War
Production Board, Roosevelt tried without openly showing his hand, to
quiet difficulties in the WPB between Nelson''s two deputies. Wilson
had threatened to resign unless he received some of Eberstadt''s
powers. Nelson capitulated. The problem the secretaries and under
secretaries of the navy and war felt, was with Nelson; and together
with Byrnes, Hopkins, and Ickes they pressed Roosevelt to appoint
Baruch head of the WPB. Byrnes in February 1943 presented such strong
arguments that the appointment would quiet Congress and win the
plaudits of the press, that Roosevelt agreed and signed a letter
making the offer. Roosevelt became swayed by the misgivings of
Director of the Budget Smith that Baruch was too elderly and perhaps
was tied to one of the factions in the dispute. There followed on
February 16, 1943 a bizarre episode. At breakfast an assistant
informed Nelson that a letter had been drawn up for Roosevelt''s
signature appointing Baruch chairman of the WPB, and Eberstadt his
deputy. The army and navy secretaries and under secretaries were to
meet with Roosevelt at two that afternoon, together with Byrnes, to
urge Roosevelt to sign the letter. Nelson telephoned Stimson who
confirmed the planned meeting. Next he tried, without success, to
reach the president, but failed. He did reach on of the White House
staff, who suggested"
"The President expects you to take things in your own hands. . . .
This whole row seems to be centering around Eberstadt -- yet you''ve
been keeping Eberstadt in your organization all this time. Do
something about that, and then see if the Boss doesn''t invite you in
for a chat." Nelson immediately requested Eberstadt's resignation and
designated Wilson as his chief deputy. Roosevelt's meeting with
Stimson and Knox did not take place. ... Later that afternoon
Roosevelt told Nelson he was satisfied with the job he was doing, yet
for some days still wavered. Baruch''s medical tests were negative. He
returned to Washington, and expecting the appointment went to the
White House. Roosevelt engaged him in conversation on numerous topics,
but the WPB was not among them. The president changed his mind. ...
.... One day early in the war, Roosevelt, nursing a head cold, lunched
with Baruch, and gave him a feeling of closeness. Roosevelt remarked,
"You think I am too soft." Baruch did not deny it. Yet what Baruch,
Stimson and others saw as softness was Roosevelt''s reluctance to use
a bludgeon ... The failure of Baruch to head the WPB and the sudden
departure of Eberstadt were cases in point.
<><><><><><><><>
Bruce M. Russet, "FDR- Unnecessary Intervention and Deception," in
Warren F. Kimball ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World Crisis,
1937-1945 (Lexington: C. D. Heath and Company, 1973
p. 36 I have no quarrel with the decisions for rearmament or to
institute Selective Service with revision of the Neutrality Act to
permit "cash and carry" by belligerents (effectively by allies only),
with the destroyers-for-bases exchange, with Lend-Lease, or with the
decision to convoy American vessels as far as Iceland. Even the
famous "shoot-on-sight" order, even as interpreted to allow American
destroyers to seek out the sight of U-boats, seems necessary if
convoys were to be protected on the first state of the critical
lifeline to Britain. ...
Only two major exceptions to the content of American policy in
1941 appear worth registering. One is the vote by Congress in
mid-Novermber 1941, at the President's behest, removing nearly all the
remaining restrictions of the Neutrality Act. It permitted American
ships to carry supplies all the way across the Atlantic, instead of
merely as far as Iceland. ...
The other and more serious exception I take is with President
Roosevelt's policy. It was neither necessary nor desirable for him to
have insisted on a Japanese withdrawal from China. ...
Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes, (New York: Simon
and Schuster, Inc., 1954)
P. 607
Friday, September 5,
1941
Bernie Baruch tried to get through to me after the new mobilization
order was issued and I called him at Saratoga Springs at a designated
hour last Friday. I told him that it looked as if he had been
superseded by Rosenman and he admitted the fact. He also agreed that
Harry Hopkins was now in effect Assistant President. He didn't make
any reproaches but I suspect that he did not like the summary but
characteristic way in which he also had been pushed aside. After all,
Rosenman hasn't had the wild experience in these matters that Bernie
has. Bernier has had more of it than any other man in the country.
Moreover, so far as I know, Rosenman has never had any experience in
administration. It looks to me as if he hadtaken the Baruch proposal
and pared and whittled to put it into some form that would be
satisfactory to Harry Hopkins. At any rate, this is my guess. It may
have looked for a time as if I would come through merely by force of
circumstances as an important figure in the defense program. But
Harry has seen to it that I haven't.
Bernie said that he wanted to see me as soon as I got back to
Washington and before I went up to testify before any of the
Congressional committees. He wants me to show that, with respect to
oil and aluminum, I was trying to anticipate the needs instead of
waiting for the needs to come into being, and to cry out in such loud
tones that no one could ignore them.
I suspect that Bernie thinks that he can get some satisfaction
out of the kicks that I can administer to the pants of OPM. I
certainly am willing to do what I can along this line. I think that
the President has given Bernie a particularly rotten deal. He called
on him for help, which was cheerfully and loyally rendered. But the
President apparently could not go along with Bernie and, at the same
time, keep certain people, including myself, in their places. SO he
called upon Rosenman to do the kind of job that he and Harry wanted.
.......
P. 614 -616
September 2_, 1941
..... I think that Bernie has undoubtedly been hurt by the
President's conduct toward him. However this was not the first
occasion that the President has ridden over him roughshod. In 1939
Bernie volunteered to set up something in the way of a war industries
board and the President turned him down. Subsequently Lousi Johnson,
Assistant Secretary of War, set up the Stettinius boear, and again
Bernie was hurt.
However, I have never known a better soldier. He feels keenly
that we have been very negligent in not putting a ceiling over all
prices as well as a ceiling over profits and wages. He felt that he
had to go before the Currency Committee yesterday to make his position
clear, and he made an excellent and convincing statement. He remarked
on Wednesday that he wasn't going to attack the President or be bitter
but that when he got through with the pending bill, there wouldn't be
anything left of it except the title. I think that he as done a brave
and much-needed job. A man like Baruch can go on the witness stand
and insist that all profits really ought to be taxed out, but a more
radical person would only arouse the feeling that he was attacking
business as such.
Bernie told me about his last talk with the President, following
which he had announced from the White House steps that the seven-man
board was a faltering step in the right direction and that he was
going to go after the price-fixing bill. Of course, Bernie shouldn't
have announced this from the White House steps, but I can understand
his very natural reaction after the President had done to him what he
had in taking all of his work and turning it over to Sam Rosenman to
play with and distort.
Baruch told me again quite definitely that the President had
specifically promised to put his plan of organization into effect.
Baruch feels just as strongly as ever that the situation calls for one
man. He doesn't believe that seven men with equal authority will be
able to do the job effectively. He had even gotten so far with the
President as to suggest two men and the President had agreed to one of
them, namely Bill Dougals. I think that the other one was Under
Secretary of War Patterson. The President told Bernie that he wanted
him to be present when he talked with Douglas, but Bernie thought that
this would not be fitting and dissuaded the President. But, according
to Bernie, the President actually called Bill Douglas on the
long-distance telephone, apparently with a view to making a
preliminary offer or at least arranging for an interview. Then the
President, without more ado, announced the seven-man board. What
happened during their telephone conversation or what caused the
President to change his mind at a stage like that, Bernie does not
know. Bill Douglas got back to Washington on Thursday night and my
plan is to see him early next week and find out what I can from him.
Bernie also told me of his discussion of me with the President.
Bernie had been pressing me for an appointment as Coordinator of Hard
Fuels and Power, as well as of Petroleum. And as such, he thought
that I ought to be in what he called the "War Cabinet." During the
discussion the President asked him whether I would be satisfied with
this or with that. Bernie assured him that I would be satisfied with
whatever place the President gave me and that I would be a good
soldier. Apparently the President acted on this assurance, although
he ran some risk in doing so.
Baruch feels that we all have to go along and make the best of
the situation. When he lunched again with me on Thursday, he told me
that the only thing to do was to be patient; that the situation would
develop in the long run so that I would get my chance at the defense
program. He didn't convince me, but for the time being there isn't
anything to do except go along. Developments in our relationship with
Japan may put a different face on the situation.
Bill Bullit came in late Wednesday afternood and it was a Bill
Bullit in distress. He had seen the President and had finally learned
definitely that there was no place for him in the preparedness
organization. Bill was terribly hurt. He was being game about it and
he told about his interview with the President with a laugh, but it
wasn't a merry laugh.
It seems that the President has been stringing Bill ever since he
resigned as Ambassador to France. Bill held himself available because
the President insisted that it was his full intention to call him into
the service in some important post. ... After months of this, Bill
finally saw the President on Wednesday to force the issue. He had
begun to suspect that he was being given the run-around. The
President told him that he had wanted to use him but that no position
had offered that was commensurate with Bill's standing and abilities.
During their interview, Bill told the President that he
understood the situation perfectly: that Harry Hopkins was responsible
for his exclusion. The President vigorously denied this and said that
Harry had nothing to do with it. Bill told him that four people had
related to him incidents in connection with Harry, which proved to him
that it was Harry's doing. The President said: "You may say to these
people that the President of the United States says that this is a
damned lie."
I asked Bill, as I had already asked Bernie Baruch, to explain
the new defense setup and particularly to give the reason why
Stettinius, who has been a failure in every job he has held so far,
has been moved up to the important post of Administrator of the
Lend-Lease Act. Both were of the opinion that all of these moves had
been to protect Harry Hopkins. They believe that Harry is now, in
effect, Assistant President, but his standing on the Hill is such that
the need of someone to front for him has to be recognized. According
to Bernard Baruch, Jimmy Byrnes told the President afte Harry was
appointed Administrator of the first Lend-Lease Act that if the
Congress had known that this was to go to Harry, it would not have
voted a nickel. Now the President wants some more money and he dare
not go to Congress and ask for it with Harry Hopkins looming as
Lend-Lease Administrator. So Stettinius has been given that title,
but he can be depended upon to do whatever Harry tells him to do. In
other directions Harry is also protected. In other words, here is a
man with tremendous power whom Congress and even public opinion cannot
reach. I must confess it is a very clever arrangement.
Bill Bullitt ruefully remarked to me that it seems that the
President had to have someone near him who was dependent upon him and
who was pale and sick and gaunt. He had had such a person in Louis
Howe and now another in Harry Hopkins. Bill insisted that the two
resembled each other physically, being cadaverous and bent and thin.
P. 641 Bernie Baruch was in for luncheon yesterday. The
President had sent for him and he seemed to be in a better frame of
mind, although I can't say that at any time he was particulary
downcast. He is really quite philosophical, despite which, however,
he felt, and still feels, the summary way in which the President threw
his plan for a reorganization of the defense agencies into the
wastepaper basket and substituted one by Sam Rosenman. Bernie had
told me at our last meeting that he would not ask to see the President
but that, of course, if he were sent for he would respond.
Bernie doesn't think that things are going any better. He was
glad that I had been appointed Hard Fuels Coordinator. He referred
again to the fact that the President had categorically promised to put
the Baruch plan into effect and I told him that he needn't urge the
matter again.
P. 649 I saw by the newspapers that Bernie Baruch was to be in
Washington to appear as a witness in support of the price control bill
and so I asked him to lunch with me. I asked Jane too. This was
fortunate because just before Baruch came in at twelve forty-five "Pa"
Watson called me up and said that the President would like to have me
lunch with him. I suppose that some other plan and fallen out and
that I was chosen to fill in. So I had just a few minutes with
Baruch before I ad to leave for the White House. He asked me whether
I had been consulted with reference to the coal strike and I told him
No. He assured me again that all I ad to do was to exercise patience
and that I would be brought in before long. ....
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1942
James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt; The Soldier of Freedom 1940-45 (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970)
p. 247 Roosevelt was still being urged to set up an integrated
super angency under a real superczar, as Baruch had proposed long
before the war, and he was still resisting. In the spring of 1942
strategic plans were still open; whether or not Russia could survive
the gathering German offensive was still a burning question. .....
Always there was the frantic demands of Allied Nations for
supplies, and no one in authority in Washington was more sensitive to
those demands than Roosevelt. The pressure from abroad itself was
institutionalized; uneasily coexisting with the United States agencies
by this time were a host of international organizations for
allocation. At the ARCADIA Conference Roosevelt and Churchill had set
up the Combined Munitions Assignments Board (MAB) in Washington and
London, operating under the Combined Chiefs of Staff ; other combined
boards were established for raw materials, production, shipping, and
food during the first half of 1942.
P. 259 Congress forced the President's hand. Impatient for action,
fearful of nationwide gasoline rationing, impressed by the popular
demand for czars who could break through obstacles, the legislature
passed a bill establishing a Rubber Supply Agency under a director
with wide powers. Roosevelt vetoed the measure arguing that it would
frustrate centralized control under the WPB. But recognizing by now,
early August, the need for more drastic action, he announced in his
veto message the appointment of a committee of Conant, Compton, and
Baruch, chairman, to investigate the problem, after Chief Justice
Stone had turned down a similar assignment. "Because you're 疎n ever
present help in time of trouble' will you 租o it again'?" he wrote to
Baruch in longhand - and by enlisting the old promoter of tough
remedies, Roosevelt knew he would get a recommendation for drastic
action. So he did : rubber and gas rationing, stepped up
synthetic-rubber programs, and a powerful rubber administrator under
the WPB.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
_________, Freedom frm Fear, loc.cit.
P. 629 ... the WPB found itself under excruciating pressure as the
cockpit where all the controversies between the various services,
between the services and the civilians, and between competing economic
sectors, were bitterly contested.
Roosevelt characteristicaly reacted to the rising pressure on the
WPB in October 1942 by creating another mobilization body, the Office
of Economic Stabilization, which officially metamorphosed into the
Office of War Mobilization (OWM) in May 1943. Each was headed in itds
turn by former South Carolina senator and Supreme Court justice James
Byrnes. .....
With the Appointment of Byrnes, Roosevelt openly acknowledged the
political dimension of economic mobilization. The crooked timber of
humanity, not scarce critical materials, was now recognized as the
principal obstacle to efficient production. Byrnes was no
businessman. He had neither executive experience nor technical
expertise. But he was the consummate political operator.
He had begun his long Washington career as a protege of Pitchfork Ben
Tillman, South Carolina's infamously racist baron, and he enjoyed the
lavish patronage of his sometime fellow Sough Carolinian, Bernard
Baruch, the Democratic Party's multimillionaire gray eminence.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1943
James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt; The Soldier of Freedom 1940-45 (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970)
p.334 ...The arsenal of democracy, he [Roosevelt] said, was making
good, and he hit out at criticism based on guesswork and malicious
falsification. But he remained dissatisfied with war production
during early 1943. "The war goes on and on-" he wrote to Beaverbrok
in March, "and while I think we are gaining, it is difficult for you
and me to curb our impatience, especially when our military and naval
friends keep saying that this cannot be done and that cannot be done
and this time schedule seems so everlastingly slow to us." A few
weeks later Baruch reported that shipbuilding was going well, escort
vessels improving, high-octane gasoline coming along better, but
aircraft production still lagged. "We are making planes but not as
many as we should."
<><><><><><><><><><>
The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes, loc. cit.
p. 438 Bernard M. Baruch came in at three o'clock in the afternoon.
It seems that he is down the first of every week, trying to get the
defense outfit straightened out. This he is doing at the request of
the President. According to Baruch, things are in pretty bad shape
with the Defense Commission. He philosophically remarked that it was
all that we had to deal with and that we ought to make the best we
could of it . I could see that he was disturbed by the way many of
these people are operating. He told the President that the situation
was even worse than he had suspected.
I think that the President made a mistake in not seeking Baruch's
advice earlier, but Baruch also made a mistake in his first suggestion
to the President that, in effect, he bring back into the government
service for this period of emergency not only himself but Hugh Johnson
and George Peek. Perhaps if Baruch had volunteered his own services
without trying to take back with him the other two men who are
particularly distasteful to the President, he might have gotten
somewhere. And with Baruch at his elbow, I do not believe that the
President would have made some of the mistakes that he has.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1944
John Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect; A Profile in History (New York:
Pyramid, 1962)
[original ed.: New York: Harbor and Brothers, 1950)
p.153 On campaign trips the President's train ran to sixteen or even
eighteen cars; on the runs between Washington and Hype Park or Warm
Springs they averaged eight. ... The train was, as a rule, broken up
after each trip, but early in 1944, it stayed intact for the month
that the President was visiting Mr. Baruch's plantation in South
Carolina; there was no telephone in the house, and the train, parked
eight miles away became his office.
James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt; The Soldier of Freedom 1940-45 (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970)
p. 339- 340 Changes came by fits and starts. A year after Pearl
Harbor, Roosevelt's defense organization was still a public issue.
Appointing czars, shoring up the WPB, making Byrnes Economic
Stabilization Director - these and other steps did not long satisfy
the critics. In Congress the Truman and Migration Committees
continued to call for more centralized authority. A Senate Military
Affairs Subcommittee reported that war mobilization was "in crisis."
.... the WPB was racked by disputes among its top officials. In the
Senate friends of the President sponsored a bill for a
super-superagency that would take over and boss a dozen war agencies.
Byrnes, struggling with a tide of stabilization problems that cut
across bureaucratic empires and their czars, began to lean toward the
idea of an office of war mobilization with broad powers to direct the
whole war effort.
For a moment the President toyed with a move he had long
resisted - to re-establish the WPB as the supreme mobilization agency
on the model of the War Industries Bnoard of World War I. And he
even decided to appoint the very man, Bernard Baruch, who had headed
the earlier board and had the presitge, status, and self-assurance to
rebuild and command an agency rivaling the White House in publicity
and power. He must have been sorely disturbed by the state of
mobilization and the conflicts between and within his war agencies -
especially the WPB - to appeal to Baruch. But appeal to him he did,
in a letter that frankly admitted that he was "coming back to the
elder statesman for assistance." Surprised and pleased, Baruch
debated whether he should give up his freedom - as symbolized by his
"office" on a Lafayette Park bench - and whether he was physically up
to it. He was on his way to New York City to consult his doctor when,
as luck would have it, he fell ill, and it was a week before he
returned to Washington to tell the President he had decided to accept.
Roosevelt, leaning back in his chair and puffing on an uplifted
cigarette, greeted him with his usual geniality.
"Mr. President," Baruch began, "I'm here to report for duty."
Roosevelt did not reply; he seemed not even to have heard. Baruch
knew something had gone wrong. The President said: "Let me tell you
about Ibn Saud, Bernie." He chatted a bit about the Mid-East. Then
he abruptly stopped talking, excused hjimself, and departed for a
Cabinet meeting. He never again, mentioned the WPB post to Baruch.
Swallowing his pride, groping for some explanation, Baruch concluded
that there must have been intervention by Hopkins, who seemed to
Baruch full of suspicion and self-protectiveness that grip men so
close to the throne.
Doubtless Hopkins did influence Roosevelt's change of heart,
but a far more important factor also intervened. Both the President
and his Economic Stabilization Director were leaning more and more
during early 1943 toward the idea of a mobilization office
directlyunder the President rather than in a vast, independent new
agency uner a new superczar. Byrnes had been working in the east wing
for some months and was already dealing with a variety of problems
outside his stabilization duties. He proposed a new office of war
mobilization with wide powers ove war production, allocation and
manpower 9except for men in uniform), that he take on thisbroader
role, and that his job as Economic Stabilizer be passed on to Fred M.
Vinson, a former Congressman and an old friend.
It was not easy for Roosevelt to go along with this plan.
The press had already dubbed Byrnes "Assistant President" and "Chief
of Staff" - terms Roosevelt disliked - and throughout his presidency
he had resisted sharing his powers with any rival person or office of
this sort. On the other hand, he trusted Byrnes. The former Justice
was not one to jump onto a white charger and gallop off with the war
effort. ... He preferred to deal with appeals from clashing agencies
rather than to issue plans and command from on high. He proposed to
continue to operate with a tiny staff, headed by Roosevelt's old
friend and adviser Benjamin Cohen. Instead of congealing into a whole
new bureaucratic layer, his office would co-ordinate policy among the
existing war agencies. And he would claim the services of the ablest
people -even Baruch, who gamely continued to advise Byrnes and the
White House.
P. 352 For Roosevelt it was a question of power. When critics
charged that he would not make Baruch or some other strong man a
superczar because he wanted to hoard his own authority or feared a
rival, they were quite right. Partly it was a matter of temperament;
as a prima donna, Roosevelt had no relish for yielding to spotlight
for long. But mainly it was a matter of prudence, experience, and
instinct. The President did not need to read Machiavellian treatises
to know that every delegation of power and sharing of authority
extracted a potential price in the erosion of Presidential purpose,
the narrowing of options, the clouding of the appearance of
presidential authority, the threat to his reputation for being on top.
p. 432 Baruch [ opposed to Roosevelt's National service proposal in
1944] argued that the best way to mobilize and allocate manpower was
by allocating materials; men would shift to high-priority industries
to get jobs. ... His mind set, but tired of the endless debate,
Roosevelt, on returning from Teheran, told Rosenman to draft a
proposal for a national-service bill for his State of the Union
address, but not to tell a soul about it.
Rosenman was aghast. Not even tell Buyrnes or McNutt or
Stimson or "Bernie," men who had been laboring on the problem? No,
said his chief, he did not want to argue about it any more. "I want
it keep right here in the room just between us boys and Grace." ...
........ A national service law, [Stimson] told the
Congressmen, was a question of responsibility. "IT is aimed to extend
the principles of democracy and justivce more evenly throughjout our
population. . ." Congress did not see it that way; the bill died in
committee.
p. 447 Hopkins was critically ill and out of commission all through
the winter and spring.
....Marvin McIntyre was dead [a loyal Roosevelt aid for 20 years
-DE].
P. 448- 449 The chief of the warriers was sixty-two and in the
winter of 1944 he was ailing and tired. Days after he had recovered
from his post-Teheran flu of January he was complaining of headaches
in the evening. Those in the White House who saw him the most -
especially Anna Beottiger and Grace Tully - became more and more
alarmed about his condition. He seemed strangely tired even in the
morning hours; he occasionlly nodded off during a conversation; once
he blanked out halfway through signing his name to a letter, leaving a
long scrawl. Finally Anna spoke to Dr. McIntire. The Admiral, an
ear, nose, and throat specialist, seemed concerned, too, but curiously
resistant to talking with the President. Anna pressed him to speak at
least to Eleanor. The upshot was that the President was persuaded to
go, on March 27, 1944, to the United States Medical Hospital at
Bethesda, Maryland, for a check-up. Lieutenant Commander Howard G.
Bruenn, a consultant in cardiology who was in charge of the
Electro-Cardiograph Department, was detailed to examine him. ....
It was Bruenn who was first surprised, then disturbed, and
finally shocked as he conducted the examination and then rushed to
check the earlier records. Not only was Roosevelt tired and gray of
face, slightly feverish, able to move only with difficulty and with
breathlessness, and coughing frequently - clearly suffering from
bronchitis - but his basic condition was more serious. Roosevelt's
heart, Bruenn found a blowing systolic murmur. The second aortic
sound was loud and booming. Blood pressure was was 186/108, compared
with 136/78 in mid-1935, 162/98 two years later, and 188/105 in early
1941. Since 1941 there had been a significant increase in the size of
the cardiac shadow. The enlargement of the heart, which was mainly of
the left ventricle, was evidently caused by a dilated and tortuous
aorta; and the pulmonary vessels were engorged.
Bruenn's findings were grim: hypertension, hypersensitive heart
disease, cardiac failure.
Emergency conferences were held among McIntire, Bruenn, and other
Navy doctors, with Drs. James A Paullin and Frank Lahey brought in as
consultants. .... Bruenn urged that at least Roosevelt be
digitalized; there was some resistance, but Bruenn insisted that if
that were not done he could take no further responsiblity for the
case. The doctors finally agreed on a program; digitalis, less daily
activity, fewer cigarettes, a one hour rest after meals, a quiet
dinner in the White House quarters, at least ten hours' sleep, no
stimming in the pool, a diet of 2,600 calories moderately low in fat,
and mild laxatives to avoid straining.
The digitalis seemed to bring good results within three days.
When Bruenn examined his patient on April 3, 1944, Roosevelt had had a
refreshing ten hour's sleep, his color was good, his lungs entirely
clear, and there was no dyspnea on lying flat. The systolic murmur
persisted however, and his blood pressure was still disturbing. He
continued to improve during the following days, but Bruenn and his
colleagues decided that he needed a real vacation. The President
readily agreed to take a long rest in the sun at Bernard Baruch's
plantation, "Hobcaw," in South Carolina.
The cardinal issue during these alarming days was who should
tell the President about his condition, and in what manner? The
doctors agreed that he should be given the full facts, if only to gain
his co-operation. .... Bruenn did not feel it his duty to inform the
President; he was only a lieutenant commander and was a newcomer to
the White House. Everyone evidently assumed that McIntire had the
responsiblity and would exercise it, but there is no indication that
he did. ...
P.450 So Roosevelt went to Hobcaw Barony not knowing that he was
suffering from anything more than bronchitis, or the flu. ... He wrote
to Hopkins that he had had a really grand time there - slept twelve
hours out of the twenty-four, sat in the sun, never lost my temper,
and decided to let the world go hang." The President did experience a
painful gall bladder attack at Hobcaw, but medication relieved the
pain and there were no cardiac symptoms.
So it was not really a matter of work. He was tired, Miss
Perkins remembered later, and he could not bear to be tired. Grace
Tully still worried about the more pronounced tremble of his hands as
he lit a cigarette, the dark circles that no longer ever seemed to
fade from around his eyes, the slump in his shoulders. ....[Allen]
Drury detected a certain lifelessness, a certain preoccupation, a
tired impatience - whether from work or political opposition, or from
age or ill-health, Drury could not tell. ...
P. 451 In his diary Stimson was still railing at the President's
"one man government," which helped produce "this madhouse of
Washington." IN fact, his chief was running the White House much as
he had in prewar days, while all around him were rising the huge
bureaucratic structures of defense and welfare that would characterize
the capital for decades to come.
The apex of the huge structure was the tiny west wing of the
White House. Here the old hands, including Steve Early and Pa Watson
served and protected the President. Executive clerks, Maurice Latta
and William Hopkins sought to keep some control over the documents and
messages that flooded into the White House - no easy job given
Roosevelt's distaste for set communications channels. The White House
office had already begun to spill over into the old State Department
Building across the way; administrative assistants - Jonathan Daniels,
Lowell Mellett, Lauchlin Currie, David K. Niles, and others - occupied
the second floor row of offices they called "Death Row" because of the
turnover. The President obtained Blair House across the street, for
putting up distinguished guests. Rosenman was still in charge of the
speechwriting team, because Hopkins was in the Mayo Clinic and
Sherwood was in London as head of the Overseas Branch of OWI.
Over in the east wing, which was in the final stages of building,
Byrnes ran an even smaller shop than Roosevelt's. In a clutter of
tiny offices and partitioned cubbyholes - for a time the news ticker
was in the men's room - a small staff struggled with the tide of
problems relentlessly streaming in from the civilian agencies
struggling for funds, authority, manpower, and recognition. Ben
Cohen, as incisive and unpretentious as ever, served as legal adviser;
"special adviser' Baruch offered wise, opinionated counsel; Samuel
Lubell and a handful of others made up the rest of the full-time
staff. Byrnes set up a War Mobilization Committee composed of
Stimson, Nelson, and other top civilians. ...
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendevous with Destiny
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1990)
p. 508At first, the illness seemed no more threatening than those
Roosevelt had weathered since the spring of 1940, and part of the time
he seemed to be on the mend. Then, in late March, his secretary,
William D. Hasset noted: "The President not looking so well ....Every
morning in response to inquiry in response to inquiry as to how he
felt, a characteristic reply has been 荘Rotten'' or 荘Like hell.''"
During a weekend in Hyde Park, Roosevelt had a temperature of 104.
Hassett recorded: "Looks ill, color bad; but he is cheerful in spirit.
. . Not inclined, however to take up anything but most pressing
business." During days when illness drained his energy, Roosevelt
delegated power even more than he had earlier in the war. Already he
was leaving many domestic problems to his cabinet and subordinates;
now he was remote from them and ill disposed to have their differences
brought to him for solution. Propped up in bed one morning, perusing
memoranda from Morgenthau and Ickes, he remarked "he wished he could
get Cabinet members who would do their own work."
Even in reaching military decisions and keeping up with the incessant
correspondence with Churchill, Roosevelt depended more and more upon
his staff. With Hopkins seriously ailing and absent, Roosevelt relied
heavily upon his chief of staff, Admiral Leahy, his naval aide Captain
Wilson Brown, and the offers attached to the White House map room. ...
.... 512 ... In 1944, Roosevelt''s medical problems clearly extended
beyond his nose and throat. His secretry Grace Tully was concerned
over the shake in his hand when he lit a cigarette, and his tendency
to not while reading letters or dictating. ...Miss Tully became so
alarmed that she carried her concerns to Anna, who shared them. Anna
already had urged McIntire to look into the president''s overall
health; McIntire sent him for a thorough checkup at the naval hospital
in Bethesda, Maryland. At Bethesda, Roosevelt was wheeled into the
office of ayoung cardiologist in the Naval Reserve, Dr. Howard G.
Bruenn, and lifted onto the examination table. Dr. Bruenn later
recalled that the president was in good humor, but "appeared . . .
very tired, and his face was very gray. Moving caused considerable
breathlessness " Dr. Bruin diagnosed him as suffering from
hypertension, hypertensive heart disease, cardiac failure in the left
ventricle of his enlarged heart, and acute bronchitis. Admiral
McIntire, along with Dr. Bruenn, conferred with leading physicians at
the naval hospital. ...Two days later they met with two consultants,
Drs. James A. Paullin and Frank Lahey, who went over the X-rays,
electrocardiograms, and other data. In the afternoon Drs. Paullin and
Lahey examined Roosevelt at the White House. Dr. Lahey, particularly
concerned with the gastrointestinal tract, did not recommend surgery,
but felt Roosevelt''s condition was sufficiently grave that he should
be fully informed so that he would cooperate wholeheartedly. After
some debate, Dr. Bruenn finally won support to administer digitalis to
Roosevelt. Overall, the president''s ailments were serious but did not
seem at the time an immediate threat to his life. His blood pressure
in the months ahead fluctuated considerably in response to his
physical shape and degree of stress. At its high points it indicated
severe hypertension, of a level a patient was not likely to survive
for more than a year. ... .... While Roosevelt from March, 1944, on
continued to make only general remarks about his chronic nose and
throat problems, Admiral McIntire was a fount of disinformation, again
and again announcing that Roosevelt was om a fine state of health. The
conspiracy of silence was important if Roosevelt was to run again, as
he felt he must, he told his son James in the summer of 1944, "to
maintain a continuity of command in a time of continuing crisis." P.
514 -515 On May 16, 1944, he startled one of his assistants, Jonathan
Daniels, by prefacing an account of his conversations with Stalin on
Poland with an ominous phrase: "Here is something you should write
about if I pop off." Whether or not Roosevelt kept himself closely
informed on his medical problems , he was an exemplary patient,
cutting back on his hours of work, increasing his periods of rest,
reducing his smoking from a pack or more a day to about six cigarettes
(then back up later to a full pack), exercisingin the White House
swimming pool -- which he enjoyed -- and adhering to a limited
low-salt diet to bring down his blood pressure andhis weight. This was
the standard treatment for hypertension, which he must have known.
Soon his health improved. On April 5 he told Dr. Bruen he felt fine.
Tow days later he was in good humor when he held a pres conference;
correspondents thought he looked better than a week before. Within two
weeks, X-rays and an electocardiogram showed his heart more nearly
normal and his lungs clearing. To speed his recovery, Roosevelt
headed south on April 8 for a vacation at Bernard Baruch''s
plantation, Hobcow, in South Carolina. For security reasons his
whereabouts was secret, but three White House correspondents waited
and watched nearby, as they had in Poughkeepsie during his Hyde Park
sojourns. He was accompanied by Admiral McIntire, Admiral Leahy, and
the military and naval aides, but took with him none of the assistants
concerned with domestic or foreign policy. While Roosevelt was there,
his medical problems continued. On April 17, Dr. Bruenn arrived ... He
found Roosevelt ... Still suffering from elevated blood pressure; but
at the end of April and in early May Roosevelt went through a fresh
ordeal, suffering two acute gallbladder attacks, which Dr. Bruenn
treated with codeine. Admiral McIntire was reassuring at the time,
saying the pain was temporary and not serious. ... The setback
contributed to a decision for Roosevelt to remain at Hobcaw an extra
week, until May 6. P. 519 With the campaign more likely to center
upon domestic issues, Roosevelt immediately upon his return from
Hobcow had to confront what had so long been a prime Republican theme
-- the charge that he was a tyrannical oppressor of business. The
press and radio were filled in May 1944, with denunciations of a new
episode in the ongoing wartime struggle between business and organized
labor, the government seizure of the giant mail-order and retailing
firm, Montgomery Ward. The stringent Smith Connally (War Labor
Disputes) Act ... Roosevelt had sought ... to use the measure while he
was at Hobcaw to discipline Sewell L. Avery, the vehemently antiunion
president of Montgomery Ward, who since 1942 had been defying the War
Labor Board.In January 1944, Avery refused to have further dealings
with a CIO union, arguing that a majority of the work force no longer
favor it. ... The president under the Smith -Connally Act had the
power to take over a strikebound plant if it was "useful" to the war
effort. Montgomery Ward, supplying the army and millions of farmers,
seemed to Attorney General Francis Biddle to be within this category.
Biddle flew to Chicago to await Avery in the Montgomery Ward office.
Avery arrived and refused to budge, sputtering "to hell with
government." Two military policement then ousted Avery. They picked
him up, and as they carried him out the main door, a news photographer
caught a picture that appeared on the front pages throughout the
nation. Roosevelt seemed to be in a trap, but by the time he arrived
back in Washington he had devised a means to wriggle out. The first
press conference opened in cheerful fashion and he kept the reporters
laughing all through the session. Roosevelt declared that the union
election was taking place that day, and if the union did not have a
majority, that would end the case; if it did , since management had
declared it would be willing to continue its contract, that too would
end the case. The union won its election that day, so the government
withdrew its control, ending the immediate embarrassing political
problem for Roosevelt. Avery continued stubbornly to resist War Labor
Board rulings, but it was not until December 28, 1944, after the
election, that Roosevelt intervened, this time firmly and prevented
Avery from running Montgomery Ward. ...
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1945
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1946
Fred J. Cook, The Warfare State (New York: Macmillian Company, 1962)
pp. 131 - 139 American policy, whether through design or lack of
vision, now became the creature of devious paradox. Looking back, it
seems that it had a double purpose: to reassure the home folks that we
were the great and peace-loving nation we had always pretended, and at
the same time, to avoid giving Russia any choice except complete
surrender.
The dual motive was most glaringly apparent in the Baruch Plan
for control of the atom, a piece of statesmanship which Americans
generally cam to regard as one of unparalleled generosity on our part,
but one which, in any realistic evaluation, must be judged to have
been so heavily loaded in our favor that the Russians never possibly
could have accepted it.
The Baruch Plan, though it has not been generally recognized,
represented the fullest flowering of our first great delusion - that
our possession of atomic "secrets" gave us a dominant position as the
guardian of the world's peace. Winston Churchill, with President
Truman sitting on the platform and cheering him on, had awarded us the
role of world arbiter in his speech at Westminster College, Fulton
Missouri, on March 5, 1946. There he had flung down the battle gauge
to Stalin and had described the "iron curtain" that the Russians had
drawn across europe. At the same time, Churchill had pictured the
United States as "at the pinnacle of world power" and had expressed
the belief that we could, if no effort was spared, maintain
"formidable superiority." Truman already had indicated his readiness
to accept the part Churchill allotted us. Immediately after the
explosion of the Hiroshima bomb, in a radio speech on August 9, 1945,
he had proclaimed: "We must constitute ourselves the trustees of this
new force . . . It is an awful responsibility which has come to us.
We thank God that it has come to us" - and not to our enemies. He had
prayed that God "may guide us to use it in His ways and for His
purposes." What all of this meant was very clear to Stalin at the
time, as his promt response to Churhcill showed. In an interview in
Pravda on March 13, 1946, he accused Churchill of being a warmonger
and added: "Actually, Mr. Churchill, and his friends in Britain and
the United States, present to the non-English-speaking nations
something in the nature of an ultimatum: "Accept our vule voluntarily,
and then all will be well; otherwise war is inevitable.
This was an attitude that foreboded a cold reception for any
American-promulgated plan unless the way for acceptance could be
smoothed by deft diplomacy, a weapon noticeably lacking in the Truman
arsenal. In the light of Stalin's explicit "ultimatum" statement, it
would seem elemental that every effort should have been made to avoid
the appearance of ultimatum. Roosevelt almost certainly would have
perceived this and would have tried to engage the Russians in a
cooperative effort to draft an acceptable plan, but then Roosevelt
almost certainly would not have sat upon the platform in Fulton
cheering Churchill on. The direct Roosevelt approach, the Roosevelt
reliance on personal contact to banish suspicion, the Roosevelt
insistence on a middle course that would keep America from becoming
the committed partisan of English policy in the conflict of
English-Russian interests - all this had been abandoned; and the
Truman Administration, militarily oriented by Leahy and the Joint
Chiefs and Forrestal, had thrown up a cold wall of noncommunication on
our side to match the iron curtain of Stalin's. In this frigid
atmosphere, before the sounding board of the United Nations where the
good guys regularly battled the bad guys, America brought forth the
Baruch plan.
Bernard Baruch, our chosen spokesman, was the multimillionaire
man of Wall Street, the unofficial elder statesman who had served as
adviser to many Presidents and a figure venerated , sometimes to the
point of positive idolatry, by America's most eminently conservative
press. From America's standpoint he was an ideal choice to present
America's position since his name and prestige could be guaranteed to
assure an enormously favorable domestic reception of our proposal, but
one has to wonder whether the choice was so ideal if the object was to
gain Russian cooperation, since Baruch almost certainly would
represent in suspicious Russian eyes the very forces of American
capitalism that they already regarded as most inimical.
In any event Baruch's was the chosen voice, and on June 14, 1946
- only a little more than three months after Churchill's virtual
declaration of the Cold War in Fulton - he presented the American plan
before the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. His opening
phrases were the phrases of ultimatum.
"We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead.
That is our business.
"Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope,
which seized upon with faith, can work our salvation. It we fail,
then we have damned every man to be the slave of Fear. Let us not
deceive ourselves: We must elect World Peace or World Destruction . .
.
"Now, if ever, is the time to act for the common good. Public
opinion supports a world movemetn toward security. If I read the
signs aright, the peoples want a program not composed merely of pious
thoughts but of enforceable sanctions - an international law with
teeth in it. . . ."
Baruch proceeded to describe the molars we had devised. We
proposed the creation of an Internaitonal Atomic Development Authority
under the United Nations. This authority would have absolute control
over all phases of atomic energy. It would own and manage "all atomic
energy activities potentially dangerous to world security." It would
have the power "to control, inspect and license all other atomic
activities." Its duty would be to foster "beneficial uses of atomic
energy," and it would be charged with research and development,
coupled with the task of comprehending and detecting "misues of atomic
energy."
This was the broad outline. Baruch spelled out in detail just
what it contemplated. His proposed Authoirty would have supreme
powers anywhere in the world. One of its first tasks would be to
obtain complete information on deposits of uranium and thorium, and
these, wherever they might be found, were to be brought under the
"dominion" of the Authority. "A keystone of the plan" was the tight
monopoly the Authority was to exercise over raw material sources and
every phase of the atomic process.
Obviously, if the Authority were to achieve such complete
control, its inspectors would have to be at liberty to poke into any
corner of the world, even to the most hidden recesses of Russia. The
inspectors similarly would have to have unlimited reign when peaceful
atomic plants had been constructed, for by relatively simple
transition the peaceful atom might be turned into the destructive
atom. Eternal vigilance would be needed to see that this did not
happen. "Any plant dealing with uranium and thorium after it once
reaches the potential of dangerous use must be not only subject to the
most rigorous and competent inspection by the Authority, but its
actual operation shall be under the management, supervision and
control of the Authority," Baruch declared.
