- A 48 minute documentary well worth watching. It's Dutch
but almost all of it is in spoken English with Dutch subtitles so we English
speakers don't miss much.
-
- Exposed: The Carlyle Group:
-
- Shocking documentary uncovers the subversion of Americas
democracy.
-
- I defy you to watch this 48 minute documentary and not
be outraged about the depth of corruption and deceit within the highest
ranks of our government and the first family.
-
-
- Perhaps the naive will be shocked. The foreign policies
of nations have long been linked to the business aspirations of their corporations
(ex. Hudson's Bay Co, East India Company...etc.) . It is completely normal.
Where the investment dollar goes the soldiers follow. I have tacked on
below another item I post repeatedly, the confessions of war hero Smedley
Butler. Anyone who knows a soldier might consider printing it out for them.
-
- More shocking than this video is the one I helped edit
"The War on the Third World, What I've Learned About US Foreign Policy"
by Frank Dorrel. http://www.addictedtowar.com. It has been shown to perhaps
a million people so far and is starting to be shown in movie theatres in
the Los Angeles area. For decades people have killed and been killed for
the private profits of an elite they are not even aware of. I highly recommend
that list members buy a copy and show it to as many people as you can.
-
- Paul
-
- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3995.htm
-
- _____
-
- War Is A Racket
-
- From The Konformist
-
- Smedley Butler on Interventionism
-
- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General
- Smedley Butler, USMC.
-
- War is just a racket.
-
- A racket is best described, I believe, as something that
is not
- what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small
inside
- group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the
benefit of the
- very few at the expense of the masses.
-
- I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing
else.
- If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight.
The trouble
- with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent
over
- here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get
100 percent.
- Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow
the flag.
-
- I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect
some lousy
- investment of the bankers. There are only two things
we should
- fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other
is the
- Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a
racket.
-
- There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the
military gang is
- blind to. It has its "finger men" to point
out enemies, its "muscle
- men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men"
to plan war
- preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
-
- It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such
a
- comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-
three
- years and four months in active military service as a
member of
- this country's most agile military force, the Marine
Corps. I served
- in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General.
- And during that period, I spent most of my time being
a high class
- muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for
the Bankers. In
- short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
-
- I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time.
Now I am sure
- of it. Like all the members of the military profession,
I never had
- a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental
faculties
- remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders
of
- higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military
service.
-
- I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American
oil
- interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent
place
- for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
I helped in
- the raping of half a dozen Central American republics
for the
- benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is
long. I
- helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking
house of
- Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican
- Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China
I helped
- to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
-
- During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room
would
- say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that
I could have
- given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was
to
- operate his racket in three districts. I operated on
three
- continents.
-
-
- Subject: US General S.Butler's book: "War is a Racket"
1935
-
- For several decades, Major General Smedley Butler (US
Marines) helped lead many a US war in Latin America and elsewhere.
However, he later became one of the most eloquent opponents of war and
war profiteering that has ever existed! Ever heard of him? He exposed,
as few can, exactly how wars were being fought to promote the interests
of a corporate elite. His book is reprinted below.
-
- Attempts were even made by US industrialists to recruit
Butler to lead a fascist coup in the US in 1933! He turned them down, told
FDR about the plot and went public. Not surprisingly, few people in the
US (or elsewhere) have still ever heard of Butler or the fascist plot of
1933. Clearly if this and similar information were common knowledge, the
war planners would have a more difficult time deceiving us with their trickery.
A word of caution to those who may think that this is
a merely a "conspiracy theory" -- and therefore automatically
not true. Please do some research on the internet for yourself and see
what you find. Here then is Smedley Butler's little book, first published
in 1935. Enjoy!
- Richard Sanders
-
-
- WAR IS A RACKET
-
-
- Chapter One
-
- WAR is a racket. It always has been.
-
- It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable,
surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It
is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses
in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not
what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside"
group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very
few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make
huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits
of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were
made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their
huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires
falsified their tax returns no one knows.
-
- How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle?
How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go
hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened
nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of
them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded
or killed in battle?
-
- Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they
are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly
is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood
in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
- And what is this bill?
-
- This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed
gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes.
Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking
taxation for generations and generations.
-
- For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion
that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize
it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they
are today, I must face it and speak out.
-
- Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met
and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar
agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting
for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.
The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia]
complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies,
were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France
was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war.
Not the people - not those who fight and pay and die - only those who foment
wars and remain safely at home to profit.
-
- There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today,
and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not
in the making. Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men
being trained to be dancers? Not in Italy, to be sure.
Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least,
is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International
Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, said: "And above all, Fascism, the more it
considers and observes the future and the development of humanity
quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes
neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone
brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of
nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."
-
- Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His
well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready
for war - anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side
of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the
hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination
of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling
presages war, sooner or later.
-
- Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant
demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace.
France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth
from a year to eighteen months.
-
- Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The
mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more
adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old
friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international
bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against
the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean
to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine
Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five
years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have
private investments there of less than $200,000,000.
-
- Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000,
or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the
Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war - a
war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands
of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically
maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
-
- Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating
profit - fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would
be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders.
Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.
-
- Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't
they? It pays high dividends.
-
- But what does it profit the men who are killed? What
does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts?
What does it profit their children?
-
- What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom
war means huge profits?
-
- Yes, and what does it profit the nation? Take
our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the
mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little
more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded."
We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We
forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances."
We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World
War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs,
our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable
trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000.
Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for
year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for
the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements.
For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld
rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always
transferred to the people - who do not profit.
-
- CHAPTER TWO
-
- WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?
-
- The World War, rather our brief participation in it,
has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means
$400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt
yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children
probably still will be paying the cost of that war. The
normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight,
ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits - ah! that is
another matter - twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen
hundred per cent - the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle
Sam has the money. Let's get it. Of course, it isn't
put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism,
love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,"
but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket - and are safely pocketed.
