Worried About Americans’ Thinking

WASHINGTON WINDOW
By LYLE C. WILSON
United Press International

WASHINGTON (UPI) — President Eisenhower was saying the other day that Americans should reject the theories of Karl Marx. He told a news conference that he was greatly disturbed by the spread in the United States of an idea which dated back to Marx’s Communist teachings of more than 100 years ago.

Specifically, Eisenhower objected to Marx’s doctrine of the class war, the ultimately violent contest for supremacy between what Marx called the proletarians and the bourgeoisie. That may be translated into labor (proletarian and management or capital Bourgeoisie). Eisenhower’s reference to Marxian theory came during a discussion of steel labor contract negotiations.

Karl Marx and a collaborator, Friedrich Engels, made their pitch for the class war for a classless society 111 years ago, in 1848. They then wrote “The Communist Manifesto.” Their work is the basic document of all of the Socialist parties in the world today, including the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Non-Socialist parties and governments have nibbled at various parts of the Marx-Engels prescription for a classless society, adopting bits and pieces of it. Of the 10 steps toward socialism or communism proposed by Marx and Engels, however, one notably, has been accepted and made grimly effective in even the most capitalist nations, including the United States.

Marx and Engels’ 10 steps to Utopia were these:

Abolish property rights in land and apply all rents to public purposes.

Impose a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Abolish all rights of inheritance.

Confiscate property of all emigrants and rebels.

Centralize credit in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly.

Centralize the means of communication and transport in the hands of state.

Extend factories and instruments of productions owned by the state; bring waste lands into cultivation and improve the soil generally with a common plan.

Make all persons equally liable to labor; establish industrial especially in agriculture .. 17 agencies  especially in manufacturing industries; gradually abolish distinction between town and country, by more equitable distribution of population.

Provide free education for all children in public schools; abolish children’s factory labor in its present (1848) form; combine education with industrial production.

“In a sense,” Marx and Engels wrote, “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence: abolition of private property!”

That is the Socialist-Communist program which Nikita Khrushchev was saying just a while ago would establish a way of life for the present crop of American grandchildren.

Amarillo Globe-Times (Amarillo, Texas) Jun 22, 1959

Empty Chair Day

Karl Marx and the Empty Chair

Image from iOwnTheWorld

From Karl Marx to General Sherman

The photos here record an interesting chapter in the history of the Sequoia National Park, when Charles F. Kellar, 90, of Santa Cruz, was an organizer of the Kaweah Colony in 1886. The group built the first road connecting the valley with the grove of big trees. Kellar was the original owner of what is now known as the General Sherman tree and first named it the Carl Marx Tree. He is visiting the park this week. The pictures show: No. 1 — Camp Advance in 1889, at that time the colony town site north of Ash Mountain on the North Fork of the Kaweah River. No. 2 — Miss Kate Redstone in 1890 standing on a suspension bridge over the Kaweah just below the junction of the North Fork and the main stream. The bridge was built by Ralph Hopping, grandfather of Guy Hopping, superintendent of the General Grant National Park. Miss Redstone later became Mrs. Ralph Hopping. No. 3 — Type of paper money used in the Kaweah Colony. No. 4 — Kaweah colonist building road to Giant Forest in 1886. No. 5 — Charles F. Kellar. No. 6 — shows what happened when the donkey engine fell through the bridge.

SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK (Tulare Co.), Oct. 17. — A 90-year-old soldier stands reverently beneath the great arms of the General Sherman Tree, oldest and largest of living things, and exclaims, “I once tried to protect you.”

The soldier is Charles F. Kellar of Santa Cruz. He once owned the Sherman Tree in every sense that so ageless a living thing can be owned by a mortal being.

Organizer of the Kaweah Colony in 1886, he built the first road connecting the san Joaquin Valley with the grove of Sequoia Gigantes now included in the Sequois National Park.

