Facts and Fascism, by George Seldes

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CHAPTER V: NAM MOUTH ORGAN: FULTON LEWIS, JR.

NOT ALL the American type of reactionary propaganda (or fascist propaganda as Mussolini would have labeled it) is confined to the newspaper and magazine press, notably the big circulation publications such as the McCormick-Patterson and Hearst newspapers, and the Reader's Digest. Considerable native Fascism comes over the radio. This is easily explained. The national hookups are paid for by the biggest corporations, and with the exception of Ford, they are all subsidizers, backers, directors and members of the National Association of Manufacturers, and members of its propaganda subsidiary, known as the National Industrial Information Committee.

With only three or four exceptions all the big newspaper columnists and radio commentators who form American public opinion are reactionaries. Pegler, Kaltenborn, Paul Mallon, Sokolsky, Mark Sullivan, Boake Carter, Frank Kent, David Lawrence reach from three to eight million persons each. On the liberal side there are a few writers and speakers who do not have a tenth this vast audience.

Fulton Lewis, Jr., reaches between 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 persons daily over more than 150 stations of the Mutual Network. He is sponsored by nationally known manufacturers such as Old Gold cigarettes and in some towns by local merchants. Today Lewis is the chief spokesman for Reaction. He was formerly employed by the National Association of Manufacturers and right now he is echoing the propaganda line laid down at the secret meeting of the resolutions committee of the NAM.

Mr. Lewis is not now employed by the NAM. Mr. Lewis denies that he has any connection with the NAM. Mr. Lewis is working for some 60 corporations and if he wants to say it is purely a coincidence that the propaganda he is putting out today and that which the NAM is putting out are alike, his word should be taken at face value. We present herewith certain facts about Mr. Lewis, the DuPont campaign for "Free Enterprise" " originated less than a year ago, Mr. Lewis's former connection with the NAM, and Mr. Lewis's present "Free Enterprise" campaign which tallies with the Hearst-Howard-NAM and American fascist campaign of Free Enterprise.

Fulton Lewis, Jr., was in the pay of the NAM, broadcasting Big Business propaganda (up to June 19, 1942) at a time many of his colleagues, notably Kaltenborn and Pegler, were working the other end of the NAM street by smearing labor.

In defense of his position, Mr. Lewis wrote me on August 10, 1942:

"Your little publication has tremendous influence and a tremendous and loyal following. You have built up what I have tried to build up over the air -- a feeling among your readers that you are telling them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth -- and I think you do that within the usual human qualifications of all of us. This letter is not written as a complaint nor as a request for any correction. It rather is written to show you what tremendous power you have. ... I have never heard of the subsidiary of the NAM (Industrial Information Committee)...."

My reply said in part:

"The only matter worth serious discussion is that line in your letter (re N.I.I.C. being part of NAM). Before I take up the matter ... I would like to ask you some questions:

"1. Do you know what Fascism is?

"2. Are you aware that there is Fascism in America?

"3. Do you know that Hitler's Naziism and Mussolini's Fascism are to a great extent the armed forces of the special big interests, such as the German cartels?

"4. Are you aware that Mussolini was subsidized by the Associazione fra Industriali Metallurgici Meccani and the Confederazione Generale dell'Industria ...which corresponds exactly to our U.S. Chamber of Commerce and our NAM?

"5. Are you aware, as Thyssen showed, that the Nazi equivalent of the NAM and N.I.I.C. taxed themselves so much per ton, so much per piece of goods manufactured, to subsidize Hitler and put him in power ..."

"6. Are you or are you not aware that Pew of Sunoco, E. T. Weir, Bell of Cyanamid ... Fuller, Lammot DuPont ... A. P. Sloan of General Motors ... all of them officers of the N.I.I.C., are the equivalent of the subsidizers of Fascism abroad, and subsidizers of the various fascist organizations exposed in the Lobby Investigation run by Senator (now Justice) Black?

"If you are not aware of these facts, then there is an excuse for your ever having been in the employ of the N.I.I.C.

"But it must be an excuse based on ignorance only. You know very well that when the La Follette Committee exposed the notorious George Sokolsky as being secretly in the pay of the NAM it was a first-rate scandal. It seems to me it was the most notorious scandal in the recent history of American journalism, and the fact the New York Herald Tribune and now the New York Sun publish the writings of this NAM hireling is still a greater scandal. The NAM was exposed three times in recent history. It actually resorted to corruption and bribery of Congressmen. It did about 90% of all the hiring in America of thugs, gunmen, racketeers, murderers and spies. Finally, it sought by a great corruption fund to change the thinking of American people by hiring professors and introducing text books in the public schools.

"I am sure that you know these facts about the NAM. I think therefore it is advisable for you to make a public statement saying that when you did the job for the N.I.I.C. you were not aware that it was formed by the NAM out of its more pro-fascist elements, and that its present plan is to invade the public schools with its anti-social propaganda."

Mr. Lewis replied again emphasizing that he had been in the employ of the NAM, not the N.I.I.C. "I have never been in the pay of the Industrial Information Committee of the NAM; in fact, I never heard of the damned thing until a former issue of your paper mentioned it in connection with me," he wrote. Of the NAM, he added: "-- I am totally dis-sympathetic and completely opposed to their labor policies. ... I fought them tooth and toenail ... on the 40-hour-week issue." And on August 31 Lewis said in a long letter that:

"1. I know very well what Fascism is, and I disapprove of it 100%.

"2. I am not aware that there is Fascism in America at this moment. ...

"3. I am, of course, well aware that Hitler's Naziism [was subsidized].

"4. I did not know specifically that Mussolini was subsidized by the particular organizations ... [Here Mr. Lewis declares that comparing these to the Chamber of Commerce and the NAM constitutes no proof].

"5. I am quite well aware that German industrialists own and control Naziism, Hitler, and whatever profits accrue from the war.

"6. I am not aware that Pew, Weir, Bell, Fuller, DuPont and A. P. Sloan are all officers of the N.I.I.C. ... not aware that they are the 'equivalent of the subsidizers of Fascism abroad' although your charge is very interesting. ... I was not aware that they were exposed as subsidizers of 'the various fascist organizations' by the Lobby investigation of Senator (now Justice) Black."

Mr. Lewis then declares that he never heard of the three Congressional investigations of the NAM, and he declares that if proof can be found the NAMzies employed 90% of all the thugs and murderers and spies -- ("that statement seems fantastic, extreme, and too much to swallow") -- he will be "glad to help publicize it the nation over."

The facts are: the La Follette Committee held public hearings and issued official reports showing that 90% or more of all the spies, thugs, murderers employed by Big Industry were employed by General Motors (controlled by DuPonts, bossed by Knudsen and Sloan) and other like members of the NAM. Of course Mr. Fulton Lewis, Jr., will not even breathe a word of these facts over the radio stations when he is paid by many of these same men and corporations.

But Mr. Lewis says he knows best what is "in my mind and heart," and that he reaches "many millions of people, the rank-and-file, middle-of-the-road people" and that "the greatest need of the labor movement is to have the support and confidence of those people, to have them told the truth, to have them de-bunked of anti-labor propaganda and lies and insinuations, and I have done that consistently and repeatedly."

Finally, Mr. Lewis, still not asking for any correction of any news items about him, suggests that the following reply be published. Here it is in full:

"I have never heard of the N.I.I.C. before you stated in your newsletter that I was employed by it. That statement was absolutely false, regardless of what the N.I.I.C. or anyone else in heaven or Earth says to the contrary. I not only had never heard of it, but o this day I have never met any of the individuals whom you list as officers of it. I know nothing about it and care less. I did a series of broadcasts for the NAM, once a week, from war production plants all over the nation for slightly more than a year. I defy you or anyone else to point to a single word, phrase, or innuendo in any broadcast that was remotely or by the slightest indirection anti-labor. On the contrary, a large part of every broadcast was devoted to showing the tremendous and constructive part that labor was playing in that particular plant. My assistant who went to the plants in advance and helped gather material for each broadcast was a fanatical pro-laborite. We had numerous union leaders on the program.

"My contract with the NAM specifically provided that I was to have absolute final discretion and power as to what was said in every broadcast, and I exercised that power on all occasions. I had no conferences, instructions, or hints about any NAM policies on labor or anything else either before or during my connection; in fact, all I know of NAM policies is what I have read in the newspapers.

Here is the evidence the NAM and NIIC are one, and that Fulton Lewis, Jr., spread their propaganda over the radio. -- "Your DEFENSE REPORTER with FULTON LEWIS, Jr., Over the Mutual Network"

"I heartily disapprove of anti-labor propaganda, whether it be by the NAM or any other organization, and I strongly resent and challenge anyone to cite any statement that I have ever made that has been anti-labor. I have stated that I had no connection with the N.I.I.C., and even my connection with the NAM as here set forth was terminated June 13, 1942, and therefore, your statement printed in In Fact in the July and August issues that I was at that time connected with the N.I.I.C. was untrue, not only for the N.I.I.C. but for the NAM as well.

"(signed) Fulton Lewis, Jr."

Furthermore, Mr. Lewis suggests that he is not "the 1942 George Sokolsky" because he was not hired secretly by the NAM; every broadcast closed with this announcement: "This program is presented by the Mutual Network in cooperation with the NAM."

The main part of Mr. Lewis's statement is his denial he worked for the N.I.I.C.; he worked only for the NAM. This is a quibble, a straw man set up to demolish. It is of no importance whatever. All it does is show that Mr. Lewis in addition to not knowing what Fascism really is, not knowing that there is Fascism in America, and not knowing that the men who paid him are also the paymasters of every fascist organization, past, present and future -- the past being officially on Congressional records -- also did not know that as far back as 936 it was officially admitted to the La Follette Committee that the N.I.I.C. was a branch of the NAM. In fact, most propaganda work of the NAM is done by the N.I.I.C., and exactly the same men own, run, control and subsidize the two organizations.

One whole volume of the La Follette report is devoted to exposing the NAM -- it is Report No. 6, part 6: Part III, the NAM, published in 1939, giving testimony from 1938 on. On page 154 Mr. Lewis will find this statement about his paymasters:

"The NAM had opposed the principal legislative measures sponsored by the national administration during the congressional session of 1935. It had opposed the National Labor Relations Act [the Wagner Act, Magna Carta of Labor, which Mr. Lewis's NAM is still fighting] the Social Security Act, the Banking Act, the Utility Holding Company Act, and the President's tax program. In spite of the Association's opposition, all these measures became law. This was a great blow to the Association; but its officers remained undaunted and they redoubled their propaganda efforts. ...

(Page 155) "After the crushing defeat of the NAM's lobby during the 1935 congressional session, its officers decided to intensify its effort in local 'education.' ... The Association set up the National Industrial Information Committee under the chairmanship of E. T. Weir. ... The 1935 annual report of the Association referred to the organization of these committees: 'In furtherance of this better understanding of industry by the public the N.I.I.C. was organized. Under the chairmanship of Mr. E.T. Weir, committees have been formed in the 20 major industrial states to facilitate development of the NAM program for the dissemination of sound American doctrine to the public. ...'

"The N.I.I.C. appealed to leaders of industry for financial support of the public information program ... to 'sell' industry to the public. ... [In the letter of appeal for funds signed by W. B. Warner, editor of McCall's Magazine, he said the N.I.I.C. -- NAM propaganda campaign would 'save the whole of the industrial system.']

(Page 6) "The NAM has blanketed the country with a propaganda which in technique has relied upon indirection of meaning, and in presentation upon secrecy and deception."

Pages 8 and 9 of the Digest of Report, Committee on Education and Labor, 76th Congress, 1st Session, states:

"The activities of the NAM became so bold and sometimes indiscreet that a scandal occurred in 1913 when public charges were made that agents of the Association had given 'financial rewards' to Congressmen to promote its legislative program. ... Investigations disclosed that the Association had placed an employee of the House of Representatives on its payrolls in order to obtain information not available to the public; the Association's agents had contributed large sums of money to Congressional candidates in their campaigns for re-election and had opposed candidates friendly to labor -- [Note: this has been done in every election, will be done in 1944, etc.] -- the Association had carried on a disguised propaganda campaign through newspaper syndicates ... placing publicists on its payroll. ... Responsible officials of the NAM did not renounce any part of their activities revealed before the Senate and House Committees of 1913. On the contrary, they reasserted the necessity of pursuing the course they had followed previously in order to counteract the 'operations of organized labor.' ... After 1920 it became what it always had been, a candid open-shop drive which was the spearhead for the anti-union movement then sweeping the country. ... "While opposing union organization under the cover of 'patriotism and freedom,' the Association's representatives maintain their unyielding attitude on social legislation ... opposition to modification of the anti-trust laws to exempt labor unions from the application ... regulation of child labor ... establishment of collective bargaining ... many other legislative proposals designed to correct some of the basic dislocations which gave rise to social unrest."

In other words the NAM, for which Mr. Lewis admits doing a public relations job, is an outfit which is devoted to fighting the general welfare and social progress of America, so that the 270 corporations which subsidize the NAM may profit.

If Mr. Lewis will obtain mimeographed report No. 24, part 3, 76th Congress, 1st Session, he will find the names of the men and corporations who employed strikebreaking espionage, private police systems, guns and poison gas -- "the four chief instrumentalities of anti-unionism." Some sample names are: Republic Steel, U.S. Steel, Bethlehem, General Motors, National Steel of Weirton, Mr. Knudsen. Let him look up the NAM and N.I.I.C. list of officers and directors and find how many are named in the report.

If Mr. Lewis will obtain mimeographed report No. 24, La Follette Statement, he will learn:

"Those few but powerful employers who utilize such practices [spies, gas warfare, etc.] wield great influence throughout industry. ... The powerful minority of employers who utilize oppressive labor practices is well organized. ... Their influence is exerted through highly paid propagandists to conceal their own offenses and to raise a public clamor against collective bargaining and bona fide unions. ... In the name of industrial harmony they have incited the most dangerous forms of class conflicts. ... I do not exaggerate when I ay that these belligerent employers already exercise an influence in the affairs of employers' associations which is out of proportion to their numbers and their economic significance. Some 45 companies making the largest contributions to, or exerting great influence in the NAM, purchased over 55% of the tear gas and tear gas equipment sold to the industry. ... E.T. Weir, whose National Steel Corporation is another outstanding purchaser of industrial arms, has assumed leadership of the efforts of the NAM to disseminate propaganda on a lavish scale. ... Civil liberties are under attack. ... There are forces within the country which openly clamor for the destruction of civil liberties through the perversion of governmental power. These forces are encouraged by the existence of private tyrannies maintained by private armed forces and by private gestapos."

Will Mr. Fulton Lewis, Jr., broadcast the fact a mere 45 companies or less than 5% of the NAM bought 55% of the tear gas, and other official proofs that NAM members bought 90% of all guns and gas and hired 90% or more of all spies, murderers and racketeers in fighting labor? It'll be a big day over Mutual, C.B.S., N.B.C. and the Blue Network when Mr. Lewis, Jr. mentions DuPont, General Motors, Girdler, Weir and all the other American Fascists.

THE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

The documentary evidence shows:

1. That the NAM and the N.I.I.C. are one and the same.

2. That the NAM was exposed as criminally Corrupt by one Congressional investigation, and more recently exposed by the La Follette investigation as at present working "in secrecy" and "in deceit."

3. That both the NAM and the N.I.I.C. claim Fulton Lewis, Jr., as their chief radio spokesman.

Exhibit A. First of all, here is the complete catalogue of propaganda materials which the NAM is using right now to corrupt the American people to its way of thinking. It is called "Bibliography of Economic and Social Study Material. Booklets, motion pictures, slide films, lantern slides, transcriptions and posters. Available through NAM. March, 1942." Millions of dollars are spent a year telling the American people to believe certain views which are the views of the multi-millionaires who own the NAM. This propaganda works for the dollar and cents profit of these men and corporations. It is directed against the general welfare of the American people. All this propaganda material is given out free.

Page 25 of this catalogue says:

"The audio-visual materials produced as a part of the National Industrial Information Program by the NAM and the National Industrial Council include sound and silent motion picture films, slide films, lantern slides, etc." [Note the names of the outfits. They now admit they are part of the same set-up.]

Page 36 states:

"The electrical transcriptions listed below were made during the actual broadcasts of the radio program, 'Your Defense Reporter,' featuring the prominent news commentator, Fulton Lewis, Jr. These programs, prepared in cooperation with the NAM and broadcast directly from war- production plants over stations affiliated with the Mutual Broadcasting System, present on-the- spot reports to the nation concerning the progress of Industry's military output. ... Transcriptions are lent one at a time and without charge."

There follows a list of eight broadcasts glorifying Big Business in iron and steel, jeep making, naval craft production, radio, drugs, textiles, torpedo boats and planes.

The purpose of the broadcasts was to answer the charges, made by Senator Truman, Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold, the Bone, Tolan, and other Congressional investigations which proved conclusively that the only traitor to the war effort was Big Business. It had refused to convert even 50% to war production before Pearl Harbor, and maintained business-as-usual for months thereafter. The Aluminum Trust, Standard Oil, the Auto industry (with the exception of a few small firms), General Electric, Standard Drugs and others having cartel contracts with Hitler's I.G. Farbenindustrie, and practically all the big corporations -- and main subsidizers of the NAM -- were proven guilty of sit-downs, sabotage, lack of patriotism and even treasonable delays. Of course, the newspapers suppressed as much of this great story as possible and ran great campaigns of whitewash for Alcoa and Esso simultaneously with great advertising campaigns by these very corporations, but somehow the truth did get about, and the NAM put on a new $1,000,000 propaganda campaign, and Lewis Jr. was one of its hired mouths.

Exhibit B. This is a folder called "Industry The Arsenal of Democracy. Defense on the Radio." On the inside page it announces

"from coast to coast, two major broadcasting systems in cooperation with the NAM regularly report on the progress of Industry's Defense output. You and millions of other radio listeners can learn the inside story (sic!) of what is being done, and what remains to be done, to make our country invulnerable. Through the blessings of uncensored radio broadcasting, we free Americans can follow the course of the greatest demonstration of industrial efficiency the world has ever known -- a performance that only free enterprise can give."

Page 3 pictures Graham McNamee, "over the Red Network of the N.B.C." Page 6 pictures "Your Defense Reporter with Fulton Lewis, Jr., over the Mutual."

In small type, page 2, is this notice: "This booklet is prepared and distributed without charge in the interests of National Defense by the NAM." Under the McNamee announcement appears: "Don't fail to see the thrilling film: 'Defense for America ... Produced by Paramount in cooperation with the NAM." Otherwise there is no indication that this is part of the NAM's million dollar propaganda campaign.

Exhibit C. In 1942 the National Industrial Information Committee sent every big business man of the country a package of its new propaganda and a request for funds. It states: "We agree that the winning of the war and the preservation of freedom require that the American people have a complete understanding of the job industry is doing to win the battle of production, of the basic characteristics of the private competitive enterprise system, and of the sincere motives of American management." Firms capitalized at $100,000 are told to send in $25; firms worth a million, $225, and all over six million are asked to send $1,000 to $25,000. More than $1,000,000 has been raised and spent to date.

