EXTORTION OR SERVICE: THE POWER ISSUE
Maurer, James H.
EXTORTION OR SERVICE: THE POWER ISSUE "The (power) industry has done enough to dirty the waters of our public life* It is time we had the key water power positions that remain to us operating...
...I lave not seen Mr...
...We have no objection to the power interests or any other powerful section of the capitalist class openly presenting their claims, meeting their opponents in open discussion, frankly stating that thenspeakers represent their class...
...That is the verdict of today...
...At the K°"'" City Convention be was Herbert Hoover's personal attorney in the contests for Southern delegates that Hoover had paid for and wanted delivered...
...Spargo is "amused" over the objections raised to the propaganda of power and light companies, considering that others have carried on propaganda in schools and colleges for public ownership...
...Their flag was hidden...
...Ever hear of James K. Paulding, Mr...
...The next Monday he wss right back in Washington trying to prevent the Federal Trade Commission from getting the real facts about what the power lobby bad done and is doing to govern this country for the profit of the power companies...
...Control of 50 per cent of the power produced annually is already in the hands Of five companies—The - Electric Bond and Share group has 18.3...
...Four-fifths of the power-that lights our homes and turns our wheels is in the hands of fifteen companies and their bankers...
...Sacrifices the Roses It is a trifle difficult to make an Individual reply to charges directed against and questions addressed to another jointly with one's self...
...6) I have never received a dollar from any utility company or companies, committee representing such companies, or any individual or organization, in return for writing, lecturing, giving information or counsel, or for any other services of any kind...
...It really does not concern anybody but myself, but the fact is that in recent years I have practically given up lecturing...
...While I would make my position clear, I would not have it believed that in doing so I cast any sort of aspersion against Mr...
...He had supreme contempt for Abolitionists...
...Bonn, professional, political or social, nor have I had such associations in many years...
...To the Editors of the New Leader: Through the courtesy of an old friend, an old and honored member of the Socialist Party, I'have received a clipping from your issue of June 30, containing your "Open Letter to John Spargo and Frank Bonn...
...19,250 in Pennsylvania...
...Be gave them for their propaganda use a statement that they were not »*»-"<ng more than six per cent, on their investment—an absurd falsehood...
...He said that regulation was adequate and satisfactory at a time when every honest public service commission in this country had taken occasion to criticize the working of our regulatory system...
...Perhaps the sequel will help you...
...Paulding had become "respectable...
...that I saw—as every economist of note in the world, including some of the leading Socialist economists, saw—that reconstruction could only be achieved through an immense .expansion of capitalism...
...Spargo's assertion that " he has not received any of the power interests' money for his support of capitalism...
...They de not, appreciate that electric light and power properties are not loaded dice to be employed in a crap game in which investors and the public are injured...
...One never knows when a good man will go astray...
...The others will live forever in the affections of mankind...
...Coolidge could nave said that had not been nailed as a lie on the floor of the Senate for years...
...One day he was at Kansas City helping his man to get the Republican nomination...
...next came three men, bareheaded, half naked, and chained together with an ox chain...
...There are the dictatorships in Cuba, Italy, Hungary, Lithuania and a few other countries...
...Spargo...
...Why yes, of course...
...Spargo, is the words of your predecessor, James K. PanMtng, we wonder that yea have "the base I mini to look sa fat the face ¦labial MasBtag...
...The Power Lobby From the Inside Mr...
...Bonn in nine years, I think...
...The "Editors of the New Leader" who have addressed this "Open Letter" to me are unknown to me...
...A citizen has to be a very babe to the woods not to see where Herbert Hoover stands on the control of this country by the private power people...
...If they gave to just one all the time what do you suppose would happen when others got into power...
...They nave subsidised whole departments of universities in order to acquire for themselves the aroma of respec tab IHty...
...Because I believe that government ownership is believe that in fighting public ownership and defending private ownership the responsible heads of the great public utilities are serving mankind, however limited their own vision may be and however selfish their motives...
...Both were well paid for their services and influences...
...Spargo, your faith in the "redeeming" tendencies of capitalism is surely worthy of Paulding's reward...
...They employed men of high position in Washington to defeat Senator Walsh's investigation of their activities...
...They were not disguised...
