IRISH SOVEREIGNTY
THE Irish people have demonstrated beyond all question and beyond all doubt their capacity for self-government. In the negotiations which are now taking place on the other side of the ocean they...
...His recommendations were followed...
...Everybody—excepting the President and Congress, knows that the "book value" of the railroads is a false value by more than seven billion dollars...
...He said: "Your Transportation Act is a failure...
...He stated in the stable agricultural state of Illinois, in the heart of the rich corn belt of the state, "there were reported 67 foreclosures of farmers in one month in one of those counties, and there are going to be many more foreclosures within the next few months...
...There you have it...
...J. A. Campbell, president of the Steel and Tube Company, of Youngstown, Ohio, summed up the situation in a word...
...The rate guaranty carried in Section 422 of the Esch-Cummins Law must be repealed before there can be any substantial relief from the general business stagnation which we have suffered for eighteen months...
...This is now well understood by everybody—excepting President Harding and Congress...
...The diagram presented on the front cover was prepared by the Bureau of Standards from an exhaustive study on government expenditures by the late Doctor Rosa of that Bureau...
...AND THIS IS THE LAW WHICH SENATOR LENROOT IN A SPEECH AT LA CROSSE, ON AUGUST 17, 1920, LAUDED AS, "THE MOST PROGRESSIVE LAW EVER PASSED BY ANY STATE OR CONGRESS...
...This diagram gives you a graphic but strictly accurate picture of the cost which war imposes upon a people, as compared with all of the other costs of maintaining government...
...and freight rates, 35 per cent...
...Against this staggering war-burden, you will observe that the total appropriations for maintaining and administering ALL of the CIVIL affairs of government, in 1920, only amounted to $406,384,443...
...1. DISTANCE IS OUR FIRST AND ABSOLUTE DEFENSE...
...but those people in England are within easy bombing range of their possible enemies...
...Admiral Sims commanded all of the American fleet in European waters during the late war...
...He was a man of few words...
...He says: "Incidentally the importance of the airplane development is so great that it means this: It enormously adds to the ability of a country to defend itself...
...In his testimony Admiral, Sims contrasts our geographical location with that of European nations as being decisively to our advantage...
...He stated in the recent hearings before the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs that: "Distance is such an obstacle in warfare that Great Britain, with all her force, could not attack this coast here without a base on this side to operate from...
...This is exactly 7.17 per cent of the total appropriations for that year, and is represented in the diagram by that portion which is NOT in solid black...
...THREE PER CENT to pay the expenses of conducting all public works such as rivers and harbors, public buildings, etc...
...General Weaver was then a member of the General Staff, a member of the Board of Ordnance and Fortifications, and a member of the Joint Army and Navy Board...
...Ignoring fractions, out of the total appropriations for 1920, NINETY-THREE PER CENT was appropriated for WAR PURPOSES and SEVEN per cent for all other purposes...
...We are so far away from European and other enemies, that there is no real danger of their sending airplanes from their own bases...
...Whenever you contribute a dollar to support your government at Washington, just remember that, upon the basis of the appropriations of 1920, 93 cents of that dollar is chargeable to war and 7 cents is chargeable to the costs of administering all of the civil affairs of that government...
...Here are a few of the high points in the testimony before the Commission, made by unimpeachable witnesses: F. W. Peck, Director of Agricultural Extension, of the University of Minnesota, testified that because of the inability of the farmer to market his produce in the face of present freight rates and low prices, "there is a question now whether the Minnesota farmer will buy coal this year or not.' "The Minnesota farmer used to buy three tons of coal with an acre of grain," Mr...
...I have heard it expressed in other parts of the country that there will be corn burned this year...
...Pullman fares, 50 per cent...
...That obligation is fixed and we must meet it But we can reduce, and to a large extent eliminate war expenditures in the future...
...Contrast the quiet and order which has been established during the past two months in the 26 counties controlled by the Irish Republican government with the anarchy and disorder which have been rampant in British controlled Ulster and you will gain a conception of what genuine self-government can be...
