Golden Age, February 10, 1937
Download: PDF — Golden Age, February 10, 1937
The Golden Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE
in this issue
WHY THE INTEREST SYSTEM IS DEATHLY SICK
"A FRIEND OF THE WORLD"
WICKEDNESS: WHY PERMITTED
A SYMPOSIUM ON HERBS
AMERICA, AWAKE!
COMING BACK FROM HELL
every other
WEDNESDAY
five cents a copy
one dollar a year
Canada & Foreign 1.25
Vol. XVIII - No. 454
February 10, 1937 CONTENTS
WHY THE INTEREST SYSTEM IS SICK 291
When the Bankers Get Them All 292
Guaranty of Bank Deposits 292
The Small Loan Plan in Massachusetts 293
Social Credit in Alberta 293
"Capitalism Is Done" 294
The City of Too Much Gold 294
Anything to Keep Profits Coming 295
God Didn't Bring the Sewers 295
Profitable Public Utilities 296
Other Wide-awake Communities 296
Rate Reductions by Municipal Plants 297
Who Gets the Big Money? 297
Telephone Rates Down a Little 298
The Best-Paying Corporations 298
Use of Violence by Big Business 299
Methods of Big Business 300
Murder—the Most Respectable Racket of All 300
International Murderers of 1771 301
International Murderers Backed Hitler 302
The Racket of International Murderers 303
Prosperity Riding on a Soap Bubble 303
"A FRIEND OF THE WORLD" 304
WICKEDNESS: WHY PERMITTED 305
WITH THE KINGDOM MESSAGE IN THE EAST INDIES 306
THE WORKS OF ABRAHAM 307
MAKING UNLEAVENED BREAD FOR MEMORIAL 308
A SYMPOSIUM ON HERBS 309
Important Points 309
Some Simple Remedies 309
AMERICA, AWAKE! 312
The Big Steal 313
Huey Long Is Dead 313
The Creation of a Depression 313
What Shall Be Done About It? 314
"Our Foreign Policy" 314
"Our Banking System" 315
COMING BACK FROM HELL 316
The Dead Are Asleep 316
Why Bring Them Back? 317
Present Responsibility 318
A Glorious Prospect 318
CLAIMS OF BRITISH WAR EXPERTS 319
CARTOONS
A Mighty Sick Hog 291
"God brought it" 295
A Famous Oarsman Doing His Daily Stint 299
Published every other Wednesday by
GOLDEN AGE PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A.
Clayton J. Woodworth President
Nathan H. Knorr Vice President
Charles E. Wagner Secretary and Treasurer
FIVE CENTS A COPY
$1 a year, United States; $1.25 to Canada and all other countries.
NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS
REMITTANCES: For your own safety, remit by postal or express money order. When coin or currency is lost in the ordinary mails, there is no redress. Remittances from countries other than those named below may be made to the Brooklyn office, but only by INTERNATIONAL postal money order.
RECEIPT of a new or renewal subscription will be acknowledged only when requested. NOTICE OF EXPIRATION is sent with the journal one month before subscription expires. Please renew promptly to avoid loss of copies.
SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS direct to us rather than to the post office. Your request should reach us at least two weeks before the date of issue with which it is to take effect. Send your old as well as the new address. Copies will not be forwarded by the post office to your new address unless extra postage is provided by you.
PUBLISHED also in Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish.
OFFICES FOR OTHER COUNTRIES
British 34 Craven Terrace, London, W. 2, England
Canadian 40 Irwin Avenue, Toronto 5, Ontario, Canada
Australasian 7 Beresford Road, Strathfield, N. S. W., Australia
South African Boston House, Cape Town, South Africa
Entered as second-class matter at Brooklyn, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879.
The Golden Age
Volume XVIII Brooklyn, N.Y., Wednesday, February 10, 1937 Number 454
Why the Interest System Is Deathly Sick
THE interest system, forbidden in the Scriptures (Psalm 15:5), contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Anyone with paper and pencil can prove for himself, in a few minutes, that any civilization built upon the interest system must perish. See Golden Age No. 277, pages 499-501.
Conservative banking is the loaning of money at 6 percent, on 60-day notes. Compounding thus, $1 becomes $2 in 150 months and ever thereafter in 142 months (or less) the entire amount doubles.
Suppose, on the accession of Pope Leo III, December 25, 795, in the days of Charlemagne, that gentleman had invested $1 for the Papacy on the above basis. The result would have been that by now the Papacy would own twelve solid globes of gold of the weight of the earth.
The history of that dollar shows what happens:
Years Amount (Dollars)
71: 64
142: 4,096
284: 16,777,216
426: 68,719,476,736
568: 281,474,976,710,656
710: 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
852: 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696
994: 19,342,813,113,834,066,795,298,816
1136: 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336
Price of 12 earths of solid gold at the going price: $80,237,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Weight of earth in tons avoirdupois: 6,550,000,000,000,000,000,000
Price of gold per avoirdupois ton, at $35 per Troy ounce for 29166 2/3 ounces: $1,020,833 1/3
A Mighty Sick Hog
Explaining a little further, 1136 years from the accession of Pope Leo III brings one only to December 25, 1931, and that is more than five years in the past,* so the funds would be ample, even at the new price for gold. But the price of gold in the United States remained at $20.67 per Troy ounce for over 100 years, and was only recently changed.
The real reason why the change was made was that those responsible saw plainly that the only way they could possibly keep the stream of interest coming was to almost double the price of gold. At the old price, 21 globes of solid gold could have been bought with the $1 invested at 6 percent compound interest on the day Leo III ascended the throne, and each globe would have been of the weight of that on which mankind lives and moves.
From 1837 to 1934 the United States was operated for the benefit of, say one John D. Morgan Mellon Sinclair Astor Vanderbilt, Jr., and a half dozen or more friends. The dozen men, acting together, have it in their power to put on a full high-powered panic any time they please, and each time they put on one they get closer and closer to taking all there is.
* And, besides, there are 5 1/4 days in each year not taken into calculation; and in 1136 years this would come to the considerable time of more than 16 1/4 years of additional interest.
