Montana labor news., 1938-01-20
Have You Read
Americas 50
Families!

States for the last 80 years, you
may feel that the current of your
political thought has been changed
for life. You may gain one fixed
purpose from nov on, to strip by
taxation, and higher wages and pub
lie ownership, through legal con-
demnation, these go predatory, idle,
vain, tyrannical, sordid, corrupting
families of their control of national,
state, county, city, school district,
university, government in America;
to get back for the 100 million peo-
pie by some process of law, the 80
per cent of all the wealth in the
nation controlled by the Morgans,
Wideners, Astors, Fords and others.
and use it to build up the sub
merged IS million people in
midst to a decent American standard
of living, and thereby secure for the
small business, professional, farmer,
middle class relief from further ag-
erosion by these cunning, self
conferred overlords, the economic
royalists."
Printed first in November, two
months ago, the third edition is al
ready in the book stores. It is al
ready shaking our present, and
shaping our future national life.
Ickes, the radical reforming Secre-
tary of the Interior, has spread its
praise over the radio by a national
broadcast. President Roosevelt is
using some of Lundberg's ideas in
his message to Congress and in his
talks on the radio. The DUPONT
Company is bringing a libel suit for
$50 thousand dollars against the
author and the publisher, the Van
guard Press. (The damages claimed
r small. If there is any right to
sue, Lundberg has done the Du-
points closer to $50 million dollars
damage.) But the grand old man,
Senator Norris, in better position
to know than anyone else, says,
'The book is true" So the libel
suit will only further increase the
sales and probably blow away like
the once famous libel suit against
the New York World for exposing
the connection of the House of
Morgan with the Panama Canal
scandal.
The treatise is a copious encyclo-
pedia Of heretofore untold facts and
figures and diplomatic documents
carefully laid away until the main
actors are dead. Yet in spite of the
intense necessary detail the interest
is sustained and indignation against
u invisible corrupt rulers, grows
from the first page until one regrets
that the story is cut short at page
500. The Congress is dividing on
this exposure Of the skeletons in the
closets of III 'best people along
the lines in the Presidents court
fight. The kept press in headlining
on front pages all over the country
the remarks of hostile senators like
Vandenberg, and Bailey is giving
the book the best advertising that
any publication has ever received.
To read what the author says is the
best answer to all his %detractors.
AS Lundberg says in his preface,
Veblen, the professor who was
drummed out of the Rockefeller
University Of Chicago for publishing
his epoch-making Theory of the
Leisure Glass;" is the chief Ameri-
can author that provided him with
the basic key to an understanding
of the dynamic character of CAPT
talistic society.
There has before appeared
in print such a cogent, sustained,
convincing, restrained argument
that in politics the great wealth Of
the nation is now and for rs years
has been used to corrupt courts,
congresses and presidents that in
industry it has stolen and muir
dered; in education it has forced its
letters on the human mind, stifled
free speech and trained the youth
to become its stool pigeons and cen
turions; in literature it has bought,
bribed and beaten its way to COM
mand worship Of its snobbery by
the reading public; in journalism it
has destroyed all freedom of the
press by buying or substituting for
its own propaganda every major
newspaper in the nation and is
rapidly gaining control of the radio;
in social life it is by fast living set
ting an example that is leading the
youth of the land to profligacy, and
undermining the honesty of the
common people.
Of the many high points m is a
discussion of the philanthropies of
the Ultra Rich and the noise these
make in their own paid press. Not
two per cent of the Rockefeller
boards were ever given to founda-
tons. Their endowments are only
for educational institutions attended
by children of the rich. The endow-
ments are frequently methods of
avoiding their taxes. The funds
given Cd are in stocks usually, and
the voting power remains in the
Rockefeller family forever.
A single man earning $1,000 the
year pays something in the way of
an income tax to support the gov
eminent. Not so members Of the