Sweeping as this provision was, ever more sweeping were the
provisions that followed. No phase had been overlooked, and Baruch's
explicit language left no doubt. All states must surrender their
rights to research in the atomic field. Only the Authority would be
permitted to find raw materials; only the Authority could build and
operate plants; only the Authority would be permitted to find raw
materials; only the Authroity could build and operate plants; only the
Authority could conduct further research. TO make sure there was no
backsliding on any of these provisions, the Authority's agents must be
guaranteed "freedom of access," defined as "adequate ingress and
egress," to any and all areas of the world without exception.
The plan clearly envisioned the establishment, through the medium
of atomic energy, of a virtual super government of the world, for the
supreme power of the atom would repose completely in the hands of this
new international Authority. It could go anywhere, do anything in its
field - and its field was so broad as to be virturlly unlimited - and
no state could say it nay. Anyone who appreciated the deep
distrust and suspicion with which pariah Russia for decades had viewed
the capitalistic West, anyone who realized that Russia attrributed her
victory over Hitler largely to the secrecy whe had maintained about
her strength and military resources - a secrecy that had led the Nazi
Fuehrer into fatal miscalculations - must have had doubts that Russia
would ever voluntarily throw wide her doors to such an unlimited
inspection system. But, supposing she should agree, the vital
question would then become: Who would administer such sweeping powers?
"The personnel of the Authority should be recruited on a basis of
proven competence but also so far as possible on an international
basis," Baruch announced. [Italics added.]
This could hardly be interpreted as reassurance to Russia. The
only personnel of "proven competence" was the American-directed team
of scientists and engineers who had manufactured the A-bomb, and the
weak concession that "so far as possible" personnel should be
recruited on an international basis seemed to suggest by its very
phrasing that not very much along these lines would be found to be
possible.
All of these provisons were dubious enough, but worse was to
come. When Baruch came to the biting edge of the molars - the "teeth"
he had mentioned to reinforce these broad provisions - he came to the
crux of the demands on which his plan was to founder. Severe
penalties, he said, would have to be imposed for interfering with any
activities of the Authority, for illegal possession and use of the
bomb, for the "illegal possession, or separation, of atomic material
suitable for use in an atomic bomb." Even an attempt to make use of
atomic energy for peaceful purposes "in the absence of a license
granted by the international control body" would be an international
crime.
Such crimes would be summarily punished. Baruch made specific
reference to the precedent set by the Nuremberg trials in which the
Allies had tried and executed high-ranking Nazis as war criminals.
Similarly, he said, the United Nations "must provide immediate, swift
and sure punishment. . . . The United Nations can prescribe individual
responsibility and punishment." Not even chiefs of state would be
immune under this provision, and Baruch made it clear there would be
no exceptions because, on this point, no veto would be permitted.
"I want to make it very plain," he said, "that I am concerned
here with the veto power only as it affects this particular problem.
There must be no veto to protect those who violate their solemn
agreements not to develop or use atomic energy for destructive
purposes."
The full significance of this provision can be understood only in
relation to the voting split in the United Nations at the time. In
this forum, the United States at the head of its Latin American and
British bloc was consistently outvoting the Soviet bloc by a margin of
46 to 5. Yet this was the lopsided judge and jury that would sit in
judgment on any real or fancied Soviet infringement. Could anyone
possibly imagine that Josef Stalin would agree ever to be judged in
such a court? Or, supposing the voting margin had favored the Soviet
bloc by 46 to 5, could anyone ever imagine that the Senate of the
United States would have agreed? The answers, it seems, should have
been obvious.
But even this was not the end. Supposing that the Soviets agreed
to all this, what would they get? This was really the best part.
This was where we were going to be unbelievably magnanimous. Baruch
said:
"When an adequate system for control of atomic energy, including
renunciation of the bomb as a weapon, as been agreed upon and put into
effective operation and condign punishment set up for violation of the
rules of control which are to be stigmatized as international crimes,
we propose that
"1. Manufacturing of atomic bombs shall stop.
"2. Existing bombs shall be disposed of pursuant to the terms of
the treaty, and
"3. The Authority shall be in possession of full information as
to the know-how for the production of atomic energy.
"Let me repeat so as to avoid misunderstanding: my country is
ready to make its full contribution toward the end we seek, subject of
course to our constitutional processes, and to an adequate system of
control becoming fully effective, as we finally work it out."
Further spelling out America's attitude, Baruch added a cryptic
paragraph which seemed to say that we might want a 100 percent
guarantee against all weapons, against all war, before we would agree
to sever outselves from our A-bombs. This paragraph read: "But before
a country is ready to relinquish any winning weapons, it must have
more than words to reassure. It must have a guarantee of safety, not
only against the offenders in the atomic era, but against the illegal
users of other weapons - bacteriological, biological, gas - perhaps -
and why not? Against war itself."
The picture that emerges seems clear beyond dispute. During the
time it took to set up this all-powerful international control system
to our satisfaction, we would continue to manufacture bombs; we would
increase and keep our own hoard until some indefinite future date when
we felt 100 per cent assured that the international control system,
and perhaps the ban against war itself, was ironclad. Only then - and
even then subject to the limitation of "our constitutional processes"
(of course the Senate might not agree) - would we consent to dispose
of the bombs and make our knowledge of atomic energy available to
other nations for peaceful purposes. If and when we finally gave up
our "secret" the U.N. agency we would still control would determine
what nations could have atomic energy and what could not - and how
many palnts each could have and where they would be located. This
would mean that, in the end, after Russia's complete submission to all
our demands, we would still retain, through our control agency puppet,
the power to deny Russia the uses of atomic energy if we chose. And
Russians could hardly be expected to believe, in the increasingly
hostile atmosphere of the times, that we would choose generously in
their favor.
Anyone who tries to do the few simple mental gymnastics required
to look at the Baruch proposal from the Russian standpoint must see
that it represented to them the sorriest of gaudily packaged bargains.
We surrendered nothing until we had obtained the most foolproof
guarantees, of whose perfection we were to be the sole judge, and with
these guarantees, almost dictatorial power over the internal systems
and lives of other countries. On the other hand, we expected Russia
to reveal to us all her secrets, to waive her own national sovereignty
in vital areas, to put even the lives of her leaders in possible
jeopardy. It is doubtful whether world history in all its long and
tortuous course, can furnish a single example of a major nation
willingly acceding to such prepostrously lopsided conditions.
Henery Wallace, in one of his last acts before being forced out
of the Truman Cabinet, wrote a letter to the President on July 23,
1946, in which he focused sharp criticism on what he called "a fatal
defect" of the American plan. He wrote:
"That defect is the scheme . . . of requiring other nations to
enter into binding commitments not to conduct research into the
military use of atomic energy and to disclose their uranium and
thorium resources, while the United States retains the right to
withhold its technical knowledge of atomic energy until the
international control and inspection system is working to our
satisfaction.
"In other words, we are telling the Russians that if they are
組ood boys' we may eventually turn over our knowledge of atomic energy
to them and to other nations. But there is no objective standard of
what will qualify them as being 組ood' nor any specified time for
sharing our knowledge."
Baruch replied that it had "always been recognized that the
precise content, sequence and timing of the transition stages would be
the subject of detailed negotiation," but neither then nor later did
we ever indicate what time limit we had in mind; never did we reduce
the vagueness of our ultimate, some-day promise to the concreteness of
specific offer.
Under the circumstances - and especially since we had no
"secret," since all that Russia needed was a few years of hard
scientific effort to develop her own atomic energy program with no
surveillance and no strings attached - the Baruch plan was foredoomed
to failure. The fact of its failure was not amazing. What was
amazing was the persistent American delusion that we had made an offer
unrivaled in its generosity. The American mind was captured and
conditioned by the headline-catching phrases in the Baruch speech -
the choice between "the quick and the dead," and "international law
with teeth in it" - and the sophisticated jokers that were hidden in
the details never registered with any impact. All that registered was
that the Russians, by slapping down our extended hand, were being
their usual intransigent and despicable selves.
The American public, sincerely wanting peace, doubtless believed
that only the utmost sincerity motivated its own government; but there
are some indications that powerful forces in the background never
wanted the Baruch plan to succeed. David Lawrence, the dean of
conservative columnists, wrote from Washington that those who had
never wanted to disclose our "secret" breathed "quite a sigh of
relief" when Russia rejected Baruch's proposals. The "sigh of relief"
seems, under the circumstances, like a decided malapropism. He had
retained our "secret" for one fleetingly brief unworthy moment of
time. It was a Pyrrhic victory that was to turn into grim reality
that "secret armament race of a rather desperate character" that
Stimson so clearly had foreseen.
P. 208 The succeeding years were full of much sound and fury,
signifying nothing. We continued to berate the Russians over the
Baruch Plan we now knew they would never accept; they continued to
growl "nyet"; and the Cold War tensions steadily mounted. Then, in
1949, Russia signaled her entrance into the nuclear club; This was
followed by the outbreak of limited war in Korea. And Now, though we
had the bomb that we had so foolishly envisioned as giving us hegemony
over the world , we dared not use it for Russia had it, too.
This was the first dead end to which the military solutions of
the Military had brought us. Confronted with it, we finally modified
our policy In a speech in October 1950, Ptresident Truman called upon
the United Nations to form a new, unified Disarmament Commission to
consider all types of arms limitations. This meant that we were now
ready, not just to talk about an impossible Baruch-type plan for
nuclear disarmament, but to couple the nuclear problem with the basic
problem that had always disturbed us - Russians and Chinese
preponderance of manpower, the force to which we had thought the atom
bomb would be the answer.
The United Naitons acted on Truman's suggestion and set up a
Disarmament Commission. To this both the Russians and the Western
allies submitted diametrically opposite proposals. The Russians
wanted to begin with an outright prohibition on the use of all nuclear
weapons and all weapons of mass destruction; the British, French and
Americans proposed that conventional forces be cut back first, that
nuclear arms limitations be considered only in the final phase. ....
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Arms merchants favor rapid and complete disarmament after each war, it
clears the decks for the next debt-financed arms buildup. The first
Secretary of Defense, James T. Forrestal, was unfortunate enough to
make this discovery.
Walter Millis, ed., with collaboration of E.S. Duffield, The Forrestal
Diaries (New York: The Viking Press, 1951)
p. 100 One of the fascinations of the Forrestal diary lies in the
extent to which it shows how many of the problems which were later to
become acute were already fully apparent in these closing days of what
many had assumed to be peace. To Foresstal, the country "was going
back to bed at a frightening rate, which is the best way I know to be
sure of the coming of World War III. He had started circulating among
his friends at this time copies of Kipling's celebrated "Tommy
Atkins," on the soldier's lot in peace:
For it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, an' chuck him out, the
Brute!"
But it's "Savior of 訴s country" when the guns begin to shoot.
..... Bernard Baruch tought it a good piece" but added
pessimistically: "This is my second round trip into war, peace and
aftermath, and I can tell you that already I see nothing but a
repetition of what took place after the last war." Forrestal,
suddenly interested in the arguments which in in the previous
"aftermath" had led to the decline of American military strength, sent
a memorandum to one of his assistants: "I want someone to do a
research for me on the things that appeared in The Nation, New
Republic and New Masses ten years before the war, against
preparedness." Now again, a great war machine was being destroyed;
the country was "going to bed"; even from Washington, as he wrote a
friend, "all hands are pulling out," and with the early winter he knew
he was facing "a great exodus" from the service of the "lawyers,
accountants, business people, etc., who had in fact been such vital
cogs in the war effort. Yet the problems and perils were no less than
before, and that had to be faced as they came - from domestic labor
policy to Soviet aggression, from dmobilization to the atomic bomb.
Fantastically different was they were upon the surface, all were
intimately interrelated at bottom.
P. 194
To James P. Warburg, 20 August 1946
Dear Jimmy:
Not for publication: I certainly agree with you that the German
problem is the key to the whole question of destruction or peace -
although I would probably, as a result of my revent travels, add China
to that category. [ ...Forestall on August 18 and 19 ... left
Norfolk about ten-thirty for Washington and thensce felw to Mitchel
Field, Long Island, where he landed in time to reach Bernard Baruch's
house for a luncheon given in honor of the latter's seventy-sixth
birthday. At lunch he sat next to Mrs. Andrei Gromyko (the wife of
the former Soviet Ambassador to the United States recently appointed
permanent delegate to the [UN] Security Council) ...
....
P.203
4 September 1946 State-War-Navy Meeting
.... I mentioned Mr. Baruch's letter to me requesting that the State
Department be informed of our effort to put into effect the eight
areas of agreement arrived at by the Army and Navy ... last spring.
Patterson agreed but made the observation that while the signature was
Baruch's, he thought the language was undoubtedly Eberstadt's. [At the
Cabinet on September 6 the President announced that the Joint Chiefs
of Staff thad recommended postponement of the third atomic bomb test
firing, originally planned to follow the first and second Bikini
tests. ...
P. 216-217
6 November 1946 State-War-Navy
..... [Sec of State Dean] Acheson said that the U.S. position on
disarmament [a subject the Russians were then vigorously pressing in
the United Nations] was confused and that he was communicating with
Byrnes and Baruch [who had been appointed as the American
representative on the United Naitons Atomic Energy Commission] on it.
He thinks that Molatov's proposal on world-wide disarmament can be
used to point up the fundamental obstacles blocking international
acceptance, such as the Russian's position on inspection [of atomic
weapon development, exchange of information etc.] .... Baruch intends
to press for a vote on the atomic energy control to focus attention on
the Soviet's stand. I mentioned that satisfactory conclusion of peace
treaties should also be included in any such statement of policy ....
Acheson said he thought the point could be worked in.
Quentin Reynolds, Winston Churchill (New York: Random House, 1963)
In March of 1946 Churchill was invited to Westminster College in
Fulton Missouri, to accept an honorary degree. During his address he
said:
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain
has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the
capitals of the ancient states of of Central and Eastern Europe:
Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and
Sofia. All these famous cities and the populations around them lie in
what I must call the Soviet sphere. What is needed is a settlement,
and the longer this is delayed, the more difficult it will be, and the
greater our danger will become. From what I have seen of our Russian
friend and ally during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing
they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they
have less respect than weakness, especially military weakness.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Fred J. Cook, The War State (New York: The Macmillian Company, 1962)
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1947
Walter Millis, ed., with collaboration of E.S. Duffield, The Forrestal
Diaries (New York: The Viking Press, 1951)
p. 241
29 January 1947 State-War-Navy
.... General Marshall explained that the other members of the Security
Council were unanimous in the belief that the Council should go ahead
with the discussion of the general problem of disarmament. He
believed that other nations would take a solid vote against us should
we propose otherwise. He said Senator Austin and Mr. Baruch shared
the view that it would be unwise for us to eliminate the atomic bomb
until other matters in the field of regulation of armaments were well
along.
P. 291
15 July 1947 Meeting Bernard Baruch
Met with Mr. Bernard Baruch, Eisenhower, Patterson after lunch.
Baruch feels that we must begin to use immediately all possible
economic measures in our relations with Russia. By this he means
pre-emptive and preclusive buying of scarce commodities. He would,
for example, buy the entire surplus of the Cuban sugar crop. He would
also buy coffee and send gold to other countries in exchange for their
raw materials. . .
P. 310
10 September 1947 Lunch with Marshall
Lunch today with Marshall, Harriman, Baruch, Lovett and Kennan.
Purpose was to get Baruch's views on the extension of help to Europe.
He expressed a strong disinclination to continue American aid unless
we had more facts and figures on which to base judgement. He believes
both the British and French have assets which they have not yet
disclosed . . .
<><><><><><><><><>
David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992)
p. 582 In the summer of 1947, in the journal Foreign Affairs,
George Kennan had published an article in which he intorduced the idea
of "containment," an expression already in use at the State Department
by then. Kennan recommended "a policy of firm containment [of Russia]
... with unalterable counterforce at every point where the Russians
show signs of encraoching" - until the Soviet Union either "mellows"
or collapses. The article was signed simply "X," but the identify of
the author was known soon enough, and in another few months Walter
Lippman issued his own strong rebuttal to the concept in a book called
The Cold War, an expression Bernard Baruch had used earlier in a
speech, but that now, like the Iron Curtain, became part of the
postwar vocabulary.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1948
Walter Millis, ed., with collaboration of E.S. Duffield, The Forrestal
Diaries (New York: The Viking Press, 1951)
P. 362-264
3 February 1948 Meeting - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.
Visit today from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., who came in with a
strong advocacy of the Jewish State in Palestine, that we whould
support the United Nations "decision," and in general a broad,
across-the-board statement of the Zionist position. I pointed ou that
the United Nations had as yet taken no "decision," that it was only a
recommendation of the General Assembly, that any implementation of
this "decision" by the United States would probably result in the need
for a partial mobilization, and that I thought the methods that had
been used by people outside of the Executive branch of government to
bring coercion and duress on other nations in the General Assembly
bordered closely onto scandal. He professed ignorance on this latter
point and returned to his general exposition of the case of the
Zionists.
He made no threats, but made it very clear that the zealots in this
cause had the conviction of trying to upset the government policy on
Palestine. I replied that I had no power to make policy but that I
would be derelict in my duty if I did not point out what I thought
would be the consequences of any particular policy which would
endanger the security of this country. I said that I was merely
directing my efforts to lifting the question out of politics, that is
, to have the two parties agree they would not compete for votes on
this issue. He said this was impossible, that the nation was too far
committed and that, furthermore, the Democratic Party would be bound
to lose and the Republicans gain by such an agreement. I said I was
forced to repeat to him what I had Senator McGrath in response to the
latter's observation that our failure to go along with the Zionists
might lose the states of New York, Pennsylvania and California - that
I thought it was about time that somebody should pay some
consideration to whether we ight not lose the United States.
[ {Editor Millis:} Here is an excellent statement of Forestal's basic
motives in a matter which was to involve him in more criticism than
any other of his actions in his nine years in Washington. But he went
on that same day to lunch with an older, wiser and certainly far more
experienced mind than that of the younger Franklin Roosevelt. Bernard
Baruch in effect warned him to go slow.]
3 February 1948 [ Lunch with Baruch]
Had lunch with B. M. Baruch. After lunch, raised the same question
with him. He took the line of advising me not to be active in this
particular matter and that I was already identified, to a degree that
was not in my own interests, with the opposition to the United Nations
policy on Palestine. He said he himself did not approve of the
Zionist's actions, but in the next breath said that the Democratic
Party could only lose by trying to get our government's policy
reversed, and said that it was a most inequitable thing to let the
British arm the Arabs and for us not to furnish similar equipment to
the Jews. [It was this same day, also, that Forrestal received a
telephone call from Winthrop Aldrich, chairman of the Chase National
Bank in New York, who had been discussing Palestine, evidently at
Forrestal's instigation, with Governor Dewey. Dewey, Aldrich said,
was very much interested in Forrestal's campaign on Palestine; he
thought Forrestal was doing just right; he was in entire sympathy and
would cooperate in any way for the best interests of the country.
Dewey, Aldrich continued, suggested that any discussions of
cooperation be handled through the Secretay of State [Acheson] and
John Foster Dulles.
p. 427-428
30 April 1948 Cabinet
... I reported to the President that the Armed Services Committee of
the House had called us for hearings on Monday on their Selective
Service bill - Chairman Andrews having stated that they proposed to
pass a Selective Service bill as such and then endeavor to bet the UMT
measure before the Hose directly afterward. ...
.... I also referred to themorning-paper comments on the possibility
of renewing lend-lease for the Western Union [at this press conference
Marshall had revealed that military lend-lease for Eurpoe was under
consideration], and asked whether it might not be wise to let
something get out on this subject to indicate the extent of further
demands which might be imposed on the national economy. The President
and Secretary of State thought this would be premature, although the
latter said he realized that his own remarks ... had already provided
the foundation for speculation on the subject ... [There was certainly
not going to be money enough for everything, and in effect UMT here
went by the board. Nor was re-armament (as Forestal well knew) simply
a matter of dollar figures in the budget. To rouse the country and
its representatives to a real military effort was a many-faceted
problem. Bernard Baruch had been campaigning before congressional
committees and elsewhere for the adoption of a "stand-by" plan for
genuine industrial mobilization, and at the end of April Forrestal was
on the telephone with Byrnes about it.]
Telephone Conversation with James F. Byrnes, 28 April 1948
MR. FORRESTAL: Arthur Hill and Eberstadt have worked up a document to
go to the President along the lines of our conversation. ... First
the immediate things that need to be done ... And, second, Bernie's
complete control of the economy - which Bernie is wonderful at
advocating ex cathedra, so to speak, but it may not be quite so easy
politically.
MR. BYRNES: It is not. ... I'm sure that B.B.'s statement - so far
as Congress is concerned - made a bad impression.
MR. FORRESTAL: Yes.
MR. BYRNES: And you would have a terrible uphill fight. It seems to
me that you have so much trouble with our own crowd that you can't
pick on that thing, when it has already been tried out by him. . .
MR. FORRESTAL: Also, of course, Bernie is very adept at the art of
making his recommendation and advice so global that he can say, "I
told you so."
MR. BYRNES: Everything. I talked to [Senator] George, and somebody
else on the committee - I think Vandenberg; you remember Van said
that he'd covered the waterfront? .. And B.B. didn't like it.
MR. FORRESTAL: That's right ...
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1949
Walter Millis, ed., with collaboration of E.S. Duffield, The Forrestal
Diaries (New York: The Viking Press, 1951)
p. 544
On January 8 Symington released his first annual report as Secretary
of the Air Force. It bluntly renewed the demand for a full seventy
groups by 1952, thus reopening the controversy of the previous year
and further undercutting Forrestal's position. At the same time the
commentators, with Marshall now out of the cabinet, turned their
attention to the Secretary of Defense. On Sunday, January 9, Walter
Winchell, a hostile critic since the days of the Palestine
controversy, broadcast a prediction that the President would accept
Forrestal's resignation within the ensuring week. [New York Times, 11
January 1949] Winchell coupled his prediciton with the bitter
allegation that Forrestal had formed a Canadian corporation in 1929 to
reduce his federal income tax in that year, and with a fevered
denunciation of the legislative proposals concerning the National
Security Council as being designed to "throw the country into war
without even notifying Congress."
Next day the White House correspondents asked Charles G. Ross, the
President's press secretary, about the Winchell prediction that
Forrestal would be out of office within a week. Ross said flatly that
it was untrue. To avoid misunderstanding , he added that all Cabinet
members customarily submitted their resignations on the advent of a
new administration, but that he did not know whether Forrestal's had
been received. Forrestal was a luncheon guest at the White House that
day.
When he returned on Tuesday (January 11) for a private conference
with the President, the correspondents questioned him about his
routine resignation. He told them that it had not yet been submitted,
but would be in the President's hands before the inauguration on
January 20. There was a brief interchange:
"Do you anticipate its acceptance?"
"No."
"Do you want to and expect to continue as Secretary of Defense?"
"Yes, I am a victim of the Washington scene."
P. 546-547
On the evening of January 16 Drew Pearson renewed the radio attack
on Forrestal. Recalling Winchell's assertion that the President was
about to accept Forrestal's resignation, Pearson insisted that the
President would have done so if Winchell's forecasting of the aciton
had not angered him. Pearson also repeated Winchell's attack on the
old Canadian corporation and added to it a trumped-up version of an
old robbery of Mrs. Forrestal's jewels that reflected on Forrestal's
personal courage. .....A week after the Pearson broadcast, when a
guest on another radio program erroneously accused Forrestal of having
a major financial interest in a cartel controlling the old pro-Nazi
firm of I.G. Farben, friends of Forrestal secured a retraction and
spology for him. These and other attacks so hurt Forrestal that he
confessed to a friend that he could no longer listen to the popular
Sunday night news-commentator broadcasts.
P. 551-552
Johnson wo had been a director of the company manufacturing the B-36s,
had asked Forrestal to make any decisions about that airplane before
leaving office, and Forrestal had promised to do so. On February 28
Foresstal appraently decided the one pending question about the Air
Force's controversial intercontinental bomber. The Air Force had been
asking for money and authority to add auxiliary jet engines to the big
bomber, and Forrestal finally authorized the modification.
The following day, March 1, saw the beginning of a swift climax in
Forrestal's secretly discussed resignation. His calendar and the log
kept by his orderly show that, after a morning of only two
appointments and few telephone calls, none after 10:30 Forrestal went
ot the White House . The entry on his callendar reads, "12:30: the
President (White House) off-the-record." He did nto return to his
office until 2:20. He then had only four visitors, the last at 4:15,
but he remained in his office alone until 6:35, when he went home. He
left no record of any of this day's events, but at least one friend
came to understand later that the President at the midday meeting had
asked Forrestal to send his letter of resignation over at once and
that this request had been a "shattering experience."
p. 553-555
Mr. Johnson was duly appointed and confirmed, and on March 28j, at
a brief ceremony in the central court of the Pentagon Building,
Forrestal saw his successor sworn in as Secretary of Defense. The
ex-Secretary drove to the White House to pay his final respects to the
President. There, to his complete surprise, he found that a second
ceremony had been arranged. The Cabinet, the military chiefs and
other high officers of government were waiting for him; in their
presence the President himself read a citation for "meritorious and
distinguished service" and pinned the Distinguished Service Medal on
his civilian coat. ....
.... The effect, unfortunately, was not what had been hoped.
With his final departure from office Forrestal was precipitated into a
depression so severe that within a day or two psychiatriac help seemed
imperative. A Navy psychiatrist, Captain George M. Raines, arrived on
the evening of March 31, but did not interview the patient, as he
learned that Eberstadt was due next day, bringing the eminent
specialist Dr. William C. Menninger. It was determined that
hospitalization was necessary. On April 2 was flown back to
Washington and admitted that evening to the Naval Hospital at
Bethesda, Maryland.
By the end of April he was responding to treatment. He seemed his
old self to numbers of his friends and associates, including the
President, whjo visited him. The moods of depression recurred with
decreasing frequency and severity. By the middle of May his
physicians were looking forward to his discharge and as a necessary
part of the treatment they risked relazation of the restraints that
had been set around him. ... On the night of May 22-22 he was reading
late in his room on the sixteenth floor; the book was Mark Van Doren's
Anthology of World Poetry, and he was copying from it William
Mackworth Praed's translation of Sophocles' "chorus from Ajax."
Fair Salamis, the billows roar
Wanders around thee yet,
And sailors gaze upon they shore
Firm Ocean set.
Thy son is in a foreign clime
Where Ida feeds her countless flocks,
Far from they dear, remembered rocks,
Worn by waste of time -
Comfortless, nameless, hopeless save
In the dark prospect of the yawning grave ...
Woe to the mother in her close of day,
Woe to her desolate heart and temples gray,
When she shall hear
Her loved one's story whispered in her ear!
"Woe, woe!" will be the cry -
No quiet murmer like the tremulous wail
of the lone bird, the querulous nightingale -
The copying ceased on this word; the sheets were laid in the back
of the book and the book itself set down open at the page. It was
three o'clock in the morning. Forrestal went into a small diet
kitchen on the same floor, which he had been encouraged to use, and
fell to his death from its unguarded window.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1950 - 1952
David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992)
p. 327-328 How Truman honestly felt about Roosevelt can be deduced
only from odd remarks to friends or in his private notes and
correspondence, and the picture that emerges, though incomplete, is
not complimentary. He called him Santa Claus. He called him a prima
donna and a fakir. Writing about Bernard Baruch, whom he disliked,
Truman would say, "There never was a greater egotist unless it was
Franklin D."
P. 494 His own recent choice as the American representative on the
United Naitons Atomic Energy Commission, Bernard Baruch, was described
as wanting "to run the world, the moon and maybe Jupiter."
P. 546 When Bernard Baruch, who had no official position in the
Administration, let it be known that he too wished to have a say in
the matter, Truman refused. "If you take his advice," Truman said,
"then you have him on your hands for hours and hous, and it is IhisI
policy. I'm just not going to do it. We have a decision to make and
we'll make it."
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1953
Roy Jenkins, Churchill (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)
p. 848 Even in his pre-political days Eisenhower was always a
little cold for Churchill's taste, with the famous smile barely
skin-deep. And although Churchill could be ruthless he was never
cold. He preferred Eisenhower with his much wider international
experience to Taft as a 1952 presidential candidate, but he was
certainly not a Republican partisan. On Sunday after the election he
told Coville: "For your private ear, I am greatly disturbed . I
think that this makes war much more probable. ... Part, but by no
means the whole, of the trouble was John Foster Dulles, the new
Secretary of State. After a dinner with Wisenhower and Dulles at
Bernard Baruch's New York apartment on 7 January (1953), the object of
which was to promote warm and friendly relations with the incoming
administration, Churchill on going to bed 壮aid some very harsh things
about the Republican party in general and Dulles in particular, which
Christopher [Soams] and I [Colville] thought both unjust and
dangerous. He said he would have no more to do with Dulles whose
"great slab of a face" he disliked and distrusted.'....
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
1958
Ray Howells, Churchill's Last Years (New York: David McKay Company,
Inc., 1966)
....The sketches hung either side of the huge open fireplace.
Above it was a large paiting of Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir
Winston's father, sitting at his writing table, which stood by the
window.
Another of the paintings on the walls was a black and white
bulldog, really a symbolic picture of Sir Winston. Above this again
hung a pen-and-ink portrait of Bernard Baruch, a life-long American
friend. A large part of two walls was lined with books, many of them
leather bound complete sets.
Dick Eastman
interests in 1913 (see below -- and also some British economic history
in Couglin's speech) who captured control of the Democratic Party. By
1935 Bernard Baruch (who also owned Winston Churchill at this time)
was controlling Roosevelt and his New Deal. The original
Jeffersonian-Jacksonian traditions of the Democrats were being carried
on by two "populist" Democrats. Here are two giants gone before --
see if their words are not beacons for humanity today as we face
criminal globalization and the Bush and Blair regimes.
=================================
Speeches by Huey P. Long and Father Edward Coughlin, 1935
Populists Senator Huey P. Long and Reverend Charles E. Coughlin, the
"Radio Priest," supported Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first years
in office. By 1935, however, disillusioned Long had broken with the
Bernard Baruch-controlled merely-FDR-fronted "New Deal" and Coughlin
was in the process of doing so.
By Spring of 1935 was threatening to run against FDR in the Democratic
primaries if Roosevelt would not break with men like Beruch who were
running the New Deal as their own personal economic bonanza.
Coughlin, whose radio powerful homilies on economics and political
corruption attracted millions of listeners each week had founded the
National Union for Social Justice.
Baruch responded to these attacks on the direction the New Deal had
taken, attacks often made against him personally (see below), by
assigning his own loyal lieutenant, General Hugh S. Johnson, former
head of the failed National Recovery Administration, to deliver a
national radio address denouncing both Long and Coughlin.
Hugh Johnson attacked the two populist critics as "Pied Pipers," and
he blamed the failure of the National Recovery Administration and
other New Deal efforts on Long and Coughlin, who, he said, planted
doubts which robbed the New Deal of the undoubting "spontaneous
cooperation" it needed to succeed. Heaping plenty of personal
invective Johnson accused Coughlin of "using the cloak of religion to
seek political power" and Long of being, in Louisiana, a "dictator by
force of arms and Adolph Hitler has nothing on him any way you care to
look at them both." Since the radio networks carried Johnson's
speech, Long and Coughlin sought the opportunity to reply and to
present their plans for economic revival in some detail.
Here are those replies - the greatest populist speeches of all time,
each, Coughlins' and Long's, a beacon for humanity's economic and
political salvation.
(Note that in 1935 average income (population divided by the total of
all income big and small) was only $1,785; that the price of an new
Ford sedan was $495, of a 3-bedroom house was $6,296, of a gallon of
gas, 18 cents, of a 1 lb. Steak 36 cents, of a pound of coffee, 25
cents, of a Sears dress, $2.95., and of a Budweiser 5 pack, 50 cents.
You must view Long's "Share Our Wealth" proposal of leaving the
many-fold-millionaires and handful of billionaires with a a few
million each in that light.)
<><><><><><><><><><>
SENATOR HUEY P. LONG
Ladies and Gentlemen: It has been publically announced that the White
House orders of the Roosevelt administration have declared a war.
The lately lamented, pampered ex-Crown Prince, General Hugh S.
Johnson, one of those satelites loaned by Wall Street to run the
government, and who at the end of his control over and dismissal from
the ill-fated NRA [National Recovery Administration] pronounced it as
a dead dodo - this Mr. Johnson was apparently selected to make the
lead-off speech in this White House charge begun on last Monday night.
The Johnson speech was followed by a fluster and flurry on behalf
of the administration by spellbinders in and out of Congress. In a
far-away island when a queen dies her first favorite is done the honor
to be buried with her.
The funeral procession of the NRA, another of these New Deal
schisms and isms, is about ready to take place. It is said that
General Johnson's speech of Monday night to attack me was delivered on
the eve of announcing the publication of his own obituary in the Red
Book Magazine.
It seems, then, that soon this erstwhile deranged alphabet makes
ready to appear at the funeral of NRA, likened to the colored lady in
Mississippi who, at such a funeral, asserted, "I is the wife of these
remains."
I shall undertake to cover my main subject and make answer to
these gentlemen in the course of this speech. It will serve no useful
purpose to our distressed people for me to call my opponents more
bitter names than they called me. Even were I able, I have not the
time to present my side of the argument and match them in profanity.
What is the trouble with this administration of Mr. Roosevelt and
of Mr. Johnson, Mr. Farley, Mr. Aster and all their spoilers and
spellbinders?
They think that Huey Long is the cause of all their worry. They
go gunning for me, but am I the cuase of their misery? Well, they are
like old David Crockett, who went out to hunt a possum. He saw there
in the gleam of the moonlight, a possum in the top of the tree, going
from limb to limb, so he shot, but he missed> He looked again and he
saw the possum. He fired a second shot and missed again. Soon he
discovered that it was not a possum that he saw at all in the top of
the tree; it was a louse in his own eyebrow.
I do not make this illustration to do discredit to any of these
distinguished gentlemen: I make it to show how often some of us
imagine that we see great trouble being done to us by some one at a
distance, when in reality all it may be is a fault in our own make-up.
And so is this the case of Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Farley or Mr. Johnson
and of others undertaking to derange the situation today.
The trouble with the Roosevelt administration is that when their
schemes and isms have failed, these things I told them not to do, and
voted not to do, that they think it will help them to light out on
those of us who warned them in the beginning that the tangled messes
and experiments would not work.
The Roosevelt administration has had its way for two years. They
have been allowed to set up or knock down anything and everybody.
There was one difference between Roosevelt and Hoover. Hoover could
not get the Congress to carry out the schemes he wanted to try,
because we managed to lick him on a roll call in the United States
Senate time after time when he had both both the Democratic leaders
and the Republican leaders trying to put them over.
But it is different with Mr. Roosevelt. He got his plan through
Congress, but on cold analysis, they were found to be the same things
Hoover tried to bass and failed the year before.
The kitchen cabinet that sat in to advise Hoover was not
different from the kitchen Cabinet which advises Roosevelt. Many of
the persons are the same. Many more of those in Roosevelt's kitchen
Cabinet are of the same men or set of men who furnished employees to
sit in the kitchen Cabinet to advise Mr. Hoover.
Maybe you see a little change in the men waiting on the tables in
the dining room, but back in the kitchen, the same set of old cooks
are bak there fixing up the vittles and the grub for us that cooked up
that miss under Hoover. There never has been even a change of
seasoning.
Now do you think this Roosevelt plan for plowing up cotton, corn
and wheat, and for pouring milk in the river and for destroying and
burying hogs and cattle by the millions, all while the people starve
to death and go naked, do you think these plans were the original
ideas of Roosevelt administration?
If you do, you are wrong. The whole idea of that kind of thing
first came from Hoover's administration. Don't you remember when Mr.
Hoover proposed to plow up every fouth row of cotton? We laughed at
him to scorn, and so we beat Mr. Hoover on his plan, but when Mr.
Roosevelt started on his plan, it was not to plow up every fourth row
of cotton, it was to plow up every third row of cotton. He went Mr.
Hoover one-twelfth better.
So it has been, while millions have starved and gone naked and
while babies have cried and died wanting milk; so it has been while
people begged for meat and bread to eat. Mr. Roosevelt's
administration has sailed merrily along, plowing under and destroying
the things to eat and wear, with tear-dimmed eyes and hungry souls
made to chant for this New Deal so that even their starvation dole is
not taken away from them, and meanwhile the food and clothes craved by
humanity for their bodies and souls go to destruction and ruin.
What do you call it? Is it government? Maybe so. It looks more
like the St. Vitis dance to me.
Now since they have sallied forth with General Johnson to start
this holy war on me, lut us take a look at this NRA they opened up
around here about two years ago. They had parades and Fascist signs,
just like Hitler and Mussolini. They started the dictatorship to
regiment business and labor much more than any known in Germany and
Italy.
The only difference was in the sign. Mussolini's sign for a
Fascist was a black shirt. Germany's sign of the Fascist was a
swastika. So in America they sidetracked the Stars and Stripes, and
the sign of the Blue Eagle was used instead for the NRA.
They proceeded with the NRA. Everything from a peanut stand to a
powerhouse had to have a separate book of rules and laws to regulate
what they did. If the peanut stand started to sell a sack of goobers,
they had to be careful to go through the rule book. One slip of the
man and he went to jail.
One fellow pressed a pair of pants and went to jail because he
charged 5 cents less than the price set up in the rule book. SO they
wrote their NRA rule books, code laws and so forth, and got up over
900.
One would be as thick as an unabridged dictionary and as confused
as the study of the stars. It would take forty lawyers to tell a shoe
shine merchant how to operate and be sure he didn't go to jail. Some
people come to me for advice as a lawyer on trying to run their
business. I took several days and couldn't understand it myself. The
only thing I could tell them was it couldn't be much worse in jail
than it was out of jail with that kind of thing going on in the
country, and so to go on and do the best they could.
The whole thing of Mr. Roosevelt as run under General Johnson
became such a national scandal that Roosevelt had to let Johnson slide
out as a scapegoat. I am told that the day the general had to go,
when they had waited just as long as they would wait on him, he wanted
to issue a blistering statement against Mr. Roosevelt, but they
finally saddled him off because they didn't know but what Wall Street
might want to lend him to some other President in the future, so he
left without.
It was under the NRA and the other funny alphabetical
combinations that followed it that we ran the whole country into a
mare's nest. The Farleys and Johnsons combed the land with agents,
inspectors, supervisors, detectives, secretaries, assistants, and so
forth, all of them armed with the power to arrest anybody and send
them to jail if they found them not living up to some one of the rules
in these 900 catalogues they had out.
One man , whose case reached the Supreme Court of the United
States, I understand, pleaded guilty because he didn't know what it
was about, and when it got to the United States Supreme Court, it was
turned loose because they couldn't even find a rule book he was
supposed to be guided by.
Now it is with the PWA, WRA, GINS and every other flimsy
combination that the country find its affairs in business where no one
can recognize it. More men are now out of work than ever. The debt
of the United States has gone up ten billion more dollars. There is
starvation; there is homelessness; there is misery on every hand and
corner. But, mind you, in the meantime, Mr. Roosevelt has had his
way. He is one man that can't blame any of his troubles on Huey Long.
He has had his way.
Down in my part of the country, if any man has the measles he
blames that on me; but there is one man that can't blame anything on
anybody but himself and that is Mr. Franklin De-La-No Roose-velt.
And now on top of that, they ordered a war on me because nearly
four years ago I told Hoover's crowd, it wouldn't do, and because I
told Roosevelt and his crowd, it won't do. In other words, they are
in a rage at Huey Long because I have had to say, "I told you so."
It was not overstating the conditions now prevailing in this
country. In the own words of these gentlemen, they have confessed all
that I now say or ever have said. Mr. Roosevelt, and Mrs. Roosevelt,
too, have lately bewailed the fact that food, clothes and shelter have
not been provided for the people. Even as this General Hugh S.