On this last occasion it came pretty near getting away from them, and in fright they decided that something must be done. Hence the real pleasure with which all the big banks in the country are loading up to the muzzle with government bonds. The bonds pay interest, don't they? Well, that explains it. And it explains the NRA, AAA, and all the rest of the New Deal.
The time has gone by when there is anything much to be gained by taking away another man's business, because business in all lines is over-manned and overdone, but if interest on money cannot be made in the good old way of dividends, then let the government have it. The interest may be smaller, but all the property in the country is back of it, and Big Money runs the show.
As an evidence that the multimillionaires are taking it away from the smaller ones, take note of the fact that mailing lists of 19,039 millionaires were obtainable in New York in 1929; the same lists now have but 14,603 names in them. The list of those worth $50,000 or more dropped from 620,000 to 495,000.
When the Bankers Get Them All
The Home Owners Loan Corporation made 850,000 loans, and is beginning to make foreclosures, as was inevitable. Some are wondering when the same bankers that repeatedly show they are stronger than the governments get control of all the property of the people just what they will do with it.
Maybe conditions will be like those on a certain street in a high-class American city where in seventeen elegant homes in a single block every tenant explained that he had lost everything, including his furniture, but was allowed to remain in the house, because the banks had found the properties were thus kept in better condition than if allowed to remain empty.
Said Congressman Sadowski, of Michigan:
I would like to see the interest-paying game taken away from private bankers. I cannot understand why bankers, who do not own the money they lend, have a right to charge interest or toll on the use of money. It is this interest, or toll, that robs the manufacturer and merchant of their profit and the laborer of his wage. It is like the rake-off or the percentage in a crap game. When the game is played long enough the house has it all. There is no reason why the money masters, the private bankers, who produce nothing, are overloaded with wealth and power, while the good American citizen who produces everything is reduced to beggary. Take away their banking privilege, take away their right to charge toll on the producers of this country, exterminate that parasite called interest; then we will have solved our troubles. Then, and only then, will you have honest distribution of wealth.
In 1929 the immense sum of $8,639,000,000 was reinvested in new productive enterprises in the United States; in 1934 the investment was only about $178,000,000, or around two percent of that only five years before. The people who have the big money see no way to assure themselves that if they invest their money they will get the interest on it. For the present they are content to put their surplus into government bonds, in the hope that for a little while longer the interest can be squeezed out of the people by taxes in some form; but it is a vain hope. The interest system has been given the final punch; it is staggering to its final fall; and the referee has begun to count tick, tock, tick, tock, the few remaining seconds before it will be in its death agonies, and the people will be for ever free from its bondage.
In 1934, when the people needed money worse than ever before in history, the banks had so much of it that they did not know what to do with it. A correspondent sent in the balance sheet of a prominent midwest bank, marking the first item "Cash on hand and in banks, $50,305,842.50", and added, in pencil, "And no place to go," and struck it about right.
Guaranty of Bank Deposits
Guaranty of bank deposits seems to work well, thus far. During the past two years only five National banks gave up the ghost, and as a result of the guaranty the depositors lost nothing.
The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) is that corporation entrusted with seeing that no more banks shall fail. The banks are all supposed to be in the corporation and to stand by one another, so that in effect it is a bankers' insurance company, with quasi-governmental approval back of it. Numerous banks after getting into the FDIC made application to withdraw; probably, their business having picked up, they did not wish to act as guarantors for others.
The investing public were recently robbed of $3,600,000,000 by "guaranteed" bonds most of which were not worth the paper they were written ten on. The big leaders in the racket, S. W. Straus & Co., American Bond and Mortgage Co., Greenbaum Sons, etc., picked committees of investors whose business it was to protect the bondhouses and let the small investors lose all. This job was so well done that the old crowd came out richer and stronger than ever.
The S. W. Straus Company sold $313,435,000 of securities to 80,000 investors and then went bankrupt. Hordes of crooked lawyers swooped down upon the carcass and by one means or another succeeded in raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars that really belonged to the victims of the smash.
So much of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad’s earnings were siphoned away to the Wall Street gang that in one year recently this once prosperous road, no longer able to buy new rails, had as many as twenty-five rail breaks in twenty-three hours.
Uncle Sam’s huge pile of gold, $11,250,000,000, is the largest ever accumulated in the world. It is being located in Denver, Colo., and at Fort Knox, Ky., 31 miles south of Louisville, where it will be protected by every known device.
Money ever seeks to hide where it is safe. The United States was strictly neutral in the Italo-Ethiopian conflict, but raw material used for war purposes went to Italy in a perfect stream. In California Alan Hoover, backed by his father, Herbert Hoover, bought farm lands on a huge scale. Herbert remembers that in the World War the people had to eat, and times were good for farmers. And, besides, money invested in a farm is safe, even if profits are small.
The Small Loan Plan in Massachusetts
Most of the states of the United States are infested with loan sharks whose charges run from 17 percent to 1,000 percent or more, and who are doing much, very much, to ruin the country. Massachusetts is favored with a small loan plan which aims to give the common people a chance, and has their approval. In the year 1931, in that state, there were 300,000 borrowers; they borrowed $36,000,000; there was no loss to the lenders; they made a net profit of 7 percent on their invested capital. No bank may own or control one of these small loan agencies; they are under control of a state supervisor. The rules are few and the charges humane; foreclosures are very few; the people are satisfied.
A dispatch from New York printed in the London Daily Telegraph reports 300 witnesses peeping through holes in a screen and thus identifying usury racketeers that loaned money at as high as 1,040 percent a year interest, and then employed gangsters to assault the borrowers when they finally reached a place where they could not pay. Gambling machines are in general use all over Greater New York. The usury racket is hoary with antiquity and still going strong.
Would you believe it possible that a man would pay another $1,100 interest on a $30 loan? It happened in Brooklyn. A man loaned that small sum to a fellow worker with the understanding that $36 was to be repaid in six weeks at the rate of $6 per week, but if a week was skipped it would be another $6 payment, and so on. The poor laborer paid $1,100 in this manner before he went to the police for advice and protection. The result was that the usurer, Joseph Fero, was arrested, and when in the toils of the law it was found that though he sported a fine car he was actually receiving $38.50 a month relief.
