Populist Socialism Reconsidered

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Populist Socialism Reconsidered


The Late Max Scherr, editor of the Berkeley Barb, holding court in the
Mediterraneum coffee house in the '60s, used to maintain that there were
roughly eight different kinds of Socialism in the American political experience.
He maintained that even the John Birch Society held positions that were,
unconsciously, Socialist. While Max was pontificating to the Capuchino brigade,
the Black Panther Party was receiving the brunt of the F.B.I. Co-Intel-Pro
operation attacks during the late sixties and early seventies.

But the form of Socialism in America that historically received the most deadly
treatment (during 1934-1936), and suffered the most persecution - even to the
suppression of their literature, and subsequent history - was the movement
that began as the Non-Partisan League (1915 to 1922) that developed into the
Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota. This is ironic, because the league was not an
armed movement.

The Non-Partisan league, like Jazz, was a purely American accident. As Jazz was
a melding of Cajun (Acadian, Scotch-Irish, and French) fiddle music with Afro-
American field hollers and African thumb-harp music in the melting pot of
Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi River, so the League was a product,
in the upper Mississippi Valley, of the miscegenation of an indigenous American,
Jeffersonian radicalism descended from the American Revolution, with the first
wave of socialist ideas from Europe that penetrated North America, blowing into
the Mid-west around the 1880s.

In the prairie Socialism of the Non-Partisan League and the Farmer-Labor Party,
traditional, western, Jacksonian concerns about the control of credit and money -
the radical- Jeffersonian, and Lincoln Greenback, radicalism of the nineteenth
century - merged with the "Class-Consciousness" found in the social doctrines of
German Social-democrats, and English Fabian-Socialists, whose organizers crossed
the Atlantic, and spread their teachings in America beginning in the 'eighties of
the nineteenth century. This marriage produced a unique hybrid, known, academically,
by the name, "Populist-Socialism."

This was before "Socialism" had become a dirty word to the masses in America; it
was Lenin and Stalin, and their co-workers, who accomplished that.

The League, first organized in 1915 in North Dakota by several socialist
organizers who had left the Socialist Party because it did not adequately
address the needs of the farmers, organized quietly and almost unnoticed for
several months. Formulating a Five-Point Platform, the League as a "non-party"
party, vowed to support any candidate of any party who would support their
platform and to work against any candidate who would deny or oppose their
platform.

The Platform, which called for state-owned grain elevators, a state bank,
and state-owned hail and fire insurance companies (for the spring wheat)
was clearly the reflection of the agrarian concerns of the farmers of North
Dakota. It was also the most radical and revolutionary state platform that
has ever been formulated, drafted, and effectively enacted into law in the
course of all American history.

From inauspicious beginnings in the mind of single individual, a failed flax
farmer named A.C. Townley, "with an idea and a Ford," in the sub-zero tundra of
North Dakota in the winter of 1915, the Non-Partisan league grew and organized
and quickly became a force. A marvelous book, entitled Political Prairie-Fire,
by Robert Morlan, published by the Minnesota Historical Society, is must reading
for all organizers who would learn the secrets of the amazing growth of this
movement. The black and white art film, NORTHERN LIGHTS, also takes you there.

                           What is Socialism?

The root of the word Socialism comes from the Latin SOCIUS, meaning 'friend' and
'neighbor,' and derives from the time before the Roman Republic (until roughly
75O B.C.) when the people, living in extended families, were a classless society
of yeomen farmers who helped each other in time of need. Thus, primitive, grassroots
socialism contains the spiritual principle of loving your neighbor as yourself, which
is the essence of True religion.

Authentic, local Socialism is something that individual people participate in;
not wait for a Lenin or a Stalin to impose upon them. It is voluntary. Thus, it
resembles the scene in the film WITNESS where the Amish farmers get together
to raise a Barn in a single day. The principle at work here is called Mutual Aid.

Authentic Socialism would entail a return to an egalitarian society, where
the social, cultural, and institutional mechanisms that perpetuate inequality,
oppression &  chauvinism, have been eliminated from the systemic functioning of
human institutions. Populist Socialism believes, intrinsically, both in private
enterprize, and in land tenure vested in families. It was a movement whose roots
grew out of American soil, having its base amongst farmers, who were passionately
concerned with retaining their farms, and passing them on to their children.

Authentic, Ideal Socialism, is not Bolshevism, Stalinism, Nazism, or Maoism -
undeniably evil movements which called themselves "Socialist," but which actively
practiced mass-murder on folks who wouldn't march lock-step with their programs.
These movements contributed to the Negation of Freedom and Dignity, and murdered
scores of millions of souls in the Twentieth century.

Each of those evil forms of 'Socialism' were sponsored by the Masters of Capital,
on both sides of "the pond." The owners of the cartel monopolies always continued
to do plenty of business with the dictators who managed these evil slave plantations
which were set up by the capitalists - both to exploit the industry and raw materials,  
human & mineral, of the nations in which these experimental "systems" were established,
as cultures in so many Petrie dishes, and - ultimately, to discredit the Idea of Socialism,
itself. It was an elegant solution, indeed.

Today, the chief economic institutions that perpetuate the inequities of the class
system are these same multi-national cartels: industrial, pharmaceutical, and substance:
grain, oil, steel, gold, tin, & tungsten, et cetera - But especially the banking cartels,
which have appropriated unto themselves the power to create Credit out of thin air.

The Central banks in the West function as fronts for rich and powerful families
who own the controlling stock - the "Class A" stock - of Prime banks. The Prime
banks in England and America serve as the Capital pool for the World Bank,
and the I.M.F.

Since the control of Credit has been privatized, the U.S. Government perpetuates
a System where a few families are allowed to pass on to their heirs Bank-Stock
that collects tidy dividends from the international debt of every nation.

