Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

traordinary events, of the war that went on, the bloody and revolting scenes, the trip, for example, of an armored car loaded with a Gatling gun and rifle marksmen, that shot up a sleeping village, the public at large remained in ignorance. If Huerta had manned an armored car somewhere in Mexico and had descended upon unarmed women and children, shooting and murdering, all the land would have known it and a cry of horror would have gone

up.

It appears to be perfectly true that these things can happen in the United States and nobody know of them but the perpetrators and the survivors.

We should note, too, that in each of these three instances the circumstances were the

same.

That is to say, workingmen had gone on a strike against unjust conditions and petty extortions practiced by their employers. The employers were members of one or the other of the two great, powerful Groups of capitalists that together control more than one-third of the total wealth of the United States. These two Groups also own or control or can muzzle most of the newspapers and news gathering agencies of the country.

That seems to be the reason why civil war can rage in the United States, armored trains can shoot up sleeping villages, battles can be fought and the Constitution abolished and the - mass of the public know nothing about such alarming facts.

To say this is easy enough. Very likely you have heard before this the assertion that the press is kept and the working class can expect from it nothing but misrepresentation and perversion of facts in the interest of the employers. If you are unfamiliar with the truth of the matter you may have thought these statements exaggerated. I will now put before you the record that you may see how little of exaggeration there is in what I have said and how little chance for justice the workers have when they venture into a contest with the tremendous and wide-spread power that is now exercised by these Groups.

Some of the richest copper deposits in the world are in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, most of them purporting to be owned or controlled by a great corporation called the Calumet and Hecla. This is a mining company that is also the holding concern for seventeen other mining companies, owns a railroad or two, some smelting works, some other profit-making de

vices and an organized system of politics the equal of any.

It is one of the richest and most profitable enterprises in the world. Except for a few railroads like those of Mr. Hill, the Calumet and Hecla has made more money on a smaller investment than any other corporation that ever existed. In the sixteen years ending with 1912 the smallest annual dividend has been 80 per cent., and in other years it has been as much as 400 per cent. Here is the record:

ANNUAL DIVIDENDS PAID ON CALUMET AND HECLA

[blocks in formation]

As these dividends were declared upon a capital stock less than half of which was ever paid for, a nominal dividend of 400 per cent. was an actual dividend of 800 per cent.

On every dollar ever invested in this company more than one hundred dollars have been paid in dividends, while millions of dollars of other

profits have been diverted to the purchase of additional profit-making ventures. With a par value of $25, on which only $12 was paid in, the shares have now a value of $540 each.

Besides the staggering dividends the following annual salaries are paid to the fortunate gentlemen that chiefly possess this unexampled private mint:

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

20,000

......

25,000

[ocr errors]

10,000

Walter Hunnewell, director
Rodolphe L. Agassiz, director

.....

George A. Flagg, sec'y and treasurer
E. B. Leavitt, consulting engineer

W. C. Smith, ass't sec'y and treasurer

Mr. Shaw therefore receives $120,000 a year in salaries, Mr. Agassiz $70,000, and Mr. MacNaughton $85,000— from the Calumet and Hecla. The officers and directors of Calumet and Hecla are usually officers and directors in the seventeen subsidiary companies of which Calumet and Hecla is the holding concern. What emoluments are attached to these positions are not generally known, but Mr. MacNaughton is said to derive $35,000 a year from

[ocr errors]

such sources, bringing his salary to $120,000 -or $55,000 a year more than the president of the United States receives. Before a committee of the United States House of Representatives Mr. MacNaughton refused to answer any questions as to the amount of his salary, curtly informing the examiner that it was none of the examiner's business. It can only be be

lieved, therefore, that the amounts set down here, which have never been challenged, are correct.

The Calumet and Hecla barony comprises 117 square miles. There is every reason to believe that it occupies and has occupied this land without rightful title, and all the vast wealth it has taken therefrom really belongs to the people of the United States.

There is also good reason to believe that it has consistently violated its charter and is now engaged in doing so every day and every hour of every day: a fact that will not in the least astonish you when you come to learn of some of its other activities, but that adds a rarely piquant taste to the pious exclamations of its attorneys on the subject of law-breaking.

The direct ownership of the Calumet and Hecla is a kind of family heirloom, residing chiefly in the Higginson and Agassiz families

« ForrigeFortsett »