Let's just take a few examples: Take our friends the
du Ponts, the powder people - didn't one of them testify before a Senate
committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world
for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic
corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period
1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed
to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit
during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year
profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits
of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more
than 950 per cent.
-
- Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically
shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture
war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000.
Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned
to munitions making. Did their profits jump - or did they let Uncle Sam
in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a
year! Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal
earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000
a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average
yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad. There
you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something
else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.
-
- Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during
the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918
profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.
-
- Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during
the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits
for the war period.
-
- Let's group these five, with three smaller companies.
The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000.
Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed
to $408,300,000.
-
- A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per
cent. Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the
only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.
-
- For the three-year period before the war the total profits
of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000
a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000,
a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company
averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000
a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap
of 1,400 per cent.
-
- International Nickel Company - and you can't have a war
without nickel - showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000
a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per
cent. American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000
a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000
was recorded. Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The
Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues.
Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers,
299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during
the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal
companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital
stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.
-
- And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great
war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships
rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders.
And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers
made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little
secrets never become public - even before a Senate investigatory body.
But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists
and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
-
- Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business
with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies.
Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they
also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from
Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance,
they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There
were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment
during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably
are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over
Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought - and paid
for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
-
- There was still lots of leather left. So the leather
people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for
the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had
to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it
- so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.
Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold
your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas.
I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried
to sleep in muddy trenches - one hand scratching cooties on their backs
and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito
nets ever got to France!
-
- Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make
sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000
additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam. There
were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there
were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little
longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold
your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France
so that more mosquito netting would be in order. Airplane
and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits
out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000
- count them if you live long enough - was spent by Uncle Sam in
building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or
motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle
in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of
30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.
-
- Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make
and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them - a nice little profit
for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the
uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers
- all got theirs. Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000
sets of equipment - knapsacks and the things that go to fill them - crammed
warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations
have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime
profits on them - and they will do it all over again the next time.
-
- There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making
during the war.
-
- One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen
48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was
that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches.
That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle
Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches
were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an
effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was
indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make
some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your
Uncle Sam.
-
- Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't
ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably
seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000
buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them
was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.
-
- The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of
it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More
than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But
$635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams
opened up - and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed
the profits.
-
- It has been estimated by statisticians and economists
and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000.
Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This
expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000
billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits
is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a
very few.
-
- The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry
and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly
has scratched the surface.
-
- Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department
has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war.
The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring.
The Administration names a committee - with the War and Navy Departments
ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator - to
limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly
the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood
into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.
-
- Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation
of losses - that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far
as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit
a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds
to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.
-
- There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says
not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or
that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed. Of course,
the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.
-
- CHAPTER THREE
-
- WHO PAYS THE BILLS?
-
- Who provides the profits - these nice little profits
of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them - in taxation.
We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at
$100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers
collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control
the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of
these bonds. Then all of us - the people - got frightened and sold the
bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated
a boom and government bonds went to par - and above. Then the bankers collected
their profits.
-
- But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
-
- If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries
on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in
the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am
at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals
for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men - men who
were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon
at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of
the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as
great as among those who stayed at home.
-
- Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields
and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There
they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about
face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder
to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We
used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all
of killing or of being killed.
-
- Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make
another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment,
sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and
sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered
them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan"
speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually
destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about
face" alone.
-
- In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800
of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel
bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These
already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human
beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape;
mentally, they are gone.
-
- There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and
more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of
the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement - the young boys couldn't
stand it.
-
- That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead - they
have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically
wounded - they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others
paid, too - they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from
their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam - on
which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps
where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and
their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the
trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days
at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain - with
the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.
-
- But don't forget - the soldier paid part of the dollars
and cents bill too.
-
- Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had
a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil
War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service.
The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In
the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured
any vessels, the soldiers all got their share - at least, they were supposed
to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all
the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier
anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could
bargain, but the soldier couldn't.
-
- Napoleon once said "All men are enamored of decorations...they
positively hunger for them."
-
- So by developing the Napoleonic system - the medal business
- the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because
the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals.
Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments
easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American
War.
-
- In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys
accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't
join the army.
-
- So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was
brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor
to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His
will that the Germans be killed.
-
- And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans
to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general
propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.
-
- Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent
out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the
"war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned
to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would
mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might
be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them
that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by
submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was
to be a "glorious adventure." Thus, having
stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help
pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.
-
- All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave
their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat
canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and
be killed. But wait!
-
- Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter
in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in
a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they
would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what
amounted to accident insurance - something the employer pays for in an
enlightened state - and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a
month left. Then, the most crowning insolence of all
- he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing,
and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money
at all on pay days.
-
- We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought
them back - when they came back from the war and couldn't find work
- at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth
of these bonds!
-
- Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His
family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he
suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched
shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly
- his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons,
and his daughters.
-
- When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or
with his mind broken, they suffered too - as much as and even sometimes
more than he.
-
- Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the
profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers
and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed
to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of
manipulated Liberty Bond prices.
-
- And even now the families of the wounded men and of the
mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are
still suffering and still paying.
-
-
- CHAPTER FOUR
-
- HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!
-
- WELL, it's a racket, all right.
-
- A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to
stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate
it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't
wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking
the profit out of war.
-
- The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital
and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One
month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation -
it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and
the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories
and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders
and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war
time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted - to get
$30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
-
- Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -
all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers,
all bankers - Yes, and all generals and all admirals
and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders
- everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to
exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
-
- Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business
and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and
majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war
risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.
-
- Why shouldn't they?
-
|