Tag Archives: New Deal

Fatal Ballyhoo

Essays/Articles, Works, , , ,

By BENJAMIN DeCASSERES

THE WHOLE POLICY of the Roosevelt administration has been to widen the breach between capital and labor.

The philosophy of the President, in so far as he has any, is that BY STRIKING AT ONE CLASS HE WILL BENEFIT ANOTHER.

The reverse of this is precisely what has happened here, as it has in Russia.

No man or set of men can strike at wealth WITHOUT CARRYING DOWN THE LABORING MAN.

IN RUSSIA in 1917 an annihilating blow was struck at all forms of private wealth.

The result was that the workingman automatically shot down almost to the level of the animal—certainly to the level of the parasite.

In America, President Roosevelt, under the hypnotic influence of the Wallaces, Tugwells, Hopkinses, Richbergs, Frankfurters and a raft of Utopian zanies, proclaimed the doctrine that he was going to lift the great masses of the people up by pulling down to their level the wealthy, the competent, the luckier, the stronger.

For this purpose he invented, with the aid of alien-indoctrinated professors and political essayists, an NRA to bind individual enterprise in thousands of thongs, an AAA to lift the farmer up at the expense of the processor of farm products, a public utilities bill to reduce to poverty legitimate investors, and, above all and worst of all, a tax system launched under the demagogic slogan that it was going “to spread the wealth.”

This whole program created a condition of CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS such as we never had in this country before.

THE AMERICAN workingman should be the first to resent Mr. Roosevelt’s attempt to lower him to the unspeakable level of the Russian proletarian under the pretence of lifting him up.

He ought to know, or HE WILL KNOW, that such insanities as the new tax bill and every bill that is aimed at wealth PER SE is a blow directed straight between the eyes of every wage-earner in the country.

The Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, employing 600,000 wage-earners, had this to say about the soak-the-successful and spread-the-poverty tax bill:

“Wages of employes would be decreased through increased costs and in reduction in controllable costs.

“Costs of consumers’ commodities of all kinds would be increased.

“Income of all investors would be seriously curtailed.

“The measure would operate as a regressive and not a progressive tax.”

A WAR ON capital, a war on wealth and profits, is a WAR ON EVERY MAN AND WOMAN WHO WORKS WITH HAND OR HEAD—THAT IS, EVERYBODY.

It is nothing short of idiocy to believe anyone can confiscate and expropriate the invested private wealth of the country without shaking the whole social structure to its foundations.

The New Deal by its persistent ballyhoo against the successful “big business” and inheritances has created a bitter tension between the employer and the employed.

Popular psychological processes work through feeling.

The constant iteration of the administration that the rich must be made poorer and the poor richer has gradually created the atmosphere of a CLASS-WAR.

NOW. THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT THE REDS IN MOSCOW AND THEIR AMERICAN ALLIES ARE AIMING AT.

It is precisely, also, what the Fascist-minded are aiming at.

THIS ADMINISTRATION is, therefore, from the straight American-individualist point of view, THE MOST DISASTROUS IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

It has not only widened to a dangerous point the antagonism between capital and labor, but it is, consciously or unconsciously, playing right into the hands of OUR ENEMIES—THE COMMUNISTS AND FASCISTS.

Original publication
Benjamin DeCasseres, “Fatal Ballyhoo,” Syracuse Journal, October 10, 1935, editorial page. Printed page number unresolved.

Who Is President?

Essays/Articles, Works, ,

By BENJAMIN DeCASSERES

IN 1932 THE American electorate was under the impression that it had elected Franklin D. Roosevelt President of the United States, running on the Democratic platform.

THE MAN WHOM IT REALLY ELECTED PRESIDENT WAS NORMAN THOMAS, RUNNING ON THE SOCIALIST PLATFORM.

No sooner had Mr. Roosevelt been inaugurated than the Democratic platform, which the people had indorsed by a plurality of 7,000,000 votes, was thrown overboard and the platform of the Socialist party, which polled only 884,781 votes out of a total of 39,000,000 votes, WAS ADOPTED ALMOST IN TOTO.

Therefore, we are ruled today by a party that was OVERWHELMINGLY DEFEATED AT THE POLLS BY BOTH MAJOR PARTIES.

We elected a Democratic ticket, but we live under a SOCIALISTIC form of government.

Let us looks at the facts:

The only two important planks in the Democratic platform, adopted at Chicago in June, 1932, that have been lived up to are the prohibition and national defense planks.

The platform began with this “solemn covenant” with the people:

“The Democratic party solemnly promises by appropriate action to put into effect the principles, policies and reforms herein indicated.”

They were: A drastic reduction of governmental expenditures; the abolition of useless commissions and offices; consolidation of departments and bureaus; eliminating extravagance; a federal budget annually balanced; unemployment and old-age insurance under STATE LAWS.

