Nazi Commercial Invaders Buyil U.S. Appeasers With Export Contracts
LYONS, EUGENE
Nazi Commercial Invaders Buyil U.S. Appeasers With Export Contracts By EUGENE LYONS Editor of The American Mercury IN our America, nothing succeeds like ^success. * Moral censure is heaped on...
...But what about the 250 teachers, sworn to defend American institutions and to mold the minds of pupili and students in harmony with democratic ideas...
...True, American business on the whole no longer looks upon the Nazi and Fascist systems as last-ditch defenses of capitalism against socialism...
...on affiliated unions in connection with activities of the C.I.O...
...Union Made Goods...
...Logically the demoniac cleverness and machine-like efficiency of the Nazi regime ought to deepen our abhorrence and heighten our alarm...
...Appeasement sentiment, I am convinced, will spread and flourish in our midst...
...In response to growing public protest we got the Clayton Act, which was intended to stop this abuse...
...For the sake of profit it will cry peace when there is no peace just 'as willingly as it will foment war when there is no need for war...
...and its restoration to full membership in the A.F.ofL...
...Hitler is getting away with it...
...Professor Counts and his colleagues are now in a position to .appeal to teachers to join their organization on its excellent platform of promoting the economic and social interests of teachers, maintaining academic freedom and high educational standards, and defending civil liberties...
...Not even an appeal tc American self-interest can cancel out the imnulse to elcrifv ard DroDitiate and alibi the lusty aggressor who gets away with it...
...It was a task that never became a chore, a responsibility that was frequently exciting— always it was lots of fun...
...APPEASERS AND SABOTEURS HPHERE are normal causes for America's slowness in getting ready to resist the German-Italian-Russian-J ap??ese menace...
...It took the pernicious cleverness of the judiciary of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century so to pervert it...
...They have fo convince the public on a question of long-range politics...
...They are not really opposing those parts of the administration's foreign policy which they mistakenly think increase the likelihood of our becoming involved in war...
...No: The killing at Coyoacan was not "spectacular...
...The appeasers will be beaten in the long run, because the people are waking up...
...Willkie, Commonwealth and Southern...
...American teachers have properly refused to become associated with a Communist transmission belt...
...The appeasers talk on the air and in the press...
...This psychological supra-rational factor plays into the hands of the professional Nazi propagandists and of the enthusiastic amateurs of the Lindbergh brand...
...As a result of the appearance a few days ago of Vice-President Matthew Woll before the I.T.U...
...This American success complex is carried over into the sphere of international relations...
...It is a blot on the New Deal scutcheon and it ought to be wiped out...
...QN this Labor Day we remind every reader of what 8"?*rf to be kept in mind every caV of the year—that *JJ...
...What he was guilty of was of valuing the individual "human being'* only as part of the concept of "mankind" and that this concept, like a Moloch, demanded that the individual shall be offered up upon the altar of "proletarian" abstraction...
...Political advantage is not merely a by-product of their foreign trade but often the main purpose...
...Thurman Arnold in the Department of Justice . under a$ administration which certainly does Jnot intend to be hostile to the movement of organized labor...
...The writing of a weekly column involves far more labor than I can afford on a task that is largely a labor of love...
...It has realized, with justice, that the "proletarian" anti-plutocracy slogans of the totaiitan-ans are not all fake...
...Positive measures are needed to stem it...
...mend to Congress the passage of a ]** so clearly worded that no officer of justice would again dare to base a prosecution of trade unions and thdr officials on a false interpretation of the Sherman Act and no judge would dare to uphold him if he did...
...kinds of goods do not carry labels, try to f.nd out those you buy are union-made...
...it is unfortunate that he refused to admit his error...
...For the prosecuting authorities to have recourse to the Anti-Trust Law, against its obvious and avowed intent, is to admit that they have no good case or that they are really aiming, not at the punishment of such offenders, but at curbing th...
...But he hasn't said a word...
...One of the queerest is the presence of Mr...
...At the time when Soviet Russia was believed to have achieved industrial miracles, a good many of our countrymen without the faintest sympathy for Bolshevism became, almost despite themselves, Soviet enthusiasts...
