This Is Our Fight
BALLOU, ROBERT O.
"This Is Our Fight" Urges U.S. Navy Convoy Food Stuffs, Iron to Allied Ports NoW By ROBERT O. BALLOU WHEN is the United States going- to abandon its stupid pose of technical neutrality in a...
...It also should mean an increase in consumption of about 59,000,000 dozens of eggs and approximately 180,000,000 pounds of pork products...
...Most important at this moment is the blond, blue-evec Major General Henry H. Arnold, chief of the Army Air Corps...
...But the threat Qf war also exposes a nation's weakness, its lack of co-ordination, its internal conflicts, the flaws of its economy...
...General Arnofir is considered the trail blazer of the sir...
...It will mean that all the billions of dollars worth of goods we have given up and the more billions we will be asked to give up for the gold, will be so much water over the dam...
...The armies of France and England and what is left of the Norwegian, the Belgian and Dutch armies have taken on this job because they were forced to do so...
...Navy Convoy Food Stuffs, Iron to Allied Ports NoW By ROBERT O. BALLOU WHEN is the United States going- to abandon its stupid pose of technical neutrality in a -war in which the hearts and minds of .our people have been constantly involved...
...There are a number of things that may be done, with our gold if its use for international trade is destroyed...
...We trade imiasiki will require all oar energy and skill m co-ordinating our labor and technical samurtss for the success of tjbe President's plans...
...Among the earliest of the U. S. Army's trained aviators, he set an altitude record in 1912 when he piloted a Burgess-Wright sirplane 'to a height of 6,540 feet In that same year he receim the first award of the MacJLsr Trophy for a reconnaissance trip thirty miles around Washington in a chain-and-sprocket...
...He has simply used them as an instrument to hound honest, militant labor unions...
...Only a national crisis jolted him out of his campaign of anti-labor indictments for a moment and caused him to look to the flaws in the arras and munition industry...
...As the head of the army's gj...
...Is fear ever a legitimate, excuse for not doing what we know should be done...
...And 'outstanding among these is the so-called anti-trust division of the Department of Justice...
...Inflation results from an over-supply of nawty (effective demand) as against available goods...
...At such a time the persecution of Labor « equal to treason, Food Stamps Feed 4,000,000 Regularly After a year of operation, the Food .Stamp Plan, initiated by Secretary Wallace's Department of Agriculture, is a success...
...This means that of the total $22 billion dollars to be issued, no more than four or five billion dollars will go into circulation in any one year...
...instead of six and seven, we would have been hailed as "good," tractable unions...
...PVERY worldngman knows that *-* if our building trades unions were weak and poorly organized that Mr...
...This is no time 1st union-busting...
...Something of far greater importance fates the country...
...We are moved by fear in this great effort at preparation— fear of an actual .possible physical invasion by powers which would destroy, if they were victorious, our way of life and render us a subject race as they have the peoples of Czecho-Slovakia, of Poland, of Belgium, Holland, Norway—and even the common man, particularly if he happens to be a Jew in Germany today...
...Insofar as this is true they will have fought our battle won onf yictory for us...
...this would mean we would distribute the gold in the form of $5, $10, $20, etc...
...The question is: If the Nazis win what will we do with our great gold hoard...
...They are fighting for their individual existence as nations...
...Yet we begin frantically arming ourselves against a battle which if it should ever come up on our own soil, would be infinitely more terrible for as than any participation into which we might be drawn in Europe...
...During the last months alone $2,500,000 of added food values was placed on the Nearly a thousand communities have applied for the stamp plan...
...Yet until the German army entered Holland and Belgium, thereby threatening England and stimulating oar fear that we might be robbed of the protection of the British navy, we have dropped details of our neutral pose against the greatest objections from those who became, frantic at the mere thought that involvement in any degree would force us to "send our boys over there...
...All this has placed, a heavy strain upon our 'treasury...
...In 1935 he again won the MacKay medal for his notable exploit in leading a mass flight of to bombers from Washington to Fairbanks, Alaska on an air survey of mountain ranges agsiar hair-raising hazards...
...Such an increase in the sale of pork products, amounting to some , $25,000,000, would be of considerable, help to farmers in the corn belt...
...The next procedure would be for the Government to monetise this "profit" by issuing gold certificates to the Federal Reserve banks in exchange for a Treasury credit of like amount...
...Let us untie our ships which ride idly at their docks...
...It is expected that this expansion will result in additional purchases of surplus", foods" through blue, stamps alone, ranging from f7,000;00t> to $9,000,0(10 a month, and Will directly benefit about 4,000,000 consumers...
...it is extremely solicitous regarding the rights of large corporations...