On page 2 of the subscription sheet is "Your program for Public Understanding in a Nation at War," and under it are listed radio, movies, posters, car cards, newspapers, schools and colleges, churches, women's clubs and other activities, all of which have already been exposed by the La Follette Committee as a campaign to corrupt the minds of the American people. This is what the N.I.I.C. says:

"The relationship between American competitive enterprise and the people is exceedingly important today. ... The people must understand the magnitude of industry's task and its patriotism. They must know that freedom of enterprise is not only one of the basic principles that America is fighting to preserve...."

Note that it was the NAM-N.I.I.C. propaganda machine which originated the slogan "Free Enterprise" which all the stooges of Big Business repeat. First on the N.I.I.C.'s list of activities is:

"1. RADIO-Fulton Lewis, Jr., 'Production for Victory,' broadcast weekly on the Mutual network, currently reporting to the people on the progress of war production. Also spot news releases and frequently informal talks by business men."

Note that in appealing for the million dollar propaganda fund to put over the "free enterprise" line, at a time Congressional investigations were showing the corruption of the "free enterprise" corporations, the N.I.I.C. listed Fulton Lewis, Jr., first as its hired man, asked for money to sustain its radio program.

When the NAM resolutions committee met in New York, in September, 1942, to prepare its December convention program, only three members voted in favor of making the winning of the war the main subject for the convention, the majority decided to fight the New Deal, labor and social legislation and to plan a post-war program in which Freedom of Enterprise would be paramount. F.C. Crawford, president of Tapco, I. H. Rand, Jr., of Remington Rand and Lammot DuPont dominated the session.

Labor-management committees were denounced. The committee also favored the end of restrictions on Wall Street speculation, more taxes on labor and less on corporations and the rich, the end of the New Deal. Everyone declared Free Enterprise was the NAM program.

That indeed was the slogan of the December, 1942, convention or the NAM.

Mr. Fulton Lewis made it his policy June 2, 1943.

First he gave himself a terrific build-up June 1. He intimated that tomorrow he would make the most important broadcast of our time. He was about to tell millions of Americans the greatest truth of all. It was super- colossal.

Came tomorrow. Mr. Lewis again built himself up and spilled over. He denounced the New Deal for selling the people a "gold brick" when it launched the Four Freedoms idea.

He approved freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but "freedom from fear and the freedom from want, the last two to finish up this trick phrase, are just so much humbug." (Daily Commercial News, San Francisco, headlined the story: "Four Freedoms Called New Deal Humbug.")

The Four Freedoms, Mr. Lewis continued, are not the philosophy of the United States, do not mean America, are not what the boys are fighting for. No government can guarantee to supply them. "It is like selling gold bricks, and if any individual were to crack out with anything of this nature, he would be thrown into jail at once." Mr. Lewis praised the pioneers, adding:

"The smart boys in Washington have left out the most important freedom of all -- and that is Freedom No. 5 -- freedom of individual enterprise -- freedom of initiative; freedom to rise in the world. ...

"We have heard Vice President Wallace's ideas of a quart of milk on every doorstep and other Utopian schemes. Actually the things our boys are fighting for is to have a doorstep of their own and the right to have on that doorstep anything they can earn and put there. ...

"This is the greatest freedom of them all -- the freedom that is America -- the Freedom of Individual Enterprise."

As for freedom from want and freedom from fear, Mr. Lewis said they were "luxuries, if you can afford them." The usual sneer at "college economists," the usual hoodlum-minded anti cultural slurs against "do- gooders."

As for Freedom of Enterprise, the great blinding new idea, the Fifth Freedom for which he had worked up his broadcast, "without it there can be no tomorrow for America." It was the "real America, the most important, the most vital freedom of all."

June 11 Mr. Lewis said that in response to public clamor he was repeating his great oration, and "according to my philosophy" (which is nothing more than the propaganda dope of the NAM) he was going to tell about the foundation stone of America, the most important thing worth fighting for throughout the world (Free Enterprise, of course). "It was fear and want which made this country," said Mr. Lewis. A sneer at "government by college economists." Freedom from want and freedom from fear he called "vote getting" items. "No government can give the people freedom from want."

The facts are: the two countries where Freedom of Enterprise have reached the ultimate state are Germany and Italy. In these and other totalitarian Big Business countries the corporations have not only been allowed the complete free enterprise of trusts and monopolies but they have been allowed to swallow little business, enslave labor, and finally to take over the political government itself. In Germany and Italy, Japan and Spain -- as documented in this book -- the equivalents of the NAM and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Associated Farmers and Associated Industries own and control the government, the banks, the wealth of the land and the land itself. This is the real aim of Free Enterprise, and it is 100% at work in fascist countries only.

The second fact which Lewis denies is the possibility of abolishing want and fear due to want. Any system providing for full production -- preferably production for use and not for profits, but full production and no unemployment -- such as was advocated by the Bishops of the Church of England in their Malvern Declarations (the report smeared by the NAM's hired professors), provides the essential needs of humanity: food, clothing and shelter -- ample, even abundant, for every human being. It could be done overnight in the United States, which has natural resources; it is even possible throughout the world if the profits were taken from the few, and the wealth of the world given to the many. Mr. Lewis and the NAM both know this but neither dare mention it, and both are working against it. They prefer profits.

_______________

Bibliography:

One entire volume of the La Follette reports exposes the NAM: Committee on Education and Labor, 76th Congress, 1st Session; Report No.6, part 6; III The National Association of Manufacturers.
Digest of Report, Committee on Education and Labor, 76th Congress, 1st Session.
T.N.E.C. Monograph 26.

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PART 3: OUR PRESS AS A FASCIST FORCE

CHAPTER 1: THE PRESS IN CHAINS

THERE are traitors among the owners, publishers and editors of the big American newspapers.

This charge was made before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 7, 1942, by Archibald McLeish, Librarian of Congress and then head of the Office of Facts and Figures, predecessor of the Office of War Information. It was broadcast at 1:30 P.M. over Station WOR and others.

Unfortunately, Mr. McLeish could not and therefore did not name any names, but all the editors present knew to whom he referred when he mentioned the publication of one of the secret military plans of the War Department.

Interesting also is the fact that although Mr. McLeish used the word "treason" twice in his address, the paragraphs containing it were suppressed by many newspapers, including the Olympian New York Times. Mr. McLeish had said that he knew of one publisher who actually told his staff that he intended to come ''as close to treason as I dare," and that the "defeatists and divisionists who strike from that ambiguous and doubtful shadow where freedom of expression darkens into treason" should be policed out of journalism by their fellow publishers themselves.

Another charge of treason was made by no less an authority than the head of the Department of Justice, Attorney General Biddle. At the time the question of censorship was uppermost, Mr. Biddle appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and, speaking in favor of a military censorship, disclosed the fact that certain newspapers and magazines had committed acts "approaching" treason. "The most closely guarded military secrets of the government have come into the possession of newspapers and magazines and ultimately into the hands of agents of enemy governments." This story was of course suppressed in all newspapers, guilty and innocent, but Labor reported from Washington:

"Biddle was testifying on an administration measure making it unlawful for unauthorized persons to divulge the contents of any confidential government document. The measure is under heavy fire. The newspapers are attacking it as a blow at 'freedom of the press,' and liberals in and out of Congress are fearful it may invade the citizen's constitutional guarantees. ...

"Biddle ... cited many instances where vital information has 'leaked,' some to newspapers willing to pay the price. ... Maps of Midway Island and its naval installations, copies of army codes, communications between the Navy Department and commanders at sea, and photographs of army camps and airfields, Biddle asserted, had been made available to newspapers and enemy agents ... A newspaper whose identity was not disclosed was declared to have purchased secret aircraft data from employees of the Wright airplane plant at Paterson, N.J. A technical journal ... was declared to have printed 'detailed data' on planes under construction at the North American Aviation factory. This information, Biddle said, is now being studied by German experts in Berlin. ... Biddle (asked Senators) to keep in mind the main objective -- the protection of the government from unscrupulous newspapers and enemy intelligence agents."

Again, no names were mentioned.

Another indication of the worry over un-American acts on the part of big publishers was given by the New York Daily News Washington columnist, John O'Donnell, who wrote (March 30, 1942):

"Last night members of the Cabinet and Supreme Court were guests at the Willard of the Overseas Writers Association and heard some bloodthirsty appeals, with much talk of concentration camps and treason, from ex-reporters now turned starry-eyed crusaders at so much per month or per lecture.

"The American press which had opposed this nation's intervention into the war before the Pearl Harbor attack was hammered lustily, with the anvil chorus led by three former reporters of the Chicago Tribune. ...

"Roosevelt advisers ... applauded lustily such declarations as: 'The American Senate must be taught the facts of life. ... The important thing is to put an end (to criticism of the Roosevelt Administration) by whatever means may be necessary -- be as ruthless as the enemy .... Get him on his income tax or the Mann Act.... Hang him, shoot him or lock him up in a concentration camp.'"

Readers will note that O'Donnell put his own phrase in parentheses about "criticism of the Roosevelt Administration" whereas =the speakers talked about treason, sabotage of the war effort, etc., and not about criticism.

O'Donnell also failed to state (or his newspapers suppressed the fact) that the former Chicago Tribune correspondents named the Chicago Tribune and its owners, Col. McCormick and Capt. Patterson, as candidates for hanging, shooting or the concentration camp. Moreover, the attack was not made on papers which opposed intervention before Pearl Harbor but on those papers, which since Pearl Harbor have continued to publish news, editorials and cartoons which must please Hitler.

Also mentioned as a Hitlerite publisher who should be tried for treason or put in jail was Charles E. Coughlin. It was suggested that the income tax law under which Al Capone and M.L. Annenberg were retired from circulation could be invoked in an investigation of Coughlin's financing.

But despite the fact that some of their members had been accused of everything from treason to following the Axis propaganda line (Divide and Conquer) the American Newspaper Publishers Associations (the Lords of the Press) held their usual convention in 1942 and devoted the major part of their week to discussing more profits despite the war.

They got together on helping the Associated Press maintain that it is not a monopoly, because it is registered under the hunting and fishing law of New York as a cooperative -- it is, in truth, the only "cooperative" in the world which refuses to accept members, and therefore a fake as well as a hypocrite and a monopolist. The publishers also discussed the newsprint situation of Canada; they were eager to keep curtailment at 10%, but no one suggested that the manufacture of newsprint instead of aluminum by the Canadian pulp mills (many owned by Americans) had curtailed the metals needed by MacArthur at Bataan and Guadalcanal. They also held secret sessions, at which no reporters were allowed, when they discussed the work of their strikebreaking committee (called Standing Committee) and their union-busting committee (called Open Shop Committee). They also brought in the Global War in this way: they argued whether or not to ask money from Uncle Sam for publicizing the bonds the nation was selling to wage a victorious war.

The eyes and ears of America's great publishers were as usual on their pocketbooks. In a special A.N.P.A. issue their mouth organ, Editor & Publisher, reported the convention would: "... examine problems created by the war," which, it explained, were: rising costs of operation, decreased revenue ... shortage of supplies, and censorship ... most important A.N.P.A. convention to be held in the past two decades. ... Among the outstanding questions of 60 scheduled for Tuesday discussion are the following:

"What is going to happen to both local and national advertising during the war? What can a newspaper do to promote new sources of advertising in a period of war emergency?

"What are newspapers under 50,000 circulation doing to offset lineage losses. ...?

"'What is the general attitude of publishers toward advertising by the government?"

Treason? Freedom of the Press? Ethics? Corruption? The anti-labor bias of 75% or more of the press? Aid given to the Axis by the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News and other reactionary papers? There was no mention of anything but business in any of the points Editor & Publisher listed except one: "Should headlines over war news 'slant' optimistically or pessimistically?"

During the convention the press devoted more columns to its discussion of whether or not to ask the government for war advertising money than to the war itself. The special convention number of Editor & Publisher carried eight big stories, of which six dealt with money and profits, one with the A.P. monopoly which makes it almost impossible for new papers to break into the present combine, and only one dealt with patriotism. Where was MacLeish's sensational charge that there is treason among America's leading newspaper publishers? Editor & Publisher did not suppress that story, the biggest story of the convention, one of the biggest stories since the Global War began. But it buried it on page 94, column 3.

The A.N.P.A. convention followed the American Society of Newspaper Editors Convention and was held simultaneously with the Associated Press convention and other editor-publisher meetings. Director of Office of Facts and Figures Archibald Macleish spoke to the A.N.P.A. as he had to the A.S.N.E., before whom he had made the charge that there is treason among a minority of American publishers.

Reporter Willard Wiener asked questions. William Allen White, Emporia Gazette, replied that "MacLeish made a good speech. But I wish he had named names -- Coughlin, McCormick, Patterson, Pelley, et al, ad lib." Houston Harte, Standard Times, said "Sure there are papers that are doing that [undermining public confidence]. ... What MacLeish said is true." Palmer Hoyt, Portland Oregonian, said: "What MacLeish said is true." A.W. Norton, Christian Science Monitor, was in favor of convicting certain papers of their wrongdoing. Senator Capper, Topeka Capital, said "I endorse what MacLeish said. We can well take notice of his suggestions"; Herbert Bayard Swope, once editor of America's leading liberal paper, the defunct New York World, said "MacLeish is right." John S. Knight, Detroit Free Press, Akron Beacon-Journal and Miami Herald, said "I don't think it ethical for one paper to attack another."

However, the persons who favored driving America's traitors out of America's journalism are with two exceptions small town editors, whereas the owners of the powerful city press refused to agree, or sneered, or threatened. Here is PM's poll:

Col. McCormick (Chicago Tribune): "MacLeish is a Communist. Russia goes on the other side -- MacLeish goes on the other side."

William Randolph Hearst, Jr. (New York Journal-American): "I didn't read MacLeish's speech fully enough to comment on it."

Roy Howard (Scripps-Howard chain): "I know of many daily newspaper publishers with whose editorial attitude toward the war I heartily disagree. I know of none whose loyalty I question."

Eleanor Patterson (Washington Times-Herald): "PM will get nothing from me. I'm going to sue you. You don't print the truth."

Frank E. Gannett (Gannett chain; sponsor of the native fascist strikebreaking organization called Committee to Uphold the Constitution): "I consider it most unfair for anyone to say that even a minority of our press are trying to undermine our Government."

J.H. Torbett, Gannett chain newspapers: "It was the type of speech to be expected from the director of the O.F.F."

L.W. Gracey, Geneva Daily Times: "Don't know the facts. I must have been lighting a cigaret while he was talking."

The foregoing also give a clue to the editorial mind of America -- both small town and metropolitan.

Nothing was done about the defeatists, the divisionists and the traitors in the ranks.

In fact, there was a suspicion current at the convention that this group -- the friends of Fascism and enemies of the welfare of the American people -- actually owned the majority of powerful newspapers of big circulation and could easily control the convention if a patriot were to propose action against a traitor.

The nearest the President has come to indicating a large part of our press as the main enemy of American democracy and the chief agent of foreign Fascism was his indictment in March, 1942, of what he termed the "Sixth Column" which was using the means of communication -- most powerful of which is the daily newspaper -- to spread dissension, disunity, fear and suspicion. Unfortunately the President is not in a position to name names, and unless this is done the job of fighting Fascism is hampered.


The Press in Chains

The Sixth Column is working for Hitler. Hitler said: "Confusion, indecision, fear; these are my weapons." There are fifteen main lies which Hitler wants you to believe. You will find them listed in the booklet Divide and Conquer which the Office of War Information sent free until Congress cut Elmer Davis' appropriation. Those who have read it can recognize Hitler propaganda in such stories as these: that there will be no November election in America, that we have a dictatorship here, that Britain is not at war but using Russian and American troops to save her empire, that China may at any moment make peace with Japan and betray us, that Russia may at any moment make peace with Germany and betray the United Nations, and scores of other defeatist and divisionist statements.

The Sixth Column has another big job in America, and that is to spread American Fascism. The Sixth Column today, as in peacetime, is active in setting white against Negro, Christian against Jew, Protestant against Catholic, industrial worker against farm worker, American-born against foreign-born.

If the reader thinks of our chain newspaper owners, Hearst, Howard, Patterson and McCormick, as merely four of America's 15,000 publishers, he fails to see the danger to America from an anti-democratic, anti- American press. These four publishers put out one fourth of all the newspapers sold daily on our streets, they own forty of the 200 big city papers which make American public opinion, they run not only the three biggest newspaper chains in the country, but two of the three big news services which supply news to a majority of America's dailies, and because they have always been anti-labor, anti-liberal, and anti-democratic even when not openly following the Mussolini and Hitler lines, they constitute what I believe is the greatest force hostile to the general welfare of the common people of America.

These publishers are all native Fascists. Two of them stand accused of treason, all of them of following the fascist line. In order that there may be no question of the power and influence of this fascist group, and so that Americans throughout the country may know who spreads defeatism, divisionism and fascist propaganda in their cities, I have compiled the facts on these three newspaper chains. (See Appendix 5.)

Colonel McCormick, Capt. Patterson and Eleanor (Cissy) Patterson are the multi-millionaire enemies of the people today. E.W. ("Lusty") Scripps founded the Scripps-Howard empire but after his death Roy Howard forgot the liberalism of the founder, devoted himself to tax-dodging and amassing millions. Everyone knows who William Randolph Hearst is. Of this whose journalistic lot (Hearst, Howard, McCormick, Patterson) it may be said that there is not a spark of social conscience left in them, that it soured to Fascism in the one who was once a Socialist (Patterson) and that the five powerful persons well represent native Fascism. Although they own forty papers and great news agencies, they are all socially and economically illiterate; and all of them are socially irresponsible. They are animated by nothing above their pocketbooks. They are doing nothing to make America a better nation, nothing to advance the welfare of the American people, although they are powerful enough to create a public opinion which could bring about an almost ideal state.

In peace time they are the enemies of American democracy. In war time they are our Sixth Column. Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito represent the enemies we have to fight with guns; Hearst, Howard, McCormick and Patterson represent the enemy within.

[admin]

CHAPTER II: BERLIN-CHICAGO-NEW YORK AXIS

DESPITE the amazing Fortune poll which showed 26-1/2% of the American people doubting the honesty of our daily newspapers and despite the universal feeling that the press is subsidized and therefore betrays the reader, it is a fact that millions who could do something about this situation are not enough aware of the danger to take any action. All know how powerful the press is and many realize that inasmuch as it is the main force creating public opinion it is, ipso facto, the force which largely directs Congress, the making of laws, taxation, the standard of living, the style of our clothes and our thinking about waging war on Fascism. Nevertheless millions do little or nothing either to fight the harmful influence of a corrupt press or to establish an honest and therefore free press.

The majority of Americans are wage and salary workers. They number 52,000,000 in normal times. Nevertheless it is impossible to name half a dozen newspapers which are at least neutral and impartial in handling the news for these fifty-two millions, and even less which protect and defend them. A vote of labor editors has shown that 92% of them think the entire press is unfair to labor, and other opinion polls taken of labor leaders and writers and editors have declared some 98% of the big city press -- the opinion-forming press -- unfair. And yet labor reads the press which betrays it.