To the Non-Partisan Leaguers, and the early Farmer-Laborites, the obvious first
step towards achieving the "Cooperative Commonwealth," the concept popularized in
Edward Bellamy's book Looking Backward, was to nationalize Credit, and create
a Public Central Bank, open and accountable to the People. These folks envisioned
a Treasury of Commonwealth so open to the People, that a Town Hall meeting could be
held in the inner sanctum.


This same vision could possibly become the seed for a potential, non-violent,
Gandhian, Town Hall reform movement in America, in the Present, with the twin
aims of Monetary and Land Reform.

During the First World War, League candidates, Robert LaFollette, Sr., And
Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., along with Eugene Debs, took a principled stand
against American involvement in the war and braved rotten eggs and tomatoes,
and sometimes bullets and imprisonment, as well as tarring and feathering.

This is the kind of fervor and courage that we need to be inspired with today,
in the face of BushLeague fascism, and Neo-Con empire-building madness.

The elder Lindbergh was considered the chief economic theoretician of the League
and of the early Farmer-Labor Party, which, by 1932, had grown to become the
largest radical-left third party ever to appear in American history, let alone
the 20th century. It was fully 15% of the entire electorate, at the height of the
movement, in the 1930s.

In the election of 1916, the League captured control of the Republican Party in
North Dakota, elected the legislature, and elected their candidate as governor in
North Dakota. In a single session of the State Legislature, they enacted all five
planks of the platform of "State Socialism," including the foundation of the
state-owned Bank of North Dakota, which continues to this day. The New York
Times wrote in 1918, in genuine trepidation of "Bolshevism on the Prairie."

Today the times have changed. Many of the issues have changed, though some
remain. The Private Banking industry still lends fictitious "Credit" to people,
hypothecated on real estate as collateral. Agribusiness, international finance,
and the grain cartels are certainly still around and have virtually eliminated
the family farm and the small farmers, who were the basic interest group who
organized the League and were fully half of the Farmer-Labor Party. Crucial
lessons may yet be gleaned both from the amazing organizational acuity - and the
subsequent pitfalls of this movement.

Could a five-point platform today, as the basis for non-violent, revolutionary
political change on a national and global level, address the pressing needs all
the common people in North America - and indeed all the people of the World?
Could such a Movement take state power in the United States today?

That is the Question.

The following five-point program could be a possible Agenda for a Non-Partisan
league in the present:

1.  The Government, of the People, for the People, and by the People, should
issue sufficient non-interest bearing U.S. notes to purchase back the capital
stock of the Federal Reserve Bank from its current private owners. In agreement
with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, of the U.S. Constitution. Henceforth the
Government of the People should control its own credit and cease issuing
interest-bearing notes, bonds, and securities. Pension-fund, and Ma and Pa and
holders of U.S. Savings bonds should be paid off in full, but no bank or trust
company holding securities against the U.S. Government debt shall be paid more
than $100,000, in full. Postal Savings Banks should be established to facilitate
the transfer of the People's credit from the defunct Bond-system.

2. The American People should move for immediate legislation to cancel all
international debt owed by any nation - including this nation - to First World
banks; and call, every year, (until it comes) that this Year be the Year of
Jubilee for the release of all nations from the bondage of debt to the
international commercial banks.

3. We should also move to take decisive steps to dismantle the military budget &
press towards immediate peace-time conversion of the industrial sector towards
the pressing needs of our own decaying infrastructure and millions of homeless
citizens, needy families and elderly.

4. The People must consider and address the issue of Land Reform, and move
to liberate the millions of acres that were fraudulently given to the Railroad
corporations in violation of the Homestead Act of 1862, as well as the additional
Millions of acres that were swindled by the timber barons by fraud, - again,in
violation of the Hometead Act of 1862 - which theft, is described in the book,
Looters of the Public Domain, by S.D. Puter. These lands should be made available
for homesteading to every American who wants a homestead. A just and reasonable
portion is four acres per couple. Furthermore, we should endeavor to provide some
restitution - in land, not money - for lands stolen from Native Americans.

5. The People must begin the painful process of learning how to live on the earth
in a manner that does not destroy it. We must learn again the ancient rhythms of
seedtime and harvest. We must strive to create a sustainable civilization upon
the earth, in the World-After-Oil. This last point is both a turning inward, and
a return to ancestral patterns that existed before the invention of the internal
combustion engine and the automobile. It is a point that can only be done by each
and every individual him or herself. It is, nevertheless, highly political.


Could a thousand citizen-candidates and ten thousand workers from coast to coast
organize and win the Congress and the Senate to put over a program like this?
Will you put your own shoulder to the wheel?

                         -  Mark Walter Evans
                         
              - Published in the North Coast Xpress, 1992 -

http://www.paleoprogressives.org/populi ... alism.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

The Hungry Ghost

On the cusp of the Decade, New Year's Eve, 1990, l was sitting at home listening to KQED prognosticate about the future. Around the middle of the evening, they wheeled out someone from the Hoover Institution, who proceeded to make a fairly savvy economic forecast of what would happen in banking in the 1990s. He let us know that the disintegration of the S & Ls was just the beginning; soon, the secondary banks would start folding, until, by the middle of the decade, "five or six super-banks" would control the entire banking industry in the U.S. It is my thesis that "five or six super banks" already controlled the banking industry in America, and that they are, with the exception of the Bank of America, the lineal descendants of the same banks (somewhat altered by subsequent mergers) which purchased the "Class A " stock of the New York Federal Reserve Bank in 1914. These are: Citibank, Chase-Manhattan, Morgan-Guaranty Trust, Chemical & Manufacturers Hanover, (which have merged), and Bankers Trust (also a J.P. Morgan bank). These are the banks which gobbled up the Savings & Loans institutions that defaulted, and went belly up during the Reagan-Bush era. Through networks of holding companies, these banks purchased the S & L's from the government, at cents on the dollar. J.P. Morgan, Sr., the most prominent of the robber barons of the late nineteenth century died in 1913. His son, J.P. ("Jack") Morgan, Jr., succeeded him that year. Sometime during the late Thirties - circa 1937 - the Rockefeller dynasty surpassed the House of Morgan in power and influence, and in the wake of Jack's death in 1943, a "managerial revolution" of sorts dissolved J.P. Morgan & Co. into the Morgan bank, Guaranty Trust. Guaranty Trust, however, is not just any bank. It interlocks with General Electric, General Motors, I.B.M., A.T.&T., General Dynamics, General Mills, Coca Cola, and much more. Its officers in the course of their careers, move in and out of the U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank for International Settlements. The hungry ghost of J.P. Morgan has achieved multinational momentum.