...rbsxa^es no offer from the private eeav plant thai was anything but Isnghsjbte...
...Spargo to contemplate the "redeemers" which the "war for democracy" spawned abroad...
...The' Great War was the result...
...20 Better Than Judas I set forth my views along these lines in an article in "The Outlook...
...I have never received one cent in my life from any utility company, or its agents, or individuals interested in any such company, as a fee for lecturing, as a bonus supplementary to fees otherwise received, as gift, contribution to expenses, or for any other purpose or reason whatsoever...
...By James H. Maurer *T*HE Socialist platform makes a clear and simple choice between an industry run for high profit-developed out of our natural water and coal resources, domineering our elections, corrupting our school and press—and a pubUc owned power system...
...The vast augmentation of production, the gathering of an immense surplus for investment in other lands (which could not regain their equilibrium without such investments) were possible under capitalism but could not have been possible under any form of economic organization to which the word Socialism could be applied...
...This is his defense for the power magnates which completely ignores the in-dictmeot brought against them...
...Outside of the fee paid by the regular authority of the organization, I never (except as hereafter explained) in the course of my career received from any source whatever any fee or reward of any kind...
...His own appointees to the New York State Public Service Commission are conservative and power companies in New York earn 8% on an Inflated investment and are allowed to merge without guaranteeing to the public any advantages from the economies effected...
...5) If asked my opinion (which is most unlikely) I should confess myself unable to suggest any good reason why a defense of the existing order should not be entered to counteract attacks against it...
...One of their lobbyists was so brazen as to say that "I represent eight billion dollars that says that Boulder Dam shall stay in private control...
...Since that time an Indignant public opinion has forced the Senate to a vote on Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam...
...In 1925 he went before- the National Electric Light Associaticei Convention in Los Angeles and gave- them a dean bill of health at the very snotnent they were voting more money tar the corruption of press and schools...
...I read so much of it as was printed in the edition of the "New York Times" which comes here, and no more...
...Their ease weak, they did not try reason in many cases, they "tried to pin the bolshevik idea" on their opponents...
...The statesmen of the capitalist powers before the Great War declared that preparedness was the best insurance of peace...
...While you go on preaching the old doctrines of class war and irreconciliable conflict, the leaders of organized capital and the leaders of organised labor are quietly but steadily and surely working out plans of harmonious cooperation in the realisation of genome industrial commonwealth...
...Sparjo, we invite you to go West and tell Hundreds of thousands of American aimers of this country of this discovery 3i yours...
...to entirely unaccounted for...
...They are old, we admit, but it is a case of old capitalist formulas vs...
...However, we note that Mr...
...If the railroad companies are allowed to do what the power companies have already done, railroad rates will jump 50% over what they are now...
...We may expect the worst from .hem...
...The covert capitalist propaganda which Spargo now defends is a cowardly propaganda...
...Spargo will Insist that this policy brought peace...
...Corruption of Press and School The power companies realize how much money they stood to lose and how much the public stood to gain if government development of Muscle Shoals, Boulder Dam and the St...
...Spargo has now become a complete convert to capitalism...
...Spargo...
...His support of Hoover can mean only one thing...
...He declared that slavery "is becoming gradually divested of all its harsh features, and Is now only the bugbear of the Imagination...
...I have seen all this and am content to pin my faith to it for the present and the future...
...Spargo Raises Judas $20 The Old Bennington Patriot Replies To The New Leader's Often Letter rriHE NEW LEADER has received the following statement from Mr...
...If thi rushing powers of the Colorado Rive) (at Boulder Dam), of the Tennessee Ri ver (at Muscle Shoals), of the St...
...They have spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars printing their misinformation, their half-truths, their smoothly concealed lies, and smuggling them into the school-rooms of almost every state in the nation—"a crime against youth", it was called by Jhe SecJetary of ttut JHa«onal Educational Association...
...To avoid possible misinterpretation of the foregoing, let me add that I have only the most friendly respect for Mr...
...You will pass and be forgotten...
...In plain words, this is bunk...
...Southern Power Men are Democrats The big power magnates of the South are Democrats...
...Disarmament...
...What do you think of him...
...Still a Chance to Break the Power of Monopoly 1 We have an Immediate opportunity tc save some of our few remaining natura resources from the wreckage—from thf monopoly of private ownership...