...But this is only a phase of the fight which must be made...
...This is our fight What are we waiting for...
...Bat this is not the time to enter into a polemical discussion of Mr...
...We must find our way to add such weight as we can to Allied victory...
...Arnold is not concerned with the impartial application of the antitrust laws...
...WE ARE AT ONE in onr-knowledge that the armies of Germany must be beaten in this war...
...In addition to this there is another billion owned by foreigners who have not as yet converted their holdings into dollar exchange...
...A more practical thing for the Government to do would be to revalue gold at, sty $70 per ounce...
...If Hitler wins the war, practically all this gold will become worthless...
...Our time, which might have been'" Better employed in organizing the unorganized, has been frittered away in the...
...The question is open to intelligent argument...
...Some of the gold coins would go out to individuals who might hoard them under mattresses in the hope of making a profit in the future by .some- unforeseen change in the international situation...
...It would seem that while Mr...
...But that is not the case...
...Thus, Mr...
...Perhaps, we should "send our boys over there...
...And it is important that in the beginning the spirit of the desired accomplishment may be made manifest...
...For them the abstract objective of "preserving democracy" may be incidental • to their struggle for self-preservation—even for the preservation of those forces in their own national lives which seem to us subversive of freedom...
...Yet if our program of rearmament is directed by this fear alone, if our apprehension is confined only to the thought that enemy troops may eventually try to invade our soil, we are less than half rearming ourselves...
...Preliminary studies, based - on experience thus far, seem to indicate that a program of the size now contemplated would offer to farmer* a much wider market for their surplus products during the coming fiscal year...
...It-is fitting and proper that at long last we show signs that we are awaking to the reality of this danger...
...ArnoldsMan Behind the U.S...
...Instead, the charges were of such an intricate technical nature as to bewilder the average lawyer or newspaperman...
...Wa were not neutral when the Red army marched into Finland...
...Our rearmament, our horror at the thought of a German victory, are only a beginning...
...Not merely their love for human freedom, but the natural love of life which is in every living organism is muscling their desperate effort...
...40-borstpower biplane of the early Wright type...
...While, admittedly, the monsttsition of a gold and silver profit as here suggested represents the "act" of inflation, it is not necessarily the "fact" of inflation...
...Can any decent American look his conscience squarely in the face in the midst of his plenty while England and France are needing vital supplies, the lack of which may detract in any degree from their ability to win a victory over German armed force...
...The primary use of gold is to carry on international trade...
...Arnold's motives...
...Defense, Serves Industry By BERT KIRKMAN President...
...The Arnold indictments are anti-union harassments, pure and simple...
...In this manner she can close all markets t» the United States, force the shutting of thausands of American plants, creating uncap)*/' meat which will make present joblessness appear like a Sunday picnic...
...Air Force More is known of the lesser military chiefs in the Balkan* thin about the military men who kwd the armed forces of the Vnhtc States...
...All the talk about restraint of trade and opposition to technological development is so much sand designed to blind the unthinking...
...Yet if they win, as we hope they shall, one essential:' victory will have been won against the forces which threaten all human freedom and decency throughout the world...
...BUT even now as the anti-trust division continues to indict and harass honest labor leaders under the Sherman anti-trust laws...
...Victorious Nazis' Barter System Would Crack U. S. Finances By IRVING B. ALTMAN Editor of Dynamic America THE monetary gold stock of the United States has reached a peak total of over nineteen billion dollars...
...Of course, this latter proposal is thoroughly unorthodox and would be condemned by banker* and others under the influence of finance-capital economics...
...This war (as all wars are) is being fought with much more than men and guns on the field of battle...
...This means that we have over twenty billions in gold in this country or probably seventy per cent of the world total...
...The obvious first-line of defense against these forces lies in assatult upon the German armies, instrument of the official German State and the present national ideology voiced in Hitlerism...
...Every decent person in the world today must be at war in his heart and mind with all of the forces which are behind the present destruction of civilization in Europe...
...If she can take succulent colonies like the Belgian Congo, the Reich will control more than 900,000 square miles of Central Africa, where vast production of copper, palm oil, nuts, coffee, cocoa, rubber, timber, maize, r*es% metals and minerals will supply Germany wit* a sufficient quantity for export...
...The German armies and German government are by all odds the outstandingly evil product of these forces today...
...Let us pay for them out of the appropriations we are now mating for airplanes, tanks and artillery which may be finished too late...
...This the Government can do by act of Congress, since the monetary value of gold is an arbitrary standard fixed by Government...
...WHY ARE WE rearming...