What's Going On?

It is a curious phenomenon that certain factions of the Left, while they profess to be Marxists or Progressives, and thus critical of capitalism, characteristically react in a hostile and denunciatory manner whenever someone pursues a critical analysis of the Federal Reserve Bank. Critics of the Federal Reserve are called "right-wing conspiracy theorists," "anti-Semites," and worse. It wasn't always so. Historically, it was axiomatic amongst the non-communist, Old Left in the 1920s and '30s to regard the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank, in 1914, as a kind of bloodless financial coup d'etat by Wall Street over Constitutional government. The Progressive Party Platform of 1924, the Platform upon which Robert LaFollette ran, the Farmer-Labor Platforms from 1920 through 1934, as well as the Socialist Party Platform of 1932, all contained planks calling for the nationalization of the Federal Reserve Bank. (See, National Party Platforms, Vol. 1, 1840-1956, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois). And, if you study the Congressional Record in the years from 1908 through 1913, you will find that the chief opposition to the "Aldrich Plan" and the subsequent Federal Reserve Act of 1913, came from the group known as the "Western Progressives" - amongst whom Robert LaFollette, Sr., George Norris, and Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., were prominent. Charles Lindbergh, Sr., the radical congressman from the Sixth District of Minnesota, presented the most articulate and principled opposition to the Money Trust, and the train of banker-sponsored legislation that led to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Lindbergh's books, Banking and Currency, and the Money Trust, 1913, Why is Your Country at War? 1917, and The Economic Pinch, 1922, were suppressed and quietly removed from practically every library in the country. One book by Lindbergh, The House of Morgan, has disappeared without a trace, even out of the Library of Congress. It has gone into the Orwellian memory-hole, and become a non-book, as if it never existed. The main thesis of Lindbergh's books posets the existence of a Super Trust, developing out of an aglomeration of capital accumulated by a group of American industrial and finance capitalists who are commonly known as the Robber Barons. According to the elder Lindbergh, this group - which included the Stillman- Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Kuhn-Loeb interests - had unified their common interests into a powerful Trust by the early 1870s. They then promoted the Sherman anti-Trust Act, in order to prevent any other, late comers from climbing up to enjoy the Olympian priveleges that they had acquired on their plateau of Wealth. The elder Lindbergh termed this Super Trust the Money Trust. I have given a name to his thesis - the Lindbergh Analysis. The House of J.P. Morgan, and the Morgan banks, Guaranty Trust, and Bankers' Trust, were vitally interested in the foundation of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and were among the "big six" money market prime banks, which purchased the "Class A" stock of the New York Federal Reserve Bank in 1914. Ferdinand Lundberg, familiar to sixties radicals as the author of The Rich and the Super-Rich, wrote, in his far more radical, and specific work, America's Sixty Families, in 1937:

    "The Federal Reserve Act was the offshoot of a bill originally presented in the Senate by the dubious Aldrich, whose measure incorporated the collective wisdom of a monetary commission under his chairmanship. The ideas of the commission in turn emanated from the fertile brains of the Wall Street clique, whose deputies worked out the details in 1908 [sic, actually, it was in 1910] at the remote Jekyll Island Club, Jekyll Island, off the Georgia Coast, during an ostensible duck hunting expedition. Among those present Were Paul M. Warburg, partner of Kuhn, Loeb and Company; Henry P. Davison, partner of J.P. Morgan and Company; Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank; Dr. Piatt Andrew, special assistant to the Senate Monetary Commission; and Benjamin Strong, vice-president of the Bankers Trust Company (Morgan). "The protracted Jekyll island conference took place in the atmosphere of an elaborate conspiracy. The trip to Georgia was made in a private car chartered by Aldrich, and the travelers all used assumed names so that the train crew would not establish their identities. For a long time there was no public knowledge that such a conclave had been held. "The financiers wanted a central bank on the European model to facilitate the large-scale manipulation of the national economy... But when Aldrich introduced the scenario produced by the Jekyll Island duck hunters it was immediately hooted down as a nefarious Wall Street enterprise and, for the time being, came to naught. "The task of the liberal Wilson Administration was to place essentially the Jekyll Island measure on the statute books, but in an eccentric guise. The job of drawing up such a bill was given to Paul M. Warburg, one of the Jekyll Island plotters. Warburg collaborated with all the big financiers, as his own memoirs reveal. "The Warburg-Wall Street draft, superficially revised by Wilson and Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, was simply the Jekyll Island duck hunters' scheme for a central bank, dressed up in fancy toggery. There was some opposition to it from uninformed Wall Street quarters, but it was, significantly, endorsed by the American Bankers Association. "In practice the Federal Reserve Bank of New York became the fountainhead of the system of twelve regional banks, for New York was the money market of the nation. The other eleven banks were so many expensive mausoleums erected to salve the local pride and quell the Jacksonian fears of the hinterland. Benjamin Strong, one of the original duck hunters... president of the Bankers' Trust Company, was selected as the first Governor of the New York Reserve Bank. "An adept in high finance, Strong for many years manipulated the country's monetary system at the discretion of directors representing the leading New York banks. Under Strong, the Reserve System, unsuspected by the nation, was brought into interlocking relations with the Bank of England and the Bank of France, greatly strengthening the financial fabric of the political status quo in the western hemisphere. While Wall Street, during and after the World War, moved on to ever enlarging profits, the farmer, whom the Reserve System was ostensibly created to assist, moved from bad to worse."

