You can get it free by sending in two yearly subs at 50 cents each or four x months subs for 25 cents each. Campaign Tape Measures Free You can get one of our handy campaign tape measures free with two yearly bs at 50 cents each or for four six months subs at 25 cents each. Rush in your subs to: The American Socialist All Hail, Conscription Washington: Congress readily agreed to pass conscription for men but conription for materials and of profits is another matter. Hiding under the ouds of patriotism which are everywhere decorating the sky, the big imorters of phosphate rock from South America have, up to this moment sucessfully killed a project to sell fertilizer to the farmer at cost. The Govnment was to buy fertilizer from the corporations for what they paid for it and then sell it to the would-be users of it at between $35 and 890 £ less than the market price. The resolution giving this power and approgon ing the funds passed the Senate after a bitter fight but it is now deac T dying in the House. All hail to conscription! Once more The seed m2 EN hiding behind a cloud of patriotism. They are doing a rushing and profite business, urged on by the by the production of foodstuffs campaign. In so places they are reducing their prices giving less seeds per evege w making more money because of the stimulated business. But-Seed met s the South, whose names are known to Government, are holding at this mon enough soy bean seed to plant the entire normal crop. The Government his asked Congress for power to commandeer this seed. Congress has not given it Congress may not give it till the planting season is past and gone, and ty seeds cannot serve their purpose as seeds until next spring. All hail, eescription! Take the bodies of men and send them out for cannon fodder, te don't hurt profits or capital for heaven's sake. GOVT. EXHIBIT No. 45 Navy Gives Receipts To show its gratitude to the women folks of those who have enlisted in the U. S. Navy, the Commandant of the Great Lakes Training Station is issuing prettily printed cards to the effect that a man from their home is now serving his country at the front in the Navy. These cards are to be publicly displayed in order to stimulate recruiting, presumably to encourage other women to swap their husbands and sons for a piece of gaudy cardboard. Any womar who would make such a trade must have a mighty low opinion of her male relations. Getting Acquainted Considerable dismay is being created in the ranks of the jingo press ot receipt of the news that Russian and German soldiers on the Eastern front are fraternizing with each other. These jingo sheets consider it the worst of tragedies that the workers of these two countries should get really ac quainted and find out that they have nothing to fight and kill each other for Here's hoping that this spirit of fraternity becomes contagious and spreads to all fronts. It is reported that not one shot has been fired on the Russian front for a whole week. This ought to give the German soldiers in the East an opportunity to consider affairs at home, to question the machinations of the war makers in Berlin and come to the conclusion that the time to quit fighting has arrived. Fraternizing between the working class soldiers of Germany and Russia should be a prelude to a "Back to Berlin" movement that would put the Kaiser in the same company with the late czar. Bloody battlfields is probably the last place one would look for fraternity and brotherhood. Yet this is one of the latest developments of the present war. May this development grow to its fullest realization. The Fifth Commandment. Little Christian children by the millions have been taught, in four words one of the most profound rules of morality and ethics. The Fifth Comman ment, they are told, reads as follows "Thou shalt not kill ". They are told that all good people obey these commandments-and if they would be good at upright and true they too will obey that commandment. We presume that the editors of that noble exponent of jingoism, The Chicago Tribune, have bee taught these humble virtues. If they havent been taught them in chur they should have received this instruction in the public schools. Yet we fi "Get the other fellow" as a title to the recent editorial contribution to the propaganda of murder and we may well ask “Shall it be substituted for th other in the most widely published book in the English language? This "te the other fellow" editorial reads. In war killing an enemy for ones count? is more serviceable than dying for it. In war it is more beautiful to give th to receive. The bullet lodged is more beautiful than the bullet received. W are not going out to die but to kill. Dying, pro patria may be a beautifr thing, but a more practical thing is to kill. Let the other fellow do the dyisz He may have the beauty of it for whatever it is. Americans are not go. to die for their country-any more than is necessary. They are going out ill for their country- -as much as may be necessary. What we want to offer ip on the altar of our country is Germany-not ourselves. Pro patria, kill someone else. It's a dead loss to die for your country. It is a clear gain to nake the enemy die." In view of the above shall we say that the ethical education of the gentlemen who edit the Tribune has been sadly neglected, or shall we conclude that Christianity and every other known creed of faith and morality is all very well in its place and perfectly applicable except when the money bags of Capitalism in general and of the gentlemen who own and edit The Tribue, in articular, are endangered in a war of their own making? 