...The Nebraska Farm Bureau has recently called my attention to the vastly increased number of suicides amongst the farmers in the State in the last year because of despondency, and that many renters have left everything to the landlord and just simply moved away...
...The results at Alexandria, Port Arthur, and at the Dardanelles furnish sufficient evidence that GUNS ON BOARD SHIPS ARE NO MATCH FOR COAST FORTIFICATIONS AND SUBMARINE GUNS...
...On August 26 rates were accordingly advanced as follows: passenger fares, 20 per cent...
...We can cut war expenditures enormously by reducing military and naval appropriations to a strictly DEFENSIVE BASIS...
...John G. Shedd, president of Marshall Field and Company, of Chicago, a few days ago stated publicly that...
...Regarding our Coast Defense he said: "WE HAVE THE BEST COAST DEFENSES IN THE WORLD...
...Because of this discussion on the other side (Europe) it has brought about a unanimity of opinion on this side...
...General Nelson A. Miles, late head of the American Army, who had participated in all the wars covering a period of nearly half a century and had inspected the military establishments of every foreign nation, testified before the House Committee on Military Affairs while the European War was in progress...
...In all my experience in public life I have never seen any greater display of the abilities of the true statesman than President De Valera has manifested in his dealings with Premier Lloyd George...
...Where the People's Money Goes FOR the fiscal year of 1920, the total appropriations to maintain our federal government were FIVE BILLION, SIX HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX MILLION, FIVE THOUSAND, SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIX DOLLARS ($5,686,005,706...
...I could cite a dozen similar instances to prove that however the negotiations may terminate Great Britain has already ack nowledged before all the world her surrender to the Irish people of the essentials of sovereignty, which she may hereafter wrest from them only by the exercise of brute force...
...Then, when the truce had been arranged, at a word from their leaders they grounded their arms and maintained the discipline of peace as perfectly as they had before maintained the discipline of war...
...Supplement submarine fleets with modern air planes to patrol our coasts and you have a DEFENSE that would SINK ALL THE NAVIES OF THE WORLD BEFORE THEY COULD COME WITHIN STRIKING DISTANCE...
...The avowed purpose of this increase was to take care of an increase in the cost of operation and also to increase the net income of the railroad corporations by $200,000,000 over the amount guaranteed them during the war...
...I quote the highest naval authority in support of this proposition...
...NO BATTLESHIP FLEET CAN OPERATE AGAINST THE COAST OF AN ENEMY WITHIN THE RANGE OF THE ENEMIES' AIRPLANES...
...This was natural, because the farmer paid the heaviest and most immediate toll under the law...
...Every since this rate increase—the most gigantic in railroad history—the-farmer has been paying the increased freight on every article of produce he has shipped to market...
...The appalling results of the present extortionate freight rates have been graphically recited at Washington within the past few weeks...
...This again is an explicit recognition of Ireland's control over her own territory and the surrounding waters...
...If Ireland is not acknowledged to have full control over her country, how can she be asked to "concede" to the British navy and to the Royal Air Force these rights and privileges which Great Britain has hitherto exercised in Ireland and all of her colonies and dominions without asking leave...
...The hundred per cent patriots who denounced German militarism as the curse of the world are responsible for the indefensible army and navy appropriations under this administration which impose a per capita expenditure upon the American people nearly TWICE THAT OF GERMANY IN 1913...
...So you are driven to the internal combustion engine and oil (the, submarine and airplane) . That is why I keep on emphasizing that the WHOLE NAVY HAS TO BE SCRAPPED...
...In 1920 he bought one ton...
...The tax falls upon each individual, no one is permitted to escape...
...As Captain Hart says in his report: "Opposed to this small force (30 submarines manned by 1500 men) were more, than 1,000,000 of the allied naval force together with the fleets of the Allied nations including between 4,000 and 5,000 small craft whose activities were of the highest importance...
...We cannot escape payment for the past wars in which we have taken part...
...THE CAPITAL SHIP WAS SAFE ONLY WHEN LOCKED IN PROTECTED HARBORS...
...War is very expensive business...