Ferdinand Lundberg, who wrote those lines, was Jewish, and a Leftist, as well. Why then, does the current crop of "New Leftists," two generations later, almost automatically associate criticism of the Federal Reserve Bank with "Right-wing conspiracy theories," and "anti-Semitism"? One reason is that generation of Old Leftists who knew these things are, for the most part, dead. Also, many of the folks who held this analysis during the 1930s found themselves in a position of dire opposition to America's entry into World War II, just as they had been opposed to America entering WW I, in 1917. To oppose the mad rush of America to War, they joined either America First, or the Keep America Out of War Committee, the group headed by Norman Thomas. After the War, there was a certain spiritual/political hardening of the arteries in some of these Old Left cadres - especially in the Midwest - as the Cold War dawned. Although many of them had been enthusiastic about the Soviet experiment in Russia in 1917, they had become thoroughly disgusted with the Stalin regime. Jack Anderson, in McCarthy, the Senator, the Man, the "Ism" touches a bit upon this phenomenon in Wisconsin - of how some of the formerly Progressive LaFollette constituency bolted, in 1946, to become followers of the 'right-wing populism' of Senator Joe McCarthy. This happened in spite of the fact that "Young Bob" LaFollette was an articulate opponent of Communism. As the years rolled, some of the remnants of this strain of old-left populism, who had fallen into McCarthyism, blundered further, and went and joined the John Birch Society. Some were even suckered into joining up with the Liberty Lobby, of Willis Carto, not realizing that it was set up as a shill, to corral and discredit the Lindbergh Analysis. The pervasive influence upon the New Left of the Institute for Policy Studies, funded, at its inception, in 1962, by James P. Warburg, the son of Paul M. Warburg, and plugged ever after into a perpetual grant from the Ford, and Singer Foundations, also accounts for some of the present ennui on the Left, at least in part. I.P.S. cadres, it seems, are conditioned to automatically dismiss criticism of the Fed as manifestation of atavistic anti-Semitism. The Lindbergh Analysis is known amongst them as "the Jewish Banker's Conspiracy". In the greater scheme of the apportioning of dialectical party-lines in post-war America, it has been given to various "right-wing" groups, like the John Birch Society, the so-called "Populist Party" of Willis Carto, the Libertarians, and the N.C.L.C. (LaRouche), to profess various species of opposition to the Federal Reserve - none of which can ever agree. Passages from the 1350-page historical treatise, Tragedy and Hope, by the "liberal imperialist," Carroll Quigley, late professor of history and sociology at Georgetown University, also clarify this question considerably:

    "The associations between Wall Street and the Left, of which Mike Straight (publisher of The New Republic) is a fair example, are really survivals of the associations between the Morgan Bank and the Left. To Morgan all political parties were simply organizations to be used, and the firm always was careful to keep a foot in all camps. Morgan himself, Dwight Morrow, and other partners were allied with the Republicans; Russell C. Leffingwell was allied with the Democrats; Grayson Murphy, with the extreme Right; and Thomas W. Lamont, with the Left. Like the Morgan interest in libraries, museums, and art, its inability to distinguish between loyalty to the United States, and loyalty to England, its recognition of the need for social work among the poor, the multi-partisan political views of the Morgan firm in domestic politics went back to the original founder of the firm, George Peabody (1795-1869). To this same seminal figure may be attributed the use of tax-exempt foundations for controlling these activities, as may be observed in many parts of America to this day... "Our concern at the moment is with the links between Wall Street and the Left, especially the Communists. Here the chief link was the Thomas W. Lamont family. This family was in many ways parallel to the Straight family. Tom Lamont had been brought into the Morgan firm, as Straight was several years later, by Henry P. Davison, a Morgan partner from 1909. Lamont became a partner in 1910, as Straight did in 1913. Each had a wife who became a patroness of Leftist causes, and two sons, of which the elder was a conventional banker, and the younger was a Left-wing sympathizer and sponsor. In fact, all the evidence would indicate that Tom Lamont was simply Morgan's apostle to the Left..." "The chief evidence, however, can be found in the files of the H.U.A.C. which show Tom Lamont, his wife Flora, and his son Corliss as sponsors and financial angels to almost a score of extreme Left organizations, including the Communist Party itself... Corliss Lamont was the leading light in another Communist organization, which started life in the 192Os as the Friends of the Soviet Union, but in 1943 was reorganized, with Lamont as chairman of the board and chief incorporator, as the National Council of American Soviet Friendship. "During this whole period of over two decades, Corliss Lamont, with the full support of his parents, was one of the chief figures in "fellow Traveler" circles and one of the chief spokesmen for the Soviet point of view both in these organizations and also in connections which came to him either as son of the most influential man in Wall Street or as professor of philosophy at Columbia University." (pages 945-946, Tragedy And Hope)

Quigley is asserting here that the House of Morgan, through the Lamont family, subsidized the Communist Party, and "almost a score of extreme left organizations," as well. Having cited Carroll Quigley, however, I'll concede that Noam Chomsky is correct: there are no conspiracies; there are only institutions. The Morgan prime banks, Guaranty Trust and Bankers' Trust, are only institutions. The Chase-Manhattan, Citibank, Chemical & "Manny Hanny," are merely Institutions. The mechanism by which the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - an Institution - channels, through the Federal Open Market Committee, interest-bearing U.S. Treasury Securities into the coffers of its member-banks, to the profit of the Super-Rich, is Systemic. The manner in which the Commercial banks are able to multiply their reserves by a factor between 7 to 25, to create "credit money" out of thin air, with which to purchase these Government Securities, is also the function of a system - fractional reserve banking. The fact that these bankers might wish to conceal the unpleasant facts of this continual transfer of wealth from the people and from the earth to the ruling class is, understandably, an issue of policy. The fact that Corliss Lamont, son of Thomas Lamont, J.P. Morgan's "apostle to the Left," should have been the financial angel for the Communist Party, USA and of magazines like the (late)Guardian was not a conspiracy. Guaranty Trust, the seat of Corliss Laniont's nest egg, generating interest off tax-exempt Government bonds, is an institution, not a conspiracy. The fact that the Guardian (and other magazines so subsidized) might tend to attack from the "Left" anybody who questions the propriety of the Federal Reserve Bank is not a "conspiracy;" it is a matter of policy.

