DOLLAR MARK RULE IMPOVERISHES PEOPLE
Nye, Gerald P.
Dollar Mark Rule Impoverishes People Financial Imperialism Eating at Our Political Structure; Government Will Never Respond to Human Instincts Until the Reign of the Cash Register is Ended. By...
...But not until then can we hope for any different order in our political and economic life here in America...
...This Federal Reserve System, founded as an institution to protect the people against the big bankers, has come to be very much the best friend they, the big bankers, have...
...To guard the interests of the public- against the growing monopolies of Mr...
...We may laugh and joke about such practice, but the seriousness of it will not erase...
...Under the pre-rsiling order this is called prosperity...
...More recently, it has been discovered that a creature known as the South American vampire bat undoubtedly was then, as it is now, the thing responsible for these mysterious deaths...
...I have never been an advocate of capital punishment, bu£ I must confess that in view of developments of a more recent day, showing men to be looting our government and playing like a cat with a mouse with every branch of our government, I do see possible occasion for capital punishment...
...Newspapers which shout the loudest about these wonderful times *nd this era of prosperity must wonder what it is all about when they observe the great falling off in advertising patronage during the past year "Ah, but there is prosperity...
...Twenty Men Saved Eleven Millions TAKE the matter of tax bills passed by congress...
...One thousand corporations, then, are enjoying five billion dollars of the 7V& billion dollar profit...
...So painless is the operation, so soothing is the fanning that the victim does not awaken...
...they can be made to drive our battleships to far ends of the earth to protect other dollars planted there...
...Dead men had voted, men who had been dead for years...
...His campaign went on smoothly and he was successful in winning the nomination...
...Making of Millionaires ARE THESE just idle and glittering words...
...Only a few days ago, the Senate was confronted with a resolution asking an investigation of the power industry monopolized by-Mr...
...May the day be close at hand when America shall awaken to what is going on and cause government to be responsive to human interests...
...An analysis of the figures of the Internal Revenue Bureau discloses that 40...
...Such huge expenditures should cause the American people to be thoroughly itidignant...
...We might go a step further and see how individuals, possessed of great means, follow up the advantages to be enjoyed under the present order, and how thoroughly unscrupulous and brazen Wealth can become when long enough nursed and played with by the Government...
...This is 14 less than the number 30 for 1926, 1 less than the number 17 for 1925, the same number 16 as for 1924, and 17 less than the number 33 for 1923...
...Nature's foresight saved Ray from hearing the worst of it...
...He and his interests would ho served whichever won...
...Let us ascertain the facts...
...It is concerned alone with the great and powerful corporations, owned in the main by a mere handful of men, who are in turn, first, the makers of governmental personnel, and, second, the recipients of favors from government...
...We know Insull merely made his investment...
...Prosperity...
...But under the Mellon tax bill of two years ago these twenty men enjoyed savings each and every year of something over eleven million dollars...
...It was a hired man that Jnsnll was after and the price worried him not at all...
...Twelve of the persons lynched were taken from the hands of the law, 6 from jails and 6 from officers of tht law outside of jails...
...THIS is the day of the I;.jilar...
...If he could be in the Senate 100 years, he could get back in salary the cost of his campaign...
...Corporations and business in general are prosperous...
...But, while this increase has been enjoyed, farm living costs, building costs, freight costs, and farm taxes have jumped upward all the way from 68% to 200...
...Their money had not saved their faces...
...They can be made to nominate and elect men to high office...
...Of these, less than one-twentieth of one per cent, or a few over 200, enjoyed in the one year 40% of the total profits of all corporations...
...for it is a singular fact, but none the less a fact, and well known to the most common experience that men will do things under the terror of the party lash, that they would not on any account or for any consideration do otherwise...
...Struggle for Small Merchant ACONTINUATION of bank failures further defines our brand of prosperity...
...The Senate conducted a thoroughgoing investigation...
...This creature, the bat, must have blood...