There are many reasons for this, too many and too long to be entered into here, but the point to emphasize is that the facts of the situation are no reason for despair and defeatism. On the contrary, there is such a fast and vast awakening that one is warranted in predicting great and good changes in the near future.

It is important that the labor unions of America are taking the leadership in exposing our commercial corrupt press and laying the foundation for a free press -- the first since colonial times, when any man with a hundred dollars and a pioneer spirit could become a publisher. Here are some bright labor straws in the foul American journalistic winds.

1. The 1942 convention of the C.I.O. in Boston went on record, first for winning the war (as contrasted with the 1942 convention of the National Association of Manufacturers which went all out for Free Enterprise and the 1942 convention of the American Newspaper Publishers Association which went all out for profits); it voted for a "Second Front Now," following the victory in North Africa, "to complete destruction of the Nazi forces on the European continent" ; it denounced the fascist appeasement forces still at large in America, and it named the vermin press which follows the "disruptive and appeaser line" as the McCormick-Patterson Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Washington Times-Herald and the nineteen Hearst newspapers. It accused the American press of anti-labor reporting, suppressing Vice-President Wallace's great declaration known as "The Century of the Common Man," suppressing important statements on labor by the President, and "slanting the news to fit the publishers' prejudice." The entire press and publicity committee's report on our venal and corrupt anti-labor press was adopted.

2. The national convention of the International Longshormen's & Warehousemen's Union at its June, 1943, convention in San Francisco went on record on the foremost and dominant subject: winning the war and the part this union can do to speed victory. The commercial press which attacks labor was generally denounced and the columnist Westbrook Pegler and newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst were both denounced as Fifth Columnists who were hindering rather than helping win the war. (May I be permitted to include the following resolution unanimously adopted by the convention: "In Fact, a weekly publication edited by George Seldes, is particularly effective in exposing the suppression and distortions of the appeaser and reactionary press. For this reason it is important that it be given the widest possible circulation.")

3. The American Newspaper Guild, which consists of more than 20,000 men and women who work for the press, the majority in the editorial department, at their 1943 national convention in Boston also made victory the order of the day and decided to watch those newspapers which are hindering rather than aiding in the war against Fascism. The Newspaper Guild resolution pledged it to "expose actions of the press which are disruptive of the war effort" and the Guild will "provide to the Guild Reporter and all other publications in which it can obtain space, material to publish and comment upon the activities of the free press during wartime."

There have always been two parties among the organized newspapermen of the country, one which believed it was wrong to criticize the press -- although fighting it for wage increases and other union rights was right; the other which had a larger outlook and followed in the footsteps of Heywood Broun in relentless criticism of the publishers, editors, owners and corrupters of the newspapers. The Boston convention heard members denounce their own Guild Reporter, official organ, for "slanting the news headlines, inaccuracies of statement, misquotations, injection of editorial opinion and redbaiting" and a resolution instructed the editor to further unity within the Guild, rather than continue his past practices.

The Guild action can make it one of the greatest forces in the nation in a fight for a free press. Its twenty thousand members can supply it with all the evidence in the world to expose the corruption of the newspapers, and a great campaign of exposure must result in at least a little reform, a little less hypocrisy, a little more decency, if not a big step towards fairness.

4. William Green, president of the A. F. of L., made this declaration (published in his American Federationist):

"Recently a bitter campaign of malicious propaganda to poison the public's mind against organized labor has been carried on by the subsidized press which is composed of reactionary daily newspapers controlled, through ownership and advertising, by exploiting profiteers and union-haters. Together with the bourbon politicians, idle rich and anti-labor columnists, they are the real parasites of our country. ... By peddling falsehoods about labor, the subsidized press is creating factionalism, disunity and class hatred. If Hitler were not so busy running away from a victorious Russian army he would take time to pin medals on the editors and columnists who are misleading the public.

"The reactionary editors of the newspapers are doing just what Hitler predicted he could accomplish here through his agents."

5. The most consistent fighters of the corrupt press among the powerful labor papers has been Labor, edited by Edward Keating, and representing the Railroad Brotherhoods.

The facts therefore are that organized labor, 13,000,000 persons, have through their leaders and their unions gone on record as aware that the American press is corrupt, their enemy and betrayer, and that something must be done about it.

How much of an enemy is the press? How deep in Fascism is our press? Let us look at one of the great newspaper chains mentioned in the last chapter, the powerful McCormick-Patterson chain, to see how one family betrays the welfare of many million people.

THE MCCORMICK-PATTERSON-BERLIN AXIS

Declaring war on the United States, Adolf Hitler screamed his hatred and his fascist reasons, arriving at this climax:

"A plan prepared by President Roosevelt has been revealed in the United States, according to which his intention was to attack Germany by 1943 with all the resources at the disposal of the United States.

"Thus our patience has come to the breaking point. ..."

One week earlier, three days before the outrageous Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, the Chicago Tribune spread across its front page in the largest type it has ever used, the following story:

"F.D.R.'S WAR PLANS!
"GOAL IS 10 MILLION ARMED MEN;
HALF TO FIGHT IN A.E.F.
"PROPOSES LAND DRIVE BY JULY 1, 1943, TO SMASH NAZIS;
PRESIDENT TOLD OF EQUIPMENT SHORTAGE
"By CHESLY MANLY
"(Copyright 1941 by the Chicago Tribune.)

"Washington, D.C., Dec. 3 -- A confidential report prepared by the joint Army and Navy high command by direction of President Roosevelt calls for American Expeditionary Forces aggregating 5,000,000 men for a final land offensive against Germany and her satellites. It contemplates total armed forces of 10,045,658 men.

"One of the few existing copies of this astonishing document, which represents decisions and commitments affecting the destinies of peoples throughout the civilized world, became available to The Tribune today.

"It is a blueprint for total war on a scale unprecedented in at least two oceans and three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia. ...

"July 1, 1943, is fixed as the date for the beginning of the final supreme effort by American land forces to defeat the mighty German army in Europe.

"In the meantime ... gradual encirclement of Germany by the establishment of military bases. ...

"The war prospectus is dated Sept. 11, 1941, and was prepared by the Army and Navy Joint Board, which is the supreme command of the United States, in response to a letter addressed to Secretary of War Stimson by President Roosevelt. ..."

This is the document to which Hitler referred when he declared war. The document was furnished to Herr Hitler and to 5,000,000 people in twelve midwestern states who read the million copies the Chicago Tribune prints daily, by Colonel McCormick.

Technically this was not an act of treason.

However, McCormick, being an army man, knows better than any layman that the publication of the secret war plans of any nation is right next to treason, if not treason itself.


Three days before Pearl Harbor the Chicago Tribune published the confidential U.S. Army plan, but the owner escaped trial for treason. -- Chicago Daily Tribune, The World's Greatest Newspaper, 2 CENTS, PAY NO MORE, FINAL, December 4, 1942 -- F.D.R.'S WAR PLANS! -- GOAL IS 10 MILLION ARMED MEN; HALF TO FIGHT IN AEF -- Proposes Land Drive by July 1, 1943, to Smash Nazis; President Told of Equipment Shortage.

Colonel McCormick, however, was too interested in fighting the New Deal and working with fascist appeasers to care whether or not he betrayed his country. He published one of the many war plans which his country had made to protect itself. (McCormick knew only too well that every nation, ours included, has plans made years or months in advance for every sort of invasion of every country in the world; it would be criminal folly for a general staff not to have them; and that this plan which he betrayed was one of many prepared to deal with any future situation and not a plot to enter the war and attack Germany.) Said Secretary Stimson:

"What would you think of an American General Staff which in the present condition of the world did not investigate and study every conceivable type of emergency which may confront this country and every possible method of meeting the emergency?

"What do you think of the patriotism of a man or a newspaper that would take those confidential studies and make them public to the enemies of this country?

"While their publication doubtless will be a gratification to our potential enemies as a possible source of impairment and embarrassment to our national defense, the chief evil of their publication is the revelation that there should be among us any group of persons so lacking in appreciation of the danger that confronts the country and so wanting in loyalty and patriotism to their government, that they would be willing to publish such papers."

This, however, does not explain why the government failed to take any action whatever. Obviously someone had betrayed America. Obviously if someone had sold this document to a Nazi agent he would have been arrested for treason. But Colonel McCormick, who supplied Hitler and Hirohito with one of our war plans, went scot free.


The American press was bribed with free cable and radio service by Mussolini. The Chicago Tribune asked for the bribe. Here is the documentary evidence.

In August, 1942, the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, and Washington Times-Herald -- the three McCormick family newspapers -- were on trial for betraying secrets to Japan in their reports of the Coral Sea battle. They were found not guilty. They had published a list of ships participating, they quoted as a source for their information some officials of the U.S. Navy, and they published the news under a Washington dateline.

In pleading not guilty to aiding the enemy the Tribune made the confession that it had faked at least parts of the story; the Washington dateline was false because the story was written in Chicago; the list of battleships which participated was just made up out of a book on ships; and the statement that the information came from U.S. Navy officials was just 100 per cent a lie.

Congressman Elmer Holland of Pennsylvania said to the House of Representatives that Joseph Medill Patterson (News) and Eleanor Patterson (Times-Herald) were "America's No. 1 and No. 2 exponents of the Nazi propaganda line ... doing their best to bring about a fascist victory." When Joe Patterson replied with an editorial headed "Congressman Holland: You Are a Liar," Holland made a list of all the defeatist fascist news items, editorials and cartoons in the McCormick-Patterson press and concluded: "Daily these publishers rub at the morale of the American people. Daily they sow suspicion. Daily they preach that we are in a hopeless struggle. Daily they wear at the moral fiber of the people, softening it, rotting it, preparing us for defeat."

A HUNDRED YEARS OF FALSEHOOD

In addition to following the Nazi line, the Chicago Tribune has a line of its own, and has followed it for almost a hundred years. It is the policy of using falsehood for its own editorial purposes -- and it started on this career three-quarters of a century before Hitler in Mein Kampf wrote his amazing paragraphs on the value of the colossal lie.
No matter which side the Tribune has been on, it has not hesitated to fake the news to favor its viewpoint. It has been on the side of general welfare -- but that was long ago. In 1858 it was for Lincoln. It fought slavery. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates it was so partisan to Lincoln that it garbled and distorted Douglas' speeches, and printed Lincoln's honestly. (Source: Edgar Lee Masters, Tale of Chicago, page 132.)

In 1864, after Joseph Medill had helped elect Lincoln, he headed a delegation protesting the draft. Lincoln was very angry with the Tribune owner. He said to him: "You, Medill, you are acting like a coward. You and your Tribune have had more influence than any paper in the Northwest in making this war. You can influence great masses, and yet you cry to be spared, at a moment when your cause is suffering." (Source: Ida M. Tarbell, Life of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, p. 149.)

And although Medill fought human slavery, he did his best to encourage wage slavery. He fought the labor movement, the eight-hour day, unions, and every attempt to better the life of the common man. When hard times came Joseph Medill published an editorial favoring the poisoning of the unemployed. That was his idea of solving the crisis of 1877.

From 1873 through the panic years unemployment increased, thousands of men began to roam the country, looking for work. The wealthy were scared. Chicago passed a Vagrant Law, making all unemployed subject to arrest. A reader asked the Chicago Tribune what to do with the barefooted and ragged who came begging for food. The reader called the unemployed tramps and also accused them of theft. The Tribune editor replied (July 12, 1877):

"The [Vagrant] Law, while an improvement on the old one, is not of much use for suburban districts, where officers are scarce and Justices or Peace hard to find. The simplest plan, probably, where one is not a member of the Humane Society, is to put a little strychnine or arsenic in the meat and other supplies furnished the tramps. This produces death within a comparatively short period of time, is a warning to other tramps to keep out of the neighborhood. ..."

The faking of news to harm labor, which began in the 1850's, is continued by McCormick to the present day. The Tribune has fought organizing labor, from the Knights of Labor to the A. F. of L. to the C.I.O.

The greatest proof in modern history that the press publishes tremendous lies for the purpose of smashing labor was the treatment of the Memorial Day massacre in Chicago in 1937. It is true that when the Paramount news reel -- which the St. Louis Post-Dispatch forced into the open after attempts at suppression -- showed that labor was entirely innocent, the police entirely to blame for the coldblooded murder of ten peaceful strikers, many newspapers did print this fact. But not the Chicago Tribune.

The Tribune stuck to its lies after the proof was given to the world. It stuck to its lies after the newspapermen who were present at the massacre testified before a Congressional investigating commission that the police were murderers, the strikers blameless. The Tribune ran an editorial saying the massacre was justified because property must be protected. Although the victims of the police were shot in the back, although the newsreel shows the police starting the shooting without reason, and murdering men who were doing nothing but watching, the Tribune editorial yelled "reds."

The Ku Klux Klan was in its second childhood in 1921. It had millions of members -- its peak was about 6,000,000 before its decline began three or four years later. The Chicago Tribune was one of the few big papers which openly favored the Klan. In 1921 George Bernard Shaw canceled a visit to America. He wrote:

"I have no intention of going to prison with Debs or taking my wife to Texas, where Ku Klux Klan mobs snatch white women from out of hotel verandas and tar and feather them."

The Chicago Tribune suppressed the name of the Ku Klux Klan. Its version reads just "mobs."

This was on April 19. On April 16 the Tribune had carried a full page ad (netting the owners thousands of dollars) signed by Imperial Wizard Simmons of the K.K.K. and saying:

"The Knights of the K.K.K. is a law-abiding, legally chartered, standard, fraternal order, designed to teach and inculcate the purest ideals of American citizenship, with malice towards none and justice to every citizen regardless of race, color or creed."

When readers protested that the ad was a lie, that the Klan attacked Catholics, Jews and Negroes, and was barred to them, the Tribune replied (Aug. 27) that the old K.K.K. had been created because of intolerable conditions and "danger of Negro domination," and although evils were committed in its name, it served an important end, while "contributing one of the romantic episodes of our history." The new K.K.K., continued the Tribune, was virtually the old. "All the great fraternal orders," it added, "which accomplish so much quiet good ... make use of this natural liking for mysterious rites and secret ties, and the new Klan will hardly be denied the right to adopt the same policy." At this time the K.K.K. had already been accused of murders, and much terrorism. "The head of the order repudiates them," concluded the Tribune.

On occasion the Chicago Times, the Madison Capital-Times and La Follette's Progressive have offered rewards of $1,000 and $5,000 to anyone who could prove that certain items in the Tribune were not lies. The rewards were not claimed, the Tribune did not sue for libel. On the other hand the Tribune, caught lying, did not attempt to explain or apologize.

The Times, Aug. 28, 1936, offered $5,000 "if the Tribune or any other newspaper can prove to the satisfaction of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the A.N.P.A. that the Tribune dispatch from Donald Day datelined Riga, Latvia, August 8, with its heading, is true." The fake story said that "Moscow has ordered 'reds' in the United States to back Roosevelt against Landon." Four years later Col. McCormick, in a nationwide radio speech, again repeated the Donald Day story. (WOR, February 15, 1940, 10 P.M.)

On October 29, 1938, the Progressive offered $1,000 to anyone who could prove that Washington correspondent Chesly Manly's story headlined "New Deal Hit in Red Inquiry" was not false. In that story the Tribune said "'La Follette's so-called inquiry [into denial of civil liberties and rights of labor] was conceived by John L. Lewis, dictator of the C.I.O. and political ally of Mr. Roosevelt." The Tribune heading using the word "red" was a smear; the story, the Progressive said, was a lie, and it would donate $1,000 to the Tribune charity fund if it was proven not to be a lie. The Tribune did not reply.

It is not often that a President of the United States calls a paper or a news service a liar, but it has happened more frequently of late. President Roosevelt has denounced Hearst, Roy Howard's United Press and the Chicago Tribune for their lies used for political purposes against him and his party.

On August 26, 1941, the President at his press conference denounced several stories ''as examples of the vicious rumors, distortions of facts, or just plain dirty falsehoods." The cause of the outburst was a Chicago Tribune story signed Walter Trohan appearing in the Washington Times-Herald. This story was in line with the Tribune policy on Lend-Lease.

No American newspaper outside the Hearst and Howard chains has fought labor so viciously as the Tribune. Not satisfied with smearing the C.I.O., distorting the news, using headlines, editorials, bias, perversion against labor, the Tribune also resorted to falsehood. On November 27, 1938, the Tribune had the following sensational headline:

"C.I.O. STRANGLES SAN FRANCISCO, INDUSTRIES DIE"

This, one of the many sensational stories blaming everything on labor, appeared on the front page, continuing to page 4. The main "fact" revealed, after the usual buncombe and propaganda and wild false generalities, was that the situation created by the C.I.O. auto workers was so bad that the Chevrolet plant moved away to Los Angeles.

A.L. Kennedy, manager, industrial department, Oakland Chamber of Commerce, protested this Tribune lie. He wrote :

"In the first place, the Chevrolet automobile assembly plant is not located in San Francisco; it is located in Oakland. In the second place and most important, it did not move to Los Angeles; it is still here. Furthermore, it has never had to operate under strike conditions. ... In fairness to this community a retraction is in order."

After lying on pages 1 and 4, the Tribune printed exactly 2-1/4 inches of Kennedy's protest as a letter to the editor! (January 4, 1939.)

Another favorite subject on which not only the Tribune but many more respected papers lied frequently, is W.P.A. Every reactionary pro-fascist anti-labor paper, and notably Hearst fought civilian aid. The Tribune naturally was not content with posed pictures of workmen leaning on shovels. It came out with two weeks of falsehood of which the following is a typical heading:

"GRAFT, FRAUDS, THEFT;
"W.P.A. REEKS WITH CORRUPTION"

Howard O. Hunter, assistant W.P.A. administrator, invited nineteen Chicago newspapermen to his office and handed them a twenty-five-page statement proving all fourteen stories in the Tribune false. He said the Tribune engaged in "deliberate, vicious, and wholesale lying." The pictures showing lazy men were taken at a private sewer-digging job. One picture had been changed between editions because its background showed many men at work. The Tribune writer had been discharged from W. P. A. for drunkenness. But Hunter did not blame the reporter or Managing Editor Robert M. Lee. He called Publisher McCormick "vicious," and "irrational." Said Hunter:

"Every statement published by the Tribune was found to be false. Ordinarily we would not dignify such accusations made by the Chicago Tribune by going to the trouble of answering them, because any intelligent person in Chicago knows that such charges have been faked and trumped up by the Tribune for years.

"But when column after column is pawned off on the public as news, none of which has any foundation, when columns are used to falsely attack individual unemployed citizens and to misrepresent to the public the work they are doing, it is time that the public is acquainted with the truth surrounding the publication of these articles."

The Tribune, of course, printed not a word about the Hunter documentation, but its brasscheck polisher, the cartoonist Carey Orr, continued to draw pictures slandering W.P.A.

It is significant that in the newspaper profession everyone knows that the Chicago Tribune is the most unfair and least reliable paper in the country, and many trustworthy journalists have openly accused the Tribune of lying.

