The "American System" in Russia, China, Germany and Japan

HOW HENRY CAREY AND THE AMERICAN NATIONALISTS BUILT THE MODERN WORLD


by Anton Chaitkin

Printed in the American Almanac, May, 1997.


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The following speech was given May 10, 1997, by historian Anton Chaitkin at an FDR-PAC Seminar. American Almanac also printed the keynote speech to the same event by Lyndon LaRouche. The speech has been edited for publication.
The Eurasian Land-Bridge policy that Lyndon LaRouche pioneered in today's world, is a program for world economic recovery. The struggle for this policy, and against it, is at the center of world politics today--again! Because, it was in the center of world politics a century ago, and there are some things that you need to know about that time to understand what's going on today.

The British Empire pushed the world into World War I to stop, essentially, this program from going into effect then. They and their allies sponsored the rise of Hitler, in Germany, looking forward to another war, for similar reasons, in the 1930s and '40s.

I'm going to describe the original land-bridge efforts, which were at the center of world affairs for several decades, from the Civil War, into the beginning of the 20th century. This program was the initiative of Henry Carey, and both American and foreign associates of his all throughout the world, and under his leadership. These were nationalists, and they worked to create powerful nation-states to form modern nations, as allies against the British Empire. The plan was that these were to be modern, high-wage, fully industrialized, fully sovereign nations. That's what we wanted.

And, the Americans, Carey and his allies, succeeded, except to the extent that London was able to prevent the rise of some of these nations, or, to turn some of these nations against others.

The surviving evidence that we have in our hands right now, shows that this conflict, between the American nationalists and their allies, on one side, and the British Empire on the other, that this conflict was particularly fierce in China, in Russia, in Germany, in Italy, in Ireland, in Japan, in Thailand, in Mexico, in Colombia, in Peru, in Canada, and in Australia; and obviously involved the fate of Africa, and the rest of the world.

The nationalist initiative, similar to what we are doing today, caused the world's great technological development in that period, which is most of the technology we have today. And this development was finally aborted, it was stopped, pretty much cold, scientifically, technologically, and politically, until the present initiative.

The fight for this policy, and against British Free Trade, really defines the true history, the little-known history of the world's great nations, the people who are now faced again with the same issues and the same types of decisions as then.

The planners of this world development crusade were the people who had sponsored Abraham Lincoln: his Presidency. They were the established leaders of the United States in those days. They were industrial leaders, military leaders, scientific and political leaders; and by about 1902, British-allied financiers had kicked them out of leadership; had displaced them, the nationalists, from power, within the United States.

The way of thinking of these patriots, which was the heritage of the American Revolution, was at that point fading from the U.S. national memory, around the beginning of this century. And under the two Presidents who were loyal to London, whom Mr. LaRouche mentioned, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the United States--which had been made powerful by their opponents, by nationalists, not by these dupes of London--the United States functioned as a British pawn under these pro-British Presidents.

By 1905, until 1914, the leaders in Russia and China and Japan and Germany were left rudderless in the world. The American Republic, which had fought powerfully to develop their nations, had disappeared. There was no American republic, by the time World War I came around. That is, the American republic was simply a shell that was being operated by London policy, instead of the political force that had put into motion the development of these other nations, by the principles of the American Revolution. And so, the statesmen of the world were floundering about in this terrible situation of World War I.


Henry Carey and The Nationalist School

The economist Henry Carey, who lived from 1793 to 1879, was America's most famous economist, and the world's most famous living economist in the period of the American Civil War, and afterwards. Henry Carey's writings were translated into many of the European and Asian languages, and with his predecessors, Friedrich List, and Henry Clay, and Alexander Hamilton, he was the main representative of the American School of Economics, or the Nationalist School, as opposed to the British School of Economics, which was represented at that time by John Stuart Mill--a very evil and famous man--and earlier writers, such as Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo and Adam Smith. Carey was the representative of the Nationalist School throughout the world.

In the May 2 issue of the Executive Intelligence Review, we have published a large package of articles, celebrating what we are discussing now, with some really ground-breaking historical material, which ought to play some significant role, especially as we continue to develop this story, in decisions to be made around the world.

I wrote some of this; the historians Graham and Pam Lowry contributed some really ground-breaking work; Bill Jones, provided the behind-the-scenes history of collaboration among Russia, China and Japan; and other European collaborators have contributed to this. We have used manuscript collections, archives, that are easily available to historians, and yet have been off-limits, untouchable material, because of the special relationship between England and America until this time.

Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865, just when the United States had won the Civil War. But his program was continued by his faction, a nationalist faction in American politics, which was the faction of the original American Revolution. They were then in control of American politics.

