The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 31, 1926, Page 8

Profiting from Organized Murder =2#s#%- THE STORY OF J. PIERPONT MORGAN'S FORTUNE? By GUSTAVUS MYERS. ernment, vestigation, HE outbreak of the civil war gave the mercantile class unsurpassed opportunities for profiting from what amounted to organized murder, this statement seems, it ig in reality quite mild in de- scribing the prevailing practices of capitalists. It would be quite peurile and a poor extenuation to say that they were not fully conscious of the disast- rous consequences to the nation flawing from their acts. They knew tho baleful results to the soldiery of impos- ing fraudulent army and navy supplies upon the gov- Yet, spared by the certainty of extortionate porfits, they went eagerly ahead and when their frauds were discovered, sought to block every attempt at in- In the one item of shoes alone, the shoe manfacturers sold to the government from 1861 to 1862 However severe five million pairs of shoes for the army, as which trans- action &@ government commission re-¢+—————————__________.. ported that at least $3,000,000 had been defrauded; that supplies of shoes which were so bad that they could not be sold privately had been palmed off upon the government. ee outbreak of the civil war gave the mercantile class unsurpassed opportunities for profiting from what amounted to organized murder. How- ever severe this statement seems, it is in reality quite mild in describing the prevailing practices of capitalists, It would be quite puerile and a poor extenuation to say that they were not fully conscious of the disastrous con- sequences to the nation flowing from their acts. They knew the baleful re- sults to the soldiery of imposing fraud- ulent army and navy supplies upon the government. Yet, spurred by the certainty of extortionate profits, they went eagerly ahead, and when their frauds were discovered, sought to block every attempt at investigation. In the one item of shoes alone, the shoe manufacturers sold to the gov- ernment from 1861 to 1862 five mil- lion pairs of shoes for the army, as to which transaction a government com- mission reported that at least $3,000,- 000 had been defrauded; that supplies of shoes which were so bad that they could not be sold privately had been palmed off upon the government. But the one equipment which the army most urgently needed was rifles. We have already, in a previous chap- ter, related how Marcellus Hartley and other prominent capitalists swin- dled the government, and imperiled the Union army, by importing the re- fuse of European arms and unloading them upon the United States govern- ment. Also, we have adverted to the fact that it was greatly because of the greaf profits made in these trans- actions that Hartley was able to build enormous factories at Bridgeport, Conn.—factories that his descendants now own. J. Pierpont Morgan was profiting from the same methods at the same time, He was, in 1861, a robust young man, just twenty-four years old. “He inherited from his parents,” says one of his biographers, “their purity of character and exceptional abilities.” Those attributed lofty virtues were not in evidence, At a critical junc- ture when the Union government was most in need of soldiers, Morgan chose not only to stay at home, but to profit from the sale of worthless rifies for the arming of the men who responded to the call to arms. Abraham Lincoln was sending out his proclamations calling for volun- teers. The contest wags a momentous struggle not merely between sections, but between two kinds of conflicting capitalist institutions. The so-called common people—the factory and shop workers, the slum dwellers, the pro- fessionals and the farmers—heroically poured in for enlistment. Hundreds of thousands went forth to the camps and battlefields, never to return. Altho well qualified ph\sically and mentally for military servme, Morgan avoided any kind of duty interfering with money making and comfort. He differed in no wise from almost all *Extracts from the “History of the Great American Fortunes” by Gustavus Meyers, published in the magazine with the permission of author and the publish~ ers, Kerr & Co. the men of position and property, They restricted their exuberant pa- criotism to talk and the waving of bunting, but took great care to keep away from the zone of personal dan- ger. The rich, for whose interests the northern armies were at basis fighting, nov only as a class evaded enlistment, but proceeded to demoralize, spread disability and sow death among their own armies. While doing this, and at the same time swindling the govern- ment, states and cities out of vast sums in army contracts, they caused the draft act to be so amended that it gave men of property the easy oppor- tunity of escaping conscription by per- mitting them to hire substitutes. Morgan’s First Stroke of Business. J. Pierpont Morgan’s first ascertain- able business transaction, was in one of these army contracts; and while it was not on so large a scale ag those of older capitalists, it was (judged by prevailing capitalist standards) a very able stroke for a young man of twenty- four. Its success gave promise of much greater things to come, in which respect Mongan’s| admirers were not disappointed, In 1857 the army inspecting officers condemned a large number of Hall’s carbines as thoroly unserviceable, and as of obsolete and dangerous pattern. The government thereupon auctioned off quantities of them from time to time at prices ranging from between $1 and $2 each. Five thousand of them, however, still remained in the army arsenal in New York City and were there when the civil war broke out. - On May 28, 1861, one Arthur M. Eastman, of Manchester, New Hamp- shire, made an offer to the govern- ment to buy these rifles at $3 each. Knowing the great frauds going on in the furnishing of army supplies, the government officials might well have been suspicious of this offer, but ap- parently did not question its good faith. The rifles were sold to East- man at $3.50 each. But either East- man lacked the money for payment, or had been thrust forward to act as a dummy for