Social Credit in Alberta
The first place in the world to try the Douglas Social Credit plan, for doing away with the iniquitous interest system, is Alberta. There fifty-nine Social Credit Leaguers won in sixty-three contested districts. The Douglas plan seems entirely reasonable, but newspapers, bankers and all whose interests are involved have done all possible to impede and obstruct the use of the “hot money” issued. A citizen refusing to work when employment is obtainable is suspended from the dividend privileges of $25 per month.
Everywhere, in spite of their newspaper and other antagonists, the people are stirring in their own behalf, and forced to do so. Acting under powers conferred by the New Zealand legislature the New Zealand Industrial Commission fixed a base rate of $18 for men and $8 for women, as the least that may be paid for a forty-hour week. The five-day week is now the rule over most of New Zealand.
The New York Daily News, having made an investigation of its own, reports that less than 4 percent of the people of the United States are getting 38½ percent of the national income and these already own and control more than 87 percent of the national wealth. The biggest fellows are not Jews.
In justice to the Jews, it is claimed that between 1925 and 1928 the one firm of J. P. Morgan & Company floated larger loans than all Jewish bankers combined, that there is not a single magazine of national circulation owned and controlled by Jews, not a single newspaper chain, and a survey shows that 769 of the highest-paid officials in the motion-picture industry are non-Jews.
Counting on the bankers to get the United States into the next world war, the same as they did in the last war, Sir Malcolm Campbell, speed driver of autos, thinks another world war certain, and also that the United States will be dragged in. If so, and connections could be proved, the results for the bankers might be far different from in 1917. The American people are extremely patient and gullible, but the business has been overdone, and present misfortunes and sufferings are too keen to be ignored or forgotten. For winning the World War for the Allies America received nothing but abuse. Morgan’s men, Sharp and Bacon, who promised the French foreign minister that they would put the United States into the war on the side of the Allies, should have told Hanotaux that there is a limit to American patience and gullibility.
Two headlines in the newspapers tell an eloquent story. They read as follows: (1) “Fifteen States to Be Cut off Relief November 15.” (2) “Wall Street Booms on Breathing Spell Message from Secretary Roper.”
"Capitalism Is Done"
At Hollywood, California, former Congressman F. H. Shoemaker, of Minnesota, said:
Capitalism is done. Production for use must and can supplant the present system. Society has been the slave of the machine, and the only solution now is to make the machine the slave of society. The capitalist is helpless in a fight against production for use. His own system has licked him. He is over-capitalized to the point where he must liquidate.
Everybody knows that Mr. Shoemaker told the absolute truth, yet if he had dared make the same remarks a few years ago he would have been denounced most savagely.
Edward A. Filene, one of America's foremost thinkers, and Boston's most famous merchant, rated as an unofficial adviser of President Roosevelt, in an address at the American Chamber of Commerce, London, made the statement:
Business cannot remain as it is. It must make some move, must organize some kind of business government or submit to some government which will govern business in view of its failure to govern itself.
Returning to America Mr. Filene resigned from the United States Chamber of Commerce, having become convinced of its unprogressiveness, and stated further:
There can never again be lasting nation-wide prosperity until American business in general is organized to pay such higher wages that the masses of wage-earners will be able to buy enough of our industrial products to give our industries an adequate market, and thus keep them in profitable operation.
About 1,000 businessmen, delegates from 48 countries, met in Paris and issued a statement in which they said, in part:
For five years business all over the world has suffered from unparalleled depression. In spite of some signs of natural recovery here and there conditions continue unsatisfactory. Confidence is lacking, monetary instability prevails, debts remain unpaid, taxation increases and international trade is held up, hampered by mounting restrictions and barriers. Business enterprise is heavily burdened and handicapped on all sides.
The railroads ruined their own business by putting passenger travel rates up to a point where the people could not pay them, and either stayed home or traveled by cheaper conveyances. As soon as they reduced the rates to a point where the people could afford to pay them, business picked up right away. Have you ever noticed the way the people flock to the ten-cent stores? They have the same idea. They like to get something for their money.
The City of Too Much Gold
La Paz, capital of Bolivia, is the city of too much gold. With the advent of hard times the natives began reworking the gold stream, on the banks of which the city stands. So much gravel was removed that the city began to crumble and the authorities were compelled to forbid further gold mining within the city limits. When one thinks of it, that is not such a bad picture of why this present civilization is falling in ruins. It has been interested only in digging gold.
Now that the war is over and the Paraguayans have won the Gran Chaco oil fields, Bolivia turns its attention to something constructive and worth while. On the western boundary of the country, between Bolivia and Peru, lies Lake Titicaca, 130 miles long and 43 miles wide. This lake, at an elevation of 12,635 feet, is the highest navigable lake in the world. Though it now empties into a smaller lake to the south, and is eventually lost in the Salinas Grandes, it once was a feeder to the Amazon skirting Mount Sorata (one of the most magnificent mountains in the world) on its way to the lower levels at its base. Lake Titicaca will now be turned into its old bed, which in a few miles descends 6,100 feet.
The power obtained from this project will be used to run all the railroads and other machinery in Bolivia, and the surplus waters will be used to irrigate the rich neighboring agricultural valley. The project will take five years to carry out and will cost $25,000,000.
"God brought it"
Bolivia handed down a decree that all men between the ages of 18 and 60 must be occupied. A census is being taken and the unemployed will be placed in mines, factories, commercial houses and other establishments willy-nilly. The government has issued orders requiring every man and woman in the country to join either the syndicate of employers or that of employees.
Anything to Keep Profits Coming
A single large Pittsburgh dairy admitted that it dumps 1,500 to 2,000 gallons of skimmed milk into the city’s sewers daily, and stated that at least one other large dairy follows the same practice. Taxpayers will feel that this milk could at least have been offered to the various relief agencies in Pittsburgh, and maybe, if they did not want it all, they might have let some of it go to the relief administration without being skimmed.
Pre-fabricated houses are now on sale by American Houses, Inc., and National Houses, Inc. A four-room unit by the former concern costs $3,800 complete; occupancy guaranteed in two weeks at any point within 100 miles of New York. There is no cellar. The steel frame is erected on a concrete foundation.