...PARLY in 1934 the Government lifted the price of gold from $20.67 per ounce to $88 per ounce, a revaluation of 75 per cent If we revalued gold as suggested above, the Govern- . ment would have a T>ookkeeping profit of over nineteen billion dollars...
...The creation of credit by the banks, too, constitutes the "act" of inflation, but does not result in actual inflation because we have been able to produce goods to meet the demand artificially created by the bank-money issued and borrowed by the Government...
...Is it not essential that America play its part in winning this vital victory regardless of differences on fundamental issues which may existbetween as and the Allies, and regardless of our fear that any sort of participation may involve us in total participation...
...The plan depends on seizure of all continental and Scandinavian factories and all wealthy African colonies new owned by the Allies...
...Let us fill them with coal, with iron, with copper, with foodstuffs, with whatever supplies French and English war staffs tell us they need and send them across the Atlantic convoyed by the United States navy to he docked at the direction of the Allies...
...The Government now has a profit of close to two billion dollars on the 1934 revaluation of gold...
...But when the demand for goods and services can be met, a large volume of money cannot cause inflation...
...Gen...
...In addition to this there is about * billion and a half of silver bullion which can also be monetized...
...Our militancy, strength, and the ceaseless campaign we have waged for the six-hour day, thirty-hour week,has not endeared us to the National Electrical Manufacturers' Association...
...We continue to eat to repletion and make a slight gesture to our consciences by contributing voluntarily (and because it is voluntary, inadequately) to the Red Cross relief fund...
...We were not neutral in fact when, the first German gun was fired in Poland...
...Barter World A revolution in the financial and industrial structure of the United States will be forced by a German victory because of the intricate barter structure Herr Hjalmar Schacht has worked oat for Hitler...
...Long before thai when Hitler, Chamberlain and Daladier threw Czecho-Slovakia and human decency, overboard at...
...Overwhelmingly the moral force of democratic America has long been arrayed against the forces which are making a shambles of Europe through the evils of power politics and the madness of totalitarian desire for domination...
...Since the beginning of the war, both England and France have been on food rations...
...Turkey has not found it so...
...If we were sure that they were going to win this war, we would remain complacent about our woeful lack of defense, secure in the feeling we have had for one hundred and fifty years that the British navy is our protection in the Atlantic It is our apprehension in the thought of a possible German victory, our fear that Europe may be dominated by totalitarianism, our sudden panic realization that we may be called upon to defend America, which has made us consent almost without a dissenting voice to the expenditure of billions of dollars from an already woefully depleted treasury in order that we may be prepared for a gigantic defensive effort should the need arise...
...And so if Hitler's blitzkrieg has served no other purpose for American democracy, it has revealed the glaring inconsistencies of certain of our federal agencies...
...Arnold's fond consideration toward monopolistic wealth is so transparent that Senator Gerald P. Nye was recently moved to write to U. S. AttorneyGeneral Jackson and say: "When Mr...
...If Germany controls the factories of France, England, Scandinavia and Central Europe she will be able to barter huge quantities of machinery in all world markets...
...But inasmuch as the Federal Reserve banks hold practically all such certificates at the present time this .procedure would merely transfer gold from the Treasury to the banks...
...In indicting eleven of our present officers and representatives, Mr...
...I ET us take the case of the . union of which I happen to be the president-—the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 3. We are the nation's ' largest building trades local...
...He has flown for twenty-Din* of his fifty-three years, mostly oat west...
...Perhaps we should not...
...Not because we are afraid of England and France...
...Arnold has been excessively zealous in persecuting labor unions, he has been fast asleep at the switch regarding monopoly as it affects the national defense...
...Depending upon the commodities on the list, there is a potential additional market for approximately $40,000,000 worth of vegetables and fruits and other surplus agricultural products which are produced in different parts of the country under a program,of the sise contemplated...
...ing fleet he will command most of the 50,000 planes and 100,000 pilots...
...Arnold made no charge of graft, corruption, violence or racketeering...
...We have coal...
...We can easily absorb this added amount to our monetary circulation...
...Arnold's Attack on Unions Hits U.S...
...All this gives the Government about twenty-two billions which can be used either to retire half of the present outstanding debt, or it may be used to finance the Government's rearmament program—plus an extensive public works program to reemploy the millions now jobless...
...The Nazi economy does not require gold for this purpose...
...The German Economic Ministry already has seised the manufacturing plants of the International Telephone and Telegraph system in Oslo and Copenhagen, which, coupled with those in Holland, Belgium, Czechia and Austria, has cost the American corporation hundreds of millions of dollars and provided the Reich with an inexhaustible source for communication equipment and precision instruments...