The Washington press corps is the elite of the profession. Most of its members are highly paid. Some of them have the same financial interests as their employers; some lead a double life, writing the propaganda to suit their owners but retaining a free and liberal mind. The latter are certainly not brasscheck polishers of the Pegler variety; they are not prostitutes. Proof of this was given when Leo Rosten took numerous polls in which these journalists told the truth.

Rosten asked America's leading press corps to vote for the "least fair and reliable" papers in the country, and here is the result in the order of their badnes :

1. The Hearst papers: New York Journal-American, Mirror; Albany Times-Union, Boston Record, American, Advertiser; Baltimore News-Post, American; Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Chicago Herald- American, Milwaukee News-Sentinel, Detroit Times, San Francisco Examiner, Call-Bulletin; Oakland Post- Enquirer, Los Angeles Examiner, Herald-Express; San Antonio Light, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

2. Chicago Tribune.

3. Los Angeles Times.

4. Scripps-Howard chain: New York World-Telegram, Cleveland Press, Pittsburgh Press, San Francisco News, Indianapolis Times, Columbus Citizen, Cincinnati Post, Kentucky Post, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Denver News, Birmingham Post, Memphis Press-Scimitar, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Washington News, Houston Press, Ft. Worth Press, Albuquerque Tribune, El Paso Herald-Post, Evansville Press.

It is to be noted that, of the three big and powerful chains, two are listed (first and fourth worst) and the third, the McCormick-Patterson chain, has its leading paper listed as the worst single paper in America.


Hearst papers -- chief peddlers of Nazi propaganda. -- "Now is Turn of Other Nations to Meet Germany's 'Desire for Peace' -- Rosenberg:; "Italy Glories in Militarism, Says Duce; 'Pacifists the Worst Enemies of Peace'"; "Reich Training Youth to Build Up Air Force but Not for War -- Goering"

Of the ninety-three Washington correspondents who were in this poll, eighty-seven voted the Hearst papers the worst, seventy-one voted against the Chicago Tribune; next were Los Angeles Times with twenty-five votes and the Howard chain with thirteen. The Scripps-Howard papers had once been the leading liberals of the country, and it is true that Roy Howard still permits certain among them to remain so. Not all Howard papers are as filthy (under daily orders) as the papers of the Hearst chain.

Rosten also took a vote on what is the best newspaper in America. Ninety-nine Washington journalists took part and the Chicago Tribune received only one vote. In other words, it was last. But inasmuch as the Tribune has a large staff, and inasmuch as several Tribune writers participated in the vote, it is indeed heartening to note that the Tribune's own men have no illusions about it being a decent newspaper.

The situation was similar with votes affecting the Hearst news services. Although several Hearst men voted, the total which believed the agency was best, more liberal, or more reliable was less than the total of Hearst men participating.

The voting is significant. When the day comes for chains of free newspapers -- a press which will deal fairly with labor, a press which will not be afraid to fight Fascism at home as well as abroad -- they will be able to call upon the newspaper workers, the reporters and, in many instances, the noted columnists who work for the corrupt press but who are not corrupted by either the money they make or the company they have to keep. For every Benjamin De Casseres, Paul Mallon, Westbrook Pegler, Frederic Woltman, William Philip Simms, John O'Donnell, Chesly Manly, whose mouth is black with the polish off the shoes of Hearst and Howard and McCormick and Patterson (as Heywood Broun so often said), there are many better men who may be working for the same corrupters of our free press but who have not been polishing the fast disappearing brass check of the ancient profession.

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CHAPTER III: POISON PEN PEGLER

IT IS the opinion of many persons and organizations that one of the most widely known and read newspaper columnists, Westbrook Pegler, is aiding the Axis rather than the United States in this war; it is a fact that the New York Newspaper Guild, the organization of thousands of Pegler's colleagues, so stated when it sent President Roosevelt a documentation of twelve instances out of Pegler's writings.

It is a fact that newspapers, columnists, radio orators and others who form public opinion have served the Axis propaganda. It is also true that too frequently those who know and who make these charges do not name names. They, therefore, emasculate their own words.

For example, here is the director of the U.S. Conciliation Service, Dr. John S. Steelman, who states:

"Careless recital of the dramatic side of strikes in the press and on the screen and over the radio has given too many people the impression that our war efforts are being held up in a serious way because of willful strife in a major part of American industry. This is a dangerous lie that serves the purpose of the Axis, but serves no good end among us." Dr. Steelman knows the culprits, but he is not in a position to name them. He is aware that Kaltenborn on the radio, Pegler in the newspapers, the entire Hearst and Howard press are those guilty of careless recitals about strikes.

On the other hand here is the statement issued by the conference directors of C.I.O. editors (Washington, April 11, 1942):

"Labor has been subjected to an infamous campaign of misrepresentation, for the purpose of cutting wages, destroying union organization, and in advancing the profits of special interest groups. Most of the daily press has joined in this campaign, together with such radio commentators as H.V. Kaltenborn and others of his type. This anti-labor propaganda campaign, if not directly inspired by Axis agents and American appeasers, at any rate plays their game by striking at national unity and undermining labor morale."

Again, the official organ of the National Maritime Union, The Pilot, states that "Pegler's sales talk has the made-in-Berlin label."

Again, the National Maritime Union, holding its 1943 convention and confirming its pledge to place the winning of the war above everything else, passed a resolution naming the leading fascist organization in the country and the twelve leading fascists, namely: The National Association of Manufacturers, Senators Nye, Wheeler and Tom Connally, the Texas polltaxer of anti-labor bill fame; Representatives Martin Dies, Hamilton Fish and Howard Smith, the notorious Virginia polltaxer of anti-labor bill fame; the great chain publishers, Hearst, Howard, Patterson and McCormick; and the clerical fascist leaders, Father Coughlin and the Rev. Gerald L.K. Smith, and the elements of the Christian Front and Ku Klux Klan which follow them.

No better list could be written. The most powerful force on it is the NAM; the most powerful individuals are the four publishers who in turn employ a hundred brasscheck columnists to spread their American fascist ideologies.


The U.S. Treasury says Pegler is a liar; so does the labor press; but 8,000,000 Americans read his daily poison. -- "PEGLER LIES! -- OLD "POISON PEN" On the Loose Again!; Richmond Times-Dispatch, Roosevelt. Wallace and Pegler; PEGLER LIES; N.Y. Protests Pegler to FDR; ACA Brother, Now In Army Raps Pegler For Lies Against Seamen; AFL-CIO UNIONS SEEK REMOVAL OF PEGLER AS THREAT TO WAR EFFORT; PEGLER IS A LIAR!

The columnists have risen to great power. The editorial page of the newspapers has fallen into disrepute as the American people have realized more and more that it represents not honest opinion but the prostitute views of the paymasters of the editors and publishers -- advertisers, the special interests, the Big Money, the well-known ruling families of the nation. Somehow or other the view spread that there was a certain amount of independence and integrity among the newspaper columnists. This view, of course, is based on the fact that there is a percentage of honest columnists, perhaps a higher percentage than among editorial writers. One may not agree with Walter Lippmann, Dorothy Thompson, Johannes Steel, Samuel Grafton and two or three others, but there is no reason to challenge their bona fides, and a few outstanding names have given columnists in general a good reputation for reliability. The truth is that most columnists inhabit the same gilt-edged bordellos and counting rooms and country clubs as the newspaper owners, and are no better or worse in the history of harlotry.

The best columnist was Heywood Broun, and he was fired by the New York World, the most liberal paper in the country, at the time he defended Sacco and Vanzetti. Just before his death he was fired from the World Telegram by Roy Howard for no ther reason than that he was a liberal columnist, and Howard had swung far towards the true international reaction which in Italy Mussolini named Fascism. Secretary of the Interior Ickes, an old newspaperman himself, quotes Broun saying: "Three or four well-known syndicated columnists wield more influence than the average lawmaker in Washington," and, Ickes adds: "Of all the columnists, Sokolsky is probably the only one who is paid directly and openly by Big Business to act as its spokesman."

Mr. Ickes made a list of columnists, their circulation, and their salaries, and in return for the journalistic material I furnished him in his debate with Frank Gannett on the freedom (and integrity) of the press, I am helping myself to his table (from his book, America's House of Lords, page 96):



Broun, Carter and Johnson have died since this list was made out. Pegler has gotten into 120 newspapers with 8,000,000 circulation and his salary from Howard, $25,000, is augmented by half of the proceeds of syndication rights, giving him a total of $65,000.

In this list the only great liberal was Broun. Miss Thompson and Mr. Lippmann are fair weather liberals, neither having the courage to break a lance or lose an eye in the war against American reaction although both are ardent fighters against Faraway Fascism. Pearson takes no part in politics -- Allen is in the army. Walter Winchell is the most syndicated of all columnists but Mr. Ickes chose to exclude him, not realizing perhaps that Winchell does devote a part of his gossip columns to political, social and other matters, which makes him a power in this country.

The list then shows: Carter, a notorious labor-baiter who was put off the air for years on the protest of unions and who, after promising to behave, still smears organized labor frequently; Clapper, who is probably too scared of his job with Roy Howard to be the liberal his friends say he was personally; Kent, a typical servant of the special interests; Lawrence, one of the worst of reactionaries; Paul Mallon, who has been denounced as a liar by Mr. Ickes (See Time, Apri1 24, 1939) and who is a typical Hearstling; Sokolsky, exposed by the La Follette Committee as a NAM agent; Mark Sullivan, another spokesman for Big Money; Lippmann and Miss Thompson and Westbrook Pegler.

It can fairly be said that the two columnists who have the most influence in the country are Lippmann and Pegler: Lippmann influences all men of intelligence, Pegler is the monitor of the morons. Lippmann has one of the best minds in America, Pegler is a mental hoodlum. He has absolutely no education, no culture, no literary quality, no intelligence, no knowledge of economics, no knowledge of most of the things he writes about outside sports and plain news sensations; he is, in short, a sort of glorified moron himself and, therefore, so successful in finding an audience of eight million who believe in not only his daily propaganda but in the numerous lies which he tells without any apparent knowledge that he is lying.

U.S. TREASURY EXPOSES A PEGLER LIE

The use of the colossal lie has been acclaimed by Hitler as a fascist method. Apparently the Peglerian mind, which was capable of advocating lynching years ago, must now employ a Nazi trick in the campaign against the welfare of the American people. Everything the Roosevelt administration has done has been attacked by Pegler for the simple reason (as Broun disclosed) that "he was bitten by an income tax return," and in January, 1943, Pegler engaged in falsehood in order to smear the government.

Exhibit A: In his papers of January 2 Pegler wrote a column beginning: "Mr. Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury, is sensitive to aspersions on the ethics and fairness of his income tax reviewers, who are, as has been observed before, masters of a repertoire of sly and shady shyster tricks of interpretation, having the color if not the odor, of legality." This statement, like some 90 per cent of all Pegler statements, is not a matter of fact, nor a matter of opinion, but a matter of prejudice and bias, unfair enough to violate the code of ethics of journalism, under which all Pegler papers are supposed to operate.

The Pegler column then continues: "We have before us a plain case of larceny from millions of citizens of all income brackets committed by the Treasury, apparently with the knowledge and approval of Secretary Morgenthau and certainly on his responsibility."

If this statement is true, those accused of larceny should be in jail. If this statement is untrue, then the person who makes it is spreading a falsehood. However, since the statement is directed against a government official, the maker cannot apparently be sued for libel.

The Pegler statement continues: "In passing the 5 per cent victory tax, Congress said unmistakably that it was to be a tax on 1943 income. Yet, the Treasury Department, in violation of the will and intent of Congress, and of the law, has usurped the Congressional legislative power and decided that all pay checks ... delivered after midnight Thursday, shall be taxable at 5 per cent even though most or all of the money was earned before the first of the year.

"In simple words, the Treasury decided to steal this money from the people and to make the employers parties to the theft by compelling them to withhold the tax and turn it in.

"Theft is the only word for it. It is a bold and cynical defiance of law and morality. ..." Next paragraphs contain phrases : "amount ... stolen," "victims of larceny," "swipe the dough," and "not taxation but larceny."

Exhibit B: Pegler column, January 19, began: "Apparently more in sorrowful patience with a miserable sinner than in mighty anger, the Treasury Department sends me Press Service Bulletin No. 34-80, which purports to put me in error in accusing the department of plain larceny in its plan to collect the 5 per cent tax on individual income earned in 1942.

"Taking something that belongs to someone else ... is stealing, and in violation of a well known commandment, and as done by the Treasury Department of the U.S.A. is a bad example to the people who might reasonably decide to take up stealing as a regular line of work and get into serious trouble, in all in innocence. ... "

It is the general rule of departments of the U.S. Government to ignore misstatements and falsehood. However, this was a matter affecting millions of people, an urgent matter, and a correction was necessary. Therefore the Treasury had to expose Pegler as a liar. It sent the following letter to Pegler's syndicate:

"TREASURY DEPARTMENT

"Washington

January 26, 1943

"Mr. George V. Carlin, Manager,

"United Feature Syndicate, Inc.,

"220 East 42nd Street, New York.

"Dear Mr. Carlin:

"I have just read Westbrook Pegler's column in today's Washington Daily News, the second in which he has given circulation to serious misinformation with respect to the Victory Tax and has made grave charges against the Treasury Department.

"Whatever Mr. Pegler's motives may be, his repetition of erroneous assertions is likely to spread confusion in the minds of taxpayers and may seriously interfere with the collection of wartime taxes.

"Because the facts in this connection have been brought to Mr. Pegler's attention by telephone and letter following the publication of his first column on the subject in the News of Jan. 1, I am writing to demand, in behalf of the Treasury Department, that a copy of this letter be made available to all of your subscribers who receive the Pegler column.

"Mr. Pegler in both instances accuses the Treasury Department of 'theft' and 'larceny' because the withholding tax out of which the Victory tax will be paid was applied to some wages earned at the end of 1942 but paid early this year. He argued that withholding should have been applied only against wages earned in 1943.

"I feel warranted, therefore, in asking those newspapers which print this column to present their readers the simple facts which he has insisted on distorting.

"The second paragraph of today's column, discussing the authority under which the tax is collected, contains a complete misstatement of fact in the sentence, 'It does not say that this tax shall be collected on any income occurring before December 31.' On the contrary, the section of the statute covering the withholding sets forth very clearly, 'The provisions of this section shall take effect on January 1, 1943, and shall be applicable to all wages ... paid on or after such date.' The law makes the time of payment the test -- not the time during which the wage was earned.

"Any inspection of this portion of the Revenue Act, or any attempt to have checked its application with the Bureau of Internal Revenue, would have shown Mr. Pegler that the total amounts collected through the withholding tax will be completely credited against such individual's Victory Tax liability at the end of this year. As a result, there cannot possibly be any question of 'theft' from any taxpayer of a portion of income not intended to be covered by Congress.

"In spite of explanations, Mr. Pegler also has persisted in presenting as synonymous a tax and a method of tax collection. Twice in today's column he refers to the 'withholding or Victory tax.' The fact is that the Victory tax will be due on March 15, 1944, on all income other than capital gains and interest from tax-exempt securities, much of that income not now being subjected to the withholding provisions of the law.

"I hope that by the distribution of this letter you will be able to undo some of the harm that has undoubtedly been done by Mr. Pegler's persistent misrepresentation.

"(Signed) CHARLES SCHWARZ,

"Director of Public Relations,

"Treasury Department, Washington, D.C."

There is not a newspaperman in America who does not know that Pegler wilfully and persistently misrepresents. But no newspaper likes to have itself and its most cherished columnist called a liar in public, and the 120 newspapers which were asked by the U.S. Treasury to publish its condemnation of Pegler either suppressed the letter, killed parts of it, or buried parts of it in that graveyard of journalistic skullduggery and hypocrisy, the "Letters to the Editor" department.

In the document above the three paragraphs to which attention is especially called are those suppressed by the Los Angeles Times, the most notorious anti-labor paper in the country.

A few newspapers are deserving of some credit: the Treasury informs the present writer that it has received a few letters from editors saying that upon reading Pegler's columns on the Victory Tax they realized he was lying and they did not run the stuff those two days. But not one newspaper threw Pegler out because of his persistent misrepresentations.

So long as Pegler makes it his main business to attack labor, liberals, the New Deal, he remains the leading columnist of our press, whose editors are not morons or hoodlums but who are on the contrary very smart gentlemen who know how to use a panderer to that sort of mind.

PEGLER AS A FASCIST STOOGE

Pegler answers every description of a perfect fascist journalist. In 1933, when he went from sports to columning, the first piece he wrote was in favor of lynching. There followed a consultation with Roy Howard, and it was decided to hold the pro-lynching column up. However, it was run within the week, and the blame must be shared equally by the two hoodlum-minded journalists.

Incidentally, the lynching in question was of white men in San Jose, California. However, since then Pegler has come out against the Anti-Lynching Bill and he has repeatedly attacked the Negro people.

September 15, 1940, the Guild Reporter, official organ of newspapermen, reported that James P. Kirby, Cleveland Press unit, "has hurled the lie back at Westbrook Pegler ... giving documentary proof of his charges." Said Kirby: "To Mr. Pegler's denial that he defended lynching I quote from his column of December 13, 1933, in which he said: 'As one of the rabble, I will admit that I said fine, that is swell, when the papers came up that recent day telling of the lynching of two men who killed the young fellow in California, and I haven't changed my mind yet.'"

Pegler topped his pro-lynching column with a pro-murder column March 31, 1942. Referring to a dirty smear of Interior Secretary Ickes by a Bridgeport (Conn.) paper, Pegler wrote: "I don't blame Ickes for resenting the editorial but I do insist that he should have gone right up to Bridgeport, sought out the editor and shot him dead. Or he might have knocked his head off with a ball-bat. I say this seriously. ... Had Ickes killed the editor he would have performed a valuable service for the community in general and for the press in particular...."


Poison Pen Pegler -- Pegler likes lynching, too. -- New York World-Telegram, New York, Wednesday, December 18, 1933 -- Fair Enough by WESTBROOK PEGLER: As one member of the rabble, I will admit that I said "Fine, that is swell," when the papers came up that recent day, telling of the lynching of the two men who killed the young fellow in California, and that I haven't changed my mind yet for all the storm of right-mindedness which has blown up since. I know how storms of right-mindedness are made.

For years Pegler has smeared Mr. Ickes in revenge for Mr. Ickes' statement that "Pegler is less discriminating than [Hugh] Johnson, and much more irresponsible." Mr. lckes had also said that Pegler "Jumps from false premises to falser conclusions." Also, that "Pegler ... is the Mrs. Dilling of columnists. When invective and vituperation fail him, he flatteringly imitates Colonel McCormick by calling the object of his diatribes a 'communist.' ... According to Pegler's code that man is a 'communist' whom he does not like personally or with whose political views he is not in accord. Luckily, few columnists are as unstable in their thinking."

However, Mr. Ickes did not take Pegler's advice to commit a common murder. But he did write to the Bridgeport publisher (instead of suing him for slander). Mr. Ickes' letter in full follows:

"Mr. Robert M. Sperry,

"Publisher, Bridgeport Life.