Johnson has said in his speech of this last Monday night that there
are 80,000 babies in America who are badly hurt or wrecked by this
depression. He, of course, includes us all in that classification of
babies.
Mr. Harry Hopkins, who runs the relief work, says the dole roll
has risen now to 22, 375,000 people, the highest it has ever been.
And now what is there for the Roosevelt crowd to do but to admit the
facts and admit furhter that they are now in their third year making
matters worse instead of better.
No one is to blame except them for what is going on when they
have had their way, and they couldn't change the thing in two years.
IT is now worse than ever, and if they haven't been able to do any
good in the way they have been going for two years, how can any one
expect any good of them for the next two years to come? God saved us
two more years of the disaster we have had under that gang.
When this condition of distress and suffering among so many of
our people began to develop in the Hoover Administration, we knew what
was the trouble, and what we would have to do to correct it.
I was one of the first men to say publically. Mr. Roosevelt
followed in my track a few months later, and said the same thing - we
said that all of our trouble and woe was due to the fact that too few
of our people owned too much of our wealth.
We said that in our land we've too much to eat and too much to
wear, and too many houses to live in; too many automobiles to be sold
- that the only trouble was that the people suffered in the land of
abundance because too few controlled the money and the wealth, and too
many people did not have money which would buy the things they needed
for life and comfort.
So I said to the people of the United States in my speeches,
which I delivered in the United States Senate and over the radio in
the early part of 1932, that the only way by which we could restore to
reasonable life and comfort was to limit the size of the big men's
fortunes and guarantee some minimum to the fortune and comfort of the
little man's family.
I said then as I have said since that it was inhuman to have
goods rot, cotton and wool going to waste, houses empty, and at the
same time to have millions of our people starving, our people naked,
our people homeless, because they could not buy the things which other
men had and for which these other men had no use.
So we convinced Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt that it was
necessary that he announce and promise to the American people that in
the event he were elected President of the United States he would pull
down the size of the big man's fortune and guarantee something to
every family, enough to do away with all poverty, and to give
employment to those who were able to work and an education to the
children born into the world.
Mr. Roosevelt made those promises. He made them before he was
nominated in the Chicago convention, he made them again before he was
elected in November, and he went so far as to remake those promises a
day or two after he was inaugurated President of the United States,
and I was one authorized to say so, and I thought for a day or two
after he took the oath as President that maybe he was going through
with his promises.
But no heart has ever been so saddened, no person's ambition was
ever so blighted as was mine when I came to the realization that the
President of the United States was not goin gto undertake what he said
he would do, and what I knew to be necessary if the people of America
were ever saved from calamity and misery . . . .
And so we arrived, and we are still there at the place in
abundant America where we have everything for which a human heart can
pray. The hundreds of millions, or, as General Johnson says, the
eighty millions of our people, are crying in misery for want of the
things which they need for life, notwithstanding the fact that the
country has had and can have , more than the entire human race can
consume.
One hundred and twenty-five million people of America have seated
themselves at the barbecue table to eat the products which have been
given to them by their Lord and Creator. There is provided by the
Almighty what it takes for all of them to eat. Yea, more.
There has been provided for the people of America who have been
called to this barbecue table more than is needed for all to eat, but
the financial masses of America have taken off the barbecue table 90
per cent of the food placed thereon by the Lord, even before the feast
began. And there is left on that table for 125,000,000 people about
what is needed for the 10,000,000. In other words, there is not
enough to feed one out of twelve.
What has become of the balance of those victuals placed on the
table by the Lord for the use of us all? They are in the hands of the
Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Baruchs, the Mellons, the Bakers, the
Asters, the Vanderbilts, 600 families at the most, wither possessing
or controlling the entire 90 per cent of all that is in America.
These big men cannot eat all of the food, they cannot wear all
the clothes, so they destroy it. The rot it up, they plow it up, they
pour it in the river. They bring destruction to the acts of mankind
to let humanity suffer, to let humanity go naked, to let humanity go
homeless, so that nothing may occur that will do harm to their vanity
and to their greed. Like the dog in the manger, they command a wagon
load of hay which the dog would not allow the cow to eat, though he
could not eat it himself.
So now, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce again, for fear that
there are some who have just tuned in and do not know who is talking.
This is Huey P. Long, United States Senator from Louisiana, talking
over a National Broadcasting Company hookup from Washington D.C.
We come to that plan of mine, now, for which I have been so
recently and roundly condemned and denounced by the Roosevelt
administration and by such men as Mr. Farley and Mr. Robinson and
General Hugh S. Johnson, and other spellers and speakers and spoilers.
It is for the redistribution of wealth and for guaranteeing
comfort and convenience to all humanity out of this abundance in our
country. I hope none will be horror-stricken when they hear me say
that we must limit the size of the big man's fortunes in order to
guarantee a minimum of fortune, life and comfort to the little man,
but if you are horror-stricken at my mention of that fact, think first
that such is the declaration on which Mr. Roosevelt rode into
nomination and election to President of the United States.
While my urgings are declared by some to be the ravings of a
madman and, by such men as General Johnson, as insincere bait for a
pied-piper, if you will listen to me you will find that it is stating
the law handed down from God to man.
You will find that it was the exact provision of the contract of
law of the Pilgrim Fathers who landed at Plymouth in 1620. Now, just
for the benefit of some of these gentlemen, I am going to read you
from the contract of those Pilgrim Fathers who landed at Plymouth in
1620. I am reading you from the contract of those Pilgrim Fathers:
"Paragraph 5: That at the end of the seventh year, the capital and
profits that the houses, lands, goods and chattels be equally divided
betwixt the adventurers and planters. When done, every man shall be
free from any debt or detriment concerning this adventure."
In other words, these birds who are undertaking to tell you of
the bad things I have done and am advocating, they have failed to note
that I not only have the Bible back of me, but that this nation was
founded by the Pilgrim Fathers, not to do just what I said, but to go
and do all the balance, divide up equally every seventh year and
cancel out all debts, and they had the authority of the Bible for
doing that. On the other hand, mine does not go near so far, but it
will save this country as the Pilgrims intended it should be saved.
You will find that what I am advocating is the cornerstone on
which nearly every religion since the beginning of man has been
founded. You will find that it was urged by Lord Bacon, by Milton, by
Shakespeare in England; by Socrates, by Plato, by Diogenes and the
other wisest of the philosophers of ancient Greece; by Pote Pius XI in
the Vatican; by the world's greatest inventor, Marconi, in Italy;
Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson,
William Jennings Bryan and Theodore Roosevelt in the United States, as
well as by nearly all of the thousands of great men whose names are
mentioned in history, and the only great man who ever came forth to
dispute these things from the Bible down is this marvelous General
Hugh S. Johnson, who labels himself a soldier and a lawyer.
He is a great soldier though he never smelt powder or heard a cap
snap, and a great lawyer though he never tried a lawsuit, and I will
not be willing transact business on the lines that everybody else must
be forgotten whom I follow, and if I should follow in such footsteps
as was arranged for the combination of an alphabetical proposition..
The principle that I am advocating, that I will give you in
detail in a minute, that principle was not only the mainspring of the
Roosevelt nomination and election but in the closing speech of Herbert
Hoobver at Madison Square Garden in November, 1932, even Hoover said:
My conception of America is a land where men and women may work
in liberty, where they may enjoy the advantages of wealth, not
concentrated in the hands of the few but diffused through the lives of
all."
So there you have it ladies and gentlemen; both Hoover and
Roosevelt swallowed the Huey Long doctrine and never made one single
complaint before the election occurred on November 8, 1932.
Now I come to give you again that plan, taken from these leaders
of all times and from the Bible, for the sponsoring of which I have
been labeled by American men as a madman and pied piper and demagogue,
so I give you that plan of our Share Our Wealth Society.
I propose, first, that every big fortune will be cut down
immediately. We will cut that down by a capital levy tax to where no
one will own more than a few millions of dollars. As a matter of
fact, no one can own a fortune in excess of three or four millions of
dollars, just between you and me, and I think that is too much. But
we figure we can allow that size of a fortune and give prosperity to
all the people, even though it is done.
I propose that the surplus of all the big fortunes above a few
millions to any one person, at the most, go into the United States
ownership. Now, how would we get all these surplus fortunes into the
United States Treasury, Mr. Johnson wants to know. Well, now, if he
will listen, he won't have any trouble finding out. It is not hard to
do. We would send every one a questionnaire, just like they did
during the war, when they were taking us over there to make the world
safe for democracy so that they might come back here and make America
save for autocracy.
On that questionnaire the man to whom it was sent would list the
properties he owned, lands, the houses, stocks and bonds, factories
and patents; every man would place an appraisal on his property which
the government would review and maybe change. On that appraisal the
big fortune holder would say out of what property he would retain the
few millions allowed to him, the balance to go to the United States.
Let's say that Mr. Henry Ford should show that he owned all the
stock of the Ford Motor Company, and that it is worth 2,000,000,000 we
will say. He would claim, say, $4,000,000 dollars of the Ford stocks,
but $1,996,000,000 would go to the United States.
Say the Rockerfeller Foundation was listed at $10,000,000,000 in
oil stocks, bank stocks, money and storehouses. Each Rockefeller
could say whether he wanted his limit in the money, oil or bank stock,
but about $9,900,000,000 would be left that would go to the United
States Government.
And so in this way, this Government of the United States would
come into the possession of about two-fifths of the wealth which on
normal values would be worth from $165,000,000,000 to
$175,000,000,000.
Then we would turn to the inventories of the 25,000,000 of
America and all those showing properties and moneys clear of debt that
were above $5,000 and up to the limit of a few millions. We wouldn't
draw down a fortune that wasn't bigger than a few millions, and if a
man had over $5,000 then he would have his guaranteed minimum. But
those showing less than $5,000 for the family, free of debt, would be
added to; so that every family would start life again with homestead
possession of at least a home and the comfort needed for a home,
including such things as a radio and an automobile.
Those things would go to every family as a homestead not to be
sold either for debts or for taxes or even by consent of the owner,
except the government would allow it, and then only on condition that
the court hold it, that is, hold the money that was received for it,
to be spent for the purpose of buying another home and the comforts
thereof.
Such would mean that the $165,000,000,000 or more taken from the
big fortunes would have about $100,000,000,000 of it used to provide
everybody with the comforts of home. The government might have to
issue warrants for claim and location, or even currency to be retired
from such property as it was claimed, bu all that is a detail not
impractical to get these homes into the hands of the people.
So America would start again with millionaires, but with no
multi-millionaires or billionaires; we would start with some poor, but
they would wouldn't be so poor that they wouldn't have the comforts of
life. The lowest a man could go would not take away his home and the
home comforts from him.
America, however, would still have a $65,000,000,000 balance
after providing these homes. Now what do we do with that? Wait a
minute and I will tell you.
Second: We propose that after homes and comforts of homes have
been set up for the families of the country, that we will turn our
attention to the children and the youth of the land, providing first
for their education and training.
We would not have to worry about the problem of child labor,
because the very first thing which we would place in front of every
child would be not only a comfortable home during his early years, but
the opportunity for education and training, not only through the
grammar school and the high school, but through college and to include
vocational and professional training for every child.
If necessary, that would include the living cost of that child
while he attended college, if one should be too distant for him to
live at home and conveniently attend, as would be the case with many
of those living in the rural areas.
We now have an educational system, and in States like Louisiana,
and it is the keystone, where school books are furnished free to every
child and where transportation by bus is given to every student,
however far he may live from a grammar school or high school, there is
a fairly good assurance of education through grammar and high school
for the child whose father and mother have enough at home to feed and
clothe them.
But when it comes to a matter of college education, except in few
cases, the right to a college education is determined at this day and
time by the financial ability of the father and mother to pay for the
cost and the expense of a college education.
It doesn't make any difference how brilliant a boy or girl may
be; that doesn't give them the right to a college education in America
today.
Now General Hugh S. Johnson says I am indeed a very smart
demagogue, a wise and dangerous menace. But I am one of those who
didn't have the opportunity to secure a college education or training.
We propose that the right to education and the extent of
education will be determined and guaged not so much by the financial
ability of the parents, but by the mental ability and energy of a
child to absorb the learning at a college.
This should appeal to General Johnson, who says I am a smart man,
since, had I enjoyed the learning and college training which my plan
would provide for others, I might not have fallen into the path of the
dangerous menace and demagogue that he as now found me to be.
Remember we have $65,000,000,000 to account for that would lie in
the hands of the United States, even after providing home comforts for
all families. We will use a large part of it immediately to expand
particularly the colleges and universities of this country. You would
not know the great institutions like Yale and Harvard and Louisiana
State University. Get ready for a surprise.
College enrollments would multiply 1,000 per cent. We would
immediately call in the architects and engineers, the idle professors
and scholars of learning. We would send out a hurry call because the
problem of providing college education for all the youth would start a
fusilade of employment which might suddenly and immediately make it
impossible for us to shorten the hours of labor, even as we
contemplate in the balance of the program.
And how happy the youth of this land would be tomorrow morning if
they knew instantly their right to a home and the comforts of a home
and to complete college and professional training and education were
assured. I know how happy they would be, because I know how happy I
would have felt had such a message been delivered to my door.
I cannot deliver that promise to the youth of this land tonight,
but I am doing my part. I am standing the blows; I am hearing the
charges hurled at me from the four quarters of the country.
It is the same fight which was made against me in Louisiana when
I was undertaking to provide the free school books, free buses,
university facilities and things of that kind to educate the youth of
that State as best I could.
It is the same blare which I heard when I was undertaking to
provide for the sick and the afflicted.
When the yhouth of this land realizes what is meant and what is
contemplated, the Billingsgate and the profanity of all the Farleys
and Johnsons in America cannot prevent the light of truth from hurling
itself in understandable letters against the dark canopy of the sky.
Now, when we have landed at the place where homes and comforts
are provided for all families and complete education and training for
all young men and women, the next problem is , what about our income
to sustain our people thereafter? How shall that be arranged to
guarantee all the fair share of what sould and body need to sustain
them conveniently. That brings us to our next point.
We propose:
We will shorten the hours of labor by law so much as may be
necessary that none will be worked too long and none unemployed. We
will cut hours of toil to thirty hours per week, maybe less, we may
cut the working year to eleven months' work and one month vacation,
maybe less.
If our great improvement programs show we need more labor than we
may have, we will lengthen the hours as convenience requires. At all
events, the hours for production will be gauged to meet the market for
consumption.
We will need all our machinery for many years because we have
much public improvement to do. And further, the more use that we may
make of them the less toil will be required for all of us to survive
in splendor.
Now, a minimum earning would be established for any person with a
family to support. It would be such an earning, on which one, already
owning a home, could maintain a family in comfort, of not less that
$2,500 per year to every family ....
General Johnson says that my proposal is for $5,000 guaranteed
earnings to each family, which he says would cost from four to five
hundred billions of dollars per year which, he says, is four times
more than our whole national income ever has been. Why make such
untrue statements, General Johnson? Must you be a false witness to
argue your point?
I do not propose $5,000 to each family. I propose a minimum of
from $2,000 to $2,500 to each family. For 25,000,000 families that
minimum per family would require from $50,000,000,000 to
$60,600,000,000.
In the prosperous days we have had nearly double that for income
some years, which allowed plenty for the affluent; but with the
unheard prosperity we would have, if all our people could buy what
they need, our national income would be double what it has ever been.
The Wall Street writer and statistician says we could have an
income of at least $10,000 to every family in goods if all worked
short hours and none were idle. According to him, only one-fourth the
average income would carry out my plan.
And now I come to the balance of the plan. We propose:
No. 4. That agricultural production will be cared for in the
manner specified in the Bible. We would plow under no crops; we would
burn no corn; we would spill no milk into the river; we would shoot no
hogs; we would slaughter no cattle to be rotted. What we would do is
this:
We would raise all the cotton that we could raise, all the corn
that we could raise and everything else that we could raise. Let us
say, for example, that we raised more cotton than we could use.
But here again I wish to surprise you when I say that if every
one could buy all the towels, all the sheets, all the bedding, all the
clothing, all the carpets, all the window curtains, all of everything
they reasonably need, America would consume 20,000,000 bales of cotton
per year without have to sell a bale to foreign countries.
The same would be true of the wheat crop, and of the corn crop,
and of the meat crop. Whenever every one could buy the things they
desire to eat, there would be no great excess in any of those food
supplies.
But for the sake of argument, let us say, however, that there
would be a surplus. And I hope there will be, because it will do the
country good to have a big surplus. Let us take cotton as an example.
But for the sake of argument, let us say, however, that there
would be a surplus. And I hope there will be, because it will do the
country good to have a big surplus. Let us take cotton as an example.
Let us say that the United States will have a market for
10,000,000 bales of cotton, and that we raise 15,000,000 bales of
cotton. We will store 5,000,000 bales in warehouses provided by the
government. If the next year we raise 15,000,000 bales of cotton and
only need 10,000,000 we will store another 5,000,000 bales of cotton,
and the government will care for that.
When we reach the year when we have enough cotton to last for
twelve or eighteen months we will plant no more cotton for that next
year. The people who have their certificates of the government, which
they can cash in for that year for the surplus, or if necessary, the
government can pay for the whole 15,000,000 bales of cotton as it is
produced every year, and when the year comes that we will raise no
cotton we will not have the people idle and with nothing to do.
That is the year when, in the Cotton States, we will do our
public improvement work that needs to be done so badly. We will care
for the flood-control problems, we will expand the electric lines into
rural areas; we will widen reads and build more roads, and if we have
a little time left, some of us can go back and attend a school for a
few months, and not only learn some things we have forgotten, but we
can learn some things that they have found out about that they didn't
know anything about when we were children.
Now the example of what we would do about cotton is the same
policy we would follow about all other crops. This program would
necessitate the building of large storage plants, both heated and cold
storage warehouses, then if there were to come a year of famine there
would be enough on hand to feed and clothe the people of the nation.
It would be the part of good sense to keep a year or two of stock on
hand all the time to provide for an emergency, maybe to provide for
war or other calamity.
I give you the next step in our program:
No. 5. We will provide for old age pensions for those who reach
the age of 60, and pay it to all those who have an income of less than
$1,000 per year, or less than $10,000 in property or money.
This would relieve from the ranks of labor those persons who
press down the price for the use of their flesh and blood.
Now, the person who reaches the age of 60 would already have the
comforts of home as well as something else guaranteed by reason of the
redistribution that had been made of things. They would be given
enough more to give them a reasonably comfortable existence in their
declining days.
However, such would not come from a sales tax or taxes placed
upon the common run of people. It would be supported from the taxes
levied on those with big incomes and the yearly tax that would be
levied on big fortunes so that they would always be kept down to a few
million dollars to any one person.
No. 6. We propose that the obligation which this country owes to
the veterans of its wars, including the soldiers' bonus, and to care
for those who have been either incapacitated or disabled, would be
discharged without stint or unreasonable limit.
I have always supported each and every bill that has had to do
with the payment of the bonus due to the ex-service men. I have
always opposed reducing the allowances which they have been granted.
It is an unfair thing for the country to begin its economy while big
fortunes exist, by inflicting misery on those who have borne the
burden of national defense.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, such is the share our wealth movement.
What I have here stated to you will be found to be approved by the
law of our Divine Maker. You will find it in the Book of Deuteronomy,
from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-seventh chapters. You will find
in it the writings of King Solomon. You wil find it in the teachings
of Christ. You will find it in the words of our great teachers and
statesmen of all countries and of all times. If you care to write to
me for such proof, I shall be glad to furnish it to you free of
expense by mail.
Will you not organize a share our wealth society in your
community tonight or tomorrow to place this plan into law? You need
it; you people need it. Write me, wire to me; get into this work with
us if you believe we are right. Help to save humanity. Help to save
this country. If you wish a copy of this speech or a copy of any
other speech I have made, write me and it will be forwarded to you.
You can reach me always in Washington D.C.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><>
REV. CHARLES E. COUGHLIN
Ladies and Gentlemen: I am truly indebted to the National Broadcasting
System by whom this time is contributed and to General Hugh Johnson
for having provided the occasion and the opportunity for me to address
you.
Our concept of government so far transcends the bigotry of race,
of creed, of color and of profession to such an extent that through
our forefathers we refrained from writing into the Constitution of the
United States any impediment to disbar any citizen from engaging in
the activities of good citizenship. I am compelled to rehearse this
plain truth for your consideration because a demagogic utterance, by
appealing to the thoughtlessness, to religious and to professional
bigotry, has questioned it.
The money changers whom the priest drove from the temple of
Jerusalem both my word and by physical force have marshaled their
forces behind the leadership of a chocolate soldier for the purpose of
driving the priest out of public affairs.
While always a priest I address you neither as the spokesman of
the Catholic Church nor as the representative of its Catholic
following. I speak to you as American to American.
The economic disaster which overwhelmed our nation proved beyond
question that, independent of all racial or religious differences,
there was common need for Catholic, Protestant, Jew and irreligionist
to solve a common problem. Together did we not enjoy a common
citizenship? Together did we not rejoice in the common appellation of
Americans? Together have we not worried through the dark years of
this depression? Thus, when through the inevitable sequence of
events, a crisis has been reached in the development of our social
well-being; when it became necessary to bridge the chasm that
seperates this day of our economic affliction from the tomorrow of our
hoped-for benediction, some one, irrespective of his catholicity or of
his protestantism, or of his Jewish faith, was required to raise his
voice, if for no other reason than to condemn those who , refusing to
leave the land of sorrow, obstructed our passage to the land of
prosperity. While it was and always will be impossible for me to
divest myself of my Catholic priesthood, nevertheless, in accepting
the dignities which my religion conferred upon me I sacrificed in no
respect the rights identified with my citizenship. It is still my
prerogative to vote. It is still my duty as a common citizen to
engage in the common efforts for the preservation of the commonwealth
as chaos clamors at our doors ....
While always a priest I carry to you the fundamental doctrines of
social justice which are intended both for the religionist and
irreligionist, for black and white, for laborer and farmer, for
everyone who shares with me the citizenship in which I rejoice.
Therefore, away with that prostituted bigotry which at one time
has been the poisoned rapier of arrant cowards and at another the
butcher's cleaving axe wielded to destroy a national unity.
The object of the National Union for Social Justice is secure
economic liberty for our people. So well is this truth known that
the concentrators of wealth are resorting to musty methods long since
in disrepute to preserve America for the plutocrats and to retain its
quarreling citizens for their exploitation.
Our program, which is interested in restoring America to the
Americans, can be accomplished peacefully only through a naitonal
solidarity. Peacefully, I say, because I believe in the Prince of
Peace and dare not disregard His warning that they who use the sword
shall perish by it.
In the meantime, therefore, let the Tories of high finance learn
from their prototype, George III. Let the unjust aggressors who for
generations have mismanaged the economic affairs of our nation assume
the entire responsibility for their Tory stubbornness. The laborer
has not sabotaged our factories! The farmer has not created a
man-made scarcity of food! The 80,000,000 cry babies have not
concentrated our wealth! These people, played upon by paid-for
propaganda did not hurl us into the seething maelstrom of a bloody
war.
These cry babies - 80,000,000 of them so confessed- were not
responsible for the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and
for the destruction of small industry. They did not force 22,000,000
hungry men and women to stand in a bread line nor with the lash of
poverty did they drive 11,000,000 laborers into idleness and
insecurity.
I am characterized as a revolutionary for raising my voice
against these palpable injustices, while the blind Bourbons cannot see
the writing on the wall nor read the pages of history written in
crimson pens which were dipped into the bleeding hearts at Concord,
Lexington and Valley Forge.
In 1776 Washington and Jefferson and their compatriots had hurled
at them the vile epithet of revolutionary. Their lands had been
overtaxed. Their laborers and farmers, had been exploited. Their
liberties had been denied. Their right to free speech and to petition
had been scoffed at. They, too, were called revolutionary.
Today, when the rights to life, to liberty and to the pursuit of
happiness have been obstructed by an economic system of high finance
far more vicious in its implications and results than were the unjust
political aggressions of a George III, they who protest against them
are classified and indexed with the patriots of 1776,
This, indeed, is a high compliment inadvertently paid by the New
Deal's greatest casualty, General Hugh Johnson, who never faced an
enemy nor successfully faced an issue.
Today he and the Wall Streeters whom he represents become
distorters of history, perverters of logic as they, the unjust
aggressors garb themselves in the raiment of patriotism and cast scorn
on those who have offered from their misdeeds the scarlet cloak of the
rebel. ...
My dear General Johnson, I am not important nor are you. But the
doctrines which I preach are important. While you were content to
vomit your venom upon my person and against my character, the American
public is fully cognizant that not once did you dare attack the truths
which I teach. I need not condemn you before the court of public
opinion. You have condemned yourself. More than that, you have
appeared before a jury fo 80,000,000 people - your own figures - who
through your lack of Christian charity and justice are today
prejudiced against you.
Those "cry babies" whose tears have welled to their eyes because
you and your kind have lashed them at the pillar of poverty; these
brothers and sisters of Chris whom you and your masters have crowned
with thorns of worry and insecurity; these sterling American citizens
whom you first fastened to the cross of hunger and nakedness and then
pierced their hearts with with spear of exploitation - these
inarticulate people for whom I speak will never forget you and your
Wall Streeters.
These people, so you have intimated, are rats being led by the
Pied Piper. Must that be the metaphor which you employ to describe
the wreckage which your kind has created?
My friends, I appeal to your charity, to your good judgement, to
your sense of social justice to bear no ill will against General
Johnson. Your intelligence informs you that he is but a faithful
obedient servant willing to express in his own grotesque manner the
thoughts which are harbored in the mind of his master.
Today he appears before us a figure to be pitied and not
condemned. He has been cast out of an Administration because he and
his plans were failures. Thus, as he appears before you on future
occasions remember that he is regarded as a cracked gramaphone record
squawking the message of his master's voice.
My dear general, if I am constrained from indicting your person,
it is simply because you are the first great casualty of the New Deal
experimentation. Whether you know it or not, you are but a political
corpse whose gohst has returned to haunt us. Although I believe that
your unique spirit will not rest in peace, nevertheless, I still
believe in that ehtical axiom - Of the dead let us speak kindly.
When real soldiers come forth to fight, having facts for targets
and truths for ammunition, I shall oppose them with the most forceful
weapons which my wits command, but never shall I adopt dishonest
tactics or dishonest warfare. I shall draw my reasons from that
school of militancy presided over by Jesus Christ, who 1900 years ago,
refrained not from attacking in scathing terms the scribes and
pharisees. "Woe to you scribes and pharisees, hypocrits, because you
devour the houses of widows, praying long prayers. For this you shall
receive the greater judgement. For you bind heavy and insupportable
burdens and lay them on men's shoulders; but with a finger of your own
you will not move them."
Yes, General Johnson, Christ is accused of stirring class against
class by the Voltaires, the Rousseaus, the Louis XVI's, and the
atheists of all times. But there are times when certain classes must
be forcefully reminded that there is such a thing as Christian charity
which bids us love our neighbors as ourselves, and that warns us that
whatsoever we do, even to the least, we do to Christ. That is what
the Pharisees refused to learn. That is what their descendants in
Wall Street refuse to accept as they continue to devour the houses of
widows and tax our citizenry into slavery and idleness.
Remembering the method of attack employed by Christ's Precursor,
John the Baptist, I will dare confront the Herods by name and by fact
even though my head be served on a golden platter, even though my body
be sawed in twain as was that of the prophet Isaias for having scorned
into disrepute a prince named Manasses.
Today there is another Manasses, your lord and master, General
Johnson. I refer to Bernard Manasses Baruch, whose full name has
seldom been mentioned, but which name from this day forth shall not be
forgotten. This was the name his parents gave him, the name Manasses.
This is the name, General Johnson, of your price of high finance.
Him with the Rothschilds in Europe, the Lazzere in France, the
Warburgs, the Kuhn-Loebs, the Morgans and the rest of that wrecking
crew of internationalists whose God is gold and whose emblem is the
red shiedl of exploitation - these men I shall oppose until my dying
days even though the Bernard Manasses Baruch of Wall Street is
successful in doing to me what the price after whom he was named
accomplished doing to Isias.
I am well apprised of the fact that your own vociferous
volubility, which you characterized last Monday as "howling," is but
the opening gun in a well organized attack against me. I fear it not
because I am protected by the moral support of the "cry babies" and
the "rats" whom you have forced into the ranks of the National Union
for Social Justice. Therefore, I shall doubly bend my efforts to the
task of handing back America to the Americans and of rescuing our
beloved country from the hands of internationalists.
There are two remaining charges which you made against me. I
rejoice in this opportunity to answer them. The first respects money.
You said that my plan is "to make money out of nothing, which would
therefore make it worth nothing." At least you admit that I have a
plan. I need not inform this audience that since 1930 and long before
it I had a plan to establish social justice. Long before you or the
financial puppet-masters who are expert in manipulating the strings of
Punch and Judy oratory became prominent in the desperate struggle for
economic independence I was associated with pioneers who were
protesting against the profitless labor of our farmers and against the
slavery of modern mass productionisim.
Where were you in 1930 and 1931 while we were advocating New Deal
on Sundays and feeding thousands in the bread line on Mondays, made
necessary by the cold-blooded individualism of an ancient economic
system?
Where were you in 1932 when our same group was advocating the
election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the birth of the New Deal long
before Franklin D. Roosevelt was even nominated for the Presidency.
Where were you in 1933 and 1934 when our beloved leader,
consecrated to drive the money changers out of the temple, was
hampered and impeded by your master, Bernard Manasses Baruch, the
acting president of the United States, the uncrowned prince of Wall
Street?
I say this in no disparagement because every one appreciates that
you are nothing more than his man Friday. With Bernard Manasses
Baruch's plan in your pocket to regiment industry, to destroy
competition, to institute a wage system designated to share poverty,
to create monopolies and eliminate small industries - you strutted
upon the state of this depression like a comic opera general. You
organized a comic opera parade on the streets of New York.
Why, General, before your name and underslung vocabulary became
household words in this nation, the pioneer associates of mine had
been fighting in the front trenches against the enemies of the New
Deal, bearing its heaviest burdens, carrying its heaviest crosses.
And no you accuse me of planning to make money out of nothing. But
let us become more specific. The man who put this thought into your
mouth is nothing but a thief yelling "Stop, thief." Bear with me,
General, as I refresh the memory of this audience on the nature of
money and how it is manufactured out of nothing by your masters.
1 - As you confess, money i merely the medium of trade. It is
not wealth; it is only the transportation system, as it were, by which
wealth is carried from one person to another.
2 - For more than 100 years the people of this nation have
permitted a small group of men to possess the privilege of making
money and thereby of controlling the flow of wealth. Many of us began
to believe that money was the real wealth instead of the trick, as it
were, whose only reason for existence is to carry the precious freight
of food, clothing, of shelter of human beings and their labor from one
point to another - from the producer to the consumer.
There are many kinds of transportation, such as the railway, the
truck, the steamboat. There are three kinds of capitalistic money,
all monopolized for use by the banker - metal, paper currency and
credit. In round figures, there are $9,000,000,000 of idle metal in
the Treasury, $5,500,000,000 of paper currency throughout the nation
and at least $250,000,000 of credit or of debt money, such as
mortgages, loans, bonds, etc. Credit money or pen and ink plus
checkbook money is really the major portion of all our money by 90
percent. Credit money is checkbook money.
3 - How is this checkbook money created in this nation? First, a
group of wealthy men petition the government for a bank charter, or,
in other words, for the right to counterfeit legally.
4 - These men deposit, for example, $100,000 with the Treasury.
In return the Treasury gives them $100,000 worth of interest-baring
bonds which are kept at Washington as security. But the interest
accumulating on the bonds belongs to these new bankers.
5 - These men return to their home town after they have the
government print for the, at scarcely no cost, $100,000 worth of paper
dollars, which they deposit in their new bank.
6 - John Smith comes to these bankers for a loan of $10,000,
which he obtains at 6 percent on depositing as security the deed for
this $20,000 farm.
7- Then the banker gives John a checkbook - no actual cash, mind
you - and immediately writes on his own books that $10,000 has been
deposited, whereas in truth it was simply loaned.
8 - Fifty, eighty, one hundred John Smiths go through the same
process until the bank which started with only $100,000 of printed
money has loaned $1,000,000 at 6 per cent. That was their urle, to
lend ten times what they actually had. Therefore, the first year in
business netted the bank $60,000 interest profit on investment of
$100,000 which all this time was bearing interest for them through the
bonds which they deposited originally at Washington at 4 per cent.
9 - Of course, Jim Jones and 1,000 other neighbors of Jim Jones
placed their savings in the town bank. They thought that this money
was safe and that the bank would surrender it on demand. But Jim did
not read the fine print in his bankbook. Had he done so, he would
have discovered that he had actually loaned his money to the bankers;
that he had become a creditor and therefore, had to take his chance of
getting his money back with all the other creditors and patrons of the
bank.
10 - Meanwhile, from the bankers bank, the Federal Reserve Bank,
word went out that too much money had been loaned by his fellow
bankers. It was time to call in the loans. It was time to cut down on
credit. Thus Henry Doe, the manufacturer, John Smith the farmer, and
Peter Adams, the merchant, all of whom borrowed from the bank, were
ordered to pay back in currency money, mind you, what they had
obtained in checkbook money. Simultaneously, this happened all over
the nation. Ten, twenty, thirty billion dollares of loans were
called. There were only $5,000,000,000 of currency money in
existence. It was an impossible situation. Therefore a depression
arose. The deeds and mortgages were claimed by the bankers and homes
and farms and industries were confiscated by him because there was no
currency money.
11 - Did the banker close up shop? He did not. At least the big
banker did not. They liquidated the homes and farms and industries
which they confiscated when the borrowers had no currency money to
save them. They sold them for what they could obtain on depressed
market. Then the turned around with this new fresh currency money and
bought governmet bonds at 4 per cent or less.
12 - Meanwhile, bread lines were established. Unemployment was
rife. Poverty stalked through the nation. Of necessity the
government must obtain money to feed the poor and must undertake
public works to slavage the unemployed. Therefore it borrowed
$8,000,000,000 from the bankers who, playing their game even in the
face of national distress, loaned the government a fat checkbook and
perhaps for good measure a bottle of ink and a fountain pen. Still
there were only $5,000,000,000 of actual currency in the nation. But,
through a banker's magic and gambler's instinct, they loaded the
$8,999,999,999 because they knew that in eighteen years hence,
$6,000,000,000 in interest would be returned by the government for the
privilege of using a banker's check book - $14,000,000,000 in all.
There, General is the true story of how money is made out of
nothing. Can you or any Wall Streeter controvert this?
To this process of manufacturing money I have been opposed simply
because our Constitution says that it is the right of Congress to coin
and regulate the value of money. In the year 1694 this right still
belonged to the British people and to their Parliament but, when
threatened by invasions, the merchants and goldsmiths of London forced
Parliament to surrender this right to them. This was the price of
their patriotism. This ewas the birthday of the privately-owned bank
of England.
During the days of our Civil War, when Arbaham Lincoln was
engaged in realizing a dream that was born in the crib of Bethlehem,
he needed gold to purchase arms and ammunition. In that day, the
international bankers were willing to loan gold to Lincoln on the one
condition that he would abrogate and cancel Article i, Section VIII,
Clause V of our Constitution, which says Congress has the right to
coin and regulate the value of money. This right they themselves
coveted; this right they themselves demanded.
From that day forward until 1913, when the Federal Reserve
Banking system was created - a system owned by a group of your masters
and not by the people the American people, as many in this audience
formerly believed - from that day forward the economic destinies of
our country have been controlled by these private central bankers who
extended and contracted credit at will.
Because I have, in season and out of season, demanded that we
Americans go back to the Constitution and restore to Congress its
right and duty to coin and regulate the value of money you have
assailed me and in doing so have stultified yourself.
When did I ever propose to make money out of nothing? I have
pointed to $9,000,000,000 of idle gold and silver sterilized in the
vaults of our Treasury. I have questioned time after time the wisdom
on the part of our government running to the Federal Reserve Bank for
dollars created for public works activities, with the understanding
that the bankers would be repaid either with good currency, at
interest, or else the security of the United States could be
confiscated by them.
I have advocated that the government employ this idle gold and
silver instead of building up unpayable debts to be shouldered by the
unborn children of future generations. You and your group have been
the inflationists, the makers of money out of nothing. But mindful of
the Federal Reserve act, which was passed in 1913, and which permits
2 ½ currency dollars to be printed against each gold dollar, mindful
that we have only $5,250,000,000 paper dollars in the country and over
$9,000,000,000 of gold and silver in the Treasury, I have asked and I
still ask why we do not employ it for the welfare of the American
people instead of utilizing the bankers' ,manufactured money for the
welfare of the Warburgs, the Rothschilds, the Kuhn-Loebs, the Morgans,
and your own master, Bernard Manasses Baruch? ...
The real enemies who are boring from within have been you and
your group of Wall Streeters, of international bankers. Who have been
the President's advisers over a period of two years? Not the farmer
or the laborer, not the National Union for Social Justice, not his
close and disinterested friends. Surely they were not responsible for
11,000,000,000 men who are still unemployed, for 22,000,000 persons
who are still in the breadlines, for our national debt which has risen
to the unscalable heights of $34,000,000,000. If our people are
growing disheartened it is not because they have lost faith in
Franklin D. Roosevelt, but because they are rising in their wrath
against you and your group who have surrounded him.
It was Bernard Manasses Baruch and the international bankers who
whispered into his perterbed ears the philosophy of destruction, the
sophistry of social reforms and politics, all of which have prevented
a magnificent leader from rescuing a nation still bound to the rock of
depression by the chains of economic slavery. Did they not, in season
and out of season, obstruct him from diriving the money changers from
the temple?
My friends in this audience, I still proclaim to you that it is
either Roosevelt or ruin. I support him today and will support him
tomorrow, because we are neither going back to the individualism of
the past nor are we going forward to the communism of the future. But
I am not that type of false friend who, mangling the very meaning of
the word, praise policies when criticism is required or betray
millions of supporters throughout the naiton by preaching to them the
prostituted slogan of "peace, meace," when there is not peace. . . .
Dick Eastman
history of 20-thCentury war profiteering -- of Bernard Baruch and
Churchill, Wilson, Roosevelt etc.
-----------------------------
You can't win. A patriot writes:
Note from Bob to the reader of this email - There is this guy on the
Internet who is somewhat well known amongst those who spend a lot of
time on
the Internet in political debate. His name is Dick Eastman. He is a
member
of hundreds of Internet email lists and he is well known because he
devotes
many hours every day to sending email to these email lists.
He has infiltrated many patriot groups and Christian conservative
groups and
calls himself a populist. Most people overlook this populist
appellation
because they do not know what it means. Personally I think he is
leftwing
and that he hides this fact from those who read his emails. I wrote
this
letter below to him in an attempt to get him to come clean and admit
his
ideological bias. But it is hard to talk with Dick because Dick does
not
like to give a straight answer to your questions. If you want to pin
him
down you have to write very specific questions to prevent his
prevarications, subterfuge and evasions. That is what I have done in
this
email. In the course of an email discussion with Dick I asked him who
are
some of his favorite political figures of all time and he sent me two
names,
"Father Coughlin" and "U.S. Senator Huey Long" both of whom are 1930's
populists. Dick also sent me the text of two speeches by these men
which I
dissected and extracted the best quotes from for purposes of the
discussion
below. I urge you to read this entire email since it will be both
entertaining and educational. Bob from Michigan.
PS - In the discussion below, I use ALL CAPS to distinguish my
sentences
from those of Dick Eastman.
+++++
DICK THE IDEAS THAT FATHER COUGHLIN AND FORMER U.S. SENATOR HUEY LONG
ADVOCATE ARE SOCIALIST BULLSHIT -
BOTH HUEY LONG AND COUGHLIN WERE ADVOCATES OF CENTRAL PLANNING BY THE
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH SCHEMES, PRICE CONTROLS,
MINIMUM WAGE CONTROLS, LAWS CONTROLLING THE MAXIMUM HOURS WORKED IN A
SINGLE
WEEK, ETC. THEY WERE SOCIALIST BASTARDS WHO OPPOSED "INDIVIDUALISM."
