Evening Star Newspaper, April 9, 1935, Page 6

MONOPOLIES HELD MENACE TO NATION Senator Wheeler Condemns Dictator Control in Radio Forum. The burning issue before America today is whether the Nation is going to allow monopolies and other large aggregations of economic power to dominate the entire social, economic and political life of the people, Sen- ator Burton K, Wheeler, Democrat, of Montana said last night in an ad- dres in the Radio Forum, arranged by The Star and broadcast over a Na- tion-wide network of the National Broadcasting Co. This issue, he said, has its roots in the fact that 96 per cent of American citizens own only 15 per cent of the wealth; in the fact that one person in every six is dependent upon the Government for relief, and in the fact that 11,000,000 people are unemployed. “Either,” he said, ‘4ndustry ftself must see that more money gets into the hands of the people in the form of purchasing power, or it will have to be a function of the Government to do like they are doing now—that is, taxing industry and placing the proceeds in the hands of the needy in the form of relief. If we do this, we are verging on state socialism, which would, to my mind, be worse than unfortunate.” Dictator Plan Dencunced. Senator Wheeler denounced suggestion that the United States be put into the control of a dictator. There is no man capable of being a dictator of this country, he said, and | this Nation has too precious a heri- tage of freedom to permit too much centralization of power in the hands of an individual. Big business, he said, has provided an example of the evils attending such centralization of power. ‘The bulk of relief today is going to people who have been “slaves to the routine of mass production,” Senator Wheeler said. He denied that the American people have los® any of their liberties under the New Deal. Unless this country wishes to see “a much more drastic reorganization of the system than most people can even imagine at this time,” Senator ‘Wheeler said, it must decide at once what place the United States is going the | to occupy in the world picture and | whether we want either private or public fascism or industrial and eco- nomic democracy. ‘The text of Senator Wheeler's ad- dress follows: B 1929 Optimism. In the minds of some 1929 was & | golden era. Optimism ran higher than securities on the stock exchanges. But they were careless, slipshod days. Credit had been inflated out of all rea- son, partly by the overcapitalization of our corporations. When & certifi- cate of stock or a bond was issued to you and you borrowed money on it at the bank, or if you bought it on & margin, you were inflating the credit, and the indispensable widows and orphans, and the bootblacks and scrub- ladies who were buying watered securi- ties were helping in their little way to inflate the credit of the Nation. ‘When all this credit inflation, which in fact was really only the creation of & fantastic and impossible debt, | started to topple over, big business rushed to the Government and wanted, and got for that matter, the taxpay- ers’ money for the purpose of pro- longing the day of reckoning, which, Urges THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTOX, Industrial Democracy SENATOR BURTON K. WHEELER. —Star Staff Photo. international trade we can. That is impossible. There is only one way | | that we can sell our surpluses abroad | and that is by permitting other nations to trade with us. Secondly, do we want to go back | and have money of redemption and & metallic base for it? If we do, then we must face the fact that there isn't enough gold in the world to meet the needs of commerce and that we must remonetize silver. Or do we want to abandon the metallic base entirely and depend on a managed currency? It we remonetize silver, we will help the manufacturer by preventing the dumping of Oriental goods over our tariff barriers. The trouble with the American political life has been that during the | war and since the war up to 1929 so | many people were prosperous that they did not stop to figure out what | was bringing about that temporary prosperity. We felt that we were God's chosen people and that some- how in His divine wisdom he had picked us out for special attention, | when suddenly in 1929 we were face to |face with the greatest economic catastrophe of modern times, either for this country or any other. | Now, I haven't time in the few minutes that has been allotted to me tonight to point out some of the danger signals that lie in whatever route we choose on these questions. Irrespective of which fork in the road we take, the burning issue before America today is whether we are going to allow monopolies and other | large aggregations of economic power |to continue to dominate our whole power, or it will have to be a func- tion of the Government to do like they are doing now—that is, taxing| industry and placing the proceeds in | the hands of the needy in the form of relief. If we do this we are verging onto state socialism, which would to | my mind be worse than unfortunate. It would be so because socialism im- plies the strong hand of a leader, censorship in the press, on the radio. soclal, economic and political life. Wealth Concentrated. This issue has its roots in the fact | that 96 per cent of we American | sovereigns own only 15 per cent of the wealth; in the fact that one out of every six persons is dependent upon the Government for relief; in the fact that 11,000,000 people