This nationalist faction was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the leadership group that had been continuously in that city from the time of Benjamin Franklin, who set it up. It also included George Washington's chief military officers. This was a leadership group, in politics and the military, that was the core of the American natonalists, all the way through to the end of the 19th century.

They had a program of government-sponsored railroads, public education, government-sponsored and -directed science, protection and development of industry (paid for by high protective tariffs), and aid to family farmers, including scientific, and other aid. Lincoln was a student of Henry Carey, who was the leader of the nationalists, and was, himself, an active member of the Carey faction in politics, throughout his political career.

In 1846, when Lincoln went into Congress, he wrote notes on tariffs. Lincoln said that the British doctrine of Free Trade bankrupts the country and destroys its industry. Lincoln wrote about ``useless labor.''

What is ``useless labor?'' he asked. It's somebody who works to carry products from another country to this country, if you could make those products here with as high a quality and using American labor. Or merchants, or insurance and other things that handle those kinds of products; that's useless labor. So he said that the government must have protection of American industry, or you have bankruptcy and destruction of the country. That was Lincoln's policy throughout his life.


The Economic Policy that Elected Lincoln

Henry Carey wrote the economic platform on which Lincoln was elected President. Carey supplied the officials to the Lincoln administration who implemented this radical nationalist program of Lincoln's, and of Carey's, for high tariffs, that built our first United States steel mills, and brought about a vast mobilization of our country during the Civil War. So we came out of the Civil War stronger than we went into it: not a usual course for civil wars.

Lincoln built a transcontinental railroad. It was finished after he was murdered; finished to California, in 1869. The government put $64 million cash into it, and it was built mainly by the Army. Then, the second Lincoln transcontinental line, the Northern Pacific to Seattle, was started up.

At this point, around 1869, with the new military and economic power behind them, these American nationalists tried to develop, and began to develop, Europe and Asia, technological and political progress in other parts of the world, in order to extend the Union victory in the Civil War. Why? Because they had to deal with the political power of the main enemy of the United States, the British Empire, who had backed the Confederacy, the slaveowners' rebellion, in the Civil War.

So, you want to create allies, who are powerful, in the rest of the world. The first steps were taken right after the Civil War, focussing on two United States allies at that time, that we wanted to build up as powers: Russia and Japan.

By 1869, Henry Carey was personally responsible for U.S. policy, for both countries. His newspaper writings, before the Civil War, had turned American opinion in favor of Russia, when Russia had a war with England, 1854. He wrote that we should back Russia against England, in the Crimean War. Carey had made an ultra-secret trip to Russia in 1859, just before the Civil War broke out here. We were headed for a crisis. He wanted to get the Russians ``on board'' as an ally, to make sure that we were going to have cooperation, as the crisis emerged in our country.

Russia did send ships, their Navy, to help us face down the combined Confederate-British-French enemy.

In 1869, Henry Carey gave a send-off dinner for Andrew Curtin, the former governor of Pennsylvania, now the new American ambassador to Russia. Attending this dinner in Philadelphia, were the Russian delegation to the United States, the chief United States railroad builders, and the machine-tool builders.

At that dinner, General Joshua T. Owen proposed that the Tsar of Russia build a railroad line to the Pacific Ocean, with a gauge to match our new Pacific railroad.

General Owen said, ``We have discovered that true glory is only to be attained, through the performance of great deeds, which tend to advance civilization, and develop the material wealth of people.'' And he called for ``girdling the globe with a tramway of iron,'' to strengthen Russia, and to ``outflank the movement made by France and England for predominance in the East, through the Suez Canal; and America and Russia, can dictate peace to the world.''

In the next few years after this, contracts were signed by members of Carey's political machine in Philadelphia, to send Philadelphia-made locomotives to Russia.


American Revolution in Japan

Now, the previous year, 1868, Japan had had a revolution. It set up the modern Japanese government. Under Prince Iwakura, this revolution overthrew feudalist warlords, created a modern central government, and it was guided by Japanese students of Henry Carey.

The Japanese consuls in America at that time worked very closely with Carey. One of those consuls commissioned the first Japanese trasnaltions of Carey's works, and another went back to Japan and set up the Meiroku (Sixth Year of Meiji) Society, which organized the economic thinking of Japan, for American System economics, as opposed to British economics, British Free Trade. So the American and Japanese allies in this Careyite movement actually led Japanese industrial development from that time on. The Americans advised the Emperor, and helped to identify Japanese mineral resources, plan exports, and design a tariff strategy, so that Japan wasn't simply a victim of genocide such as Britain was practicing against China at that time.