...Dollars play their game in the Judicial branch...
...It was THE question before the Senate...
...but, when five million feet of natural gas blow up, the detonation must be something terrific...
...The net profits of all corporations is put at 7Vi billion dollars for the year...
...He said that "it didn't sound like much of an explosion...
...Power Trust Control SAMUEL Insull is counted the greatest public-utility magnate in the world...
...All of the persons lynched were Negroes...
...Serpent-like, this financial imperialism has sought, and not altogether without success, to fasten itself upon America and bind it tightly...
...Here the returns are clearly shown...
...It is not mythical...
...When wc Americans can divorce ourselves as victims of that financial imperialism which has fastened itself upon us, we can hope to effect some recovery and to win back that full measure of democracy which it was intended should be ours...
...But let an individual who pos-sesses some political and business acumen, accumulate a sufficient number of them and they can be made to do wondrous things...
...It is never necessary when this tribe of dollar-grabbers contributes to the direct election of individual members of Congress...
...2 were put to death and then their bodies burned...
...It is the kind of prosperity that will put sound legs under the major political parties, because hte major political parties have been largely responsible for placing prosperity where it is found today...
...Is this what we call prosperity...
...Barrels of money were spent by the Doheny and Sinclair tribes to win a whitewash from the senate, but it was too raw a mess for a majority of that body to stomach...
...It is not sufficiently substantial...
...Money Came in Handy Bi'XAUSE a few men, commonly called insurgents, progressives, trouble-makers, Socialists, Bolsheviks, Reds, or What-Nots, thought they smelled something wrong, congress went looking for facts...
...And more millions to whitewash when they were caught in their game of robbing the people...
...Is a campaign fund contribution without influence...
...Millions more to further coax favors from these men as officials...
...Dollars attempt to buy the legislative branch...
...Their dollars therefore become, the dictator as to who shall and who shall not be nominated and elected, and just what the officials elected shall and shall not do in the way of administration and legislation...
...they can be made to buy immunity from that thing commonly called Justice,—this and more they can he made to do in this day of Dollar ami power worship...
...The farmer has never known such prosperity as it with us today, and he would be delighted if he could be freed from its acquaintance...
...It is after all a certain brand of prosperity...
...Instead, it seems only to have kd the Nation to sleep, any event, following the election of the Lading administration, Sinclair and Doheny .Jo their demands...
...Eight of these were in Northern states and 34 in Southern states...
...Vare won, they said...
...The President was called upon to take action in a certain trespassing case...
...they can be made to win great concessions by government at the expense of the people...
...In 24 of the cases the prisoners .were removed or the guards augmented or other precautions taken...
...But out of these contributions by the two big oil men came a series of developments which should have shaken tha '.cn to full realization of the dangers con-.ling it...
...Certain is one thing, this mythical thing called prosperity can not serve to sustain life always...
...Indeed,—for the few...
...The butcher, the baker, the average merchant struggle as they never have struggled before under this unprecedented prosperity wave which has been upon us of late years and continues,—not only continues, but grows...
...We'll wake up some day to discover ourselves starved or bled to death politically and economically...
...Four of them were burned to death...
...There never was a time when so many millions of dollars of profits were l>eing accumulated by so few individuals...
...Insull's money, would have voted on that question ? Wcuid he have been with and for the people of Illinois, or with and for Mr...
...Smith, whose campaign was aided by more than $100,000 of Mr...
...Where does all this great campaign fund of each party come from every four years ? Henry Cabot Lodge, than whom there is no better authority, declared on the floor of the United States Senate in 1923, "I am putting1 it moderately when I say that nine-tenths of the money expended on behalf of the Democratic party, as well as the Republican party, is raised in the city of New York...
...During the formation of this new party, the Republican party, in an address before the first Republican convention in Illinois on May 29, 1856, Abraham Lincoln declared: "The party lash and the fear of ridicule will overawe justice and liberty...
...Surely that spells prosperity...