...They secretly poison the editorial and news columns of the daily press...
...The few lectures I have given have been nearly all given without fee and upon subjects far remote from public ownership and kindred questions...
...I do not know what his political views or affiliations are...
...Over eight billion dollars are already invested in the electric power industry and within another fifteen years it will probably have passed the railroads in size of Investment...
...In particular, I honor him for the position he took against the war policy of the Socialist Party in 1917...
...The Socialist Party stands condemned in the minds of right-thinking men and women for the crime of 1917, when it departed from its own path to accept the leadership of a sinister combination of pro-Germans and slippy pacifists...
...Spargo, you may not have been able to recognize the man...
...Last of all came a white man—a white man, Frank!—on horseback, carryingpistols in his belt, and who, as we passed him, had the impudence to look os in the face without blushing...
...Whatever else might happen, there can be no vast human carnage with disarmament...
...A radical change...
...Three cents a kilowatt on the 16,300,000,000 kwhs...
...The nightmare of valuation" hangs over us, as Joseph Eastman, Interstate Commerce Commissioner, states...
...John himself carried on agitation for public ownership In these institutions, he declares and was paid for it by "a national organization created and maintained for such propaganda...
...Behind the cart marched three black women, with head, neck and breasts uncovered, and without shoes or stockings...
...What are our Socialist formulas...
...We give space to It and our comment follows his statement...
...As I do not intend to be drawn into further discussion, I shall take pains to make my position so clear that not even you can pretend to see in it any evasion...
...In both parties...
...They have secretly altered text books in the schools or had them altered to suit the interests of their class...
...The Northeastern (New York—New England) group has 9.3...
...I will add to this statement that no, such money was ever offered to me and no suggestion ever made to me that money could be so obtained...
...John Spargo in answer to our open letter in the issue of June 30...
...It has 'just reached me...
...A dirty hole and corner way of doing R. The way of a man afraid to do it in public where people could look at nun...
...He painted some hideous portraits of human bondage, especially the slave gangs chained together and driven under a hot sun for sale in the lower South...
...The way of a man who does the dirty thing he is put there -at de as quietly as possible, hoping that decent people wont happen to be looking when he does it...
...I have not the slightest idea that anybody will call me as a witness in the investigations, or that anyone in authority will be so ill-informed as to suppose that I can give any information...
...They will fail again...
...To prevent this they took the money that we had paid in rates and used it to open the newspaper columns to their interests in the struggle to retain their power...
...Upholds Utilities Companies I believe that I have replied to your questions, so far as they were addressed to me, in terms precise and explicit enough to satisfy anybody who is honest...
...Availing myself of the cool afternoon breeze I shall do the best I can...
...Fifteen companies control 80 per cent of ail electric utility power produced in the United States today...
...They have set in motion a machinery for controlling public opinion and private interests such as this country has never seen before...
...Some four millions of unemployed men and women would like to hear your cheerful views...
...they work...
...I reply: (1) I have not "been following Sheridan's testimony...
...I never spoke to Boy Scouts In my life...
...The Commission struggled along far a time, borrowing help from this and that department of government, and then, unable to do the duty assigned to it by law, struck...
...Lawrence and other key power positions giving cheap service, making the power of our streams and rivers available for use for all rather than for the profit of a few...
...The cart had no covering, and they seemed to have been actually broiled to sleep...
...Here are the old formulas, Mr...
...If, However, I should be called I should respond as a good citizen and tell all that I actually know about it...
...Some of their present lobbyists are men who were formerly members of the state public service commissions...
...In 1835 Paulding brought out another edition of his writings and this and similar passages were omitted...
...Because that article was reprinted in pamphlet form and distributed by a great Insurance company, I will say that "The Outlook" paid me fifty dollars for the article, as I remember it, and not one penny beyond that payment by the editors was ever received by me from any source whatever for that article...
...Ex-Senator Thomas was their Democratic counsel before that committee...
...The Socialist Party alone stands for public ownership and control of the generation, transmission and distribution of electrical power the only means by which the consumers can be protected against the present exploitation and the exploitation to come...
...He has allowed himself to be supported by public utility - men in all parte of the country...
...This is a concentration of control it took the railroads almost a hundred years to achieve...