 - Mark Walter Evans, - first published in The Sonoma Free Press, 1992 -

http://www.paleoprogressives.org/house-of-morgan.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Also a good read at the site.  The Jews killed his Grandson because of this publication-- CSR:
http://www.paleoprogressives.org/bankin ... rency.html

Banking  and Currency

COPYRIGHT, 1913

BY  CHARLES  A. LINDBERGH

NATIONAL CAPITAL PRESS,  INC.

BOOK MANUFACTURERS

WASHINGTON, D. C.


    The market prices of commodities vary from day to day and often several times a day. This occurs when there is no radical difference in the proportion of the supply and the natural demand. This fact is conclusive proof that our system is controlled by manipulators and fundamentally wrong. I have sought to elucidate this problem within this volume and have suggested a plan which, if adopted, would make the people the master of the world, instead of the present master—THE MONEY TRUST.

By Charles A. Lindbergh, Author of the

Money Trust Investigation.

CONTENTS


PAGE

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS                             5

INTRODUCTION                                               8

IN CONTEMPLATION                                    15

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH US?              26

CURRENCY, BANKING, AND THE

MONEY TRUST                                     33

INTEREST, DIVIDENDS AND RENTS        138

SHORT SELLING                                            161

THE POLITICAL ASPECT OF THE

PROBLEM OF FINANCES                168

GOVERNMENT GUARANTEE OF

BANK DEPOSITS                                177

MONEY                                                            183

THE REMEDY                                                 195

A TWO-FOLD REMEDY REQUIRED           220

THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF A BETTER

FINANCIAL SYSTEM                        272

APPENDIX A                                                   289

APPENDIX B                                                   299

 

______________

 

The price of this book is $1, cloth bound,

50 cents, paper bound.

 

Copies may be secured from

C. A. LINDBERGH,

LITTLE FALLS,

MINNESOTA.



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

 

The material production and consumption by the people, and industries of the world go on continually. In the aggregate there is no perceptible difference from day to day, or even from month to month. All things considered, the proportion of supply and demand does not vary greatly from year to year. The catastrophies which occur in the world are usually confined to different localities at different times, and do not, on the whole, change the general result. Nature seems to keep the balance fairly well, at least well enough so that man need not fear that Nature will fail to respond to the needs of men.

We meet a different condition when we study the personal and commercial relations of the people with each other. When we do that we find an intensely variating condition, which works rapidly backward and forward with no or at least comparatively little, relation to the material conditions. These human conditions seem to have exhausted the patience of men and they are reaching out to make three great changes:

        BANKING AND CURRENCY

 

A change in the banking and currency conditions;

(B) A readjustment of our industrial relations;

(C) A change in the political conditions so that the people as a whole may direct their own political affairs.

Bankers, merchants, professional men, farmers, and wage earners all know that a change in our banking and currency laws is imperative. Such a change is sure to come, and Wall Street is endeavoring to foster ideas in the public mind which will insure the adoption of a plan favorable to frenzied finance. Civilization has reached the point where the people ought to consider the following facts: That we are slaves of a money system; that market quotations fluctuate up and down at times when there is no corresponding change in the supply and natural demand; and that the Wall Street financiers have suddenly found time to leave their speculative schemes long enough to direct the work of educating the people in the mysteries of finance. Are these financiers working in the interests of the people or in their own interests? They were content to deal only with the boss politicians


 
6      GENERAL  OBSERVATIONS        

 

until the people themselves began taking an interest in legislation, but now that the people have admonished the bosses, Wall Street is trying to mould [sic] public opinion in order to make it favorable to some disguised Wall Street plan.

These questions are all answered in this little volume. Also, a plan is proposed which if adopted will make the people the master of the world and the builders of their common fortunes, instead of leaving that power in the clutches of its present master—the Money Trust.

We live in an age of mechanical devices and have the use of methods by which the natural elements are harnessed and made use of in general production, and in the establishment of conditions that serve to produce whatever is necessary, convenient and proper to the enjoyment of life, and it is natural that men shall look forward to the time when the people themselves will secure the full benefit of all these things. I have taken these problems up for consideration in three separate volumes. This volume on Banking and Currency and the Money Trust is the first. The second will be on "The Industrial Relations," and the third on "The Political   Relations."

 

INTRODUCTION.

 

It would seem that one could not state and analyze so difficult a problem as that of banking and currency within the scope of a small volume, but I believe that it can be done and can be easily understood if properly treated. No civil matter that has arisen out of our present social condition was ever of greater importance than that which is contemplated as a basis of our first study, which is really the money problem. But this first study is only one of several that we shall make while investigating the highways and byways of business, politics, and those affairs of life which force men into the environments that are not of their own choosing. We shall study conditions that are quite ordinary, and show their relations to others that are extraordinary and not generally understood. I have examined and know about the subjects to which we shall give our thoughts, and if a majority will join with me in these considerations, I am certain that within a very short time we shall all understand much more clearly the present conditions, and learn to make

 

8

               INTRODUCTION              

the best use of the advantages that are common to all mankind. We shall also discover the reason for their being daily neglected. We shall not be able, in a short study, to cover the entire field, but it will present to us such things as are not commonly known to exist. Some of us have suspected that conditions exist about which we know very little or nothing, but the most of us have looked calmly on and decided eventually that there was something wrong. What is it'd Our studies will tell.

