The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 16, 1924, Page 9

WHAT ABOUT OBREGON AND THE MEXICAN TEAPOT?~ 2 smsox-cionax if HAT the depredation of petroleum imperialists are not confined to Wyoming and California fie.ds is taken for granted by anyone cog- nizant with the nature of the animal. But as the U. S. Senate investigat- ing committee has a few more shocks coming its way if it carries out the proposed widening of the in- vestigation to include concessions granted American corporations in foreign countries—according to the resolution passed on February 13th —it may be well to break the news gradually and ease the shock. With that humane consideration in mind, let us lay aside the current daily capitalist newspaper with its stage-thunderous indignation against the “guilty” as distinguished from the “innocent” plunderers of the na- tional resources and its present ef- forts to check the oily flood before it seeps into the tombs of two dead presidents, Let us recall that Stand- ard Oil was for many years waging a bitter struggle against British in- terests led by Lord Cowdray for con- trol of Mexican oil resources. Then, let us read between the lines ' of the following article referring to recognitions between Albert Fall, then U. S. Senator from New Mexico, | and President Obregon of Mexico, as published in the London Daily Herald on Dec. 13, 1920: “The plan provides for the prompt recognition of the Obregon regime by the republicans, for a large Mexican loan from American bankers and for the eventual ap- pointment of Senator Fall to super- vise the reorganization of the Mex- ican railways... . Passing thru Washington to lay details of the arrangements before Senator Hard- ing at Marion, Senator Fall sig- nificantly praised Obregon as a man capable of safeguarding in- vestments in Mexico. A similar unaccumstomed admiration of the Mexican regime is being voiced by the oil magnates and the Hearst newspapers, which have hitherto been notoriously belligerent. Mex- ieo has paid the price for peace with AT TWO RUTH, it is said, is stranger than fiction. Strange as it may sound, infants, at the tender age of two and three years are actually pro- ducing marketable commodities. The sceptical attitude of some towards the expositions made by the “New York Welfare Commission” brings back to my mind a recollection of my own childhood; how every naturally chil- dren of the working class drift into work; how parents with even the warmest love for their children are forced to send them to work. As I remember my environment at the age of three or thereadouts I was the eldest of three children. My father tho a barber was rorced thru slackness in his trade to work as an unskilled laborer in a railway shop. To add to the meager, insufficient wages he did a little barbering in the evenings. My nursery, the one room we all lived in, was like a stage. Three times a day the scene changed. In the morning father could be seex disentangling himself slowly, tho not without impatience, from amongst the little arms and legs strewn over and around him in the family bed, swear- ing because it was cold, yet every now and then throwing out an angry, “Why didn’t you wake me earlier, didn’t I tell you cold or no cold I'll be sacked if I get to work lates. , . We haven’t enough money yet to open up a regular barbershop. The wife, my mother, barefootedly running around a pm his _ breakfast, would silently gesture to him not to make so much noise lest the children wake up. “Well, I don’t have to worry about reporting my Income Tax anyway North America. The confluence of both republican and democratic politics in the great oil stream will be noticed by the in- clusion of Hearst with Fall and Harding. Perhaps this is why Hearst recently traveled a long way to have a little talk with Coolidge. Hearst papers have thus; far been untouched by Teapot oil, but how about Mexi- ean oil? Fellow Crooks. Besides, here is evidence that Fall, intriguer and crook for Standard Oil interests before he was appointed to Harding’s cabinet, must have been known as such by Harding—indeed, Fall hurried to Harding as to an ac- complice in putting a deal across whereby the Mexican people were ravaged of their oil resources by the same gang that later took the Tea- pot. Fall, the international shoplifter, seems to have a way with him that presidents cannot resist... ! To make it a bit more interesting, let us go back further. Fall, pre. vious to his cabinet position, was U. S. senator from New Mexico. As such he was given the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Public Lands (nice, cushy job!). All this time he had been connected with Do- Wall Street’s - 9 Sn Helping Hand to the Philippines heny’s Petroleum Proaucers’ Asso- ciation, which organization was lead. ing a propaganda for armed inter- vention in Mexico, because the “dirty Greasers” had been inconsiderate to American oil and mining interests by writing in Article 27 of the Mexican constitution that subsoil rights should revert to the Mexican nation, Wilson, Too. John Kenneth Turner, in his book “Shal. It Be Again?” states that, “As condition for the recognition of Obre- gon, Wilson accepted the terms of Albert B. Fall, which were also the terms of the great financial and in- dustrial interests.’ Again another president succumbed to the wiles of Doheny’s Man-Friday, Fall. But Obregon at that time was telling the seducer that he was not that kind of a girl. The Plot Thickens. Naturally, something had to be done about it. Fall, as chair- man of the committee of the Senate on Public Lands, caused a sub-com- mittee to be appointed with himself as chairman, empowered by some hocus-pocus with the investigation of Mexico. Fall had a girl secretary who seemed to be a pliable lassie. She was sent to Mexico and remain- The Strikebreaker-Governor General Wood. An hour or so later the scene AND THREE YEARS filled with the thought that I was old would change. This same room would | enough to work and I could see my- become a dressmaking establishment. |self throwing hand-fulls of pennies Now, instead of the bed there was a |into my mother’s lap. <A few doors huge closet with mirrored doors, In |down lived a printer, who like my these my mother’s customers would | father, was strugg.ing to make ends view themselves in the full glory of |meet. I had seen his children tying their Sunday best. Much bargaining | strings onto cardboard tags so I would take place. Once while my |thought I would ask him for a job. mother was fitting a dress my little} Mother, fearful lest I should catch brother got his finger caught in the cold, ran after me but, seeing that wheel of the sewing machine and it |I had my heart set on getting a job, nearly drove my mother into hys-|she asked the printer to “play the terics. game with me” and give me the job, In the evening, right after supper,| The first few days my working was my father’s barbershop would be|taken as a joke but as the week ad- flashed on the screen. The kitchen| vanced and the sum of my wages table placed before the grand mir- |grew to almost the size of a fifty cent rors and the red plush covered barber | piece even my mother was forced to chair pushed up before it would be |take it a little more seriously. By the signal for my little prother and | the time that the second week start- sister to creep up to my mother to be ;ed tho my interest in the game of lulled to sleep on a couple of chairs until the shop was closed and they could be put into bed. I being considered “a big gir) al-|@nd sister « seeing who could tie the most strings onto tags was civing way to a de- sire to play my little brother fate had taken a ready” was allowed to come near the | hand in my lite routine and I eon- barbershop section. I was even given a job cutting up newspaper into squares for the soap of the razor to be wiped off on. In that way I made a number of friends amongst my tinued to work. My father was kill- ed. In his zealousness to make a hit with the foreman he worked in the most dangerous places and met his death under the crushing weight of an overturned car. father’s customers. One evening one of them asked me with, as I imagine he must have done, a sly wink at my father, “Hey, there what do you want to sit and cut paper squares for a smart girl like you. Buy your- self a razor and a brush so we won't have to wait around so long. What! You are too smail! Oh, we can fix that! You stand on a soap box. Just think, perhaps your mother won’t have to sew dresses and your little brother will not get his finger caught in the machine because your méther isn’t watching him.” “Yes,” I thought, taking myself very serious- ly, “I could too. Papa will you buy me the tools?” I asked. “Buy you the tools! That is no way to do bus- iness. Go out and work, save peur money and then buy yourself tools. “Right again,” I must have thought, because no svoner had he said that than I quietly put the papers down; got into my hat and coat and was on my . Before any one realized what I was doing I was out on the street. No matter even if it was nine o’clock at ta and mid-winter at that; my childish imagination was ed there for eight months, Doheny paying her salary and expenses! She came back like the dove to the ark, or better, like a stool-pigeon, with voluminous testimony to give before the fancy little sub-committee Fall was carrying around. She said that Mexicans were laying waste their na- tive heath and massacring Americans right and left, that neither property nor life of foreigners was safe, And Fall’s sub-committee promptly brought in a recommendation to the Senate demanding armed intervention in Mexico. The Senate rejected war, however, and Fall had to use other means, ; From the above quotation from the Daily Herald it is seen that as quick- ly as Harding was elected, Fall made his visit to Mexico City, saw Obregon an# finally brought him “to reason” with a deal which would swap recog- nition by the republicans and a large loan by American bankers for “safe- guarding investments in Mexico” and “reorganization of the Mexican rail- Ways.” Wall Street Gets Railways. This “safeguarding of investments” was the revocation of the retroactive effect of Article 27—practicaily nul- lifying it, and the reorganization of the railways -was a turning over of the nationally owned lines of Mexico to private capital—Wall Street, The whole barter and sale of Mexican re- sources in an itemized way, including this railway reorganization, was finally signed and sealed in New York in_the spring of 1923, by Thomas W. Lamont, representing the committee of International Bankers, and Adolpto De La Huerta, then a cabinet officer under Obregon and now leading an abortive revolt. A resolution was introduced Febru- ary 18, in the Chamber of Deputies in Rome calling for an investigation of the concessions granted by Italy to Sinclair’s oil interests. The Oil Scandal has become international. The American government is uncov- ered in its nakedness as a prostitute. How about its “sister republic” to the south? How about the Mexican teapot? By MYRA MANN, taught a few motions necessary for the production of some commodities psychologists will agree. As for conditions making it necessary, one need only go down to the east side of New York City to see that what the New York Welfare Commission has reported is true, “The defeated of today will be the Lieb- victors of tomorrow.”’—Karl knecht. The Poor Fish says he believes in the enforcement of the prohibition So my career as 4 wage worker be-|laws if it doesn’t make it too hard gan. That a child of three can be to get a drink, The High Cost of Living, 1930. CATV No ap A