THE ONLY GOOD THING I CAN SAY ABOUT THEM IS THAT THEY EXPOSED AND
OPPOSED
THE "FEDERAL RESERVE SCAM." THEY OPPOSED THE FIAT CURRENCY, PAPER
MONEY
SCHEME.
DICK EASTMAN YOU LIED TO ME... I WROTE TO YOU THE FOLLOWING:
++++
Dick, haven't I heard you support Democrats and liberals for political
office?
It seems to me that you are a leftwinger.
If I am wrong please correct me and elaborate on your personal
political
opinions.
Dick, what politician on the national level most reflects your
personal
politics?
+++
DICK YOU WROTE ME BACK AS FOLLOWS:
Bob, I am for small Jeffersonian government.
I believe in the market system
Pat Buchanan -- I was for him in 88, 92, 96, 2000
+++
DICK I WROTE TO YOU EARLIER AS FOLLOWS:
I am trying to get an understanding of your political opinions, but it
is
hard because I feel like you are intentionally deceptive and ambiguous
when
someone tries to nail down just exactly what it is that you believe.
You say
you are for small government but I do not believe you. I think you
support
social security, public schools and medicare. I do not think you
really
believe in freedom and limited government. I think you were a liberal
when
you were a teacher and I think you still lean to the left. Please
prove me
wrong.
I am sincerely yours, Bob from Michigan
+++
DICK - THEN YOU TELL ME THAT TWO OF YOUR FAVORITE ALL TIME POLITICAL
HEROES
ARE 1930'S U.S. SENATOR HUEY LONG AND THE 1930'S RADIO PRIEST, FATHER
COUGHLIN.
BUT THAT DEMONSTATES EXACTLY WHAT I AM SAYING ABOUT YOU - YOU LEAN TO
THE
LEFT.
HUEY LONG AND COUGHLIN WERE BOTH FAR LEFT WING SOCIALISTS WHO WANTED
THE
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO ENGAGE IN VARIOUS REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
PROGRAMS
FROM SOCIAL SECURITY TO PRICE SUPPORTS FOR AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS TO
OUTRIGHT
THEFT OF THE WEALTH OF THE BILLIONAIRES!!!
DICK EASTMAN - YOU ARE EITHER A LIAR OR YOU ARE SELF DECEIVED.
DICK - THE ANSWER TO ALL OF OUR PROBLEMS IS FOUND IN THE WORD
"FREEDOM." ALL
WE NEED TO CURE ALL OUR PROBLEMS IS FREEDOM, VERY SMALL GOVERNMENT, NO
SOCIAL SECURITY, NO PUBLIC SCHOOLS, NO WELFARE, NO CORPORATE WELFARE,
NO
REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH FROM THE RICH TO THE POOR. WE JUST NEED
FREEDOM,
PROPERTY RIGHTS AND EQUAL JUSTICE IN THE COURTS.
DICK I AM SUBSCRIBED TO OVER 300 YAHOO GROUPS. I HAVE OVER 5000 PEOPLE
ON MY
PERSONAL EMAIL LIST. I AM A COPY OF YOU DICK EASTMAN. I AM ALSO AN
INTERNET
ACTIVIST.
HOWEVER, I AM GOING TO EXPOSE YOU AS A LIAR AND A LEFTIST SOCIALIST
AND YOU
AND I ARE GOING TO GO TO WAR IF YOU DO NOT REPENT OF YOUR LIES. MAKE
SURE
YOU READ THIS EMAIL ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM.
I URGE YOU TO READ AYN RANDS BOOK ATLAS SHRUGGED, F.A. HAYEKS BOOK
"ROAD TO
SERFDOM" AND ESPECIALLY MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL READ DAVID CHILTON'S
BOOK
"PRODUCTIVE CHRISTIANS IN AN AGE OF GUILT MANIPULATORS."
YOU DICK EASTMAN ARE A SOCIALIST, YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN FREE MARKETS
AS YOU
FALSELY CLAIMED. YOU STILL SUPPORT STATE RUN SCHOOLS, SOCIAL SECURITY,
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE FOR THE ELDERLY AND TON'S OF GOVERNMENT
REGULATION.
YOU ARE A LIAR AND A DECEIVER DICK EASTMAN.
YOU HAVE CUNNINGLY GOTTEN SOME PATRIOTS AND CONSERVATIVES TO LISTEN TO
YOU,
BUT I AM GOING TO RIP THE MASK OFF OF YOUR FACE AND EXPOSE YOU AS A
LYING
LEFT WING LIBERAL.
YOU PROBABLY SUPPORT HOMOSEXUAL RIGHTS AND THE RIGHT OF A WOMAN TO
CHOOSE TO
MURDER HER BABY IN THE WOMB, BUT THIS IS SPECULATION AND I COULD BE
WRONG.
THIS LETTER IS WRITTEN ONLY TO YOU AND I HAVE SENT IT ONLY TO YOU AND
BCC'ED
IT TO A FEW PEOPLE ON MY PERSONAL EMAIL LIST.
HOWEVER, I AM GOING TO REWRITE IT AND SEND IT TO THOUSANDS OF YAHOO
GROUP
SUBSCRIBERS AND THOUSANDS OF PATRIOTS AND I AM GOING TO EXPOSE YOU AS
A
TROJAN HORSE IN THE PATRIOT COMMUNITY, IF YOU REFUSE TO COME CLEAN AND
ADMIT
THAT YOU ARE A LEFTWINGER.
BOB FROM MICHIGAN
PS - I READ THOSE TWO SPEECHES VERY CAREFULLY BY LONG AND COUGHLIN AND
THEY
WERE FILLED WITH COMMUNIST, LEFTWING GARBAGE. BELOW ARE SOME OF THE
MOST
OUTRAGEOUS EXAMPLES:
#1 - EXCERPTS FROM LONG
...I was one of the first men to say publicly. Mr. Roosevelt followed
in my
track a few months later, and said the same thing - we said that all
of our
trouble and woe was due to the fact that too few of our people owned
too
much of our wealth....
...because too few controlled the money and the wealth, and too many
people
did not have money which would buy the things they needed for life and
comfort.
So I said to the people of the United States in my speeches, which I
delivered in the United States Senate and over the radio in the early
part
of 1932, that the only way by which we could restore to reasonable
life and
comfort was to limit the size of the big men's fortunes and guarantee
some
minimum to the fortune and comfort of the little man's family.
...So we convinced Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt that it was necessary
that
he announce and promise to the American people that in the event he
were
elected President of the United States he would pull down the size of
the
big man's fortune and guarantee something to every family, enough to
do away
with all poverty, and to give employment to those who were able to
work and
an education to the children born into the world.
....What has become of the balance of those victuals placed on the
table by
the Lord for the use of us all? They are in the hands of the Morgans,
the
Rockefellers, the Baruchs, the Mellons, the Bakers, the Asters, the
Vanderbilts, 600 families at the most, wither possessing or
controlling the
entire 90 per cent of all that is in America.
...It is for the redistribution of wealth and for guaranteeing comfort
and
convenience to all humanity out of this abundance in our country. I
hope
none will be horror-stricken when they hear me say that we must limit
the
size of the big man's fortunes in order to guarantee a minimum of
fortune,
life and comfort to the little man,
... I propose, first, that every big fortune will be cut down
immediately.
...I propose that the surplus of all the big fortunes above a few
millions
to any one person, at the most, go into the United States ownership.
...Second: We propose that after homes and comforts of homes have been
set
up for the families of the country, that we will turn our attention to
the
children and the youth of the land, providing first for their
education and
training.
...We propose: We will shorten the hours of labor by law so much as
may be
necessary that none will be worked too long and none unemployed. We
will cut
hours of toil to thirty hours per week, maybe less, we may cut the
working
year to eleven months' work and one month vacation, maybe less.
...Now, ladies and gentlemen, such is the share our wealth movement.
DICK - THAT IS ENOUGH OF THIS SOCIALIST BASTARD HUEY LONG - WHO YOU
SAY IS
ONE OF "YOUR HERO'S."
#2 - EXCERPTS FROM COUGHLIN
...The object of the National Union for Social Justice is secure
economic
liberty for our people. So well is this truth known that the
concentrators
of wealth are resorting to musty methods long since in disrepute to
preserve
America for the plutocrats and to retain its quarreling citizens for
their
exploitation.
...You said that my plan is "to make money out of nothing, which would
therefore make it worth nothing." At least you admit that I have a
plan. I
need not inform this audience that since 1930 and long before it I had
a
plan to establish social justice.
NOTE TO DICK - NOTE THE WORD "PLAN" IN THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE - STALIN
HAD LOTS
OF 5 YEARS PLANS. SOCIALISTS LOVE PLANS - DICK, WE DO NOT NEED ANY
STINKING
GOVERNMENT PLANNING, WE NEED TO BE LEFT ALONE, WE NEED FREEDOM. DO YOU
UNDERSTAND YOU LEFTWING SOCIALIST DUMBASS? NO? THAT IS WHAT I FIGURED.
...My friends in this audience, I still proclaim to you that it is
either
Roosevelt or ruin. I support him today and will support him tomorrow,
because we are neither going back to the individualism of the past nor
are
we going forward to the communism of the future.
NOTE TO DICK - IN THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE WE SEE THAT COUGHLIN HATED THE
PHILOSOPHY OF RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM WHICH IS THE ROOT OF FREEDOM AND
THE FREE
MARKET AS WELL AS THE ROOT OF AMERICA'S ABILITY TO PRODUCE SUCH GREAT
AMOUNTS OF WEALTH FOR ALL IT'S CITIZENS RICH AND POOR.
COUGHLIN AND LONG ARE BOTH LEFTWING SOCIALIST, REDISTRIBUTIONIST SCUM.
DICK, DO YOU NOW RENOUNCE BOTH FATHER COUGLIN AND HUEY LONG AND
DENOUCE THEM
AS SOCIALIST SCUM OR DO YOU ADMIT TO BEING A LEFTWING ACTIVIST
INFILTRATING
THE PATRIOT COMMUNITY BY PRETENDING TO BELIEVE IN LIMITED GOVERNMENT,
RUGGED
INDIVIDUALISM, CHRISTIAN LIBERTY AND FREE MARKET CAPITALISM?
==========================================
==========================
Senator Cantwell, D-Wash. voted for war. Was this because:
a) She owes the New York financiers who bailed out her indebtedness
when her companies stock plummeted in value below her election-buying
debts? War Profiteer Baruch owned 60 Congressman as well as Senators
-- she follows a well worn path -- like her fellow hawktress Hillary
CLinton and her first-timer's luck in the commodities market.
b) Because Washington State's Boeing needs a fat contract for a fat
new war airplane? This airplane:
It's a supersized fleet carrier
By Peter Almond
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
Boeing plans to build the world's largest airplane, capable of
delivering a fleet of battle tanks directly into a war zone.
The aircraft, which has been named the Pelican, will have a
wingspan
of more than 500 feet and a wing area of one acre. A Boeing 747 has a
wingspan of 195 feet.
Aeronautical engineers say the plane will be able to transport
14,000
tons of cargo more than 10,000 miles. The Pelican will be designed to
fly
50 feet above the ocean, using the buoyant aerodynamic effect of
flying
close to the water to achieve maximum fuel economy.
U.S. defense chiefs believe that a fleet of Pelicans will enable
them
to deliver thousands of troops, tanks and aid anywhere in the world in
a
fraction of the time it takes cargo ships.
The Pelican will have the capacity to carry up to 17 main battle
tanks, each of which weighs more than 50 tons. The largest military
cargo
aircraft now in service is the Russian Antonov 225, which has a range
of
2,800 miles.
The Pelican would land and take off on civilian or military
runways
like conventional aircraft, but it would have up to 38 sets of landing
gear
and 76 tires to spread the weight evenly.
Powered by four advanced turboprop engines, it would be capable
of
cruising over land at up to 20,000 feet, although its maximum
effectiveness
would be over water.
Blaine Rawdon, the Pelican project manager, said: "It will be
much
faster than ships at a fraction of the operational cost of commercial
airplanes. The ultralarge transport aircraft will be attractive to
commercial and military operators that require speed. It will compete
with
container ships."
The aircraft evokes memories of the gigantic H-4 Hercules Spruce
Goose
seaplane designed during World War II by Howard Hughes, the reclusive
billionaire industrialist and film producer.
Hughes built the H-4 after the U.S. war department lost interest
in a
plan for a flying boat that would carry bulky cargo or up to 700
troops
alongside the "liberty ships" that were turned out rapidly to move
supplies
to Britain and elsewhere during the war.
In November 1947, thousands of people watched as the wooden
eight-engined aircraft flew a mile across the harbor at Long Beach,
Calif.,
at a height of 70 feet. The Spruce Goose never flew again.
c) Or for one of THESE REASONS (morbidly humorous, but all true):
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/corrections.swf
(Thank you Mitchel Cohen -- I say Mitchel Cohen would make a good
green/populist President one day.)
------------------------------
The Hirelings downplay public opposition to the war:
Received:
AFL-CIO President and CFR member John J. Sweeney says health issues
are more important than war issues to organized labor.
DNC Chairman Terence McAuliffe played down the role of the Iraq debate
in the August-September drop in direct-mail contributions, contending
"it could be the economy, it could have been a bad mail piece."
"Our liberal base wants us to stand up and challenge Bush on the war,"
said Donna Brazile, who runs the Democratic National Committee's
Voting Rights Institute and managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential
campaign. She said loyal Democrats in low-income areas and black
neighborhoods, along with many women and liberal suburbanites, are
bitterly complaining that "no one is talking to us, no one is
addressing our issues" on the economy and preparation for war. "There
is a real danger out there."
----------------------------------
It's my wifes birthday today -- and I am just remembering it now --
she is the world's most neglected wife and for what?
For this:
To: Dick Eastman
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 12:56 AM
Subject: Re: Giants gone before: Huey Long and Father Coughlin
speaking in 1935
with plans to overcome Bernard Baruch's Wall Street -- beacons for
humanity today
> Father Coughlin was a Fascist. What do you have aggainst the "new" deal.
> When you have a warfare state for plutocrats by plutocrats .....at least the new
> deal gave the common man some crumbs in the corrupt system. I am against
> the plutocrat warfare state and the welfare state, but if we have to be looted by
> the first then some help to the bankrupt near starving masses was necessary.
> That Father Coughlin was a piece of work. Read how he attacked the pro-liberty
> Masons.
> Sincerely,
> Belinda
That's ANOTHER REASON WHY I LOVE OL' FATHER COUGHLIN. If
anti-Masonism
defines fascism -- then I'm a fascist.. I belong to the human race.
I belong
to the earth habitat. I belong to the the one true God. I belong to
my wife and children
and my neighbors. Secret societies -- secret anything -- is sin to
me. And in politics,
it's corruption and treason.
Dick Eastman
Every man is responsible to every other man.
==========================
For the Congressional Record
By William Rivers Pitt
For the record: There is no case for war in Iraq. There is no proof
whatsoever that Saddam Hussein poses a threat to America or his
neighbors.
The marvelously absurd Catch-22 we have heard so often is that Hussein
is a
mortal threat, and yet will be a pushover in battle. There is no proof
that
Hussein retains any functional aspect of the chemical, biological or
nuclear
weapons programs that were totally dismantled and destroyed by the
UNSCOM
weapons inspectors from 1991 through 1998.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0210/S00076.htm
For the Congressional Record
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/10.11B.wrp.record.htm
Thursday, 10 October, 2002
The sun may well rise tomorrow and find this article irrelevant. The
Congressional decision train, bound for Bush's war on Iraq, very well
may
have already left the station. A goodly number of Democrats, and
virtually
every Republican in the House and Senate appear to have made up their
minds
on the matter, well in advance of the expected Thursday night vote to
approve or alter Bush's resolution for war. Still, it is important for
this
information to be known. For the record:
There is no case for war in Iraq. There is no proof whatsoever that
Saddam
Hussein poses a threat to America or his neighbors. The marvelously
absurd
Catch-22 we have heard so often is that Hussein is a mortal threat,
and yet
will be a pushover in battle. There is no proof that Hussein retains
any
functional aspect of the chemical, biological or nuclear weapons
programs
that were totally dismantled and destroyed by the UNSCOM weapons
inspectors
from 1991 through 1998. Repeated attempts by the United Nations to
reinsert
more inspectors have been spurned by the Bush administration in favor
of
combat.
Back in 1991, when Hussein had vast stockpiles of these weapons, he
did not
use them when American forces were bulldozing through his country.
When he
fired SCUD missiles into Israel, there was no mustard gas or other
chemical
agent attached to the nose comes, and there could very well have been.
The
only time Saddam Hussein has used these weapons was during the 1980s,
while
in the paid employ of the American government under Reagan, which gave
him
most of the stuff in the first place. Should an American army arrive
in
downtown Baghdad, however, and should the dire rhetorical salvos of
the Bush
administration prove correct, American solders may come face to face
with
botulinin toxin. You can put Israel on the firing line right next to
G.I.
Joe.
The irony is rich, wretched and deadly: Hussein only used these
weapons when
he was a vassal of America, after receiving these weapons from
America,
never against Americans, and may only actually use them against
America - in
the rare chance he still possesses them - if we invade.
The idea that Hussein has connections to al Qaeda terrorists is
laughable;
Hussein is a secular dictator who has crushed Islamic fundamentalism
for 30
years. Bin Laden and al Qaeda despise him and want him dead. Hussein
would
sooner stick his face into a running chainsaw as give weapons of any
kind to
al Qaeda, because the end result of either action would be the same.
The concept of bringing democracy to Iraq through war, proffered by
the Bush
administration, is a joke. Democracy in the western sense means
majority
rule, and the majority in Iraq is comprised of Shiite Muslims who are
ideologically and theocratically aligned with the extremist mullahs in
Iran.
The rest of the Iraqi population is comprised of Kurds, who will not
be
allowed to rule Iraq or anything else because of Turkey, and by the
Sunnis,
from whose vicious tribal politics came Saddam Hussein. Democracy in
Iraq is
a concept that terrifies our allies in the region, most notably Saudi
Arabia. Given the fact that the House of Saud appears to have great
management control over the House of Bush, it is profoundly unlikely
that
anything resembling democracy will ever come to exist in Iraq through
this
looming process. Whomever rules there after the 'regime change' will
be as
bad as Hussein, or worse.
Bush's resolution speaks of making war on the "region," not just Iraq,
thus
giving him legal cover for total war upon the entire Middle East. This
is
the passionate dream of the extremist neo-conservative hawks within
the Bush
administration who are actually running American foreign policy and
the War
on Terror: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick
Cheney.
The resolution for war as it now stands is nothing more or less than a
legal
blessing to extend eternal war across the planet. George W. Bush is
not
running this government, and this war is not just about Iraq. It is
about
oil, and it is about power. Nowhere in this is anything having to do
with
the protection and well-being of American citizens.
Should we attack Iraq with the purpose of removing Saddam Hussein,
there
will be no easy repeat of the Gulf War. American troops will face
house-to-house combat in the streets of Baghdad, a city of five
million
people. One former combat general interviewed on a cable news station
predicted the possibility of American casualties amounting to a
battalion a
day. In order to prosecute this urban war, Baghdad will have to be
'reduced'
via aerial bombardment and artillery, which is likely to cause tens of
thousands of civilian deaths. The resulting outrage - termed the 'Al
Jazeera
effect' after the Arabic news station that will broadcast the
shattered
bodies of Iraqi civilians all across the Middle East - will spawn new
and
more horrible terrorist attacks on our shores.
Last, but not least, it is painfully obvious to any clear-headed
person that
the Bush administration has pushed this war to remove Enron, Harken,
Halliburton, Arthur Andersen and the woeful state of our economy and
the
stock market off the front pages and out of TV news rotation. Andrew
Card,
the White House Chief of Staff, looks at his President in terms of
marketing. In fact, he was quoted last August as saying that the
administration would not bring up war against Iraq at that point,
because
August is a bad time to introduce new products.
No one can deny that this Iraq issue was sprung as a trap to snare
Congressional Democrats, and their followers, in an enraged tailspin
that
would serve to blast the terrible economic news out of mainstream
view. The
fact that this political trap is matched by a very real intention
within the
Bush administration to go to war only magnifies the reality of the
dangerous
times we live in. Many are ready to throw up their hands and give up
on the
Democrats, who appear poised to hand Bush everything he wants on this
matter. This is the final aspect of the trap, timed to create disgust
within
the Democratic electorate on the eve of the all-important mid-term
elections.
The Thursday vote on war with Iraq may well come out wrong in the
minds of
many Americans. Let the above stand in the record; they have heard all
this
before, and if they vote for war in the face of the data, they will
have
some tall explaining to do when the deal goes down. Do not, however,
forget
who started this mess in the first place. The Bush administration is
pushing
for war as a political tactic and as a means to wrap their arms around
the
petroleum available. When voting day comes on November 5th, remember
that. A
Bush administration with control of the House, Senate and Supreme
Court
would be a menace on a level we have not to date experienced, and that
is
saying something. Remember that, too.
***********
William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. He is the author of
two
books - "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context
Books,
and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in April 2003 from
Pluto
Press.
============================================
I hope old friends have heard me on the Tom Valentine Program
discussing
war profiteerin in the 20-Century, esp. about Bernard Baruch.
Can hear it at RADIO FREE AMERICA:
http://www.rfausa.com/ ( Real Player will work)
Also download the Bernard Baruch history ref. info without virus!!!!
(Requires Acrobat Reader)
From my favorite Democrat, Lori Price (may she and her fellow
legitgov.org activists return the whole Democratic party to its
original (non-CFR, non-Wall Streeter) principles:
From: Lori R. Price
To: VoterMarch ; trustthepeople-la ; therealihatebushfanclub ;
thenewbushwhackerbrigade2 ; Thenewbushwhackerbrigade ; TheFIN ;
TheFalloutShelter ; the911coverup ; Propaganda_Matrix ;
Political_Sanity_Main ; Michael D. Rectenwald ; Lori R. Price ;
KoreshX98 ; ImpeachSonOfaBush ; ihatebushfanclub ; HumaneRightsAgenda
; Gore2004worldwidePD ; G.W. Bush Conspiracy Forum ;
Democratic-Victory-2002 ; Dem-NY-Manhattan-Bronx ;
dem-elections-strategy ; corporatesleuth ; CLG_Dem_Only ;
CitizensForLegitimateGovernment ; CitizensAgainstBush ; aquacoalition
; AlGore2004 ; NotMyPresident
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 11:57 PM
Subject: [the911coverup] Hillary Clinton's handbags. That is what we
are discussing.
NO Mention that the Sept. 11 commission was just dismantled, but
rather that Hillary Clinton owns Judith Leiber handbags, which are
expensive!
This is a key article in the New York Post, October 11, 2002:
Hillary's Bags Surface -- by Dick Morris
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/49031.htm
October 11, 2002 -- FOUND! The four Judith Leiber bags Hillary Clinton
denied having every received...
Well, the missing bags have finally surfaced in the documents of the
House subcommittee. Hillary got four bags while serving as First Lady
after all, and their combined worth is about $9,000. They are:
* a "small beaded Leiber handbag" worth $3,555 on 11/7/96;
* a "metal Leiber purse with comb, mirror & coin purse" worth $3,000
on 7/2/96;
* a "beaded handbag" worth $1,200 on 7/5/94;
* a "black satin" handbag, worth $925, on 1/11/94.
Hello? Does anyone besides myself see complete and utter lunacy in
these mindless articles?????
Lori R. Price
http://www.legitgov.org/
Also from my friend, Price:
Petition to Senate - Investigate Oddities of 9/11:
http://www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
White House 'exaggerating Iraqi threat' Bush's televised address
attacked by US intelligence --pResident Bush's case against Saddam
Hussein, outlined in a televised address to the nation on Monday
night, relied on a slanted and sometimes entirely false reading of the
available US intelligence, government officials and analysts claimed
yesterday. Officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being
put under intense pressure to produce reports which back the
mis-ministration's line, the Guardian has learned.
America's great misleader Bush's arguments strain the limits of
plausibility to justify war on Iraq, and this, says Simon Tisdall,
means regime change is imperative - in Washington "In his speech in
Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr Bush employed what might in British parlance be
termed the kitchen sink approach. In other words, he threw just about
everything he had at the target, including domestic appliances."
Is the President [sic] Nuts? Diagnosing Dubya -- by Carol Wolman, M.D.
"Many people, inside and especially outside this country, believe that
the American president is nuts, and is taking the world on a suicidal
path. As a board-certified psychiatrist, I feel it's my duty to share
my understanding of his psychopathology. He's a complicated man, under
tremendous pressure from both his family/junta, and from the world at
large. So the following is offered with humility and questioning, in
the form of a differential diagnosis..."
Roast the chicken hawks -- by John Sugg "As you read this, Congress is
being bullied into granting aspirant world emperor George Bush a blank
check to go to war with Iraq and against any other "threat." For
senators and representatives, the club cynically wielded by the White
House is the dilemma of either handing Bush what amounts to
dictatorial power or being subject to charges of lack of patriotism."
George Bush's Nuclear Lie Last night, while addressing the nation,
Bush forgot the truth about his nuclear lies, which undermines any
truth in his speech. -- by Frederick Sweet "Before we can believe his
other arguments, on chemical and biological weapons, on Saddam
Hussein's intentions, our president [sic] must first come clean. He
must set the record straight that he has 'misrepresented' the truth
about Iraq's nuclear potential."
Few minds change in Mountain State pResident Bush's speech to the
nation on Monday night didn't appear to change the minds of West
Virginia's congressional delegation about the need for a military
invasion of Iraq. "There was a lot of new rhetoric, but no new
evidence," said Rep. Nick J. Rahall, D-W.Va., who has criticized Bush
for rushing to invade Iraq.
Dissent over going to war grows among U.S. government officials While
pResident Bush marshals congressional and international support for
invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence
professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep
misgivings about the mis-ministration's double-time march toward war.
Byrd threatens to delay vote on Iraq Lawmakers resumed their debate
Tuesday on authorizing pResident Bush to use military force against
Iraq, but a leading critic said he would use parliamentary tactics to
delay a final vote, even as supporters of the resolution compared
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler. [Any student of
history can draw far more comparisons between George W. Bush and
Adolph Hitler.]
Iraq Has a Lot of Nerve! ( Part I ) -- by Tom Flocco "Will Congress
Permit Bush 43 to Place Soldiers in Harm's Way, With Questionable
Protective Equipment, Against Same Chemical Weapons that Bush 41
Officials Allowed to be Shipped Illegally to Iraq?"
War Call Meets Sound of Silence -- by Dennis Duggan "The anti-war
anvil that glowed a bright red during the Vietnam War is cold to the
touch now. But there are signs it's heating up - an anti-war rally in
Central Park Sunday and a new poll that shows voters are more
concerned with the faltering economy than Saddam Hussein."
U.S. Presses for Total Exemption From War Crimes Court A top State
Department envoy left for Europe today to try to persuade several
governments to ignore a recent European Union compromise on the
international criminal court that would exempt only some Americans
from prosecution.
U.S. Conducted Open-Air Biological, Chemical Weapons Tests, Records
Show The United States held open-air biological and chemical weapons
tests in at least four states - Alaska, Hawaii, Maryland and Florida -
during the 1960s in an effort to develop defenses against such
weapons, according to Pentagon documents.
U.S. Troops Were Subjected to a Wider Toxic Testing Acknowledging a
much wider testing of toxic weapons on its forces, the Defense
Department says it used chemical warfare and live biological agents
during cold-war-era military exercises on American soil, as well as in
Canada and Britain, according to previously secret documents cleared
for release to Congress on Wednesday.
Citing 9/11, Appeals Court Upholds Secret Hearings The federal appeals
court in Philadelphia ruled yesterday that the Bush mis-ministration
had acted lawfully in holding hundreds of deportation hearings in
secret based on its assertion that those detained might have links to
terrorism.
Bush Threatens Veto of Defense Bill Bush Wants Disabled Military
Pension Benefits Eliminated pResident Bush has threatened to veto the
$355 billion defense authorization bill for the new fiscal year if
House and Senate conferees do not eliminate new pension benefits for
disabled military retirees.
Veterans group is backing Wellstone Conferring a blessing that may
offset charges that he is soft on national defense, the Veterans of
Foreign Wars' national political action committee on Monday endorsed
U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone for re-election.
Ore. Considers Universal Health Plan Every man, woman and child in
Oregon would receive full medical insurance — no co-payments, no
deductibles — under a measure on the Nov. 5 ballot that would create
the first universal health care plan in the nation.
Climate Change Induced Disasters Could Cost $150B Over Next Decade
Climate change is causing natural disasters that the financial
services industry must address, a group of the world's biggest banks,
insurers and re-insurers warned Monday. [Looks like they are trolling
for more corporate welfare rather than clamoring for the Bush
mis-ministration to stop destroying the environment.]
The dark secret kept hidden for 50 years: how a global media empire
was built on a lie The virtuous image of the Bertelsmann media empire
has been destroyed by a devastating historical study into the
company's Nazi links that exposes its post-war success as built on a
lie.
NCC Board Repudiates Falwell's "60 Minutes" Comments on Islam
Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican Leaders Call Bush to Condemn Falwell's
Remarks -- The Executive Board of the (U.S.) National Council of
Churches this afternoon (Oct. 7) voted unanimously to "condemn and
repudiate" the Rev. Jerry Falwell's statements yesterday on CBS-TV's
"60 Minutes" about Islam and the Prophet Muhammed, Islam's founder,
saying Falwell's statements endangered the lives of Christians around
the world. [another Nazi with a media empire: Jerry Falwell.]
Armey Seeks Provision in Bill To Punish Hometown Paper Furious at how
the Dallas Morning News covered his son's failed congressional bid
this year, House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) is trying
to insert language in a military spending bill that would force the
newspaper's parent company to sell off one of its Dallas media
properties.
Lawyer: Close Court for Noelle Bush An attorney for Gov. Jeb Bush's
daughter asked a judge Tuesday to close her drug court proceedings,
arguing that she has a right to privacy while under that court's
supervision.
URGENT!! Calls are needed to Senator Byrd's office to stop the war! It
is urgent to call Sen. Robert Byrd's office 202-224-3954 and ask the
Senator to filibuster against the war resolution of the Administration
(and Dem leadership). Or, call 800-839-5276 and ask for his office.
Senator Byrd's office is taking a poll on whether he should do this.
Sen. Byrd local phone/fax numbers, if toll-free mailbox is "full":
304-342-5855; Byrd's fax is: 304-343-7144. Also, call Jim McDermott,
at 202-225-3106; McDermott's fax is: 202-225-6197.
===
Remember:
Before the war,
there were the murders.
THIS PENTAGON SECURITY CAM VIDEO SEQUENCE
IS "SMOKING-GUN" EVIDENCE, ESTABLISHING THE
SEPTEMBER 11 MASS-MURDER AS AN "INSIDE-JOB,"
A FRAMEUP CONSPIRACY PLANNED TO INVOLVE THE
U.S. IN A WAR FOR CONTROL OF OIL AND FOR THE
CONTINUATION OF NORTHERN ALLIANCE OPIUM
SHIPMENTS TO CHINA TO BOOST WORLD HEROIN
PRODUCTION AND INCREASE DRUG REVENUES THAT ARE
LAUNDERED INTO THE BIG NEW YORK INVESTMENT
BANKS.
See the attack video evidence here:
animated sequencing
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/flight77.htm
frame-by-frame sequencing
http://www.msnbc.com/news/720851.asp?cp1=1
stills
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/77_plane.htm
(Observe:
1) the size of tail fin image in frame #1 requires
that for the plane to be a Boeing 757, the front
end of its fuselage would have to be visible extending
out to the left of the stone driveway pillar in
the picture.
check: a) the 757 is over seven times the
length of its own tail fin, i.e., it would take
seven and a quarter tail fins to cover the back
of a Boeing 757, Stegasaurus style, from the tailfin
in the rear to the nose, but the width of the
image of the driveway pillar that conceals the
attacking plane's entire fuselage is only five
times as wide as the tail fin that appears sticking
up above and behind the pillar (so that regardless
of angle of approach to the Pentagon wall or of
distance of the aircraft from the camera, the plane
simply cannot be aircraft of the length and form
of a Boeing 757;
b) a 757 is 155 feet long and the Pentagon
is only 71 feet high, but by direct inspection,
if you stood the aircraft behind the pillar on
end against the wall, say half way to the far end
of the wall from the impact point, it would reach
no more than 70 percent of the wall's height, the
method is rough, but the margin of error in your
estimate can be nowhere near the 218 percent
difference that would be needed to turn that
attack jet into Flight 77.
2) the presence of the unmistakable white horizonal
missile plume being launched by the plane to weaken
the wall in the vicinity of impact so that the jet
can easily invade the Pentagon interior without give-away
aircraft parts bouncing back on the grass and giving away
the frameup;
3) in frame #2 the tell-tale white-hot intitial explosion
of the missile warhead is definitely neither a jet fuel
kerosene fire, nor the result of aluminum, plastic
and flesh crashing into brick, concrete and glass;
4) the blossom of white-hot explosion of the missile
warhead spreads laterally, more so than the subsequent
jet fuel flames that in frame #3 come from inside the
Pentagon, suggesting that the warhead was designed to
trigger at the split second of impact rather than after
entry through the wall.
All existing coverup scenarios seeking to explain
away this smoking-gun evidence have just been
answered.
Yours truly,
Dick Eastman
223 S. 64th Ave.
Yakima, Washington
Every man is responsible to every other man
Totally objective and fearless Pentagon Investigation Sites:
http://www.koolpages.com/killtown/flight77.html
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm
http://www.worldmessenger.20m.com/messenger.html
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/911_truth.htm
http://hamilton.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=1786&group=webcast
http://www.thewaronfreedom.com/index2.htm
http://www.crc-internet.org/june2a.htm
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/
Newsgroups
Go to www.googlegroups.com
and click "groups" box, then search for this site:
uk.politics.com
"Two world wars, shame on them.
A third world war, shame on us."
Dick Eastman
was up to with war profiteering and great-depression-exploiting -- Huey Long
and Father Coughlin. The first was shot and the second was brought down by
the first major media-monopoly smear, fifteen years before McCarthy, who
discovered George C. Marshall's sellout of China as a communist was destroyed
in the totally unjustified "McCarthyism" frameup.
I know this all goes against your establishmentarian history indoctrination, as it
did mine -- but read on.
======================================
Advice from the past. Huey Long and Father Coughlin (presented without
slander)
-------------------------------
Huey Long (Quotations and new sites)
"God Almighty had warned against this condition. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew
Jackson, Daniel Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan and
every religious teacher known to this earth had declaimed against it. So it
was no new matter, as it was termed, when I propounded the line of thought
with the first crash of 1929, that the eventful day had arrived when
accumulation at the top by the few had produced a stagnation by which the
vast multitude of the people were impoverished at the bottom.
"There is no rule so sure as that one that the same mill that grinds out
fortunes above a certain size at the top, grinds out paupers at the bottom.
The same machine makes them both; and how are they made? There is so much in
the world, just so much land, so many houses, so much to eat and so much to
wear. There is enough--yea, there is more--than the entire human race can
consume, if all are reasonable.
"All the people in America cannot eat up the food that is produced in
America; all the people in America cannot wear out the clothes that can be
made in America; nor can all of the people in America occupy the houses that
stand in this country, if all are allowed to share in homes afforded by the
nation. But when one man must have more houses to live in than ninety-nine
other people; when one man decides he must own more foodstuff than any other
ninety-nine people own; when one man decides he must have more goods to w
ear for himself and family than any other ninety-nine people, then the
condition results that instead of one hundred people sharing the things that
are on earth for one hundred people, that one man, through his gluttonous
greed, takes over ninety-nine parts for himself and leaves one part for the
ninety-nine.
"Now what can this one man do with what is intended for ninety-nine? He
cannot eat the food that is intended for ninety-nine people; he cannot wear
the clothes that are intended for ninety-nine people; he cannot live in
ninety-nine houses at the same time; but like the dog in the manger, he can
put himself on the load of hay and he can say:
" ' This food and these clothes and these houses are mine, and while I
cannot use them, my greed can only be satisfied by keeping anybody else from
having them.'
"Wherefore and whence developed the strife in the land of too much,
beginning in the year 1929."
===============
Huey Long, the year he was shot, wrote a book, My First Year in the White
House, telling everything he indended to do to carry out his Share Our
Wealth Program. Here is a site with most of the text of that book:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/hueywhouse.html
=================
Here are key Huey Long speeches on the Share Our Wealth Program, the New
Deal betrayal, Bernard Baruch etc.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/longsen.html
=================
Freedom of Informaiton Act Documents on Huey P. Long (for the serious
researcher)
http://foia.fbi.gov/hueylong.htm
(These files of 1818 pages contain information concerning the activities and
associates of Louisiana State Senator Huey "Kingfish" Long who was
assassinated in 1935.)
=================
What happened to the Sare Our Wealth Program after Huey Long's
assassination?
Ever hear of the Naitonal Union Party?
http://www.ssa.gov/history/gsmith.html
=================
Long also wrote a biography in 1933, Every Man a King, from which these
excerpts are available at
http://www.ssa.gov/history/huey.html
=================
Long even wrote a song, "Every Man a King." Here are the lyrics:
Why weep or slumber America
Land of brave and true
With castles and clothing and food for all
All belongs to you
Ev'ry man a King, ev'ry man a King
For you can be a millionaire
But there's something belonging to others
There's enough for all people to share
When it's sunny June and December too
Or in the Winter time or Spring
There'll be peace without end
Ev'ry neighbor a friend
With ev'ry man a King
============================
Death of Huey Long
from: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3502/homef.htm
... Dr. Carl A. Weiss went to the capitol that night with the intention of
killing Senator Huey P. Long.
On June 21st, 1935, there was a meeting of prominent business people,
politicians, and doctors, all of them Anti-Long, at the DeSoto Hotel in New
Orleans. This meeting was held to address the happenings of the Long
administration and to discuss possible tactics to use against it,
specifically in the upcoming elections. Their was a debate of the
feasibility to kill Long. Their is also a rumor that straws were drawn to
see who would do the deed of killing Long, and Weiss was supposedly the
loser. Huey Long was aware of this meeting and had the room bugged with a
recording device in order to gain information to use against his opponents
and to protect himself. The recording came out very sketchily so Long had to
rely on people who he had been listening to it and taking notes. A Wise was
found to have registered at the hotel for that day, and many people think
that this was really Carl Weiss. Three people signed affidavits saying that
Weiss was there at the meeting. ...
Weiss did own a handgun and witnesses testified that he shot Huey Long. It
is known that Weiss owned a pistol as per his family and a customs report of
items he claimed while entering the country from Paris, where he studied.
Huey Long was also involved in a bitter fight with the Standard Oil Company
and they were threatening to leave Baton Rouge if Long didn't stop
"harassing" them. ...
Another idea that supports the theory that Weiss went to kill Long is the
story that Weiss had increased his life insurance policy in the summer of
1935, a time which coincided with the DeSoto Hotel meeting. Weiss had 4
insurance policies, two taken out by father, and two taken out by himself.
They were normal retirement plan policies and only totaled $17,500.
...A letter to Mrs. Huey Long from "X WE" on September 30, 1935: "I was a
silent listener. ... Poor Carl was paid three thousand dollars and the
promise if he died his wife and baby would be cared for so he wanted to turn
the money back and the Co. of thugs would not receive it back... Could tell
you who was in on the plot but it would cause me to get bumped off. There is
someone in Washington they call the Aid who put up eight hundred dollars in
the death plot. Carl used to cry and get so worked up over the matter he
would go bluey at times. He worried over the laying off of his
father-in-law, the judge, old man Pavy sent a special letter by private to
Turkey Head Friday before the killing and Dr. Weiss Sr., knew all about the
plot and he tried to not get Carl to do what he done, but he just had to do
it so don't put all the blame on him because from Francais W. Stanley,
Sullivan, Walmsley and three or four others but these I named are the
pillows. Blibo, the aid in Washington, they all knew something. ... I have a
family and would not care to get bumped off..."