a principal in the back- ground. One Simon Stevens then stepped on the scene, agreeing to back Eastman to the extent of $20,000, which sum was to be applied for pay- ment for the rifles; as collateral se- curity Stevens took a lien upon the rifles. But from whom did Stevens get the funds. The official and legal records show that it was from J. Pier- pont Morgan. Y ’ Courts Make the Government Pay. Did Morgan and_his associates get their full demands from the. govern- ment? They did. Judge Peck heid that when Fremont had agreed to buy the rifles he had entered into a con- tract which bound the government, and that a contract was a contract. The court took no cognizance of the fact that the worthless, condemned rifles had been represented as new, nor did it consider the fact that the money with which they had been bought from the government was vir- tually government money. It gave Stevens a judgment against the gov- ernment for $58,175, It was this particular decision which assured the open sesame for the hold- ers of what were then cynically called “deadhorse claims” to collect the full amount of their swindling operations. The government could now plead itself : i ¢ NE of the few and far-between good little photoplays was shown in Chicago last week at one of the many and ever-multiplyimg big, bad “movie” houses, As a girl behind me in the audience remarked, in a per plexed voice: “Well, that was a pe- culiar picture.” And so it was, “Man- trap,” peculiar because it really had some good points. The plot of “Mantrap”’ was taken from a serial story by Sinclair Lewis that recently ran in Collier's maga- zine.. There was evidently little sig- nificance about the story, except its author and its undercurrent of vague discontent. If the discontent had been less “vague” I am sure that Collier's wouldn't have used it. And there was less significance about the picture be- cause the djrector couldn’t refrain from a little “improvement” on the author, Nonetheless, enough of Lewis’ realism and humor remained to make the film diverting, especially with Ernest Terrence playing the chief part. One can’t help but chuckle at him in almost any role. How a city working girl gets tired of city men and lets herself get mar- ried to a Canadian trader and borne away to the backwoods, and how city men get equally tired of being city men and also let themselves get borne away (not at the price of marriage, tho), and then how city girl and city man meet in the backwoods and de- cide to beat it back to the city. This is the gist of the story, if you don’t take into consideration the backwoods- man, But as he is the one who makes the plot’s wheels go round, and the “hero” to boot, he eventually gets nearly everything that is coming to him, according to movie standards. Our hero pursues the fleeing pair, not so much to recapture the girl, he says, as to warn the city man against her flirtatiousness,- which the latter, unfortunately, has already discovered PRISCILLA DEAN. defenseless against the horde of con- tractors who had bribed officials to accept decayed ships and defective armor, worthless arms and shoddy clothing, flimsy tents, blankets and shoes, and haversacks which came to pieces, adulterated food and similar equipment and supplies. As for crim- inal action, not a single one of these defrauders went to prison, or stood any danger of it; the courts thruout the land were perennially busy rush- ing off petty defrauders to imprison- ment and employing the full punitive power of their machinery against poor, uninfluential offenders. é This was the real beginning of J. Pierpont Morgan's business career; the facts are there immovable and un- assailable in the public records. This el eet hi ede ae A PEEK EACH WEEK AT MOTION PICTURES Love for the girl is still for himself, in the back of both their minds, how- ever, and they argue how best to dis- pose of her “for her own good.” But she, having learned to make her own way in the world, asserts her right to decide things for herself and dashes back to the city alone. The city man likewise betakes himself to his own city, reconciled to its short skirts and divorce suits. And the backwoodsman tries to console himself in his loneli- ness with memories. TLés is where Lewis had the story DAVID GRIFFITH. end, I am told. But a profit-making movie director cannot afford to have a picture too “peculiar,” so he oblig- ingly provides the girl with memories, too, and “fond” ones at that. And she drops down from the sky into the backwoods again. The end is saved from banality by the sudden appear- ance of another “city” man. Even 4s the backwoodsman greets his returned flapper with hearty embrace, she peeks wistfully around at the new- comer and whispers, “Hold me tight, Joey; I’m slipping.” The picture thus discloses the dis- concerting truth that sterling qualities of the attractive little working girl, her pluckiness, ingenuity and cama- raderie, are marred by the fact that she flirts! When accused of it, she defends herself by saying that she only flirts when it is “absolutely nec- essary,” as, for instance, to win food from the aviator when lost in the woods. The picture refuses to accept her explanation, however, coming to the conclusion that she “flirts as natu- rally as she breathes.” I fear that it didn’t occur, even to Sinclair Lewis (at any rate no hint is given of it), that a manicurist, as such, scarcely gets wages enough to feed herself with and that “flirting” is an economi- cally developed mechanism for “pleas- ing the public,” from whence flows an indispensable source of income for a large class of working girls, namely, the magic “tip.” But since the laws of economics op- erate on a movie director as well as on a working girl, he has developed his little ways of “leading ‘em on,” too. And I'll say that he is a fast stepper when it comes to being fickle with the truth. G. W. was the brand of “‘patriot” he and his fellow capitalists were; yet ever since, and especially so today, clergy and politicians and shallow, obsequious writers saturate the public with myths all designed to prove Morgan’s meas- ureless benevolence and lofty patriot- ism,