"A man whom I do not know has sent to me a tear sheet from your issue of Saturday, July 26, 1941. My correspondent speaks of your 'filthy mind and paper' and he also seems to think that you are a coward. Undoubtedly, he is right on all scores. The impression seems to be that the filth in this editorial surged up from the cesspool that passes with you for a mind. However, it doesn't much matter whether you actually wrote the thing or not; as a publisher you are responsible.

"I don't know you and I had never heard of you until this letter came. Now, although I still have never met you, I feel that I know you very well as a cowardly, skulking cur. I can see you in my mind's eye eating your own vomit with relish but enjoying even more the savor of the excrement in the pigsty in which you root for choice morsels. It is, undoubtedly, perfectly natural for you to think the putrid thoughts which you naturally express in the language of the gutter.

"Very truly yours,

"HAROLD ICKES"

The Sperry editorial which caused this reply from Ickes is unprintable.

Much more important, however, than Pegler's lie about the Victory Tax, or Pegler's endorsement of lynching, or even the reprint of Pegler anti-labor propaganda by notorious fascist organizations, such as the Associated Industries of Cleveland, is the Pegler line of war thinking which caused the New York Newspaper Guild to protest.

Between June, 1941, and December 7, 1942, Pegler expressed the hope that Germany and Russia would exterminate each other. It is true that when Pegler covered the Olympic Games in Germany in 1936 he wrote several columns against Hitler, but as between Germany and Russia, Pegler did not hide his preference for the former. However, America was not in the war when Pegler wrote he feared the liberal New Deal and the few gains labor had made under it more than he feared Hitler. But since December 7, Pegler has followed the line which Director of Facts and Figures MacLeish denounced before the publishers' convention as defeatism and divisionism. In attacking America's Allies, in attacking labor, in attacking the Negroes, Pegler has done what Hitler predicted would aid his propaganda in America.

The New York Newspaper Guild, which upholds the Broun tradition, on May 21, 1942, acting on information that Pegler was appearing in the official Army publication, Stars and Stripes, protested to the Commander-in- Chief, President Roosevelt. The Guild statement said:

"The Newspaper Guild of New York membership on May 13 urged discontinuance of publication of a column by Westbrook Pegler ... in Stars and Stripes. ...

"Calling the attention of President Roosevelt to a report that Pegler was among the contributors to this soldier paper, the Guild charged that this columnist had since December 7 cast doubt on the wisdom of a United Nations victory, and by his writings in domestic newspapers had served the cause of disunity. Copies of the resolutions were directed to Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, Mr. Philip Murray and Mr. William Green."

The Guild resolution said in part:

"As citizens, as working newspapermen, and as trade unionists concerned with the ethics of our profession, with the patriotic duty to support the war effort, and conscious of the obligation of a union of newspapermen to keep up morale, the Newspaper Guild of New York's membership lodges this protest against continued publication of Mr. Pegler's articles intended for American soldiers facing Hitler across the English Channel.

"Mr. Pegler has actually raised a question as to whether a victory of the United Nations against the Fascist Axis would be worthwhile. ... Mr. Pegler by his written word since December 7 has given circulation to opinions, views and distortions of fact which would result in setting one group of people against other groups instead of knitting all the people more firmly together for the united war effort essential to the conduct of the war.

"In support of this appeal, and in justification of the assertions involving Mr. Pegler, the Guild appends sample exhibitions of his written words since December
7:
"December 8, 1941. Pegler ... warns: 'We all know that most of the arguments that American boys would not be sent to a foreign war were campaign trickery.'

"December 11. Pegler accuses the government of treachery; 'Dealing off the bottom of the deck, the national government betrayed every worker in the country in the decision of the packed arbitration board to grant Lewis the closed shop in the so-called captive mines. ... The whole transaction reeked of treachery.'

"December 17. Casts doubts on the aims of our Allies: 'Our people are not going to believe that our gallant Allies of Russia are fighting for the four freedoms. ...'

"January 6, 1942. Casts doubt on our own aims and discourages cooperation between capital and labor. 'The [automotive] industry is sure to be socialized now and God only knows who will get it when the war is over, but the odds are that it will never be turned back to the stockholders. ...'

"January 22. Unity ... disastrous: 'A unified or combined organization of the C.I.O. and the A. F. of L. under the present laws and under the leadership of any of the men now prominent in union politics would be disastrous to every American worker."

"January 29. Charges President is moving toward totalitarian state: 'The President is using the bosses of the A. F. of L. and C.I.O. for his own political purposes which plainly and irresistibly tend toward a totalitarian state. ...'

"February 18. He tends to tear down our support of an ally; 'They [the Russians] are the most practical patriots of all, fighting for Russia only, and it is inconceivable that they would prolong the war a single hour beyond some point at which they decided that a truce or peace would best serve the interests of Soviet Russia.'

"[March. Pegler on vacation.]

"April 4. He again attempts to divide our own people: 'The bitter fact is that the whole American people ... are never allowed to forget that they are being used to create a new internal force, governed by a few personalities who are contributing nothing to the war, which plans to inherit the government after the war is won.'

"May 1. Divisionist attempt: 'If our side wins the war, Russia will plan the peace of the European continent, and on the basis of all Russia's past performances we can confidently assume that in Germany it will be a peace not much different from that which Hitler has imposed on Poland. ...'

"May 5. Doubts own war efforts: 'The obliteration of Germany ... would be a drastic way of preserving civilization, but the only question is whether the real war aim of the U.S. justifies the only positive means of securing that aim.'

"May 13. Cynicism toward our own democratic institutions: 'The Senate is our Reichstag. ... The Senate is protecting a gigantic political racket. ... The Senate is a very arrogant organization, blown up with pomposity and indifferent to the will and interest of the people."

Ever since this protest was filed Mr. Pegler concentrated on baiting labor. In this way he continues to be of service to the divisionists.

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CHAPTER IV: WALLACE'S SUPPRESSED SPEECH

"The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies, where its interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing." -- The Letters of Henry Adams, Vol. II, p. 99.

IF THE American press were at least frank about its being a commercial institution, as many of its leaders and owners, notably William Allen White, have admitted, then one of the main indictments against it would fall flat on the ground: the indictment of hypocrisy. When Mr. White said that journalism was once a profession, "a noble calling; now it is an 8 per cent investment and an industry," none of the hundreds of commercialized publishers would agree with him. If, however, the American Newspaper Publishers Association (the Lords of the Press) were to come out openly with a statement that it was in business for profits and that the code of ethics (adopted by the editors, not owners) in 1923 was a dead letter, since it has never been honored, the atmosphere would at least be cleared of the greatest piece of hypocrisy in the American panorama.

Of all the hypocrisies of American journalism the greatest is the claim of a free press, coupled with a barrage of editorials, news stories, cartoons and orations deriding the dictator countries for the manner in which their newspapers follow the orders, wishes, and whims of the ruling party. But it is a fact that about 95 per cent -- perhaps it is 98 per cent or even 99 per cent -- of the American press is also dictated to, and also follows the wishes of a superior power, which Henry Adams has named the "monied system."

The commercial press, in another of its brazen hypocritical proclamations, points with pride to the fact that it is free because it upholds a free system in which there are two political parties. But there is probably not one member of the A.N.P.A. who does not know that the Republican and Democratic parties both feed out of the same bag provided by the monied system, and that the same persons frequently subscribe funds to both major parties, and that where the list frequently differs the same interests are represented. They know this very well, and they also know very well that the press has never given honest news coverage to the formation, platform and campaign of any third party which was independent enough not to feed on the same money.

Furthermore, the A.N.P.A. knows that where there is a choice between the two parties, when one is more liberal than the other, when one gives the majority of the American people (labor) a new deal or a square deal or a better deal, the press turns against that party to the extent of 85 to 95 per cent. If one leaves out of the accounting certain rock bound papers, such as the rock ribbed southern Democrats and the granite ribbed Vermonters, then the tally for the various Roosevelt campaigns has shown that he was attacked, abused, unsupported by 85 to 95 per cent of the press, and that he was even suppressed in certain big papers including the Chicago Tribune. Moreover, all this was done without an official order from a fascist dictator. It was not quite 100 per cent; and so we might say that although we have no press dictator as in fascist countries, the American press is already about 85 to 95 per cent totalitarian on certain issues.

In my opinion this is a fair estimate. There are various polls and reliable estimates and weekly and monthly surveys on the editorial viewpoints of the American press. They show divided opinion on many things. But when the issue is the general welfare of the many against the increased profits of the few, when it is liberty and democracy versus special privilege, the American press is so unanimously on the side of the latter that it can be said that without being dictated to by a fascist dictator it follows the line of native American Fascism.

There is no doubt but that the most important fascist force in the nation is the National Association of Manufacturers, since this organization of the 9,000 biggest businesses is in the control of only 207 powerful men who use it for anti-social purposes. In the year 1935 the La Follette Committee's report said, "the NAM had opposed the principal legislative measures sponsored by the national administration ... National Labor Relations Act [the Wagner Act, the Magna Carta of labor, which the NAM is still trying to have repealed or emasculated], Social Security Act, the Banking Act, the Utility Holding Company Act. ..." This fact alone does not show the fascist ideology of the NAM, but it does show that this most powerful lobby in Washington worked against every piece of legislation aiding and protecting the people of the country, and worked for special privilege and profits.

Any test of the alignment on these same measures will show that the press was more than 50 per cent for the program of the NAM, in some cases 98 per cent. Between 1935 and 1939, when the Global War broke out, the New York Times ran an average of 12 editorials a year in favor of the NAM policy of repealing or amending and hamstringing the Wagner Act, and more venal papers were even worse. Of course, no one wrote or phoned Sulzberger of the Times, McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Hearst and Mr. Howard and the other imposing reactionaries and gave them instructions to attack the Wagner Act, or the Social Security Act or, indeed, any piece of legislation of the Roosevelt administration which disinterested persons favored and which favored the general welfare. Neither an American Mussolini nor the publicity department of the NAM took any action, and yet the great newspaper chains which enslave the American mind all rattled with the uniform sound which Mussolini once described as so pleasing to his journalistic-dictatorial ears.

Let us consider some examples of the behavior of the American press in handling and suppressing big news stories. They will show that it is not necessary to have a fascist dictator in our Country to get totalitarianism -- or at least 85 to 95 per cent of it -- in the press. Here are a few instances.

It would be the greatest crime in the history of civilization to ask our men to give their arms and their legs, their eyes, their health and their lives for a cause that did not justify it. There is today a cause which justifies the risk and the sacrifice: it is the cause of destroying Fascism, which is the enemy of the good life. Vice President Henry Wallace realized this, and in the great days of confusion of May, 1942, he delivered his now famous speech on The Century of the Common Man.

Mr. Wallace said that this was a war between a free world and a slave world. This war is part of the "march of freedom of the past 150 years." This war is "a people's revolution" taking up where the "American Revolution of 1775, the French Revolution of 1792, the Latin American revolutions of the Bolivarian era, the German Revolution of 1848 and the Russian Revolution of 1917" left off.

"Everywhere the common people are on the march," proclaimed Mr. Wallace.

The Vice President is also aware of the profits in Fascism for the few. He said: "The demagogue is the curse of the modern world, and of all the demagogues the worst are those financed by well-meaning wealthy men who sincerely believe that their wealth is likely to be safer if they can hire men with political 'it' to change the sign posts and lure the people back into slavery of the most degraded kind."

Mr. Wallace also advocated the Four Freedoms, the last two being Freedom from Fear and Freedom from Want. These are of course the economic freedoms, and since they imply a better world for the many they have scared the living pocketbooks out of the few.

The most important fact of all about the Wallace speech is that it was the big declaration of the war program of the nation, and as such was entitled to most of the front page of every honest newspaper from coast to coast.

Actually it was about 95 per cent suppressed and distorted. A dozen liberal newspapers ran the speech in full, some a week or two late when public pressure demanded it. In the nation's capital the speech was so badly reported that an industrial Concern (Latex Corp.) paid to have it inserted as an ad. (We have said much about the evils of advertising; this is a rare instance of its social value.) In the metropolis where the speech was heard over the radio, only one paper, PM, ran the text. Only PM headlined the great statement on the war -- the war between a slave world and a free world; the war as a continuation of the American and other revolutions for the rights of all people. This is how the metropolitan press handled the story:

Howard's World-Telegram; one-third column; "Wallace Sees Possibility of Raid on Alaska."

Hearst's Mirror; one-half column; "Axis May Soon Hit at Alaska, Says Wallace."

Hearst's Journal-American; one-quarter column; "Attack on Alaska Seen by Wallace."

Patterson's News; two-thirds of a column; "Wallace Sees Alaska Target of Jap Attack."

These are four papers owned by men who favored appeasing Japan and who published Nazi and Italian fascist propaganda in their papers ever since 1922; they are three of the four publishers (the other is McCormick of the Chicago Tribune) named as suspects following the MacLeish speech before the publishers' New York convention in which he charged treason and near-treason in the press.

The anti-fascist press did little better. The Post ran one-third of a column, mostly on Alaska; the Times ran four-fifths of a column, with Alaska in the head and lead; the Herald Tribune ran one and one-half columns with an Alaska lead but mentioned the free world theme; the Brooklyn Eagle ran one-half column on Alaska.

An apologist for the press is Raymond Clapper, Howard columnist, who while praising Wallace suggested that the speech "was lost in the shuffle of the news desks of the country, like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. ... Every newspaper office and press association desk muffs a play now and then. Instead of there having been a plot to suppress this most significant address, I suspect that most newspapermen who handled it are kicking themselves for having missed the story. I go into this because there are people who can't see anything around newspaper offices but dark suppression plots. They mistake a muffed play for sinister intent."

This is nonsense, if not worse. The Vice-President's office sent out "hold-for-release" copies days earlier. If Clapper were not always a paid apologist for Roy Howard and his venal papers his present apology might sound better.

The suppression of the speech (and publication of the Alaska paragraph cannot support a claim the story was reported) was followed immediately by a series of apologies by the brasscheck writers of the Clapper type, and from June, 1942, to date by a series of attacks on Wallace and his ideas which reached a high point in the National Association of Manufacturers' convention of December, 1942. The attack still continues. It must be noted that the very newspapers which suppressed the news are the leaders in attacking the views.

It can be said factually that the vast majority of our newspapers have sought to poison the public mind against the Wallace declarations. In doing so they have also degraded our war aims. All our native fascist, near-fascist, anti-labor and reactionary columnists, headed by Westbrook Pegler, joined all the corrupt editorial writers and radio speakers who until this day continue the NAM propaganda campaign against the Century of the Common Man. Here are some samples of the attack:

WESTBROOK PEGLER (a fair sample of the illiterate writings of a hoodlum mentality):

"This nonsense about the war aims of the United States is beginning to get out of control, so, before we become a lot of confirmed political hopheads walking around in a dream of international and interracial fellowship and love, it should be stated with such force as to snap us out of our daze that the fighters and people of the United States are at war for the sole purpose of defending this country from a combination of enemies who touched off the fight by a treacherous attack under cover of protestations of friendship."

PAUL MALLON (Hearst service): used his May 26 column to sneer at Wallace.

"HEPTISAX" (Rodney Gilbert) in his New York Herald Tribune column said Wallace's speech suggested "asinine world improvement"; he called it "this perambulating Iowa pipe dream." The peace of the Common man, Heptisax said, was propaganda. Finally the writer for the $50,000,000 paper showed his disgust for both ideas of education and milk for the common people.

FRANK R. KENT (Baltimore Sun) wrote:

"The strenuous effort to make Vice President Wallace into a superman has been pushed just a little too far. ... The overpraise brought the inevitable reaction. Some of his associates in the Senate have begun to laugh. ...The radicals also went into hysterics about it [the Wallace speech]. ... The whole thing has become ridiculous. ... "

New Orleans Item (editorial) said it favored education and milk for all but declared this is visionary and impossible.

"Who," it asked, "would pay the bills for educating, feeding and making democrats of all these mixed and myriad breeds ... if we conformed to the Wallace dream?"

New York Daily News (editorial) decided that Wallace was "vague," that his idea was "a lovely thing to talk about and to dream about," but "we can assure the talkers and the dreamers, however, that when and if they try to bring these dreams into cold, solid reality after the war, they will fan up a fight in this country which will make the recent isolationist-interventionist fight look like a mere warm-up."

Chicago Tribune suppressed the Wallace speech, ignored it editorially, but referred to Wallace once as "mystic -- engaged in dreams."

Arizona Daily Star, Tucson:

Wallace's Suppressed Speech

"Will such a plan embracing racial equality and removal of our tariff and immigration barriers work out? Will the people of America support a people's revolution? But even more than that Mr. Wallace and his followers will probably find out that such a plan will lead to a 'people's revolution' all right, but not the kind he has in mind."

LYNN LANDRUM, The Dallas News' own Pegler:

"You supposed you were really fighting to keep things the way they are in the United States instead of proposing any bloody crusade to ram freedom down the throats of the rest of the world."

San Diego Union-Tribune: "Wallace's speech sounds wonderful but, insofar as its being practical is concerned, it is so much oratorical flapdoodle."

"DING" (J.N. Darling, cartoonist; New York Herald Tribune, Des Moines Register) drew a vicious cartoon making fun of Wallace. So many readers protested that Darling had to write a letter of apology (Register, July 1). Darling spends most of his time doing anti-labor cartoons.

HARRY M. BEARDSLEY, Chicago Daily News, wrote a three-column attack on the Wallace speech (June 5.)

THOMAS F. WO0DLOCK, clerico-fascist columnist, and RAYMOND MOLEY, New Deal renegade, both wrote their columns in the Wall Street Journal in opposition to Wallace, Welles, Milo Perkins and others who have expressed idealism for the coming peace, rather than hope for big business triumphs. Editorially the Wall Street Journal said (June 6) that whereas it approved the Atlantic Charter, it opposed "additional promises so far reaching as to be either meaningless or dangerous." These included "demanding higher social and economic standards." Then Wall Street's speaker came across with a brand new idea: "There are not four but five freedoms for which the war must be fought. The fifth is the freedom of any people to reject the first four." (In other words, freedom not to have freedom, which equals Fascism.)

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CHAPTER V: THE PRESS AND WAR PROFITEERS

No PRESS and propaganda department of a fascist regime could be more successful than is the American self- styled free press in doing the double job of attacking labor while suppressing the news of the real traitors and saboteurs of the great Global War production effort.

The profit system, Free Enterprise, are the great golden calves and sacred bulls of the American press. It is now certain that the editorials it published after the Munitions Committee disclosed corruption for profit in the World War and the support it gave Mr. Bernard M. Baruch who published his program entitled "Take the Profits Out of War" were also items for the dossier of journalistic hypocrisy. Even if all the lies and biased reports against labor in this war were fair and true they would not have a fraction of the importance that the treason has which was committed by certain corporations and industries before and after Pearl Harbor -- treason for profits protected by the press. Yet the history of our wartime journalism shows clearly two trends: one of slander, libel and daily attack on labor; the other defense and whitewash of the elements which have committed treason for money: the war profit makers.