And, as leader of the colony of Socialists, he named the largest of the trees the Karl Marx Tree. The government later changed the name to General Sherman.

Is Visitor At Park

Kellar is visiting in the park now, just fifty years after he and fifty-six other colonists started work on the road from a point seven miles above Three Rivers to the wilderness that now is a network of wide highways and graded trails. He is the guest of his granddaughter, Mrs. Daniel J. Tobin, wife of the assistant park superintendent.

Back in 1885, Kellar, a newly arrived San Franciscan who had just finished four years of service in the civil war, was the head of a Socialist organization, the Land Purchase and Improvement Company. On a business trip to Visalia — a trip made mostly on foot — he overheard two United States surveyors talking about a recent survey of a vast timber region dotted with giant trees. He soon had a copy of the survey and had obtained a guide, Newton Tharp, to take him to the timber country.

Tharp was a son of Hale Tharp, the discoverer of Giant Forest, and knew the wilderness even though there were no trails.

With packs on their backs, the two men traveled almost the same route now followed by the Generals Highway. They went up the middle fork of the Kaweah River to the base of Moro Rock, then wound around until they reached what is now known as Crescent Meadow.

Camp Was Inside Tree

Headquarters was made at Hale Tharp’s “cabin,” a fallen Sequoia hollowed out by fire and commodious enough for a Summer home.

Shortly, Kellar saw the really big trees. He saw the largest of all. And decided to own it and protect it.

Returning to San Francisco, he organized the Kaweah Colony. Each man put up a $10 fee on the quarter section of land that was to be his, and $400 was paid for the land. There were forty of the colonists.

Kellar recalls the trek to the promised land. The bay district Socialists came in a body and on foot, toting their worldly goods. Each had the hope of developing the land of the majestic trees and sharing in profits equally with his fellows.

As the weary party came upon the Sequoias they were awe inspired. All resolved the primary purpose of the colony would be to protect the largest of the trees for posterity.

Kellar’s land was towered over by the “Karl Marx Tree,” and around it spread the holdings of the other colonists.

Having invested $4,000, the colony leader included in his properties a ???-acre ranch, the old McIntosh place, on which the Kaweah Park office now stands.

The ranch became the starting point for the wilderness road which ended at C?????y Mill, ___  ____ d___.[back copy, illegible]

“It took us three years of the hardest labor to build the road,” Kellar says. “We had few tools and we were unskilled.”

Upon completion of the job, the federal government brought suit against the Kaweah Colony charging fraudulent entry. When the case came up for trial in Los Angeles, Kellar says, the colonists presented their receipts for fees and payments and the matter, Kellar says, was thrown out of court.

Nevertheless, there was difficulty due to the government’s opposition. The Sequoia National Park was formed by the federal authorities. The colonists became discouraged, disbanded and scattered. The road they had toiled so hard to build they used only as a way out of the wilderness.

Kellar likes to reminisce about his youth. Born in Germany in 1846, he came to America with his parents at the age of 9 years, the family settling on a farm in Pennsylvania, near Lake Erie.

Served Throughout War

When the war clouds began to gather between the North and South, Kellar, although not of age to become a soldier, enlisted three times, having run away from home to join the army. His father balled him out of the service twice. His third and last enlistment was one year prior to General Lee’s entrance into Gettysburg and he served throughout the war.

Among the highlights of Kellar’s career as a soldier was his march with General Sherman to the sea. He cast his first vote for president Abraham Lincoln when a ballot box was brought to the field of battle. Congress had given special permission for all soldiers to vote regardless of their ages.

Crossed Isthmus Of Panama

After the war Kellar came to California via Panama by rail and water in the year 1886. Leaving Panama the ship stopped at San Pedro, the only other coast city having a wharf, besides San Francisco. Here as far as the eye could see were fields of wild geese which looked somewhat like a mirage. Los Angeles then had a population of 5,000, and land was selling for $10 an acre. Seventh and Hill Streets was considered an outpost.

