Fathers of Republic Welcomed British Link Against Despots
Lee, Algernon
Fathers of Republic Welcomed British Link Against Despots By ALGERNON LEE THERE is a notion abroad that isolationism is a sacred Ameri-* can tradition, created by the Fathers of the Republic,...
...Those words fit the situation today—rbut not in the isolationist sense...
...Willkie believes iin.easing up on the restrictions covering Wall Street speculation...
...A so-called Citizens and Taxpayers Committee was formed to lead the fight - The president of the committee has since acted as attorney for the Tennessee.Electric Power Co., i.--and its treasurer was connected with an underwriting ¦ concern which actively handled securities of the...
...There were 909 other counts on which Mr...
...all of which Williams shortly turned over to the Free Press in ostensible consideration for the issue to him of certificates pf stock...
...France, president Roosevelt, ana ali Americans favorable tc the &nti-K;t!er Cause...
...I talked with MB* dreds of people, nllinr-itanas attendants, farmers, factory workers, preachers, teachers...
...i ? * T READ this book, as I reasrW * in the beginning, autisf tk interims of a trip thronsJHpIs, Indiana, and Michigan...
...We refer you to the records of the Tennessee Utilities Commission, which show— (a) That Mr...
...They neither clamored for war nor cried for peace...
...He is as far from the hot affairs of men as the astronomer is from the birth or death of a star...
...Milton's paper first supported TVA, then favored a publicly owned power plant for Chattanooga...
...Agricultural workers to date have been segregated from other workers in the receiving social legislation benefits, because of the nature of their work...
...Willkie's company further gave indirect financial help to the publisher who was fighting the Chattanooga News by giving him a 5 per cent discount on the bills of some 40-odd grocery stores in which the publisher was interested...
...The very .effort to be unbiased leads tc this result...
...ThrPap?se cf the chemical analyst ¦ to find the right combinas*»» elements to make a useful-ff*-uct...
...Willkie's power company bought $19,303 worth of 1 advertising in the paper set up to fight the Chattanooga News, and paid an advertising- rate "far in excess of the regular rates"— about 25 per cent higher—the only conclusion being that Mr...
...Here we hsve the result of tat best job of propaganda analysis yet rrocuced...
...have been different' had its subsidiary the -Tennessee Electric Power Company, spent the money to kill public power...
...Another few years, and in the fall of 1823 we find James Madison rejoicing in the fact that Great Britain and ?he United States were acting together on a line of world politics which affected Europe as well as America...
...j,ne savings oi me people evaporated in the ensuing liquidation...
...TPHE authors would not—cculd * not — have recognized ar-.y right cr wrong...
...But millions cf Americans do he-lieve in the British cause, go is analyst's job is to deflate Britain, put it or...
...Morality is erased...
...c) That Mr...
...This is the Commonwealth and Southern set up—and this is the way most of the utilities are set up...
...Restore business confidence and investors will once more flock to Wall Street, invest their savings, and soon we will have real recovery with jobs for all...
...All argument is reduced to nullity...
...This volume adds tc confusion by whirling liar...
...He would have been ranked over Douglas and Breckenridge— not because he represented liberty as opposed to slavery—but because he used a good trick and pulled the greater part cf the population over to his side...
...The Nazis and the Communists are properly characterized...
...But Mr...
...Willkie's company, and its subsidiary the Tennessee Electric Power Company, caried on an unsuccessful campaign against the bond issue...
...As was pointed out in a New Leader editorial several weeks ago, George Washington did not in his Farewell Address sweep-ingly warn his countrymen against European alliances...
...Perhaps there is a usefw hint to be found here...
...The great bulk of the people, as in most wars in most eras,~seem?d to be watching the enactment of a drama in which their role had already been fixed...
...or fastens...
...The presupposition is that there are no genuine issues, no ways of getting at essential facts, and no people genuinely interested in the welfare of America or of the world...
...as William Pelley ar.d Father Cough?n...
...Theirtatas-ing about the war if based ejis-dubitabie facts which an oa* to anyone who read...
...The only patriots, American youth are taught, an peopie toe deaf to hear the raen, too blind to read the papen, sad too dumb to express an opinion...