The walls are in panels 4 feet by 10 feet and 2 1/4 inches thick, of alternate layers of cement, asbestos and burnt cork. The outside is a light gray and needs no paint. Extra rooms can be added from time to time by unbuttoning one outside wall. The walls are papered in parchment that can be washed with soap and water. An electric clock is set in the wall, over a radio. All rooms are air-conditioned. Down one side of the kitchen runs a monel-topped counter in which are set the stove, refrigerator and sink. Next to the kitchen, neatly embedded in a thick column, are the furnace, plumbing inlets and outlets and air-conditioner.
These houses, cheap, durable, attractive, made by machinery, spell the doom of the building trades and mean that, hard as times have been for carpenters, plasterers, plumbers, roofers and painters, they are bound to be harder still in the near future. National Houses, Inc., announces that it expects to have 10,000 pre-fabricated houses to sell during the next twelve months.
God Didn't Bring the Paves
That was a great discovery by the 100%-Profit Americans that God did not bring the paves but did bring everything that had any money in it. In the case of sewers, and more particularly in the case of paves, it is a case of everything going out. And so no group of patriots ever got together behind frosted glass to consider how these could be taken over and operated by them to the public advantage.
But when it came to services of water, gas, steam, oil, electric lights, electric power, telephones, telegraphs, radio, what a desperate effort the patriots put up to keep these services in their own hands and to impress upon the public that they will be morally and otherwise ruined and destroyed if they try to handle them themselves.
For years the Power Trust had college professors running around the country hollering their heads off against public ownership of public utilities. Some of these professors did this entirely as a labor of love, plus a little rake-off of $5,000 a year. Bankers did the same. Editors did the same. And probably the preachers did the same. And the politicians. It was great while it lasted, but it didn't last.
The argument put up by the Power Trust people that they hadn't a man, not one, who could or would manage a public-ownership plant in the interest of the people was so convincing that here and there an honest mayor decided to try it out, especially in those communities where the electric rates were well known to be in the neighborhood of fifteen times the cost of producing the current, which cost is around 3/4 of 1c per kilowatt-hour.
Profitable Public Utilities
In Birmingham, England, in 1934 and 1935, the net profits from the public-owned and public-operated electric, gas, water, railway and omnibus utilities were $10,487,815. Birmingham was the first city in the world to discover that it is all right for the people as a whole to operate their own utilities.
It helps one to understand why those of the Power Trust are so eager to teach the American people the terrors and dangers of public ownership of anything that has an income attached to it, when one learns that in the last 32 years the city of Toronto, Canada, saved $278,000,000 because of the public ownership of power in Ontario. Think what a boon that money would have been to the bankers that own the Power Trust!
“The city of Cleveland has owned and operated its municipal plant for over twenty years. During that time it has maintained a maximum rate of substantially 3 cents a kilowatt-hour, and an average rate among the very lowest in the country. At these astonishingly low rates the city has accumulated an equity in the plant over and above all costs of operation, capital charges, etc., of over $15,000,000. The saving to the citizens of Cleveland resulting from the municipal plant during the last twenty years, is $40,000,000. The 3c rate, which was at first declared to be impossible and was ridiculed by its opponents, has been proved to be an overcharge.” —Edward J. Kenealy, Ohio.
Woodsfield, Ohio, if memory serves aright, a few years ago had a bonehead for chief of police, but in other respects it is an up-to-date community. Three years ago it purchased its own Diesel engine electric light plant at a cost of $28,000. Since that time it has paid for the plant, loaned the village $4,500, given free electric service for two months, reduced the current from 9c to 5c, and supplied free current to the municipality.
The Vineland (N.J.) municipal light plant paid the borough $100,000 profit every year for six years; lowered the tax rate from $5.61, six years ago, to $3.99, in 1935; furnished $42,000 worth of municipal and street lighting per year, free of charge to the taxpayers; helped to pay the bill for hard-surfacing 14 miles of streets and improving 30 miles more; piled up a cash balance in the bank of $250,000. What a crime against Big Business!
Other Wide-awake Communities
With electric light rates down to rock bottom, the Martin’s Ferry (Ohio) municipal power plant made so much money that all patrons received a dividend of a month’s free electricity. When you hear of some of the privately owned public utilities’ doing something of the kind, you will know that this earth is no longer a fit place for you, and that the little feathers on your shoulders are the first faint signs of your coming wings.
The city of Painesville, Ohio, received its November, 1936, municipal light plant bills marked “Paid”. Now, in some of the big cities, where the newspapers, owned by the big toads, fight against municipal ownership of everything that makes money, the people are looking for some free bills, and they will get them when they are nailed up, and not before.
The municipal electric light plant of Poplar Bluff (Mo.) gave one month’s free service to every customer in 1936. The reason why none of the privately owned utilities can do anything like that is that it would cut into the reserve funds needed to bribe legislators, college professors and others who object to public ownership of public utilities—for a consideration.
Pennsylvania’s only tax-free town is Mifflinburg. The revenues from the municipally owned water and electric plants were more than enough to pay all expenses. Sad, isn’t it?—for the utility holding companies and such.
The little city of Munroe, N.H., has two huge power plants, one assessed as worth $9,000,000. These plants pay 95 percent of the taxes, with the result that the city now has $15,000 on hand for which it has no use. Just a timid suggestion: Turn it over to the Power Trust and let them use it for propaganda against public ownership of any profitable public utility.
Rate Reductions by Municipal Plants
In Public Ownership magazine is a list of cities showing the maximum rates per kilowatt-hour before municipal ownership and afterwards. Roughly, the average rates at first were about 12c; now they are less than 4c. Details are as follows: Pasadena, Calif., .15 and .045; Jamestown, N.Y., .10 and .035; Webster City, Iowa, .10 and .063; Virginia City, Minn., .113 and .02; Winnipeg, Man., .20 and .025; Ft. Wayne, Ind., .10 and .07; Lincoln, Nebr., .13 and .0475; Holyoke, Mass., .16 and .04; Washington, Ind., .10 and .07; Eugene, Oreg., .15 and .04; Toronto, Ont., .08 and .015; London, Ont., .09 and .013; Ottawa, Ont., .07 and .009.
