CHAINS, GAGS AND THREATS!
CHAINS, GAGS AND THREATS! Capitalist Press Urges Dictatorship (CONCENTRATION of wealth into the hands of a small class brings a drift towards oligarchy. As the classes below are denied...
...The industries are idle...
...What Macfadden suggests is similar to a program that had the support of a large section of the ruling class in the South before the Civil War...
...They fear the ruling group above and they do not trust the masses below...
...Norman Thomas for President and James H. Maurer for Vice-President, This, must be our answer to the plea for oligarchy so often heard today...
...Socialists for Workers Against it the Socialist Party raises tlie standard of revolt and summons (heiworking class to fight for its liberation...
...When the conflict ended he proceeded to Gettysburg where he spoke of a "new birth of freedom...
...Macfadden places the Lincoln quotation at the head of his editorial column and then follows it with a restatement of the old program of bondage of the slave owners of some seven decades ago...
...Vote for it by voting for the Socialist candidates...
...They thought of a(military dictatorship as he does to keep these whites "in order" and also to keep Northern mill workers actively, producing profits-* for the owners...
...Ruling Classes Ready So the middle groups are tossed between fear of the ruling class above and distrust of the working masses below...
...Not-so with the spokesmen of the ruling classes...
...Unless something can be done to reihedy the appalling situation we are now facing, revolution may be tipon us...
...And all other throttling taxes should be nullified...
...It was because of these contacts between the ruling classes of both sections that the planters believed that they could strike a bargain with Northern |x>liticians and capitalists...
...He advises the ruling classes to establish an arbitrary regime over the working people...
...As the classes below are denied opportunities the class above seeks to barricade itself against an assault...
...The slave owners feared the onward rush otyN&rthern capitalism...
...That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom...
...Lincoln was aware of this, program for universal bondage for white and black workers...
...They ha«ve every reason for abolishing it but they have not clearly thought it out...
...He read Southern books and newspapers that supported this program...
...Would Renew Bondage The richest lands and most of the slates in the South were concentrated in the hands of about 5,000 families when this program unfolded...
...Perhaps the most frank utterance we have today appears in Bernarr Macfadden's Liberty, a weekly with an enormous circulation...
...Facing the wreck of their own system they fear all who live in the lower levels of society but they fear the working class most...
...Others have hinted at this...
...The despoiled millions of wretched fanners and jobless workers have little or nothing to defend within the capitalist system...
...He could do much to put the business man, the investor and the promoter at their ease...
...Obviously this is a revolution that no plug hat would oppose...
...Slave owners thought of using the unoccupied lands of the West by poor whites as Macfadden now docs...
...Farming, on the other hand, lias become a bankrupt occupation...
...There were family alliances between Southern planters and Northern capitalists through intermarriage...
...So are we, They need us and we need them...
...And, yet he wants a revolution, one so nice that the ruling classes can accept it...
...Between the millions who have-nothing and the upper class that has much there are middle groups that are uncertain of where their interests lie...
...It is putting its fears and its proposals iii language that we can understand...
...The workers in general are thinking but they have not as yet reached unity...
...A greatly/**educed sales tax could be utilized...
...The dictator w«uld "first of ail elissjnate the income tax" which "robs active business men of their well earned rewards...
...Northern shippers engaged in the illegal' slave trade were sympathetic with the slave system...
...Macfadden baldly shouts this creed...
...of a military nature...
...We must have power to discharge that class, to take over industry, to organize it on a Socialist basis...
...So runs part of a quotation from Lincoln at the head of1 the editorial columns of Liberty...
...They hesitate...
...The want of confidence on the jart of business men everywhere is the specter that is scaring the investor and the promoter" so that what we need now "is martial law...
...This would make business men "realize that our government was being handled by intelligent executives...
...The upper ruling group is not only thifflcing...
...Even the one slender stake wage workers once had, a job, is gone...
...Arbitrary power to hold the workers to their tasks, abolition of all income taxes, and imposition of tales taxes for the masses to pay I The Macfadden plea fof*a class, oligarchy may appeal to the upper ruling group of Amer-capitalism but its realization means slavery for the'working cla^s...
...Ye sons of toil fight for it...
...And what "could be done by a dictator with power...
...This is the logic of concentrated capital and power...
...This is real liberty...
...It certainly would...
...They are uncertain...
...Wo1 do not want "one or two acres with a sliack or a tent" land working under the police of a capitalist oligarchy...
...at any time," writes Macfadden...
...For Business Rule But what is in store for the millions of workers...
...We want them as our collective possessions to own and operate as our public property...
...The dictator "would give one or two acres of land with a shack or a tent and the crude implements necessary to dig in the soil to earn his own food...
...New England mill owners wanted cheap slave/Cotton and some Northern corporations had invested in slave plantations...
...Between us and these industries is the owning class...
...We want the natural resources and industries taken out of the hands of the class that denies us access to them...
...Asks Martial Law In the issue of June 25 Macfadden interprets this "new birth of freedom" in terms of chains, gags and a military dictatorship...
...They cannot climb into the class above and they do not want to fall into the class below...
Vol. 14 • July 1932 • No. 1