are unemployed. Either industry itself must see that more money gets into the hands of the people in the form of purchasing in my judgment, has got to come. This is no way to build for the future, to try to shift the penalties of bad Judgment onto the people. Business end financial leaders of | prominence issued weekly interviews telling how much bigger and better | things were getting all the time. Why, | nothing could stop us in our forward | march. ! Sees Hope in Despair. | I happened to notice in the paper | the other day where one of these men | Just returned from Europe, and when | interviewed about conditions, shook his head gloomily and uttered words of despair. Now, that is the most hopeful sign of the end of the de- pression that I have yet seen, because this man was wrong so many times | in 1929, when things were getting big- | ger and better, and was wrong so | many times during 1930, 1931 and | 1932, when he told us that prosperity | was just around the corner. | ‘These same high priests are still | with us, and they honestly believe that | we should let things work out with | no Government interference except | Government loans. They do not want reforms, crazy speculation is in their blood and nothing would meke them 80 happy as to be allowed to build up another 1929. But, my friends, their usefulness, and I am admitting that | in the past they have been useful, is over. The day of frontiers is over and | ‘we must settle down to living the full- est possible life with our resources. Friends, we have something far i more important before us today thean any feeble attempts to reassure the | public that all is well. We have some- | thing on our hands that is infinitely | more of concern to our welfare than | eny minor patching up of the old ! machine. | Decisions Necessary. | America is at this moment on the threshold of very vital and far-reach- ing decisions. Where do we want to | 80? The decision is up to us. Do we | want to do what some strong groups | contend for and abandon our foreign | trade for economic nationalism? I can | hear some of my listeners say we | want to maintain our high tariff walls | and at the same time to get all the | Building Material _The New TELEPHONE DIRECTORY CLOSES To order a t'elephone or arrange for additional listings call MEtropolitan 9900 GIRLS PREFER A MAN WHO'S CLEAN-SHAVEN And I don’t think that there is any man capable of heing dictator of the United States of America, be he Herbert Hoover or Franklin D. Roose- velt, or any one else. We have too preclous s heritage of freedom and democracy to entrust it to faclsm, communism or any other ism that implies centralization of too much power in the hands of any one individual. Example in Past. Big business gives us a good enough example of the evils which might at- tend this course. From 1920 to 1929 no sacrifice was 0o great to make to centralize power in the hands of fewer and fewer corporations, controlled by fewer and fewer individuals. In 1909 thie 200 largest non-banking corpora- tions had assets of only $26,000,000,- 000. In 10 years, by 1019, these assets had reached 43.7 billions, or an in- ‘crease of 63 per cent.- In the next 10 years, from 1919 to 1929, they in- creased to $81,000,000,000, or & gain of 85 per cent. These 200 largest corporations would, if the rate of growth from 1924 to 1929 were applied in the fu- ture, in 30 years absorb all corporate activity and practically all business activity. These 200 largest corpora- tions are directed nominally by about 2,000 men. But most of the directors are inactive, many of them are dummy directors. It is safe to say that only a handful of men, somewhere in the hundreds, control half our corporate wealth, The other day Chalrman Jones of the R. F. C,, testifying before my committee in the Senate, stated that the rallroads were controlled en- tirely by the bankers. Other testi- mony showed that the banker control was almost entirely divided between just two banking firms. What is true of the rallroads is also true of the life insurance companies and the util- ities in just the same way. I have no doubt that it is true of the rest of the 200 corporations. This shows that while half of the corporate wealth is controlled outright by a handful of men, at least the major share of these men may be controlled in turn by less than a half dozen investment bankers. ‘The corporate form was originally one by which private business was conducted by an individual. It is now a means whereby some financial oper- D. €., TUESDAY, ators, entirely without stake of their own in the case of many corporations, put the risks of their own bad judg- ment on thousands of part owners from Maine to California, while tak- ing out for themselves the profits that accrue from their good judgment. In its original form the corporate device served a very necessary func- tion and was a fine thing, but I say to you that business units of the size of these 200 corporations have no place in our economy. In them are all the objectional features of Government o Ip, except that they are in no way responsible to the public interest. They lend themselves to the maldis- of wealth and power. They tend to stifle private initiative. They foster nepotism in its worst form. They deliberately sup- press inventions and new processes so that they can preserve obsolete and uneconomical machinery and plants. They are bureaucracy plus. Their managements, like the Hapsburgs and other royal families, tend to be self-per- petuating, because by wide dispersion of the stock ownership, the use of proxies and holding devices, they can remain in control with only a mini- mum of stock. Economic democracy under them is an impossibility when they own around 40 per cent of all business wealth. Their influence, how- ever, does not stop at ownership. ‘There is no way of estimating how much wealth they actually and ef- fectively control in addition to what they own. Employes and people de- 'APRIT. 