The Canadian cities that have electric light and power rates of less than 1 1/2c per kilowatt-hour are Hamilton, London, Niagara Falls, Port Arthur, St. Thomas, Toronto, and Weston. Those that have 1 1/2c per kilowatt-hour and up to (but not more than) 2c per kilowatt-hour are Acton, Barrie, Brampton, Brantford, Brockville, Chatham, Collingwood, Dundas, Galt, Georgetown, Guelph, Ingersoll, Kitchener, Listowel, Midland, Mimico, New Toronto, Norwich, Owen Sound, Picton, Paris, Prescott, Preston, Sarnia, Stratford, Strathroy, Tavistock, Tilsonburg, Waterford, Waterloo, Welland, and Windsor. The Canadian city that has the lowest rate of all is Ottawa, which is but 9/10 of 1c per kilowatt-hour.
Compare these rates with the rates, service charges, reconnection charges, fines and other amenities on this side of the line, and you will know why the bankers and college professors and politicians and newspapers over here are such rooters for private ownership.
Pointing out that the United States Government sells electric power for four-tenths of a cent per kilowatt-hour, the city of Pawtucket refused to pay its bill at rates up to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour, and filed a bill with the Legislature seeking permission to build its own power plant.
Who Gets the Big Money?
With the worst depression in the history of the world still on, the Associated Gas and Electric System made a profit of 300 percent above the cost to the corporation for engineering services rendered to its subsidiaries.
Persons who have cut their eyeteeth will be mildly amused at the statement that the 38,000 employees of the Consolidated Gas System have combined to fight municipal ownership of New York city’s gas and electric systems, and that their activities will be supported by “voluntary contributions”. Wonder if the gang that paid millions to send bogus telegrams to Washington to head off the utility holding company legislation will join and help forward these voluntary contributions.
In the investigation of Power Trust crookedness at Washington it came out that 2,000 telegrams were sent from York, Pa., and all but 14 of the messages had forged signatures. The Western National Bank of York, Pa., respected (?) caretakers (?) of the people’s funds, paid for 157 of these messages, and the rest were paid for by the Associated Gas and Electric Company, whose Mr. Ursal E. Beach (another product of our wonderful twentieth-century civilization) ordered the subsidiaries in 26 states to get rid of all written evidence pertaining to their Holding Company Bill resistance.
The modern hold-up man takes no chances. He has a lawyer by his side every step of the way and knows just when to strike, how to strike, and when to collect the loot. One of the modern stars is Ellis L. Phillips, who, starting with $50,000 in 1913, and understanding how to work public utilities to a finish, rolled up profits of $5,080,000 over a twenty-year period in which he took the Long Island Lighting Company for a ride. One transaction was when Phillips sold to the lighting company for $66,000 equipment which it valued at $1,200. In 1927 the Phillips Company charged $1 an hour for the use of a truck that had a book value of $1.
Telephone Rates Down a Little
Telephone rates are down a little, and it is high time they were. In Washington there have been congressmen, not a few, who have boldly expressed the opinion that the Telephone Trust is stronger than the Government itself.
The Influence Network of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company contains 4,911 banks in which the company has deposited funds, and at times the influence of these banks stands the company in good stead, but 17 of its officials are also heads of 197 other corporations having combined assets of nearly $40,000,000,000. A wise distribution of advertising keeps most of the press silent of criticisms of the great trust.
There are more than 34,000,000 telephone users in the world, slightly more than half of them in the United States. New York city has 1,506,100. The entire world is now linked together, so that if one has the price he may pick up his instrument and telephone all over some 73 countries.
Walter Gifford, president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was selected by President Hoover as head of his unemployed relief organization. Here is what then happened: In 1929 the company of which he is head had 364,000 employees; last year it had 244,000, but the dividends of the company stayed at 9 percent all through the depression. The 120,000 American Telephone and Telegraph Company employees that went on relief relieved the company of taking care of them, and, besides that, most of those that received the dividends had nothing to do at any time, being unemployed because they did not have to work. This system of relieving the unemployed has many supporters. Over 50 percent of A.T.&T. stock is held by 5 percent of the stockholders. Fifty-seven percent of the stockholders own less than 10 percent of the stock. The president of the A.T.&T. draws a salary of $206,000 annually.
The gambling business at Evansville, Ind., seems to be in good shape. When an A.T.&T. race-wire machine was grabbed at that city an A.T.&T. lawyer made it clear to the city fathers that the company wanted no part in any gambling enterprise. Then to the Ministerial Association the same clever lawyer gave assurance that the A.T.&T. would do all in its power to prevent the use of its scientific devices for ignoble ends, and then to the gambling client the same clever lawyer gave assurance that he had nothing to worry about. The Youngstown Telegram offers the foregoing information and follows it with the succinct summary, "No runs, no hits, no errors."
American homes contain many comforts. 21,455,000 contain radios, 21,430,000 have passenger cars to drive, 20,890,000 are wired for electricity, and 10,660,000 have residence telephones. The homes having telephones could be doubled, but it is the policy of the Telephone Trust to make the charges high and so discourage further telephone extensions.
New York city will take over the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit lines for $192,500,000 and the Interborough lines for $238,251,000, operating, all together, 237 miles of subway and elevated lines at a uniform fare of 5c. The combined lines represent the largest and most comprehensive rapid transit system in the world. The proposition has been advanced that the city should run these transportation lines free, the same as elevators in a great building, and thus distribute the population more widely.
The Best-Paying Corporations
The United States corporations that pay their executives wages from $100,000 to $250,000 a year are General Motors Corporation, Jones & Laughlin Steel Company, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, American Telephone and Telegraph Company, McKeesport Tin Plate Company, Standard Brands Incorporated, McCall Corporation, Republic Steel Company, United States Rubber Company, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Standard Oil Company of Indiana, Air Reduction Company, United States Industrial Alcohol, National Dairy Products Corporation, Consolidated Gas Company of New York, Kennecott Copper Subsidiaries, Coca-Cola Company, Montgomery Ward & Company, American Smelting and Refining Company, Diamond Match Company, Lambert Company, Owens-Illinois Glass Company, Saturday Evening Post, Continental Oil Company, Atlantic Refining Company, United Gas Improvement Comcompany. Besides the foregoing, 29 other concerns pay their presidents or other officials larger salaries than that paid to the president of the United States. There are 110 film stars who receive higher salaries than the president.