The fact that I am a Congressman and seeking to force these matters before Congress for correction will cause me to be publicly censured for exposing the nature of the affairs of certain interests which have been prospering for a long time by appropriating the products of our toil. Numerous fires have been and will continue to be set under me by those who are selfishly interested in maintaining the present Money Trust, which not only includes many of the greatest bankers, but all others, in whatsoever business, who are beneficiaries of the system, as well as the political bosses subservient to the great interests. Of course they know that when the public once realizes how outrageously it has

                                                                         9

         BANKING AND CURRENCY    

been, and is being, fleeced it will not permit it any longer, and they resort to desperate and tricky methods in their attempt to force me out of public office, because they realize that in my present position I have an excellent opportunity to direct public attention to the truth relating to the practices of the banks and other special interests.

It is a well-known fact that in forcing through Congress the investigation of the Money Trust, I laid bare one of their innermost secrets, even though the investigating committee was composed of men selected by them after the interests were unable to prevent the passage of a resolution to investigate. But regardless of this fact, the environments surrounding the committee's work forced out facts which will aid in ultimately exposing the whole piratical system. This seems to them to be the great offense that I have committed, and therefore they do all that they can to weaken me before the public. Already, by means of their agents, they have begun to spread stories. These stories they wish the people to unwittingly peddle from one to another. Underhandedly they start one or more falsehoods in each locality

 

10

              INTRODUCTION          

and hope that by the time these are peddled among my constituents enough of them will be believed to be true so that each voter shall find something to which he objects. In that way they hope that at least a majority of the voters can be secured who will vote against me. That is a scheme that is in operation, and for the same reason a certain portion of the press was subsidized to oppose me. Newspapers print scurrilous articles and others in the same employ copy them. Some articles are inserted which contain a few complimentary words about me for having done some unimportant thing, but these are diplomatically inserted in order to impress the reader with the idea that the editor is impartial. This impression is what they rely upon to give the color of truth to the opprobrious and derogatory matter.

My fight against graft in politics and special privileges in business has not resulted in my landing in a bed of roses. The public has seen that, and I knew from the start that I would have to fight every inch of the way as well as pay my own expenses, while those who opposed me, and consequently my plans, would have their campaign and other expenses paid, including

                                                                  11

     BANKING AND CURRENCY

 

other advantages which would be extended to them. I observe, for instance, that the stand-pat Senators and Representatives, all of whom are more or less under the domination of the special privileges, and stand-patters generally, have received recognitions and courtesies from the Administrations that have been absolutely refused to one. All sorts of dishonest and unfair means have been resorted to in order to injure me, while, on the other hand, every kind of deception has been used in the attempt to make the public believe that the Senators and Representatives who have supported the special interests were all right. This fight has not been easy nor has it been personally profitable to me from a financial standpoint. My purpose in calling attention to these facts is, that almost everyone who undertakes to establish reforms, that involve substantial property rights or personal privileges, receives the knocks and the least material rewards further, the attacks made upon them by the special interests often mislead the public. That, of course, is the real purpose of the attacks, and every person must endure them who assails with vigor the system

12

              INTRODUCTION            

under which the special interests are able to levy tolls upon us for their maintenance.

Lest there might be some misunderstanding, I wish the real attitude of the bankers on this subject of the Money Trust to be known. Many of them, and more especially those from the country districts, are not opposed to reform. They know that they have special privileges that they ought not to have. In fact, the greatest number of them are opposed to the Money Trust. I have received letters from hundreds of them, but in nearly every instance they request that I keep secret the fact that they oppose the Money Trust. They dare not endanger themselves, and they do well not to as long as the present system is continued, for no bank would be safe if the Money Trust sought to close its doors.

I do not intend to arouse any distrust of your banker. He is a citizen the same as the rest of us. I am not assailing him, but I am assailing with all the vigor of my life the system of banking and currency that so taxes our existence, and I am seeking to prevent the Money Trust from fooling us into adopting changes that will allow it to retain its power. And I further seek


to bring about a change that will enable us to retain the products of our own energy and give therefrom such moiety to those who render service as they may be entitled to by reason of their services.

We do not expect perfection either in ourselves or in others, but we should at least fulfill the plain necessities of life to the extent of not being ridiculous in our failures. For that reason there should be no delay in pressing the fight for our common rights and enforcing them through the intelligence of our conduct. We should not waive our individual rights in support of other's vanity, nor give them undeserved wealth or authority.

IN  CONTEMPLATION.

 

To AMERICA What a grand expanse of territory! Behold the majesty of her mountains; the vastness of her plains; her enormous forests; her wealth of soils and minerals; the number of her lakes; her splendid rivers leading to the natural highways between all lands and continents—the mighty oceans, and all—all of these are the free gifts of God to Man.

TO MAN: Behold him in his application with the free gift—America. He has gone out over the plains and through the forests; developed the farms; built beautiful villages and great cities; constructed highways; furnished communication between them all; and then developed them by his ingenuity. All these are the expressions of his own energy—the results of his toil, but, notwithstanding the gifts of God and the giving by Man of his own energy, he is burdened with a huge debt—the greater because of the largeness and richness of Nature, the expenditure he has made of his energy, and the accumulation by the few of the products. Why should we all labor to produce material wealth
                                                                      15

   BANKING  AND CURRENCY

 

Called capital, when it is appropriated by the few and made the basis on which they tax us and collect from us more interest and dividends ?

 

TO THE JOKER:

 

       HERE I HOLD A GOLD COIN

 

What a false illusion thou art to human mind! How cruelly thou deceivest thy possessor and those who covet thee! Thou buyest for me by thy betrayal of mankind. Thou didst tax my energy to gain thee, and thy discount has lost to me and my fellow-men the greatest blessings of a continent, as well as the principal products of our toil. Few indeed are they who know and understand thy seductive power. We shall expose thy falseness so that our children shalt not be deceived by thee.