The documentary evidence of this treason can be found in the reports made either to government departments and agencies or by Congressional committees. Notable are the reports of Thurman Arnold, assistant attorney general, the Tolan Committee, the Bone patents investigation, the several and most important Truman Committee reports. Together they indict General Motors, the DuPonts, Chrysler, Ford, Aluminum Corporation, the Mellons, Standard Oil and in short the elite of big business of what may be termed industrial treason. In fact it was Senator Truman who said "This is treason" when testimony before him showed that the synthetic rubber cartel agreements between Standard Oil and I.G. Farben had prevented the manufacture of rubber in our country.

Only two important newspapers headlined the treason charge. The January, 1942, report of the Special Senate Committee Investigating National Defense named names, notably Bethlehem Steel and Aluminum Corporation, but in Chicago the Tribune and the Hearst Herald-American suppressed them. The report was official and could not be ignored. Nevertheless the most important paper in the country, the New York Times, suppressed the names of General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, Alcoa, Bethlehem Steel, these being among its advertisers.

The Tolan House Committee report, also suppressed or played down or buried, said:

"The testimony before the committee was almost universal that production to date has been a failure, measured against the available facilities and the visible needs for military purposes.

"The largest and most efficient manufacturing facilities are not being used in the armament effort. At the same time, the system of contract awards in effect excludes from production the facilities of tens of thousands of small producers. As a result, the mass production of critical military materials is awaiting, to a considerable extent, the completion of new plants. Thus, when speed in production is vital to the nation, the potentially greatest arsenals stand unused and their unemployed workers are waiting for new plants to open. The battles of today cannot be waged with deliveries from the plants of tomorrow."

Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold's report to Congress said in part:

"Looking back over 10 months of defense effort we can now see how much it has been hampered by the attitude of powerful private groups dominating basic industries who have feared to expand their production because expansion would endanger their future control of industry. These groups have been afraid to develop new production themselves. They have been afraid to let others come into the field."

The worst criminal of all was the auto industry. It simply had insisted on pleasure cars as usual; it had promised conversion of some plants but even after Pearl Harbor it was found that 80% of the industry was still manufacturing civilian cars. In mid-January, 1942, I asked leaders of the industry and leading members of Congress: "Can the present management of the automobile industry be relied on to convert the industry to a full war effort? Do you think the government should take over? What limit would you set before demanding that the government step in?" Among the replies, all favoring government operation, was the following from George Addes, international secretary-treasurer of United Automobile Workers and member of the seven- man board set up under Knudsen's Office of Production Management to "advise" on conversion of auto plants:

"From the attitude conveyed in the recent conferences held in Washington between labor, industry and government, industry cannot be relied upon to convert its facilities to full war effort unless government or the President of the United States issues an executive order to that effect.

"On that matter of government taking over industries, it is my thought that government should harness or conscript industry as it has harnessed or conscripted labor, if management refuses to have its facilities converted and under way within the next thirty or sixty days. It is quite evident that labor has sacrificed far more than industry and will no doubt continue to make those sacrifices for the duration."

The fact remains that the auto industry, the oil industry, the aluminum industry, the steel industry; and many great corporations sabotaged America before and after Pearl Harbor, and that crime continued up to the moment of writing. Here are some of the highlights of what profiteering, also known as Free Enterprise, did to undermine the war against Fascism:

SCANDAL IN AVIATION

Before Pearl Harbor the biggest scandal was in aviation. The government in 1940 had awarded $85,000,000 for 4,000 planes, but Secretary Stimson said only thirty-three planes had been produced by Aug. 9, 1940. Knudsen, to the contrary, said that 45% of the Army and 75% of the Navy plane funds had been awarded. What was the truth? The truth was there were no planes. The "awards" had been made, but the aviation firms, many dominated by Knudsen's General Motors, refused to take the contracts. There were awards, but no planes. "Only a thin verbal partition separated him [Knudsen] from falsehood," concluded I.F. Stone in his book, Business As Usual.

Why were almost no planes built in 1940? Because Big Business staged the greatest financial sit-down in American history and the newspapers, busy shouting against labor, suppressed all mention of it. For six months, from May to October, 1940, there was a sit-down of money and industry, aviation being used as a "front" by Big Business to break the President's plan (even at the cost of national safety) and get special tax privileges on defense contracts. "Unlike the strike of labor," says Stone, "the sit-down strike of capital in the summer of 1940 had the support of the nation's great newspapers, of the War and Navy Departments, and of the new Defense Commission." The notorious merchants of death, the DuPonts, are a major factor in aviation; DuPonts control General Motors; General Motors' Knudsen refused to break the aviation sit-down, but fooled the American people with a tricky statement about "awards" for planes.

Curiously enough, in World War I the industry which came closest to committing treason was the auto industry. Auto companies actually refused in the last half of 1918 to cut production to 25% of 1917. Bernard Baruch's war industries board threatened to seize their coal and iron but the war ended before the showdown.

According to Stone, Knudsen's General Motors in this war has again sabotaged defense. In 1940 its defense production was only 3-1/2%; in the first quarter of 1941 only 8%. Why the failure? Because producing defense goods -- and General Motors had then the second largest order in America, next to Bethlehem -- meant building new plants, and General Motors preferred instead to hog the orders and produce civilian autos. At the same time it put a full page ad in the papers saying it would not produce new models in 1943. But it went ahead with new models for 1942.

Curtiss-Wright and Hitler. At the moment of writing Senator Truman's latest report against the Curtiss-Wright company is a national sensation. But among the little known facts is the Munitions Investigation report showing that Curtiss-Wright is the actual originator of the Stuka bombing idea and that when Hitler came into power Curtiss Wright joined the DuPonts, Pratt & Whitney, and others in secretly arming Naziism for world conquest. The evidence includes a letter sent in January, 1934, by the president of Curtiss Wright to his salesmen in foreign lands. It says:

"We have been nosing around in the bureau in Washington and find that they hold as most strictly confidential their divebombing tactics, and procedure, and they frown upon our even mentioning dive-bombing in connection with the Hawks, or any other airplanes to any foreign powers.

"It is also unwise and unethical at this time, and probably for some time to come, for us to indicate that we know anything about the technique and tactics of dive-bombing.

"It may be all right ... to put on a dive-bombing show, to show the strength of the airplanes -- but to refer in contracts to dive-bombing or endeavor to teach dive-bombing is what I am cautioning against doing."

This was an open order to the salesmen of Curtiss Wright planes to put on shows of dive-bombing and let foreign nations, including Hitler-Germany, learn the secrets which were being guarded by the Navy Department, which had invented the technique before Hitler came into power. The Curtiss Wright Company committed the equivalent of an act of treason in order to sell its airplanes abroad. It helped make Hitler.

"It is apparent," reads the Senate report, "that American aviation companies did their part to assist Germany's air armament. It seems apparent also that there was not an adequate check on the foreign shipments by ... the War and Navy Departments."

The first six months in 1933 the sales figures took a tremendous jump to $1,445,000. Pratt & Whitney was exposed as one of the largest smugglers of planes to Hitler. The Nye report then states that by May, 1934, a year after Hitler took over, he had bought parts for making 2,500 modern bombing and fighting planes chiefly from Pratt & Whitney, Curtiss Wright and Douglas Aircraft. He also got planes from Vickers and from Armstrong-Sidley, in England, and was already rated "superior in the air to France, Russia, England or any other European power."

Anaconda. One of the worst cases in American history of a corporation "defrauding the government and endangering the lives of American soldiers," was exposed in Attorney General Biddle's indictment of Anaconda Wire & Cable Co., whose Marion, Indiana, branch had sold the United States $6,000,000 worth of telephone wire and cable for war purposes, and had previously sold the Russian government wire which was 50% defective and which no doubt resulted in the death of many soldiers.

One newspaper (the Milwaukee Journal) suggested that the death penalty for corporation heads responsible for sabotaging the war should be instituted. The newspapers, generally speaking, did their best to bury the Anaconda scandal. It broke about New Year's Day, and it is the custom of the newspapers -- one of their most corrupt customs -- to hold up Big Business for good-will advertisements for a special supplement (known in the trade as a racketeering job) to celebrate the passing of a commercial year. There were no indignant editorials in the big New York papers -- the Times, the Herald Tribune, the Hearst Journal-American -- but their annual business supplements each had a full page advertisement signed by Anaconda of Montana and listing all affiliates, including Anaconda Wire & Cable, Andes Copper, Chile Copper, Greene Cananea, American Brass and International Smelting & Refining Co. The ad contained this phrase: "The Army-Navy 'E' pennant for excellence in production flies over eight plants." And wooden crosses surmount the graves of soldiers murdered by Anaconda for profit.

The press, of course, is equaled by the radio in venality. December 21, 1942, the date of the Anaconda scandal, several non-sponsored news broadcasts had the Anaconda indictment as the biggest news of the day. Not so Lowell Thomas. His broadcast (for the Pews of Sunoco) had no mention of the copper firm. Both Sunoco and Anaconda are members and subsidizers of the NAM, and Mr. Thomas had done jobs of work both for the NAM and for General Motors, the DuPont controlled auto firm which is one of the main pillars of NAM Free Enterprise.

TREASON IN RUBBER

It was March 26, 1942, that Senator Truman applied the word "treason" to the Standard Oil, after listening to Mr. Arnold's testimony. Immediately afterward Standard Oil began a nationwide advertising and propaganda campaign, asking every editorial writer, publisher, columnist, radio commentator and other makers of public opinion to whitewash it. Many who received money did so.

An excellent example of usual newspaper and magazine venality was shown in the indecent rush of our leading paper, the New York Times, and leading newsweekly, Time, to defend Standard Oil from the treason charge.

Time, April 6, said Standard Oil had been smeared, said its treason "turned out to be strictly of the dinner-table variety," poked fun at Thurman Arnold's "horrific" charges, and tried to answer everyone of them. This was on page 16. On page 89 Time carried a $5,000 Standard Oil ad.

The New York Times, April 2, main editorial whitewashed Standard Oil. Reading it one can conclude either that the entire press which does not take advertising lied, or that the New York Times and Time, which live on the money which Standard Oil and other corporations give to them, are lying today.

The day after the Times whitewash Assistant Secretary of State A.A. Berle testified Standard Oil refused to stop fueling Nazi and Fascist airplanes in Brazil until the United States put enemy plane companies on a blacklist.

Standard Oil's Farish never denied he shipped oil to a Japanese navy which made possible the attack on Pearl Harbor and Japan's ability to resist the Anglo-American Navies today. He excused himself by saying that Standard Oil was "an international concern."

Standard Oil supplied Franco during the Spanish Fascist uprising. Standard Oil supplied Franco-Spain after 1939, National Maritime Union men giving testimony that oil went to Germany and Italy, for use against France and Britain.

Technically, Standard Oil was not committing treason then because the United States was not at war. This will be interesting news to the men on Bataan and the men in the United States Navy.

U.S. Cartridge Co. The facts about U.S. Cartridge were unearthed by the St. Louis Star-Times, one of the few brave crusading papers left in our country. (The Associated Press did not pick this story up and send it to its 1,200 subscribers, as it did the Akran Beacon-Journal Guadalcanal lie.)

Julius Klein and Ralph O'Leary, of the Star-Times, submitted their findings to the Office of Censorship, Washington, which made no objection to publication. The story is copyright. It says in part:

"Evidence indicating that thousands of defective cartridges manufactured at the St. Louis Ordnance Plant passed through plant inspection as good ammunition and might, unless stopped short of the war fronts, imperil the lives of United States fighters, has been obtained by the Star-Times through an independent investigation. ...

"The Star-Times has learned that picked agents of the F.B.I. for weeks have been making a sweeping investigation into complaints they too have received that defective shells are being passed through company inspection at the ammunition works.

"This plant, one of the largest small-arms ammunition factories in the world, is operated for the government by the U.S. Cartridge Co., subsidiary of the Western Cartridge Company of East Alton, Illinois. ...

"Evidence in possession of the Star-Times includes sworn statements by members of the U.S. Cartridge Co.'s inspection staff in the ordnance plant charging various types of imperfections in the cartridges produced there. The plant manufactures .50-caliber cartridges for machine guns and .30-caliber shells for rifles and machine guns. ... The charges of faulty ammunition in each instance involve company inspection and production and are not made against government inspection.

"Five company employees have given affidavits to the Star-Times charging manufacture of defective ammunition. ..."

It is not necessary here to explain the defects and the methods by which cartridges liable to explode within the rifle were passed. What is important is this: that the Department of Justice has taken up the case after an attempt to whitewash the corporation was made, according to a broadcast by Drew Pearson. Important also is this fact: no less than twelve persons, working men and women in the plant and inspectors who risked losing their jobs and livelihood, voluntarily came to the Star-Times office and signed sworn affidavits.

This is one of the thousands of proofs that the working men and women of our country place true patriotism above everything else, whereas many of our biggest corporations have been proven by United States investigations to place profits above patriotism.

U.S. Steel, Bethlehem Steel, etc. The main element needed for war is steel. A book could be written giving the documentary evidence of the sabotage of our war by our steel corporations. In case the reader does not have access to non-commercial newspapers, here are a few headlines indicating the nature of the story:

"SABOTAGE OF WAR PROGRAM CHARGED TO STEEL MAGNATES
"More Interested in Keeping Monopoly Than With Beating Axis, Senator O'Mahoney Declares"
-- Labor, July 7, 1942.

"TRUMAN ACCUSES STEEL COMPANIES OF 'SABOTAGE'
"Senator Black Charges That Big Corporations Hamstring Production"
-- PM, June 6, 1942.

"STEEL SHORTAGE SCANDAL INDICATED AS COMPANIES FIGHT EXPANSION"
-- Federated Press, October 17, 1941.

"BLAME FOR STEEL SHORTAGE PLACED ON TRUST DOORSTEP"
-- Labor, June 30, 1942.

"BIG STEEL CONCERNS REFUSE TO FILL UNCLE SAM'S ORDERS"
-- Labor, April 28, 1942.

Under the above heading the report is:

"It has become clear as the noonday sun that the vicious attack which has been made on the nation's workers in recent weeks was actually a red herring designed to divert attention from treasonable sabotage of the nation's war program by Big Business, which is being exposed by Congressional committees and defense agencies.

"Proof of that statement may reasonably be drawn from sensational and unbelievably shocking disclosures of a cold-blooded betrayal of national welfare by men whose only flag is the dollar sign. ... One of the most shameful chapters in our history.

"1. The Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation, subsidiary of U.S. Steel, and the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company were charged by the War Production Board with having refused to fill government armament orders while diverting iron and steel to favorite civilian customers for non-essential purposes. The result is that shipbuilding and other war construction have been held up.

"2. The President directed the Navy to take over three plants of the Brewster Aero Company, accused of sabotaging the aviation program. ...

"3. The United States faces a shortage of critical war materials because many outstanding industrial concerns have contracts with German monopolists restricting production here. ..."

General Electric. Senator Bone's Patents Investigation Committee heard testimony April 16, 1942, that until Pearl Harbor the General Electric Co. observed an agreement with the Krupp Co. of Essen, Germany, under which the Nazi trust was permitted to limit American use of a vital element in arms production. The man who admitted this was Dr. Zay Jeffries, head of W.P.B. metallurgy committee, chairman of General Electric's subsidiary, Carboloy Co. The vital element is known as Pantena, or carboloy, or cemented tungsten carbide, which is almost as hard as diamonds and used for machine tools.

Aluminum Corporation (Mellon-Davis-Duke families)."If America loses the war it can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America." -- Secretary of Interior Ickes, June 26, 1941. By its cartel agreement with I.G. Farben, controlled by Hitler, Alcoa sabotaged the aluminum program of the U.S. air force. The Truman Committee heard testimony that Alcoa's representative, A.H. Bunker, $1-a-year head of the aluminum section of O.P.M., prevented work on our $600,000,000 aluminum expansion program. Congressman Pierce of Oregon said in May, 1941: "To date, 137 days or 37-1/2% of a year's production has been wasted in the effort to protect Alcoa's monopolistic position. ... This delay, translated into planes, means 10,000 fighters or 1,665 bombers."

This, of course, is the answer to the boys on Guadalcanal and in Tunisia, and not absenteeism, the 48-hour week, or wage increases to meet the cost of living.

AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

The big three of the auto industry, General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, refused to convert to war production, refused to extend plants, refused to give up civilian production, insisted on government cash and business as usual, thus delaying war production of tanks, guns and planes, while labor offered excellent war plans.

The pro-auto magazine, United States News, which carries big ads and boosts corporations, nevertheless admitted: "Today, 20% of U.S. effort is devoted to defense, 80% to meeting civilian demands. ... Next year: armaments ... will average 30% ... leaving 70% for civilian demands." -- Dec. 12, 1941.

United Automobile Workers Union President Thomas testified before the Tolan Committee that "of 1,577 machine tools in thirty-four Detroit plants, 337 are idle ... not working more than 35% of capacity"; he urged coordination of unused equipment "... producing arms to frustrate Nazi designs for world domination." This was forty-seven days before Pearl Harbor. Autoworkers Secretary Addes on December 22 reported 64% machine tool idleness, "a crime against civilization and democracy in this critical hour." Very naturally Charles Coughlin's Social Justice, following the Nazi line, demanded that "the metropolitan dailies which have profited most from the automobile advertising dollar should campaign against the curtailment of production of American motor cars." (July 28, 1941.) Any shortage of guns and tanks is due to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler delay, not the autoworkers.

Ford. Delay in constructing Willow Run was due to management (and mismanagement), not labor. One of the major scandals was old man Henry Ford's decision to keep adequate workers' housing away from Willow Run -- he plans to tear down the place when the emergency is over and return the land to his dearly beloved squirrels. The newspaper announcements, that the assembly line for bombers at Willow Run was in full operation and planes were being turned out so many per day, were all fakes. It was not until mid-1943 that the Willow Run works began operating efficiently.

Tank Failure. Mismanagement was blamed by the C.I.O. United Autoworkers for the failure, up to May, 1943, of the General Motors Tank Arsenal at Los Angeles to produce any finished tanks, although many men worked at their jobs. The union was forced to file a brief against General Motors with the War Production Board; it disclosed, incidentally, that when Lieut.-Gen. Knudsen (former head of General Motors) made an official inspection of the Tank Arsenal, General Motors officials put on a fake show -- the old Potemkin village trick. They had the men install and remove the same tank treads fifty-seven times, likewise the motors, giving Knudsen the impression that fifty-seven tanks were being produced, instead of one.

On April 21 "Time Views the News" (WQXR, New York), admitted the fact, known in Army circles, that one of our major failures was the much-advertised tank known as the M-7. Production had been stopped, the news commentator announced, but he did not name the company making the M-7.

It was General Motors.

General Motors ads saying that the M-7 was a wonderful tank and was chasing the Japanese and the Italians and the Germans to perdition were still running in the newspapers when the War Department ordered them abandoned as being no good whatever.

