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- From: nyxfer%panix.com@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
- Subject: HIST:How Capitalists Rule/Pt.11
- Message-ID: <1992Aug26.004214.16019@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
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- Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 00:42:14 GMT
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- Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit
-
-
- How Capitalists Rule: The Republocrats
- Part 11:
-
- Blaine Points Imperialism Southward
-
- by Vince Copeland
-
- One of the most important appointments made by President Benjamin
- Harrison was that of Secretary of State. He named a professional
- politician, none other than James G. Blaine, who was by 1889 the
- intimate of several of the very biggest of the money crowd. Blaine
- had smelled out the coming imperialist expansion to overseas
- colonies and semi-colonies well before his acquaintances and even
- some of his masters did.
-
- Blaine pointed U.S. policy south into Mexico, the Caribbean and
- South America at a time when the U.S. investment level there
- totalled well under a billion dollars. He was somewhat ahead of his
- time in this respect. Like the two Roosevelts, he often understood
- what was good for capitalism before the capitalists did.
-
- But it remained for a Democratic Secretary of State, Richard Olney,
- to pick a fight with mighty England over a boundary dispute in
- South America. Olney was appointed by Grover Cleveland in his
- second term (1893-97), and had already served as Secretary of War.
- He invoked the sacred Monroe Doctrine and faced off the British in
- a tough little diplomatic skirmish. This gave notice that the
- United States would be the big ruler of Latin America and grab
- Spain's colonies for the profits of its own big business rather
- than England's.
-
- After Cleveland was well out of the presidency, J.P. Morgan
- suggested he be made a trustee of the Harriman-Ryan Equitable Life
- Assurance Society. This company was going through a well-publicized
- scandal involving a lot of corruption and needed someone of great
- probity, like the Buffalo hangman, to give it a better odor.
-
- This was in 1905. But subsequent testimony indicated that in the
- same year, Cleveland, along with Oliver H. Payne, William C.
- Whitney and others, participated in a stock market pool that made
- him a lot of money. (Ferdinand Lundberg, "America's 60 Families,"
- p. 57) A payoff? Only an un-American skeptic would say that!
-
- Power of the Senate
-
- While big business was getting closer to complete domination of the
- two big political parties, the form and concentration of government
- itself was changing somewhat. The House of Representatives had been
- the center of political power during the Civil War and
- Reconstruction, but during the period of reaction that followed,
- the center of power shifted to the Senate.
-
- This came about first because of the exhaustion of the social
- forces behind the radicalization of the House, and second because
- the new political leaders -- or "bosses" -- found it easy to become
- senators by bribing or intimidating the legislatures, which still
- elected them. Election to the Senate by popular vote wasn't
- introduced until 1913.
-
- The concentration of power in the Senate also came about because
- the potential centralism of the presidency could not yet be fully
- realized. That is, the economic power of capitalism, although
- growing more concentrated, still had a number of emerging centers,
- often in competition with one another.
-
- There were not only the Rockefeller oil trust and the Morgan
- financial power, but steel (not yet in Morgan's hands), sugar,
- tobacco, lumber, cotton, textile, packing house, mining, and more.
- All were big economic entities on the way to becoming monopolies
- and each openly served by one, two or more senators.
-
- The organizer and leader of these oligarchs in the Senate was
- Nelson Aldrich, senator from Rhode Island. He was the main conduit
- to the very biggest tycoons.
-
- Aldrich was in the confidence of J.P. Morgan and of John D.
- Rockefeller as well.
-
- Amalgamating in heaven
-
- Not the least of the amalgamations of these big interests occurred
- when, in 1901, Aldrich's daughter Abby married John D. Rockefeller
- Jr. This was a marriage made in bourgeois heaven. It sealed the
- fate of many a small corporation and laid out the lines of
- exploitation for some millions of workers in the coming decades.
-
- This period of senatorial ascendancy climaxed in the election of
- 1896 and exploded in the Spanish-American War of 1898.
-
- Its relative decline set in about 1906, when the agitation for
- popular election of senators became irresistible. Finally in 1913
- the passage of the 17th Amendment provided for popular election of
- the Senate.
-
- After that, the more dignified -- and more powerful -- dictatorship of
- the presidency became the center of power.
-
- The mysterious power of Aldrich
-
- How could one man, Nelson Aldrich, tell the whole U.S. Senate what
- to do? And even more, how could a senator from the smallest state
- have such an influence with senators from states 10 or 20 times
- larger?
-
- In 1906 Rhode Island had less than half a million people, with only
- about 70,000 of them active voters. When Aldrich first went to the
- Senate in 1881, there had been considerably fewer. Yet by 1906,
- according to a popular commentator of the day, Aldrich had it
- completely sewed up. The increased population was not the slightest
- problem.
