Montana labor news., 1944-02-24
WOODROW WILSON'S
LAST PROPHECY

The following radio speech was de-
livered recently by Lowndes H.. Maury
over the combined network Of the z Bar
Net:
I thank the Open Forum for this
honor of addressing you.
You will remember how small-minded,
jealous senators persuaded the people to
disregard Wilson's prophecy: that unless
we joined a strong league of nations
there would again be worldwide wal in
twenty-five years.
Another prophecy Of Wilson has been
made public. At the conventions of
Paris in 1919 he bitterly opposed giving
Japan a mandate over the islands of the
Pacific extending a thousand miles south
Of Tokyo. His words to Lloyd George
and Clemenceau were: 1T will endanger
American commerce in the Orient, and
be a dagger pointed at Australia and
New Zealand"
In his last published words, Atlantic
Monthly, August, 1928, Wilson warned US
Of the dangers Of capitalism; of the
greed and dishonesty in managing large
banks and industries by men who are
often in private life honest and fair.
These same men have now been indict-
ed at the bar of public opinion. They
have admitted that for five months after
our declaration Of war against Germany
they we're shipping gasoline to a South
American port for re-delivery to the Axis
powers to kill our boys. They have
pleaded guilty to selling the United
states defective field telephone wires for
use of our boys under fire. Federal
Judge Slick-that's his real name, folks
slapped them on the wrist with fines of
less than one per cent of the profit
made in such shameful work,
This spirit of greed will flare into a
consuming fire at the dawn Of peace.
No longer will they be frightened by the
hazard of trading with the enemy.
Two questions confront America. Can
we hold on to the good things, few
enough, that war has brought in our
social economy? And, also, can we avoid
the sorrow and waste of having fifteen
million unemployed e~x-soldiers and
munition makers roaming in the glorious
country that they fought for and saved?
If we can hold on, against the forces
of crooked politicians and greedy capt.
talists to such of our industrial plants
as built in war, but useful in peace.
we can put the returning soldiers to
work in them. If we let these all be
stolen by men who worship the economy
Of scarcity, rather than Of plenty, who
hope to diminish production in order to
sell at monopoly prices, we will be in
the worst slump ever known.
There may be fifteen million young
men and women looking in vain for
mere subsistence jobs. Our yearly pro
duction of wealth, now, with only half
the labor force at work, is two and one
half times as much as in 1888. If these
plants return to private control, the
production, With all the labor anxious to
work, will fall off to one-half the gross
output of 1899.
If our people act carefully along social
economic lines, production for use may be
ushered in gradually, peacefully, consti-
tutionally, in good time, without the
misery Of a breakdown.
Otherwise, our youth in rags will see
in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzer-
land, Russia, comfort for all willing to
work on farm and in factory, while
Americans are hungry outcasts. If that
is permitted by you to happen, these
young folks are trained in arms; the
change will be |convulsive.
This is a vertical, as well as a hori-
zontal war. Farmers and workers in
Europe are destroying kings and capt.
talists. The mighty partisans of that
Serbian hero, Josip Brozovich, are fight
ing King Peters friends, the capitalists,
as well as the Nazis. We are fumbling
in Italy. Italians would rise in millions
and throw the Germans out, but they
fear we Americans are in Italy, not for
the four freedoms, but to save the senile
King Emanuel and the four hundred
million dollars New York and London
bankers have lent his Fascist friends.
Our civil administration in Italy has
so many New York bankers as majors
that the Italian people are afraid.
And in this surge Of farmers and
workers, if our boys return to idle star
walton or boondoggling, they may pre-
sent their petitions to the White House,
not as ~stragglers who were fired on by
regulars in Hoover's administration, but
in serried ranks behind a popular general
on horseback.
All published plans for putting the
Army to work after rehabilitation are
paliatives, not cures, for displacement of
labor. The private predatory capitalists
who hope to grab all the vast industrial
plants now built, and run by the gov
eminent as war measures, are behind
and promoting in their press every
pretenses OF help our return
ing men get jobs.
Not long ago some public spirited, but
misguided gentlemen in Butte, noisily
raised from the public 100000 to pro-
vide jobs for returning soldiers. Aesop
told all about this 1000 years ago in a
A gnat riding on the axle of a !
looked back and said: "See what
a dust I am kicking mp"