49 THOMAS J. SCONE, witness on behalf of the Government testified as follows: Direct Examination by Mr. Fleming. I reside at Rockford, Illinois; I am a court reporter of Winnebago County, Illinois Circuit Court since 1912. I reported an address made by Adolph Gerner June 17, 1917, at Blackhawk Park, Rockford. I took notes and transcribed them. I have the original notes. There were at least 2000 people present. I would judge from their appearance that men between the ages of 18 and 45 vere present. The entire transcript is 26 pages. The document you show me s said transcript. It is a faithful and correst transcript of my notes, Whereupon said transcript was marked Government's Exhibit 46 and offered n evidence. Objection by Mr. Stedman as follows: I object in behalf of each of the defendants upon the ground that it is incompetent, immaterial, and irilivant: In addition to the objections heretofore made I would like to urge the one specifically that statements (referring to exhibit) in reference to the raising of revenue for carrying on the war do not indicate, and neither is it competent to show, the specific intent of the offiece alleged. Court Objection overruled. To which ruling of the court the defendants were respectively allowed an exception. 50 (Said transcript was thereupon by the court admitted in evidence, marked Government's Exhibit 46, and the same is in words and figures as follows, to wit:) 51 GOVERNMENT EXHIBIT 46. Speech delivered by Adolph Germer at Blackhawk part Sunday June 17th, at about 3 o'clock P. M. Ir. Jenner: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, comrades, friends and fellow-citizens:---Last fall when I was in Rockford I did not have as large an audience as I ave this afternoon, because at that time we all believed in the slogan that "he would keep us out of war". (Laughter) That slogan seemed at that time to trike a very popular chord and seemed to hypnotize the great mass of the eople because on election day they voted because "he kept us out of war'. Since that time the situation has changed considerably and while we said ast fall, "praise God, he kept us out of war ", Wall Street now says: praise God, he got us into war". (Laughter and applause) But now that we are in he war is no reason why we should despair and become disheartened but it s all the more reason why we should take heart, for it if it logicol, if it is good judgment, to prepare for war during times of peace, it is also good judgment and logical to prepare for peace during times of war. (applause) This war will not last forever; it cannot last forever; its end must come ome time, and the question for us to determine is when that end shall be. am not going this afternoon to appeal to your passion; I am rather going to appeal to your intelligence, to your reasoning and I want to present some facts to you; at least they are facts, in my judgment that will perhaps give you a different conception of this war which you are ot able to get out of the daily papers in Rockford or out of the Chicago Tribune. (laughter) 52 Since Congress declared that a state of war exists and since the mobilizaion of troops has increased from day to day, we are beginning to ask: "what re we fighting for" and the reply has been given us that we are fighting to make the world safe for democracy. But if we are to make the world safe for democracy, then wy is it that we have singled out one country and de clared that a state of war exists between this country and that country when there are other countries in this world that we are trying to make safe for democracy that are just as undemocratic and just as autocratic as the govern ment against which we have declared war. (applause) Is it that we are going to make the world safe for democracy only for Germany or are we also going to make the world safe for democracy so far as Ireland is concerned, so far as India is concerned, so far as Austria is concerned, so far as Turkey and Belgium and Italy and Serbia and Roumania? Are we going to make the entire world safe for democracy and if so, then why not declare war on every country in which democracy does not exist. (laughter and applause) 453 I know and I concede that there is no vistige of democracy in the German empire, so far as the Kaiser is able to prevent it. I know that he is autocratic and despotic as Theodore Roosevelt, (applause) but I have some confidence in the people in Germany, just as I have confidence in the people of America. (applause) And if we claim the right to live our own life and to make our own form of government, we ought to be democratic enough to leave that same privilege to the people of Germany and to every other country, because it is an historical fact that a democracy cannot be established in any country until the people of that country are ready for it and want it. (applause) This country did not force democracy on Russia: the people of Russia did that themselves, though they had the arch autocrat as their ruler and just as the people of Russia threw over the government of the Romanoffs, so will the people of Germany throw over the house of Hohenzollern and the people of Austria will throw over the house of Hapsburg. Leave it to the people of those countries, just as we expect the people of those countries to leave it to us. O, but some one will say, "unless we join the allies now and lick the kaiser, they will come over here and take the United States, (laughter and applause) and some actually believe the kaiser is already on his way and about to land in New York harbor and make a charge on the Statute of Liberty. (applause and laughter) You need not 454 be surprised if on waking some morning you read in some paper here, or the Chicago Tribune, the mandate has gone forth that before retiring every night you have to look under the bed to ascertain that the kaiser is not there. (laughter and applause) What a terror this one man has created all over the world. And why? They are not afraid of the kaiser; they know the kaiser wouldn't come over to this country, put it in his vest pocket and take it back to Berlin and put it in the beer garden. That is only a snare to excite and arouse the people of the country in order to get their assent to the military program that has been mapped out in order to protect the material interests of Wall Street. (applause) I am not saying this without some facts and I am going to present them here this afternoon. Perhaps some of you have read them for they are published in some of the papers. So the war is not to make the world safe for democracy; the war is not to give Germany a democratic form of government, but I repeat that the war in which we are engaged is only fundamentally, principally and wholly in the interests of the munitions ring and the