San Francisco was a series of sand dunes, a wharf, board walks, a few boarding houses and saloons. Beer was 25 cents per glass. No grass was growing in the city, but some one had imported Bermuda grass and dried one crop as hay in the region now known as Golden Gate Park. The wind soon sifted the dry grass around in the sand dunes and with the aid of moisture from the sea, there was a luxurious growth.

Kellar asserts an ounce of gold worth $15 constituted a day’s wage in the late sixties. There was a great scarcity of labor. “We carried our gold in buckskin bags in our pockets, he recalls.

Fresno Bee Republican (Fresno, California) Oct 18, 1936

From the Smithsonian – American Exploration and Settlement:

Between 1884 and 1891, the area along the North Fork of the Kaweah River just upstream from the Terminus Reservoir site was the scene of an interesting experiment in utopian socialism that is still the subject of serious study by students of economics and political science. This was the Kaweah Cooperative Commonwealth, generally referred to as the Kaweah Colony. It was based upon the theories of Laurence Gronlund, an American socialist originally from Denmark, whose book “The Cooperative Commonwealth,” was the first adequate exposition of German socialism. In general, Gronlund envisioned an ideal cooperative colony in which working members would own and control production and profit accordingly. Burnette G. Haskell, John Hooper Redstone, and James John Martin, all of whom had been active in labor organizations in San Francisco, were impressed with Gronlund’s theories and decided to form such a colony with timberlands as a source of raw materials for a manufacturing business. After a search of the entire Pacific Coast and parts of Mexico, the leaders of the proposed colony selected the Government timberlands between the Middle, Marble, and North Forks of Kaweah River. Fifty-three timber claims totaling about 12,000 acres were filed. Because several of the applicants gave the same San Francisco address and some were aliens, and because of the large number of claims, the Federal Land Commissioner in Visalia withdrew the lands filed upon from entry on suspicion of fraud. The colonists, however, were convinced their claims would be validated by the courts and proceeded with the venture.

*More at the link, although I didn’t see any mention of Charles Kellar.

And more at The History of Kaweah Colony. No mention of Kellar here either. Maybe he embellished his role a bit  in starting the colony.

I found a few references to C.F. Keller with a little more searching (The History of Tulare and Kings County):

*****

Some Thoughts on Taxes

Some Thoughts On Taxes

By George E. Sokolsky

Adam Smith, in discussing taxes on property, wrote:

“While property remains in the possession of the same person, whatever permanent taxes may have been imposed upon it, they have never been intended to diminish or take away any part of its capital value, but only some part of the revenue arising from it . . .”

The original idea of the income tax was not to deprive citizens of their savings nor to diminish their possessions but to raise revenue for the use of government. The new taxes imposed by the inequitably taxed President are actually reducing the possibility of savings and therefore of coming into possession of property. The present taxes involve not only a redistribution of earned wealth but a confiscation of earnings.

KARL MARX AIMED to abolish love of country so that the world revolution would come more quickly. Whereas in the United States the theory of life was that there would be a constant improvement, so that workers would own their own homes, buy their own insurance policies, even go into business for themselves. Karl Marx really hoped for increased poverty so that the proletariat would be more numerous.

In America, the aim was to increase the middle class; Marx sought to abolish the middle class.

Harold Laski put these ideas in this language:

“. . . If Communists are charged with seeking to abolish love of country, the Manifesto answers that workers can have no country until they are emancipated from bourgeois domination; with their acquisition of political power, the hostility between nations will disappear. So also, it will change traditional ideas in religion and philosophy. Since it puts experience on a new basis, it will change the ideas which are their expression.”

In a word, Communists seek, in every respect, to abolish our world as we have known it for at least 5,000 years.

AMONG THE MEASURES WHICH MARX advocated for the accomplishment of the revolution were these (the numbers are his; there were altogether 10):

“1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

“2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

“3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

“5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

“6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of state.”