...The Finance Committee of the Senate, of which I am a member, has been taking the testimony of manufacturers for weeks upon the Tariff bill...
...For more than a year the men, women, and children of Ireland endured with marvellous fortitude and solidarity all the tortures and terrors that a barbarous government with overwhelming forces could inflict upon them...
...would not any one of your readers like to get a nice, fat contract for, say, only five battleships at 35,000,000 of golden sovereigns...
...Preparation for FUTURE WAR is likewise very expensive business, for by the same measure, $1,424,138,677, or 26 cents out of every dollar was appropriated to pay for the "NEXT WAR...
...Howard read into the record from a communication addressed by the executive board of the Bureau, to the President and Congress and the Interstate Commerce Commission: "The Government decreed last year that railroad rates must increase...
...We now appeal to the agencies of the Federal Government to bring us relief...
...J. W. Shorthill, Omaha, Secretary of the Farmers' National Grain Dealers' Association, testified: "This increase in freight (under the Esch-Cummms Law) has wiped out more than an of the profits which the farmer gained by establishing his co-operative elevator concerns...
...General Erasmus Weaver, the head of the Coast Defense of this Government at the time of his death three years ago, testified before the House Committee on Military Affairs after the European War had been raging for 18 months...
...Upon the spiritual side the achievements of the Irish people and their leaders have been not less splendid and convincing...
...Against such evidence from the highest military and naval authority of the world it seems incredible that the Harding Administration and the Republican Congress would enact legislation to consummate a naval program with all of the accompanying expenditures, that will cost the taxpayers of this country ONE BILLION, FIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS, by the time It is completed...
...The farmers were the first to realize the inherent viciousness of the Esch-Cummins Law...
...ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE...
...They are better in some respects than the guns that are mounted at the Dardanelles, which HAVE RESISTED THE MOST POWERFUL SHIPS OF WAR OF THE BRITISH AND FRENCH NAVIES...
...The Crime of 1920 DAY by day the evidence is accumulating in Washington that when Congress voted to make fictitious values the basis for railroad rates in the Esch-Cummins Law, in February, 1920, it committed an economic crime against the farmer, the manufacturer, the business man, and the consuming and producing millions of the nation...
...Congress passed the law in February, 1920, compelling the Interstate Commerce Commission to raise rates to insure the payment of 5 1/2 (or 6) per cent on the book value of the railroads...
...I believe * * * that a reduction of freight rates, as coming from the margin of his net return, is the most important consideration to the farmer...
...The seven per cent was divided as follows: THREE PER CENT was appropriated to pay the expenses of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Departments of Government...
...You can now see where your money goes and why government costs so much...
...Peck testified...
...Who else in the world travels about with the same comfort as the captain of a battleship...
...He said: "It has been recently forcibly demonstrated that ship attacks on forts are futile (the European War) has CONCLUSIVELY DEMONSTRATED what every military strategist knew before, that IT IS IMPOSSL BLE FOR SEA CRAFT TO SUCCESSFULLY ATTACK LAND FORTIFICATIONS...
...He said: "I am prepared to say that our coasts are as well defended as the coasts of any country and with the same class of high-power guns and heavy projectiles...
...Look what a paying concern it is...
...But the taxpayers must understand thate there are greatiand powerful influences back of these military and naval expenditures...
...He was then the ranking officer of our Navy...
...Upon this point he said: Their situation on the other side is almost totally different_from ours...
...of coal with an acre of grain, and there is a ques tion now whether he will buy coal this year or not...
...It is throttling business...
...Each passing hour makes it more apparent that transportation is the key to the present crisis in agriculture and business...
...I believe that the statement regarding the comparative and relative purchasing power of farmers' products indicates that there is practically an agricultural panic...
...The war with Germany confirmed this judgment...
...W. Jett Lauck declares rentals have increased on an average of 48.1 per cent in 1921 over 1920, and that the average increase-since 1917 has been 91.4 per cent in the moderate priced apartment and higher in the more luxurious buildings...
...Excepting it be to satisfy the lust of Big Business for more money more power, more power more money, through an ever encroaching supremacy in the trade of the world, we can have no war with any foreign nation...