All these “solemn promises” have been broken by increased governmental expenses, the creation of new commissions and bureaus; increased extravagance; a further division, instead of “consolidation,” of departments and bureaus; an unbalanced federal budget; a mounting debt, and federal unemployment and old-age insurance instead of insurance under state laws EXCLUSIVELY.

The rest of the platform consists of vague generalities piled on the still vaguer basic generality of “to recover economic liberty.”

Now turn to the platform of the national Socialist party, adopted in May, 1932, at Milwaukee.

Here are the leading planks in that platform which the Roosevelt administration has tried by every means in its power, TO FOIST ON A COUNTRY THAT VOTED FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM:

The entrance of the United States into the world court (failed).

Recognition of the Soviet government (succeeded).

Six-hour day and a five-day week (succeeded, partly).

Increased inheritance tax (about to be launched).

Moratorium on farm foreclosures (succeeded until knocked out by the ALL-AMERICAN supreme court).

Socialization of the power, banking and other industries (already begun on a large scale under the NRA—until smashed by the same ALL-AMERICAN supreme court, Socialistic power and banking planks now under consideration).

Cancellation of war debts (tacitly successful, as nothing is being done in the matter).

That is the platform adopted by a party, whose avowed aim is the DESTRUCTION of individualistic – Democratic – capitalistic America and the SUBSTITUTION of a tyranny of economic and political mob-masters originating in the brains of reactionary minded European peoples.

And that is the platform—with still more revolutionary and crackpot details—that the Roosevelt administration has adopted, instead of the one it was ORDERED TO PUT INTO EFFECT BY THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES!

If Norman Thomas was elected president in 1932, why isn’t he serving?

WHY HAS HE A PROXY?

Original publication
Benjamin DeCasseres, “Who Is President?,” Syracuse Journal, June 22, 1935, editorial page (number unresolved).

‘Down With EVERYTHING!’

Essays/Articles, Works, ,

By BENJAMIN DeCASSERES

AFTER one hundred and fifty years of upbuilding an epidemic of destruction evidently has taken possession of the American people—or at least of that part of them that now pretends to represent them.

“DOWN WITH EVERYTHING!”

Among professional Communists, direct-action anarchists and that vast horde of “social innovators” who are born with ants in their bones and bats in their belfrey, this is quite understandable.

But, both officially and among a crowd of demagogues and their followers, a demoniacal spirit, totally foreign to the conservative instincts of the American, has suddenly seized the country.

Is this mania to revolutionize all our traditions, to tear up all our safeguards to liberty and to trample on all that we once boasted of—our ingenuity, our individualism, our competitive joy—NARROWLY LINKED TO THE RISE AND DOMINANCE IN OUR LIFE OF RACKETEERING AND GANGSTERISM?

There is a close connection, psychologically and actually, between the professional politician and the gangster.

Their methods differ, but their object is the same—SPOLIATION.

One uses a gun. The other uses the weapons of taxes, bureaucratic tyranny and sappings and mining the edifice of free institutions under the guise of “going forward to better things.”

DOWN WITH EVERYTHING!
Down with profits!
Down with the rich!
Down with savings!
Down with free competition!
Down with incomes!
Down with independdence!
Down with the Constitution!
Down with private business!
Down with criticism!
Down with capital!
Down with over-production!
Down with under-production!
Down with the law of supply and demand
etc., etc., etc.

DOWN WITH EVERYTHING—EXCEPT the jobs of politicians, the right to confiscate personal wealth, the right to build up a tyrannous bureaucracy, the right to play fast-and-lose with every crack-brained theory that has made Europe a shambles and a stench.

THESE things are made safe for the mob-masters and the Utopian racketeers.

Look back from 1935 to 1932. Here is a three-year perspective for solid thought.

IT LOOKS NOW AS IF THERE HAD BEEN A PLOT HATCHED BEFORE THE LAST ELECTION WHICH IS ONLY NOW COMING TO LIGHT.

If the national program that is now undermining the traditional American Republic had ever been hinted at in the Democratic platform adopted in the summer of 1932, HERBERT HOOVER WOULD NOW BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

The Socialists who now rule at Washington are bent on a program of DOWN WITH EVERYTHING!

They are doing precisely as the dictator-tyrants of Europe are doing—everything to dig themselves in indefinitely.

The “forgotten man” is today more completely forgotten than ever—HE IS NOW JUST A NUMBER ON A DOLE CARD.

The “remembered man”—that is, the man of wealth, the business man, the capitalist—is the big target of the “down with everything!” program.

Economic atheism is another reason for this destructive business.

We no longer believe in natural law. We no longer believe that business and normal human beings, who are left alone, more certainly attain their ends than when they are harried and hamstrung.

When we have as rulers men of the “down with everything!” school we have turned to strange gods.

Especially are these new, strange gods a menace when they and their actual character and opinion never were elected by the people, but swooped down on us in the Trojan horse of a perfectly conventional and traditionally American political platform.

Original publication
Benjamin DeCasseres, “Down With EVERYTHING!,” Syracuse Journal, May 29, 1935, editorial page (number unresolved).