(It will be noted that since 1848, when this list was published, many so-called Capitalist countries have accepted Marx’s program.)

The income tax is high on the list. The graduated income tax can reduce the individual to a constantly lowering standard of living. It can prevent savings by leaving nothing over after living expenses. The tax guarantees poverty.

When to the income tax is added a complex system of excises and hidden taxes, it is possible for government to arrange for an economy which permits the appearance of high wages and even high prices while all the time the standard of life is being depreciated and the middle class is being squeezed out of existence.

IN THIS COUNTRY, we are now observing precisely this process, particularly as it affects the white collar and professional classes. For them, very little hope of self-improvement is left. Their doom is to find rated jobs in government, jobs which pay little, permit of no initiative, require featherbedding to survive and end in a low standard retirement pension. If that is pie in the sky, it certainly is not of the American dream.

If we complain that too many Americans are on the government payroll, we are in error. For if we permit our white collar and cultural classes to be taxed out of opportunity for self-improvement, they must take government jobs as no others are available to them. In the past, such Americans made their own opportunities out of their ingenuity, their ability to save or to borrow from their neighbors. They were not inhibited by government through taxes.

IN A WORD, THE REVOLUTION which the New Deal under Harry Hopkins introduced and the Fair Deal under Leon Keyserling seeks to complete is being accomplished with even greater skill than Lenin exhibited in Russia. The Bolsheviks employed terror and murder and confiscation as weapons.

The American revolution is being accomplished by means of taxes, principally the income tax, by premeditated wasteful expenditure of the people’s money, and by depreciating the currency. And the revolutionists can truthfully say that it is done with our consent. We authorized the revolution by our votes.

(c 1951, King Features Syndicate, Inc.)

Tucson Daily Citizen (Tucson, Arizona) Nov 8, 1951

“I Will Make the Corporations Come to Time!”

Cartoon by Robert Minor in St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1911). Karl Marx surrounded by an appreciative audience of Wall Street financiers: John D. Rockefeller, J. P. (Pontifex Maximus) Morgan, (Pontifex Maximus), John D. Ryan of National City Bank, and Morgan partner George W. Perkins. Immediately behind Karl Marx is Teddy Roosevelt, leader of the Progressive Party.

Image and caption from Reformation Online

In the New York Evening Post of Friday, August 26, there appeared in an editorial article the following statements:

“I will make the corporations come to time!” shouted Roosevelt to the mob. But did he not really mean that he would make them come down with the cash to elect him, as he did before? For a man with Mr. Roosevelt’s proved record it is simply disgusting humbug for him to rant about the corporations upon whose treasurers he fawned when he was President and wanted their money for his campaign. Does he think that nobody has a memory which goes back to the life insurance investigations, and that everybody has forgotten the $50,000 taken from widows and orphans and added to Theodore Roosevelt’s political corruption fund? Did he not take a big check from the beef trust, and glad to get it? And now he is going to make the corporations come to time! One can have respect for a sincere radical, for an honest fanatic, for an agitator, or leveler, who believes that he is doing God’s will, but it is hard to be patient with a man who talks big but acts mean, whose eye is always to the main chance politically, and who lets no friendship, no generosity, no principle, no moral scruple stand for a moment between himself and the goal upon which he has set his overmastering ambitions. *  *  *

This champion of purity, this roarer for political virtue, is the man who was for years, when in public life, hand in glove with the worst political corruptionists of his day; who toadied to Platt, who praised Quay, who paid court to Hanna; under him as President, Aldrich rose to the height of his power, always on good terms with Roosevelt, it was Roosevelt who, in 1906, wrote an open letter urging the re-election of Speaker Cannon, against whom mutterings had then begun to rise; it was Roosevelt who asked Harriman to come to the White House secretly, who took his money to buy votes in New York, and who afterward wrote to “My Dear Sherman” — yes the same Sherman — reviling the capitalist, to whom he had previously written, saying, “You and I are practical men.”

The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.) Sep 1, 1910