In March of 1872, representatives of the new Japanese government arrived in Philadelphia, escorted by United States Army officers. The leaders of the city of Philadelphia published a pamphlet called the ``Diary of the Japanese Visit to Philadelphia in 1872.'' It described, as they put it, ``the mission on which these pioneers of an advancing state of civilization in their own country were engaged.''

On the first page of that pamphlet, published by the leaders of Philadelphia, they said that before the United States began to aid Japan's development, Japan was closed to world commerce. Why? Because of the empires, the European empires' outrages against Japan.

And this is the way the Philadelphia leaders, the American nationalists, described this: They said that ``the least concession'' by the Japanese ``made to the foreign trader'' brought in ``that aggressive policy, that arrogance, and grasping spirit of monopoly which have ever followed the British footfall on foreign soil,'' so that, the Japanese, before then, had closed up, ``as a means to preserve its national and political autonomy.'' But, now they were opening up again, in cooperation with a U.S. effort to develop Japan, not destroy it, as the British were doing. That was the American idea, as opposed to our principal enemy, the British Empire.

The first stop on this visit of the Japanese to Philadelphia was the Baldwin Locomotive Works, the world's largest capital goods organization at that time.

The Japanese went in there and inspected the engines, the machine tools, the foundries where the metal was made, and the plans for the locomotives. They did this in order to buy all those types of things, and also to build these locomotives themselves with U.S. assistance.

We have in Washington, at the Smithsonian Insitution, a wonderful set of books, in the Archive center. These are the order books of the Baldwin Locomotive Company. You can go see these things. They show a complete record for evey single locomotive built by the main locomotive company. Thousands of locomotives, throughout the 19th century; all the specifications of the locomotive, how it was made, what the parts were, the principal metals, the price, the terms of sale, where it was going to be delivered, what country, at what port was it landed.

You wonder, how does a locomotive get somewhere, except on a track? Well, it goes on a boat, just as Lincoln brought the first locomotive to Illinois, when he was a state legislator there. There wasn't any track from the east coast to there, so they had to put it on a boat. Because all railroad-building is political. You get a good political leader, he builds a railroad. And if there is no good political leader between there and here, you have to float it on a boat to get it there, right?

So Lincoln made Illinois the center of American industry, by political policy. The same thing was going on all around the world, when Lincoln's policy faction was in control, and, it was principally through this locomotive company. The locomotives were the ``engine of development.''


Locomotives Shipped Around the World

We see in the order books, Baldwin's shipments of locomotives to American railroad lines, to Russia, to Japan, China, Australia, Mexico, Brazil. This was a calculated program of economic development. That is, the people who ran this company were politically motivated.

The Balwin company was only one part of a conglomerate, a whole set of institutions. Probably the biggest money-maker was the Pennsylvania Railroad, the largest railroad company.

Also in this conglomerate, controlled by the same people, was the Franklin Institute for Scientific and Tecnological Research. This was the organization set up by Matthias Baldwin and others in this group, whose leader, in the mid-19th century, was Alexander Dallas Bache, the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin. This was all part of Franklin's personal organization, continuing after the American Revolution, taking the spirit and the ideas of that revolution onward.

Bache and this institution collaborated directly with the great German scientists, Humboldt, Gauss and Weber, in a worldwide organization of the highest science on the planet; and the U.S. headquarters was here, in Philadelphia.

Other parts of this one, functioning unit in Philadelphia were the University of Pennsylvania, controlled by Carey and his friends at that time; machine tool companies: the greatest one was that of William Sellers; the Carnegie steel company, and other Carnegie organizations; all in effect one partnership, interlocked, working together for common goals.

The business leaders of this group called themselves, the ``Philadelphia Interests,'' opposed to Wall Street, at war against Wall Street, because Wall Street was always just a bunch of British financial bloodsuckers who hated the United States.

The heart of the United States military and industrial machine was this Philadelphia operation, and the guiding light of this was Henry Carey.

So Prince Iwakura, leader of the Japanese revoltuion, and his party of visitors came to Philadelphia, 1872.

They met with the banker, Jay Cooke, who was the U.S. government's principal banker at that time. Cooke was not Wall Street. He sold U.S. bonds to the public; that's how they financed the Civil War, not Wall Street. The Japanese were preparing a treaty with the U.S., and a huge loan. They were negotiating connections with the Northern Pacific Railroad in Asia. Cooke was also negotiating the annexation of Canada at the time. The German ambassador to the United States was helping in this process, building that Northern Pacific, so they named the terminus of the railroad after the German Chancellor, Bismarck (the capital of North Dakota is still Bismarck), because of the international project that was going on, for this land-bridge.