...We cannot refrain, however, from expressing condemnation of the 250 delegates at Buffalo who voted against the resolution, suppoited by the majority, denouncing "all dictatorships, whether of Nazi, Fascist or Communist origin, whether in Germany, Italy or Russia...
...He has also declared agaitat our democratic form of government...
...Foreign trade is as much a state monopoly in totalitarian countries as their armies or their secret services and diplomatic corps...
...Among these are the hoodlums who have stirred race riots in the densely populated Bronx and Brooklyn sections...
...HAT sentiment, moreover, will be inflamed "by * greed for profi...
...Say what you will —and mind you, I hold no brief for his methods or his ideas—that boy's putting it over...
...There are the elements for which Ford, Hoover, and Lindbergh are outstanding spokesmen...
...The decision will be made...
...Harrison Retires As Columnist For New Leader From CHARLES YALE HARRISON To the Editor: For the past year and a half writing Where the News Ends has been one of my keenest pleasures...
...American Destiny Party...
...Even our great corporations are small against the economic totality of Nazi Germany...
...War against its enemies...
...If they did, they would soon find that instead of getting rid of one evil they had added others to it...
...Hitler's G^nnany will swing this economic weight more profitably for itself, more disastrously for America, than Stalin's Russia was able to do...
...The United States Senate made a good start on Wednesday when, by a 69 to 16 vote, it adopted the amendment to the Selective Service bill, authorizing the government to take over, by condemnation proceedings, any plant deemed necessary for national defense whose owners show themselves unwilling to cooperate...
...Of what value is our government control of foreign relations when the most powerful instrument for shaping those, relations—the totalitarian trade monopolies—is given frte play in our own country...
...But logic has smail enoug*h role in the process...
...over the payment of the assessment levied by the A.F.L...
...He could really put...
...Nor de we see why the taxpayers of a democratic nation should continue to feed enemies who -would impose a totalitaria despotism upon them...
...Goebbels, and a lot more insidious...
...convention at New Orleans, the conflict involving the I.T.U...
...A though there is any need to frustrate the weak...
...There are others who do not look so far ahead...
...The capitalist opposition is today following two lines, which run parallel for the present, but will in time converge...
...Leon Trotsky, one of the greatest geniuses of our era (this,, incidentally, is also the verdict of a conservative newspaper like the New York Times and of men like Winston Churchill who hated Trotsky and all that he believed in), in whom there burned the sacred flame kindled by the French Revolution, was not guilty of shooting down Russian workers...
...Having outlawed competitive economy in its own domain, Germany will utilize that very competitive element in other countries, and in the United States in patieular, to build up an array of profit-partners...
...Moral censure is heaped on petty thieves, punks, pickpockets and "streetwalkers...
...Among its several rewards I number a host of friends and an assortment of enemies that any writer might well envy...
...There was no use telling them about catastrophic famines and teeming prison camps and general oppression — the Kremlin crowd, in Duranty's much reiterated phrase, was "getting away with it," and that made everything right...
...The notion that a private American firm, large or small, can deal with a foreign trade monopoly on equal terms is an absurd piece of make-believe...
...shows that the sales people are unionized...
...It is a mistake to suppose that Big Business always wants war...
...One of the chap ters in Lawrence Dennis's new book, The Di names of War and Revolution, is entitled "Th Bloody Futility of Frustrating the Strong...
...But a species of heroism and social glamor attaches to big-shot racketeers within and without the law as long as they remain at the top...
...What is more, it is one of the principal and most effective of their political weapons...
...Thyssen has become a kind of symbol of disillusionment on that score...
...Chamber of Commerce, can prevent American business fronrinaking a wild scramble for Nazi orders—or from promoting the "stabilization" that holds promise of such orders...
...If ?*S5...
...I am proud of having added my small contribution to its growing strength...
...There still were difficulties, but for years it looked as if common sense and good faith would prevail...
...Only when the^-miracles turned out to be phony did that unnatural admiration collapse...
...Look for the union label...
...But now, in the era of the New Deal, of all times, we have a return to the old perversi?n of a good law to bad ends...
...But back of these natural causes for delay loom sinister forces, using them as shield and spearhead...
