True Americans Not Ones Who Profited a Thousand Times Over During the War, Says Allen McCurdy, April 30, 1920

From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., April 30, 1920

What Is This 100 Per Cent Americanism? The Answer Maybe Be Found in Allen McCurdy’s Entertaining Contribution. . . Why Not Call Them “Thousand Per Centers?”

By Allen McCurdy

An Americanization Committee was recently thrown into confusion and debate by the simple question, “What is 100 per cent Americanism?” No phrase is more universally used. All politicians are strong for “100 per cent Americanism.” It is a curious phrase. When James Otis, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln spoke of Americanism, it was always in terms of liberty, equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none, the fear of injustice and despotism, the hatred of monopoly and the aspiration for freedom. It is significant that the modern politician describes Americanism, not in terms of the aspirations of the human soul, but in the terms of the banking house, the ledger and profit.

This gives us a clue to what “100 per cent Americanism” really is. Senate Document No. 259 shows us the practical side of “100 per cent Americanism” by revealing to us some “100 per cent Americans. One steel company, according to this document which is based upon returns to the Treasury Department, in the year 1917 after paying its excess profit tax, made 212,584 per cent profits, its net income being $14,549,952 on a capital stock of $5,000., Senate Document No. 259 also reveals that during 1917 net profits were reported by

Dry goods stores as high as 9,826%

Coal companies as high as 7,856%

Meat packers as high as 3,295%

Flour mills as high as 2,628%

Canners (fruit and vegetable) as high as 2,032%

Woolen mills as high as 1,700%

Building contractors as high as 1,390%

This is concrete “100 per cent Americanism.” From the men who made 109 per cent or more in the year of supreme sacrifice (1917), when economy was urged upon the mass of the people and when our soldiers were risking and giving their lives for $30 a month, has probably come the money to finance the political campaigns and pay for the enormous publicity whose chief end seems to be to call all who object to this kind of Americanism as “traitors,” “Bolshevists” and “revolutionists.”

It is highly significant that although Senate Document No. 259 has been within easy reach of the Attorney-General of the United States, not one of these “100 per cent Americans” has been prosecuted for profiteering. Instead, the activities of the Department of Justice have been directed toward the “revolutionary efforts” of the workers to secure enough wages to keep pace with the increased cost of living, the cause of which is suggested in the above figures.

At a public meeting recently, such men hissed the statement of one speaker that “this country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right of dismembering and overthrowing it,” being ignorant, until they were informed, that they had hissed Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address. Lincoln would have called such men to-day what he called them 61 years ago. “They are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.”

Americanism, in terms of the dollar, is that patriotism which Ben Johnson defined as being “the last refuge of scoundrels.” It must be destroyed and replaced by the Americanism of Jefferson and of Lincoln, which I marked by “its superior devotion to the personal rights of men holding the right of property to be second only and greatly inferior—the man before the dollar.”

Senate Document No 259 contains unanswerable facts which dictate the necessity for the public ownership of basic industries. For, according to the able analysis of this document by Mr. Basil Manly, published in the April issue of “The Searchlight,” “the American people in the last three years have paid in net profits every dollar’s worth of stock of the coal companies, and to the United States Corporation in the two years of 1916 and 1917 net profits amounting to $888,931,511, which is $20,000,000 more than the total capital stock of the Steel Corporation.” And yet the advocates of private ownership ask us how the people can afford to buy from the profiteers the ownership of these industries. The financial part of this problem is solved. The legal part of it will be solved when the people who believe in government ownership of basic industries come together in one great political party.