The National Pants Company made 100,000 pairs of pants for the CCC and just as soon as the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional the firm notified all employees that it would make deductions from their wages until the firm had got back all the “excess” paid under the NRA. Of course, the firm got unusually high prices for the pants because it was working under the NRA code. In other words, the National Pants Company tells the Government, the people in general, and their employees, to go right straight to the end of the dock and jump off.
OH, IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER WHEN GOOD FELLOWS GET TOGETHER -
INTEREST SYSTEM
EXCESS PROFITS
JOHN PUBLIC
SERVICE
PUBLIC UTILITIES
CORPORATION GREED
JUSTICE FOR ALL
A Famous Oarsman Doing His Daily Stint
The love that labor has for Big Business is not the same kind it used to be for the employer with a heart. Before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Education and Labor J. Warren Madden, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, testified that the Freehauf Trailer Co., Detroit, Mich., paid a detective $175 a month to look after their interests with their men. He joined the labor union which was just getting a start in the plant, was elected its treasurer, reported to the company several times a week the names of those he had induced to join the union, and got them fired, and at length skipped out with the union's funds. There are numerous detective agencies in all the large cities fully equipped to do work of this kind.
Use of Violence by Big Business
The Methodist Federation for Social Service seems to think that violence is out of place when practiced by the principals of the flock against the common people, and is quite right. It says, in its report:
At least seventy-three workers, share-croppers, Negroes, were killed in economic struggles and lynchings during the year; no employers. . . . The condoning by the authorities of violence against radicals by lawless bands, their participation in it, was an accompaniment of the rise to power of Fascism in Italy, in Germany and Japan.
Building a tunnel in West Virginia, two thousand workers were denied dust masks and wet drills. So 476 of the workers are dead, 169 of them buried in one ditch, without coffins or other marks of identification; 1,500 more are expected to die. By depriving the men of the safety devices the company building the tunnel saved at least a dollar for each man killed. West Virginia newspapers refused to print any news of the tragedy caused by the silicate dust, into which the workmen were driven by foremen armed with clubs. Relief officials refuse aid to families suing or desiring to sue for compensation.
When a stockholder of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation offered a resolution, at the thirtieth annual meeting of the stockholders of the company, that the combined salaries of the officers be limited to 20 percent of the profits in 1934, Schwab, Grace and other big stockholders and officials beat the motion by a vote of 2,370,000 to 355. They have shrinking modesty, to be sure, but not financial shrinking—not that you could notice it.
W. A. Case & Son, pottery manufacturers, Robinson, Ill., discharged thirty-one faithful employees the day before the Illinois Workmen's Compensation Act pertaining to occupational diseases became effective. The thirty-one employees have told the United States government that they are afflicted with silicosis incurred at their work.
Methods of Big Business
"We must tell the American farmer that the chains destroy the vegetable price in southern California and in the Bay district; how they shipped lettuce in and dumped it on the market in the Bay district to break the price the farmers were receiving—tell the farmers the story of eleven bunches of vegetables for a dime and seven dozen oranges for a quarter, destroying the farmers' ability to purchase manufactured goods such as tractors, trucks, plows and cultivation machinery which must be sold to the farmer if the laboring man in the great manufacturing centers of the east is to have a chance for a job.
"We want to ask the local insurance broker and salesman did he ever sell a policy to a chain store, and the answer will be he never did; for the chains do not buy from local agents. Ask the local attorney if he ever performed a service for a chain store, and again the answer is no. 387,000 traveling salesmen driven off the road in one year by food mergers alone, adding to the great army of the unemployed; another half million people who cannot buy the products of the soil and factory. What do our hotel men think of this?
"We want to tell the independent merchant the story of the contract between the Goodyear Rubber Company and Sears-Roebuck as it was exposed by the Federal Trade Commission wherein they showed that Goodyear had given Sears, Roebuck & Co. a price discount on tires of $41,000,000, and, as though that were not enough, they gave Sears-Roebuck 18,000 shares of Goodyear Rubber Company stock, and as a consideration for the signing of a secret agreement, gave them $800,000 in cash with which to purchase an additional 32,000 shares of Goodyear stock.
"We want to tell the story that was revealed by the Patman Investigating Committee in Washington and published in the report of that committee in the Congressional Record, showing where A&P admitted under oath that they had received from manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors, in one year, discounts and allowances amounting to $8,200,000; where they had received from one company a cash rebate of $144,000 on a five-cent yeast cake; from another company, $84,000 on a five-cent package of gum; from another company, $360,000, and so on for page after page of rebates, discounts and allowances.
"Does any man or woman believe one can compete with that kind of competition? The chains in their propaganda will tell you that the independent merchant can compete with the chain store if he had the courage, the stamina, the stick-to-it-iveness that was necessary. And they tell the story of an ex-chain store manager who went into business for himself and who at the end of the sixth year was making $360,000 a year and then tell you there is nothing to it if you have the courage and the stick-to-it-iveness.
"My answer to them is that you may have all of the grit and the courage and the red blood and stick-to-it-iveness that you want, but you cannot overcome a price differential of $41,000,000 on tires or $144,000 on a five-cent yeast cake or $84,000 on a package of chewing gum. My answer is that the ruthlessness, the unscrupulousness, the cunning manipulation of the chain store corporations, can be overcome only by legislation which corrects by curbing the expansion of the chain store in this state."—By Senator Chris N. Jespersen, Calif.
Simon & Schuster, New York publishers, made a list of the 200 most powerful men in the world, according to their judgment. The eleventh man on the list is J. P. Morgan, concerning whom the statement is made that his firm controls over one-quarter of America's organized wealth. The governor of the Bank of England was given first place on the list, the pope the second place, Franklin D. Roosevelt the sixth place, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the fifteenth place.