As for the Army and Navy "E" pennants, the fact is that many of them are part of a racket, as Space & Time, advertising newsletter, first disclosed. Big advertising men in Washington arrange to award the Army and Navy pennants to war manufacturers who place advertisements in the right newspapers via the right advertising agents.

The Buick local of the C.I.O. believes the "E" pennant should be given for 100% cooperation between management and labor. General Motors, however, refused to recognize the Labor-Management Committee at the Buick plant, refused to permit the union a voice in deciding the merits of suggestions which labor supplies for increasing production, refused to comply with the W.L.B. order for maintenance of membership, refused to obey the law and pay women the same rates as men for the same work and, finally, refused to utilize fully for winning the war the machinery and manpower labor offered. Local 599 of the United Automobile Workers, Flint, Michigan, therefore refused to participate in the "E" pennant award ceremonies; they called them a fraud.


THE LIES!, THE DENIAL! HERE'S HOW THEY PLAY UP THE TRUTH! -- AKRON BEACON JOURNAL, Thursday, January 21, 1943: Ship 'Strike" Ires Guadalcanal Fighters; NEW YORK JOURNAL AMERICAN, Friday, January 22, 1943: Union Crew on Holiday; Ill Marines Unload Ships; ORDER PROBE OF CIO SCANDAL IN GUADALCANAL; Probe Seamen's 'Strike' in Pacific; Marines Unload in CIO 'Holiday'; HOUSE INQUIRY BEGUN INTO CIO PACIFIC SCANDAL; LABOR CODDLING BLAMES FOR CIO SHIP SCANDAL; Denies Sailors Shirked: WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (INS). -- The Navy Department made public a report of Admiral Halsey, in which the commander of U.S. forces in the South Pacific asserted merchant seamen have never failed to discharge cargo from vessels at Guadalcanal.

One of the great lies of this war and part of the newspaper campaign to smear labor -- while defending the corporations which produced defective war materials and robbed the nation. The Guadalcanal story was a fake; it originated in the Akron Beacon-Journal, was spread throughout the country by the Hearst press, and others.

TREASON IN THE SHIPS

When the history of what America did to rid the world of Fascism is written, one of the truly great pages will be that devoted to the maritime unions.

At the date of this writing they have given 4,500 lives to carrying the munitions of war across the Atlantic and Pacific to our own men, to Britain, China and Russia. They have suffered many wounded, and their list of torpedoed survivors is 12,000.

In proportion to the small number of men in this service the casualty list of the unions is many times as high as that in any service, not excepting aviation, tanks, or submarines.

On the other hand the shipowners and in several instances the ship construction companies and the ship lessees have committed crimes of profiteering tantamount to treason in wartime.

"An orgy of profiteering that staggers imagination" is how the I.L.W.U. Dispatcher reports the official revelations of war profiteering by the shipowners, made before the Congressional Merchant Marine subcommittee. James V. Hayes, general counsel, gave proof to the subcommitee that profits from a single trip of some vessels involved were enough to pay the entire book value of the ships many times over.

Eighty-one privately owned merchant ships made ninety trips to the Red Sea receiving charter hire of $21,364,880, it was testified. Profit was many times the cost price of these eighty-one ships. The American Export Line sent six ships on six trips. Profit was announced at $1,572,144; cost of ships was $232,350.

Two American Foreign Steamship Corp. ships worth $895,974 made a profit of $481,128 on two trips. Two American President Line, Ltd., ships worth $307,828 made $814,242 profit on three trips. Ten Luckenback ships valued at $1,426,857 made $8,879,729 on twelve trips. And so on.

Another report showed $26,874,176 profit on ninety trips. American Merchant Marine Institute lawyer J.J. Burns protested that the figures did not include overhead and depreciation of about $2,500,000 but that wouldn't change profiteering figures much.

Every labor union leader in America except John L. Lewis has plans to speed up victory. President Murray of the C.I.O., President Harry Bridges of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, President Joe Curran of the Maritime Union have presented the government complete detailed plans for helping victory. Says Bridges:

"If this war is to be won before millions of American and allied lives are wasted there has to be an integrated plan for shipping and a single, authoritative agency to administer it. The proper cargo has to be on the dock and properly sorted when a ship arrives. The required manpower has to be on hand and at the right place. The required number of seamen have to be ready to sail. The ship has to be dispatched to a port that can accommodate discharge of its cargo without delay. Provision has to be made for the skilled manpower to unload it at the foreign port. These things and a thousand others that need to be dovetailed require blueprinting of the highest order.

"Blueprinting isn't being done. Ships carry sand ballast to Africa and bring ballast back. Ships shop for low-fee piers. Ships wait at piers while somebody digs through red tape to find the heavy cargo that goes in first. Ships wait while prying agencies investigate seamen. Ships wait while longshore labor is being wasted at other piers.

"And ships carry booze and bananas, birdseed and artificial flowers while munitions pile up in warehouses. This space isn't long enough to begin a list of the delays and waste.

In peace time the shipowners have an incentive for meeting schedules. It is the way they hold their business. Today they have no incentive. The government guarantees them a profit and they suffer no penalty for failing to deliver the goods on time. Naturally, they favor their old customers and that is how toothpicks and wine get crowded into shipping space so vitally needed for war supplies.

"The big failure of the War Shipping Administration to date has been its lack of a centralized plan. It hasn't called in labor or permitted labor to participate in its policies. In fact, it has no policy to speak of.

"The time has come for a plan to make the whole shipping industry operate as one integrated unit, regardless of the sacrifice it may demand of labor and the owners."

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CHAPTER VI: THE SUPPRESSED TOBACCO STORY

FEW persons are aware that the two largest advertisers in the country are the manufacturers of the most expensive and the least expensive products, namely automobiles and cigarets. It is, therefore, natural that the press which protected the automobile industry during the first three years of war scandals should give the same protection to one of the most harmful of all industries, the tobacco manufacturers. The story of tobacco is told here to illustrate its power in dictating to the press, and also to satisfy the request of thousands who were unable to obtain the special issue (and 10,000 additional reprints) of the In Fact story. The entire report of Dr. Raymond Pearl is included in the Appendix.

"War is booming the Tobacco Business," say recent press reports; no less than 20,000,000,000 (twenty billion) cigarets are being made and smoked a month. Press and radio urge you to remember the fighters against Fascism by sending them tobacco.

But the American press and radio -- at least 99% of each -- have suppressed the facts, scientifically established, that the more tobacco a person uses the earlier he dies. Tobacco impairs the health of all users, moderate and heavy. But the tobacco companies spend fortunes -- four (Camels, Lucky Strikes, Chesterfields and Old Golds)spend $50,000,000 annually -- to keep the American public in ignorance.

The story is sensational. It must be said here that the term sensational is generally used against a newspaper to characterize it as yellow, biased, unfair, given to overplaying news. But sensational news can also be news really worth playing up, such as, for example, the discovery of the electric light, or the American landing in Sicily. These were sensational news items which no paper need be ashamed for headlining, whereas the Hearst press and the New York Daily News, which played up the Errol Flynn rape case for almost as much space as the Rommel defeat in Africa, were illustrating the sensationalism of yellow journalism.

Certainly the first scientific, documented report from the head of the biology department of Johns Hopkins University listing tobacco as first in impairing life, as causing users, of whom there are tens of millions in America alone, to die earlier than non-users, was a first-class story, a big story, and in a scientific way a sensational story, and worth the front page of any paper not corrupted by cigaret advertising. But to this day the story is suppressed by 99% of our commercial newspaper and magazine press, and if used at all in the other 1% (which is doubtful) it is buried or played down so effectively that not one-tenth of 1% of America's newspaper readers have ever heard of it.

And here is the evidence of the venality of the press as regards tobacco -- an industry which pays the press much more than $50,000,000 a year.

In February, 1938, Dr. Raymond Pearl, then head biologist at Johns Hopkins University, gave the New York Academy of Medicine the scientific results of a study of the life histories of some 7,000 Johns Hopkins cases which, for newspapers, should have constituted a story "to scare the life out of tobacco manufacturers and make the tobacco users' flesh creep," as Time commented.

In brief, Dr. Pearl discovered that smoking shortens life. Between the ages of 30 and 60, 61% more heavy smokers die than non-smokers. A human being's span of life is impaired in direct proportion to the amount of tobacco he uses, but the impairment among even light smokers is "measurable and significant."

The Associated Press, United Press and special correspondents of New York papers heard Dr. Pearl tell the story. But a paragraph or two buried under less important matter, in one or two papers, was all that the great free press of America cared to make known to its readers, the consumers of 200,000,000,000 cigarets a year.

When the Town Meeting of the Air announced a debate, "Do We Have a Free Press?" January 16, 1939, the present writer sent to Secretary of the Interior Ickes documentary evidence proving quite the opposite. In the debate Mr. Ickes easily bested Frank Gannett, chain newspaper owner. During the question period someone asked for examples of news suppression and Mr. Ickes mentioned a few casually, adding, "I understand that at Johns Hopkins University there is a very sensational finding resulting from a study of the effect of cigaret smoking that has not yet appeared, so far as I know, in any newspaper in the United States. I wonder if that is because the tobacco companies are such large advertisers."

The statement was correct. Research had proved that although the A.P., U.P. and I.N.S. had sent the story to every paper in America, although New York science reporters were present and Science Service had sent all advance account to numerous big papers, 98% of the big city press, the press which takes the cigaret advertising, suppressed the story.

But because Mr. Ickes had said "in any newspaper" that same press threw a journalistic bombshell. It attacked and smeared Mr. Ickes, it lied outright and printed half-lies which are harder to nail, it distorted and faked the news, published untrue editorials and generally presented to America the spectacle of as corrupt a press as that usually charged to fascist nations.

The tobacco story, to be exact, appeared in some country papers, and one or two big city papers. Here is what happened in the "great free press metropolis of New York:

Herald Tribune, totally suppressed.

Sun, totally suppressed.

News, totally suppressed.

Mirror, totally suppressed.

Post, totally suppressed.

Journal-American, totally suppressed.

World Telegram carried a few lines.

Times carried a few lines.

The World Telegram and the Times carried a three-fourth and half column story respectively, dealing first with the effect on long life or hard work and alcohol, then, at the end of the story, tobacco. This is all the Times had to say, and that at the bottom of the first column on page 19:

"Professor Pearl also presented the 'first life tables ever constituted' to show relation between tobacco and longevity. The tables showed, he said, 'that smoking is associated with a definite impairment of longevity.'

"This impairment, he added, is proportional to the habitual amount of tobacco usage in smoking, being great for the heavy smokers and less for moderate smokers. But even in the case of the moderate smoker, he said, the impairment in longevity is 'sufficient to be measurable and significant.'"

The tables had been seen by the press. The leading authority in America, if not in the world, had made a great discovery and presented the first scientific study in a controversial matter in which some 50,000,000 Americans consuming billions of cigarets were interested, and 75% of the New York press suppressed the story, 25% half-suppressed it, 100% of the press manhandled it.

The Federated Press, serving the labor press (which gets precious little cigaret advertising) reported that the Herald Tribune not only suppressed the tobacco story but claimed it never saw it. The F.P. said: "Wilbur Forrest, executive editor (said) his paper had been scooped on the tobacco story. Asked how an Associated Press member could be scooped on an A.P. story, he explained that the Herald Tribune does not get the A.P. local service. This excuse was punctured by A.P. executives, who insisted that the story went not only to the Herald Tribune but also to other New York papers that failed to print a line."

A large part of the controversy hinged on Dr. Pearl. In preparing the evidence, the present writer wrote Dr. Pearl, who replied:

"I may say that the newspaper coverage on my statement regarding the association between tobacco smoking and longevity was very widespread. Without taking the trouble to count them, for which I have not the time to spare, I should say that the point was amply and promptly reported in no less than 250 daily and weekly newspapers in this Country."

Inasmuch as a search at the New York Public Library revealed that no San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati newspaper, or, in fact, any big newspaper besides the Washington Post, had covered the story, Dr. Pearl was asked to name two or three newspapers, outside of country dailies and country weeklies (which are not subsidized by tobacco advertising), which ran his story. He refused to answer.

There are 200 big daily papers in America, some 1,700 smaller dailes and many thousand weeklies. Apparently Dr. Pearl had 249 country paper clippings plus the Washington Post. Science Service, asked to look through its files, found only the Washington Post story and the two buried references in New York.

But no sooner had Ickes mentioned Dr. Pearl than the A.P. rushed out a column story which the Times headlined: "Contradicts Ickes on Tobacco Story -- Johns Hopkins Biologist Says Report ... Was Widely Published. -- 'No Press Suppression.'"

Six cigaret companies grossed $200,000,000 in 1937 (SEC report). A combined profit after all charges of $83,000,000 that year was reported by the Census of American Listed Corporations (April 5, 1939).

The major companies' advertising bill a year on four brands is:



The newspapers, Editor & Publisher, Saturday Evening Post, all say that advertising has nothing to do with editorial policy. The facts are:

1. The cigaret companies spend more than $50,000,000 a year.

2. News inimical to tobacco is not published.

3. Ninety-nine percent of the American press suppresses government fraud orders against advertisers.

The tobacco advertisers share with peacetime automobile advertisers first place in spending money in newspapers and magazines. This is without doubt the reason the press suppressed the story. The press is therefore part of a system spreading actual poison throughout America. As for the poison of reaction (Fascism) the evidence is just as thoroughly documented.

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Conclusion: VICTORY OVER FASCISM

IF WE take the "one world" view, the global view -- regardless of the brilliant sneers of rattlebrained lady Congressmen who are too far removed from the men and women who are working and fighting for the Century of the Common Man to do more than make newspaper remarks -- then we see that Fascism is being beaten back on every front and that the year of victory is near.

If we take the national view, the panorama is not so brilliant: at the moment of writing the Congress has reached one of its lowest levels of intelligence and honesty. The men elected with the money of the DuPonts, the Pews, the Mellon-Aluminum family and the other leaders of the NAM, have noted the reactionary trend in politics and dared openly to vote a dozen bills against the welfare of the majority and for the benefit of their paymasters. They passed the so-called 75% Ruml Income Tax bill, they killed the President's $67,200 salary limitation order (falsely called a $25,000 limitation by the press), they killed grade labeling, although a great part of the success of the maintenance of prices depended on it, they killed planning boards and the youth administration and they finally passed the Smith-Connally Anti-Labor bill which more than any other measure of the time approached typical Hitlerite and Mussolinian Fascism.

The Duce said, years ago, that two forces were striving for world mastery, Fascism and Democracy; it is "Either We or They." The answer is now being given on every battlefield on the five continents, the seven seas, and all the air over them. It is the Duce's "They" who will win, it is "We," the democracies.

Thus the greatest drive and the greatest war in history which has been paid for by men and organizations owning a vast part of the world's wealth and covetous of all of it, will come to an end with the destruction of the world's special interests. A world ends for Privilege, the great day dawns for the peoples of the earth.

Unless our own State Department fascisti and the reactionaries in American political life, in business, and in the armed forces interfere, the outlook is brilliant for the restoration of all the old freedoms to European peoples and the additional freedoms from fear and from want -- the economic freedoms which can be won for the democratic Many with no harm to anyone but the fascist Few.

All the enemies of the people of the world are united behind the Fascist International. When that is broken we will have come the main part of the way to a practical reality which previously had been regarded as a dream of idealists. Of course this will be possible only if Fascism (reaction) does not exist in disguise and wrapped in new flags and sheltered by wealth and power and accepted by peoples accustomed to being betrayed by rulers and the propaganda organs of these rulers, the world's corrupted press.

Fascism is Reaction. When we destroy international Fascism we must at the same time destroy national Fascism, we must replace the reactionary forces at home with truly democratic forces which will represent all of us.

Victory over foreign Fascism is certain. All of us will share in that. The American soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines will have fought in a war which will never be regretted. The thousands who gave their lives, notably the seamen of the Atlantic and Pacific, will have made a sacrifice equally as great as that of armed men, and even in greater proportions. And those of us who did anything at all to fight and destroy Fascism will reap a reward of satisfaction as well.

We, however, will also inherit the job left unfinished on the battlefield: it is we, the civilians, and the soldiers who will again become civilians, who will have to continue to fight native Fascism for many years. We will do this in the elections, in Congress, in the labor unions, in the press, in the churches, in the schools -- everywhere. Otherwise we will stupidly have dropped the victory won in Africa, in Italy, in Germany and in Japan.

And since that victory will go down in history as the greatest to benefit mankind in all recorded time, it must cheer all of us on to fight the remaining enemies of a free people at home.

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Appendices

APPENDIX I: WHAT IS FASCISM?

MUSSOLINI: "Fascism, which did not fear to call itself reactionary when many liberals of today were prone before the triumphant beast [Democracy], has not today any impediment against declaring itself illiberal and anti-liberal. ... Fascism knows no idol, worships no faith; it has once passed, and, if needful, will turn to pass again over the more or less decomposed body of the Goddess of Liberty." (Gerarchia, March, 1923.)

PALME DUTT: "The fascist system is a system of direct dictatorship, ideologically masked by the 'national idea.' ... It is a system that resorts to a popular form of social demagogy (anti-Semitism, occasional sorties against usurer's capital and gestures of impatience with the parliamentary 'yelling shop') in order to utilize the discontent of the petit-bourgeois, the intellectual and other strata of society; and to corruption through the building up of a compact and well-paid hierarchy of fascist units, a party apparatus and a bureaucracy. At the same time, Fascism strives to permeate the working class by recruiting the most backward strata of the workers to its ranks, by playing upon their discontent, by taking advantage of the inaction of Social-democracy, etc. ..."

"The combination of social demagogy, corruption and active White terror, in conjunction with extreme imperialist aggression in the sphere of foreign politics, are the characteristic features of Fascism. In periods of acute crisis for the bourgeoisie, Fascism resorts to anti-capitalistic phraseology, but, after it has established itself at the helm of state, it casts aside its anti-capitalist rattle, and discloses itself as a terrorist dictatorship of big capital."

"Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital." -- 13th Plenum of Executive Committee of the Communist International, Moscow, 1933.

RAYMOND GRAM SWING: "Fascism is a reorganization of society to maintain unequal distribution of economic power and a substitution of barbaric values for individualist civilization."-"Forerunners of American Fascism."

HEYWOOD BROUN: "I am quite ready to admit that the word Fascism has been used very loosely. Sometimes we call a man a Fascist simply because we dislike him, for one reason or another. And so I'll try to be pretty literal in outlining some of the evidence which I see as the actual danger of Fascism in America. First of all, we need a definition. Fascism is a dictatorship from the extreme Right, or to put it a little more closely into our local idiom, a government which is run by a small group of large industrialists and financial lords. Of course, if you want to go back into recent history) the influence of big business has always been present in our federal government. But there have been some checks on its control. I am going to ask latitude to insist that we might have Fascism even though we maintained the pretense of democratic machinery. The mere presence of a Supreme Court, a House of Representatives, a Senate and a President would not be sufficient protection against the utter centralization of power in the hands of a few men who might hold no office at all. Even in the case of Hitler, many shrewd observers feel that he is no more than a front man and that his power is derived from the large munitions and steel barons of Germany. ... Now one of the first steps which Fascism must take in any land in order to capture power is to disrupt and destroy the labor movement. ... I think it is not unfair to say that any business man in America, or public leader, who goes out to break unions, is laying foundations for Fascism." (May, 1936.)