Mr. Tugwell

Essays/Articles, Works, ,

By BENJAMIN DeCASSERES

BEFUDDLEMENT!

No word more precisely describes the mental flounderings of the Sanhedrin of professors who hatch the word-eggs of the “new order” in Washington.

There is nothing courageous, well-defined or creative in the books, pamphlets or the verbose proclamations of these professorial and professional rigmaroleans.

Now and then they flutter around the red flame of Communism. When they feel they are in danger of getting politically scorched, they blithely trip away to the frogpond of near-Socialism.

Here, comfortably squatted, they croak “rugged individualist,” “capitalist” and “Tory” at the self-reliant, aggressive, self-made Americans who pass by.

These horn-rimmed nunkey-donkeys of the New Deal are already immortalized by what they do not know.

Their thoughts hop around pathetically on their flypaper brains.

Their mucilaginous political views prevent their puny ideas from ever taking wing.

Hence they have no historical sense, no knowledge of men at first hand, no psychological penetration and no sincere belief of any kind except in the financial rewards of publicity and that their jobs MAY some day be turned into a soft life-commissarship.

Befuddlement!

Of all the hopelessly befuddled minds of the “new order,” Rexford Guy Tugwell, deputy commissar in the department of agriculture, seems to be most muddle-headed.

He is the most perfect type of the yes-and-no man, of the right-wing-left-wing-no-wing man, of the high-diddle-diddle-jump-over-the-fiddle, the phoney-baloney young man.

One has but to read his latest bull on the New Deal, called “The Battle for Democracy,” to see plainly that the grand junta of Brain-Trusters is very like Br’er Rabbit: It come in by the same hole it went out at.

Someone said economics was the deadly dull science. This is sheer nonsense. Nothing is dull to a live, vital brain.

It isn’t economics that is dull. It is the brains of the political-professorial press agents of the New Deal that are atrophied.

Befuddlement!

Listen to Mr. Tugwell:

“What the old order describes as ‘rugged individualism’ meant the regimentation of the many for the benefit of the few.”

ONE OF THESE “FEW” IS REXFORD GUY TUGWELL.

The “old order” and “rugged individualism,” which he despises, built the dozen or so universities from which Mr. Tugwell drank at the bubbling founts of Marx, Engels and the other czars of collectivism.

It was the “old order” and “rugged individualism” that made possible Mr. Tugwell’s job of deputy commissar of agriculture, with its emoluments and the revenues he derives from his royalty-laden proclamations.

If the “old order” meant, as Mr. Tugwell says, “The regimentation of the many for the benefit of the few,” THEN WHY HAVE THE WORKING CLASSES OF ALL THE WORLD BATTERED AT OUR DOORS FOR ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS? WAS IT TO BE REGIMENTED AND EXPLOITED?

The “old order” and the “rugged individualism” of the American character built the only country in the world WHERE THERE WAS NEITHER COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE NOR REGIMENTED HUMAN BEINGS; WHERE LABOR UNIONS ACHIEVED MORE IN FIFTY YEARS THAN ALL THE LABOR UNIONS OF EUROPE HAD ACHIEVED IN A CENTURY.

“Malefactors of great wealth” and “plutocrat” having become shopworn, the “new order” demagogues have invented the new bugaboo of “rugged individualism” to scare the old ladies of both sexes.

It is “rugged individualism.” physical, mental and political, that is the very core of the character of Mr. Tugwell’s humane chief, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Rugged individualism” is a mighty, an inspiring phrase that should be hung on every wall in every home and office in America.

The antonym to “rugged individualism” is milksop, weakling, chicken-heart.

Under which banner does Mr. Tugwell prefer to march?

More befuddlement!

“What is demanded of us in America today is the making over of the institutions controlled and operated for the benefit of the few so that, regardless of their control, they shall be operated for the benefit of the many.”

As they do in bled-to-the-bone Russia, where a small bureaucratic Camorra own 170,000,000 people body and soul? Here Mr. Tugwell flutters around the red flame.

I spoke of Mr. Tugwell’s lack of historical sense. I suggest that he throw his abstractions out of the window and read concrete American history.

From the foundation of America, THE MANY HAVE BENEFITTED BECAUSE THE FEW HAVE BENEFITTED.

The working classes of America are literally dragged upward when the few prosper by the inexorable law of supply and demand.

Besides, where have 99 per cent. of Mr. Tugwell’s “few” come from in America?

They have risen because of their RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM and their SUPERIOR COMPETENCE right out of the ranks of the “many.”

And who is to “operate” these “institutions” for the benefit of the many?

Why, of course, Rexford Guy Tugwell and the rest of the vast army of mentally befuddled “new order” crusaders who only wait the signal to doff their masks of “democracy” and turn to the duped “many” the face of Lenin.

Original publication
Benjamin DeCasseres, “Mr. Tugwell,” Syracuse Journal, January 15, 1935, editorial page (number unresolved).