The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-12-17
THE NEW YEARS CROP OF
PROPHETS
By HARRY CANNES.

BY HARRY CANNES.
Mote: The following article was written be-
fore the crash of the Bank of the United
States. The conclusion of this article is
strengthened by the largest bank failure in
the United States.)
y VERY soon the new years crop of prosperity
l. predictions will be harvested Last year,
when the crisis was young the capitalist press
fairly oozed with brilliant promises of happy
future for American capitalism. Hoover, as
usual, took the lead. When he failed they
dragged out old Millionaire Andrew Mellon, who
had not been discredited. He promised the i'm
possible and was silent thereafter.
But new year brings new lies. The leading
bosses, ignorant of the fundamental laws of
capitalist economy actually believe that by their
predictions they can stimulate the decaying Or
ganism into a semblance of hectic youth
How Far They Missed.
How far they miss the mark can be judged
from the following quotation taken from the
Commercial & Financial Chronicle, written Just
after the famous stock market crash of 1929
To quote Hoover, Lamont. Klein, Barnes, or their
ilk, would be taking what the bosses themselves
later admitted was fakery too thickly spread.
But the Chronicle was a little more serious,
careful and even pesSimistic, But here is what
they said on November %, 1929:
"The most satisfactory feature of the situation
at the moment-and it is a very reassuring fea-
ture-is that after last months stock market
panic and upheaval. things are rapidly return
ing to the normal
How rapidly they returned to the normal" is
now economic history. We have the normal
100000 unemployed; industry at the lowest level
in so years; the severest world economic crisis
in the history of capitalism, and political crisis
in many capitalist lands
That the crisis has gotten worse cannot be
denied by the most rosy-bespectacled capitalist
economist But they have new theme-song
The refrain runs: 1.-THE worse it gets the better
it is" The National City Bank December, 1880,
Bulletin) hands out this line as follows:
I'VE have to remember in times like these that
influences of depression are cumulative and that
it is the usual thing for the outlook to appear
more and more unpromising in proportion as the
depression nears its end"
This is pretty shrill whistling to keep up the
bosses courage The very same Bulletin admits
that new complications have not ceased to arise
to confuse the outlook and involve new groups in
the area of readjustment" And they come to
the usual note of the capitalists rooted in their
confidence in the indestructability of capitalism
that obviously this sort of thing has to come
to an end sometime" Very true, indeed, but the
talsm. There is the end in war! There is the
end IN a protracted course of the economic
disease. There is the end in revolutionl
Heavy Emphasis on Spring
The major share of the predictions this new
year will promise revival in the Spring. There
is nothing original in this. They promised re-
vival last Spring. In the Spring there is always
certain amount of reawakened economic life,
jagged upward zig-zag even in the worst of
crisis. The bosses hope to fool the masses of
unemployed and sorely-beset employed workers
into the belief that this should be taken as an
upturn. But an examination of the facts in the
basic industries shows there is no basis for
major upturn or revival of American capitalism
In 1881. There will be some of the prophets who,
to be on the safer side, will shove the "upturn"
toward the summer If this fails, they will fol-
low the usual stunt of showing it ever into the
future.
The fact is, there have been features added to
the present crisis which have complicated it,