...Many of them openly espouse Coufhlini oft-repeated fascist principles: many of them officially pat' ticipate in pro-Nazi Christian Mobilizers, Christian Front American Destiny party, Bund, and even Ku-Klux HH demonstrations and campaigns...
...Their Ieaat common denon»* inator is always anti-Semitism...
...It will be able to subsidize treason, as it did among its pre-war European neighbors, by the perfectly legal method of throwing lucrative business or threatening to withdraw it...
...Variations on the theme are inescapable, and unless the Nazi machine is halted demonstratively by the British, they are sure to become more incisive and more audible...
...We have faith, however, that the principle of the Overton-Russell amendment will become law...
...Roosevelt to the presidency the power so granted will no doubt be used to put an end to capitalistic sabotage...
...The New Leader is no fledgling...
...These alien philosophies have become the official ?OgM of the Catholic hierarchy in Brooklyn and Queens, wb*W reside some 1,500,000 Catholics...
...From intimate personal knowledge I am aware that the Kremlin, at one period, was using American capitalist groups to do job* of propaganda and to exert direct political pj?essure in the United States...
...Public opinion is about ready to support the government in dealing with them as they should be dealt with...
...All these men are under the jurisdiction of Archbiabg...
...Please understand: like you lam utterly opposed to all that Trotsky stood for...
...The saboteurs saw wood and say little...
...It will be read from Catholic pulpitl throughout Germany...
...unions themselves...
...What Big Business wants is profit...
...that even after he convinced himself that he had created a Frankenstein, that the October Revolution had crumbled to dust he refused to listen to the voice of reason...
...Peace in the House of Labor...
...The number of teachers in the A. F. of T. is infinitesimal compared with the hundreds of thousands to be organized...
...We wish them success...
...candidate for the presidency, fails to see the relation between Archbishop Francis J. Spe'.lman and the German Catholic Bishops' Conference at Fulda in the Reich...
...The saboteurs must be beaten in a shorter way...
...His colleague, R*T erend E. F. Brophy, has appeared in courts as a chai***" witness for Yorkville's fascist leader, Joe McWiHiaa** Brophy has also spoken at demonstrations advertised • "great Christian rallies to send Joseph McWilliantt pfH James Stewart to Congress as the representatives of tg...
...No amount of exhortation, though it come from the inner sanctum of the Manufacturers Association or U.S...
...The conference has just issued a solemn pledge of loyalty to Chancellor Hitler...
...Of course there are crooks and criminals among our six or seven millions of anion members and among the tens of thousands of union officials—just as there are crooks and criminals among the members of any church, any fraternal, any business men's association...
...These stand for ditching Great Britain and appeasing Hitler, not because they deprecate the horrors of war, but because they think an understanding with the dictatorships, together with the curbing of democratic and labor forces at home which that would imply, would give Very Big Business in this country such opportunities for profits and for lasting domination as it could never win in a democratic world...
...No doubt the pro-Natilt pastoral letter of the German Bishops will increase the ft**-power of these marauding gangs...
...It is especially hard for a humane people to resolve on killing or being killed...
...To say, however, as you do in your editorial, that "we cannot pretend to weep any bitter tears over the death of shades - of Russian workingmen peasants whom in his days of glory he caused to be shot down rises between us and his bier" is to simplify a great and profound event in modern history that stirred-the imagination of untold millions of workers, liberals, artists, educators and humanitarians of all shades and description—an event whose birth and death only future historians will be able to judge objectively...
...But trade unionism is an honest movement, a progressive movement, and by the intent of modern legislation a legally recognized and even approved movement, necessary to the welfare of the wage-working class and conducive to true liberty, justice and social concord...
...We hope it presages the beginning of a new era in the A. F. of T.,—the mass' organization of American teachers...
...But they are intent on the profits which either war or armament without war can bring them...
...However, I suffer no misgivings in taking leave of my editorial colleagues...
...This will clear the road to lifting of the suspension of the I.T.U...
...Already, as the press has revealed in connection with the Dr...
...We suggest the A. F. of T. make a clean job of it by driving the traitors from its midst...
...I have argued that "we must confront foreign trade monopolies with the full force of a unified American economy if we are to survive as a free nation in an enslaved world...
...In this, as in most other things, the Nazis will apply Stalinist techniques more effectively...