Murder—the Most Respectable Racket of All
In getting up a little story about the efforts of those who have money to keep the stream of interest flowing, the oldest, most respectable business in the world should not be overlooked—the war business. It never pays to write on a subject that somebody else has written up better than you could do it yourself. The following is from The American Guardian; it is of special interest just now, for the reason that Europe is expecting war. This is evidenced by the fact that the world's store of gold is being salted away down in Kentucky, so that when the fun begins the men that control the pile can draw upon it to buy the munitions that will be needed, and to purchase the newspaper and radio propaganda to squeeze the United States into the conflict.
When the noble Romans were short of hoe hands on their plantations, they sent their legions into Gaul, Germany and Brittany to fetch more.
When a king of yore felt an itching for the real estate of a neighbor, he called his retainers together and went after it with halbert, spiked club, and butcher knife. If luck was with him, he made away with the vanquished acres, improvements and livestock, such as oxen, horses, goats, and serfs. If luck went against him, it was just too bad, but there can be no profit without risk.
For many centuries, war was the business of specialists called knights. The reason why they called themselves noble is that they worked only on horseback, where they were hard to reach, and if reached, were so covered by sheet iron that the worst that could happen was a dent in their fenders.
When two knights had maltreated each other's hardware until one of them ran out of wind, the winded one was declared vanquished and held for ransom by the victor. Thereupon, word would be sent to his friends and relatives to bail him out or know the reason why. Killing knights was poor business, which explains that after centuries of knightly warfare, descendants of these noble warriors are still littering up the earth.
War in those good old days was good honest business. Your opponent had something you wanted, and when you got your man, you got what he had. There was no talk about national prestige, insult to flag, or making the world safe for democracy, etc. This was so because the count who owned the country, or the king who owned the country, owned the people, too, so there was no need of fooling people who had nothing to say nohow.
Well, the kings, knights, stone raiders, and robber barons no longer own, and consequently rule, the earth. Their place has been taken by so-called "capitalists", who are just like you and me. Now, all men are equal before the law. The capitalists select the people who make the law and enforce the law, while you and I obey the law. Outside of this and the minor fact that these people own all the things without which the rest of us must die or croak, there is no difference between the citizens of democracies, such as ours, for instance. In other words, there are no ruling classes in democracies. There are only folks who own all and command, and folks who own nothing and obey.
But as there is nothing perfect in this imperfect world, democracy created new problems. One of them is how to make people who own nothing fight for something they haven't got and won't get if they win, and that's where patriotism comes in. Patriotism is the art of inducing people who own nothing at home to fight for the other fellow's interests abroad.
For illustration, let's say a party whom you have never met, and wouldn't get a chance to chum with on a bet, owns a string of oil gushers in Mexico. The only interest you have in oil is when you buy it by the gallon, using a potato for a stopper. When times are good, meaning when the kind of folks who own strings of oil gushers in Mexico let you work, you burn the oil and throw the potato away. When times are bad, you eat the potato and do without the oil. From this it may be reasoned that those oil gushers in Mexico are none of your concern. But wait a minute.
The cruel, hard-boiled and unscrupulous government of Mexico proceeds to tax the oil gushing from the string of gushers owned by the gentleman you never met, and what was "his'n" but yesterday is ours today. Our interests are menaced in Mexico. Our country must not tolerate interference with American rights in Mexico. Our prestige is at stake. Our flag is insulted. "We," "us," and "ours" gushes from every newspaper, billboard and four-minute speaker. Funny. Yesterday there was nothing of me, us, and ours about these oil gushers in Mexico. They were the safe, sacred and exclusive private property of the gentleman we never met.
For some reason the gentleman will not fight for his oil gushers in Mexico. Neither will he go down in his jeans and hire a private army to defend his property. The property is his. The profit is his. Up to yesterday it was all I, me, and mine. Now it is all we, us, and ours, and woe unto the oilcan plus potato stopper toter who is not willing to lay his life down for our country's interests, glory, prestige, and foreign investments.
Our country, my eye. The bulk of us don't own enough of our country to be buried standing up in it. We work when its owners let us; quit when they tell us; give our lives in return for wooden crosses, peg-legs, and pewter medals while its real owners stay at home and make hay while it rains blood, gore, and broken stove lids.
We saved our country in the Civil War, but if anybody ever saw a Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Gould, or Vanderbilt in a G.A.R. parade, let him speak up, or forever hold his peace.
We saved it again during the World War, and doing so made 40,000 new millionaires, but if there was a millionaire's son among the killed, wounded, or missing, we missed his name.
The International Murderers of 1771
Don't get the idea that the International Murderers are something new. It is one of the most ancient and one of the most honorable rackets of earth. In 1771 Boswell's hero, Johnson, wrote of the gentry who now dominate every peace conference:
These are the men who, without virtue, labor or hazard, are growing rich as their country is impoverished; they rejoice when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation, and laugh from their desks at bravery and science while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest.
The reason why the World War of 1914-1918 went on four and one-half years instead of six months is that the French army did not penetrate eight miles into Lorraine and recapture munition plants and blast furnaces seized from the French by the Germans in the first days of the war. This the Germans now admit, and the French admit that in order to protect those private interests the French commanders were instructed not to bombard the plants. It thus appears that the death of some 50,000,000 people and the ruin of mankind was due to anxiety to spare losses to the rich.
At the Sunrise Conference of April, 1916, President Wilson, in the presence of Claude Kitchin and Champ Clark, pounded the table and said that if the country declared war at once hostilities would be over in four months. Seven months from the time of the conference he was re-elected because "he kept us out of the war"—into which, during all the campaign, he was determined to plunge the country as soon as he could after re-election.
What it cost to make the world safe for the two billion dollars of loans and credits advanced to the Allies by the American bankers were 350,000 Americans killed or wounded, 25 billion dollars spent by the U.S.A. for armaments, 12 billion more loaned to the allies, and defaulted, 55 billion more for pensions, and the pushing of the whole world into the arms of Fascism—Catholic Action.