An unsigned letter mailed from Flushing, NY to Senator Huey P. Long on
September 8, 1935, says Weiss is a premeditated cruel murderer and has
killed many for money or gain. He is in the pay of an Islaming murderer. J.
A. Farley gave orders to five hired murderers one evening at the Central
Park Casino restaurant last week. One of these men was Dr. Carl A. Weiss who
was given $200 and promised more for the murder of Senator Huey P. Long
Others were to be killed in Boston and New York City by the other four.
The following is from Capt. John Jones. It is not evident who this
correspondence was meant for but most probably it was for Gen. L. F. Guerre.
"Saw Odom and Fred Parker Jr. together on Florida Blvd. Saturday morning by
CJ Brown's office and later back of the Triad Bldg. on Florida Street.
During the morning Wills and Moss were seen together in the same area with
two tall men dressed in white and one he thinks answers to the description
of Weiss. Those men went into the Istroma Hotel. Junot says that a girl gave
information that Weiss had a call about 8:00pm and was told that this was
the night and that he knew what to expect if he did not carry it out. Mrs.
Hammond, who lives across the street from the Weiss home said that Mrs.
Weiss was very nervous and walked up and down the hall the whole time that
Weiss left the house and it seemed that she knew something was astir."
...
This is from a statement dated January 18, 1936. WD Hayes told Mr. Andreport
he was present when Dr. Weiss drew the short straw and that he made the
statement to another man near him that Dr. Weiss did not have the nerve to
do the job. The man replied "Oh yes, he has."
A postcard from Mr. Trotter, transportation agent of Hudson River State
Hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY to Governor O. K. Allen says he is the man that
put up Dr. Carl A. Weiss to shoot the late senator Long at Baton Rouge. Says
he was in Baton Rouge the day when he put up Weiss to kill Long. Says Long
is better off dead because he "removed a lot of good men from office" Says
he knew Weiss when he was in Bellview.
A handwritten note to Gen. L. F. Guerre from H.E.H. relates that: Bazer also
told them that signed up if any of them doubled crossed them they would get
what Dr. Weiss would of got if he had failed to go through with his end.
There was also the popular consensus around Baton Rouge, based on the
observations of the private detectives hired by the State, that Weiss was a
nice guy, but unlucky because he had "drawn the short straw."
=============
FATHER COUGHLIN, THE POPULIST "RADIO PRIEST" OF THE 1930'S
"The great betrayer and liar, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who promised to drive
the money changers from the temple, had succeeded [only] in driving the
farmers from their homesteads and the citizens from their homes in the
cities. . . I ask you to purge the man who claims to be a Democrat, from the
Democratic Party, and I mean Franklin Double-Crossing Roosevelt."
"... we shall barter our sovereignty as a free, independent nation or accept
the decisions of a World League as a super-nation to manage our affairs ..."
"While we sympathize with the Serbian or the Russian, with the Jew in
Germany or the Christian in Russia, the major portion of our sympathy is
extended to our dispossessed farmer, our disconsolate laborers who are being
crushed at this moment while the spirit of internationalism runs rampant in
the corridors of the Capitol, hoping to participate in setting the world
aright while chaos clamors at our doors."
-- January 28, 1935
"Roosevelt has a poor brand of Russian communism ... I think it is
significant the leaders among the communists of the world never once
attacked international bankers. Roosevelt will not touch that subject."
-- August 31, 1935
"I need not recall for you that both the laboring and agricultural classes
of America are forced to work for less than a living wage while the owners
of industry boastfully proclaim that their profits are increasing."
-- April 6, 1936
"If Jews persist in supporting communism directly or indirectly, that will
be regrettable. By their failure to use the press, the radio and the banking
house, where they stand so prominently, to fight communism as vigorously as
they fight Naziism, the Jews invite the charge of being supporters of
communism."
-- November 28, 1938
"From European entanglements, from Naziism, communism and their future wars,
America must stand aloof. Keep America safe for Americans and the Stars and
Stripes the defender of God."
-- January 2, 1939
---------------------------------------
Hear 1930's populist Father Charles E. Couglin (pronounced kog' lin)
http://www.ssa.gov/history/coughlinradio.html (realplayer or windows media
format)
Three Coughlin Speeches:
Father Coughlin first took to the airwaves in 1926, broadcasting weekly
sermons over the radio. By the early 1930s the content of his broadcasts had
shifted from theology to economics and politics. Just as the rest of the
nation was obsessed by matters economic and political in the aftermath of
the Depression, so too was Father Coughlin.
He began as an early Roosevelt supporter, coining a famous expression, that
the nation's choice was between "Roosevelt or ruin." Later in the 1930s he
turned against FDR and became one of the president's harshest critics. His
program of "social justice" was a very radical challenge to unbridled
capitalism and to many of the political institutions of his day. In the
three broadcasts reproduced here he outlines his program and responds to his
critics.
THE NATIONAL UNION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
(Sunday, November 11, 1934)
SIXTEEN years ago this afternoon, my friends, I mingled with thousands of my
fellow citizens who were celebrating the termination of a war that was
fought to end wars. As I look back upon these years--years identified with
the Peace Treaty of Versailles, with the League of Nations, with
assassinations of men in high office, with the birth of Bolshevism, with
repudiations of debts and with universal poverty--I honestly believe that in
all history such destruction of ideals and such miscarriage of justice were
never chronicled save during the years which witnessed the assassination of
Christ.
Instead of making the world safe for democracy, the bells which tolled their
message sixteen years ago this afternoon were sounding its requiem. Instead
of announcing that here was the end of all war, we were being ushered into a
new conflict too terrible to contemplate.
No nation and but few individuals have escaped the atrocities identified
with the last sixteen years. Waste and destruction of property, the
desolation of homes and farms, the decay of factories and industries, which
are associated with this period through which we have passed, are beyond our
reckoning. They were years when innocent civilians of all countries were
bowed down by the regimented forces of greed, of selfishness, of crass
ignorance and of obstinacy
Thus, it is almost with a cynical smile that we hope for peace when we
recognize the feverish efforts of every great nation as they are busy
manufacturing cannons and shells, war ships and lethal gases. The stage is
being set for the last act of that tragedy which will mark the passing of a
prostituted civilization unless our course is suddenly changed. Peace
conferences and naval conferences failed miserably as did the hypocritical
efforts of the League of Nations. In their laboratories of destruction the
chemists of greed and of poverty, of hate and of lying propaganda are
mingling their poisons of warfare. The old diplomacies, the ancient
rivalries which were left wounded unto death upon the battle fields of
Flanders today are rising in their ghostly forms to sound a new call to
arms. To these menaces we are not blind. Their ghastly presence must not be
ignored.
I
On this Sunday following the signal political victory of the new deal,
perhaps, my friends, you are expectant to hear soft words of praise and
glorification. I shall not be one, either today or at any future date, to
break down your confidence in the outcome of this new deal. My constant
prayer is for its success. Soft words and insincere praise, however, must
have no more place at this present hour than had our empty rejoicing sixteen
years ago. Thus, I wish to reassert my belief that, although the old
Republican party with its rugged individualism is as dead as Benedict
Arnold, nevertheless, it is true that the Democratic party, now composed of
progressive men and women of all political affiliations, is merely on trial.
Two years hence it will leave the courtroom of public opinion vindicated and
with a new lease on life, or will be condemned to political death if it
fails to answer the simple question of why there is want in the midst of
plenty.
Truly, democracy itself is on trial. It has been given the final mandate to
face the real causes of this depression and to end them instead of
temporizing with useless efforts for the preservation of a system, both
economic and political, which once before watered the fields of Europe with
blood and the highways of America with tears.
Today the American people are the judge and jury who will support this
Administration and accord it a sportman's chance to make good. It has
already subscribed to the principle that human rights must take precedence
over financial rights. It recognizes that these rights far outweigh in the
scales of justice either political rights or so-called constitutional
rights. It appears to be an Administration determined to read into the
Constitution the definition of social justice which is already expressed
within its very preamble. There we are taught that the object of this
Government is to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to
promote the general welfare and to provide the blessings of liberty for
ourselves and for our posterity.
The task confronting this government consists first, in recognizing and
utilizing this constitutional truth; and second, in eliminating and
destroying, once and for all, the well known and well established
unconstitutional causes of this depression. This afternoon I plan to address
you on its first cause viewed from a material standpoint.
II
This has to do with a just and living annual wage for all citizens who care
to earn their own livelihood. I will deal with the substantial error
associated with modern industrialism--an error which, if not eradicated,
will logically lead us into the perpetuation of the dole system and thence
into communism. After all, the economic analysis of communism teaches us
that the State is absolutely supreme; is absolute master and proprietor of
all material goods; is the sole industrialist and capitalist, and its
citizens are the recipients of chocolate coated doles. Communism is nothing
more than a candied pill of glorified "doleism."
Thus, at the outset of this discussion, let me rehearse for you a few facts
relative to the history of labor and of industry, of production and of
unemployment. As we turn back the pages which tell us the story of the World
War, we are convinced that it was one organized and operated for commercial
purposes and commercial gains. Every cannon forged, every shell exploded was
trade-marked with the sign of decadent capitalism. It was a war fought to
make the world safe for Wall Street and for the international bankers.
Are you not aware of the fact that in 1914 England's financial and
commercial supremacy were in jeopardy due to the rapid advance of German
commerce? Are you ignorant of the fact that during the first two years of
the World War the United States industrialists and bankers had poured
billions of credit dollars into the war chests of Great Britain? Need I
remind you of the pleading on the part of English statesmen for us to enter
the war or of the letters sent by Ambassador Page to President Wilson
demanding that we should join the allies for the sole reason of preserving
our bankers' foreign investments--bankers, who in league with England, had
wagered on the losing horse; powerful bankers who, in a few months after the
outbreak of hostilities, perverted the mind of President Wilson to such an
extent that, although elected to his high office on the promise of keeping
us out of the war, he now submitted to the fallacy that it was more sacred
to protect the capitalistic dollar than to preserve the life of a mother's
son!
The years in which all this was happening were identified with the date when
the monstrous dragon of want had been slain by the new St. George of modern
scientific machinery. Before the advent of the World War we were not
troubled with the problem of unemployment. Eighteen or twenty years ago
industry was well operated under a system of economics devised for the
upkeep of a civilization which, until then; was engaged in solving the
problem of production. With our clumsy machinery and unskilled mechanics we
could not produce enough shoes, bath tubs, locomotives, motor cars or, for
that matter, any other mass production commodity to supply the practical
demands of a world which was still struggling to free itself from the
deprivations of the past. By 1914 Watt and his steam engine, Edison and his
electric motor and the thousand inventors who followed them had not
completely conquered the problem of want in the midst of need--the problem
of production.
Now what has all this to do with the World War of 1914 and with the present
depression which was born in 1918? Be patient for a moment and I shall try
to weave a few thoughts relative to this subject into a simple fabric of
understanding.
For the first two years of the war we found practically the full manpower of
France, of England, of Italy, of Belgium and of the European allies clothed
in the uniforms of soldiers. This meant that the flower of European youth
ceased to be producers. This meant that suddenly the production power of
Europe was perverted into a force of destruction.
Meanwhile America was called upon to supply wheat and corn, pork and cotton,
food and wearing apparel not only for these 10-million allied soldiers but
also for their wives and children and fellow citizens who remained at
home--citizens who were not so much engaged in farming and in producing the
demands of a peaceful life--but regimented citizens who were occupied in
manufacturing shrapnel and bullets, rifles and munitions. These, too, must
be cared for, at least in part, by American labor and agriculture.
Perhaps mathematical, official figures are more eloquent than words to
amplify this statement.
In 1912, even while preparations for the World War were going on in Europe,
we exported less than $1-billion worth of goods. In 1915 our exports
amounted to more than $2-billion. Nineteen hundred and sixteen saw this rise
to practically $4-billion. This figure of $4-billion held good for the years
1917 and 1918. When the war ceased our exports to Europe dropped below the
$1-billion mark--$849,762,607 for 1933 to be exact; For 1934, ending with
September, our exports were only $696,620,471.
During this period of bloated exportation which was identified with the
World War, several substantial effects are to be noted. We in America passed
from the normalcy of 1914 production into the abnormalcy of 1916 and 1918
production and accomplished twice as much work with millions of fewer
laborers! As a matter of fact we had 4-million soldiers and sailors actually
subtracted from our farms and factories, from our trade and commerce. These
men were not only non-producers. They were occupied with destruction and not
with production. They, as well as their non-producing wives and children,
had to be cared for. Thus, approximately 30-million men, at the most, were
engaged here in America to produce the ordinary necessities and conveniences
for the United States as well as clothing and foodstuffs, munitions, and
battleships for a great portion of the allied forces and allied citizens.
Handicapped though we were with a shortage of help in our factories and in
our fields, I repeat, that in 1918 we were forced to produce more than twice
as much as we did in 1913.
Now if fewer men, both farmers and mechanics, kept both America and a great
part of Europe supplied with foodstuffs and with war materials during this
period of artificial prosperity while the flower of America and of the
allied youth was busied with destruction, how was this accomplished?
Well, naturally, these were days when unemployment was unheard of. But more
than that these were days when the disciples of Watt and Edison so perfected
steam and electricity, when the scientists and engineers so perfected the
lathe and mass production machinery that, between the years of 1914 and
1918, we find science and engineering making it possible for one man to do
the work of approximately two and one-half men.
Keep that fact in mind as you turn your calendar to the date of November 11,
1918! Armistice Day--the day when there was born from the womb of war the
new problem of distribution.
That was the day when the soldiers and sailors began to return to their
respective homes. That was the day when Europe's task, at least from an
economic viewpoint, was to resume producing for herself without the help of
America. We, in this country, were expected to return to normal
housekeeping. But when more than 4-million soldiers and sailors came back to
our shores seeking employment they found young girls and married women
occupying positions in office and in factory. More than that, they
discovered mass production machinery so perfected that no longer was it
possible to continue with the same program of production in 1919 as had been
in vogue in 1914.
These were the facts which confronted the so-called statesmen in 1920. They
were the known facts which maliciously and purposely were avoided as Wall
Street, which had long since moved into the Treasury Department, launched a
program of credit inflation at home and of bond inflation abroad hoping to
stimulate European purchasing by post war loans. Wall Street, which owned
almost all the industries, was determined to keep itself going. They were
loans made in the shape of credit notes--not in actual dollars. They were
loans made with bankers' checks which were expected to be repaid in ounces
of gold. More than that, they were loans made upon the presumption that
European factories would remain idle and that European people would buy
American goods.
Of this insane practice, which necessarily dug itself into the trenches of
repudiation, I shall speak to you on a following Sunday. But for the time
being I shall not digress from the labor, the unemployment, the industrial
problem.
When we weave together the threads which the loom of fact has so clearly
fabricated, to what conclusions are we forced as we view the labor situation
between 1919 and 1929?
First: Unemployment on a huge scale was an absolute certainty, if we still
held to the proposition that a laborer should be paid 50 cents an hour while
he worked and then be left to seek refuge in a dole line until the motor
cars, the locomotives, the shoes and other products of a factory were being
consumed.
Second: The theory that production for a profit existed for industrialists
and stockholders only, and not for laborers and mechanics, was no longer
tenable. If laborers were required to work only six or eight months in the
year under a wage scale that paid them while they worked and starved them
while they were idle, then a new annual wage scale must be adopted.
This, then, was no depression. It simply marked the end of an era where
man's problem was formerly one of production. It announced the birth of a
new era where henceforth our problem shall be one of distribution of the
profits not only to the owners and stockholders but also to the laborers and
mechanics, enabling all to live prosperously even when the wheels of
industry have ceased operating.
III
Now let me speak about this problem of distribution which we must solve
within the next two years or else witness a new form of government that will
face it and attempt to solve it by some communistic means.
As far as production is concerned, we have more acreage under cultivation,
more factories equipped with the finest machinery, more educated scientists
and skilled mechanics than any other nation in all history. Our struggle
against the blind forces of destructive nature, as well as against the
ignorance of the past, has been successful. The Great War has driven in and
riveted down this nail of progress so firmly that no longer shall there be
want in the midst of need. Today there is want in the midst of plenty.
Before speaking further about the distribution of wealth may I be emphatic
in my opposition to the philosophy of destructionism or of sabotage. To all
purposes destructionism says: "Let us go back to the year 1900 or to the
year 1850. Let us take land out of cultivation. Let us destroy pigs and
cotton and wheat and corn."
If that philosophy were logical, it would also say: "Let us destroy one out
of every three automobile plants; permanently lock the doors of one out of
every three steel mills; burn down half our textile factories; food
one-third of all our coal mines and pay a bounty to every Dillinger and
desperado for removing scientists from our universities."
It is the philosophy which refuses to face the problem of distribution. It
is the philosophy which is attempting to hold us manacled to an obsolete
system of finance and of production for a profit only. It is the final
attempt on the part of a decadent capitalism to destroy us into prosperity.
It is similar to the program of the bankers who, for ten years following the
war, attempted to bond us with paper into gold prosperity.
Now, my friends, let no one deceive you with the economic lie that there is
over-production when millions are hungry, when millions more are in the
bread line and when 16-million homes in America are deprived of the ordinary
conveniences of life--running water, modern plumbing, electricity and modern
heat,
There is simply a lack of distribution.
Distribution of wealth is substantially associated with the problem of
money--with the problem of 50 cents an hour while you work and the soup line
while you are idle; with the problem of a destroyed purchasing power; with
the problem of organized doles and disorganized taxation; with the problem
of impending communism.
If there is plenty for all in this country--plenty of fields of wheat and of
cotton, plenty of factories, mechanics and scientists--the only reason why
this plenitude of God's blessing is not shared by all is because our
Government has not, as yet, faced the problem of distribution. In other
words, it may boast that it has driven the money changers from the temple
but it permits industry to cling tenaciously to the cast-off philosophy of
the money changers. Our Government still upholds one of the worst evils of
decadent capitalism, namely, that production must be only at a profit for
the owners, for the capitalist, and not for the laborer. This philosophy of
finance, or of distribution of profits, based on the theory of
"pay-while-you-work" for the laborer can only be identified with destruction
of the entire system of capitalism.
IV
Were I addressing a group of industrialists I would inquire of them whether
or not they were of the opinion that this technical unemployment--an
unemployment brought about by the scientific development of machinery and of
men--could continue. Surely, they must recognize that industrial competition
must produce newer inventions, newer machinery and longer bread lines.
I would ask the industrialists whether or not they and their children could
logically anticipate a time in the not distant future when they will become
targets for the wrath of a despoiled people. Do they not remember the French
Revolution, the Russian Revolution ? Do they know that human nature does not
change?
I would plead with them, for their own self-preservation, if for no other
reason, to cooperate with the Government as it will move, we hope, towards
the shortening of hours for all engaged in mass production activity and
towards an annual wage system that is just and equitable and thus permit
American workmen to preserve the American standard of living.
The annual wage shall not be one that will permit us merely to subsist. It
must be one that will keep us on the level of the American standard of
living. That is why our foreparents forsook Europe to come to America. That
is what we and our children shall fight for.
By no means shall we despairingly admit that all is lost. All is not lost if
we only have the courage to adopt the policy of producing for use at a
profit for all--the owner and the laborer.
Indeed, we must find room in the ranks of agriculture, of science, of art
and of labor for every American citizen who wishes to earn his livelihood
and retain his self-respect. We can ill afford to have 12-million men,
2-million women and well over 2-million never employed youths in this nation
idle and angry. From a practical standpoint, I repeat, their number will
increase in proportion as our science is perfected. From a practical
standpoint, they and the millions, who will gradually be added to their
ranks, will become unable to share the tax burden of this nation--a burden
which ultimately will mean the breakdown of government and the confiscation
of all industry and the communizing of property.
You industrialists, surrounded as you are by your economists are anxious to
form organizations for the protection of your property rights and for the
perpetuation of your profit system. But, may I ask you, of what value are
property rights unless they are firmly established upon the sanctity of
human rights?
Are those of you who own and control wealth ignorant of the fact that labor
owes no rights to capital unless capital performs its duty towards labor?
Are you forgetful, ye princes of this world's goods, that you are no better
than stewards designated to manage justly and fairly the property of this
world which belongs not to you but to the God who created you?
In the event of strikes produced under an unjust economic system where men
are forced to starve because there is no work at a profit for the owner, are
you men foolish enough to think that the moral law of God shall force the
working men to disobey the first command of all--the command of
self-preservation--and follow, in its stead, your man-made precept of
property preservation ?
Are you so misguided by your advisers as to believe that, because you own a
factory, or a bank, or a fortune, you can use it as you will to the
detriment of the common good?
And on this Armistice Day, when the murmurings of discontent are rumbling
throughout the capitals of this world, when armies are being marshaled and
new cannons forged, are you so bereft of reason as to think for a moment
that the men and women, whom your system has starved for five long years,
will shoulder arms to protect your rights and your property and your rotten
policies?
Modern capitalism is destroying itself at both ends. It speaks to the youth
of the nation with this bright sentence: "You are inexperienced. We do not
want you." To the matured laborers in industry who are forty-five years of
age, it says: "You must retire simply because the compensation insurance
rate is too high for us and the insurance companies of this nation do not
care to risk you."
There are 21-million boys and girls in our public school system.
Approximately 1-million in our colleges and universities soon will be
knocking at your doors for employment. For the older ones you will try to
rewrite the natural law of God as you preach to them the reasonableness of
birth control when you really mean the godlessness of wealth control.
"Increase and multiply" was the command of God--a command that has been
sterilized in the heart of every thinking young man who dares not marry
because he dares not inflict poverty upon his children.
And this in a nation where the birth rate and the death rate are sparring
for supremacy; this in a nation that dares not invite the immigrant to enter
because already there is too much unemployment!
Yes, "increase and multiply" was the command which echoed over the flowering
fields and the towering forests. It was heard in the sheep-folds and on the
pasture-lands. It broke forth in holy emotions as lovers clasped in fond
embrace.
"Increase and multiply and I shall kiss your fields with the lips of the sun
and water them with the fountains of rain. I will unfold to you the secrets
of nature. And I shall teach your nimble fingers to work and labor as I do
the wings of a bird to fly."
Oh! how this Sacred Scripture has become perverted as, in the midst of
plenty, we struggle to create want--we struggle to create profits--all for
the purpose of perpetuating a slavery which has been so often described as
the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few!
My friends, the outworn creed of capitalism is done for. The clarion call of
communism has been sounded. I can support one as easily as the other. They
are both rotten! But it is not necessary to suffer any longer the slings and
arrows of modern capitalism any more than it is to surrender our rights to
life, to liberty and to the cherished bonds of family to communism.
The high priests of capitalism bid us beware of the radical and call upon us
to expel him from our midst. There will be no expulsion of radicals until
the causes which breed radicals will first be destroyed!
The apostles of Lenin and Trotsky bid us forsake all rights to private
ownership and ask us to surrender our liberty for that mess of pottage
labeled "prosperity," while it summons us to worship at the altar where a
dictator of flesh and blood is enthroned as our god and the citizens are
branded as his slaves.
Away with both of them! But never into the discard with the liberties which
we have already won and the economic liberty which we are about to win--or
die in the attempt!
My friends, I have spent many hours during these past two weeks--hours, far
into the night, reading thousands of letters which have come to my office
from the young folks and the old folks of this nation. I believe that in
them I possess the greatest human document written within our times.
I am not boasting when I say to you that I know the pulse of the people. I
know it better than all your newspaper men. I know it better than do all
your industrialists with your paid-for advice. I am not exaggerating when I
tell you of their demand for social justice which, like a tidal wave, is
sweeping over this nation.
Nor am I happy to think that, through my broadcasts, I have placed myself
today in a position to accept the challenge which these letters carry to
me--a challenge for me to organize these men and women of all classes not
for the protection of property rights as does the American Liberty League;
not for the protection of political spoils as do the henchmen of the
Republican or Democratic parties. Away with them too!
But, happy or unhappy as I am in my position, I accept the challenge to
organize for obtaining, for securing and for protecting the principles of
social justice.
To organize for action, if you will! To organize for social united action
which will be founded on God-given social truths which belong to Catholic
and Protestant, to Jew and Gentile, to black and white, to rich and poor, to
industrialist and to laborer.
I realize that I am more or less a voice crying in the wilderness. I realize
that the doctrine which I preach is disliked and condemned by the princes of
wealth. What care I for that! And, more than all else, I deeply appreciate
how limited are my qualifications to launch this organization which shall be
known as the NATIONAL UNION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE.
But the die is cast! The word has been spoken! And by it I am prepared
either to stand or to fall; to fall, if needs be, and thus, to be remembered
as an arrant upstart who succeeded in doing nothing more than stirring up
the people.
How shall we organize? To what principles of social justice shall we pledge
ourselves ? What action shall we take? These are practical questions which I
ask myself as I recognize the fact that this NATIONAL UNION FOR SOCIAL
JUSTICE must be established in every county and city and town in these
United States of America.
It is for the youth of the nation. It is for the brains of the nation. It is
for the farmers of the nation. It is for everyone in the nation.
Establishing my principles upon this preamble, namely, that we are creatures
of a beneficent God, made to love and to serve Him in this world and to
enjoy Him forever in the next; that all this world's wealth of field, of
forest, of mine and of river has been bestowed upon us by a kind Father,
therefore I believe that wealth, as we know it, originates from natural
resources and from the labor which the children of God expend upon these
resources. It is all ours except for the harsh, cruel and grasping ways of
wicked men who first concentrated wealth into the hands of a few, then
dominated states, and finally commenced to pit state against state in the
frightful catastrophes of commercial warfare.
Following this preamble, these shall be the principles of social justice
towards the realization of which we must strive:
1. I believe in liberty of conscience and liberty of education, not
permitting the state to dictate either my worship to my God or my chosen
avocation in life.
2. I believe that every citizen willing to work and capable of working shall
receive a just, living, annual wage which will enable him both to maintain
and educate his family according to the standards of American decency.
3. I believe in nationalizing those public resources which by their very
nature are too important to be held in the control of private individuals.
4. I believe in private ownership of all other property.
5. I believe in upholding the right to private property but in controlling
it for the public good.
6. I believe in the abolition of the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking
system and in the establishment of a Government owned Central Bank.
7. I believe in rescuing from the hands of private owners the right to coin
and regulate the value of money, which right must be restored to Congress
where it belongs.
8. I believe that one of the chief duties of this Government owned Central
Bank is to maintain the cost of living on an even keel and arrange for the
repayment of dollar debts with equal value dollars.
9. I believe in the cost of production plus a fair profit for the farmer.
10. I believe not only in the right of the laboring man to organize in
unions but also in the duty of the Government, which that laboring man
supports, to protect these organizations against the vested interests of
wealth and of intellect.
11. I believe in the recall of all non-productive bonds and therefore in the
alleviation of taxation.
12. I believe in the abolition of tax-exempt bonds.
13. I believe in broadening the base of taxation according to the principles
of ownership and the capacity to pay.
14. I believe in the simplification of government and the further lifting of
crushing taxation from the slender revenues of the laboring class.
15. I believe that, in the event of a war for the defense of our nation and
its liberties, there shall be a conscription of wealth as well as a
conscription of men.
16. I believe in preferring the sanctity of human rights to the sanctity of
property rights; for the chief concern of government shall be for the poor
because, as it is witnessed, the rich have ample means of their own to care
for themselves.
These are my beliefs. These are the fundamentals of the organization which I
present to you under the name of the NATIONAL UNION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. It
is your privilege to reject or to accept my beliefs; to follow me or to
repudiate me.
Hitherto you have been merely an audience. Today, in accepting the challenge
of your letters, I call upon everyone of you who is weary of drinking the
bitter vinegar of sordid capitalism and upon everyone who is fearsome of
being nailed to the cross of communism to join this Union which, if it is to
succeed, must rise above the concept of an audience and become a living,
vibrant, united, active organization, superior to politics and politicians
in principle, and independent of them in power.
This work cannot be accomplished in one week or two weeks or in three
months, perchance. But it must begin today, at this moment. It shall be a
Union for the employed and the unemployed, for the old and the young, for
the rich and the poor, independent of race, color or creed. It is my answer
to the challenge received from the youth of the nation; my answer to those
who have dared me to act!
All I ask of you today is that you voluntarily subscribe your name to this
Union. In addressing your letter to me, please be careful to note well the
county in which you live as well as the State. Information will be sent to
you for your organization within your own county and your own district.
Tremendous opposition will be aroused against us. Obstacles will be thrown
in our path to prevent our success. Every public utility shall besiege us.
But all of those who still wish to leave behind them a better country than
they found are invited today and this week to unite their hearts and minds
for the establishment of social justice.
I have spoken to some of you for nine years over this microphone and to most
of you for more than three years.
Today I call upon you to assemble your ranks for action. Thus, in the name
of the God of our fathers, we can look forward to better days to come. But
without His principles of justice and of charity reduced into practice there
is little hope either for ourselves or for the children who will follow us.
There are no fees being exacted from you to belong to this NATIONAL UNION
FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. I am not in it for the commercial profit, because I am
talking to the poor, talking to the dispossessed, talking to the jobless and
talking against those who possess the means to sustain this broadcast. It
will be supported by the voluntary offerings of those who can afford to
support it.
In this Union fear no man, employer or employee. For in this crusade we
cannot rise to a realization of the principles of social justice without the
unremitting and sacrificing toil on the part of all our members.
Do not entertain the thought that, because you are a housewife engaged in
your daily duties, a student at his books, an unemployed person, a nun in a
convent, a hobo in the jungle or an industrialist in the seat of the mighty,
your moral support in this Union is not welcome. All I ask is that those who
apply for membership will be men and women of courageous heart and intrepid
spirit willing and ready to suffer.
God wills it!
This is the new call to arms--not to become cannon fodder for the greedy
system of an outworn capitalism nor factory fodder for the slave whip of
communism.
This is the new call to arms for the establishment of social justice!
God wills it! Do you?
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE!
(Sunday, January 6, 1935)
FRIDAY, January 4th, marked a definite step in the progress of social
justice throughout the world. On that day, President Roosevelt appeared
before the assembled Congress to enunciate certain principles which, beyond
all question, indicate that we are determined to place once and for all the
sacredness of human rights above the materialism of property rights.
In clear-cut phrases he delivered an official statement of policy which
committed both himself and this Seventy-fourth Congress to the deep,
spiritual philosophy of Christian charity and social justice. With a prayer
of divine guidance on his lips, with a recognition of God's providence in
his mind, he disassociated both himself and the American people from
atheistic communism, from Fascism and Hitlerism
January fourth, 1935, brings to an end the economic principles of
individualism hitherto taught, practically in every American university.
It is the date which marks the termination of certain of those principles
taught by Adam Smith, by John Stuart Mill and Malthus. Such outworn and
impractical economic phrases as "free competition, and "rugged
individualism" and "laissez-faire" today are seeking a resting place in the
limbo of archaic falsehoods.
Without compromise, without pussyfooting, the President covered the humane
philosophical principles which centuries ago were sounded on Sinai's
mountain top and of old were echoed on the hillsides where Christ preached
His Gospel of brotherhood.
Thus, today, the members of the National Union for Social Justice can
rejoice, while the avowed opponents of human rights-- the Liberty Leaguers,
the United States Chamber of Commerce members, the Manufacturers
Association--can find scant consolation as their programs for doles, for
balanced budgets, for gold standards, for free rein in the industrial field
are indirectly consigned to the wastepaper basket of ancient history.
Let them heed the words of the President that "we have undertaken a new
order of things." Let them be cautious, henceforth, because only at their
own personal peril will they dare obstruct the rising of this sun of social
justice which will not set until the new economic system will have been
perfected.
To those of you whose misfortune it was neither to have heard nor read this
Presidential message, may I quote from it and comment upon its salient
passages.
II
1. In speaking of the new order of things, Mr. Roosevelt said: "We progress
towards it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American
Constitution." This means that we are still Americans--in fact, that we will
become better Americans than ever--as we will hold fast to our democratic
traditions and to our republican institutions. The phrase, "spirit and
intent of the Constitution" is important--more important than if it read
"the letter and the legal interpretation of the Constitution." I need not
remind you that "the letter oftentimes killeth, while the spirit maketh to
live," as the Scripture says. I need not rehearse for you the deeds and
misdeeds perpetrated in the name of the cruel letter of a man-made code of
laws which was written primarily for the protection of property rights and
only incidentally for the safe-guarding of human rights.
2. Well did our President say that: "Throughout the world, change is the
order of the day. In every nation economic problems, long in the making,
have brought crises of many kinds for which the masters of old practice and
theory were unprepared. In most nations social justice, no longer a distant
ideal', has become a definite goal, and ancient governments are beginning to
heed the call."
If, on many past occasions, I was prompted to criticize, to castigate and
sometimes to whip with the lash of words these masters of an old practice
which was cruel, hard and impossible to bear, I glory in the cause which I
espoused. For many years it was evident that social justice should replace
the practices of modern capitalism; that the doctrine of exploitation should
be relegated to the same graveyard where rots the corpse of feudalism, that
the theory of exploitation should take its place with the theory of slavery;
and that the teaching of social justice, which distinguishes between the
right to own and the right to use, should replace the Bourbon teaching which
identified these two rights and thereby permitted the owner to use his goods
to suit his own selfish purposes.
At last the day for social justice has had a hearing in the courts of
progress. At last we recognize that the God Who created US gave us this
earth and the fullness thereof to sustain us, that He intended thereby that
what He gave us for our sustenance should not be stolen from us by a little
group of individuals who had succeeded in placing a fence of
"better-than-thou-ism" around the world, placarding it with the sign "Thou
shalt not enter!", thus forcing countless numbers into destitution and into
the bondage of economic slavery.
The millions of members of the National Union for Social Justice are deeply
indebted to our President for this statement as are the millions of
Americans, who long since have learned that there was no justice for the
multitudes under the out-worn system of modern capitalism.
3. The President is no optimist. Even his bitterest critics must admit that
he is a realist when they meditate upon the following words: "We find," said
he, "our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by past
sporadic remedies. In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk, we have
not weeded out the over-privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the
underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice leave retarded
happiness."
Here is an honest act of contrition. For two years Mr. Roosevelt was so
conservative that he gave ear to those men whose policies were most
responsible for effecting the depression. Modern capitalism with its gold
standard, its private control of currency and credit, its privately owned
Federal Reserve banks and many other trappings, was suffered to continue
alongside the emergency relief which was expended upon a down-trodden
people. Even this emergency relief was financed by the private bankers.
All this was honest experimentation which resulted in seventeen millions or
more citizens becoming recipients of a national dole, in our national debt
being increased by billions of dollars, and in our bankers waxing rich as
they battened off the interest money resultant from our endeavors of trying
to borrow ourselves out of debt with privately manufactured bankers'
dollars.
No wonder we did not weed out the over-privileged! No wonder that we did not
effectively lift up the underprivileged! The task was impossible as long as
the tool for its performance was the system of modern capitalism.
These were two years of bitter verbal conflict. Two years which served as a
proving ground, a laboratory. Two years expended in giving a sportman's
chance to the corporate body of modern capitalists to rise to the occasion.
Two years in which they proved to civilization that their economic system,
their financial system, their entire fabric of philosophy were so dissipated
and inefficient that the naked facts which confront us today cry out for
reform.
4. No wonder Mr. Roosevelt adds that, at this moment, "We have a clear
mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear that conception of the
acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue
private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public
affairs as well."
What is the conception of the acquisition of wealth to which the people are
opposed? In one sense it is related to the practice of industrialists paying
their workmen only while they work and starving them while they are idle. In
another sense it is related to paying dividends to stockholders all year
round whether or not the wheels in the factory are busy; whether or not
there is an annual wage for the laborer.
In the more important sense, it is essentially related to the banker who
gained control over industry. How did he gain this control over industry?
Need I repeat what I have already told you, namely, that in the year 1929,
at the peak of prosperity, there were 30 per cent fewer industries in this
country than there were ten years before it? This was due to the immorality
of our private credit system which permits the banker, who takes your one
honest currency dollar deposited with him, to create on his legalized
printing press at least nine other fictitious dollars, credit dollars. These
credit dollars he loaned to the industrialist who needed money to carry on
his business. To secure the loan, the industrialist mortgaged his property
with the banker. Billions of such credit dollars were scattered throughout
the nation. At least nine times more credit dollars were expected to be paid
back to the banker than there was actual currency or real dollars in
existence. When the loans became due the currency dollars were non-existent.
Consequently the banker took over the property of the industrialist,
amalgamated it with other factories and began to build up his monopoly,
counter to the best interests of this nation. That is how, as on a former
occasion I pointed out to you, the J.P. Morgan and Company control
$40-billion of American industry, banking, insurance and other activities in
this nation. It was due to this private issuance of credit that such a thing
as unjust competition was permitted to run rampant.
All during this period, while the bankers enjoyed the power of issuing
credit, they also held control over the actual currency dollars. These they
kept scarce. By keeping them scarce they were simply playing the game of a
cat watching a mouse--watching the borrower--who eventually would fall into
his trap and be forced to surrender his property. Thus, through the
existence of an immoral law which is counter to the letter and to the spirit
of the American Constitution, Alexander Hamilton and his successors in
office were responsible for handing over to a small group of individuals, of
parasites who did not produce but who lived upon the labors of others, this
control of money which enabled them, in days of prosperity, to grow fat upon
interest and, in the days of depression, to grow fatter upon confiscations.
Until a few months ago this mystery of money was a secret which was
safeguarded by the international bankers of the world and their hired
puppets throughout every nation. But now that the veil has been removed,
there goes forth a mandate from the American people calling a halt to this
practice.
5. In this nation there is ample room for everyone to profit according to
his merit provided he is willing to work. Henceforth our national motto
shall be "security for all." Henceforth our laws will be so written and so
executed that financial privileges for the few shall disappear. This is what
is meant when Mr. Roosevelt said: "Among our objectives I place the security
of the men, women and children of the Nation first."
These words indicate the philosophy which will guide our President during
his tenure of office. It is the philosophy of social justice which is about
to vanquish the sophistry of greed and of individualism.
Upon the attainment of this objective Mr. Roosevelt is willing to stand or
fall.
6. Let us inspect the proposed policies by which that philosophy of security
can be put into practice. First and foremost Mr. Roosevelt plans to develop
our natural resources. He said:
"A study of our National resources more comprehensive than any previously
made, slows the vast amount of necessary and practicable work which needs to
be done for the development and preservation of our natural wealth, for the
enjoyment and advantage of our people in generations to come. The sound use
of land and water is far more comprehensive than the mere planting of trees,
building of dams, distributing of electricity or retirement of sub-marginal
land. It recognizes that stranded populations, either in the country or the
city, cannot have security under the conditions that now surround them.
"To this end we are ready to begin to meet this problem--the intelligent
care of population throughout our Nation, in accordance with an intelligent
distribution of the means of livelihood for that population. A definite
program for putting people to work, of which I shall speak in a moment, is a
component part of this greater program of security of livelihood through the
better use of our National resources."
In my interpretation of this statement there is hereby launched a program
for permanent public works. At last we have an official pronouncement that
gold is not wealth; that the real wealth of the nation, from a material
standpoint, is identified with the homes, the farms, the forests, the
developed waterways and highways which we can and will arrange for the
benefit of future generations.
This policy is sensible insofar as it is designed to take up the slack of
unemployment which necessarily and increasingly results and will continue to
result from our development of mass production machinery. It recognizes that
stranded populations, either in the country or the city, cannot have
security under the conditions that now surround them. Thus a program of
public works will be devised by which our hitherto idle population will have
an opportunity to earn its livelihood on the basis of a just wage. It dares
not be less than a living wage. This wage, however, will not necessarily be
commensurate with the wage paid by industry. Henceforth the industrial wage
must be predicated upon a new division of the profits, a new share in the
goods produced.
As soon as the produced goods of the factory will have been consumed or
used, those engaged on the public works program will find a place for their
labors in the factories. On the off-season they will return to their road
building, to their reforestation, to their slum clearances. This means the
end of the unscientific and uncivilized dole system. This means the
beginning of a new wealth for the future generations of America.