...I have no associations with Mr...
...Finally, Mr...
...It may be that these newspaper stories have worried you a bit and you are wondering what you are going to say when you are called to the stand...
...Russia was and is a terrible demonstration of this...
...Very well...
...Not even Mr...
...We may expect to see some of these millions spent during this election...
...Bonn...
...One of their own publicity men, Jas...
...You can take it from me that if I were associated with the publicity or propaganda work of the power and light companies, or other utility companies, I should take professional pride in doing the job as well as I could and in signing my name to my work and being personally identified with my job...
...Through the post-war period I have seen capitalism—which was supposed to be in extremis and doomed to perish at the first crisis—not only surviving, but ledeemlng the wastes of the Great War, expanding on every hand, and, at the same time, overcoming ill after ill, elevating the conditions of millions of men and women in all lands...
...The Socialist Party demands publi development of these resources...
...You certainly can recognize the creature...
...I know not wno they are, but I do know that there is no excuse for a misapprehension of my views and my position as they have manifested in their letter...
...They have too...
...Publish it I JOHN SPARGO...
...Their expenses before legislatures are largely unaccounted for...
...Spargo has in mind, have sent their speakers, including Spargo at one time, to educational institutions...
...are given into the hands of the privat companies, there will be no hope of se curing for the public the advantages o the country's great natural endowments Their monopoly will be practically com plete...
...In 1838 President Van Buren gave him the post of Secretary of the Navy in his...
...I had not previously seen or even heard of it...
...The next year he published another book, "Slavery in the United States," which was a complete defense of capital invested in chattels...
...Former Senator Lenroot was the paid lobbyist of the power utilities to prevent the Senate from pasting the Walsh resolution for an investigation of the power companies activity in politics, press and schools...
...He has attempted to gain credit by supporting Boulder Dam when he is actually against public development of any kind, and has said so again and again...
...it will be the verdict of fifty years hence...
...Its sponsors fear that it would not have force if its real backers were known...
...Now, Messrs...
...You say: "'You have probably been following Sheridan's testimony before the Investigators for the Federal Trade Commission into the propaganda work of the utilities...
...That was too raw for anybody except a man definitely retiring from office to stand...
...Old Bennington, Vermont...
...Capitalism, be declares, is "redeeming the wastes of the Oreat War" and "overcoming ill after ill...
...They spent thousands of dollars needing Congress with telegrams whenever »r» Jmmrfanfr «m*<> on power matters came up during the last session...
...Then go to the bituminous coal flelds...
...Slavery was "redeeming" civilization...
...3) I do not know the publicity director of any such company, nor any man or woman known to be engaged in the publicity work of any such company...
...The power lobby spends about one million dollars a year in the country to get good will for Itself, to get legislatures, to get Congress, to get school teachers and editors and public service commissions to do what it wants them to do...
...I believe in private initiative, but I do not believe to subsidising it 3 to 6 cents per k. w. b. ,,• . . the bankers in the electrical industry do not appreciate what a fat thing they had had in the past 7 pears...
...They struck below the belt...
...Coming fron Niagara the power is about a cent cheap er than power in the United States Three cents a kilowatt hour is our hats off tribute to private efficiency in the United States...
...A United States senator then was worth $160,000 to one public utility man alone...
...As a paid lecturer, receiving my pay, not from the colleges and schools, but from the funds of a national organization created and maintained for such propaganda, I have participated in such "educational work...
...You gabble...
...They have sent lecturers into educational institutions who were secretly on their payroll...
...The man who can assert in the face of these facts that capitalism is "redeeming" the world is either an ignoramus or a hypocrite...
...He does not even favor public transmission of power from the St Lawrence...
...Robinson Bats .667 For the Power Gang Joe Robinson, of Arkansas, candidate for Vice-President on the Democratic ticket, had three chances during the last session to show how he stands on the power issue...
...Your guess under this head is wide of the mark in so far as I am concerned...
...They have paid college professors for the use of their name...
...This they will not do...
...Its work is not being done now...
...BY WAY OF REPLY IV/K accept Mr...
...3) I have been mildly amused to note that the power and light companies have been abused and condemned for subsidising propaganda against pubUc ownership in schools, and that the well-known fact that subsidized propaganda in favor of public ownership was carried on through schools and...