This was not something the British were going to stand for. They struck with real fury. The newspapers came out with slanders against this whole project, against Jay Cooke, and against the railroad operations. They said that he was bankrupt. They stopped his credit. They had anti-railroad scandals in Congress, which you probably have read about, if you have studied some of the history of this period.


British Free Trade Causes 1873 Depression

The Congress turned yellow, turned chicken, cut off the funds, cut off subsidies, cut off support for this kind of project. There was a terrible crash when the Jay Cooke banking house closed down. The United States went into the 1873 depression, and joined the rest of the world, which was in a depression because of British free frade hegemony that had plunged everybody into unemployment, all over the world.

But Henry Carey, at the age of about 80, did not quit. He fought back with tremendous bold initiatives that changed the face of the world. He put out a pamphlet in 1876, entitled ``Commerce, Christianity and Civilization Versus British Free Trade,'' better known by its subtitle, ``Letters in Reply to the London Times.''

This pamphlet was circulated by Carey's friends overseas. It was a call to arms for world development! It especially attacked the British destruction of China, through the opium trade, the principal point in the pamphlet; Carey wanted to illustrate, ``what do you mean by `Free Trade'? Oh, you mean this crime.''

The pamphlet was a response to a London Times editorial, that had complained that the viewpoint of ``Mr. Carey, of Philadelphia ... has been ``repeated in hundreds of magazines and newspapers, and ... endless orations, and has affected the economical policy of the Union ... and is held by multitudes....''

The London Times warned that Free Trade, which they called ``English political economy,'' is rejected by the Americans, and other countries under the influence of ``ignorant,'' ``imbecile,'' ``dishonest,'' ``heretics,'' [aside] such as ourselves.

This Carey pamphlet, used poetry by Robert Burns, on its cover:

``Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
And foolish notion.''

It said that the British rulers ought to try to see themselves as others see them. It would protect us from many a blunder, if we see ourselves as others do. In other words, they should see themselves as pirates, dope pushers and mass killers. That is the idea of the pamphlet.

He said that the British monarchs, heads of Church of England, sanctioned and pushed opium smuggling to China, using bribery, fraud, perjury, and violence, against the valiant self-sacrificing attempts of Chinese leaders stop it. That they waged two Opium Wars to compel the dope to be thrust onto China. They seized Hong Kong in the first Opium War, and the rest of that colony, Kowloon, in the second Opium War.

Why did Britain seize Hong Kong? As a depot for dope smuggling, that was the whole purpose of it; and today, they are crying tears in Britain about having to give that up.

Principally, as in the pamphlet's title, Carey mocked the British empire's religious pretense, that they claimed to be Christians. He wrote about their racist arrogance: where they portrayed this bloody so-called Free Trade as ``great Reformer''; that is what they called their own policy.

He went through the looting of India by the British, the destruction of India's independent economy. They had set up India as the base for growing opium, dope, to be sold to China, to be forced on China by war. That was the Free Trade system.

The London Times also had terrible hypocrisy which the pamphlet blasted, because they praised the efforts of the so-called ``human rights'' groups of the time, led by the British government, that were hypocritically campaigning against slavery in Africa, after they had just supported the South in America's Civil War. Whereas they are imposing on China the worst possible slavery that exists: dope. And he went through the social situation in England, the poor masses, and the bored, lazy aristocrats, which was very similar both to the Roman Empire and to the southern states of the United States. It's all in this pamphlet.

He described the British free-trade system, wrecking much of the world economy. But, he said, the United States has now overthrown Negro-slavery, and America, and some other countries, under protectionism, are developing home industries, on purpose, with government interference in the market, and we are going to succeed economically because of that.


The Fight for Germany

Carey's followers in Germany used this pamphlet, and other American initiatives, to fight for a dramatic policy change in Germany, then ruled by Chancellor Bismarck, who, unfortunately, had come under British policy in the late 1850s, 1860s and early 1870s, and they had no way to get out of the terrible depression. Germany was not a great power in the world, industrially. So, it was in a mess, just like it is in a policy mess today, with Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

It was also split along religious lines. The government of Germany was attacking the Catholic Church. They were being manipulated into this, within the Church, and against the Church. It's very similar to the problem today, where you have many governments that are led to say that that ``we have to concentrate on fighting off the Muslim enemy; we can't get involved in development efforts, because there's this radical Islam somewhere.'' We now read about this as a ``Clash of Civilizations;'' we have this southern ``religion'' problem.

In those days, the southern religion was the Catholic Church, which was a large part of the German population. So they were being pushed into this frenzied situation, a real mess. Also, socialists were agitating the workers in Germany, to say that the industrialists were their main problem.

