The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-02-04
Crisis Increases Capitalist
Concentration
BY BSrek

have helped to spread the dictator
ship of Wall Street. One involved
an ingenious linking Of all the 1865
building and loan associations in
New York State with a central
committee headed by Owen d.
Young. Then, in a Slightly diff
ferent field, certain big industrial
lists, including Sloan of General
Motors and Teagle of Standard Oil,
agreed to compel small business
men to use trade acceptances in
stead of cash or open credit. In
praising the manifold advantages"
of this plan, the New York Times
said, THE use of trade acceptances
would help the small business men
by resisting him from injudicious
purchases" In other words, the
big corporations more openly as
sumed the power to dictate TO their
customers.
2. or course It is true that
many of the giant properties have
been inflated and will have to be
''reorganized.'' This applies espe-
cially in the field Of railroads and
public utilities. But the financial
rulers can-and generally do-use
the receiverships and bondholders'
protective committees, set up for the
process of reorganization, to keep
companies under their own con-
troll or to shift them from one
financial group to another. Often
this is quite openly arranged. Two
Of the three receivers for Rookie
feller's Consolidation Coal Co., for
example, are the president and an
other official of the company itself.
insults utility empire was inter-
fering with the growth of other
stronger systems, SO insult was
slated for destruction, and his
operating companies which are
still in sound financial condition
in spite of the failure of his top
holding companies will almost GER
tainly be taken up by groups tied
to. Morgan or the Chase National
Bank.
QY the ruling OF a federal judge
~ in 1929, all receiverships coming
before the federal court in New
York-except those involving spe-
ciaI types of litigation-are auto
matically turned over TO be aa-
ministered by the Irving Trust Co.,
a bank close to Morgan and the
National City Bank.
8. Then last, but not least, is
the Reconstruction Finance Cor
poration and the War Debt sit
uation. The big financiers guided
the setting up of the Reconstruct
ton Finance Corporation SO that
they could secure for themselves
and their banks the repayment of
certain types of shaky loans and
pass on the risk of loss to the
Federal Government. The r. F. G,
has already paid over one billion
dollars to the banks and railroads
but only about a hundred million
out OF the $300,oO0,00o appropriated
for loans to state funds for unem-
ploylnent relief.
In this way, the bankers have in
sisted that while revision or even
cancellation of war debts to the
United States is now desirable, the
sacredness of their private loans
in other countries must be re-
spected.
AS the crisis grows steadily worse
and capitalist writer's are admit
ting that they see no basis for i'm
mediate recoyery-this process of
Z increasing concentration of finan-
cial power will continue. For how
ever the Morgan, Rockefeller, Mel
Ion strongholds may be weakened
by the further deepening of the
crisis, they will stand up better
than the outer fields of independent
business.
And when they turn to war as the
one big capitalist solution of the
crisis, the one hope of saving the
capitalist system, the big financiers
will further strengthen their own
position. War loans mean profits
for the leading bankers. War orders
mean superprof1ts for the basic in
dustries which they control.
The trend toward centralized fin
ancial dictatorship and its political
counterpart, an openly fascist gov
eminent, is deeply rooted In the
capitalist system. The only alter
native lying before the present per-
iod is a revolutionary mass move
ment of workers and small farmers,
strong enough to overthrow the
capitalist system and substitute for
the fascist dictatorship of capitalist
overlords a government by and for
the working class