Explaining why he and other United States marines were sent to China, supposedly to protect the lives of Americans, General Smedley D. Butler, in an address at Newburyport Mass., said:
In the past 100 years there haven't been as many Americans killed in China as are killed in Chicago every day. What we really went to China for was to protect $20,000,000 worth of Standard Oil property at a cost to the American people of $12,000,000. It cost the people that much to protect a private investment that doesn't pay a cent in taxes to the Government.
International Murderers Backed Hitler
Senator Nye, of North Dakota, in an address at Tacoma, Washington, charged that Eugene Schneider, French munitions maker, was one of the chief financial means by which Adolph Hitler climbed into power and thus destroyed Germany. He further declared that the submarines, airplane motors and poison gases that now threaten the safety of humanity are manufactured under American patents. The conspiracy of the International Murderers is world-wide, to foment strife and disorder. It means money in their pockets.
All Europe is taking the boys and girls and turning them into prospective soldiers. Of these boys and girls the New York Times says, truthfully:
For those who remember the fresh freedom of the morning hours, there is no sadder sight today than the lengthening regiments who march on without knowing that their parades are the funeral march of their youth.
International Murderers have been warned by General William H. Tschappat, United States army ordnance chief, to get ready for their war mission. Part of that mission, as history shows, is the bribery of army officials.
The Government is alleged to have noticed that when it asks for quotations from the members of the steel combine it seems to get identical prices from all competitors. If the Government should suddenly decide to enforce the Sherman Act it might be necessary for these big munition makers to start another war to keep out of trouble; and that they would do that in order to save their profits, there is not the least question.
Do you really wish to get ahead in the world, or are you content to lag behind? If you want to get ahead, you must give yourself wholly to the Devil; for it is true, just as Scott Nearing said:
Those who accept, advocate and support war find themselves functioning at the center of civilized society. Let anyone seriously work for peace, and he is regarded as a renegade, an outcast, an enemy of civilization. . . . Those who refused to participate in the work of organized destruction and mass murder were branded by the French, German and American ruling class interests alike as enemies of civilization.
Sir Basil Zaharoff, the greatest arms salesman of all time, and therefore the greatest potential murderer of all time, died at 86 years of age at his mansion thirty miles out of Paris, accounted the richest man in Europe. Because his life was a curse to his fellow men he was knighted and decorated by England, France, Russia, Italy, and other countries. In his last few weeks he saw no one, read no letters, and received no parcels, because he was afraid somebody would blow him up with a bomb. The poorest beggar, dying destitute of food, clothing and shelter, dies enviously rich compared with the merciless wretch who finally came to his end. What are his hopes now?
The Racket of International Murderers
Referring to the racket of the International munition makers, Senator Homer T. Bone, of Washington, in an address at Denver, said:
The rackets of men like Al Capone are socially dangerous and should be suppressed because they endanger society, and for exactly the same reason the racket of men who desire to plunge us into the insanity of war by their greed should be suppressed.
Skoda, Central Europe’s largest armament firm, increased its net profits in the year 1935 over 1934 fabulously. They rose from 11,200,000 to 39,600,000 crowns, all made out of the sorrows and anxieties of men that wish to live in peace.
Labor sets forth that 75 percent of Germany’s steel is from France: an average of 60 iron ore trains left France for Germany every day during the past three years. If war were to come, two-thirds of the shells fired by the Germans at the French would represent a profit to the French steel trust, the Comite des Forges.
In 1933 the nations of the earth expended $7,436,000,000 for armament; in 1934 they expended $8,281,000,000; and in 1935 they expended $9,295,000,000.
According to the London News Chronicle, the armament bill for 1936 was almost five times that for 1913. The respective bills for arms of the seven dangers of the world are given in pounds sterling as follows (the figure for Italy includes the cost of the Ethiopian campaign):
1913 £ millions | 1936 £ millions
Japan 20 | 105
Italy 30 | 184
Great Britain 77 | 188
France 60 | 217
United States 98 | 240
Russia 86 | 555
Germany 91 | 800
Totals 462 | 2,289
According to the League of Nations Armament Yearbook Germany’s best customer for war materials during the past year was Great Britain. Germany was also a good customer for British arms. Both countries are afraid of the other’s arms program. That makes the business of the International Murderers excellent in both countries.
For the year 1935 Britain led the world in arms exporting; Czechoslovakia came second; France, third. To show how crooked are the nations reporting through the League of Nations, it is known that the total arms exports for that year were not less than $42,000,000, yet the importing nations admitted receiving only $23,000,000 worth.
Prosperity Riding on a Soap Bubble
Whatever its faults, the League of Nations has sufficient perspicacity to discern and mention that:
The economic revival which is provoked by mass production of new weapons of warfare is illusory and precarious.
Score one for the League. Now if they can just get the pope not to encourage any more wars like the Ethiopian massacre or the Spanish Republic overthrow, mankind will be getting somewhere.
George Lansbury, M.P., has the faculty of saying things in such a way that they may be understood. In an address at Wigan he said:
The Dwellers in Cuckooland are those who, from 1914 to 1918, drove the youth of the world to the madness of uncivilized slaughter and at the end gave the new generation a heritage of hatred and despair. These same men now invite the youth of the world to enlist, this time under the sign of the skull and crossbones, to make the world safe for barbarism.
Great is the joy among International Murderers, Preferred and Common. It is claimed that germ cultures will sell for $300 a pound, while the cost of production is only $6 per pound. The germs mixed with food paste and ground silicon dioxide are blown out behind a plane through the exhaust. The silicon cuts through the clothing and causes wounds within the lungs.
According to the aviation magazine Contact, three places for the production of these germs are already in operation, one in the North sea, one in the Mediterranean, and one on an island in the New World. Spores of grain and fruit diseases are being cultured, so that neither crops nor cattle will be immune. Probably the plants have been already “blessed” by some legate. All the élite of International Murderers are in on the new system of mass murder.
“A Friend of the World”
“YE ADULTERERS and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God.” (James 4:4) “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” (John 14:30) “The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”—2 Corinthians 4:4.
By virtue of his office, the “holy father” is acknowledged to be, and is, “a friend of the world,” under the explicit guidance and direction of “the prince of this world”, and is continuously offering service to “the god of this world”, that Rebel, the Devil.—Romans 6:16.
…