...On page 165 they frankly acknowledge that in relation to censorship "England was utopia compared with Germany...
...Business was booming and workers had jobs...
...To them all propaganda is -on the same level—just as to an entomologist all bugs are equal...
...the level with Germany...
...Nicholas Murray Butler and Dorothy Thompson, cn the other hand, an mere British dupes...
...To them this great tragedy It sat a business cf tricks...
...In 192S ¦ that same seat brought over $600.000, but then we had the five-million-share days and brokerage commissions from trades were pouring in...
...and honest people about in e kaleidoscope Men -who aspire te make their work honorable prof?salas must offer some genuine hell* There must be s eonnectiisX • arguments and issues with P«* manent human values...
...Down in Chattanooga, George Fort Milton, a real progressive, published one of the few liberal newspapers found in the South...
...Isafa» its chapters...
...There were no idle bank deposits 'and capital was flowing freely...
...Yet roughly three times as much space is spent dissecting British efforts as is giver- tc the elahor...
...The British government, already heading in the direction of democracy, joined in this view, and this is what;Madison wrote: "With the British power and navy combined' with our own, we have nothing to fear from "the rest of the world...
...It would, of course...
...Prior to the referendum, the Commonwealth and Southern, Mr...
...This dramatic effort gives us a chance to size up t.?e ¦whole great movement for propaganda analysis...
...1, * ¦ * * BACK in 1935, at the time Will--kie: launched into his fight against the TVA, the State- of Tennessee authorized the City of Chattanooga to purchase or construct a municipal distribution plant, provided the voters of the city, should approve the project in a referendum...
...Italy and the Soviet Union...
...The last sentences of the book state blandly that the American people are having their minds made up for them...
...Lincoln would have been breveted as the supreme propagandist of his age...
...Friend of the (Wall St...
...has is tha: if a larger contribution could nave overcome the propaganda and contributions of the federa, government and the Tennessee Valley Authority that it did no: make such additional contributions...
...And the people shared their views, especially the working people, as witness the hundred thousand* who in November, 1830, gathered in Washington Slquare to celebrate the second French revolution, and the welcome "given in all parts of the country twenty years later to Louis Koasuth, Hungarian political refugee, whom our government had openly aided in escaping the Austrian and Russian bloodhounds...
...These young men, with the blessing of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, have undertaken the perilous task of picturing the waves of argument which roll over the American people as we play our part in World War II...
...d) That Mr...
...Over $1,000,000 a month will be added to the wages of more than 60,000 workers in 12 southern pulpwood manufacturing plants, if the prosecutions are successful...
...influence ought to be felt on the other side...
...Of this ?20,000 was contributed by Commonwealth and Southern...
...The authors' obvious purpose is to show that the entire debate is false and that ali of the debaters are liars and hypocrites...
...Willkie's power companies...
...Unnoticed by the press a few days ago 70,000 agricultural workers—the semi-peonage class stretching from California's corporate farms to the backyards of New York—were brought under the provisions of the Wages and Hours administration, in a ruling setting a thirty cents an hour minimum wage for farm labor...
...What followed...
...The history of regulation of American business, on the whole, has not been a happy one...
...As 0. Henry would say, the report lacks confirmation...
...People", Willkie, An Old Hand at Smashing the Opposition Press By IRVING B. ALTMAN Editor of Dynamic America THE other day a seat on the -New York Stock Exchange sold for a mere $35,000...
...The general result is an enormous smear campaign...
...James Monroe had explained what came to be called the Monroe Doctrine by saying that it was meant to gttard against the danger that the Holy Alliance would attempt, plerhaps to conquer some Latin-American republics, perhaps tOi "control their destinies" without actual conquest...
...It is called "War Propaganda and the United States" and was written by Harold Lavine and James Wechsler...
...It's all right to have regulation, but .it mustn't be effective...
...I found them sober, not at all nulled this way and that by say sort of propaganda...
...The Department of Justice has also been proceeding with criminal prosecutions under the Wage and Hour Law...
...The new ruling sets a precedent in bringing the men under the protection of the Wages and Hours Law, and it strikes a blow at the employers who have tried to take the teeth out of the law by claiming exemption for their : workers under the "area of production" clause which—to date —has been a weak point in the line of labor defense...