...They were ' not honest...
...We will make you acquainted with him...
...The North American has 6.7...
...that were used in the homes of this country in 1927 is a matter of $489,000,000...
...Paulding was a citizen of New York and In 1817 he published several volumes based upon personal investigations of slavery in the South...
...Parties and drinks were given to reporters...
...Moreover, the big capitalist powers with colonies have reestablished slavery in various forms in many of their colonies...
...The Georgia director burned all his records before the Commission could find out what was in them, leaving about $200,000 nosecounted for...
...I probably spoke for hundreds of such 'clubs in favor of pubUc ownership, and in most cases for a fee...
...They have Bed about municipally owned power developments In this country and in Ontario...
...4) I have neither "worried" nor wondered what I shall say if and when I am "called to the stand...
...The Coolidge economy worked., Tbt Federal Power Commission is starred out...
...elevating the conditions of millions of men and women in all lands...
...4) I have never written as much as a single line for publication in any paper or magazine published by or in the interests of any utility companies, and have never received me dollar in payment for work or services of any kind from any such publication...
...And that "all" can be summed up in this: I have no knowledge of any propaganda against public ownership carried on through the medium of schools or colleges, but I do have knowledge of an extensively organized propaganda directed against private ownership and in favor of public ownership, carried on through the medium of schools and colleges over a long period of years...
...It has—and has shown it has—the power to dictate to the two old parties...
...Perhaps the following excerpt from his writings will interest you: "The sun was shining out very hot, and in turning an angle of the road we encountered the following group: first, a little cart drawn by one horse, in which five or six half naked children were tumbled like pigs together...
...For a number if reasons I cannot join with Mr...
...The power companies already have that jump on us...
...old Socialist formulas...
...They do not appreciate the enormous value of the monopoly feature...
...Reads like John Spargo's testimony to the "redeeming" character of the capitalist oligarchy that rules the United States...
...1) I have never owned a -share of stock in any light, power, or traction company...
...Ex-Senator Lenroot (a Hoover supporter) was their Republican counsel before the Senate Committee...
...He voted wrong, he voted against the Boulder Dam bill...
...That annoyed the private power interests...
...He is the side-kick of Smith, who is supposed to be all right on power...
...The true meaning of the "CooUdga Economy" can be seen in the systematic and prolonged starvation of the Federal Power Commission...
...Bonn...
...They saw to it that no funds were voted by Congress to allow this Commission to do iti work properly...
...2) I do not know personally any responsible executive officer of any such company in this country...
...Mr...
...Larger advertising appropriations, growing every year, broke open the editorial columns of the poor small town papers throughout the country...
...This is what the greatest lobby of all time if fighting for when it .prevents the passage of the Boulder Dam bill, when President Coolidge vetoes the Muscle Shoals bill, when Insull buys himself a United States Senator, when the power companies back Herbert Hoover for President...
...The Standard Gas and Electric has 4.6...
...He spoke at patriotic celebrations...
...Everybody knew whom they represented...
...Afrajd that the power oompantaa weaM be helped them out He did not sign the taOL Me did not refuse to sign it Doing what he bad been put there to do, he lad the bm in his pocket and a t~*"-*-imr that Congress adjourns rather than moesses during the summer, numeged to de away with it...
...In view of these facts, or allegations, you ask "How much do you get for an article from your bosses, over and above what the papers give you...
...We have let the power "companies accomplish it in thirty years...
...They hope to elect their candidates this fall aid avoid another contract embarrassing to them, that of seeing Muscle Shoals, Boulder Dam, the St...
...Tell It to the Workers Mr...
...EXTORTION OR SERVICE: THE POWER ISSUE "The (power) industry has done enough to dirty the waters of our public life* It is time we had the key water power positions that remain to us operating under government ownership...
...His batting average was .333 for the people and .667 for the power crowd...
...For some reason not clear to me your "Open Letter" is addressed jointly to Prank Bonn and me...
...He was sure that their "old formulas" were "evidence of ossification...
...They have let their money (collected from us) talk in no uncertain tones...
...He voted wrong on the Walsh resolution to investigate the power industry...
...During my "unregenerate days" in the Socialist Party we were generally on opposite sides, as old members of the party will recall...