...reader can answer this for himself...
...Workers in industry, in the mines and in the textile factories, for example, can tell us something of hard times now parading l>efore them under the name "Prosperity...
...Only weakness is the tell-tale of something wrong...
...In this connection it is well to follow a little further the figures made available through the Internal Revenue Bureau...
...Doheny found it advantageous to contribute liberally to both major parties...
...So clean is the operation that the wound is difficult to discover...
...In Illinois, the head of such a public commission became a candidate for the United States Senate running for this office while still serving as head of the said commission...
...I think not...
...But not always is -she party lash necessary...
...Hedging, so to speak...
...Returns of the bat to the victim night after night eventually bring the only ultimate end—death—death while the victim is gently fanned into deeper, ever deeper sleep...
...Then more millions to save themselves from the hand of Justice...
...Is that an unreasonable conclusion...
...Insull and other public utility owners, commissions have been set up by the people which deal for the public in controversies with the utility managers and owners...
...Since 11*20 the exchange value of farm land has been decreased by four billion dollars, and farm indebtedness has increased from four to twelve billion dollars in the past fifteen years...
...The party lash was found doing fine work in the fifties, hut it soon thertafter lost the crack and snap when Americans insisted upon a new order and brought into being a new party...
...There again money came in handy...
...Jn 18 other instances, armed force was used to repel the would-be lynchers...
...Following the election, disturbance occurred in the oil fields and the government was quite considerably embarrassed over the claims for favor...
...With "prosperity" holding sway today and finding as many ready hearers as it does, it seems too much to expect the thorough awakening of conscience which is merited...
...That is A question...
...Great campaign contributions are made for the purpose and by interests which have found t?!at these contributions pay handsome returns, and men who will consent to let such contributions help them buy office will as willingly sell that office which they buy...
...At a cost of a million dollars or more he was declared elected to a job paying a salary of $10,000 a year...
...I agree...
...Approximately 1,000 of the~"total of 430,072 corporations in the country, according to the latest available tax returns, are enjoying 06% of all the profits of all corporations...
...Is this an essential condition which must accompany prosperity...
...Not bad investments...
...Some Oil Contributions TN 1920 two oil men became prominent by virtue of the size of their contributions Co the campaign funds of the parties...
...Men who have accepted huge contributions from the "plunder bund" influences of New York, from whence 90r/c of the campaign funds of the two parties come, are -in a certain debt just as are parties which accept these funds from the same sources and since party loyalty has been made so praiseworthy, the lash falls with the approval of many when one strays too far from beaten paths...
...We are told that the people of this nation have never known such prosperity as is with us now...
...To his campaign fund Samuel Insull, the utility magnate, contributed well in advance of $100,000...
...In the darkness it finds its sleeping victim and drops lightly from above to a position hovering over its new found food supply...
...The opening of a few ballot boxes disclosed strange goings on...
...Millions to defeat Justice and more millions to "frame" honest men who seek to save government and the people from thieves who parade in the guise of IIO'/p Americans...
...Once on *he polling lists in that state one never died...
...And through this period farm failures and bankruptcies have increased something like 1,500 per cent...
...One or two or tnree or four of them may seem to the average nlan *° De °f ¦ ittie enough power...
...What is the end if we Americans continue to sleep while these things go on day after day...
...while men who will march up to the mouth of a loaded cannon without shrinking, will run from the terrible name of "Abolitionist" (today other terrible names are used) even when pronounced by a worthless creature whom they, with good reason, despise...
...Though 29 per cent of the people of this nation reside upon and are dependent upon the returns of their farms, they are enjoying only eight per cent of the current national income...
...We may, though, throw off the anaesthetic any moment...
...Evils of the Party Lash BUT the lash will not always work as successfully as it has...
...Dollars buy the administrative branch...
...Was it just for the .sport of seeing a good political fight...
...It is fair to assume that Mr...
...or 200,000 of the corporations in this country lost money last year...