III
There is one point which Mr. Roosevelt did not clarify. It is associated
with the money to be employed in our permanent public works program. It is
associated with the over-privileged banking classes and with either their
perpetuation as such or the destruction of their over-privileges as such.
Last Sunday I had occasion to explain to this audience a few facts relative
to the nature of money. The only thing mysterious with money was definitely
related to the fact that for every valid dollar bill which a depositor
places for safe-keeping in a bank, the banker proceeds to lend it ten times.
With each loan he marks down on his books that these ten dollars have been
deposited when, as a matter of fact, they were never deposited but were
loaned. The only thing that was deposited besides the solitary dollar was a
mortgage for your home or your farm or your business.
I pointed out that the financial picture which is presented to you in
America today shows, on the one hand, no more than 1 billion real dollars
deposited in the banks. But the bankers advertise in their statements that
they have approximately $30 billion on deposit. This means that when the
proper date comes around on the calendar for your mortgage to fall due, or
for all the mortgages in the country to fall due, the bankers, who are the
manufacturers of money, demand payment in currency, in real dollars. Of
course, this is impossible because real dollars to that amount do not exist,
there being no more than 5 billion currency dollars extant in the nation. In
this way, through the privilege accorded the bankers, they are lawfully
permitted to seize the real wealth of the nation because it is impossible
for the citizens of the nation to pay back the bankers in currency when only
credit was borrowed.
That is the mystery surrounding money, namely, that bankers reap where they
do not sow, or, at least, they reap wheat where they sowed cockle.
All this has a bearing on the point which Mr. Roosevelt failed to
incorporate in his message to Congress last Friday.
Here is where it affects you, my fellow citizens. Shall Mr. Roosevelt use
bankers' credit money to conduct the program of permanent public works or
will he be courageous enough to revert to the Constitution which he loves
and which he has sworn to uphold--the Constitution which says plainly and
unequivocally, "Congress has the right to coin and to regulate the value of
money"
You ask me what difference it makes? May I tell you with emphasis and with
clarity what difference it makes.
During the past two years our present Administration has borrowed
approximately $8-billion from the bankers. It was used partially for public
works, partially for paying men to pick up leaves, partially to sustain a
questionable dole system. It was $3-million of relief which we, the
taxpayers, contributed for the sustenance of the destitute. It was
$8-billion of credit money, of manufactured money, of fictitious money which
never did exist in real currency. Eventually we and our children must pay
back to the bankers that $8-billion not with credit money but with real
currency money.
Besides paying them back the borrowed $8 billion we are obligated also to
pay them back $6,400,000,000 for interest, making a grand total of
$14,400,000,000 which the taxpayers must produce in real currency that does
not exist when these bonds and notes issued by our present Administration
mature. In other words, we have mortgaged the United States to the bankers.
We have contracted to pay them $14,400,000,000 on the $8 billion we have
borrowed.
It is impossible to fulfill this contract because there are no more than 5
billion real currency dollars in existence in our country. This means that
when the date of maturity arrives for these mortgages and bonds the bankers
will own the United States of America, its homes, its farms and forests and
fields.
This is their legal right, namely, to confiscate, at least in part, the
United States of America. This the present law guarantees.
May I anticipate the objection which the bankers make to this statement--a
statement that they cannot deny.
They will tell us that these bonds and notes will be refinanced!
What does this mean? It merely means that we will continue paying interest
for generation upon generation. It means that we will keep them living in
luxury, in their over-privileged palaces, in their Palm Beach residences, in
their Scottish hunting lodges, because, Alexander Hamilton, the first
Secretary of the Treasury, and his successors, permitted men of flesh and
blood, the same as you and I, to create wealth, to counterfeit money, to
manufacture credit, only through the grace of a fountain pen and a piece of
gilded paper!
Thus, if our proposed program for permanent public works will be launched
through the agency of bankers' money it means that the five or even ten
billion dollars which will be used to reclaim marginal lands, to destroy
slums, to build homes, to prevent erosion, to plant trees will sustain the
over-privileged banker. It means that, eventually, our generation and the
succeeding generations will be working under the fiction of a new deal for
the benefit of the privileged classes. The reality of a New Deal will be
absent.
Throughout the ages, classes became privileged only because they controlled
the wealth of a nation, only because they made either physical or political
or economic slaves of their fellow citizens. It was true with the Romans
under Caesar Augustus and his millions of slaves. It was true with the
baronial lords who lived the lives of leisure while the tenants upon their
princely estates lived the lives of serfs. It is still true in America
through the grace of an Alexander Hamilton and the plutocrats who followed
him. The privileged classes of money manufacturers gained control of the
lands, of the homes, of the industries and of the government itself in this
country due to no other reason than to the fact that they have controlled
the issuance of credit and thereby, the legal right that the borrower pays
back in currency when these bankers have kept currency money scarce.
The very heart and soul, the motor of the new deal is the money question.
Unless their constitutional privilege is removed from the bankers; unless
their purple fountain pens are emptied and it be legislated that it is as
illegal for them to create money as it is for you and for me to counterfeit
it: unless this Congress has the fortitude and the sagacity to reclaim for
itself the right and the duty to coin and regulate our money, the new deal
will remain as a noble but unsuccessful experiment on the part of man to
destroy the worst brand of slavery that was ever perpetrated!
IV
What is my suggestion relative to the kind of money which should be used for
public works? In plain language it is this. If we borrow $8 billion from the
bankers it means that eventually we must repay them $14,400 million
including the interest. We have simply created a debt. This debt exists in
the nature of bonds, of paper blessed by the printing press!
If the government itself prints $8 billion of greenbacks, differing only in
color from the bonds which are yellow backs and to which coupons are
attached, this $8 billion is also a debt. Like the bond, it is born on the
bed of a printing press. Like the bond it is headed for the graveyard of
maturity.
Need I ask which is the sounder debt? Or, which is more inflationary? There
is only one answer to these questions, because most certainly
$14,400,000,000 is more inflationary and less sound than the $8 billion
backed by the gold in the Treasury.
There is no mystery about this any more than there is a mystery why two and
two are four. The only mystery consists in endeavoring to make two and two
equal five, or to say that 14,400,000,000 is less inflationary than
$8-billion.
My friends, there is no one who wishes this new deal to succeed more than do
I. Thus, more than a year ago I coined the phrase, "Roosevelt or Ruin"
because I believed in him when he openly avowed that he would drive the
money changers from the temple and hand America back to the Americans.
Today I believe in him as much as ever. Today it is "Roosevelt and Recovery"
provided he veers neither to right nor to left; provided he will strike home
at the very heart and soul and motor of modern capitalism, namely, the right
of the few privileged ones to control the issuance of credit. Through this
control they live like lords from the debts which we incur for national
public works. Eventually, when these debts fall due, these over-privileged
lords will demand payment of their pound of flesh either in currency money,
which does not exist, or in the actual wealth of the nation which they will
control. Have not the past two years taught us that we can never borrow
ourselves out of debt with bankers' bonds and dollars? The National Union
for Social Justice answers this question affirmatively. Upon this point, the
National Union cannot and will not compromise.
IV
Down the centuries of history two great and sinister stupidities have
prevailed--witchcraft and statecraft. Superior and perverted minds have made
them the instruments to power. Self-centered brilliant minds have employed
them to control the man with the hoe, to exploit the man who stands at the
lathe, to subjugate the man who follows the plow, and to rule and pauperize
the multitudinous hoary-handed brothers and sisters of toil.
It is nearly a century since witchcraft fell upon evil days. Its stupidities
were exposed. Superstition and the black arts were merged in the deeper
shadows of oblivion. But its twin brother, the monstrosity of stupid
statecraft, still blunders on. Turn back with me the pages of history until
you come to the name of Nicholas Machiavelli. His was an inspired genius,
which lacked the lustral drop of Christianity's brotherhood. It was he who
codified the tenets and systematized the technique of modern statecraft in
the most unsocial book ever produced by the mind of man. I refer to "Il
Principe." Here is the doctrine contained in that book:
"The masses of men are irreclaimably inferior in intellect, in emotion and
in spirit. Left to themselves the only law they will recognize is the law of
the jungle. Anarchy is the order of their disordered souls. The masses
cannot rule themselves. They cannot be unified and directed by leadership
even of an intelligent ruler. Consequently, it is the duty of a superior
mind, of a ruler, to deceive them with promises, to circumvent their
disorderly impulsiveness by artifice, by oppression and by trickery. And, if
necessary, by bloodshed. But always deceive them with promises."
This Machiavellian theory of statecraft was briefly but accurately expressed
in the motto of that Bourbon, Louis XVI of France, "Divide and govern."
It was evidenced in America by the younger spiritual brother of Machiavelli,
the brilliant Alexander Hamilton, who said of the people: "I loathe the
masses." It was he who taught the powers of plutocracy in America how to
divide and rule, how to make a travesty of democracy and a figment of
political independence.
My friends, at this juncture I ask your leniency. I am going to speak to a
certain group of persons as I have never spoken before. Not to the masses,
whom I have defended and whom I will defend, am I addressing these remarks.
But to the princes of American industry and finance, to the politicians who
still believe in Machiavelli, in Alexander Hamilton and in the doctrines of
deceit and of promises unfulfilled.
Bear with me and forgive me if I appear to be a so-called intellectual,
speaking to the superior minded intellectuals of our nation.
"Leaders of America, gentlemen of the banking fraternity, members of
Congress: Consider with me for a few moments the so-called average man, the
man who barters the labor of his hands for the means of his livelihood. As
far as all practical purposes are concerned he is your inferior in the
intellectual order and in the social order. For the sake of argument let us
admit that the great middle class--the laboring class, and the agricultural
class of America--are only shadows of your substance in thought, in
executive ability and in scientific endeavor as well as in social talent.
"I know how you valuate the common man in the scales of actuality--the
actualities of life. You deem him to be the plaything of impulse, the toy of
emotion. The demands of his great but foolish brain make profitable your
degenerate press, your lascivious moving picture industry and the indecent
drama of your burlesque houses.
"Nevertheless the common man is the man who is the centrifugal force in
civilization. He is supposed to be your much talked about purchasing power.
He is supposed to wear the textiles which your mills produce. He is supposed
to ride in the cars which come embellished and ennobled from your factories.
(How pleasing these products are to gaze upon! The common man who produces
them comes forth from the same factories broken, disconsolate, and
desecrated!)
"In a sense, gentlemen, grant that Machiavelli was right. Grant that
Machiavelli his genius when he said that by their very nature the masses
require a strong hand and a superior brain to rule them and to exploit them.
"Gentlemen of the intellectual class, now that we have considered the common
man and judged him, are you willing to turn the x-ray upon your philosophy
with the same objective disinterestedness of the scientific investigator?
First may I inquire what were the colossal blunders of statecraft that
destroyed the Caesars, the Bourbons, the Hapsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, the
Romanoffs?
"Why did the heads of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette roll from the block of
the guillotine?
"Why were Nicholas II and his entire family slaughtered in a Siberian cellar
and the nobility of the Russian court scattered throughout the world to be
door men and dish washers and menial clerks? All these were your
predecessors in practicing the principles so ably taught by Nicholas
Machiavelli.
"The answer is simple. Machiavelli forgot that there is one great force that
can weld the masses in united and terrible action. That force is common
suffering which becomes commonly known. You of the intellectual class, of
the ruling class, perhaps forget this. You forget that you are not dealing
with a Spartacus and his slaves, with a Condorcet and his rebels, with a
Trotsky and his unkempt Moujiks. Today you are dealing with men and women to
whom you have advertised the luxury which your factories produce and before
whom you have flaunted the illegitimate wealth which your economic system
has exploited. You are dealing with an educated common man upon whom you
depend in a most intimate manner. You are dealing with the masses whose
children are better trained, more virtuous, oftentimes, than your own.
"At this moment there is burning in the hearts of these masses an
inextinguishable desire fanned, not by hatred but by justice, to share in
the fruits of this nation. They know that these fruits belong to them. They
know this despite your policy of deception, despite your broken political
promises.
"Gentlemen, I have sat down with members of your intellectual class and have
discussed with them the truth of democracy and the truth of finance. They
have admitted to me the fiction of their credit system and of their
exploitation systems which are in vogue. They shocked me when they said "To
hell with the masses! Every man for himself!" But they have never argued
with me about the facts of the case, being content to tell me that they will
scare off the people with the noise which they will make on the drum of
inflation.
"Is it not time to appeal to you intellectual people of America who prefer
to be disciples of Machiavelli--is it not time to appeal to you to avert the
shadow of the Bourbon guillotine that hovers over yourselves and your
children? This is the question which I have been trying to arrive at.
"Is it not time to ask you to become fair competitors in the accumulation of
wealth either in industry or in agriculture or in the professions and arts
rather than attempt to retain this racket of creating it with a fountain
pen?
"I cannot argue with you from a spiritual standpoint because this would have
no force. You do not believe in Christ's principles. I can, however, appeal
to you from your own selfish, material standpoint because I know the pulse
of the people better than you will ever know it. If you think yourselves
superior, utilize the intelligence you possess, correct the stupidities
which your patron saint of intrigue forgot. Permit this Congress without
further opposition to restore to themselves the coinage and the regulation
of money. Machiavelli is as obsolete as Caesar Borgia for whom he wrote "The
Prince."
"The days of Caesar Borgia with his mass murders and mass starvations, with
his wars and his robberies have passed. For your own selfish love of life
and of terrestrial happiness I ask you to be sufficiently intelligent to
comprehend the new concept of human liberty and of social justice which was
taught to you last Friday.
"Cease, therefore, computing how this program of social justice will be
financed for your personal benefit. Look askance upon your over-privileged
comrades-in-greed who, at this moment, have not enough intelligence to
retreat. They are asking: "Do we get no bloody bonds? How can we loan our
fiction of credit at interest to the richest nation in the world which is
surely rising to its feet?"
VI
And now my underprivileged friends, a word of information for you! To
finance our recovery independent of the banker and his privileged greed, we
have in our vaults today $8,234,000,000 in gold and $1,229,000,000 in
silver. In all $9,472,000,000 of metallic currency against which there has
been issued only $5,534,000,000 of greenbacks, of currency.
Shall we suffer while this money remains idle to fatten the wallets of the
bankers or shall we employ it to create employment for the underprivileged?
Shall we, the taxpayers, or shall the bankers finance the program of social
justice?
I know your answer. The millions of you citizens who have joined the
National Union for Social Justice are united on this point.
Thus, may we prosper as a people and not as a privileged class! May God
grant that the weeds of the over-privileged be rooted up.
It is your prerogative and duty to uphold the moral arms of our President
while he, far removed from the conceits of Machiavelli, attempts to fulfill
his program.
It is a program which aims at creating security for the able bodied. In its
comprehension it reaches out a kindly hand to protect the aged who have
borne life's burdens under a harsh, cruel, financial system.
It has Christian compassion on those poverty-stricken mothers who, when the
valley of darkness confronts them, will enter it knowing that the practical
sympathy of a grateful nation is extended to them.
It is a program that encompasses within its generous arms the little
children, the handicapped and the infirm who henceforth shall not be denied
the use of the surplus wealth possessed by their more fortunate fellow
citizens.
These thoughts impel us to profess that a new day has dawned in
statesmanship. The old statecraft has gone to join its twin brother, the old
witchcraft, in the tomb of time.
Passing out is the shadow of Machiavelli and coming in is the substance of
Roosevelt!
The old order changeth, giving place to new.
The people have given a new mandate for social justice. May our President
and our Congress have the grace and the courage to fulfill it careless of
criticism, and conscious that God will not fail them!
Note: General Hugh Johnson was FDR's Director of the National Recovery
Administration (NRA). A controversial figure in his own right, Johnson was
forced to resign from the government in late 1934, but he remained a
Roosevelt supporter. In March 1935 he delivered an unexpected attack on the
plans of Huey Long and Father Coughlin. His speech, at a dinner in his
honor, set off a firestorm of debate about the merits of the two plans and
it was the first time that the pro-Roosevelt forces had dared to take on
Long and Coughlin.
A REPLY TO GENERAL HUGH JOHNSON
(Monday, March 11, 1935)
I AM truly indebted to the National Broadcasting System by whom this time is
contributed and to General Hugh Johnson for having provided the occasion and
the opportunity for me to address you.
I am mindful that I am a Catholic priest whose voice is being carried into
the homes of millions of persons who do not share my faith. I am thoroughly
mindful that despite differences of religion, of race, of color and of
profession, I am also an American citizen privileged as such to speak to
American citizens.
The economic disaster which overwhelmed our nation proved beyond question
that, independent of all racial or religious differences, there was common
need for Catholic, Protestant, Jew and irreligionist to solve a common
problem. Together did we not enjoy a common citizenship? Together did we not
rejoice in the common appellation of American? Together have we not worried
through the dark years of this depression? Thus, when through the inevitable
sequence of events, a crisis had been reached in the development of our
social well being; when it became necessary to bridge the chasm that
separates this day of our economic affliction from the tomorrow of our hoped
for benediction, some one, irrespective of his Catholicity, or of his
Protestantism, or of his Jewish faith was required to raise his voice, if
for no other reason, than to condemn those who, refusing to leave this land
of sorrow, obstructed our passage to the land of prosperity.
While it was and always will be impossible for me to divest myself of my
Catholic priesthood, nevertheless, in accepting the dignities which my
religion conferred upon me, I sacrificed in no respect the rights identified
with my citizenship. It is still my prerogative to vote. It is still my
privilege to be interested in good government. It is still my duty as a
common citizen to engage in the common efforts for the preservation of our
commonwealth as chaos clamors at our doors.
I regret sincerely that a man who once held such high office in our nation,
either ignorantly or maliciously, has called into question this fundamental
principle of citizenship. It has been intimated in words more forceful than
mere suggestions that a priest's place is at his alter; that a priest, on
becoming such, should sacrifice his privileges, his prerogatives and his
rights as a democratic citizen. Thus, with the logic of a braggart, I have
been challenged to divest myself of my priestly vocation, if I wish to
participate in national affairs. Does our concept of Americanism instruct
the teacher that his place is always in the classroom? Does it teach the
lawyer that his proper place is circumscribed by the walls of his office?
Does it tell the barber that his activities are limited to the tools of his
trade? Does it cling to the out-worn theory of the divine right of kings by
which is implied that the affairs of good government and the direction of
national progress must be surrendered into the hands of professional
politicians?
Unfortunately this erroneous doctrine has been openly intimated by the
spokesman of a group which has gained control of the democratic liberties of
a free people. It is just as logical to conclude that a general must be
perpetually occupied in leading troops, if a clergyman must be constantly
engaged in his sacerdotal duties.
Our concept of government so far transcends the bigotry of race, of creed,
of color and of profession that, through our fore-fathers, we refrained from
writing into the Constitution of the United States any impediment to disbar
any citizen from engaging in the activities of good citizenship. I am
compelled to rehearse this plain truth for your consideration because a
demagogic utterance, by its appeal to thoughtlessness, to religious and to
professional bigotry, has questioned it. The money changers, whom the Priest
of Priests drove from the temple of Jerusalem both by word and by physical
force, have marshaled their forces behind the leadership of a chocolate
soldier for the purpose of driving the priest out of public affairs!
While always a priest I address you neither as the spokesman of the Catholic
Church nor as the representative of its Catholic following. I speak to you
as American to American.
While always a priest I carry to you the fundamental doctrines of social
justice which are intended both for religionist and irreligionist, for black
and white, for laborer and farmer for everyone who shares with me the
citizenship in which I rejoice.
Therefore, away with that prostituted bigotry which, at one time, has been
the poisoned rapier of arrant cowards and, at another, the butcher's
cleaving axe wielded to destroy a national unity!
The object of the National Union for Social Justice is to secure economic
liberty for our people. So well is this truth known that the concentrators
of wealth are resorting to musty methods, long since in disrepute, to
preserve America for the plutocrats and to retain its quarreling, divided
citizens for their own exploitation.
Our program, which is interested in restoring America to the Americans, can
be accomplished peacefully only through a national solidarity. Peacefully, I
say, because I believe in the Prince of Peace and dare not disregard His
warning they who use the sword shall perish by it.
In the meantime, therefore, let the Tories of high finance learn from their
prototype, George III. Let the unjust aggressors, who for generations have
mismanaged the economic affairs of our nation, assume the entire
responsibility of their own Tory stubbornness. The laborer has not sabotaged
our factories! The farmer has not created a man-made scarcity of food! The
80 million cry babies, to whom General Johnson referred, have not
concentrated our wealth! These people, played upon by paid-for propaganda,
did not hurl us into the seething,, maelstrom of a bloody war! These cry
babies--80-millions of them, so confessed--were not responsible for the
concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and for the destruction of
small industry! They did not force 27-million hungry men and women to stand
in a bread-line nor, with the lash of poverty, did they drive 11-million
laborers into idleness and insecurity!
I am characterized as a revolutionary for raising my voice against these
palpable injustices while the blind Bourbons cannot see the writing on the
wall nor read the pages of history written in crimson by pens which were
dipped into bleeding hearts at Concord, Lexington and Valley Forge!
In 1776 Washington and Jefferson and their compatriots had hurled at them
the vile epithet of "revolutionary." Their lands had been over-taxed. Their
laborers and farmers had been exploited. Their liberties had been denied.
Their right to free speech and to petition had been scoffed at! They, too,
were called "revolutionary."
Today, when the rights to life, to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness
have been obstructed by an economic system of high finance far more vicious
in its implications and results than were the unjust political aggressions
of a George III, they who protest against them are classified and indexed
with the patriots of 1776.
This, indeed, is a high compliment inadvertently paid by the new deal's
greatest casualty, General Hugh Johnson, who never faced an enemy nor
successfully faced an issue.
Today he and the Wall Streeters whom he represents become distorters of
history and perverters of logic as they, the unjust aggressors, garb
themselves in the rainment of patriotism and cast upon those who have
suffered from their misdeeds the scarlet cloak of the rebel!
II
For a moment I plan to pause to answer the charges and insinuations which
General Johnson so intemperately made against my person. First he said:
"This political padre . . . may or may not now be an American citizen, but
certainly once was not."
My dear General, I am as much, if not more, of an American citizen as you
are or ever will be. Your parents are but one generation removed from
Ireland. My paternal grandfather's bones are buried in Lackawanna, New York.
My great-grandfather dulled many a pick with the pioneers who dug the Erie
Canal. If you mean that I have sprung from the laboring class and chance to
be born of American parents on Canadian soil I have no apologies to make. By
an Act of Congress of February 10, 1855, Sec. 1993 U.S.R.S. I was always an
American citizen!
Secondly, you categorically accuse me of breaking the religious vow of
poverty. The truth is, as my religious superiors will testify, I never made
a vow of poverty and therefore could never break one. More than that I never
belonged to any religious order although I was associated with a group of
priests whose lives were dedicated to the teaching of Canadian and American
students.
Thirdly, you have cleverly insinuated that I was a modern Talleyrand, who,
as a Catholic cleric, was excommunicated by his Church because, among other
reasons, he protected the plundering Bourbons. This you did in one breath
while in the next you praised the good Catholic laity. For what purpose? For
none other than to turn not the Protestants nor the Jews against me but
rather to confuse the people of my own faith. It is sufficient for me to say
that, up to the present date, I have not been classified with a Talleyrand
by those whose business it is to judge whether or not I am in good standing
in the Catholic Church.
Fourthly, "compared to me Judas Iscariot is a piker"--the same Judas who
betrayed his Lord and Master. It is not my province to classify myself with
the eleven faithful Apostles. I am content to leave to the justice of
history and to the judgment of God this decision.
What insanity possessed you to say such things? What desperation forced you
to utter such exaggerations?
I remember how in 1933 Mr. Roosevelt pleaded with the people to cease their
hoarding. I remember how he promised to raise the price of commodities. It
was in those days that the committee in charge of the financial affairs of
the Radio League of the Little Flower heeded the President's word and
believed the President's promise. This committee, having more faith in
Franklin D. Roosevelt than you and your kind ever placed in him, expended
some of the surplus money under their care in silver contracts. As a result
of this action more than $12,000 was gained for the Radio League of the
Little Flower. Not one ounce of silver have I ever purchased for myself. Not
one penny of gain from it have I ever made for myself. And I am the Judas
Iscariot!
But you and your kind, wedded to the belief that the Baruchs are the only
ones who should make gain by transacting business in commodities, have
spewed your venom not upon me but upon an organization of people whose
membership runs into the millions, because their legally constituted
officers gained for them enough money to pay for the broadcasting activities
which are designed for the people and paid for by the people.
It is perfectly ethical for your task-master, Bernard Baruch, to profit by
his gold and silver transactions. But it is totally unethical for the people
who have been exploited by him and his group of speculators and
international bankers to gather the crumbs of profit which fall from the
table of the commodity market.
To malign me you have more than insinuated that personally it was I who
profited and, therefore, that I am the modern Judas Iscariot who has
betrayed Jesus Christ! I rejoice that never once have I sold Jesus Christ
nor did I betray the brothers of Jesus Christ! Can you say as much?
General Johnson, your enemies and, if I must say it, some of your
fair-weather friends, have heaped upon my desk the fulsome record of your
personal life. General, I disdain to refer to it. Need I remind you,
however, that of old it was said that Christ stirreth up the multitudes;
that He was a wine bibber, a consorter with sinners? Or need you remind me
how the Master crowned with the thorns which were woven by the fingers of
the money changers, nailed to the cross by the spikes which were forged in
the furnace of hatred, said: "Father forgive them for they know not what
they do." Dare I claim title to Christianity General, and forget that
prayer?
My dear General Johnson, I am not important nor are you. But the doctrines
which I preach are important. While you were content to vomit your venom
upon my person and against my character the American public is fully
cognizant that not once did you dare attack the truths which I teach. I need
not condemn you before the court of public opinion. You have condemned
yourself. More than that, you have appeared before a jury of 80 million
people--your own figures, General--who, through your lack of Christian
charity and justice, are today prejudiced against you. These "cry babies"
whose tears have welled to their eyes because you and your kind have lashed
them at the pillar of poverty; these brothers and sisters of Christ whom you
and your masters have crowned with the thorns of worry and insecurity; these
sterling American citizens whom you first fastened to the cross of hunger
and nakedness and then pierced their hearts with the spear of
exploitation--these inarticulate people for whom I speak will never forget
you and your Wall Streeters!
These people, so you have intimated, are rats being led by a Pied Piper.
Must that be the metaphor which you employ to describe the wreckage which
your kind has created?
My friends, I appeal to your charity, to your good judgment, to your sense
of social justice to bear no ill will against General Johnson. Your
intelligence informs you that he is but a faithful, obedient servant willing
to express in his own grotesque manner the thoughts which are harbored in
the mind of his master. Today he appears before us as a figure to be pitied
and not condemned. He has been cast out by an Administration because he and
his plans were failures. Thus, as he appears before you on future occasions,
remember that he is to be regarded as a cracked gramophone record squawking
the messages of his master's voice.
My dear General, if I am constrained from indicting your person, it is
simply because you are the first great casualty of the new deal
experimentation. Whether you know it or not, you are but a political corpse
whose ghost has returned to haunt us. Although I believe that your unquiet
spirit will not rest in peace, nevertheless, I still believe in that ethical
axiom--"De mortuis nil nisi bonum"--"Of the dead let us speak kindly." When
real soldiers come forth to fight, having facts for targets and truths for
ammunition, I shall oppose them with the most forceful weapons which my wits
command, but never shall I adopt dishonest tactics or dishonest warfare or
be accused of fighting a ghost. I shall draw my reasons from that school of
militancy presided over by Jesus Christ, Who, 1900 years ago, refrained not
from attacking in scathing terms the scribes and Pharisees. "Woe to you
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour the horses of widows,
praying long prayers. For this you shall receive the greater judgment. For
you bind heavy and insupportable burdens and lay them on men's shoulders;
but with a finger of your own you will not move them."
Yes, General Johnson, Christ, for having made that statement, is accused of
stirring class against class by the Voltaires, the Rousseaus, the Louis
Sixteenths, the atheists and the pussy-footers of all times. But there are
times when certain classes must be forcefully reminded that there is such a
thing as Christian charity which bids us love our neighbors as ourselves,
and which warns us that whatsoever we do even to the least, we do to Christ.
That is what the Pharisees refused to learn. That is what their descendants
in Wall Street refuse to accept as they continue to devour the houses of
widows and tax our citizenry into slavery and idleness.
Remembering the method of attack employed by Christ's Precursor, John the
Baptist, I will dare confront the Herods by name and by fact even though my
head be served on a golden platter; even though my body be sawed in twain as
was that of the prophet Isaiah for having scorned into disrepute a prince by
the name of Manasses!
Today there is another Manasses, your lord and master, General Johnson. I
refer to Bernard Manasses Baruch whose full name has seldom been mentioned
but which name from this day forth shall not be forgotten in America. This
was the name which his parents gave him, the name Manasses. This is the
name, General Johnson, of your prince of high finance. Him with the
Rothschilds in Europe, the Lazzeres in France, the Warburgs, the Kuhn-Loebs,
the Morgans and the rest of that wrecking crew of internationalists whose
god is gold and whose emblem is the red shield of exploitation--these men I
shall oppose until my dying days even though the Bernard Manasses Baruchs of
Wall Street are successful in doing to me what the prince, after whom he was
named, accomplished in doing to Isaias. I am well apprised of the fact that
your own vociferous volubility, which you characterized last Monday night as
"howling," is but the opening gun in a well organized attack against me. I
fear it not because I am protected by the moral support of the "cry babies"
and the "rats" whom you have forced into the ranks of the National Union for
Social Justice. Therefore, I shall doubly bend my efforts to the task of
handing back America to the Americans and of rescuing our beloved country
from the hands of the Baruchs, your masters.
III
There are two remaining charges which you made against me. I rejoice in this
opportunity to answer them. The first respects money. You said that my plan
is "to make money out of nothing, which would therefore make it worth
nothing." At least you admit that I have a plan. I need not inform this
audience that since 1930 and long before then I had a plan to establish
social justice. Long before you or the financial puppet-masters, who are
expert in manipulating the strings of Punch and Judy oratory, became
prominent in the desperate struggle for economic independence, I was
associated with pioneers who were protesting against the profitless labor of
our farmers and against the slavery of modern mass productionism.
Where were you in 1930 and 1931 while we were advocating a new deal on
Sundays and feeding thousands in the bread line on Mondays, made necessary
by the cold-blooded individualism of an ancient economic system to which you
belong?
Where were you in 1932 when our same group was advocating the election of
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the birth of a new deal long before Franklin
Roosevelt was even nominated for the presidency?
Where were you in 1933 and 1934 when our beloved leader, consecrated to
drive the money changers out of the temple, was hampered and impeded by your
master, Bernard Manasses Baruch, the acting president of the United States,
the uncrowned prince of Wall Street?
I say this in no disparagement because everyone appreciates that you are
nothing more than his man Friday. With Bernard Manasses Baruch's plan in
your pocket to regiment industry, to destroy competition, to institute a
wage system designated to share poverty, to create monopolies and eliminate
small industries --you strutted upon the stage of this depression like a
comic opera cream puff general. You organized a comic opera parade on the
streets of New York.
Why, General, before your name and your under-slung vocabulary became
household words in this nation these pioneer associates of mine had been
fighting in the front trenches against the enemies of the new deal, bearing
its heaviest burdens and carrying its heaviest crosses!
And now you accuse me of planning to make money out of nothing. But let us
become more specific on that point. The man who put this thought into your
mouth is nothing but a thief yelling "Stop, thief!" Bear with me, General,
as I refresh the memories of this audience on the nature of money and how it
is manufactured out of nothing by your masters.
1. As you confess, money is merely the medium of trade. It is not wealth. It
is only the transportation system, as it were, by which wealth is carried
from one person to another.
2. For more than one hundred years the people of this nation have permitted
a small group of men to possess the privilege of making money, and thereby,
of controlling the flow of wealth. Many of us began to believe that money
was the real wealth instead of the truck, as it were, whose only reason for
existence is to carry the precious freight of food, of clothing, of shelter,
of human beings and their labor from one point to another-- from the
producer to the consumer--. There are many kinds of transportation, such as
the railway, the truck, the steamboat. There are three kinds of capitalistic
money all monopolized for use by the banker--metal, paper currency and
credit. In round figures there are $9-billion of idle metal in the Treasury,
$5-billion of paper currency throughout the nation and at least $250-billion
of credit or of debt money such as mortgages, loans, bonds, etc. Credit
money or check money is really the major portion of all our money by 90 per
cent. Credit money is check book money.
3. How is this check book money created in this nation? First, a group of
wealthy men petition the Government for a bank charter, or, in other words,
for the right to counterfeit legally.
4. These men deposit, for example, $100-thousand with the Treasury. In
return, the Treasury gives them $100-thousand worth of interest-bearing
bonds which are kept at Washington as security. But the interest
accumulating on the bonds belongs to these new bankers.
5. These men return to their home town after they have the Government print
for them, at scarcely no cost, $100-thousand worth of paper dollars which
they deposit in their new bank.
6. John Smith comes to these bankers for a loan of $10 thousand which he
obtains at 6 per cent on depositing as security the deed for his
$20-thousand farm.
7. Then the banker gives John a check book--no actual cash, mind you--and
immediately writes on his own books that $10 thousand has been deposited,
whereas in truth it was simply loaned.
8. Fifty, eighty, one hundred John Smiths go through the same process until
the bank which started with only $100-thousand of printed money has loaned
$1-million at 6 per cent. That was their rule, to lend ten times what they
actually had. Therefore, the first year in business grossed the bank
$60-thousand interest profit on an investment of $100-thousand which all
this time was bearing interest for them through the bonds which they
deposited originally at Washington at 4 per cent.
9. Of course, Jim Jones and one thousand other neighbors of Jim Jones placed
their savings in the town bank. They thought that this money was safe and
that the bank would surrender it on demand. But Jim did not read the fine
print in his bank book. Had he done so, he would have discovered that he had
actually loaned his money to the bankers; that he had become a creditor and,
therefore, had to take his chance of getting his money back with all the
other creditors and patrons of the bank.
10. Meanwhile, from the bankers' bank, the Federal Reserve Bank, word went
out that too much money had been loaned by their fellow bankers. It was time
to call in the loans. It was time to cut down on credit. Thus Henry Doe, the
manufacturer, John Smith, the farmer and Peter Adams, the merchant, all of
whom borrowed from the bank were ordered to pay back in currency money, mind
you, what they obtained in check book money. Simultaneously this happened
all over the nation. Ten, twenty, thirty billion dollars of loans were
called. There were only five billions of dollars of currency money in
existence. It was an impossible situation. Therefore, a depression arose.
The deeds and mortgages were claimed by the bankers and homes and farms and
industries were confiscated by him because there was no currency money.
11. Did the banker close up shop? He did not. At least the big bankers did
not. They liquidated the homes and farms and industries which they
confiscated when the borrowers had no currency money to save them. They sold
them for what they could obtain on a depressed market. Then they turned
around with this new fresh currency money and bought government bonds at 4
per cent or less.
12. Meanwhile, bread lines were established. Unemployment was rife. Poverty
stalked through the nation. Of necessity the government must obtain money to
feed the poor and must under take public work to salvage the unemployed.
Therefore, it borrowed $8-billion from the bankers who, playing their game
even in the face of national distress, loaned the government a fat check
book and, perhaps, for good measure, a bottle of ink and a fountain pen.
Still there were only $5-billion of actual currency in the nation. But,
through a banker's magic and a gambler's instinct, they loaned the
$8-billion because they knew that in eighteen years hence, $6-billion in
interest would be returned by the government for the privilege of using a
banker's check book--$14-billion in all!
There, General, is the true story of how money is made out of nothing. Can
you or any Wall Streeter controvert this?
To this process of manufacturing money I have been opposed simply because
our Constitution says that it is the right of Congress to coin and regulate
the value of money. In the year 1694 this right still belonged to the
British people and to their Parliament but, when threatened by invasion, the
merchants and goldsmiths of London forced Parliament to surrender this right
to them. This was the price of their patriotism. This was the birthday of
the privately owned Bank of England.
During the days of our Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln was engaged in
realizing a dream that was born in the crib of Bethlehem, he needed gold to
purchase arms and ammunition. In that day the international bankers were
willing to loan gold to Lincoln on the one condition that he would abrogate
and cancel Article I, Section VIII, Clause V of our Constitution which says
Congress has the right to coin and regulate the value of money. This right
they themselves coveted; this right they themselves demanded.
From that day forward until 1913 when the Federal Reserve Banking system was
created--a system owned by a group of your masters and not by the American
people, as many in this audience formerly believed--from that day forward
the economic destinies of our country have been controlled by these private
Central bankers who extended and contracted credit at will.
Because I have, in season and out of season, demanded that we Americans go
back to the Constitution and restore to Congress its right and duty to coin
and regulate the value of money you have assailed me and in doing so have
stultified yourself.
When did I ever propose to make money out of nothing? I have pointed to
$9-billion of idle gold and silver, sterilized in the vaults of our
Treasury. I have questioned time after time the wisdom on the part of our
government running to the Federal Reserve Bank for dollars created out of
nothing, borrowing this manufactured money for relief purposes, for public
works activities, with the understanding that the bankers would be repaid ei
ther with good currency, at interest, or else the security of the United
States could be confiscated by them.
I have advocated that the government employ this idle gold and silver
instead of building up unpayable debts to be shouldered by the unborn
children of future generations. You and your group have been the
inflationists, the makers of money out of nothing. But mindful of the
Federal Reserve Act which was passed in 1913 and which permits 2 currency
dollars to be printed against each gold dollar; mindful that we have only 5
billion paper dollars in the country and over $9-billion of gold and silver
in the Treasury, I have asked and I still ask why we do not employ it for
the welfare of the American people instead of utilizing the bankers'
manufactured money for the welfare of the Warburgs, the Rothschilds, the
Kuhn-Loebs, the Morgans and your own master, Bernard Manasses Baruch?
Only yesterday afternoon I asked that same question. And this morning, to
the gratification of every patriotic American, Franklin D. Roosevelt has
made the initial step in our direction. Today he has given the answer to you
and your false charge by ordering the use of approximately $650-million of
that idle gold and silver, thereby giving his benediction to the principles
for which I have fought for more than three years.
IV
The few minutes which remain at my command I shall devote to your last set
of charges which I need not rehearse. My record is clear in that neither you
nor Bernard Manasses Baruch can justify any statement to the effect that the
National Union for Social Justice or that I, its President, are allied with
Republican or Democrat, with Catholic or Protestant or with any other
individual or group of individuals. The principles which I have enunciated
and the principles upheld by other organizations are ample proof to
substantiate this statement. My dear General, you have gone on record as
categorically stating that, ever since the exposition of the silver list, I
have been opposed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, our elected President. An entire
nation knows that this statement is palpably untrue. On that point my is
clear.
Who originated the slogan of Roosevelt or Ruin?
Who repeated it again this year? When only last January the President's
magnificent message was read to Congress, did not your master's associates
condemn it, while openly and nationally I advocated its support?
The real enemies who are boring from within have been you and your group of
Wall Streeters, of international bankers.
Who have been the President's advisers over a period of two years? Not the
farmer or the laborer, not the National Union for Social Justice, not his
close and disinterested friends! Surely they were not responsible for
11-million men who are still unemployed, for 22-million persons who are
still in the bread lines, for our national debt which has risen to the
unscalable heights of $34-billion. If our people are growing disheartened,
it is not because they have lost faith in Franklin D. Roosevelt, but because
they are rising in their wrath against you and your group who have
surrounded him.
It was Bernard Manasses Baruch and the international bankers who whispered
into his perturbed ears the philosophy of destruction, the philosophy of
social reforms and policies, all of which have prevented a magnificent
leader like Roosevelt from rescuing a nation still bound to the rock of
depression by the chains of economic slavery ? Did they not, in season and
out of season, obstruct our President from driving the money changers from
the temple ? Did not your master, the acting President of the United States,
actually sit in at the gold plate banquet of the Supreme Court before the
gold clause decision?