...The election of Wendell Willkie would spell huge profits for Wall ?Streer,op.erators...
...The same sort of diff erante occurs in the treatment of Americans on the two sides of the argument...
...Communist editors woo them, and the gang that does the best job will win them for isolation or intervention...
...This, he said, we must resist, because "the political system of the allied powers (Russia, Prussia, Austria, Bourbon France, Spain, and' the Papacy) is essentially different from that of America...
...Willkie and Freedom of the Press lyiR...
...At the time of this fight Mr...
...But genuine American isolation ists...
...Willkie and the Southern and Commonwealth Corporation in their fight against TVA...
...So Mr...
...The use of "Honest Abe'' to designate the ¦ President of the United States would have been hailed as a familiar propaganda device...
...On New Year's Day, 1814, under the impression that Napoleon might complete his mastery of Continental 'Europe and then conquer England, Thomas Jefferson wrote of the danger-that he might send armed forces in British ships to attack tihe United States, and declared: "It cannot be to our interest that all Europe should be reduced to a single monarchy...
...What he did say was that we should "steer clear of permanent alliances" and "trust in temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies...
...The Communists aid Nazis are sharply characterised...
...Then came the bust up...
...Lord Lothian is placed on the same leve...
...We did not have a Securities, and Exchange Commission to regulate' the stock markets, nor Fair Trade standards enforced by pesky Washington bureaucrats to destroy business confidence...
...and in the great struggle of the epoch between liberty and despotism, we owe it to ourselves to sustain the former, in this hemisphere at least" Some of our industrialists and some of" our politicians have got very far away from the spirit of the Founding Fathers...
...But since everyone discussed is dumped in the same kettle they ali come out dyed with the same hue...
...The big monopolies have pretty generally been able to escape effective regulation by one legal device or other...
...b) That Mr...
...It is in the nature cf the profession of propaganda analysis that it tends to place all propaganda and all propagandists cn the same level...
...The unity, freedom and happiness cf the nation would not have been discovered to be at stake...
...Willkie's company paid more than it had was a subsidy to the "friendly paper...
...like Senator Nye and Sav stor Wheeler, emerge from the acid looking pretty fine...
...Nothing remains hat cynicism...
...ate products of Kerr Goebbeh' machine...
...Everyone who takes any stand at all comes cut as a rascal...
...Milton opposed Mr...
...Those were the blessed pre-New Deal days...
...This involves a tacit denial of all moral issues...
...One very effective device for avoiding such regulation has been the holding company set-up...
...But take this question of regulation...
...WILLIAM E. BONN TYURING a trip through the Middle West I read a good . book on propaganda analysis...
...The failure lies not'in the men hut in the presupposition of the task...
...Does Mr...
...for effective regulation destroys business confidence...
...The Tennessee Utilities Commission found the Willkie power company guilty on 917 counts of "using illegal devices" to destroy the Chattanooga News by unlawfully helping its competitor, which was "friendly" to the Power Trust's interests...
...Willkie can go on' record favoring regulation of utilities, in the full knowledge that under present conditions such regulation cannot be wholly effective...
...What finally happened to the Chattanooga News...
...Would this be the fate of the other papers who oppose Mr...
...The cleverness with which he tied in the interventionist cause with the accepted Websterian slogan, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," would have been marked ?s the masterpiece which won the day over the other devices in the hands of other experts...
...It was sold by the sheriff to the Free Press, the same paper the Tennessee Utililities Commission said had been subsidized by Mr...
...Willkie says he believes in the freedom of the press...
...So did such brilliant and versatile thinkers as Samuel F. B. Morsr, inventor and artist, or John W. ^Draper, chemist and historian...
...Here is a case history of how this works in actual practice...
...Morality ¦ to them very real, end issues an simple_as they were to their grandfathers in 1861...
...THE theory is that the people V of the United States are just dupes, robots, iron filings which are pulled this way or that by the strongest magnet...
...them...
...Willkie's company was found guilty of trying to destroy a newspaper whose policies he didn't like...
...Since few Americans are deceived by the Germans, there is little need of wasting space or...
...Willkie was quoted in the New York Times as follows: "The only regret the Commonwealth and Southern Corp...