...But to confuse the revolutionary genius Trotsky, Trotsky-Robespierre with Stalin-Capone whose bloody, cowardly hand directed the pickaxe murder from the Kremlin is to commit a grave moral and historical error...
...CUCCESS-worship is implicit in all of our na tive appeasement sentiment...
...Certainly the working people cannot afford to defeat the Roosevelt-WaDace ticket on this issue...
...But on the other hand, support of the present administration for the good it has done should net silence criticism of its greatest misdeed...
...The New Leader WMl glad to help you...
...Make the housadauipt complete...
...Unless the American people take steps to prevent it, that clandestine maneuvering for the inside track on German trade must turn into an open stampede...
...It was brutal, beastly, cowardly and Stalin who was the perpetrator of it will be branded with the mark of Cain for generations to come...
...that the state ?euda?iam of Hitler and Mussolini is no more capitalistic than the state feudalism of Stalin...
...The American mind is the arena of a tug-of-war between fear of what they may do to us and admiration for what they have done to others...
...Father Curran, laM of the International Catholic Truth Society, is on re**" as an avowed anti-Semite...
...Getting away with it is its own justification in the American tradition, as attested by the lush legendry around Jesse James, the Dalton boys, even unto Dillinger and Capone...
...Most Americans, however, are neither sluggish nor cowardly...
...The title has, at any rate, the virtue of candoi Less frank or self-deceived appeasers of German think along the same lines without admitting i They argue that Nazi Germany cannot hurt u? that it needs our help to consolidate her cor quests, that Hitlerite ideology concedes to Amei ica a sphere of influence, and so on...
...They favor armament on the grandest scale...
...They juf»t "haggle and alow production and hold back on investment, counting that sooner or later the government's needs will force surrender...
...Already letters have reached me from the most diverse quarters, including business men, approving this principle...
...ANOTHER STEP TO'LABOR PEACE ^^S we go to press we learn that negotiations are to be resumed between the executive council of the American Federation of Labor and the officers of the International Typographical Union for adjustment of the conflict which led to the suspension of the I.T.U...
...A Hit-lerized Europe, possibly with mvch of Asia and Africa thrown in, will represent the world's largest business organization—a buyer and seller of goods able to tempt, to reward and to punish private businesses in America or elsewhere...
...It is - an unquestionable fact that neither Senator Sherman, the author of the Anti-Trust Law, nor the senators and representatives who voted for it nor the president who signed it nor ?ie people who rejoiced in its enactment meant it to be used against the trade unions...
...To the Editor Criticizes Trotsky Editorial Likens Him to Robespierre From LEON DENNEN It was with dismay that I read your cold-blooded editorial on the death of Leon Trotsky in last week's New Leader...
...Today, more than ever before, because of the talented writers it has attracted in recent years,- it is the authoritative spokesman of the honest, democratic left...
...They are just obstructing, sabotaging, playing for time in .which to bargain for their cut on the billions to be spent...
...TEACHERS' CONVENTION THE election of Professor George S. Counts as president of the American Federation of Teachers at its convention in Buffalo, together with the entire anti-Communist slate of officers, is an event gratifying to all who have the interests of democracy and education at heart...
...And much as I should like to continue with it, press of other duties, among them a novel in progress, makes the column a luxury which I can ill afford at the moment...
...This task has been tragically obstructed by the Communists and fellow-travelers who have bedevilled the life of the teachers' organization for many years...
...They expect war...
...There are among the 20.000,000 United States CanSo-lics, several million who follow every whim, every ¦Off**' tion of Father Coughlin...
...These are the far-sighted super-capitalists, who know that peace hath her victories, cheaper and no less lucrative than those of war...
...ljj5JB|| thority to stop the abuse, for the he*} of the Department cf Justice is hBSpj pointee and is Thurman Arnold's ?jfifc' If, for any unknown reason, the chief executive cannot stop it, he can recon...
...By the mere refusal to trade with them he can set one racial group in our midst or one section of the country against another...
...If Hitler's winning streak continues without break, the appeasement mood is certain to prosper here...
...Spellman...
...A democracy does not like to make grave decisions without long deliberation...
...himself on record as an crusader against intolerance by publicly addressing to ?|*>P -man an appeal for the curbing cf a dangerous, pro-ra»** force...