...Let me direct your attention, for example, to the fact that Great Britain explicitly acknowledges in her "proposals" of July 20 that the settlement finally arrived at must take the form of a "treaty" between Great Britain, and Ireland, "to be ratified by their respective parliaments...
...But even if we gave them a base on this side, American submarines built at a very-limited cost would compel their great navy to remain within the shelter of their naval base...
...If Congress will reduce transportation rates the farmer will not only be enabled to market hi3 crops but it will mean that a great buying power now stagnant will be revived...
...Continuing to describe Illinois conditions he said: "An Illinois county agent told me within the last week that unless conditions changed that 50 per cent of the renters of the State would not operate next year...
...2. SUBMARINE AND AEROPLANE OUR SECOND COMPLETE DEFENSE...
...CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT BUT THAT GER-MANY WOULD HAVE WON THE WAR IF HER SUBMARINE FLEET HAD NUMBERED 200 INSTEAD OF 40 WHEN THE WAR BEGAN...
...In Montana recently I found the same condition...
...Sir Percy Scott, British admiral, admittedly the "best naval brain" in Great Britain, declared before the European War began that there was no further use for great navies...
...Admiral Frank A. Fletcher, Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, testified before the same House Committee...
...But this attempt overshot the mark...
...tions of Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas...
...Not by cunning and not by the clever artifice and deception of the trained diplomat, but by dignified insistence upon the great, fundamental principles of human freedom, the Irish President has forced the British Prime Minister step by step to yield what the English rulers had sworn they would never yield...
...The Interstate Commerce Commission has been holding hearings, before deciding whether or not rates are to be reduced on grain, grain products, and hay, between points in the Western and Mountain Pacific states...
...As taxpayers it is fair to assume that you will be interested to know for what purpose this vast sum was appropriated in 1920...
...This it does, too, in the face of the fact that all of the great nations in Europe are war-sick and bordering on bankruptcy...
...In these circumstances we must expect the construction of battleships to be backed by many people possessing strong political interest, commercial interest, and the support of capital...
...I would not attempt to say to what extent, but I think it is significant...
...Practically every witness complains that the Esch-Cummins Act has stalled transportation and crippled business everywhere...
...The modern apartment house is a wrecker of home life, a highly undesirable "perpendicular mode of living" and profits only real estate speculators, says the Women's City Club of Chicago...
...To be captain of a battleship is the ambition of every naval officer...
...In 1921 after having fought a war to "end all war" our Government at Washington is so war-mad that it appropriates $328,000,000 to support its Army...
...We can build a dozen submarines for the cost of a single battleship...
...Protected on the east by more than three thousand miles of water and on the west, from the only nation that could assail us, by more than ten thousand miles of open sea, we are secure against attack by any power or combination of the great naval powers of the world...
...He said: "Now that submarines have come in, battleships are of no use either for defensive or offensive purposes, and consequently building any more in 1914 will be a misuse of money subscribed by citizens for the defense of the empire...
...The year before the European War we appropriated $90,958,712 for the support of our army...
...The history of the Irish struggle for freedom should be an inspiring lesson to the people of all countries for it demonstrates that a relatively small number of people if inspired by a lofty and noble ideal for which they are willing if need be to sacrifice their lives, cannot only never be conquered, but that in the end they can overcome the mightiest forces of the world...
...They resisted bravely the armed forces of the crown and the uniformed thugs who were licensed to break their spirit and they fought hard in self defense and retaliation...
...A great nation does not negotiate a TREATY with a subject state, but only with another natiom In the same dispatch Great Britain asks as a condition for entering into this treaty that Ireland concede to the British navy certain rights and privileges in Irish harbors and Irish waters...
...It is not my business to discuss the land, but at sea the only way to avoid the air is to get under water...
...3. OUR COAST DEFENSES IMPREGNABLE AGAINST ATTACK...
...and ONE PER CENT to pay for RESEARCH, PUBLIC HEALTH, and EDUCATION...