...In this campaign well over $3,000,000 was spent...
...These men were elected by the people of their states...
...they can be mad'> to influence the action of congress upon virtually every issue of importance...
...they can be made to •cause American soldiers to plac^ their lives over American dollars wherever they may be invested...
...Let us not prolong the day when we sha'l tear the blinds free from before our eyes and place far above the worship of property and riches and power ami Big Business, that which is human, something more divine...
...They had not invested the mere sport of seeing a contest...
...We can hive such a government when it is no: influenced by debts it owes to campajgn contributors—the greater the contribution the greater the debt...
...We know belter...
...Insull and others...
...Therein lies the power and influence of money in elections and legislation...
...As a result of the investigation by that body the two men were forced into the courts to defend their activities, along with certain government officials...
...In an address last October, John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturer's, declared that, '"Outside the few gigantic corporations which don't have to worry about competition and by whose large profits the public is misled, the common run of manufacturers in America today are in about as unhappy a condition as the farmers, and I challenge the statisticians to overturn the statement...
...The investment required for these favors is so insignificant as compared with the returns which are proven to be enjoyed by the investors as to make it preposterous for party leaders to worry "about the availability of funds with, which to carry on the next campaign...
...We ought to want and ought to have a government conducted by men and women who were really trying to represent the best interests of the people whom they are e>:pi: cd to represent and io serve the be-t interests of those people -*r.d their country...
...Gently and quietly it fans its victim with its broad wings, all the while it slowly but surely forces its fangs into the flesh...
...Tfley uunied something more material...
...JUST for the sake of this argument let us assume that we are, as a nation, enjoying prosperity...
...How do you suppose Mr...
...It was to engage an army of Burns detectives to go out and see what could be done with the jury trying the case...
...It was no one party which gave this to a few...
...By GERALD P. NYE [United States Senator from North Dakota...
...Our Financial Imperialism MANY are the medieval legends of strange deaths during sleep of human beings and animals...
...Where is the end...
...Let us look to those statistics available to ail people in this day when we are being fed so much of this prosperity bunk...
...Never does this gentle fanning of the wingg stop, not even as the bat removes its fangs and plugs the wound...
...The courts can testify as to one result of this thing called prosperity if they will but relate the story of the terrible increase in bankruptcy cases and criminal actions which are virtually choking our federal and state courts...
...This page does not speak for or of the laborer, the farmer r;r the business man, or even the small corporation...
...Through its claims upon parties, the party is given a lash and that lash is more often than not made to win success...
...insull...
...You have deprived states of the right to send whom they will to represent them...
...After the votes were counted, or weighed, or guessed at, by well paid watchers and machine election boards, Vare was found to be the winner...
...This development gave cause for one United States Senator to remark, "Pennsylvania was the one state in the Union which could insure Immortality...
...Ninety per cent of the business done in America is done by corporations, which number 430,072...
...Continually fanning, it feeds, sucking the warm life blood from its prey...
...But this response tc campaign contributors is a mere bagatelle compared with the various other sources of returns afforded by a willing government—a government willing to go to any extreme to satisfy enthroned wealth but extremely careful to let none of the favors of government fi!ter through to the people...
...Who Elected Vare and Smifh WHAT a hue and cry went up when the Senate exercised its right to judge the election of its own members and decided that Smith and Vare were not entitled to their seats in the Senate...
...In other words, a few individuals, -with headquarters in this great city of finance, are each year making sure that whichever party is successful in elections, will, after all, be THEIR party and ir THEIR debt...
...It also developed that the same Insull contribute...
...lib-fci&lly also to the campaign fund of the man who was to be Smith's democratic opponent in the general election...
...Ray Bingbauer was standing almost up against the tank of natural gas which recently exploded at Pittsburgh and all his clothes were torn off him...
...In the courts, as in the recent Sinclair trial in Washington, the evidence against him had piled up so fast and so high that resort to desperate means seemed necessary...
...Were they elected by the people of their states...
