Montana labor news., 1938-07-21

how these fortunes have been used
and misused by the plutocrats to
a private government in
fact behind the government of ac-
tuality. Here is history badly need
ed in our schools, so that children
may not grow up with the myth that
Theodore Roosevelt, for instance,
was a great trust-buster and enemy
of big business. In 1900, Lundberg
shows, there were only 149 trusts,
with 4 billions of capitalization;
when Roosevelt stepped out in 1908,
there vert 10000 trusts, with 81
billions of capitalization.
The myth about Wilson, the great
Democrat "reformer and liberal"
needs plenty of bursting also. Lund-
berg tells in beautiful detail of Viii
sons Wall Street backing; of his role
in effecting the Federal Reserve
System to the Streets advantage; of
his intervention in Mexico in 1914
at the request of Standard Oil; of
his hypocritical distinction between
credits and loans which implicated
the United States government in the
World War squarely behind ]. P.
Morgan and Co. Concerning the
matter of wartime profits, Lundberg
is painfully specific. 1.-THE total war
time expenditure of the United
States government from April 6,
1917, to October 81, 1919, when the
last contingent of troops returned
from Europe, was $35,413, 000, 900.
Net corporation profits for the period
January l, 1916, to July, 1921, when
wartime industrial activity was final
ly liquidated, were $4,000 900 1000,
or approximately the amount of the
war expenditures" And during this
time the pick of the young manhood
Of America were getting themselves
killed for $50 a month!
1t is only when n begins to in
quire for what purpose government
money was spent during the war that
the amount of corporation profits as
sumes its true proportions. A single
item, neither the most nor the least
important, will take the breath out
of you: although $1,O51, DOC, 900 was
disbursed for combat airplanes, none
was ever delivered.
Yet no less shocking are Lund-
berg's chapters on the Wall Street
presidents, Harding, Coolidge, and
Hoover; on the intrigues and scan
dals they permitted and encouraged;
on the property-controlled American
press; on the colossal irony of phil
%anthropic practices; and on the ex-
travagance of the multi-millionaires
But the most pointed and provoca-
tive of his chapters in his discussion
of the New Deal.
Too many of us, panicked by the
rising of capitalist-inspire fascism
as the alternative, like to imagine
that Franklin D. Roosevelt is a left
liberal who may eventually drift us
into socialism. Lundberg is careful
to point out that, although the New
Deal is the most progressive and
constructive administration the
American people have ever had, it
is still a traditional and conservative
American government. It's direction
is confusing only until one under
stands that the New Deal REPRE-
sents one faction of great wealth
the light-goods ndustrialists-pittted
in bitter political struggle against an
other faction-the capital goods in
dustrialists. Roosevelt, addicted as
he is to verbal castigation of the
wealthy, was supported in 1882 and
again in 1886 by some of the richest
families of the country"
Such a book as Lundberg's would
be useless if it did not demonstrate
unequivocally the extreme danger to
American democracy of the very
existence of the tremendous fortunes
he has described. Education must
prepare the popular mind for the
difficult steps that the future is
going to demand of them. Vast
wealth, wrested wrongfully from the
labor of the masses of people, will
inevitably be used to keep those
masses s~ubservient. The American
people may find themselves forced
to fight in the streets simply for the
privilege of carrying on the orderly
processes of democratic government
Lundberg concludes: "The danger Of
dictatorship of the right was never
more real than at the present mo-
ment, with many of the wealthy
already stung in their pocketbookS
and worried about possible future
stingings. The country must serious
ly address itself to the task of deal
ING with the historically unprece-