...Arnold has permitted himself to be the friend, if not the direct agent, of the corporations which fear and hate Local 3. Labor does not demand" that any laws be suspended in its behalf...
...These armies must be crushed and made impotent, as the first s"tep in the war which human decency must wage against forces which were powerful on both sides of the conference table at Munich and which have destroyed for the moment human liberties and human civilization throughout Europe and Asia...
...Arnold's partiality toward defendants of great wealth is' known, when the significance of his consent decrees measures in settling civil complaints is realized, then we may expect a national revulsion against his determination to obtain criminal indictments against other alleged but lesser violators of federal anti-trust laws . . ." And to make his extreme partiality still more glaring, the New York Times, under date of June 4, informs us that the AssistantAttorney General intends to waive the anti-trust laws insofar as they apply to corporations engaged in the national rearmament program...
...Every person who is afraid to express forcefully his hostility to these forces is allowing fear to prevent his true rearmament...
...The most orthodox thing to do would be to go back to a gold-coin standard...
...Some 1,300,000 people in sixtyeight local areas are benefiting directly through increased and improved diets...
...And is it necessary immediately upon the official abandonment of our neutrality to send an inadequate and futile military force into the zone of battle...
...If our men were working: eight and nine hours a day...
...A few days ago Thurman Arnold, who heads the division, declared that many of the key patents required in the manufacture of arms is bottlenecked by means of Nazi control...
...I ET US HAVE our new airplanes, our anti-aircraft guns, our artillery and our new ships and pray to whatever gods there may be left in a seemingly godless world that we will get them before our need for them is desperate...
...The nation most make it clear to the heads of the anti-trust division that only the unification of all the best forces of our nation can pull us through the present crisis...
...The shout would go up that tus i» wild inflation...
...courts...
...But why are we waiting for that hour of desperation to engage in the most effective way immediately possible to us in this gigantic struggle which is ours as well as that of the Allies—this struggle which must be won if human liberty and human security is not to be set back for generations to come...
...Our membership consists of 16,500 men and women engaged in every branch of the vital electrical industry...
...Here, in essence, we have the crux of the entire matter...
...Both France and England need metals, common in times of peace, precious in time of war, which are still so plentiful in this country that we throw them away and let them disintegrate on every city and village dump, selling to the Allies such as they will buy for cash and carry away in their own ships protected by their own navies...
...The flow of money can be controlled, since obviously, it will not all go into circulation at one time...
...All the legal verbiage is intended to confuse the issue...
...In the case of butter, there is expected to be an increase in consumption of about 56,000,000 lbs...
...coins as we formerly did, to holders of gold certificates...
...Arnold would have Ignored us...
...Munich, we were not neutral...
...The money will be paid out for materials and wages as production goes on...
...If we have been guilty of anything save an unceasing effort to provide work at decent wages for our members, we should be punished...
...However, when you boil all the charges down to their essence, this is what you get: We refused to do anything that would tend to lower the high labor standards which, exist in our industry...
...The invasion of the Low Countries has forced France to face a coal shortage...
...This abandonment of moral neutrality is a far more important fact in the constitution of the present American point of view than the abandonment one by one of the technical details which have up to the last few weeks marked our official neutrality in the actual warfare in which the Allies are now engaged against Germany...
...Is it conceivable that we hold ourselves aloof from it or do only those things to the doing of which we are driven bythe fear of future invasion...
...Under the direct barter system, a universally accepted medium of exchange (as is gold) is not needed...
...By our rearmament program and forceful public utterances in the press, over the radio, and even by official government spokesmen, we are showing our sympathy for the Allies and our desire that they may win the present phase marked by armed struggle between their armies and Germany's...
...They effect exchange by direct barter of goods...
...Local 3, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers A NATION threatened 'with war, so we have been told, is capable of ^ the greatest acts of self-sacrifice and heroism...
...It is not enough for the United States of America to begin now to rearm against the possibility of an Allied defeat...
...Bit by bit, as we did between 1914 and 1917, we are proving that there is no carefully and accurately drawn line which separates the state of complete neutrality from that of an active belligerency...
...But is not there a deeper more fundamental question involved...
...THE United States has the resources—land, * materials, capital and man-power—capable of producing the goods to meet the new demands caused by an increase in the volume of mosey...
...We have been the target for costly law suits and at the moment a case involving $1,300,000 alleged triple damages is pending against us in the Federal courts...
...The point to bear in mind is that the direct issue of money by the Government is essentially no different in purpose and result than when the Government borrows such sums from the banks...
...Their system carries us back to the days of classic antiquity when merchants and traders came to the world's market places and traded goods face to face...
Vol. 23 • June 1940 • No. 23