9, 1935. pendent v their- favors have M more dmmcy than did under the feudal system. go out and vote, yes, but their economic dependence upon companies is such that they do n dare to disobey a mandate to sides in & particular issue, Quotes Editerial. I think it would be enlightening just at this point to read an editorial from the Electrieal World, a semi-official publication of the public utilities. In the list of 200 largest corporations which I have menfioned, 52 are public utilities. ‘I quote briefly from the edi- torial, which is entitled . “Light Up ‘With Politics”: “Upon a platform of public interest, utdlity men as taxpayers, as citizens, a8 representatives of employes and investors, and as public service sup- pliers, must make politics their major concern. Every executive or manager in each community served must devote his individual efforts to making the citizens and the politicians {friends instead of enemies. * * * The utility men must come to know intimately the present municipal officials and | State and national legislators, also those who will attain these political positions in the future, and they must be able to convince these men of their political impartiality. * * * Suc- cess in politics depends on human relations, and these have their great- est center in the homes of the citizens of each locality. Utilities should trans- Finer---Has No Subst.itute ‘SALADA . TEA And now that same great Amoco-Gas has been improved to be- come GREATER Amoco-Gas. It took some improving to better the Amoco that holds more official world’s records than any other gas. Cnly our new refinery and new processes made this improvement possible. Out of them all comes a new basic gasoline into which more available energy from the raw crudes is being put than was ever be- fore possible. In addition, we have increased the percentage of the most costly of Amoco’s exclusive ingredients. WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU! 1. world’s high in calorifick value. 2- or motor fuel. 3. 4. motor fuel on the market today. S. ive; it is different! [ AMERICAN OIL COMPANY DO THIS: GREATER Amoco-Gas, among other superiorities, sets a new It contains more heat units per gallon than any other gasoline This definitely means more power and more miles per gallon. It takes less fuel to get more results. It’s the biggest gallon of There is nothing else like GREATER Amoco-Gas. It is distinct- % CALORIFIC VALUE: The heat units available in a gallon of motor fuel for direct conversion into mileage and power. THAN ANY OT Read the letter from the Contest Board of the (A.A.A.) American Automobile Association! It-says Amoco holds more world’s records than any other motor fuel or gasoline. That’s official! late public service into political serve ice also by taking local action ade- quate to meet present needs. Local tickets should be slated and local plate forms written at once for each com- munity.” How much effect the lesson for utilities contained in this editorial has had can best be judged by the cam- | n;fl: fl]‘:y“ h:l}:le administration’s i ul ing company bill which I have introduced in the United States Senate. I will be the first to admit that these corporations have every right to spread their gospel in any way that they see fit, but I strenuously object to the masquerading of their own selfish in- m—u un:er thebf‘-rb ;_; concern for poor dear public. ey have the right to volce their opinions 1n tne ' W B R M OUTH public forum and I would be the last | to say that they should be deprived of it in any way, shape or e But | Imported by when they are openly avowing that| W, A. TAYLOR & CO., N.Y. (Continued on Seventh Page.) BEITZELL & (O, Distributors ‘For"H'\e perfect . DRY MARTINI MARTINI &ROSSI DRY WEEK=END ;. NEW ORLEANS 7 s, MIAMI 6% Hrs. 2 ROUND TRIPS DAILY ®T.S. Air Mail, Passengers and Express in the famous Douglas irliners. Airlin TICKET OFFICE: 808 15th Street, N. W., National 1057. Also hotels, travel bureaus, telegraph offices. USE GENERAL AIR EXPRESS AMOCO HOLDS MORE OFFICIAL WORLD'S RECORDS R GAS! ® Women won't tell you that stubble is offensive to them...they simply pre- fer the man who keeps clean-shaven! Why spoil your chances—socially or in business-by neglecting to shave as close or as often as you should? TheGillette “Blue Blade” is especially recommended for men with tender skin. Even two shaves a day, when necessary, are easy, pleasant. Shave withthe Gillette “Blue Blade” tomor- row morning and feel the difference. Reputable merchants give you what you ask for. In stores where is practiced INSIST ON Gillette Blue Blades . Now 5%r25¢ - 10%-49¢ » No matter what ges you are using today, you owe it to your pocketbook to try thisnew GREATER Amoco-Gas. GREATER Amoco-Gas costs us more to produce, but is soid to the motorist oo the same ‘basis a5 the previous Amo- co-Gas. Prove to yourself that GREATER Amoco- Gas is the biggest gallon of motor fuel you can buy. Sold from Maineto Florida and inland, ALWAYS GREAT...NOW GREATER THAN EVER - <