APPENDIX 2: WHO OWNS AMERICA?

THE Temporary National Economic Committee, headed by Senator O'Mahoney of Wyoming, in its Monograph 29 ("The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Non-Financial Corporations"), supplemented by Monograph 26 ("Economic Power and Political Pressures"), shows clearly that a handful of men and companies (Big Business, the Big Money, the NAM) own, control, boss and rule America in a manner which approaches the rule of Germany, Italy, and other fascist countries by similar elements.

Monograph 29, page 116, shows that of the 200 ruling families of America there are thirteen which top them all. Here is the official table:

TABLE 6

Identified stockholdings in 200 largest non-financial corporations of thirteen family-interest groups with holdings of over $50,000,000.



Includes only holdings of family members and family-endowed foundations in stock of 200 largest non- financial corporations insofar as they were identified among twenty largest record shareholdings. Values represent in most cases market values at December 31, 1937; otherwise (particularly for Ford) book values.

In other words, this vast accumulation of wealth (which means vast power) does not represent the totality. The Ford family fortune is estimated at two billion dollars, which is four times the amount of stock held in their own corporation. The same multiple probably applies to the other twelve.

APPENDIX 3: WHO OWNS GERMANY?

AT THE start of the second World War the 25 most important landowners in Germany were:

GERMANY'S BIGGEST LANDOWNERS



Kaiser Wilhelm II's family: 97,000 hectares
Prince of Pless: 50,000 hectares
Prince of Hohenlohe: 48,500 hectares
Prince of Hohenzollern-Siegmaringen: 46,000 hectares
Prince of Solms-Baruth: 38,700 hectares
Ernst von Stolberg-Wernigerode: 36,700 hectares
Duke of Ratibor and Prince Hohenlohe-Schilling fuerst: 31,100 hectares*
Duke of Anhalt-Dessau: 29,300 hectares
Count Thiele Winkler: 28,000 hectares*
Duke of Ahrenberg-Nordikirchen: 27,800 hectares
Count Schaffgotsch: 26,800 hectares*
Leopold Prince of Prussia: 25,000 hectares
Count von Bruehl: 22,900 hectares
Count Fink von Finkenstein: 21,000 hectares
Prince Frederick Henry of Prussia: 17,100 hectares
Duke Albrecht of Wurttemberg: 16,100 hectares
Prince Schaumburg-Lippe: 15,700 hectares
Family of Field Marshal von Kleist: 15,200 hectares
Prince Henkell von Donnersmarck: 15,000 hectares*
Grand Duke of Oldenburg: 13,800 hectares
Prince Richard Sayn-Wittgenstein: 12,000 hectares
Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha: 10,400 hectares
Hereditary Prince Josias of Waldeck: 10,000 hectares
Prince Philipp of Hesse: 7,000 hectares
* One hectare equals: 2.47 acres.

CAPITAL OF JOINT STOCK COMPANIES



PERCENTAGE OF THE TOTAL CAPITAL



CAPITAL OF LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANIES



PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL CAPITAL



* NOTE: -- The Silesian magnates knew what they were doing when they greeted with enthusiasm Hitler's war against Poland. By the partitioning of Upper Silesia in 1921 Count Thiele-Winkler had lost 15,900 hectares, the princes and counts of Donnersmarck 37,000 hectares, the Prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, 18,700 hectares, the count of Ballestrem, 4,900 hectares, and the Duke of Ratibor 2,600 hectares to Poland. In 1940 all their property on Polish soil was again restored to them.

(Reprinted from Albert Norden's The Thugs of Europe, with permission.)

APPENDIX 4: NAM: AMERICAN FASCISM

(Digest of Senate Report No.6, part 3, 76th Congress, 1st session.)

"A subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr., Wisc., Chairman. ...

"The committee found that the purchasing and storing of 'arsenals' of firearms and tear and sickening-gas weapons is a common practice of large employers of labor who refuse to bargain collectively with legitimate labor unions and that there exists a large business of supplying gas weapons to industry. ... During the years 1933 through June, 1937, $1,255,392.55 worth of tear and sickening gas was purchased by employers and law-enforcement agencies, 'chiefly during or in anticipation of strikes.' The committee noted that:

"'... all of the largest individual purchasers are corporations and that their totals far surpass those of large law-enforcement purchasers. In fact, the largest purchaser of gas equipment in the country, the Republic Steel Corp., bought four times as much as the largest law-enforcement purchaser.'"

The largest industrial purchasers of gas munitions were found to be:

Republic Steel Corp., $79,712.42 ( Girdler; Vice-President and director of the NAM).

U.S. Steel, $62,208.12 (Contributed $41,450 to NAM in four years).

Bethlehem Steel, $36,173.69 (Contributed $29,250 to NAM in four years).

Youngstown Sheet & Tube, $28,385.39 (Contributor to NAM).

General Motors, $24,626.78 (Contributed $66,000 to NAM).

Anthracite Institute, $17,457.

Goodyear, $16,912 (Contributor to NAM and Associated Industries).

National Steel, $12,085 (of Weirton; E.T. Weir of the NAM, president).

Auto-Light, $11,351 (Contributed $4,800 to NAM in four years).

Goodrich, $7,740 (Contributed $2,600 to NAM in four years).

Pennsylvania Railroad, $7,466 (Contributed $10,000 to NAM in four years).

Chrysler, $7,000 (Contributed $35,400 to NAM in four years).

Thompson Products, $6,867 (F.C. Crawford, president of the NAM).

Seattle Chamber of Commerce, $5,873.

Waterfront Employers Union, San Francisco, $5,512.

Columbian Enameling, Terre Haute, $5,482.

Spang Chalfant, Ambridge, Pa., $5,281 (Contributed $5,750 to NAM in four years).

APPENDIX 5: ROSTER OF THE SIXTH COLUMN PRESS



 
APPENDIX 6: TOBACCO SMOKING AND LONGEVITY

By DR. RAYMOND PEARL, Johns Hopkins University IN THE customary way of life man has long been habituated to the routine usage of various substances and materials that are not physiologically necessary to his continued existence. Tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, opium and the betel nut are statistically among the more conspicuous examples of such materials. If all six are included together as a group it is probably safe to say that well over 90 percent of all adult human beings habitually made use of one or more of the component materials included in the group. All of them contain substances of considerable pharmacologic potency if exhibited in appropriate dosage. Widespread and long-continued experience, however, has shown that the moderate usage of any of these materials, if measurably deleterious at all, is not so immediately or strikingly harmful physiologically as to weigh seriously against the pleasures felt to be derived from indulgence, in the opinion of vast numbers of human beings. The situation so created is an extremely complex one behavioristically, and not a simple physiological matter, as it is sometimes a little naively thought to be. Purely hedonistic elements in behavior, which are present in lower animals as well as in man, have a real importance. Indeed they frequently override, in their motivational aspects, reason as well as purely reflex physiological inhibiting factors. There are undoubtedly great numbers of human beings who would continue the habitual use of a particular material they liked, even though it were absolutely and beyond any question or argument proved to be somewhat deleterious to them. Most of them would rationalize this behavior by the balancing type of argument -- that the keen pleasure outweighed the relatively (in their view) smaller harm.

The student of longevity is not primarily interested in the behavioristic aspects of the situation under discussion. His concern is to appraise quantitatively, with the greatest attainable accuracy, the effect of each of these habitual usages upon the duration of life. This problem is necessarily statistical in its nature, for in the ordinary way of usage the effect upon longevity of any of the materials mentioned is not sufficiently strong or immediate to be disentangled in the individual from the effects of other and more powerful factors that are involved, such as infections, for example. An approximate evaluation of the statistical effect of these minor and secondary factors influencing longevity can, however, be reached by the application of actuarial methods (life table construction) to groups of individuals. For the maximum effectiveness of this methodology in the premises, the groups to be compared should be each as heterogeneous or random as possible in their compositions relative to all other characteristics except the one of degree of habitual usage of the particular material under discussion, and as homogeneous as possible relative to that. We shall then have a dispersed and counterbalancing effect within each group of all such factors as economic and social status, occupational and racial differences, etc., the plus variants relative to each such factor offsetting more or less evenly the minus variants; while there will be a concentrated, uni-directional and statistically cumulative effect, if any, of the habitual usage factor under test, since all components of a group will be alike in respect of it.

The purpose of this paper is to report a part of the results of an investigation of the influence of tobacco upon human longevity, planned and carried out along the lines indicated above. The material was drawn from the Family History Records of this laboratory. It is composed of data collected at first hand and ad hoc. The accuracy of the data as to the relative degree of habitual usage of tobacco and as to the ages of the living at risk, and of the dead at death can be guaranteed. The figures presented here deal only with white males, and concern only the usage of tobacco by smoking. The material falls into three categories, as follows: non-users of tobacco, of whom there were 2,094; moderate smokers, of whom there were 2,814; and heavy smokers, of whom there were 1,905. In other words, the results presented here are based upon the observation of 6,813 men in total. These men were an unselected lot except as to their tobacco habits. That is to say, they were taken at random, and then all sorted into categories relative to tobacco usage.

Complete life tables have been constructed for the three groups defined above relative to tobacco usage by smoking. The tables start at age 30 and continue to the end of the life span, by yearly intervals. Here only a condensation of the tables can be presented. This is done in Table I, where the date rate (1000 qx) and survivorship (1x) function are given by five-year intervals.

TABLE I
THE DEATH RATE (1,000 qx) AND SURVIVORSHIP (lx) FUNCTIONS, AT FIVE-YEAR INTERVALS, STARTING AT AGE 30, OF (a) NON-USERS OF TOBACCO; (b) MODERATE SMOKERS WHO DID NOT CHEW TOBACCO OR TAKE SNUFF; (C) HEAVY SMOKERS WHO DID NOT CHEW TOBACCO OR TAKE SNUFF. WHITE MALES.



However envisaged, the net conclusion is clear. In this sizable material the smoking of tobacco was statistically associated with an impairment of life duration, and the amount of degree of this impairment increased as the habitual amount of smoking increased. Here, just as is usually the case in our experience in studies of this sort, the differences between the usage groups in specific mortality rates, as indicated by qX, practically disappear from about age 70 on. This is presumably an expression of the residual effect of the heavily selective character of the mortality in the earlier years in the groups damaged by the agent (in this case tobacco). On this view those individuals in the damaged groups who survive to 70 or thereabouts are such tough and resistant specimens that thereafter tobacco does them no further measurable harm as a group.

(This material originally appeared in Science, March 4, 1933, Vol. 87, No. 2253, pages 216-217.)

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INDEX

Addes, George, 254, 263,
Advertising, 168, 170, 195, 258, 268,
272.
A. F. of L., 37, 214.
Alba, Duke of, 57, 66.
Aluminum Corp., 262.
American Fascism, 11, 46, 210.
American Legion, 34, 105.
American Mercury, 159, 163, 164.
America's 13 Families, 279.
Anaconda, 257.
A.N.P.A., 90, 205, 206, 213, 215.
Anti-Semitism, 22.
AP, 93, 272.
Arnold, Thurman, 68, 76, 253.
A.S.N.E., 203.
Associated Industries, 34.
Automobile Industry, 262.

Barton, Bruce, 77.
Baruch, Bernard M., 252, 255.
Bennett, Harry, 125.
Berle; A. A., 173, 259.
Big Business Sit-Down, 255.
Birkhead, L. M., 152.
Book-of-the-Month Club, 172.
Bowers, Claude, 58.
Brady, Prof. Robert A., 33, 54, 55.
Bridges, Harry, 267.
Brooklyn Tablet, 59.
Broun, Heywood, 214, 232, 278.
Buchmanism, 134.
Butler, Smedley, 112.

Cameron, W. J., 125.
Carnegie-Illinois Steel, 261.
Catholic Party, 41.
Chandler, Harry, 135.
Chicago Tribune, 204, 215, 218, 222,
226, 250.
Christian American ASSOC., 117.
C.I.O., 37, 213, 229, 264.
C.I.O. News, 97.
Clapper, Raymond, 232, 233, 248.
Coughlin, Father, 129, 152, 160, 205,
230, 263.
Crawford, Frederick C., 81, 101.
Curran, Joseph, 267.
Curtiss-Wright, 256.

Dennis, Lawrencc, 159, 161.
Detroit Press Press, 133.
Detroit News, 133.
Detroit Times, 132.
Dies, Martin, 74, 165, 230.
Dillon, Read, 41, 155.
"Ding," 251.
Dodd, Ambassador, 47, 122.
Downey, Sen., 176.
DuPont, 14, 35, 49, 74, 76, 77, 80,
99, 196, 255, 274.
Dutt, Palme, 277.
Dyer, Gus W., 93.

Eastman, Max, 183.
Editor & Publisher, 141, 206.
Eliot, Major George Fielding, 148.

F.A.E.C.T., 174.
Fascism, definitions of, 277.
Ford Empire, 122.
Ford, Henry, 77, 263.
Portun(, 43, 212.
Franco, 57.
"Free Enterprise," 86, 117, 119, 196,
198, 213, 252.
French, Paul Comly, 112.
Friends of Democracy, 152.
Fuller, Walter D., 96.

Gannett, Frank, 208, 232, 270.
Ge1lermann, William, 107.
General Electric, 262.
General Motors, 74, 75, 264.
Goebbels, 24.
Goering, 23.
Good Housekeeping, 169.
Green, William, 214.
Guild Reporter, 214, 238.

Hamilton, Thomas J., 60, 64.
Hart, Merwin K., 178.
Hearst, 11, 95, 106, 211, 226, 230.
Henri, Ernst, 18.
Heptisax, 250.
High, Stanley, 167, 176.
Hindenburg, 30.
Hirohito, 48.
Hirschfeld, Gerhard, 17.
Hitler, 17, 122, 140, 210, 256.
Hoffman, Rep. Clare, 160.
Hoover, Herbert, 77.
Howard, Roy, 95, 208, 211, 230, 238,
249.
Hugenberg, 20.

Ickes, Harold L., 180, 232, 2.38, 270.
I. G. Farbenindustries, 17, 43, 49, 76,
122, 194.
l.L.W.U. Dispatcher, 266.
INS, 93.
International Bankers, 153.
Italian Big Business, 34.
Jackson, Justice, 179.

Japan, 48, 218.
Jews, 17, 19, 28, 71, 96, 133, 141.
Jung, Harry A., 180.

Kennedy, Joseph P., 77.
Kent, Frank R., 250.
Knudsen, William S., 77.
Kuczynski and Witt, 31.
K.K.K., 117, 222, 230.

Labor, 204, 215.
La Follette, 83, 199.
Landowners, 30, 34, 35, 41, 42, 58.
Lewis, Fulton, Jr., 184, 197.
Lindbergh, Col., 77, 139.
Lippmann, Walter, 232, 233.
Lit tell, Norman, 68.
Los Angeles Times, 135, 226, 237.
Luce, Henry, 43.
Lutz, Harley L., 93.
Lyons, Eugene, 164.

MacLeish, Archibald, 203, 207.
Mallon Paul, 228, 232, 233, 250.
Manly, Chesly, 216, 228.
March, Juan, 57.
Martin, Homer, 130.
Marx, Karl, 25.
Matteotti, 38.
McCall's, 191.
McCormack-Dickstein Com., 113.
McCormick, Col., 205, 211, 215, 230.
Mein Kampf, 140, 220.
Milwaukee Journal, 257.
Mitsubishi, 48.
Mitsui, 48.
Morgan, 41, 155.
Murray, Philip, 267.
Mussolini, 11, 20, 34, 277.

NAM, 26, 35, 37, 80, 118, 124, 184,
197, 213, 230, 246, 274, 281.
Nation, The, 166.
Nazi Cartel Plot, 68.
New Republic, 165.
N.I.I.C., 92, 94, 191.
N.M.U., 81, 230.
Norden, Albert, 27.
N.Y. Daily News, 15, 44, 204.
N.Y. Herald Tribune, 271.
N.Y. State Economic Council, 178.
N.Y. Times, 88, 97, 136, 203, 246,
258, 271.

O'Donnell, John, 204, 228.
OWI, 11
O'Mahoney, 83.
Owsley, Alvin, 109.

Palmer, Paul, 159, 163.
Patric, John, 176.
Patterson, Capt., 205, 211, 215, 230.
Pearl, Dr. Raymond, 268, 284.
Pegler, Westbrook, 35, 229, 236, 249.
Pew, J. Howard, 97.
Pilot, The, 81, 230.
PM, 173, 248.
Prentis, H.W., 96.
Press-Fascist Force, 204.
Profits in Fascism, 16.

"Quislings," 180.

Railroad Brotherhoods, 37, 176.
Rand, J. H., 96.
Reader's Digest, 15, 158.
Rimar, Ralph, 125.
Robb, Arthur, 141.
Rosten, Leo, 226, 228.

Salvemini, Prof., 34, 46.
Saturday Evening Post, 11, 15, 96.
Scripps-Howard, 44, 95, 208, 226.
Sinclair, Harry, 38.
Sinclair Upton, 135.
Sixth Column Press, 209, 283.
Sloan, Alfred P., 75, 80.
Smart, David, 110.
Smith, Gerald L. K., 180, 230.
Social-Democratic, 20, 72, 277.
Social Justice, 152, 263.
Society of Jesus, 57, 63.
Sokolsky, George E., 35, 93, 167, 186,
232.
Spahr, Walter, 93.
Spivak, Lawrence E., 164.
Standard Oil, 76, 122, 258.
State Department, 73, 172, 275.
Stinnes, Hugo, 20.
St. Louis Star-Times, 259.
Stone, I.F., 255.
Sulzberger, A.H., 97.
Swing, Raymond Gram, 278.
Tabouis, Genevieve, 78.

The Economics of Barbarism, 31.
The Thugs of Europe, 27.
Thomas, Lowell, 258.
Thomas, R.J., 263.
Thompson, Dorothy, 38, 144, 232.
Thyssen, Fritz, 17, 19, 20, 135.
Time, 258, 264.
Tobacco, 268, 284.
Treasury Dep't., 234, 236.
Truman, Sen., 253.

UP, 93.
U.S. Cartridge Co., 259, 260.
U.S. Steel, 260.

Valtin, Jan, 172.
Vandenberg, Sen., 77.
Varney, Harold Lord, 166.
Vereinigte Stahlwerke, 19.

Wallace, DeWitt, 158.
Wallace, Vice-Pres., 13,139, 213, 247.
Waring, Roane, 106, 115.
Warner, W.B., 191.
War Profits, 252.
Washington Post, 272.
Watson, Morris, 182.
Weir, E.T., 191, 193.
Western Cartridge Co., 260.
Wheeler, Sen., 154, 230.
White, William Allen, 207, 244.
Willkie, Wendell, 152.
Wohlforth, Robert, 87.
Wolff, Otto, 19, 20.
World-Telegram, 95.