My friends in this audience, I still proclaim to you that it is either
"Roosevelt or Ruin." I support him today and will support him tomorrow
because we are neither going back to the individualism of the past nor are
we going forward to the communism of the future. But I am not that type of
false friend who, mangling the very meaning of the word friendship, praise
policies like N.R.A. when criticism is required or betray my millions of
supporters throughout this nation by preaching to them the prostituted
slogan of "'Peace, Peace,'when there is no peace."
The fantastic fusillade of false charges which the genial general of
generalities, the kind chocolate soldier, and the sweet Prince of Bombast so
engagingly publicized, certainly were not potent enough to arouse my wrath.
More important things must be accomplished. I dare not be diverted from my
course by a red herring, even though it chances to be a dead one.
America's destiny is in the process of fulfillment. The ancient world set
aside the bondage of physical freedom. Throughout the middle centuries
civilization struggled to disentangle itself from an agrarian serfdom which
prevented men from owning their own homes or farms. In later days, in the
spirit of the Magna Carta, there was lifted aloft the first standard for
political freedom. Physical, agrarian, political--these freedoms has the
world obtained. But, as the finger of Providence weaves on the wall of time
the fabric of this life's story, there is still another golden thread which
must be spun from north to south, from east to west--the golden thread of
economic liberty and financial freedom. Palestine has given us our
religion--our faith and hope and charity. Greece has bestowed upon us her
culture. From the Tiber's banks at Rome came law and order. It was left to
England and Spain, and especially to the Nordic nations, to teach the world
the story of commerce and carry across the seven seas the glory which they
inherited.
What part must America play? There is only one. We, the great creditor
nation of this world, who today control its gold are in a position to strike
the first and telling blow for economic freedom, for financial independence!
This shall be our contribution. As long as there is a God in heaven and
power within my soul I will stand out first and foremost to lead in driving
the money changers from the temple. This is the destiny of Columbia. This
will be her contribution to civilization. To this task I invite you to
dedicate your lives.
All material from "A Series of Lectures on Social Justice," by Rev. Chas. E.
Coughlin, Radio League of the Little Flower, Royal Oak Michigan, March 1935.
Hear 1930's populist Father Charles E. Couglin
http://www.ssa.gov/history/coughlinradio.html (realplayer or windows media
format)
Arguments for the Ages: Father Charles Coughlin: In midst of plenty, we
create want
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1389/26302.html
Published Feb 19, 2001FC2K19
Editor's note: Father Charles Coughlin (1891-1979), a Roman Catholic priest
and radio commentator in the 1920s and '30s, exerted enormous political
influence during the Great Depression. Although his rhetoric was
unmistakably anti-Semitic, other elements of his philosophy resist easy
description: He reviled Republicans and Democrats alike; he was both
anticapitalist and anti-Communist; he was both a supporter of President
Franklin Roosevelt and a harsh critic. His "social justice" agenda, which he
advocated in the speech excerpted here, was seen as a challenge to America's
economic and political systems. Before his superiors in the church forced
him off the air in 1940, Coughlin's "Golden Hour of the Little Flower"
audience may have reached 40 million.
"Increase and multiply" was the command of God -- a command that has been
sterilized in the heart of every thinking young man who dares not marry
because he dares not inflict poverty upon his children.
And this in a nation where the birth rate and the death rate are sparring
for supremacy; this in a nation that dares not invite the immigrant to enter
because already there is too much unemployment!
Yes, "increase and multiply" was the command which echoed over the flowering
fields and the towering forests. It was heard in the sheep-folds and on the
pasture-lands. It broke forth in holy emotions as lovers clasped in fond
embrace.
"Increase and multiply and I shall kiss your fields with the lips of the sun
and water them with the fountains of rain. I will unfold to you the secrets
of nature. And I shall teach your nimble fingers to work and labor as I do
the wings of a bird to fly."
Oh! how this Sacred Scripture has become perverted as, in the midst of
plenty, we struggle to create want -- we struggle to create profits -- all
for the purpose of perpetuating a slavery which has been so often described
as the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few!
My friends, the outworn creed of capitalism is done for. The clarion call of
communism has been sounded. I can support one as easily as the other. They
are both rotten! But it is not necessary to suffer any longer the slings and
arrows of modern capitalism any more than it is to surrender our rights to
life, to liberty and to the cherished bonds of family to communism.
The high priests of capitalism bid us beware of the radical and call upon us
to expel him from our midst. There will be no expulsion of radicals until
the causes which breed radicals will first be destroyed!
The apostles of Lenin and Trotsky bid us forsake all rights to private
ownership and ask us to surrender our liberty for that mess of pottage
labeled "prosperity," while it summons us to worship at the altar where a
dictator of flesh and blood is enthroned as our god and the citizens are
branded as his slaves.
Away with both of them! But never into the discard with the liberties which
we have already won and the economic liberty which we are about to win -- or
die in the attempt!
My friends, I have spent many hours during these past two weeks -- hours,
far into the night, reading thousands of letters which have come to my
office from the young folks and the old folks of this nation. I believe that
in them I possess the greatest human document written within our times.
I am not boasting when I say to you that I know the pulse of the people. I
know it better than all your newspaper men. I know it better than do all
your industrialists with your paid-for advice. I am not exaggerating when I
tell you of their demand for social justice which, like a tidal wave, is
sweeping over this nation.
Nor am I happy to think that, through my broadcasts, I have placed myself
today in a position to accept the challenge which these letters carry to
me -- a challenge for me to organize these men and women of all classes not
for the protection of property rights as does the American Liberty League;
not for the protection of political spoils as do the henchmen of the
Republican or Democratic parties. Away with them too!
But, happy or unhappy as I am in my position, I accept the challenge to
organize for obtaining, for securing and for protecting the principles of
social justice.
To organize for action, if you will! To organize for social united action
which will be founded on God-given social truths which belong to Catholic
and Protestant, to Jew and Gentile, to black and white, to rich and poor, to
industrialist and to laborer.
I realize that I am more or less a voice crying in the wilderness. I realize
that the doctrine which I preach is disliked and condemned by the princes of
wealth. What care I for that! And, more than all else, I deeply appreciate
how limited are my qualifications to launch this organization which shall be
known as the NATIONAL UNION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE.
But the die is cast! The word has been spoken! And by it I am prepared
either to stand or to fall; to fall, if needs be, and thus, to be remembered
as an arrant upstart who succeeded in doing nothing more than stirring up
the people.
-- Father Charles Coughlin, Nov. 11, 1934. Radio address.
---------------------------
http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/garraty_awl/chapter27/me
dialib/primarysources2_26_1.html
Father Charles E. Coughlin, "A Third Party" (1936)
By 1932 a new era of production had come into full bloom. It was represented
by the motor car, the tractor and power lathe, which enables the laborer to
produce wealth ten times more rapidly than was possible for his ancestors.
Within the short expanse of 150 years the problem of production had been
solved, due to the ingenuity of men like Arkwright and his loom, Fulton and
his steam engine, and Edison and his dynamo. These and a thousand other
benefactors of mankind made it possible for the teeming millions of people
throughout the world to transfer speedily the raw materials into the
thousand necessities and conveniences which fall under the common name of
wealth.
Thus, with the advent of our scientific era, with its far-flung fields, its
spacious factories, its humming motors, its thundering locomotives, its
highly trained mechanics, it is inconceivable how such a thing as a
so-called depression should blight the lives of an entire nation when there
was a plenitude of everything surrounding us, only to be withheld from us
because the so-called leaders of high finance persisted in clinging to an
outworn theory of privately issued money, the medium through which wealth is
distributed.
I challenged this private control and creation of money because it was alien
to our Constitution, which says "Congress shall have the right to coin and
regulate the value of money." I challenged this system of permitting a small
group of private citizens to create money and credit out of nothing, to
issue it into circulation through loans and to demand that borrowers repay
them with money which represented real goods, real labor and real service. I
advocated that it be replaced by the American system--namely, that the
creation and control of money and credit are the rights of the people
through their democratic government. . . .
No man in modern times received such plaudits from the poor as did Franklin
Roosevelt when he promised to drive the money changers from the temple--the
money changers who had clipped the coins of wages, who had manufactured
spurious money and who had brought proud America to her knees.
March 4, 1933! I shall never forget the inaugural address, which seemed to
re-echo the very words of Christ Himself as He actually drove the money
changers from the temple.
The thrill that was mine was yours. Through dim clouds of the depression
this man Roosevelt was, as it were, a new savior of his people! . . .
Such were our hopes in the springtime of 1933.
My friends, what have we witnessed as the finger of time turned the pages of
the calendar? Nineteen hundred and thirty-three and the National Recovery
Act which multiplied profits for the monopolists; 1934 and the AAA which
raised the price of foodstuffs by throwing back God's best gifts into His
face; 1935 and the Banking Act which rewarded the exploiters of the poor,
the Federal Reserve bankers and their associates, by handing over to them
the temple from which they were to have been cast! . . .
Alas! The temple still remains the private property of the money changers.
The golden key has been handed over to them for safekeeping--the key which
now is fashioned in the shape of a double cross.
===================================
http://www.detnews.com/history/coughlin/excerpt.htm
The following is excerpted from a radio address by Father Coughlin in late
1931 entitled "Rubber Credit Money -- The Int'l Bankers."
On another occasion we find our own State Department intervening and
meddling in the affairs of the Republic of Colombia in behalf of American
interests whose oil concessions in Colombia were at stake.
This is the story: A loan of $20 million had been arranged by the National
City Bank of New York. $16 million had been forwarded. 14 million was being
withheld. Telegrams passed between President Olaya of Colombia and the
National City Bank petitioning for the immediate extension of the remaining
portion of the loan. But not until Colombia signed, sealed and delivered the
Barco oil concession; not until the oil concession bill was modified and
ratified to suit the Gulf oil Company or the Mellon interests was payment of
that $4 million made.
Does this not smell of bribery? But perhaps our Texas and Oklahoma and
mid-western oil farmers think it smells of hellish injustice, because at
this identical moment their own oil wells were closed while foreign oil
products from Lake Maracaibo which were produced with almost slave labor
were being dumped into the United States duty free, thereby creating an
unjust competition.
While this dastardly case was being perpetrated you would think that
something would be done by our Government about it. But we find according to
Senator Johnson, our own controlled State Department submitting information
about the Barco oil concession to the National City Bank, and refusing to
give the same information to the Senate Investigation Committee.
We find such names as the Chase National Bank; Dillon, Reed & Company; the
First National Bank of New York; the Bankers Trust Company; Kuhn, Loeb &
Co.; Halsey, Stuart & Company; White, Weld & Company; E. H. Rollins & Sons;
Lee, Higginson & Company; Ladenburg, Thalmann & Company; the Bank of
America; and the First National Corporation of Boston. These are the twelve
apostles of international banking, associated with these loans of which
Senator Hiram Johnson has said that "the very method used in obtaining them
and in organizing them would put the merest tyro upon inquiry."
"It is utterly inconceivable," continues the Senator, "that international
bankers did not know what the best informed public opinion of Latin America
was fully cognizant of. The bankers simply did not heed the facts. They gave
no thought to the impoverishment of American citizens who trusted them. They
acted, apparently, only for profits. They were perfectly willing by their
loans to maintain dictators in power and to be party to the suppression of
every natural right of citizens of South American republics. Indeed, they
contributed the money in some instances, for the destruction of liberty
itself, and heavy upon them is the responsibility not only for the financial
ruin of a vast number of American citizens but for the destruction of
Personal and political rights in Latin American States."
This is not rhetoric. This is the true story of the most sordid epoch which,
please God, shall ever be enacted in the annals of American history.
In this Senatorial inquiry and investigation documentary proof of the above
statements is filed in our Federal archives. Moreover, the statement that
these loans were made to go hand in hand with concessions like the Barco oil
concession, out of which princely profits could be realized; that sometimes
they were made upon the desire of the bankers merely to lend; that sometimes
they were made simply to obtain securities of unproven value to foist upon
the American public-all this testimony has been given under oath.
Thus the Morgan Company listed gross profits of $10,883,626. Other
International Bankers made smaller profits. While the International Bankers
were profiteering, the loss accrued to our own overconfident countrymen is
now estimated at over $2-billion. A high price for bond buying.
If our credit, and therefore our money, was being dissipated on questionable
foreign bonds, another similar tragedy was being enacted at home.
According to Frank A. Vanderlip, former President of the National City Bank
of New York, approximately $74-billion has been lost by the American public
in local stock investments. He adds that "the laborious savings of an
uncounted number of lifetimes have been swept away."
Of course this inflation of the local stock market had to be engineered if
the International Banker wished to succeed in milking the American cow.
These are only a few facts, my friends, to show you whit has happened to
much of your credit money.
In all, we have accumulated about $200-billion of private debts, many of
them represented in bonds and in stocks, some of which will never be paid
and not one of which in your life time or mine will ever reach the price you
paid for them.
If there is question today of recognizing the fact that our debts must be
controlled or else they will control and destroy us, from whom should we
seek advice?
The International Banker who can buy his way into the financial pages of our
daily press? The International Banker who has been consistently wrong for
the last fourteen years; the International Banker whose sole objective seems
to be in making a profit out of the misery of the American people; the
International Banker who maliciously and unjustly inflated the credit dollar
of our country and now squirms and prates about the inflation of the
currency dollar? He foresees that through the revaluation of the gold ounce
a definite loss will accrue to him although he has been instrumental in many
ways in providing substantial losses to the American investing public. All
investors must suffer save the International Banker who alone must profit.
That is his philosophy. Therefore, he advocates letting nature take its
course until the relation of twelve credit dollars against one gold dollar
is re-established. In other words, like a spider in the web he is waiting
for your farms to depreciate in value even more; waiting for the wages of
the laboring class to be reduced and scaled down; waiting for your homes and
contracts to be confiscated; waiting until the $200-billion are melted at
least in half before he devours the whole for himself.
The American public will never wait for this raw, untamed, un-
merciful nature to take such a course. We have had enough of confiscations.
We have struggled long enough with starvation wages.
We are expecting a readjustment of debt to be made under our news regime. We
are expecting it in a logical, Christian method in order to save what we
have; in order that the wheels of industry may once more turn in prosperity;
in order that the fields may produce their golden grain at a reasonable
profit. We will either reevaluate our gold and thereby cut our debts in half
in order t let business revive and prosperity reappear or else we will be
forced into a policy of repudiation. But for one thing we will no longer
continue to follow the advice of the International Bankers of whom I told
you only a farthing's worth.
The Time for juggling words has cease. The time for saving American homes
and American investments has arrived. Human rights must take precedence over
the barbarous financial rights which have been in vogue in this country for
the last fourteen or more years.
The time has come for cleansing the Augean stables of international banking
houses and for guaranteeing bank deposits without which no confidence can
ever be restored in a system that has operated on the principle, "Heads we
win - Tails you lose."
----------------
Ever hear of Father Coughlin?
http://www.pbs.org/greatspeeches/timeline/c_coughlin_v1.html (real player
required)
Get Coughlin radio speeches:
http://www.old-time.com/sponsors/radiomemories/regular/father_coughlin.html
www.pbs.org/greatspeeches/timeline/c_coughlin_v1.html
======================
Also:
Radio Free America (RealPlayer needed)
http://www.rfausa.com/Audio1/audio1.html
Tom Valentine and guest Dick Eastman discussing:
Bernard Baruch, Master War Profiteer of the 20th-Century : 10/6/02
9-11 Frameup: (with Christopher Bollyn of The American Free Press) 11/25/01
Also: http://www.rfausa.com/ (see lower right of page):
Bernard Baruch Broadcast referenced quotations (Adobe Acrobat needed)
72-page download -- hitherto untold history of 20th-century war profiteering
involving Bernard Baruch, Churchill, Wilson, Roosevelt and others.
----------------
"Two world wars, shame on them.
A third world war, shame on us."
===========
Pentagon Murder Investigation Sites:
www.humanunderground.com
Dick Eastman
(Collected by Lem Clampett, the Philippiness)
Deuteronomy 23:19: "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother;
usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent
upon usury."
Leviticus 25:36-37: "Take thou no usury of him, or increase; but fear
thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him
thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase."
"When the Babylonian civilization collapsed, three percent of the
people owned all the wealth. When old Persia went down to destruction
two percent of the people owned all the wealth. When ancient Greece
went down to ruin one-half of one percent of the people owned all the
wealth. When the Roman empire fell by the wayside, two thousand people
owned the wealth of the civilized world...It is said at this time less
than two percent (2%) of the people control ninety percent of the
wealth of America." -Lincoln
Aristotle on Usury in 350 B.C. wrote:
"The most hated sort of money-making, and with the greatest
reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself and not from
the natural use of it-for money was intended merely for exchange, not
for increase at interest. And this term interest, which implies the
birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money,
because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of
money-making, this is the most unnatural." -The Church and
Usury, by Rev. P. Cleary
Saint Thomas Aquinas:
"He who takes usury for a loan of money acts unjustly for he sells
what does not exist. It is wrong in itself to take a price (usury) for
the use of money lent, and as in the case of other offences against
justice, one is bound to make restitution of his unjustly acquired
money." -The Church and Usury, by Rev. P. Cleary
Benjamin Franklin, 1763:
While visiting England, Benjamin Franklin was asked how he
accounted for the prosperous condition of the Colonies. His reply was:
"That is simple. It is only because in the Colonies we issue our own
money. It is called 'Colonial Scrip' - and we issue it in the proper
proportion to the demands of trade and industry."
Soon that information was brought to the Rothschild's bank which
coerced the English Parliament to pass a Bill providing that no Colony
could issue its own money. Franklin said, "Within one year from that
date the streets of the Colonies were filled with the unemployed."
Franklin later said that this was the original cause of the
Revolutionary War. In his own language: "The Colonies would gladly
have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been
that England took away from the Colonies their money, which created
unemployment and dissatisfaction." -Lightning Over The Treasury
Building, by J.R. Elsom
John Adams 1787:
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise,
not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want
of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the
nature of coin, credit and circulation." -Money - Questions & Answers,
by C. Coughlin
In 1790 Mayer Amschel Rothschild said:
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care
not who makes its laws."
Thomas Jefferson said:
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our
liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money
aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power
(of money) should be taken from the banks, and restored to the people
to whom it belongs."
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the
issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the
banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the
people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on
the continent their fathers conquered. -Lincoln Money Martyred
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the moneyed
corporations, which dare already to challenge our Government to trial
of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -Money -
Questions & Answers, by C. Couglin
Lord Acton, Lord Chief Justice of England in 1875 stated:
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have
to be fought sooner or later is the People vs. the Banks." -
President Andrew Jackson to the bankers who approached him in the
drawing room of the White House:
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am
convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the
breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits
amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell
me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I
shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but
that is your sin! Should I let you go on you will ruin fifty thousand
families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and
thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I
will rout you out!" -Money - Questions & Answers by C. Coughlin
Abraham Lincoln:
"The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and
conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than
monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.
It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw
light upon its crimes." -Famous Quotations on Money, by Sheldon Emry
Editorial in the London Times after "Lincoln Greenbacks" were issued:
"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in the
North American Republic, shall become endurated down to a fixture,
then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will
pay off its debts and be without debt. It will have all the money
necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without
precedent in the history of the world. The brains and the wealth of
all countries will go to North America. That government must be
destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."
The Hazard Circular - published by London bankers, 1863:
"The great debt that the Capitalists will see to it is made out of
the war must be used to control the value of money. To accomplish this
government bonds must be used as a banking basis. We are now waiting
for the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States to make that
recommendation.
"It will not do to allow greenbacks, as they are called, to
circulate as money for any length of time as we cannot control them.
But we can control the bonds and through them the banking issues."
Salmon P. Chase in referring to the National Bank Act of 1862 said:
"My agency in promoting the passage of the National Bank Act was
the greatest financial mistake of my life. It has built up a monopoly,
which affects every interest in the country. It should be repealed,
but before that can be accomplished, the people will be arrayed on one
side and the banks on the other, in a contest such as we have never
before seen in this country." -Famous Quotations on Money, by Sheldon
Emry
Letter to: Messieurs. Iklheimer, Morton and Vandergould, No. 3 Wall
St., New York, U.S.A.:
"Dear Sirs: A Mr. John Sherman has written us from a town in Ohio,
U.S.A., as to the profits that may be made in the National Banking
business under a recent act of your Congress (National Bank Act of
1863), a copy of which act accompanied his letter. Apparently this act
has been drawn upon the plan formulated here last summer by the
British Bankers Association and by that Association recommended to our
American friends as one that if enacted into law, would prove highly
profitable to the banking fraternity throughout the world.
"Mr. Sherman declares that there has never before been such an
opportunity for capitalists to accumulate money, as that presented by
this act and that the old plan, of State Banks is so unpopular, that
the new scheme will, by contrast, be most favorably regarded,
notwithstanding the fact that it gives the National Banks an almost
absolute control of the National finance. 'The few who can understand
the system,' he says 'will either be so interested in its profits, or
so dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that
class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally
incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages that capital
derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint and
perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical (adverse)
to their interests.' Please advise us fully as to this matter and also
state whether or not you will be of assistance to us, if we conclude
to establish a National Bank in the City of New York...Awaiting your
reply, we are
Your respectful servants.
Rothschild Brothers.
London, June 25, 1863"
- Lightning Over The Treasury Building, J.R. Elsom
Henry Ford said:
"The function of money is not to make money but to move goods.
Money is only one part of our transportation system. It moves goods
from man to man. A dollar bill is like a postage stamp: it is no good
unless it will move commodities between persons. If a postage stamp
will not carry a letter, or money will not move goods, it is just the
same as an engine that will not run. Someone will have to get out and
fix it." -Money - Questions & Answers, by C. Coughlin
Hon. Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., on December 23, 1913 stated:
"This Federal Reserve Act establishes the most gigantic trust on
earth. When the President (Wilson) signs this bill the invisible
government of the Monetary Power will be legalized."
-Famous Quotations on Money, by Sheldon Emry
Concerning government bonds issued for a construction project Thomas
Edison said:
"People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project,
nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the
United States than will the people who supply all the material and do
all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest.
"In all great bond issues the interest is always greater than the
principal. All the great public works cost more than twice as much on
that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add
from 120% to 150% to the stated cost.
"But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it
is capable of issuing a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond
good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the
bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount
of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest
sort provided by the Constitution, pays nobody but those who
contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our country can
issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay but
one fattens the usurer and the other helps the people.
"If the currency issued by the people were no good, then the bonds
would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the
Government, to insure the National wealth, must go in debt and submit
to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the
fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan."
-Lightning Over The Treasury Building, by J.R. Elsom
Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England, in an informal
talk to 150 University of Texas students in the 1920's said:
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin...Bankers own
the world. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create
money...and with the flick of a pen, they will create enough money to
buy it back again...Take this great power away from bankers, and all
great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear,
because this would then be a better and happier world to live in...But
if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers, and pay the cost
of your own slavery, let them continue to create (your) money."
-"Bankonomics" in One Easy Lesson, by Peter Cook
In 1933 Congressman Louis T. McFadden wrote:
"Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board (FED) to
conceal its powers, but the truth is-the FED has usurped the
government. It controls everything here (in Congress) and it controls
all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will."
-Billions for the Bankers, by Sheldon Emry
Robert Hemphill, for 8 years credit manager of the Federal Reserve
Bank of Atlanta said:
"If all bank loans were paid, no one would have a bank deposit,
and there would not be a dollar of currency in circulation. This is a
staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial
banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash
or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are
prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent
monetary system. When one gets a complete grasp upon the picture, the
tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible-but
there it is. It (the banking problem) is the most important subject
intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so
important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is
widely understood and the defects remedied very soon." -Famous
Quotations on Money, by Sheldon Emry
Emanuel Josephson stated in the Rockefeller Internationalist:
"They (the Rockefellers) control most of the important newspapers,
magazines, and book publishing houses in the country, including the
Curtis Publications, the Hearst Publications, Time, the New York
Times, the Associated Press and many others." -The Elements of
Economics, by J.L. Carmichael
John Moody wrote:
"Seven men on Wall Street now control a great share of the
fundamental industry and resources of the United States. Three of the
seven men, J.P. Morgan, James J. Hill, George F. Baker, head of the
First National Bank of New York belong to the so-called Morgan group;
four of them, John D. and William Rockefeller, James Stillman, head of
the National City Bank, and Jacob H. Schiff on the private banking
firm of Kuhn, Loeb Company, to the so-called Standard Oil City Bank
group...the central machine of capital extends its control over the
United States...The process is not only economically logical; it is
now practically automatic." -Secrets of the Federal Reserve, by
Eustace Mullins
The Banker's Manifest, 1934:
"Capital must protect itself in every way, through combination and
through legislation. Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages
foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the
common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and
more easily governed by the strong arm of the law, applied by the
central power of wealth, under control of leading financiers. People
without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known
among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of
capital to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to
expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to
us except as teachers of the common herd"
Nobel Prize Winner - Frederick Soddy:
"The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the
capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting
with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into
their debt irredeemably, by a trick.
"This money comes into existence every time the banks "lend" and
disappears every time the debt is repaid to them. So that if industry
tries to repay, the money of the nation disappears. This is what makes
prosperity so "dangerous' as it destroys money just when it is most
needed, and precipitates a slump.
"There is nothing left now for us but to ever get deeper and
deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the
increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and
growth.
"An honest money system is the only alternative." -Lightning Over
The Treasury Building, by J.R. Elsom
Andrae Nordskog:
"In February, 1850, our State of California issued bonds in the
sum of $943.40 to pay for a granite slab to be placed at the 120 foot
level inside of Washington's Monument on the grounds of our National
Capitol.
"Our Golden State issued short term bonds bearing interest at the
rate of 36% annually. In 1873 new bonds, in the amount of
$2,277,500.00 were issued to retire the original bonds. Since that
time the State has paid over $10,000,000 in interest but not one cent
on the principal." -We Bankers, by Andrae Nordskog
John R. Elsom, 1941:
"Since the people have either lost the heart to borrow from the
Banks, or their collateral has already been taken over by the Banks -
the latter being primarily the case - and therefore can no longer
borrow, in order to get money into circulation the Government must do
the borrowing in lieu of the people." -Lightning Over The Treasury
Building, by J.R. Elsom
Summer H. Slichter (Professor Business Economics at Harvard):
"The principal way in which dollars are created is by borrowing.
This means that the number of dollars in existence at any particular
time depends upon the ability and willingness of the banks to lend.
The volume of purchasing power fluctuates with the state of men's
minds; the growth of pessimism may suddenly throw millions of men out
of work (because of the lack of currency), or the growth of confidence
may create thousands of job overnight (because of sufficient
currency)." –
Lightning Over The Treasury Building, by J.R. Elsom
"Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it
matters not who makes the nations laws. Usury, once in control, will
wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and
credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred
responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of
democracy is idle and futile."
- William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, 1935
"Most men, even without being consciously dishonest or wilfully
stupid, seem to be unable to examine heterodox views with
understanding and impartiality.
The inertia of tradition and the lack of courage to defy it when new
evidence fails to conform to it, seems to be potent enough to blind
all, except the ablest and most fearless of men, to the most patent
facts."
Winston Churchill's Proposals
Winston Churchill, in his Romanes Lecture at Oxford University in
1930, laid a logical foundation for approaching these problems, with a
view to their ultimate solution, We quote the following extracts from
that notable address:-
"Direct taxation has risen to heights never dreamed of by the old
economists and statesmen, and at these heights has set up many
far-reaching reactions of an infrugal and even vicious character. We
are in the presence of new forces not existing when the textbooks were
written . . .
"Beyond our immediate difficulty lies the root problem of modern world
economics; namely, the strange discordance between the consuming and
producing power ...
"If the doctrines of the old economists no longer serve for the
purposes of our society, they must be replaced by a new body of
doctrine equally well-related in itself, and equally well-fitting into
a general plan . . .
"Have all our triumphs of research and organisation bequeathed us only
a new punishment-the Curse of Plenty? Are we really to believe that
no better adjustment can be made between supply and demand? Yet the
fact remains that every attempt has so far failed.
"Many various attempts have been made, from the extremes of Communism
in Russia to the extremes of Capitalism in the United States. But all
have failed, and we have advanced little further in this quest than in
barbaric times.
"Surely it is this mysterious crack and fissure at the basis of all
our arrangements and apparatus upon which the keenest minds throughout
the world should be concentrated.
"It would seem, therefore," Churchill went on, "that if new light is
to be thrown upon this gave and clamant problem, it must in the first
instance receive examination from a non-political body, free
altogether from party exigencies, and composed of persons possessing
special qualifications in economic matters.
"Parliament would, therefore, be well advised to create such a body
subordinate to itself, and assist its deliberations to the utmost. The
spectacle of an Economic sub-Parliament debating day after day with
fearless detachment from public opinion all the most disputed
questions of Finance and Trade, and reaching conclusions by voting,
would be an innovation easily to be embraced by our flexible
constitutional system.
"I see no reason why the political Parliament should not choose in
proportion to its party groupings a subordinate Economic Parliament of
say one-fifth of its numbers, and composed of persons of high
technical and business qualifications."
The Banks "Gift from Pandora"
Garet Garret, regarded as "the clearest expositor of economics in the
United States", makes these interesting remarks about that magic
abstraction, bank credit, in his book, "The Bubble that Broke the
World":-
"Of all the discoveries and inventions by which we live and die, this
totally improbable helix of credit is the most cunning, the most
liable, the least comprehended, and next to high explosives, the most
dangerous, AND that the bankers themselves really know about it is how
it works from day to day. Beyond that, it is a gift from Pandora."
Phillip A. Benson, president of the American Bankers' Association, in
a speech at Milwaukee, on June 8, 1939, quoted in the "New York Times"
of June 11, 1939, said:-
"There is no more direct way to capture control of a nation than
through its credit system."
W. E. Gladstone once stated:---
"From the time I took office as Chancellor (December, 1852) 1 began to
learn that the State held, in the face of the Bank and the City, an
essentially false position as to finance. The hinge of the whole
situation was this: The Government itself was not to be a substantive
power in matters of finance, but was to leave the Money Power supreme
and unquestioned. In the conditions of that situation I was reluctant
to acquiesce, and I began to fight against it by financial
self-assertion from the first. I was tenaciously opposed by the
Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank (of England), who had seats
in Parliament; I had the City for an antagonist on almost every
occasion."
(The term "the city" in London refers to the banking and financial
institutions, and the quotation is from Morley's "Life of Gladstone".)
With one or two notable exceptions, the Church has maintained a
sepulchral silence on the subject of financial policy, averting its
eyes heavenward in the presence of a stupendous temporal problem. The
two exceptions were Archbishop Le Fanu, Anglican Primate of Australia
during the Depression. He spoke out frequently and courageously
against a financial policy so heavily freighted with the social evils
of anti-Christ.
Anglican Primate of Australia (Archbishop Lefanu) in October, 1935,
said:-
"Every man in the community is heir to all the inventions and
scientific knowledge which have made this easier life possible, and
yet the enhanced values and opportunities of life are not shared as
they should be.
"Our present financial system is not doing its job. The fundamental
Christian objection to the existing capitalistic system and to the
bankers' control of money, from which it seems inseparable, is that it
holds persons in serfdom to the exigencies of financial policy."
Pope Pius XI in the Encyclical "Quadragesimo Anno" wrote:-
"It is patent that in our days not alone is wealth accumulated, but
immense power and despotic economic domination is concentrated in the
hands of a few . . .
"This power becomes particularly irresistible when exercised by those
who, because they hold and control money, are able also to govern
credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying so to
speak the lifeblood to the entire economic body, and grasping, as it
were, in their hands the very soul of production, so that no one dare
breathe against their will."
Revealing Statement by NZ Bank Chairman
In the higher realms of banking, however, there is no doubt that most
of the V.I.P.'s know the facts. This was admitted by Mr. H. W. Whyte,
Chairman of the Associated Banks of New Zealand, in his evidence
before the New Zealand Royal Commission in 1955. He admitted, quite
frankly, that banks create credit when making loans and advances, and
he added:-
"They have been doing it for a long time, but they didn't quite
realise it, and they did not admit it. Very few did. You will find
it in all sorts of documents, financial textbooks, etc. But in the
intervening years, and we must all be perfectly frank about these
things, there has been a development of thought, until today I doubt
very much whether you would get many prominent bankers to attempt to
deny that banks create credit. I have told you that they do; Mr.
Ashwin (Secretary to the Treasury) has told you that they do; Mr.
Fussell (Governor of the Reserve Bank) has told you that they do.
"But twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago you would not have found
many people who would have said that. They didn't quite appreciate
they did that.
"The system has not changed very much; it is the system that stands
today, not very much different from what it was forty, fifty years
ago, but there has been a development of thought."
Further, in reply to Dr. Mazengarb, Q.C., who submitted to the
commission a series of monetary reform proposals on behalf of H. J.
Kelliher, one-time director of the Bank of New Zealand, Mr. Whyte,
reiterated the point: "There is no secret about banking; there is no
secret about banks creating money; there has been a development of
thought in the matter."
A Bank Governor's Frank Admissions
Some of the most frank evidence on banking practices was given by Mr.
Graham Towers, Governor of the Central Bank of Canada, before the
Canadian Government's Committee on Banking and Commerce.
During the 1939 session this Committee confined its proceedings to an
examination respecting the Bank of Canada. The witness for the Bank,
subject to cross examination, was Mr. Graham F. Towers, its Governor.
The Committee held thirty sittings and its proceedings cover 850
pages, so that to bring out the important points necessitates drastic
condensation. We have endeavoured to do this fairly, and in each case
we give the page number of the proceedings so that reference can be
made to the context.
Bear in mind that the following statements made or agreed to by Mr.
Towers are those of the Governor of the government-owned central bank
of Canada.
(The following extracts are from the Minutes of Proceedings and
Evidence Respecting the Bank of Canada, Committee on Banking and
Commerce, 1939. Government Printing Bureau, Ottawa):-
Question: "But there is no question about it that banks create the
medium of exchange?"
Towers: "That is right. That is what they are for . . . That is the
Banking business, just in the same way that a steel plant makes
steel." (P. 287)
"The manufacturing process consists of making a pen-and-ink or
typewritten entry on a card or in a book. That is all." (Pp. 76 and
238)
"Each and every time a bank makes a loan (or purchases securities),
new bank credit is created-new deposits--brand new money." (Pp. 113
and 238)
"Broadly speaking, all new money comes out of a Bank in the form of
loans." (P. 461)
"As loans are debts, then under the present system all money is debt."
(P. 459)
Mr. Towers continued: "A government can find money in three ways: by
taxation, or they might find it by borrowing the savings of the
people, or they might find it by action which is allied with an
expansive monetary policy, that is borrowing which creates additional
money in the process." (P. 29)
Q.: A banker can purchase a federal government bond by accepting from
the government, we will say a bond for $1,000 and giving to the
government a deposit in the bank of $1,000?
Mr. Towers: Yes.
Q.: ... what the government receives is a credit entry in the banker's
book showing the banker as a creditor to the government to the extent
of $1,000?
Mr. Towers: Yes.
Q.: And in law all that the bank has to hold in the way of cash to
issue that deposit liability is 5 per cent?
Mr. Towers: Yes. (P. 76)
Q.: Ninety-five per cent of all our volume of business is being done
with what we call exchange of bank deposits-that is simply bookkeeping
entries in banks against which people write cheques?
Mr. Towers: I think that is a fair statement. (P. 223)
Q.: . . . the need of a currency gold reserve was today largely
psychological so far as domestic currency was concerned?
Mr. Towers: As far as domestic currency was concerned; yes.
Q.: But if the issue of currency and money is a high prerogative of
government, then that HIGH PREROGATIVE HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED TO THE
EXTENT OF 88 PER CENT FROM THE GOVERNMENT TO THE MERCHANT BANKING
SYSTEM?
Mr. Towers: YES. (P. 286).
Creating New Money
Q.: When a $1,000,000 worth of bonds is presented (by the government)
to the bank, a million dollars of new money or the equivalent is
created?
Mr. Towers: Yes.
Q.: It IS a fact that a million dollars of new money is created?
Mr. Towers: That is right. (P. 238)
Q.: Now, as a matter of fact, today our gold is purchased by the Bank
of Canada with notes which it issues -not redeemable in gold-in effect
using printing press money ... to purchase gold?
Mr. Towers: That is the practice all over the world ... (P. 283)
Q.: When you allow the merchant banking system to issue bank
deposits-with the practice of using cheques -you virtually allow the
banks to issue an effective substitute for money, do you not?
Mr. Towers: The bank deposits are actually money in that sense.
Q.: . . . as a matter of fact they are not actual money but credit,
bookkeeping accounts, which are used as a substitute for money?
Mr. Towers: Yes.
Q.: Then we authorize the banks to issue a substitute for money?
Mr. Towers: Yes, I think that is a very fair statement of banking. (P.
285)
Q.: Will you tell me why a government with power to create money
should give that power away to a private monopoly and then borrow that
which parliament can create itself, back at interest, to the point of
national bankruptcy?
Mr. Towers: ... we realize, of course, that the amount which is paid
provides part of the operating costs of the banks and some interest on
deposits. Now, if parliament wants to change the form of operating
the banking system, then certainly that is within the power of
parliament. (P. 394)
Mr. Towers: The banks cannot, of course, loan the money of their
depositors. (P. 455)
Q.: You have agreed that banks do create money.
Mr. Towers: They, by their activities in making loans and investments,
create liabilities for themselves. They create liabilities in the
form of deposits.
Q.: You will agree with the statement that has been made that banks
lend by creating the means of payment.
Mr. Towers: Yes.
Q.: So that with the increase of 500 million of bank deposit
money (from 1934 to 1938) we have not had any inflationary result?
Mr. Towers: We have not. The circumstances of the time have not
encouraged it. (P. 643)
Q.: . . . so far as war is concerned, to defend the integrity of
the nation there will be no difficulty in raising the means of
financing whatever those requirements may be?
Mr. Towers: The limit of the possibilities depends on men and
materials.
Q.: ... and where you have an abundance of men and materials you
have no difficulty, under our present banking system, in puffing forth
the medium of exchange that is necessary to put the men and materials
to work in defence of the realm?
Mr. Towers: That is right.
Q.: Well, then, why is it, where we have a problem of internal
deterioration, that we cannot use the same technique . . . in any
event you will agree with me on this, that so long as the investment
of public funds is confined to something that improves the economic
life of the nation, that will not of itself produce inflationary
conditions?
Mr. Towers: Yes, I agree with that, but I shall make one further
qualification, that the investments thus made shall be at least as
productive as some alternative uses to which the money would otherwise
have been put. (P. 649)
Q.: Would you admit that anything physically possible and
desirable can be made financially possible?
Mr. Towers: Certainly. (P. 771)
The Australian Royal Commission into the Monetary and Banking system
of Australia made its report in 1937.
After nearly two years of exhaustive inquiry the Commission, in its
report, was obliged to admit that the Commonwealth Bank (now the
Reserve Bank) possessed all the power necessary to finance all
Governmental needs.
Section 504, of the Commission's Report, headed "Creation of Credit",
reads:-
Because of this power, the Commonwealth Bank is able to increase the
cash of the trading banks in the ways we have pointed out above.
"Because of this power, too, the Commonwealth Bank can increase the
cash reserves of the trading banks; for example, it can buy securities
and other property, it can lend to the Governments or to others in a
variety of ways, and it can even make money available to the
Governments and to others free of any charge . . . "
As this last clause has led to a good deal of controversy as to its
exact meaning, Mr. Justice Napier, Chairman of the Commission, was
asked to interpret it, and his reply, received through the Secretary
of the Commission (Mr. Harris) was as follows:-
"This statement means that the Commonwealth Bank can make money
available to Governments or to others on such terms as it chooses,
even by way of a loan without interest, OR EVEN WITHOUT REQUIRING
EITHER INTEREST OR REPAYMENT OF PRINCIPAL."
Thus the Commonwealth Government was given the happy alternative of
obtaining all its loan requirements without recourse to borrowing from
the banks on Treasury Bill security, and so involving the nation in
additional national debt, and the people in more onerous tax burdens.
BUT IT DIDN'T TAKE IT.