...He has a large drawing room, a dining room in which he can seat 25 or 30 guests, a commodious bedroom with bathroom attached, and spare bedrooms...
...To attack us they would have to come across the ocean...
...Like sinister interests and agencies are behind the enormously increased costs for military expenditures...
...The complete text of the dispatches, however, proves conclusively upon analysis that Great Britain has been forced to recognize the status of Ireland as a nation...
...For the same reason distance precludes her establishing a base on this side without our consent...
...Investigation since the war by Captain Bart of the American army establishes the fact that GERMANY DID NOT HAVE MORE THAN 30 SUBMARINES MANNED BY 1500 MEN, AT SEA AT ANY ONE TIME...
...Notwithstanding this great disproportion in forces, Germany nearly won the war...
...J. R. Howard, president, American Farm Bureau Federation, claiming l,250, 000 members in 45 of 48 states, testified J "The farmer is dependent upon transportation the moment he produces a surplus of any product...
...The farmer not only is charged with the freight on that which he sells...
...Out of the total appropriation for 1920, amounting to $5,686,005,706, the solid black area in the diagram, which is exactly 92.83 per cent of the total, represents the amount appropriated to meet the requirements of 1920 resulting from PAST wars, such as pensions, interest on war debt, etc., aggregating $3,855,482,-586, PLUS the amount appropriated for 1920 in preparation for FUTURE wars, that is for military and naval purposes, aggregating $1,424,138,677, or a total for wars PAST and FUTURE of $5,279,621,-263...
...Measured by the appropriations of 1920, it costs $3,855,482,586, or 67 cents out of every dollar appropriated to pay the expenses of the wars in which we HAVE ENGAGED...
...Every dollar of money expended each year to maintain the Government is provided by taxing the people...
...The picture of American agriculture painted by farm representatives who appeared before the Commission, has no parallel in our history...
...It crippled the business of this country...
...The guns now mounted and those contemplated will give us an entirely satisfactory defense...
...No nation on earth can attack us...
...When every other line of business was called upon to reduce its charges, the American people were ordered to assume an increased transportation burden of more than $1,500,000,000 annually...
...Geographically we occupy the one strategic position in all the world for maintaining an assured and lasting peace with the great power's across the Atlantic and Pacific Here in this favored spot we can live at peace with all the world, until the clock of the centuries stops for all time, if we can but restrain the imperialistic greed of the organized capital of our own country...
...In the negotiations which are now taking place on the other side of the ocean they have shown that they are the equals, if not the superiors, of the British in all the essentials of statesmanship and diplomacy...
...On this point I quote again from Admiral Sims' testimony...
...Lord John Fisher, who built the dread-naught, Admiral of the British fleet, writing in September, 1919, after the war, said: "Flying dominates FUTURE WAR both by land and sea...
...So much for the technical and legalistic side of self-government...
...In other words he said: "That increase in freight had more than absorbed the profit or advantage that the farmer had gained from establishing his local co-operative elevator concerns, in which the farmers of the country have an investment to exceed $40,000,000...
...What is true of Great Britain is doubly true of Japan with more than double the distance to her disadvantage...
...Transportation rates must be lowered...
...Upon the highest Naval authority, that situation in itself would render our position one of absolute security even before the advent of the submarine...
...I do not know whether you have been able to learn from the abbreviated dispatches that have been poublished in American papers the full extent of this victory...
...from his farm, but he pays an enormous freight bill on the stuff which he buys in order to produce his crop...
...Asked if he knew of Instances of farm-ers burning corn for fuel, he replied: "It has happened largely in sec...
...He recommended that 11,000 men and officers should he added to the Coast Artillery and asserted that this would COMPLETE OUR DEFENSE and RENDER OUR POSITION IMPREGNABLE...
...Sir Percy Scott explains it all in a paragraph which I quote from a letter written last March: "The building of battleships will be supported by all the battleship builders of the world, because it is the bread whereby they live...
...We must also expect the necessity of battleships to be supported by all the navies of the world, for naval men do not commit suicide, and battleships are vital to their profession and vital to their comfort...
Vol. 13 • September 1921 • No. 9