So now, the German nationalists, coordinating closely with Henry Carey and his circle, and with the new Pope Leo XIII, when he came into leading the Catholic Church, fundamentally reshaped German national policy.

They adopted a high tariff, to replace free trade. They had the government, in this new policy, supervise a huge industrial and technological development program. They dropped the anti-Catholic policy. And they adopted a protection for workers, various forms of social security. This is back in the 1870s and 1880s. And Germany joined the United States as the motor of world development.

Let us now look a bit behind the scenes, to get some insight into how things work in the world.

In late 1875, Chancellor Bismarck met with an industrialist named Wilhelm von Kardorff, a man completely unheard of today. He was the head of a small, pro-Carey party in Germany, spreading Henry Carey's works there. And Bismarck gave the green light to this man, to go ahead and organize industrialists, farmers and other people, to push for a nationalist program.

We have in the archives, in the Pennsylvania Historical Society, the letters from these people inside politics in Germany, to Henry Carey, describing how this works. Kardorff used this pamphlet, translated it, and got it all around, the attack on the British dope pushing in China, British free trade.

It was this American initiative that flipped the German policy and made Germany a great power. What was the American initiative? When America's nationalists alerted the leaders of other countries, in Germany, for example, to the danger of the British Empire, that's what sent Germany into its final great leap to becoming a modern industrial power.

They set up high protective duties; in 1879 they passed high tariffs. Smelting and machine works increased 30%. Employment went up 40%. Wages increased. The government sponsored formation of cartels of different companies, which joined together to pool laboratories. They set up banks whose only purpose was to build industry, not speculation, not usury. This was part of a completely government-guided system. It was not communism. The idea was, we are going to deliberately develop, and they built canals, ports and so fort.

Meanwhile, very idealistic Americans and Germans joined together in a crash program to bring electricity to the world. That was part of this program, this political program. That's how the world got electricity.

We had, in 1876, the 100th anniversary of the American Revolution, of the Declaration of Independence. We celebrated that by staging the most important world's fair that's ever happened. It was a political event, of highest consequences. It was organized by Henry Carey and his circle. Why did they hold it in Philadelphia? Well, that had been the capital of the Revolution, and it still was. And the government of the United States made this our national celebration.

This had a profound impact on Germany, as well as the rest of the world.

This Centennial exposition, a World Fair, celebrated Man's freedom as absolutely connected to industrial development. That is, technological power, national power, increased power over nature: absolutely inseparable from human freedom.

The free-trade faction, the Gingrich faction of that day, tried to stop the fair. Senator Sumner of Massachusetts cut off the funding for it, declaring that President Grant was overstepping his authority to invite foreign nations: to the celebration of America's centennial! Sumner died, though, and they got away with it.


100,000 At Centennial Opening

One hundred thousand people gathered for the opening celebration, standing in front of the beautiful Memorial building, which was built for the Centennial exposition. Millions attended the Centennial overall.

The main exhibition building was massive, with a 21-acre room inside, and, there were 249 buildings.

In the center of the main building, there was a bandstand for concerts. Above it, hanging from the ceiling, was a very curious display, that illustrates the principle of the land-bridge: a gigantic sort of air car, with the two dignified figures of Confucius and Mohammad, giving the sense that our projects would reach out to the parts of humanity they represented.

There was a statue of a freed slave. The United States had just come through the Civil War successfully, and the rest of the world had an increased admiration for the United States because we had abolished slavery. And because in that struggle, which had involved 200,000 black soldiers, we had developed the most powerful military machine in the world.

The arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty were on display. The Statue of Liberty was built for this Centennial fair. But it never got set up until some years later in New York harbor, a gift from France. This Centennial was the celebration of human freedom on this planet.

On display were hundreds and thousands of machines, including a giant I.P. Morris blast device for making steel. This blast engine delivered 170 cubic feet of air per second to a furnace.

One of the beautiful Baldwin locomotives at the Centennial, is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution, in the Arts & Industries building, on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Baldwin built those locomotives at considerable expense for the Centennial, for political reasons, to display to the world.

Right next to the Baldwin display was the Corliss engine, whose steam devices were in another building, so it was totally silent. This turned all machinery on display. This was the world's largest engine at the time. They turned it on and off so people could see the power over nature that was being exhibited.

The Japanese put up their own building in the fair. There were some racist attitudes on the part of spectators when they started this. They were using some methods, that were less than the highest level of machinery, to put it up. But when the people saw the quality of the workmanship and design of this building, they had tremendous admiration and the Japanese became very, very popular there.

A Baldwin locomotive was placed on display, in Osaka, Japan, many years later. We continued to pour out these locomotives for the development of these countries.