Professor Soddy, the eminent physicist, of Oxford University, wrote:-
"Is it possible in these days of disbelief in physical miracles really
to caricature institutions which pretend to lend money, and do not
lend it, but create it? And when it is repaid them, de-create it?
And who have achieved the physically impossible miracle thereby, not
only of getting something for nothing, but also of getting perennial
interest from it?"
Professor H. Kniffer, in American Banking Practice, also testifies to
this fact:-
"The percentage of cash to credit necessary for a bank to hold,
demonstrated over a period of years, is 21 per cent, with 72.5 per
cent as a reserve with other banks."
[This approximates to the practice in Australia where the trading
banks hold a small percentage of cash for legal tender purpose, with a
further deposit at the Reserve Bank of Australia.]
There is only One Restraint on Lending
The July, 1938, issue of "Branch Banking", an English Bankers'
Journal, stated:-
"There is no more unprofitable subject under the sun than to argue any
banking or credit points, since there are enough substantial
quotations in existence to prove to the initiated that banks do create
credit without restraint."
There is just one restraint. "Sound banking practice" limits the
creation of credit.
From Chamber's Encyclopaedia (1950), vol. 2, page 99, under the
heading of Banking and Credit:-
"It is a fact that bank deposits are used as money, which provides the
basis for the statement that 'Bank loans create deposits.' The
creation takes place when the value of the loan is credited to the
customer's account, or, if a different practice is followed, when one
customer's overdraft becomes another customer's deposit."
Davenport's "Economics of Enterprise" states: "Banks do not lend their
deposits, but by expansion of credits, create deposits."
"Banking is Little More Than Book-keeping"
The late Sir Edward Holden, an eminent British banker, said:-
"Banking is little more than book-keeping. It is a transfer of credit
from one person to another. The transfer is by cheque. Cheques are'
currency (not legal tender). Currency is money."
The Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna, one-time Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and Chairman of the Midland Bank, addressing a meeting of the
shareholders of the Bank on January 25, 1924, said this (and it is
recorded in his book "Post-War Banking"):-
"I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the
banks can, and do, create and destroy money. The amount of money in
existence varies only with the action of the banks in increasing or
decreasing deposits and bank purchases. We know how this is effected.
Every loan, overdraft or bank purchase creates a deposit, and every
repayment of a loan, overdraft or bank sale destroys a deposit."
H. D. McLeod, in his "Elements of Banking", states:-
Remember what the Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna, onetime Chairman of the
Midland Bank, said: "Every loan, overdraft, or bank purchase creates a
deposit, and every repayment of a loan, overdraft or bank sale,
destroys a deposit." That is what is meant by the cancellation of
credit.
J. M. Keynes, a very frank and refreshing economist, who later became
Baron Keynes, Governor of the Bank of England, once pointed out that
all the banks' own cheques are passed through the exchanges, where the
debits and credits of each bank are worked out.
If the banks work in harmony with each other (as they do), they can
meet their own requirements, and acquire assets, at no real cost to
themselves.
As Hawtrey, one-time Under-Secretary to the British Treasury, observed
in his "Art of Central Banking":
Other lenders have not this mystic power of creating the means of
payment out of nothing."
"When it is said that a great London Joint Stock Bank has perhaps
$50,000,000 of deposits, it is almost universally believed that it had
$50,000,000 of actual money to 'lend out' as it is erroneously called
... It is a complete and entire delusion. These 'deposits' are not
deposits in cash at all . . . They are nothing but an enormous
superstructure of credit."
Hartley Withers, in his book, "International Finance," said:-
"A credit in the Bank of England's books is regarded by the financial
community as 'cash', and this pleasant fiction has given the Bank the
power of creating cash by a stroke of the pen and to any extent that
it pleases, subject only to its own view as to what is prudent and
sound business." (Page 31).
"It may sometimes happen that the borrowers may require the use of
actual currency, and in that case part of the advances made will be
taken out in the form of notes, but as a general rule the Bank is able
to perform its function of providing emergency credit by merely making
entries in its books." (Page 32).
Professor Heinz Wolfgang Arndt, Professor of Economics at the National
University, Canberra, writing on Banking in "The New International
Illustrated Encyclopaedia," Vol. 1, page 321, said:-
The other important function, which is exclusive to the banking
system, is to create the community's money supply, and to administer
the monetary system. The two functions are intimately connected since
modern money is created by banks in the process of granting credit."
[Note: To create means to produce out of nothing.]
Lord Keynes, the economist, and war-time Governor of the Bank of
England, states: "There can be no doubt that all deposits are created
by the banks."
Mr. R. G. Hawtrey, previously Assistant Undersecretary to the British
Treasury, in his "Trade Depression and the Way Out," says: "When a
bank lends it creates money out of nothing."
In his book, "The Art of Central Banking," Hawtrey also wrote:-
"When a bank lends, it creates credit. Against the advance which it
enters amongst its assets, there is a deposit entered in its
liabilities. But other lenders have not this mystical power of
creating the means of payment out of nothing. What they lend must be
money that they have acquired through their economic activities."
The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th Edition, under the beading of
Banking and Credit (vol. 3, page 48):--"Banks create credit. It is a
mistake to suppose that bank credit is created to any important extent
by the payment of money into the banks. The bank's debt is a means of
payment, it is credit money. It is a clear addition to the amount of
the means of payment in the community."
Governor Eccles, one-time head of the Federal Reserve Bank Board of
the United States, said:-
"The banks can create and destroy money. Bank credit is money. It's
the money we do most of our business with. not with that currency
which we usually think of as money."-(Given in evidence before a
Congressional Committee).
The borrower can only be,
a servant to the lender, see?
There is no economic nor mathematical reason for "interest" to be
charged on money loaned, only greed.
Banking should only and always be,
a service to the community.
"The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency
and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and
the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles,
the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease
to be master and become the servant of humanity."
Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
Despite warnings, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 U.S.
Federal Reserve Act. A few years later he wrote: "I am a most unhappy
man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation
is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is
concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our
activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of
the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated
governments in the civilized world, no longer a government by free
opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the
majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group
of dominant men."
Woodrow Wilson, 28th US President.
"I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the
banks can, and do, create and destroy money. The amount of money in
existence varies only with the action of the banks in increasing or
decreasing deposits and bank purchases."
The Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna, one‑time Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and Chairman of the Midland Bank, (recorded in his book
‘Post‑War Banking').
"The other important function which is exclusive to the banking
system, is to create the community's money supply, and to administer
the monetary system. The two functions are intimately connected since
modern money is created by banks in the process of granting credit."
(Note: To create means to produce out of nothing.)
Professor Heinz Wolfgang Arndt, Professor of Economics at the National
University, Canberra, writing on Banking in The New International
Illustrated Encyclopaedia,' (Vol. 1, page 321)
"The process of creation of money by banks is still commonly described
as involving the ‘deposit of money by customers with banks' which can
then lend out more money they have' because some of the money they
have lent out ‘comes back to them as deposits,' Nowadays, it is a
mischievous and very misleading description. It is misleading because
it wrongly suggests;
(a) that notes and coin are, but deposits are not, money;
(b) that banks merely borrow and lend money created by someone else;
and
(c) that deposits come into existence primarily through bank customers
paying in notes and coin, and only secondarily through bank lending."
H. W. Arndt and C. P. Harris, in their textbook "The Australian
Trading Banks", clarify this further in a special appendix, "The
Creation of Money":
"Any given piece of expenditure can be financed from one of four
sources (or a combination of these sources)
(a) new savings;
(b) accumulated reserves;
(c) money borrowed, other than a bank;
(d) money borrowed from a bank.
"The last source differs from the first three because when money is
lent by a bank it passes
into the hands of the person who borrows it without anybody having
less. Whenever a bank lends money there is, therefore, an increase in
the total amount of money available."
The former Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, and economic
adviser to every Australian Prime Minister from the 1940's until his
death in the mid 90's, Dr. H. C. Coombs, in the "E. S. & A. Research
Address" at Queensland University on September 15, 1954.
"Today in Australia, as in most other modem economics, all money is a
debt of the banking system. When a banker grants a customer credit by
overdraft, the bank ‘opens an account' in its books and gives the
client the right to draw funds without first having to put money into
the account. But bank deposits only increase when the customer
actually draws on the account to pay his creditors. In the case of
loans, funds are deposited directly to the customer's credit and
results in an immediate increase in the volume of money. In either
case the money supply increases as a result of the bank's lending
activities. As long as the debt remains outstanding the community's
quantity of money is increased."
An extract from the article, ‘Sources of Money,' in the Bank of New
South Wales Review, October 1978.
"Whatever the Australian people can intelligently conceive in their
minds and will loyally support, that can be done."
Sir Denison Miller, First Governor of the Commonwealth Bank, on the
7th July 1921, in response to a question at a press conference asking
if he could issue credit free of usury in peace time, (as he had
during the First World War) for construction of public projects.
"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute
master of all industry and commerce."
James A. Garfield, 20th US President.
"In 1911 the Commonwealth Bank was established, not as a central bank
to manage credit for the benefit of the community, but to compete with
the private profit-making banks "whose gradual extinction, would
follow as a matter of course."
A.G.L. Shaw, senior lecturer in History, University of Sydney. The
Economic Development of Australia (Longmans 1944).
"History records that the money changers have used every form of
abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their
control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."
James Madison, 4th US President.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."
Thomas Jefferson, (Letter to Elbridge Gerry, Jan. 26, 1779).
"This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the
commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in
circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic
money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without
a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the
picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost
incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject
intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so
important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes
widely understood and the defects remedied very soon."
Robert H. Hemphill, (Credit Manager of Federal Reserve Bank, Atlanta,
Ga., USA):
"To take usury is contrary to Scripture; it is contrary to Aristotle;
it is contrary to nature, for it is to live without labour. It is to
sell time, which belongs to God, for the advantage of wicked men. It
is to rob those who use the money lent, and to whom, since they make
it profitable, the profits should belong. It is unjust in itself, for
the benefit of the loan to the borrower cannot exceed the value of the
principal sum lent him; it is in defiance of sound juristic
principles, for when a loan of money is made, the property in the
thing lent passes to the borrower, and why should the creditor demand
payment from a man who is merely using what is now his own?"
R. H. Tawney, wrote in ‘Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.'
"There is no more unprofitable subject under the sun than to argue any
banking or credit points, since there are enough substantial
quotations in existence to prove to the initiated that banks do create
credit without restraint."
The July, 1938, issue of ‘Branch Banking', an English Bankers'
Journal.
"People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project (Muscle
Shoals Dam) nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more
money from the United States than will the people who supply all the
material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about
interest...But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar
bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good
makes the bill good also.
The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets
the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an
additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the
Constitution, pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way.
It is absurd to say our country can issue bonds and cannot issue
currency.
Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other
helps the people. If the currency issued by the people were no good,
then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation
when the government, to insure the national wealth, must go in debt
and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control
the fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan."
Thomas A. Edison.
"Banking is little more than book-keeping. It is a transfer of credit
from one person to another. The transfer is by cheque. Cheques are
currency (not legal tender). Currency is money."
The late Sir Edward Holden, an eminent British banker.
"When a bank lends, it creates credit. Against the advance, which it
enters amongst its assets, there is a deposit entered in its
liabilities. (This is ‘double-entry' book-keeping.) But other lenders
have not this mystical power of creating the means of payment out of
nothing. What they lend must be money that they have acquired through
their economic activities."
From his book, "The Art of Central Banking", by Mr. R. G. Hawtrey.
"When a bank lends it creates money out of nothing."
Mr. R. G. Hawtrey, previously Assistant Under‑Secretary to the
British Treasury, in his "Trade Depression and the Way Out."
"The banks create and destroy money. Bank credit is money. It's the
money we do most of our business with, not with that currency which we
usually think of as money. (Given in evidence before a Congressional
Committee).
Governor Eccles, one‑time head of the Federal Reserve Bank Board
of the United States.
"It is a fact that bank deposits are used as money, which provides the
basis for the statement that ‘Bank loans create deposits.' The
creation takes place when the value of the loan is credited to the
customer's account, or, if a different practice is followed, when one
customer's overdraft becomes another customer's deposit."
From Chamber's Encyclopaedia (1950, Vol. 2, page 99) under the heading
of "Banking and Credit."
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue
of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks
will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up
homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power
should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it
properly belongs."
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President.
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. The Bankers own
the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create
deposits, and with the flick of the pen they create enough deposits to
buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great
fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for
this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish
to remain the slaves of the Bankers and pay the cost of your own
slavery, let them continue to create deposits."
Sir Josiah Stamp
(Chairman of the Bank of England in the 1920's, and then the second
richest man in Britain)
"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency
and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and
the buying power of the consumers. By the adoption of these
principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest.
Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity."
~Abraham Lincoln~
President Andrew Jackson stated in reference to the bankers at the
state of his administration:
"You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by
the Eternal God, I will rout you out."
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, people can
change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without
bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and
not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight
with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.
There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no
hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as
slaves." Winston Churchill-- On the eve of Britain's entry into World
War II.
"Men stumble over the truth from time to time but most pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."
Winston Churchill.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil" 1 Timothy 6:10
"The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out
of nothing."
William Patterson, Founder of the Bank of England -1694
The Global MONEY Vampires are in control of the finances of most of
the world. Here are some statements of those who, past and present,
have been aware of that control:
GEORGE W. MALLONE, U.S. Senator (Nevada), speaking before Congress in
1957, alluded to the families that secretly own the "Federal" Reserve
Bank and control the finances of the U.S. He stated:
"I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what
Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on
Washington; they would not wait for an election... It adds up to a
preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of
the United States!"
THOMAS JEFFERSON, U.S. President: "I believe that banking institutions
are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they
have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at
defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and
restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."
JAMES A. GARFIELD, U.S. President: "Whoever controls the volume of
money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce."
HENRY FORD, Founder of Ford Motor Company, commented on the privately
owned "Federal" Reserve System scam: "It is well enough that people of
the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if
they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow
morning."
LEWIS MCFADDIN, U.S. Congressman, said this about those same
international financial conspirators, during the very time they were
taking over the monetary control of America: "We have in this country
one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer
to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks,
hereinafter called the FED. They are not government institutions. They
are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United
States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers..."
AMERICAN MERCURY MAGAZINE, December 1957, pg. 92. "The invisible Money
Power is working to control and enslave mankind. It financed
Communism, Facism, Marxism, Zionism and Socialism. All of these are
directed to making the United States a member of World Government..."
(With very little study one can easily prove the above is 100%
correct)
MAYER AMSCHEL BAUER, (alias Rothschild/Head Bloodsucker) The Godfather
of the Rothschild Banking Cartel of Europe stated, "Give me control of
a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws."
(Our Congress gave him and fellow international Bankers complete
control of the U.S. monetary system through passage of the "Federal
Reserve Act, the Income Tax Act, and the 17th Amendment in 1913.)
ROTHSCHILD BROTHERS OF LONDON. In a letter discussing their new
banking scheme with fellow conspirators, June 25, 1863, they stated:
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in
its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no
opposition from that class. The great body of people, mentally
incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages will bear its
burden without complaint".
(This was long before their takeover of the U.S. banking system).
RUSSELL MUNK, Assistant General Counsel, Dept. of the Treasury, in a
1977 letter admitted: "Federal Reserve Notes Are Not Dollars."
(Then what is that paper stuff in your wallet?)???
ONE LAST WORD ON THE MONEY VAMPIRES: Do we wonder why so many
Americans are being sucked dry and are losing their homes, farms and
businesses each week? Is it just "cyclical (temporary) economic
downturn" as the Establishment "Experts" and controlled media tell us?
That is a fabrication to the 10th power. If any Officer doubts this
after reading the preceding statements by the money parasites, it
would be wise to consider this secret communiqué circulated among the
leading U.S. Bankers only, way back in 1934, entitled,
THE BANKERS' MANIFESTO
"Capital must protect itself in every way ...Debts must be collected
and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a
process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be
more tractable and more easily governed by the STRONG ARM OF THE LAW
(Cops) applied by the central power of leading financiers. People
without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known
among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of
capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them
to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance
to us except as TEACHERS OF THE COMMON HERD." (Taken from the Civil
Servants' Year Book, "The Organizer" January 1934.)
When, fellow "Strong-Arms-of-the-Law", Americans are now losing 4,000
homes, 2,000 farms, 2,500 businesses per week to the Money Vampires
who made the prior statement. Is it just a coincidence? How many
homes, businesses and farms have you helped to take away from good
Americans for the IRS/Banksters? For those Officers who still do not
know it, "YES, THE IRS IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE WORLD ORDER PLAN TO
DIVEST AMERICANS OF THEIR WEALTH, AND MAKE THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES PAY
FOR THEIR OWN NATIONAL DESTRUCTION."
"Any uncontrolled standard of exchange to compete with his official
monopoly of interest-bearing usury 'money'. In essence, this means
that every time you spend a Federal Reserve Note you are making a very
profound expression of faith that the central banker is a kind of
'god' who can create value out of absolutely nothing because this is
his 'holy' privilege. Not only that, but you also become perpetually,
irreversibly indebted to him, as a form of 'worship', for his creating
of the 'money' by the usury that he charges you for this 'service'
(e.g., the U.S. 6 trillion dollar debt). This is capitalism."
[Anonymous]
"There is a large class of people who believe that paper can be, and
ought to be, made into money without any promise or hope of
redemption; that a note should be printed: "This is a dollar," and be
made a legal tender. I regard this as a mild form of lunacy, and have
no disposition to debate with men who indulge in such delusions, which
have prevailed to some extent, at different times, in all countries,
but whose life has been brief, and which have shared the fate of other
popular delusions. The Supreme Court only maintained the
constitutionality of the legal tender promise to pay a dollar by a
divided court, and on the ground that it was issued in the nature of a
forced loan, to be redeemed upon the payment of a real dollar; that
is, so many grains of silver or gold. I therefore dismiss such wild
theories, and speak only to those who are willing to assume, as an
axiom, that gold and silver or coined money, have been proven by all
human experience to be the best possible standards of value, and that
paper money is simply a promise to pay such coined money, and should
be made and kept equal to coined money, by being convertible on
demand."
- Secretary of Treasury John Sherman, 1877
"I am firmly of the opinion that there never was a paper pound, a
paper dollar, or a paper promise of any kind, that ever yet obtained a
general currency (as money) but by force or fraud, generally by both."
- John Adams
"If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall
surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash."
- George Washington
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue
of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, (i.e., the
"business cycle") the banks and corporations that will grow up around
them will deprive the people of all property until their children
wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Examining the organization and function of the Federal Reserve Banks
and applying the relevant factors, we conclude that the Federal
Reserve Banks are not Federal instrumentalities...but are independent
and privately owned and controlled corporations...Federal Reserve
Banks are listed neither as 'wholly owned' government corporations
[under 31 U.S.C. Section 846] nor as 'mixed ownership' corporations
[under 31 U.S.C. Section 856]...It is evident from the legislative
history of the Federal Reserve Act that Congress did not intend to
give the Federal government direction over the daily operation of the
Reserve Banks...The fact that the Federal Reserve Board regulates the
Reserve Banks does not make them Federal agencies under the
Act...Unlike typical Federal agencies, each bank is empowered to hire
and fire employees at will. Bank employees do not participate in the
Civil Service Retirement System. They are covered by worker's
compensation insurance, purchased by the Bank, rather than the Federal
Employees Compensation Act. Employees travelling on Bank business are
not subject to Federal travel regulations and do not receive
government employee discounts on lodging and services..."
- Lewis vs. U.S., case #80-5905, 9th Circuit, June 24, 1982
"The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve
Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a
purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the
sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use
of other people's money."
- Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923
"Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States
Government institutions. They are not Government institutions. They
are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of these
United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign
customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich
and predatory money lenders."
- Congressman Louis T. McFadden, 1932
"The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an
unlawful crime against civilization. Why? Because they "create" the
money made out of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their
"Federal Reserve Notes" and stamps our Government approval with NO
obligation whatever from these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks
or National Banks, etc."
- H. L. Birum, Sr., American Mercury Magazine, August 1957
"A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. It
undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social system,
and encourages propensities destructive to its happiness. It wars
against industry, frugality and economy, and it fosters evil spirits
of extravagance and speculation. Of all the contrivances for cheating
the labouring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than
that which deludes them with paper money."
- Congressman Daniel Webster, 1846
"The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions
the world has ever seen. There is not a man within the sound of my
voice who does not know that this nation is run by the International
Bankers."
- Congressman Louis T. McFadden, 1934
"Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers - but the
truth is - the Fed has usurped the Government. It controls everything
here and it controls all of our foreign relations. It makes and breaks
governments at will."
- Congressman Louis T. McFadden, 1934
"From now on, depressions will be scientifically created."
- Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1913
"The depression was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the
World Money powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply
of call money in the New York money market...The One World Government
leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of
the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the
privately owned Federal Reserve Bank."
- Curtis Dall, Franklin D. Roosevelt's son-in-law, as quoted from his
book, "My Exploited Father-in-Law"
"The one who cannot see that on Earth a big endeavour is taking place,
an important plan, on which realization we are allowed to collaborate
as faithful servants, certainly has to be blind."
- Winston Churchill
"Truth is so precious that it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of
lies."
- Winston Churchill
"In politics nothing is accidental. If something happens, be assured
it was planned this way."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what
is perceived to be true."
- Henry Kissinger
"For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been
diverted from it's original assignment. It has become an operational
and at times a policy making arm of the government."
- President Harry Truman
"There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own
Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own
ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and
free from the law itself."
Senator Daniel K. Inouye
"The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other
governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the
secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and
can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans."
- Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain, 1876
"It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a
great part of Europe - the whole of Italy and France and a great
portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries - is covered
with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of
the earth is now being covered with railroads."
- Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain, 1876
"Fifty men have run America, and that's a high figure."
- Joseph Kennedy, father of John F. Kennedy, in the July 26, l936
issue of The New York Times
"Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid
by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the
President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional
government. We have operating within our government and political
system, another body representing another form of government - a
bureaucratic elite."
- Senator William Jenner, 1954
"The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim,
nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in
private hands able to dominate the political system of each country
and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be
controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world
acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent
private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank
for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank
owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were
themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism
made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of
this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect
injury of all other economic groups."
- Carroll Quigley, Professor of History at Georgetown University in
his book "Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time"
(Macmillan Company, 1966), highly esteemed by his former student,
William Jefferson Blythe Clinton
"In a small Swiss city [Basel] sits an international organization so
obscure and secretive [that few people know about it]...Control of the
institution, the Bank for International Settlements, lies with some of
the world's most powerful and least visible men; the heads of 32
central banks, officials able to shift billions of dollars and alter
the course of economies at the stroke of a pen."
- Keith Bradsher of the New York Times, August 5, 1995
"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close
relationship with the Bank for International Settlements...The
conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury
Departments are willing to pool the banking systems of Europe and
America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above
the Government of the United States."
- Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on
Banking and Currency, quoted from the New York Times, June 1930
"Ever since the Civil War, Congress has allowed the bankers to control
financial legislation. The membership of the Finance Committee in the
Senate [now the Banking and Currency Committee] and the Committee on
Banking and Currency in the House have been made up chiefly of
bankers, their agents, and their attorneys...In this way the
committees have been able to control legislation in the interests of
the few."
- Congressman Charles A. Lindberg, Sr.
"The Council on Foreign Relations is "The Establishment". Not only
does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at
the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it
also announces and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from
below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S.
from a sovereign Constitutional Republic into a servile member state
of a one-world dictatorship."
- Former Congressman John Rarick, 1971
"The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the American Branch of a
society which originated in England [The Royal Institute of
International Affairs]...and believes national boundaries should be
obliterated and one-world rule established."
- Carroll Quigley, Professor of History at Georgetown University
"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for
multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by
seizing control of the political government of the United States. The
Trilateral Commission represents a skilful, coordinated effort to
seize control and consolidate the four centres of power - political,
monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in
the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world
community. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a
worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the
nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they
propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and
creators of the system they will rule the future."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for President, 1964
"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a
one-world government combining supercapitalism and communism under the
same tent, all under their control...Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I
am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations
old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."
- Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines
747 (flight KAL007) that was shot down when the airliner unaccountably
strayed into North Korean air space.
"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding,
and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together
12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the
most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number
of them to control generally the policy of the daily press...They
found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the
greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers
was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for
each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the
questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other
things of national and international nature considered vital to the
interests of the purchasers."
- Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in
America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is
not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you
did, you know beforehand that it will never appear in print. I am paid
weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected
with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and
any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would
be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest
opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours
my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to
destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at
the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily
bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an
independent press? We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind
the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we
dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are the property
of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
- John Swinton, Former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, called by
his peers "The Dean of his profession", was asked in 1913 to give a
toast before the Associated Press annual banquet.
"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate,
secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their
citizens. There is no subtler, more sure way of overturning the
existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process
engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of
destruction, and does it in a manner in which not one man in a million
is able to diagnose."
- John Maynard Keynes
"The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in
which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to
reveal it."
- John Kenneth Galbraith, in his book "Money: Whence It Came, Where It
Went", 1975
"A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize
the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the
region of ignorance that tyranny begins."
- Benjamin Franklin
"In the colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called 'Colonial
Script'. We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods pass
easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating
ourselves our own paper money, we control it's purchasing power and we
have no interest to pay to anyone."
- Benjamin Franklin, speaking at the London Parliament
"If that mischievous financial policy which had its origin in the
North American Republic [i.e., honest Constitutionally authorized
debt-free money] should become indurated down to a fixture, then that
government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off
its debts and be without a debt (to the International Bankers). It
will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will
become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized
governments of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will
go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will
destroy every monarchy on the globe!"
- The Times of London newspaper, opinion-editorial commentary
"The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other
matters, had it not been that England took away from the colonies
their money, which created great unemployment and dissatisfaction.
Within a year, the poor houses were filled. The hungry and homeless
walked the streets everywhere. The inability of the colonists to get
power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George
III and the International Bankers was probably the Prime reason for
the Revolutionary War."
- Benjamin Franklin, as quoted from his autobiography
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but
the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to
take it from them, but to inform their discretion."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to
destroy the American's freedom, and before I leave office I must
inform the citizen of his plight."
- John F. Kennedy, speaking at Columbia University, 10 days before his
assassination
"Mr. Greenspan needs to make his decision independent of what I think.
I learned a pretty good lesson during the transition, and that is I
commented out loud about one of the actions he took. That's the last
time I'm going to comment about the actions Mr. Greenspan takes. He's
an independent voice, and needs to be an independent voice."
- [Notional] President George W. Bush, speaking in regards to the
Federal Reserve Board
Chairman, 2001
"Those who swallow down usury cannot arise except as one whom Satan
has prostrated by his touch does rise. That is because they say,
trading is only like usury; and Allah has allowed trading and
forbidden usury. To whomsoever then the admonition has come from his
Lord, then he desists, he shall have what is already passed, and his
affairs is in the hands of Allah; and whoever returns to it - these
are the inmates of the fire; they shall abide in it..."
- From the Qur'an, Surah Al-Baqarah
"If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou
shalt not be to him an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.
- Exodus 22:25. Take no usury of him, or increase...thou shalt not
give him thy money upon usury. - Leviticus 25:36-37. Unto thy brother
thou shalt not lend upon usury: That the Lord thy God bless thee. -
Deuteronomy 23:20"
- The Bible
"It comes as news to most people to learn that practically all
important ethical teachers - Moses, Aristotle, Jesus, Mohammed, and
Saint Thomas Aquinas, for instance - have denounced lending at
interest as usury and as morally wrong."
- Lawrence Dennis, Saturday Review of Literature 661, June 24, 1933
"The most sinister and anti-social feature about bank-deposit money is
that it has no existence. The banks owe the public for a total amount
of money which does not exist. In buying and selling, implemented by
cheque transactions, there is a mere change in the party to whom the
money is owed by the banks. As the one depositor's account is debited,
the other is credited and the banks can go on owing for it all the
time. The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the
capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting
with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into
their debt irredeemably, by a trick. This money comes into existence
every time the banks 'lend' and disappears every time the debt is
repaid to them. So that if industry tries to repay, the money of the
nation disappears. This is what makes prosperity so 'dangerous' as it
destroys money just when it is most needed and precipitates a slump.
There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper
into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing
amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. An
honest money system is the only alternative."
- Frederick Soddy, Nobel Prize Winner, 1921
"Economic warfare spans political warfare and military warfare and
supersedes both, which are merely tools in the hands of those who are
the masters of economic systems. The public is systematically misled,
almost hypnotically, to believe that no such hidden masters of
economic systems actually exist, or could even possibly exist, and
that all of the economic strife in the world today is strictly the
result of unplanned human incompetence when, in fact, very deliberate
economic warfare is being carried out. Populations struggle to find
purely political or military solutions to their economic problems, or
they are manipulated and duped into giving yet more economic control
over to their masters, in the name of general prosperity, because they
do not fully understand the real principles of economics and banking.
The myth of their non-existence is what protects the hierarchies of
the international money cults of the world and allows them to continue
their constant rivalries against one another, and to maintain their
existence at the dire cost of their subject populations."
- [Anonymous]
"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class
muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In
short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for
the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I
helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil
interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for
American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a
decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I
helped in the rape of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the
benefit of Wall Street..."
- Major General Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its
population...Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern
of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of
disparity...To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality
and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated
everywhere on our immediate national objectives...We should cease to
talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the
raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far
off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The
less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
- George Kennan, Director of State Department Policy Planning staff,
Truman Administration, 1948
"Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merge of
state and corporate power."
- Benito Mussolini
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the
growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the
democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of
government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private
power."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of
acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps
both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean
to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power that
knowledge gives."
- James Madison
"Information is the currency of democracy."
- Thomas Jefferson
"I may be alone with my thoughts, on my island located on my inland
sea. Previously, I would be helpless to influence my national
government. With the internet, although physically isolated, I can
associate with millions across my country and across the globe. No
longer am I one person, and no government can afford to ignore me. I
have become a power block, in both theory and in fact. Even if I
ignore today the ability I now have to associate with others, no
government can afford to ignore the possibility that someday I may,
for some reason, choose to exercise this ability to associate. The
individual, isolated or not, has become important."
- Andrew Grosso, Attorney, Chairman of the ACM Committee on Law and
Computer Technology
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government,
they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their
revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural
"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with
another, and...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these ends [of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
[provide] their Safety and Happiness..."
- Declaration of Independence of the American Colonies, 1776
"A Government that makes peaceful revolution impossible, makes armed
revolution inevitable."
- John F. Kennedy
"If you're not ready to die for it, put the word "freedom" out of your
vocabulary."
- Malcolm X
"When the government fears the people, you have liberty; when the
people fear the government, you have tyranny."
- Thomas Jefferson
"...news organizations, and all Americans, in times like these have to
watch what they say and watch what they do."
- Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary, September 26, 2001
"It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from
falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the
government from falling into error."
- Justice Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety [and they will very quickly
lose both]."
- Benjamin Franklin
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave,
hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join
him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
- Mark Twain
"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its
government."
- Thomas Paine
"Let us disappoint the men who would raise themselves upon the ruin of
our country."
- John Adams
"The perverse deceptiveness characteristic of the individuals who
control the Federal Reserve Bank is readily apparent to those who know
the necessary historical truths. The fact that they adorn their notes
with symbols of the Freemasons and pictures of our national heroes (to
help carry on the charade that the Fed is a government institution),
who were actually diametrically [totally] opposed to the Fed's
existence and its type of 'money', is a mockery that is downright
diabolical, and must be the insider's 'joke' of all time.
Unfortunately, the consequences of this colossal con to the American
people, and the entire world, are all too deadly serious. The Federal
Reserve Bank is not federal, is not a reserve, and is not even a real
bank."
- [Anonymous]
"The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause
of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause,
the banking system; a system which if it could do good in any form is
yet so certain of leading to abuse as to be utterly incompatible with
the public safety and prosperity. The Central Bank is an institution
of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form
of our Constitution."
- Thomas Jefferson
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together
in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal
system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
Frederic Bastiat, in his book "Economic Sophisms"
In 1957, the then U. S. Senator from Nevada George W. Malone, said: "I
believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what
Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on
Washington; they would not wait for an election. It adds up to a
preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of
the United States."
"A lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth."
- [Unknown]
"The perfect slave is the slave who thinks that he is free."
- [Unknown]
"The truth is always revolutionary."
- Antonio Gramsci
Lem Clampett is the author of Out of the Red and Into the Black
Russil Wvong
> "We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its
> population...Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern
> of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of
> disparity...To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality
> and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated
> everywhere on our immediate national objectives...We should cease to
> talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the
> raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far
> off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The
> less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
> - George Kennan, Director of State Department Policy Planning staff,
> Truman Administration, 1948
This gets quoted a lot as evidence of the iniquity of US foreign policy
worldwide, but in fact George Kennan was referring specifically to the
Far East; in particular, he was arguing that the United States
ought to *withdraw* from China and the Asian mainland, not oppress
the Third World and steal its resources.
This quote gets posted so much that I've put together a standard response.
People interested in discussing international politics and US foreign
policy may want to check out alt.politics.international.
http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/kennan/quote.html
--
In 1945, George Orwell wrote:
Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain
forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations
removed from their context and doctored so as to change their
meaning.
[http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/nationalism.html]
I don't think Orwell would have been surprised by this highly
selective quotation of George Kennan. From what I can tell, it was
stitched together by Noam Chomsky, the American linguist and
anarchist, as evidence that US foreign policy since World War II has
been driven by greed.
In fact, if you look up the source of the quote, PPS/23, you'll
find that Kennan was saying something quite different: given the
disparity between the wealth of the US and the Asian countries --
particularly China and India -- it was pretty much inevitable that
they would fall under Soviet control, and that rather than trying
to keep the Communists from taking over China, the US ought to
prevent a future attack from the Pacific by trying to keep Japan
and the Philippines within the US sphere of influence.
Kennan was particularly concerned about Japan, which had colonized
Korea and Taiwan, invaded Manchuria and China, occupied Indochina,
attacked the US, and invaded Indonesia, Malaya, Singapore,
Burma, and the Philippines, and had only been defeated by the
US after a long and bitter war. As Kennan says in his memoirs:
We Americans could feel fairly secure in the presence of a truly
friendly Japan and a nominally hostile China -- nothing very bad
could happen to us from this combination; but the dangers to our
security of a nominally friendly China and a truly hostile Japan
had already been demonstrated in the Pacific war. Worse still
would be a hostile China *and* a hostile Japan. Yet the triumph
of communism in most of China would be bound to enhance Communist
pressures in Japan; and should these pressures [in Japan] triumph,
as Moscow obviously hoped they would, then the Japan we would have
before us would obviously be a hostile one.
I've included below the section of PPS/23 from which the quote is
taken.
The irony in Chomsky's quoting Kennan to criticize US foreign policy
is that Kennan himself has consistently argued for much greater
moderation and restraint in US foreign policy. Indeed, Kennan does so
even in the section of PPS/23 which Chomsky is quoting. For a
detailed assessment of Kennan's role in shaping US foreign policy
during the early Cold War, see Wilson D. Miscamble's book "George
F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950,"
published in 1992.
In short, Chomsky's quote makes it appear that Kennan is saying
that the US needs to *hold people down*, when in fact Kennan is
saying almost the exact opposite, that the US should *leave them
alone*.
For more information on Kennan, including the full text of PPS/23, see
http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/kennan.html.
Chomsky's posted a response to this criticism:
groups.google.com/groups?selm=afe9ed76.0208080952.4fe1128b%40posting.google.com
My response to Chomsky:
groups.google.com/groups?selm=afe9ed76.0208161713.2f5ac771%40posting.google.com
Discussion on Brad DeLong's website:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/000568.html
I would respectfully suggest that you should be careful about uncritically
accepting anti-American propaganda, on the net and elsewhere. As Kennan
wrote in 1961:
The lack of a strong and firm Western historiography in this subject
[of relations between the Soviet Union and the West] is particularly
unfortunate for the reason that Soviet historians have recently been
giving elaborate attention to certain of its phases. The tendency of
their labors has been to establish an image of this historical
process which they conceive to be useful to the present purposes of
the Soviet Communist Party but which is deeply discreditable to
Western statesmanship and to the spirit and ideals of the Western
peoples generally -- so discreditable, in fact, that if the Western
peoples could be brought to believe it, they would have no choice
but to abandon their faith in themselves and the traditions of
their national life.
[Russia and the West, 1961, p. v]
--
The section of PPS/23 from which Chomsky is quoting:
VII. FAR EAST
My main impression with regard to the position of this Government
with regard to the Far East is that we are greatly over-extended
in our whole thinking about what we can accomplish, and should try
to accomplish, in that area. This applies, unfortunately, to the
people in our country as well as to the Government.
It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations as
a moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples.
Our political philosophy and our patterns for living have very
little applicability to masses of people in Asia. They may be all
right for us, with our highly developed political traditions
running back into the centuries and with our peculiarly favorable
geographic position; but they are simply not practical or helpful,
today, for most of the people in Asia.
This being the case, we must be very careful when we speak of
exercising "leadership" in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and
others when we pretend to have the answers to the problems which
agitate many of these Asiatic peoples.
Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3%
of its population. This disparity is particularly great as
between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we
cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real
task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships
which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity
without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we
will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming;
and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our
immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that
we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
For these reasons, we must observe great restraint in our attitude
toward the Far Eastern areas. The peoples of Asia and of the
Pacific area are going to go ahead, whatever we do, with the
development of their political forms and mutual interrelationships
in their own way. This process cannot be a liberal or peaceful
one. The greatest of the Asiatic peoples--the Chinese and the
Indians--have not yet even made a beginning at the solution of the
basic demographic problem involved in the relationship between
their food supply and their birth rate. Until they find some
solution to this problem, further hunger, distress, and violence
are inevitable. All of the Asiatic peoples are faced with the
necessity for evolving new forms of life to conform to the impact
of modern technology. This process of adaptation will also be
long and violent. It is not only possible, but probable, that in
the course of this process many peoples will fall, for varying
periods, under the influence of Moscow, whose ideology has a
greater lure for such peoples, and probably greater reality, than
anything we could oppose to it. All this, too, is probably
unavoidable; and we could not hope to combat it without the
diversion of a far greater portion of our national effort than our
people would ever willingly concede to such a purpose.
In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense
now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our
thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the
aspiration to "be liked" or to be regarded as the repository of a
high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting
ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and
refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should
cease to talk about vague and--for the Far East--unreal objectives
such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and
democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have
to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered
by idealistic slogans, the better.
We should recognize that our influence in the Far Eastern area in
the coming period is going to be primarily military and economic.
We should make a careful study to see what parts of the Pacific
and Far Eastern world are absolutely vital to our security, and we
should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas
remain in hands which we can control or rely on. It is my own
guess, on the basis of such study as we have given the problem so
far, that Japan and the Philippines will be found to be the
corner-stones of such a Pacific security system and if we can
contrive to retain effective control over these areas there can be
no serious threat to our security from the East within our time.
Only when we have assured this first objective, can we allow
ourselves the luxury of going farther afield in our thinking and
our planning.
If these basic concepts are accepted, then our objectives for the
immediate coming period should be:
(a) to liquidate as rapidly as possible our unsound commitments in
China and to recover, vis-a-vis that country, a position of
detachment and freedom of action;
(b) to devise policies with respect to Japan which assure the
security of those islands from communist penetration and
domination as well as from Soviet military attack, and which will
permit the economic potential of that country to become again an
important force in the Far East, responsive to the interests of
peace and stability in the Pacific area; and
(c) to shape our relationship to the Philippines in such a way as
to permit the Philippine Government a continued independence in
all internal affairs but to preserve the archipelago as a bulwark
of U.S. security in that area.
Of these three objectives, the one relating to Japan is the one
where there is the greatest need for immediate attention on the
part of our Government and the greatest possibility for immediate
action. It should therefore be made the focal point of our policy
for the Far East in the coming period.
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
alt.politics.international FAQ: www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/apifaq.html