To clearly understand the circumstances which existed during the 1930s and 1940s, and are the subject of this booklet, it would be helpful to first put the hemp / petrochemical conflict into historical perspective. The events which took place in the years leading up to World War II were a continuation of a struggle between agricultural and industrial interests that began before the American Revolution, a struggle which has yet to be decided, even today.
AGRICULTURE VS. INDUSTRY
The historical record, at least as it has been presented to us in the public school system, is that the Civil War was fought to end slavery. This is not the whole story. The truth of the matter is that it was also a clash between Northern industrialists and Southern agriculturists, over control of the expansion into the newly opened West.
In 1845, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "I hold it a paramount duty of us in the free states due to the union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself, to let the slavery of other states alone." (1)
Concerning the Western territories, he said "The whole Nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for homes and free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery be planted within them." (2)
Lincoln was caught in the middle between the Northern industrialists and the Southern agriculturists, who both wanted to dominate Western expansion because of the wealth it offered. The industrialists knew that the agriculturists depended on slavery because cotton, upon which Southern wealth was based, was very labor intensive and required the inexpensive labor that slavery provided. They knew that if the Western lands were declared "free states" then the Southern agriculturists would be unable to compete, and would be forced to leave Western expansion, and its potential profits, to the Northern industrialists.
Quoting "The Irony of Democracy," by Thomas R. Dye and T. Harmon Zeigler,
"The importance of the Civil War for America's elite structure was the commanding position that the new industrial capitalists won during the course of the struggle. . . . The economic transformation of the United States from an agricultural to an industrial nation reached the crescendo of a revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century."Civil War profits compounded the capital of the industrialists and placed them in a position to dominate the economic life of the nation. Moreover, when the Southern planters were removed from the national scene, the government in Washington became the exclusive domain of the new industrial leaders." (3)
The Northern industrialists used this increased capital to build the system of transcontinental railways, linking the Northeast with both the South and West. The labor for this undertaking was from the Northeastern Establishment's own source of cheap labor - recently freed slaves and poor immigrants from Europe and China - who suffered under living conditions which were often little better than those which existed under the Slave System just a few years before.
It was during the years between the Civil War and the beginning of the Twentieth Century that the Northern industrialists altered the role of the American government. Originally established by the Revolution to protect and preserve the lives, property and freedoms of all Americans from repressive government, it was transformed into an agency to protect the economic future of Northern industrialists.
"[T]he industrial elites," according to Dye and Zeigler, "saw no objection to legislation if it furthered their success in business. Unrestricted competition might prove who was the fittest, but as an added precaution to insure that the industrial capitalists themselves emerged as the fittest, these new elites also insisted upon government subsidies, patents, tariffs, loans, and massive giveaways of land and other natural resources." (4)
The struggle between Western farmers and the railroads owned by the Northern industrialists is a good example. To protect their interests, citizens created "the Grange," an organization which helped to enact state laws regulating the "ruthless aggression" of the railroads. In 1877, these laws were upheld by the Supreme Court in the Munn v. Illinois decision. But, a few years later, Justice Stephen A. Field changed the role, and the very definition, of the corporation. He gave a new interpretation to the Fourteenth Amendment that actually gave corporations legal status as citizens . . . as artificial persons. (5)
It was not long after this change in the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that John D. Rockefeller, the father of the modern-day corporation, created the great Standard Oil Corporation which, by the late 1880s, gained control over 90% of all the oil refineries in America. (6)
The roots of 20th Century American politics can best be illustrated by the 1896 Presidential Election, won by Republican William McKinley by a landslide. The McKinley campaign was directed by Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Standard Oil and raised a $16,000,000 campaign fund from wealthy fellow industrialists, (an amount that was unmatched in Presidential campaigns until the 1960s). The major theme of the campaign, and one that would echo far into the future, was "what's good for business is good for the country." (7)
This emerging political and judicial misuse of power in America was feared by Thomas Jefferson who, in 1787, wrote, "I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they remain chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe they will become corrupt as in Europe." (8)
It is important to remember that the American Revolution was a clash between the agriculturists in the colonies, and the British industrialists who controlled the government in England. Almost 100 years later the Civil War was fought as a continuation of the same basic struggle, but with the victory going back to the industrialists. This began the erosion of the American government "of the people, for the people and by the people." The buying of the 1896 Presidential Election, by Hanna of Standard Oil and the Northern industrial interests, was the next important step on the long road to the American government "of the corporation, for the corporation and by the corporation."
A few years later, World War I would forge an even closer relationship between corporations and government in the United States, as well as around the world. Anthony Sampson, in his book "The Arms Bazaar," notes that "the American companies, led by US Steel and du Pont, were transformed by war orders. US Steel, which had absorbed Carnegie's old steel company, had made average annual profits in the four pre-war years of $105 million, while in the four war years they were $240 million; and du Pont's average profit went up from $6 million to $58 million. . . .
"Certainly the arms companies had become much richer through the war, and there were widespread suspicions that they were actually trying to prolong it." (9)
The bottom line is, of course, victory or profit, and in what proportions? To what lengths would this nation's top industrial leaders go to secure their share of the profits before and during the next "war to end all war?"
NOTES: INTRODUCTION