Lady Lynda Chalker [today's British ``Overseas Development'' Minister] would not have liked the exhibit of Egypt and Sudan. The motto on their building read, ``The oldest people of the world, its morning greeting to the youngest nation.'' President Grant was depicted at the exhibit, in a published drawing, being greeted by the Egyptians and the Sudanese.

The Centennial's famous Memorial Building had, possibly, the largest temporary art exhibition, that ever took place: thousands of American and European works of art, many of which, on loan from Europe, were brought over on U.S. Navy ships.

The Memorial Building was built by a German immigrant architect, Herman Schwarzmann. The German Reichstag building was copied from the Centennial Memorial building, and was built a few years later.

The head of the German delegation to this Centennial, was Franz Reuleaux, a professor of machine building. He came to Philadelphia, and spent several months conferring with the Carey people and the industrial and political leaders there. Reuleaux became world famous for writing a sharp attack on Germany's industrial backwardness, Germany's subservience to British free trade policies, and its reputation for producing ``cheap, and therefore bad'' products. This head of the German delegation wrote a book called Letters from Philadelphia, first serialized in the newspapers, attacking the petty chauvinism in Germany under its free-trade and oligarchical policy, attacking the stupid militarism, which doesn't equal military power.

Reuleaux was a professor of machine building who introduced his students to Schiller's universal history teaching, to teach them about machines. He said that America produced excellent machines because its workers were very highly paid, intelligent and motivated, and because America had a protective tariff.

Adolf Hitler had a response to this. In 1940, just after Hitler launched the invasion of Russia, Hitler commented, ``We were busy as bees'' (now this is an Austrian hippie, and he's saying ``we Germans''), we were able to mass produce goods. They were cheap, but at first they couldn't have the quality of the English products. We were beginners, and didn't know the secrets of production. That's how, at a world's fair in Philadelphia, German production got the attribute, `cheap and bad.'|'' But then, Hitler went on, three industries were developed, chemical, electrical and optical, in which `our' work was superior to the English in quality.

Well, that's ironic. Because, how did Germany develop their industrial power? Not with slave labor, as Hitler had. Not with cheap chauvinism, like Hitler. But, by developing under a nationalist idea, which celebrated man's freedom, as opposed to free trade. The British say, you can only be for free trade, or you can be for authoritarian dictatorship, communism or fascism. That's all there is.


Idealism is the Only Practical Policy

No! Nationalism built the world, and it was an idealistic nationalism; that was the only practical step for mankind. Everything else failed. Total idealism was the only practical thing.

Russia's exhibit at the Centennial showed some of their machines, and the works of the Practical Technological Institute of St. Petersburg, and of the Imperial Technical School. They were showing off the beginnings of their industrial development at that time.

We have a copy of the Baldwin Locomotive company advertisement poster, in the Russian language, with ``Baldwin'' written in big Russian characters across the top, which was circulated around Russia in about 1880.

There was a Hawaii section at the fair. Hawaii was an independent country at that time. The head of the Hawaiian delegation was a missionary, originally from America, named Samuel Damon, who would later play a role in the Chinese revolution that set up the present Chinese nation (not the communist aspect).

This man Damon, wrote that racial harmony would prevail in Hawaii, ``if we continue to treat man as man, irrespective of color or race; but a war will come,'' he wrote, just before the Civil War, ``when the wicked doctrines of the London Times are allowed to prevail, and the Anglo-Saxon is allowed to displace an [allegedly] inferior race in the interests of trade and civilization.''

This Rev. Damon, head of the Hawaiian delegation, had educated the Japanese youth, Manjiro, who as the first Japanese English-speaker, translated for the 1850s U.S. naval expedition opening up Japan.

The moment the Centennial Exposition opened in May, 1876, a young inventor named Thomas Alva Edison moved into his ``invention factory,'' that had been set up by the Carey people, who backed him. In a sense, he was their employee: they sponsored, and financed, and protected him. This laboratory was at Menlo Park, New Jersey. Edison, as a very young inventor, displayed his first, telegraphic inventions at the Centennial exposition.

A couple of years later, we find Professor George Barker, the head of the Franklin Institute's research, and young Thomas Edison, out on an astronomical trip, in the American west. It was there that the Carey and the Bache people, this Philadelphia group, through Professor Barker, asked Edison to invent the electric light, and develop electric power for the public, challenging him to do that.

Before long, Edison held a press conference to announce that he was going to electrify the world.

A German named Emil Rathenau came to the Centennial. And a few years later Rathenau and Thomas Edison set up a partnership. Rathenau founded the Edison Electric Company in Germany, as a partner of Edison and these Carey people. Between them, Edison and Rathenau brought electricity to Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Japan and China. And of course, the United States and Germany. They made Germany's Berlin, the capital of the Russian electrical industry. [Emil Rathenau was the father of Walther Rathenau, who, in 1922, worked out the Rapallo accord, between the German Republic and the Soviet Union].