...and if, as we fully expect, the people return Mr...
...They are not opposing the administration's preparedness policy...
...IN the current issue of The American Mercury, * I have proposed that this country "act now to make it impossible, illegal and traitorous for individual firms to transact business with any totalitarian nation...
...But while business in the aggregate will prob-ably not play with the Fascists of Europe, individuals and individual firms will have no more scruples about dealing with Hitler than they had about dealing with Stalin, when trade in that quarter seemed good...
...The only serious sin really counted against the Teapot Dome gang or the Inssll crowd or Whitney is that they were caught, outsmarted, and even then the blame is tinctured with admiration...
...is to be adjusted...
...These are concentrated in BoatOT...
...In their task they will now have the cooperation of 1,000 central labor bodies throughout the country, as promised by President Green...
...The President...
...In the battle for the preservation cf democracy, teackm must occupy the front trenches, in France, the NatM Teachers Union, powerful and well organized, contrinatki materially to the nation s debacle because it was riddled with Communists, fellow-travelers and Fifth Columna* or-various hues...
...I —;- , % BUY UNION GOOD...
...How it can be reconciled with the attitude which has given us the Labor Relations Act and the Wages and Hours Act is a puzzle...
...This ought to be pressed upon the attention of Attorney-General Jactaan,^ President Roosevelt, and of the men*' bers of both houses of Congress,, more forcibly and persistently thaajjEf yet been done...
...Under it al however, is the very American approbation of success...
...That's the formula...
...from the federation...
...I have long since convinced myself that all dictatorship including the fiction of the dictatorship of the proletariat spells the death of all liberty, and democracy—things that civilized humanity cherishes most...
...It seems to me worth earnest consideration...
...Not even in "his days of glory" did he "cause" workers to be shot down...
...Detroit, Chicago, some cf New England's minor cities, and in N ew York...
...And today there is no doubt that our traditional worship of success, without sensible reference to the means employed or the consequences involved, is beginning to color national opinion on Hitler ^nd his Nazi hordes...
...Business is business arid not all the current oratory about national duty will curb the competitive urges...
...Now Mr...
...Westrick story, American business men are edging in carefully for that groundfloor inside-track on economic relations with a Nazified Europe...
...All friends of labor peace will hail the result as another step toward termination of the internecine strife in the ranks of organized labor...
...This resolution was adopted by the votes of 358 delegates...
...Willkie, in search of the Catholic vottvlj^ important in New York State, stages an exploitation % by visiting the Archbishop...
...WILLKIE SEES THE BISHOP pERHAPS Mr...
...The amazing sharpness of the claws of the Nazi beast, the agility of its spring and the ferocity of its appetite are stirring that deep-rooted American success-fetishism...
...Also, lock for the union sign »*J*f window of the retail store, barber shop, bar r°om'..rT2...
...It is no accident that the German, Italian and Russian trade missions abroad have always been hotbeds of political intrigue directed against the nations in which they are stationed...
...The Nazi business representative is as definitely an invader as the Gestapo agent or the emissary of Dr...
...This is the reality largely ignored in the present excited -drive for rearmament and national security...
...This will CO* you nothing and it will help Organized Labor...
...Under the strict .authority which govern* «• church he could quiet the anti-democratic rabble-ro***f of his important lieutenants...
...There will of course be a great outcry about "arbitrary violation of the sacred rights of property...
...Patrick Scanlan, editor of official diocese newspaper, The Tablet, -has officially participated in anti-Semitic propaganda...
...A few days later he renounc*" Father Coughlin's support—how earnestly remain* to W seen...
...Editorial A. Blot on the Scutcheon Queer things happen in this world...
...More and more Americans will acquire a real or imaginary profit-stake in the consolidation of the Nazi conquest...
...The criminal code provides ample means for dealing with crooks and criminals within the labor organizations as well as anywhere else...
...But the anti-Semitism, the anti-democratic, pro-Na» agitation of these groups is not limited to crackpot rank a*» file...
...We do not see how the A. F. of T., representing teachers supported by the money of America-, taxpayers, can continue to tolerate supporters of totalitarianism in its ranks...
Vol. 23 • August 1940 • No. 35