...It was much later, in the early poet-war period, facing the great problems of reconstruction...
...For example, I never SDOke for a woman'* club against public ownership, either with or without fee...
...The combined utilities spent somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five million dollars on advertising last year...
...The power people have, for the moment, gotten rid of an embarrassing contrast, the difference between waterpower developments that can not charge rates on an inflated valuation and their own plants...
...Long after I left the Socialist Party I remained a Socialist and preached Socialism through the Social Democratic League and otherwise...
...The issue is whether such great money resources, unscrupulously used, should prevent the people of the United States from sharing in the great industrial revolution that electric power is bringing about, or whether the Industry shall be told in tinging terms-to furnish service at cost and remove Its sinister and corrupting decay from our public life for once and alL Herbert Hoover has been the constant apologist of the electric power Industry...
...The bugs on the roses can wait...
...What they have done to threaten and scare senators and congressmen up for re-election, will probably never be known...
...Do you recognize this man, Mr...
...He was Herbert Hoover's firm supporter from the start...
...He did not dare to veto the bill...
...Governor Smith will have to deal with them to retain a control of Congress in case he is elected...
...I still believe that...
...The intercollegiate Socialist Society, later the League for Industrial Democracy, the organizations Mr...
...It is a process of intense sweating of weaker peoples, enslaving them for the enrichment of capitalists and hankrra...
...He voted right on Muscle Shoals...
...As you know, during many years I lectured extensively as a professional lecturer...
...Control of another thirty percent is now in the hands of 10 other companies...
...In the Illinois senatorial election Insull contributed to both parties, and George Brennan, the Democratic nominee for senator explained "many power companies and financiers go to both parties and even to factions...
...alHosjJw (the great conflict...
...Indeed, so remote is my life from your world that I was not even aware of the existence of The New Leader...
...If Spargo is unable to understand the ethics of this we are not surprised...
...The power companies have learned how to regulate regulation...
...He didn't want any such investigation...
...After it had been proved and proved and proved over again, until .it was too plain for even the most contented old party politicians to ignore, that Muscle Shoals leased to private power interests on their terms was a rank gift, on » par with Teapot Dome, and Congress, frightened of opinion at home if it approved such a gift, voted for public development, then President Coolidge, retiring from office, helped the power, people out...
...Take, for example, this statement: "When you deserted the Socialist Party at one of the most critical periods in its history and went over to the enemy, you gave the world to understand thai you have an honest change of heart...
...The Instill group has 10.9...
...I reply: Merely to make a negative answer to your insolent questions here reprinted would leave the way open for further questions of a like nature...
...We are not foolish enough to believe that they did not earn their jobs before they left the commissions...
...In Ontario the domestic consumer: pay two cents a kilowatt hour for light ing...
...Bonn In making the joint reply which your letter seems to call for...
...One thing is sure...
...He admits it in the communication above...
...It could not conceivably be made flexible enough to meet the needs of the time...
...Can there, in your own words, "be plainer evidence of mental ossification" than you exhibit today...
...Lawrence River (in Northern New Yort State), of the Columbia River (in Wash ington), oMhe Potomac (at Great Falls...
...Gene Debs, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Brown, Henry D. Thoreau, Bruno and others will sleep wen despite their knowledge of the Pauldings and Spargos...
...Still, we hope that be will eventually be called before the Federal Trade Commission...
...They have slandered the unselfish men who have stood up and told the truth about them...
...It has been estimated that they have spent a million dollars a year blocking the Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam bills...
...I left the party—"deserted" it, if you prefer the word—by openly resigning, not because I had had a "change of heart," but because, in my Judgment, the Socialist Party by its war policy was betraying mankind and committing a crime against civilization...
...Slavery was "becoming gradually divested of all its harsh features...
...Elementary human freedom is strangled and in the United States heresy hunts have become an essential industry...
...Lawrence were effected...
...This Commission was charged with seeing that none of the inflation of investment that marks the rest of the industry is allowed to waterppwer developments...
...They failed once...
...I believe that the utility companies are justified in waging the best campaign of publicity they can to counteract the destructive propaganda directed against them...
...B. Sheridan, of St...
...They have worked under cover...
...The power companies have regulated our state commissions to the...
...I have no apologies to make for my stand by the American nation and its...