TO OURSELVES: The fact that we did not prevent the various evils of which we now complain from becoming parts of our system, should make us considerate of those who are operating under it, and remove from us all personal prejudice. The practices that are allowed at present, and which are contrary to what we know to be for the best interests of mankind as

 

16           IN  CONTEMPLATION      

a body, are almost wholly due to the process of adaptation and not to the mere personal choice of some particular individuals.

Men are compelled to employ the methods and systems that are used in their times. No one can set up an independent system for himself and operate under it without the help and consent of the majority of his fellow-men. He must abide by, and operate under, the recognized systems regardless of the fact that neither the means nor the method may suit him. For that reason it is neither uncommon nor improper for us to do many things of which we do not ourselves approve. It is impossible for anyone to have a successful business career who does not conduct it in accordance with and in systematic concert with the prevailing methods, and therefore in the study and discussion of the affairs connected with the general conduct of business we should be broad in our interest, and honestly try to understand everybody, whether they conduct their business in the way that we think proper or not.

We should remember that we are dealing with systems and not with individuals, and that we have no right to blame individuals for the present

     BANKING AND CURRENCY       17

system nor because they use it, but we have a right to ask them to examine it carefully, and if they find errors, to join in an endeavor to correct them and not make an unfair use of the opportunities such errors may present to them. Radical changes are not possible until they come by common consent.

Mankind is restless, and the broad field presented to the human intellect and selfishness, combined with the ambitious desire for prominence and leadership, impels it onward in a great and endless struggle. Individuals drop out as time advances, but humanity as a body presses onward. We inherit, fit into, adjust and renew the establishments and systems of our fathers, and what changes we do make are made through natural evolution, which is slow or rapid according to our inventive and creative energy and our acceptance, as a whole, of the change.

War has been one of mankind's greatest occupations, or, in other words, the exercise of government by the law of physical force. It has been esteemed a manly art, and all men have paid the toll, including the numerous toilers who provide provisions and munitions of war and supplement those in the actual field of combat.

 

18         IN   CONTEMPLATION      

It has been the mighty burden that the past has had to carry, and we still carry war obligations because the general understanding of this problem has not been sufficient to cause it to be absolutely abandoned. The comparatively few who have understood have had to fight the same as those who did not, somewhat on the same principle that we are forced to do business as business is done, or stop trying, which men will not do until they can no longer push as hard as they are pushed. But, even now, although we know that war is merely a legacy from the earlier generations, we realize that we cannot prevent it merely because we no longer think favorably of it. Civilization has advanced almost to the -period of framing a plan for abandoning it, but all men and all peoples do not reach the same plane of understanding at the same time. We must still keep prepared for war because it is not improbable that we shall have some great wars long after we have finally concluded that war is an improper method to use for the settlement of disputes. So, too, in the world of business, some unsatisfactory, in fact bad, methods will continue, and it may be necessary for them

    BANKING AND CURRENCY        19

to continue long after we know them to be neither just or desirable.

The great struggle of the present is centered in the world of commerce and trade. It has become so intense that the outlet for human ambition has shifted notably from the field of war to that of commercial struggle. In fact, the commercial struggle often produces the cause of war. This industrial struggle is another and much more humane diversion. I say diversion because whenever commerce is resorted to for speculation rather than for the purpose of supplying needs, it becomes a diversion. Some interesting comparisons may be drawn between the respective leaders and workers in these two fields of action, comparisons which may serve to make more clear the difference between the social and financial conditions of the governed and the governing.

History records the glorious achievements and victories gained by the military generals. But although it relates the honors and positions that were given the leaders as rewards for their initiative, it gives no specified individual record of the plain soldiers who fought the battles and suffered the privations and tortures incident to war.

          IN  CONTEMPLATION        21

      These were considered as an army,— merely the force with which the generals fought. The great wizards of finance and the captains of commercial industry also direct battles and seek the same sort of acclamation growing out of an entirely different application of human energy and for another kind of victory. Their wealth and their struggle repays them and its buying and ruling properties win for them applause, position, and power.

It is probably easier to be a toiler in some branch of commercial industry than to be a soldier or sailor and direct the sword and cannon against one's fellow-mortals, but the toilers, the same as the soldiers, are the plain people. On them depends the result of the struggle. On them rests the greatest part of the work, the denials and the sufferings, but contemporaneous history makes no more individual recognition of them than it did of the private soldier. Notwithstanding this seeming inconsistency, we owe thanks to the financial wizards and the captains of industry for leading us out into the industrial field and away from that of war, because it provides a better outlet for human energy. It was the next move  ill   the   march  of

22     BANKING AND CURRENCY

civilization, and these captains of industry have been leaders in the struggles. Often it is the cruel and unreasonable who accomplish more for us than the kind and generous. They reveal to us our limitations. But there is no more reason to condemn the industrial generals than there has been to condemn the generals who fought in the world's great army and navy battles. The highest purpose of civilization should be to conserve and protect humanity, and whatever defeats that purpose should be condemned and eliminated.

No such destruction of human life can ever result from the industrial struggles as resulted from those of armed battle. The element of construction is far greater than that of destruction, and regardless of the cruelty which results from an abuse of the opportunities which the present system presents to men, it remains evident that many of the captains of industry who lead men into the field of industrial struggle are using their brains in an effort to better conditions. Their first motives may be even more selfish than those of the military generals, but the results are far more desirable, and humanity secures far better proceeds. They are

          IN  CONTEMPLATION        23

the leaders in one of the great struggles in the climb toward a more splendid and altruistic civilization and the struggle is fraught with lessons.

Yes, the struggle has its teachings, and that is what we demand. These lessons exemplify the force of human energy, and the value of consistent action. The next great problem for mankind to demonstrate is that of converting the energy of men and the consistency of thoughtful plans into benefits to be derived by the plain toilers themselves as a result of their toil. We concede that the captains at the head of the great industrial trusts were and are the great advance teachers of the world, but humanity has followed long enough. It now ought to be able to direct its own actions, and that must happen before the present problems can be satisfactorily dealt with.

