The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 3, 1926, Page 11

o Sil HOLE libraries have been written on the events of the last 150 years, years which have changed the face of the world, let alone the aspects of American life, in a way that would unquestionably strike dumb with amazement those who a century and a half ago believed their own puny power and their own social arrange- ments to be the last word in civiliza- tion, Nothing can give us the sense of the transitory nature of social systems and governments better than a peek at the past. Our space allows only a little peek, however. But, projecting ourselves back to 1776, our first gasp of astonishment comes at the realiza- tion of the dissolution of the old Span- ish empire. Spain claimed the great bulk of the western hemisphere, though it must be said that Spain, France and Eng- land, all claimed, some at the same time, that immense territory laying west of the Mississippi River in the North American section of the Ameri- can continent. Land grants from the British crown aften provided that the “grantees” could begin to claim land on the Atlantic seaboard and go as far as they liked, the grants reading “from ocean to ocean,” there being the gen- eral idea that the land stopped some- where and ran up against an ocean. But it didn’t make much difference then, because Teapot Dome had not yet been discovered and the Indians, the 100 per centers of those days, had the idea they owned it, too. The Indians of both North and South were generally hospitable and kindly people, but when the white man began to enslave them, to drive them to work in mines with whips and hot irons, as did the Spanish conquerors, or to steal their lands on a claim that some Euro- pean monarch had given the white men a piece of paper, and to massacre them without mercy for trespassing, the Indians fought ‘with marvellous heroism. The year of 1776 falls only |- in the third quarter of the four hun- dred years of time that the Indian forced the heralds of capitalism to walk abroad with rifles. ee The thirteen colonies on the Atlan- tic seaboard were, of course, British in 1776. England had ousted France from Canada, claimed by France on the ground of Cartier’s voyage. The great Mississippi valley, then called Louisiana, had changed hands, as! those of Spain, and were—be it said— usual, by exchange between the Euro-| almost as bad as the fathers of our : the twilight of Spain in the Ne pean monarchs, but was at the = These latter gentry were the World. But England, too, had her “mercan- tile imperialism.” Her governors sent to the American colonies in the North different only in degree from claimed by France. Mexico stretched | rising capitalist element whose inter- clear up to Oregon and still belonged | ests were conflicting with those of to Spain, as did Florida, British business. The mercantile Spain held her émpire under the| theory of England was that the colo- same iron hand with which she seized | Dies should not produce finished com- it. The territory was divided in four} ™Odities, but should buy these from vice-royalties, Mexico, Peru, La Plata} Eugland, and send over raw materials and New Granada. Besides these | 2nd receive all goods, in British bot- Spain had five so-called “captain gen- | toms. eralships,” something like modern] The ship-building class of New Eng- Wall Streets’ hold on Porto Rico and} land, the manufacturing and tradins Haiti. These five weré Yucatan, Gua-| Class in the northern and middle colo- temala, Chile, Venezuela and Cuba. | Hies, and the big plantation owners in Brazil was still a colony of Portugal. the south were the real owners and bosses of the colonies and, sammoning the small landlords, wage slaves, bond slaves and chattel slaves behind them, “proclaimed liberty thruout the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof” just 150 years ago. It needs no specially discerning eye to discover that we in 1926 have not yet caught up with that proclamation of 150 years-ago. “Liberty” to the rising capitalist class meant free trade; equality,” their right to share the robbery of the toilers with the no- bility; and “fraternity” was to be de- fined as the great brotherhood of stockholders. HE United States today is, so far as wealth is concerned, in the hands of a few. Nobody but some in- curable liberals and sections of the middle class really believe in democ- racy, for the good reason that there is none. More than forty families have in excess of $100,000,000 each. More than one hundred other families have over $50,000,000 each. More than three hundred families have in excess of $20,000,000 each. Even the “B, & O. plan” and the Watson-Parker law can't advance democracy a _hair’s breadth in the face of this sort of thing, this real oligarchy. ‘ There are men richer than Solomon ever dreamed in every industry of this country. In oil, steel, coal, beef, cop- The most ghestly massacres and tor- tures were visited upon the Indians by Spaniards to make them efficient slaves. Spain demanded gold and raw materials, and that everything manu- factured be for Spain. Colonial gov- ernorships were well paid absolutions, stained with the blood of countless In- dian slaves. Colonists were not even allowed to grow vines or olive trees, and everything cost six times its price in Spain. No books but religious ones were allowed in the New World, The Indiang who were not slaves in mines were serfs, bound to the soil, Over this spectacle of blood and empire the same church which only last month produced the Eucharistic Congress in Chicago spread the halo of divine ap- proval. NGLAND had the monopoly by agreement with Spain for furnish- ing still more slaves, Negroes, hunted down like animals in Africa, to New Spain. But England, moved by France's alliance with Spain, aide New Spain when it began its fight for independence, which continued from 1810 to 1826, “If France has Spain,” cried -Can- ning In parliament, “at least it shall/be Spain without the Indies. We have called a New World into existence to redress the balance of the old.” It. .. The. American. Continent....-....-. By Harrison George ... per, railroads, traction, telephones, radio, power, tobacco, rubber, sugar, flour, armaments and shipping a hand- ful of men rule the destinies of tens of millions. The average wage of the factory workers is less than $25 a week. The cost of living for a family of five is a minimum, for health, of $2,200. .A great percentage of farmers are ten- ants, another great percentage are mortgaged. The majority barely make ends meet—and sometimes they don’t meet. New combines of already great corporations are of daily occurrence. Tho machinery constantly inproves, the conditions of the ones who make it and use it grow steadily worse. There’s an awful swag being made away with by the capitalist class as a whole. Like a spider in the center of a web of modern industty, the” finan- cial imperialists, the credit” méfopoly, | rules over all, units all, livés updn' all.) Wall Street has taken the place of Cortes in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. It bosses with cruel fist the little re- publics of Central America. It is steadily driving British imperialism, which had built up its power in Latin America for a hundred years, into a subordinate position. It has but re- cently, in Brazil’s withdrawal from the (British) league of nations, shown its probably final hegemony in that coun- try of marvelous wedlth. It has made Canada dependent upon New York in-. stead of London, and is reaching over the whole world to claim the prize of financial overlordship. One hundred and fifty years is not a long time, yet it is long enough to have shown how ephemeral are the powers of a ruling class. In that short space the mercantile -imperialism of Spain has vanished utterly. That of the. British has changed to financial imperialism and it, too, is being crushed. United States financial im- perialism, which is giving its British rival the coup de grace, is flourishing over a volcano, a volcano now dormant and inactive it is true, but filled with expolsive millions of wage workers who must sooner or later, overthrow it or perish, It will not need another 150 years, either; nor fifty,