Wall Street interests. (applause) Let us see! The previous speaker said that some of the prominent manufacturers in Rock455 ford be it said to their credit, went on the bond of a number of the men who are imprisoned and he said that they did it in order to get sufficient help in the factories. Now, these men were working for their economic interests. It was a case of economic determinism, that more or less actuates all of us. Wall Street, (and when I speak of Wall Street, I don't mean that littl narrow street on the south side of New York, but I mean the people that have their headquarters there) is actuated by the same motives that most of us are, and the figures that have been given us by even the capitalistic press prove it, and these figures have been printed in the American Socialist. Some of our skeptical Democratic and Republican friends wouldn't believe it because they say: "well, those socialists are fanatic and irresponsible but the Chicago Trib une, like eGorge Washington, can't tell a lie. (Laughter) I have here the figures from 42 industrial corporations, which give the profits for 1914 aud 1916 and their profits in 1916 exceed those of 1914 by more than $611,000,000 And each one of these industrial corporations is directly or indirectly furnish ing the means with which to carry on the war. I am not going to read all of 456 them, just the principle ones, and the first is Armour & Company. Now, Mr. Armour is one of the gentlemen who is on the State Council of De fense. He is one of those gentlemen who is concerned about your material welfare, to see that the Kaiser doesn't get you and take you back to Berlin. (laughter) The earnings of Armour & Company in 1914 were $7,509,000. In 1916 they were $20,100,000 or an increase in two years of $12,590,000. The Bethlehem Steel Company (and by the way I want to tell you a little bit about Mr. Armour,-a very interesting person.) I have a friend in the wholesale grocery business in Chicago who called my attention to the ads run in the Chicago papers, "eat less meat and more rice." In other words, become Chinaied. (laughter) "Eat less meat and more rice." "Well, he says, we have een selling rice from three and a half up to five cents a pound to the retailers. I came into a grocery store one day and the grocer said: " why, you have a new competitor in the rice business." "Why, who is it "? "Why, Mr. Armour, and by the way, he has raised the price." Well, I told the grocer, we are still selling at the old price." He said "a few weeks after that we tried to go on the market and buy rice and we found we had to buy from Mr. Armour. They sent out their agents broadcast and bought all the rice that was saleable and of course when they got a corner on it they began to send the price skywards, and that explains why Armour & Company urges you "to eat less 66 meat and more rice." (laughter and applause) A similar story was 157 told me by a representative of a New York banking house the other day. He lives in New York but he said "I saw where the food commissioner listributed 50,000 circulars urging the people to eat more rice and less meat; I decided that the price of rice would go up so I bought a carload of rice at three cents a pound, had it shipped to New York, stored in a warehouse and the price of rice went up to five cents, six cents, seven cents, eight cents and I sold; the party who bought my rice held it at eleven cents, but I found that the food commissioner who went out and urged people to eat more rice and ess meat bought fifty tons of rice and was selling it at an advanced price. Now, the food commissioner doesn't hate the people of America; Mr. Armour loesn't either, but they are actuated by their material interests. That is busiess, and of course during this war time, while we are sending our food stuffs broad it is much easier to corner the commodities and consequently raise the rices. Next is the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. There is a singular interest attached to this concern; I spent 15 months in Colorado, that at that time was twin sister to Siberia, so far as industrial conditions were concerned. We conducted a strike against Mr. Rockefeller, (and by the way Rockefeller owned the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, and Mr. Rockefeller boasted before the strike was called that he had $5,000,000 to spend to break up the union mining districts of that state, and in 1914, the strike was on,1913 and '14. 158 In 1914 the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company had a deficit of $905.000. In 916 the profits were $2,210,000, in increase in two years in profits of $3,107,000. Of course Mr. Rockefeller could well afford to buy $15,000,000 worth of bonds and raise the price of gasoline two cents. The DuPont Powder Company,-Mr. DuPont is one of the leading lights in he Navy League; he wants a larger navy and of course a larger army, to see hat the working class of America is well protected, that no ill becomes it. laughter) The profits of the DuPont Power Company in 1914 were only 4,831,000. In 1916, the profits were $82,107,000 or an increase in two years of $77,275.00. I suppose your wages increased in the same proportion. laughter) The Lackawanna Steel Company in 1914, had a deficit of $1,652,000; in 1916 hey had a profit of $12,218,000 or an increase of net receipts in 1916 over 914 of $13,870.000. The United States Steel Corporation, the arch patriot and arch American, . Pierpont Morgan's company, in 1914 the profits of the United States Steel Corporation, where a union man dare not sneeze, were $23,496,000. In 1916 he profits were $271,531,000, or an increase of $248,034,000. 59 Now, let me ask you men and women, can you understand why these arch patriots want war? (Laughter) Isn't there an economic reason for war? Isn't there a reason why we should now buy Liberty bonds in order to prosecute the war and enlarge upon it? It is self-evident from these gures that do not come from socialist, but come from government sources. But have you seen anywhere the slightest indication where J. Pierpont Morgan as rushed to the recruiting office to don a suit khaki at fifteen dollars a month, 138525-19-VOL 2-11 |