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.