The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-08-12

aluminium trusts manufacture time
fuses, air cooled machine guns
ammonia. composed of powdered
aluminium and ammonium nitrate,
q powerful explosive.
Through his billion dollar corpor-'
ations, Mellon can chisel profits in
a thousand ways. Not only does he
get them through exploiting the
tens Of thousands of workers in his
most powerful companies such e.
the Aluminium Company of America
with its 81 subsidiaries, the Koppers
Co.. with its IS subsidiaries, the
Pittsburgh Coal Co., with its % as
sociate companies, or the Gulf OIL
Corporation, with its 81 subsidiaries.
But he gets it in the banks, through
tax eyasions, through renting COM
pany houses to miners, through
charging higher prices at his com
pany stores, through graft and cor,
ruption Of every kind, through spe-,
cially made tariffs and monopoly
prices
TOWARDS labor, the Mellon pol
icy is expressed by his brother.
Richard B. Mellon. you could not
run a coal company without ma
chine guns" he said.
Every Pennsylvania miner has
looked into the muzzle Of Mellon
machine gun.
O'Connor gives the history OF
scrip, another method that Mellon
has Of chiseling profits, taking it
out Of the hide of the starved
miners.
The 1873 crisis broke. H. G. Prick,
an associate Of Mellon, found him
self hard up. What more practical
then, than to pay his men off in
scrip redeemable at the company
store? 1t worked so well that when
good times returned, Prick con-
tinued the scrip and it became
fixed custom in the western Penn
sylyarlia coal and coke regions"
NOT AFFECTED BY CRISIS
In this day of the New Deal,
when Green and Lewis never tire Of
telling the workers that labor, cap
ital and the government are really
a cooperative society, we see how
little different their theology as
from that of Andrew Mellon. In.
1881 Mellon said: Both labor and
capital are beginning to realize that
they have common interests.
Labor as well as capital must think
in constant terms and must act in
harmony with and not in antag-
onism to those great economic
laws. :" Green and Lewis used
almost these very words to drive the
10000 Pennsylvania miners back
into the Mellon and Morgan mines.
When the crisis came, Mellon said
prosperity would return immedi-
ately but fired over half his work
ers. But his profits stayed up in
the tens Of millions. The Mellon
family's profits during the crisis,
not to count the hundreds of mil
lions in reserve funds in his many
mighty corporations, is a gigantic
reservoir for unemployment insur-
ance. Gulf Oil in 1881 made 50, :
743,000, with surplus fund at
hand of $178,42o, 900; Aluminium
profits was SIC, 1857 900 in 1890; 81
$4,000 in 1881, and $4,411 900 paid
out in 1882. Koppers, another Mel
lon treasure, saw its assets leap in
the crisis years of 1881 and 1892
from $156,Oo0,000, to $18e, 079, 900.
Space does not permit the listing
Of the other tens Of millions except
to mention that the Mellon fin
ancial structure paid a dividend Of
200 per cent in 1888, when the First
National Bank of New York, pre-
mier dividend-paying bank, paid a
mere 100 per cent.
MELONS MILLIONS leaves no
III secret about one of the great
est sources for the payment of I'M
employment insurance if the work
ers can rally their forces to demand
and get it.
O'Connors book is a thorough
piece Of work on the Mellon family
which is a good slice Of present day
capitalism. It is excellently written,
easy to read.
While effectively presenting all
the available facts of the Mellon
millions, O'Connor draws no theo-
retical conclusions about the devel-
opment of American imperialism
We just learn that capitalism is
morally bad but get no historical
reasons, and no way out is indi-
Gated.
The mere presentation Of facts in
this manner-without drawing the
inevitable political conclusions
limits the value Of this otherwise
excellent book.
Pennsylvania workers who want
to know their main boss should
read 1t. ALI who want to study
present-day capitalism h vi d
read it.
International Publishers is going
to make its main facts available to
larger group of workers who can
not afford to buy the book by is
suing a popular pamphlet by O'Con-
nor on How the Melons Got
Rich"