Meanwhile, another partner of Edison, and of the Carey circle, Frank Sprague, introduced electric street cars, and subway trains to the United States.

Another person you never heard of: Wharton Barker (not to be confused with Professor George Barker, mentioned above, who was not a direct family relation). He was a central figure in the projects from here on out; this is a Carey insider in Philadelphia. It was at his house that the dignitaries from these other countries met, when they came to the Centennial, just like they might come into Leesburg today [to meet with its most celebrated resident, Lyndon LaRouche] to talk about what they're going to do.

In 1878, Wharton Barker was hired by the Tsar to build warships for the Russian navy in the Philadelphia shipyard. He then went to Russia to plan the industrialization of South Russia, with the Bethlehem Iron/Steel company, which was owned by his uncle, Joseph Wharton.

Barker also supervised the Irish revolution unit of the Carey circle, that is, the Irish in America, as well as Ireland, working together with this little circle, set up something called the Clan na Gael. One of their central people went from Philadelphia to Ireland in 1878, and organized 20,000 feuding Irishmen into a central revolutionary organization called the ``Irish Republican Brotherhood.'' Together with their Clan na Gael in the United States, which shipped arms and money to Ireland, the Brotherhood continued to be the main organization of Irish nationalism (out of which the Sinn Fein was created), until Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, who worked for that organization, established the nation of Ireland right after World War I.


Assassination Stops the War Against England

The plan was that the United States and Russia together, would make war on England, and there would be an Irish uprising. That was what these men were organizing for. Unfortunately, Tsar Alexander II, and Wharton Barker's candidate for president, James Garfield, whom Barker put in the White House, both were assassinated within a few months of each other.

A fellow named Terence Powderly was part of this little inner circle in Philadelphia. He is well-known, historically, as the head of the first mass organization of working people, called the ``Knights of Labor.'' Under Powderly's leadership, it grew from a little secret society, to 800,000 members, black and white, women and men, immigrants and natives, employed and unemployed.

Its purpose was, for the workers to study political economy, and to defend the rights of workers against employers, who were mindlessly attacking them. That's how Powderly is known: as the most famous labor leader in that era. He introduced, as a leader of labor, the concept of a mass organzation of workers, not socialist. He was a Careyite, part of his inner circle, and he was the treasurer of the ``skirmishing fund'' of the Clan na Gael that sent the guns to Ireland for the Carey organization.

Powderly was not known for his political activities, in this circle of American nationalists. We have a copy of a letter from Terence Powderly to Wharton Barker, a banker in Philadelphia, and they are conniving in the running of American politics.

One of their projects was the development of the submarine, paid for by the ``skirmishing fund.'' They paid a man named John Holland to build the first submarine for the Irish revolution. Then, the U.S. navy hired him to build its submarines, a little bit later.

The British didn't like this. They got the Canadian Catholic Church to tell the Pope, ``Don't allow this!'' Because these guys were organizing workers, in Britain, and Canada, while they were doing all these other initiatives.

But the new Pope, Leo XIII, was on Powderly's side, and worked in tandem with Carey's American nationalists.

The British Magazine, Puck, ran a vicious cartoon, attacking the Knights of Labor, and attacking Cardinal Gibbons, who had worked to get Vatican protection for Powderly. This British cartoon depicted scandalously ugly and ignorant workers, stoning a poor scab, and the Catholics should be ashamed to participate in this.

Another British Puck cartoon showed Pope Leo XIII as a lunatic supporting Irish revolution and worker uprisings, because he was on the same side as the American nationalists.

And it was because of this combination, really, that Germany got this social security system--health insurance, pensions--for the workers, in the 1880s.

The Trans-Siberian railway was finally built by the Russians in the 1890s, under the finance minister Count Sergei Witte, who was an advocate of the American nationalists' economic policy, as opposed to the British. The Baldwin company provided the locomotives; Carnegie steel provided the rails, and so forth. This was a joint American and Russian project.

When the U.S. President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, bringing in Teddy Roosevelt, that cut off American assistance to this type of project; now, the British-loving faction was in control of America.

We have a copy of the contract signed by Wharton Barker's representative Eugene Mitkiewicz, with the Chinese government in 1886, to build railroads all over China; the contract is in the Wharton Barker papers at the Library of Congress.

The plans were to develop a national bank for China, and to build railroads, telephone lines and modern industry throughout China. We have a copy of the map Wharton Barker drew, of the plans for this railroad system: an American-instituted, massive development project for China.

