The independent. [volume] (Elizabeth City, N.C.) 1908-1936, 1920-04-30

lcan1sfn. From the men who made 1O0
per cent or more in the year of supreme
sacrifice (1917), when economy was
urged upon the mass of the people and
when our soldiers were risking and Civ
ing their lives for $50 a month, has
probably come the money to finance the
political campaigns and pay for the enor-
nous publicity whose chief end seems
to be to call all who object to this
kind of Americanism traitors "Bol-
shevists" and ''revolutionists.''
1t is highly significant that although
Senate Document No. 259 has been with
in easy reach of the Attorney General
of the United States, not one of these
100 per cent Americans has been pro-
secuted for profiteering. Instead the
activities of the Department of Justice
| have been directed toward the ''revo-
| lutionary efforts of the workers to Sc
cure enough wages to keep pace with
the increased cost of living. the cause
of which is suggested in the above fig
| ureS.
| These 100 per cent Americans are
! evidently determined to perpetuate,
| through the control of the government,
| conditions which allowed them to cap
italize the World War for their own per-
sonal profit. They believe that the
government is something for them to live
on, while all others live under it.
At public meeting recently, such
men hissed the statement of one speak
er that ''this country, with its institu-
tions, belongs to the people who inhabit
it. Whenever they shall grow weary of
the existing government they can eX-
ercise their constitutional right of
amending it, or their revolutionary right
of diSmembering and overthrowing it,
being ignorant, until they were informed,
that they had hissed Abraham Lincoln S
first inaugural address. Lincoln would
have called such men to-day what he
called them 81 years ago "They are
the vanguard, the miners and sappers
of returning despotism. We must re-
pulse them, or they will subjugate u.s."
: Americanism, in terms of the dollar,
is that patriotism which Ben Jonson de-
fined as being "the last refuge of scoun-
drels." 1t must be destroyed and re-
placed by the Americanism of Jeffer-
, son and of Lincoln, which is marked
I by ''its superior devotion to the person
. al rights of men holding the right OF
v property to be second only and greatly
t inferior-the man before the dollar
= Senate Document No. 259 contains
unanswerable facts which dictate the
necessity for the public ownership Of
basic industries. For, according to the
able analysis of this document by Mr.
= Basil Manly, published in the April is
sue of "The Searchlight.'' ~ 1.-The Ameri
- can people in the last three years hav
i paid in net profits every dollars WORT
:. of stock of the coal companies, and t.
the United States Corporation in tn
- two years of 1916 and 1917 net pro
-. fits amounting to $SSS, ,931, ,511, whic
: is $2O,O00O0O more than the total capi
~ tai stock of the Steel Corporation.
And yet the advocates of private owner
ship ask us how the people can affor
ne to buy from the profiteers the owner
Mt ship of these industries. The financi'
:" part of this problem is solved. tt
e. legal part of it will be solved when tt
n people who believe in government owne
to ship of basic industries come togeth
in one great political party which sh'