...Now in Tennessee, as in many other states, it is a crime for officers of a corporation doing business in the state to spend money to influence a public election, but the Commonwealth and Southern is a Delaware corporation, and as a mere holding company, it would claim that it did not do business in the state of Tennessee...
...Willkie's company granted a 5 per cent discount on the power bills of the Free Press, even after they became delinquent, and when they were not subject to discount...
...Out of Peonage ' WASHINGTON, D. C. — Despite the news coverage in the daily press, the Federal Government's activities have not quite shrunk down to...
...Those who, listen, reach desasas, join groups, make sacrifica», devote themselves tc causes, anal dupes...
...Fathers of Republic Welcomed British Link Against Despots By ALGERNON LEE THERE is a notion abroad that isolationism is a sacred Ameri-* can tradition, created by the Fathers of the Republic, cherished by five or six generations of good citizens, and faithfully followed by our statesmen until President Wilson got us into war with Germany, or at least until President McKinley sent American troops, along with British, French, Germans, and Belgian forces, to put down a revolt against monarchy in China...
...Willkie practice what he preaches...
...The stock market bubble burst from overinflation, business went into a tailspin and workers lost tncir jods...
...I wish to report to the authon that their picture of those folks out there :s a fallacious «8...
...The total funds used- by the committee .in .campaigning against public power was S22.265.45...
...TTHE proportions of space de* voted to opposing propagandas suggest that the authors set themselves the special task cf deflating Britain...
...e) That Mr...
...If Jefferson was right in thinking that an...
...other are mere appendages of foreign interests...
...This is the Republican formula for prosperity—in fact, it's The American' Way, don't you know...
...WILLKIE has declared ¦** that "free and untrammelled press is one of the guaranties of democracy...
...Women who raise funds to help suffering Finns or who knit to cover cold French or British soldiers appear as rather sinister characters with evil motives...
...Willkie and his Tennessee Electric Power Company got on the job to destroy this liberal paper...
...A perfect analyst can never reach a conclusion...
...They waited, and the words rolled over them...
...Willkie's company was found guilty of turning over to this Silas Williams the sum of $10.000 "under the guise of counsel fee...
...Suppose that two sharp men like these had written a similar book in 1861...
...As a matter of fact every one of the first six presidents, not to mention Clay, Webster, and other leading statesmen down to the eve of the Civil War, recognized that the United States had a practical as well as an idealistic interest in European affairs and Wat, merely as a matter of national safety, our...
...Willkie's company withdrew its advertising from the Chattanooga News after a competitor, the Free Press, had been set up in business by a group of men whose chief stockholder was Silas Williams, an attorney for the Tennessee Electric Power Company...
...invasion from the other side of the ocean was practicable in hisi time, his professed admirers should explain how it comes to be impossible today...
...Because this study is a careful and technically first-class work it gives us a penect test case, mj sincere admiration for a difficult job superbly done cannot blind me to the fact that in a time ¦of crisis the propaganda experts ihave little to offer to a nation in the throes of decision...
...British lecturers, German broadcasters...
...Willkie if he were elected president/^ the United States...
...same company...
...Let's see...
...fact there would have been no judgement of the rival propagandists excepting on the basis cf their relative cleverness and success...
...Scores of other bureaus, for years fonts of news, function silently on all cylinders, tracking down criminals, prosecuting price-gouging corporation combines, ferreting out pure food and drugs law violations, developing plans for public housing, blueprinting plans for public health and ever widening the scope of benefits under the scores of New Deal reform laws...
...Propaganda Analysis' Debunking Turns Into New Anti-British Weapon By DR...
...Even, in the thinking of the authors, Americans who have opinions one way or the...
...Mr...
...How can a Public Service Commission effectively regulate an oneratinp- utilitv rorrmanv doinc business in Tennessee owned by a holding company organized under the laws of Delaware, and having its principal business offices in the Chase National Bank building at 20 Pine Street, New York...
...the defense departments only...
...The News was sold—and then killed...
...He is, moreover, referred to as "the ubiquitous Lord Lothian"— the old' name-calling device used here in a book which is supposed to be propaganda analysis rather than propaganda...
Vol. 23 • August 1940 • No. 35
