HOG ISLAND SCANDAL
Hog Island Scandal (From the New York American, Feb. 20, 1918.) We have a few plain words to say about this Hog Island scandal. First, let us make plain the facts. The Emergency Fleet...
...Every war in which America has engaged has been disgraced by these plundering financiers...
...Percy A. Rockefeller, representative of the first financial family of America, whose immense and menacing fortune was amassed through governmental corruption and public extortion...
...And every man who takes advantage of the people's huge contributions of money and of their nation's urgent necessities to make millions of dishonest dollars whil% our sons are giving their lives in the shot-swept trenches, is a damnable traitor, a disgrace to the name American, and well deserves a traitor's fate...
...J. Ogden Armour, head of the meat trust which was responsible for the "embalmed beef" scandals in the Spanish-American War, and which Government investigators are now show-ng to be the most unscrupulous combination that ever coined profits out of the nation's necessities and perils...
...And if these feelings are increased in intensity by seeing rascally profiteers escape with their wicked gains from any punishment, the...
...But now these rich rogues of Hog Island have either proved that La Follette was absolutely truthful in describing their secret motives, or else that they themselves have turned rogues and profiteers and virtual traitors since La Follette declared them to be...
...I want to say to you that it is not being done for money...
...Here they arc securing contracts through the influence of their wealth and the actual position of some of them as representatives of the Government...
...Senator La Follette at one time declared that rich financiers were behind the war propaganda and that they wanted war so that they and their kind could make huge profits...
...The American International Corporation then promptly sublet the building of the shipyard and ships to another corporation organized for that purpose, which is called the American International Shipbuilding Company—the net result of all this scheming being to put a prospective profit of six million dollars into the pockets of these "patriots," who had not invested a dollar of their own money and who were not called upon to use their time or their credit or to take the risk of losing so much as a copper cent...
...and then making vastly excessive profits out of the Government and in additior defaulting on their contracts to the extent o. being four months behind in their work, at a time when the Government needs shipping-most for the maintenance of our soldiers abroad...
...Here are a dozen of the richest men in the country—all with so much money that they do not know what to do with it and yet sacrificing their honor and their loyalty in order t^ rob the Government of some more millions during war times...
...MR...
...Why, Senator, I have a boy 'over there.' Do-you think I anr in this thing for money...
...enthusiasm for the wSr will die, and the people will refuse to make the sacrifices which alone can win the war and without which defeat and disaster would be inevitable...
...the time giving the lie to his loud voice...
...Yet they do exist and do plot their infamies...
...Robert Dollar—another fitting name—who is the head of the Dollar shipping interests, and who lias chiefly distinguished himself by fighting the Seamen's law and who is advocating the employment of Asiatic coolie labor on ships, and a number of other rich financiers whose fiery patriotism has not made them averse to making excessive and dishonorable profits out of their country and their countrymen while better men hazard their lives in the country's cause...
...Mitchel, the railroads' candidate for Mayor of New York...
...We cannot understand the iiearts and the conduct of men who can plot to make profit out of their own people's peril and sacrifices...
...Why then has your corporation from six or seven million dollars profit coming to you directly and much more to the subsidiaries and sub-contractors...
...It really seems as if the making of money becomes a mania, a dementia, and that the people afflicted with it are willing to sacrifice everything that the ordinary man holds dear in order to get a few more dollars to add to an already overflowing pile...
...The severity of this method and the promptness of it would probably deter unscrupulous financiers from sacrificing their country and the public good to their private greed...
...The contract which these eminent patriots made with the Government was sweet simplicity itself...
...Every man who had a voice in urging war, and who now uses the opportunity of the war to add to his riches, proves conclusively that his patriotism was bogus, that his black heart was al...
...You can keep an individual alive on it, but a corporation has dividends to pay...
...Baldwin Blames Soulless Corporations PROTESTING that he was not interested in the Government contracts for the money there was in them, George J. Baldwin, Vice-president of the International Corporation, explained, however, that corporations can not live on patriotism...
...The Emergency Fleet Corporation, which is only another name for the Government, made a contract with a hastily organized corporation, calling itself the American International Corporation, to build a huge shipyard at Hog Island —a sweet name that turned out to be charmingly descriptive...
...Why, the subsidiary corporation—not to be outdone in patriotic zeal—began to pay out the Government's money and credit to themselves and to others with such lavish hands that the $21,000,000 the Government estimated it would have to provide has been more tha.i spent, and it appears that from ?40,000,000 to $50,000,000 will be needed to complete this Hog Island yard —which is no way near ready for extensive work, though everybody who has any sense at all knows the desperate need of haste in building new ships if the war is to be wor and not lost...
...And, we ask fairly and frankly, if La Follette deserved expulsion from the Senate on the ground that he said that certain rich financiers wanted war for profiteering's sake—and said so FALSELY, as these men claimed—then, in that case, what do these rich rogues who have MADE GOOD Senator La Follette's description of their motives—and who have endangered the Nation's cause to satisfy their own base greed—deserve as a fitting and sufficient punishment...
...Cross questioned by Senator Hiram Johnson regarding the profits out of the contracts, the following colloquy took place: MR...
...How do these profiteering rogues endanger the Nation's cause...
...BALDWIN...
...It has stockholders who must be kept going...
...BALDWIN...
...JOHNSON...
...SEN...
...The American International Corporation has as directors and stockholders:— Frank A. Vanderlip, in his private capacity president of the National City Bank of New York and in his public capacity an assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury at Washington...
...Why, because every time the mass of the people see a rich profiteer piling up his already unreasonably great riches, and doing that at the expense of common folk's sacrifices, feelings of resentment and of distrust and of discouragement swell in their hearts...
...Because he said that Senator La Follette was denounced by these plutocratic "patriots" and by all their newspaper organs as a traitor— the New York World, owned by the little Pulitzers, and the New York Sun, Times, Herald and Tribune, all owned by the associates and beneficiaries of ti-ust plutocrats, leading the chorus of denunciation and shouting for $he expulsion of Senator La Follette from the Congress...
...Then what happened...
...There is only one way to deal with this situation, and that is to try all such cases under court-martial and to inflict the military penalty for whatever the crime may be...
...Indeed, such men and their evil hearts and base minds seem incredible to decent folk...
...Robert S. Lovett, president of the Harriman railroads, which have made immense sums out of war business and which lately ordered their advertisements out of the Hearst newspapers because those publications were not supporting Mr...
...All the great scandals in the history of our country have been furnished by this money-mad class, wholly unscrupulous, wholly unpatriotic...
...Because you can not keep a corporation alive on patriotism...
...The Government was to provide them with all the money needed to build tin: Hog Island shipyard AND THE SHIPS, an J the Government was to take over the product of the loan as full payment and allow these self sacrificing patriots a private profit estimated at six million dollars...
Vol. 10 • February 1918 • No. 2