...When the parties responded in Congress to that very much restricted "demand" for the granting of a perpetual charter to the Federal Reserve System, as they did a year ago, they paid their debt to the big boys many times over...
...The stocks and bonds page of the daily papers is, as I have already-said, the barometer or the yard stick by which prosperity is measured in this day and age of the enthroned Dollar...
...In Pennsylvania one William S. Vare stepped out to win election to the United States Senate...
...It was a "spooky" election in more ways than one...
...It is just interesting in passing to take this profit of five billion dollars and compare it with the net income, say nothing of profit, of ten or twelve billion dollars going to our thirty million agricultural people for division among them in the same year...
...Upon the outcome may depend which party wilt enjoy the most liberal allowance when campaign fund time rolls around in the next few months...
...An indignant people will create an indignant Congress and an indignant government and thus make certain an end to this terrible influence being exercised today by the God of Riches upon our government, the lives of our people and the life of our nation...
...Since before the war the prices paid for farm produccts have increased 2*5...
...Those who enjoy it paid for it, and they will be expected to foot the bill again for a program which will place them, the parties, again in the debt of the few—the makers of officials and government itself...
...The ofi't-nses charged were: murder, 7; attempted murder, 2; rape, 2; attempted rape, 3; improper conduct, 1; charge not reported, 1. Tire states in which lynchings occurred and the number in each state are as follows: Arkansas, 3; Kentucky, 1; Louisiana, 1; Mississippi, 7; Missouri, 1; Tennessee, 2; Texas, 1. Nature built the human ear so that it cannot hear the most dreadful sounds, thereby protecting our nervous systems from total wreck on occasion...
...It was both...
...Thus do many counter...
...Today our prosperity and well-being are measured by the ups and downs of those figures found on the stocks and bonds pages of our daily newspapers...
...they can be made to cause great national parties to first ask the owner of those dollars what they had best do...
...Sixty-eight persons, 15 white and 53 Negroes, were thus saved from death at the hands of mobs...
...JUDGE LYNCH LOSES HIS POPULARITY THERE were 16 persons lynched in 1927...
...Twenty men, including Rockefeller Mellon, Whitney, Baker, Astor, Duke, Fleiscti-man, Curtis, Widener, *he Marshall Field estate, and others prominent in our political and economic life in this country, made contributions in 1924 to the campaign funds of the two major parties of thousands of dollars...
...And now the scramble is on between the two parties to see which one can do the most for the big boys in another tax reduction bill...
...Why did Insull thus contribute to both men who sought the same office...
...They have learned how to get along with it and HOW TO USE IT...
...Were they the choice of the people of their states ? The Senate held that they were not, and I believe justly so...
...He had at his disposal considerable of means with which to conduct, his campaign...
...Millions of dollars to elect "hired men" to public office...
...There were 42 instances in which officers of the law prevented lynchings...
...But we are unfair if we do not admit that there is money, big money, being made in America these days...
...The use of unreasonable and unfair amounts of money in campaigns ought to be frowned upon on every hand...
...According to the federal census of agriculture for 1925, there ¦were in that year 80,000 fewer farm owners and 100,000 more farm tenants in the United States than in 1910...
...They got ij when they coaxed an official within the i-;:I/net of the President to accept a little IL.-k satchel loaded with liberty bonds or cash il.c extent of $100,000 or more, in exchange leases to certain naval oil reserves, the c-rty of the people...
...He hesitated because, as one marine captain, G. K. Schuler, later State Treasurer of New York, testified, "the President did not want to take this action because an officer of the trespassing company was a close personal friend, AND CONTRIBUTED TO THE CAMPAIGN FUND...
...Perhaps our major parties will prolong our lives by taking some soundings before their ships are wrecked and will keep themselves free from debt except to those people who afford the strength by which they, the parties, live...
...Sinclair found the way to do the same thing, though publicly he appears as a giver to only one party...
Vol. 20 • January 1928 • No. 1