At the present time there is nothing to be gained in war that could not be acquired by some other method. Its results are death, destruction, and despair. In the commercial and industrial field we find elements of production, construction, distribution, and accumulation. The ambitions of the leaders themselves furnish

 

24     BANKING AND CURRENCY

the elements of destruction, but not in the degree in which we find it in the field of war. In the case of war the results of the battle revert to the government of the country that has been successful in the engagement.

The financial kings seek to, and do, secure the substantial profits and the principal products resulting from the labor of the plain toilers. They take their chance in the game of life and gather in the fruits from others' labor. War means destruction and leaves little or nothing to distribute to the soldiers of the ranks, but the activity of men in the field of industry, when applied in connection with the latest mechanical devices, approved methods of application, methods of association, etc., results in an enormous increase in the productive energy of the masses, as well as an enormous daily accumulation of real wealth. But however great the accumulated wealth may be or become, it is a mere bagatelle when compared with the results that must come from the daily expenditure of the energy of the working people, and it is the results of the wealth that is thus brought forth that should be equably distributed, in so far as it can be, to the individuals participating   in  its production (princi-pally    those  who  labor)  as  a  reward

 

     IN      CONTEMPLATION     25

for their industry. They are entitled to it, and in our studies we shall find out why they have not received it. At the same time we shall consider ways and means by which they may, in the future, secure what is properly due to those who honestly, industriously, and intelligently apply themselves.

 

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH US?

Business is conducted on a plan that makes it difficult for the most of us to secure the time in which to increase our information and enjoy the appropriate recreations and pleasures that are necessary in order to properly develop our intelligence and give us a correct mental and physical balance. It is true, however, that most of us are, and all men should be, capable of filling better positions in life than most of them occupy, but we are still forced to remain in the same condition because we allow a false system to continue in practice rather than bestir ourselves and enforce the institution of a proper system which would enable us to follow a natural order of things and stop receiving under pay for working over time throughout the entire journey of life.

One reads in newspapers, books, and other sources of information the various views and conclusions of persons very much like ourselves. Some of those who write prove to be capable judges, some poor. Some people judge honestly, some look through clouded glasses and come to

 

[Christopher Marlowe]

The following five-point program could be a possible Agenda for a Non-Partisan
league in the present:

1. The Government, of the People, for the People, and by the People, should
issue sufficient non-interest bearing U.S. notes to purchase back the capital
stock of the Federal Reserve Bank from its current private owners. In agreement
with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, of the U.S. Constitution. Henceforth the
Government of the People should control its own credit and cease issuing
interest-bearing notes, bonds, and securities. Pension-fund, and Ma and Pa and
holders of U.S. Savings bonds should be paid off in full, but no bank or trust
company holding securities against the U.S. Government debt shall be paid more
than $100,000, in full. Postal Savings Banks should be established to facilitate
the transfer of the People's credit from the defunct Bond-system.

2. The American People should move for immediate legislation to cancel all
international debt owed by any nation - including this nation - to First World
banks; and call, every year, (until it comes) that this Year be the Year of
Jubilee for the release of all nations from the bondage of debt to the
international commercial banks.

3. We should also move to take decisive steps to dismantle the military budget &
press towards immediate peace-time conversion of the industrial sector towards
the pressing needs of our own decaying infrastructure and millions of homeless
citizens, needy families and elderly.

4. The People must consider and address the issue of Land Reform, and move
to liberate the millions of acres that were fraudulently given to the Railroad
corporations in violation of the Homestead Act of 1862, as well as the additional
Millions of acres that were swindled by the timber barons by fraud, - again,in
violation of the Hometead Act of 1862 - which theft, is described in the book,
Looters of the Public Domain, by S.D. Puter. These lands should be made available
for homesteading to every American who wants a homestead. A just and reasonable
portion is four acres per couple. Furthermore, we should endeavor to provide some
restitution - in land, not money - for lands stolen from Native Americans.

5. The People must begin the painful process of learning how to live on the earth
in a manner that does not destroy it. We must learn again the ancient rhythms of
seedtime and harvest. We must strive to create a sustainable civilization upon
the earth, in the World-After-Oil. This last point is both a turning inward, and
a return to ancestral patterns that existed before the invention of the internal
combustion engine and the automobile. It is a point that can only be done by each
and every individual him or herself. It is, nevertheless, highly political.

It's interesting that Phillip Roth recently wrote a novel where Lindbergh, the son, won the presidency in 1940, and the US does not enter WWII on the side of the bankers.  Of course, that is made to be an awful thing in Roth's book, but I wonder what might have been if the father or the son had become President, and we actually got some much needed reform.  Sigh...

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

It's interesting that Phillip Roth recently wrote a novel where Lindbergh, the son, won the presidency in 1940, and the US does not enter WWII on the side of the bankers.  Of course, that is made to be an awful thing in Roth's book, but I wonder what might have been if the father or the son had become President, and we actually got some much needed reform.  Sigh...

Not surprised at all Christopher... the Jewish press really ripped the Lindberghs as Nazis's before WWII -- in fact all of German-America.  My Grandfather spent two weeks in a county jail in Texas since they thought he was a spy in 1942. IMHO, Phillip Roth is just another sick Jew -- always ready to twist something about respected anti-Jew whites in any negative direction.  It is always Portney's Complaint or some other sick Jew perversion.
 
You know, I grew up in St. Louis and we all saw Lindbergh as a "hero" and great man when we went to the History Museum in Forest Park. It was something all kids did. At that time, I never knew this story of his father or the battles they fought to keep the USA actually "free" from Jew Usury... sad  when one considers that the Jews killed his son.  Just one, of many murders of great people by Jews.  I learned this fact much later in life.  

But, many of us these days are ready to swing the sword.... like our otherwise unknown forefathers. Many of whom thought long and hard on human events as they toiled for hours extracting life from the earth... Jews always feared genuine Midwest radicalism...  since they can't control it when it starts swinging vicious truths at their innumerable lies.