...As applied to me, that statement is a silly lie, as the record will show...
...Senators who will oppose these measures are worth more to the power companies...
...He succeeded in having that resolution beaten...
...The: will furnish us with five Ontarios on ou side of the border, five government cor porations or authorities dedicated to thi proposition that the people, rather thai the private companies,' should get tb natural advantages of our own stream and rivers...
...The Present Issue Hunted to the light, they shout in brazen Impudence that they will not .top—that they will go on with this propaganda, with this corruption of public opinion that has already made them a nenace to free government in this country...
...Spargo...
...Spargo says that men who have lived through the Great War and its aftermath and who repeat "the old formularies in the old way" reveal "evidence of ossification...
...Secretary Mellon, who dictated Hoover's nomination after receiving his terms for it, is the owner of large public utility companies throughout the country...
...Cabinet...
...But what can be said of men who have lived through the Great War and its aftermath and have, not changed their lives at all, but go on repeating the old formularies in the same Old way, offering for the world of 1938 the same economic solutions they offered in 1908 and 1898...
...Never Spoke to Boy Scoots You say that one Hungerford "got $15,000 for his book on the utilities that the school children of New York are now studying," and that college processors got fees ranging from $1,000 to $50 for speaking and writing against public ownership...
...The Editors of the New Leader," here is the statement you asked for, with the fullest and most unequivocal answers to your questions...
...Let me here anticipate your rejoinder and observe that it is not a bid for a job: I am not in the market...
...A President who will veto such measures is worth millions to them every year...
...There will then be no yardstick: by which their efficiency in service o: rates can be measured...
...Louis, in charge of -he Missouri power trust committee, wrote to his immediate superior, telling the story from the inside: "What can we do when the financiers will inflate, overcapitalize, sell securities based on blue sky or hot air, and rates must be kept up to pa yreturns and said blue sky and hot air...
...2) I know nothing 'about the matter concerning which Sheridan gave testimony, or about the man himself...
...The miners are under the peculiar illusion that they are suffering from lack of food and clothing...
...place where they all claim and make us pay seven and eight per cent on an imaginary investment...
...They skulk in the shadows...
...Is it not a case of ''mental ossification" for you and others like you to gabble about YOUR formulas which have failed and to sneer at ours which have not been tested...
...colleges years before the power and light companies began their counter-propaganda, and is still being carried on...
...The exception referred to was in the case of my employment as a lecturer by the Inter-Collegiate Socialist Society, when the fees paid by the organizations were inadequate and the balance was made up out of the funds of the Inter-Collegiate Socialist Society, collected for the purpose...
...The reports of the French, British and Dutch delegates to the recent International Labor and Socialist Congress in Brussels present a wealth of facts, including laws, regulations and decisions of colonial officials, which show that capitalism has established forced labor in these regions...
...How much tor a lecture before a woman's club, a talk to a Rotary meeting, a bed-time story for the Boy Scouts...
...I do not belong to any organization of which he is a member...
...Was This Honorable There was nothing Mr...
...And he received his reward...
...He has made his peace with this crowd...
...In the United States they pay an average of seven cents...
...5) I have never sold any work of mine, or rendered any services to such publications Indirectly through the medium of syndicates or agencies of any kind...
...The first has horribly failed and humanity has paid a fearful price for it...
...All that is necessary to accept his views is to close xir eyes, ignore facts, and speak at patriotic village celebrations...
...Nations cannot fight if they have no arms...
...Could there be plainer evidence of mental ossification...
...He is the living announcement that the Southern Democrats era just as much private»power people si the Northern Republicans...
...Then we ask Mr...
...It is simply a fact that I am not in any way associated with him...
...Socialist in the sense of governmentally owned and operated industries was at once rendered obsolete and reactionary...
...I never spoke for a fee at a Rotary meeting in my life, and never on the subject of public ownership that I can now recall...
...They prepared...
...The textile workers are laboring under similar illusions...
...When the manager of the insurance company asked for permission to reprint it, I was glad to give the permission, without royalty or fee of any kind...
...An Earlier Spargo Except for the Central Powers the capitalist nations have more arms than they had before the Great War while our statesmen subscribe to the view of preparedness to insure peace...
Vol. 7 • September 1928 • No. 38