The British came down in a virtual military attack against this deal. They circulated press lies: you might hear this today, ``Chinagate'' today, against our President, against the Chinese.

What did they say about this then? First, ``there's no such contract.'' And when the Chinese said, ``yes, there is,'' the British said, ``yes, there's a contract, but it's fraudulent.''

When the Chinese said, ``no, it's not fraudulent,'' they said ``the Chinese have cancelled it.'' And they kept the pressure up. The same paper would say all those different things!

The British government finally exerted terrible pressure. They had their Navy, and they had a bad U.S. President, Grover Cleveland. The press was full of racist anti-Chinese filth, and the British forced a cancellation of this project finally. Barker tried again later, in 1895. He was called back to China by the Chinese viceroy; they worked out another deal, for a $125 million program, 5,000 miles of railroad lines, to develop a navy, a merchant marine, steel mills and locomotive plants. That was also shut down, stopped by the British.

The Railroad Gazette, in 1899, ran a photograph of Baldwin Locomotive parts, boilers, and items in crates, unloaded on the dock, in China, in the port city of Newchang.

It didn't work out. China had a very weak, corrupt, Manchu dynasty, that fell under the complete domination of foreigners, particularly the British.

At the same time, in Hawaii, these American nationalists had a last bastion of their influence, while American government was coming under the dominance of British policy. And they put together an organization in Hawaii, led by one of their protégés, their young friend, named Sun Yat-sen, Sun's organization was built up in Hawaii at the house of Frank Damon, whose father Rev. Samuel Damon ran the Hawaii delegation to the Centennial.

Frank Damon had been in Berlin as a Hawaiian embassy leader, during the period that the Carey circle was working so hard over there. Damon provided money and support and even military training to the beginning of Sun Yat-sen's organization. Sun used Hawaii as his base to make his revolutionary movement in China, which proclaimed the Chinese Republic just before World War I.

Sun Yat-sen had the same goals as Carey, and the same ideas as Lincoln: massive economic development, tremendous railroads and other infrastructure were called for.

This idea of the meaning of this kind of program is what Franklin D. Roosevelt had, and FDR's politics against Churchill is what was inherited by this new Chinese leadership, after America had kind of gone to sleep in the world, So they have left this legacy to us now, that we are now reviving in the world.


Captions

The author addressing the FDR-PAC meeting May 10.

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``The economist Henry Carey, was the world's most famous living economist in the period of the American Civil War, and afterwards. His writings were translated into many European and Asian languages, and with his predecessors, Friedrich List, Henry Clay, and Alexander Hamilton, he was the main representative of the American School of Economics, or the Nationalist School, as opposed to the British School of Economics.''

Tsar Alexander II, the ally of Lincoln and Carey said, ``I shall accept the recognition of the independence of the Confederate States, by France and Great Britain as a casus belli.'' Russia sent it's Navy to defend the Union. Shown here: Russian sailors in New York harbor.

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Philadelphia's Baldwin Locomotive Works proudly displyed several shiny steam engines in Machinery Hall of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, held in Philadelphia. The immense Corliss steam machine, which ran all the machinery on display, can be seen in the background.

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100,000 people gathered for the opening celebration of the Philadelphia Centennial, in front of the beautiful Memorial Hall, which still stands today. It built by a German immigrant architect, Herman Schwarzmann, who design was copied by the architects of the German Reichstag, built just a few years later.

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There was a statue of a freed slave. The United States had just come through the Civil War successfully, and the rest of the world had an increased admiration for the United States because we had abolished slavery. And because in that struggle, which had involved 200,000 black soldiers, we had developed the most powerful military machine in the world.

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The arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty were on display. The Statue of Liberty was built for this Centennial fair. But it never got set up until some years later in New York harbor, a gift from France. This Centennial was the celebration of human freedom on this planet.

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President Ulysses S. Grant, greeted by representatives of Egypt and Sudan (Soodan). The motto on their building read, ``The oldest people of the world, its morning greeting to the youngest nation.''

The moment the Centennial Exposition opened in May, 1876, a young inventor named Thomas Alva Edison moved into his ``invention factory,'' that had been set up by the Carey people, who backed him. This laboratory was at Menlo Park, New Jersey. Edison, shown here with his "Edison effect" lamp, had, as a very young inventor, displayed his first, telegraphic inventions at the Centennial exposition. Before long, Edison held a press conference to announce that he was going to electrify the world.



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The preceding article is a rough version of the article that appeared in The American Almanac. It is made available here with the permission of The New Federalist Newspaper. Any use of, or quotations from, this article must attribute them to The New Federalist, and The American Almanac


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