-
- "The Aldrich machine controls the legislature, the election board,
- the courts -- the entire machinery of the Republican form of
- government," this commentator wrote. "In 1904 when Aldrich needed
- a legislature to re-elect him for his fifth consecutive term, it is
- estimated that carrying the state cost him $200,000 -- a small sum,
- easily to be got back by a few minutes of industrious pickpocketing
- in Wall Street, but a very large sum for Rhode Island politics."
- (David Graham Phillips, "Treason of the Senate," p. 79)
-
- And to anticipate his later greatness, here is the summary of his
- talents by the same author:
-
- "Before he reached the Senate, Aldrich had had 15 years of
- training [in the Rhode Island legislature and the House of
- Representatives -- V.C.] in how to legislate the proceeds of the
- labor of the many into the pockets of the few. He entered it as
- the representative of local interests engaged in robbing by means
- of slyly worded tariff schedules.... [He] demonstrated excellent
- talents for sly, slippery work in legislative chambers and
- committee rooms and his security in his seat against popular
- revulsions and outbursts together marked him for the position of
- chief agent of the predatory band which was rapidly forming to
- take care of the prosperity of the American people."
-
- "Various senators represent various divisions and subdivisions of
- this colossus," the writer continues. "But Aldrich, rich through
- franchise-grabbing, the intimate of Wall Street's great robber
- barons, the father-in-law of the only son of Rockefeller -- Aldrich
- represents the colossus." (Ibid, p. 83)
-
- This somewhat rhetorical, but no less accurate, description of a
- party chief explains the real source of power of the U.S. senator
- in the 1890s and early 1900s. It differs from Josephson's picture
- of the 1880s that we cited earlier, only because now the senators,
- while still very powerful, no longer have that relative
- independence with which they could implicitly defy or ignore even
- some of the biggest capitalists at times.
-
- Imperialism takes over
-
- Modern imperialism is the taking over of other countries through
- economic penetration, export of capital, which in turn is thrust
- outward by tremendous expansion inside the "mother" country and the
- growth of monopoly. This process was speeded up in the 1880s, first
- by the unprecedented growth of railroads and then by the oil
- industry, led by the Rockefeller Standard Oil Co.
-
- Between 1879 and 1884 $3.4 billion in new railroad stock was
- issued. (Augustus Myer, "History of the Supreme Court," p. 574)
- Railroads formed about one-fifth of the total wealth of the country
- and were falling into fewer and fewer hands. While it is hard to
- gauge how much $3.4 billion would be today, this sum was more than
- twice the amount of the war-swollen national debt at that time.
-
- The railroads were expanding into Mexico and Canada during the
- 1880s, while Standard Oil was going to Europe and Asia. Of course,
- this could not have happened without close connections to and
- cooperation from the national government.
-
- Staking out the Pacific
-
- In this war of "peaceful" expansion of trade, there was one big
- shot that misfired. Even before the Civil War, the shipping
- interests, mostly Northern, tried to take over Japan, which was
- then regarded as very vulnerable. For nearly two and a half
- centuries, Japan had barred all foreign countries -- except for
- Holland -- from doing business there. It had few modern arms and no
- modern ships.
-
- The U.S. sent three warships to Japan in 1854 and "opened up" that
- country to U.S. trade. The "opening" was done with guns, of course.
- But the disunity of the ruling class elements in the North and
- South at that time prevented a coherent policy from being shaped
- before the Civil War. And for some years afterward the
- preoccupation with Reconstruction prevented much more attention
- being paid to Japan.
-
- The Japanese capitalists made good use of the intervening time to
- modernize. They launched a revolutionary "restoration" in 1868,
- putting back on the throne what was to prove a puppet monarchy
- while proceeding to build a modern capitalist state. At the same
- time, the United States established in Japan a semi-colonial
- "extraterritoriality" in which Americans were tried in American
- courts there and U.S. business interests took precedence over
- Japanese. But this could only be maintained until 1899.
-
- It was significant that Japan went to war against China in 1894. It
- took over the island of Taiwan, renaming it Formosa, and thus
- emerged as a contending imperialist power while still a
- semi-colonial footstool in relation to the United States.
-
- The relationship of the U.S. to Japan was somewhat like that of the
- English to India, in the sense that the U.S. was trying to build a
- fence around its trading empire, but was not yet exporting capital
- or directly exploiting workers abroad.
-
- The problems of world expansion, however, were already evident.
-
- -30-
-
- (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
- source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21 St.,
- New York, NY 10010; "workers@igc.apc.org".)
-
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