Posted on 10/16/2014 2:47:42 PM PDT by lbryce
I was aware of FDR as a left-leaning, communist sympathizer and worse but still this story really illustrates the extent in which it really brought home how far he would go to demonstrate his political sympathies towards his left-leaning communist affiliation.
Unfortunately most FREEPERS will not get to see this post and won't get to know the extent in which FDR demonstrated his political proclivity as American dictator during his 'reign' as president.
I reminded myself of this terrible page in American history after coming across this article in the Washington Beacon today, details of which are reminiscent of events that lead up to FDR ordering U.S. Army troops to storm and seize Montgomery Wards’ corporate offices in Chicago.
There is Nothing New Under the Sun. Know Your History. Here’s your history lesson of the day, and it’s a duzy. Do you all remember the department store chain Montgomery Ward? It was in the same class as JC Penney and Sears, and like Penney’s and Sears had a robust catalog business in the 20th century. The catalog ended in 1985 and the stores closed in 2000. The incident we are going to talk about happened during World War 2, in 1944. When I read this it initially put my jaw on the floor, but when I thought about it for a moment, I realized that it put all of the pieces together regarding Marxist tactics and motivations.
In early 1943 employees of Montgomery Ward went on strike in seven cities: Jamaica, New York; Detroit; Chicago; St. Paul; Denver; San Rafael, California and Portland, Oregon. (For the sake of brevity, I will henceforth refer to Montgomery Ward as “Wards”, which is what people casually referred to them as back in the day.) Wards stood their ground and refused to recognize or capitulate to the union thugs in these seven locations.
Now get this. On April 26, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered U.S. Army troops to storm and seize Wards’ corporate offices in Chicago. Yes, you read that correctly. FDR deployed the Army against Americans on American soil, physically captured occupied their property and even had Wards’ chairman, Sewell Avery, forcibly carried out of his office by US Army troops. FDR then installed his Secretary of Commerce, Jesse Holman Jones, as manager of Wards’ Chicago facility. FDR justified this action by citing his power as Commander-in-Chief AND his authority under the Smith-Connally Act.
The Smith-Connally Act, which was also called the War Labor Disputes Act, was passed in June of 1943. It was hastily rammed through congress, touted as an “emergency measure” (sound familiar?) after 400,000 coal miners went on strike. Why did the miners go on strike? They went on strike because of the high inflation that was being experienced at the time. (Sound familiar?) They wanted a $2 per day wage increase in order to pace the inflation. Interestingly, FDR vetoed the Smith-Connally Act but Congress had a super-majority and overrode FDR’s veto. This threw me for a moment when I first read it, but let me explain. The Smith-Connally Act gave FDR massive dictatorial power. So why did he veto it? Optics. FDR knew that he had a super-majority in Congress, so in order to appear like the innocent, blushing maiden, rather than the Marxist dictatorial wolf that he was, he vetoed it. Congress promptly overrode the veto and FDR was then free to wield the power which was handed to him by Congress and which he falsely claimed to protest. In other words, “Hey, you INSISTED on giving me this power. Now you can’t complain when I use it.”
Back to Wards. In the summer of 1944 the National Labor Relations Board (Sound familiar? Boeing? South Carolina? 2011?) tried to organize a Wards union again, but Wards STILL stood its ground. As a result, FDR issued an executive order (sound familiar?) ordering the Secretary of War (which is now called the Secretary of Defense) to seize ALL Wards property nationwide in order to force Wards to capitulate to the unions. This seizure was upheld by the Court of Appeals. No joke. I’ll tell you how the story ended in a minute.
I have one more anecdote about the tyrannical use of the Smith-Connally Act by FDR. This one is complex because there were wrongs on both sides, and it actually involved FDR turning against the unions, but we’ll think our way through it. In 1944 the Philadelphia Transport Workers Union went on strike because Philadelphia Transportation Company decided to integrate the skilled positions on trains and trolleys, namely motormen and conductors by promoting and training black porters and other existing employees in menial positions, but who were already experienced with the trains of trolleys. This integration was spurred not by altruism and a spirit of Christian brotherhood, but because there was a shortage of labor due to the war. Because of this, the whites-only union went on strike. Yes, everyone’s motives were sleazy. But, I want you to focus on what FDR did, because the issue in question is the lawless tyranny of the state. The true racism of the unions is a given. We don’t need to re-invent that wheel.
FDR ordered his then-Secretary of War (again) Harry L. Stimson to seize the Philadelphia Transportation Company and installed US Army Major General Philip Hayes as CEO. That’s right. FDR forcibly seized and handed a private company to the United States military by executive fiat. When the union didn’t agree to Gen. Hayes’ terms, Hayes deployed 5000 troops to seize and run the PTC trains, with armed soldiers riding the trains as “security”. Oh, but it gets even worse! On August 5, 1944, Gen. Hayes issued an order that unless the unions returned to work by 12:01 am on August 7th, they would be fired and all between the ages of 18 and 37 would lose their military draft deferments. Yep. He threatened to draft them, which during World War 2 carried a very high risk of being killed.
FDR was one of the most dangerous men in American history up until Obama. If FDR had been ten years younger than he was and had lived, I honestly think that he could have become a full-blown dictator. FDR died in April of 1945 after having just been sworn in to his FOURTH term as President. Harry Truman then became president and after the conclusion of the War appointed the Hoover Commission which promptly recommended the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution which limited Presidents to two terms. Truman knew that we had dodged a bullet with Roosevelt and made certain that a tyrannical dynasty like FDR’s would never happen again. With regards to Montgomery Ward, Truman terminated the government seizure of Wards almost immediately after being sworn in as President in 1945. Remember, Truman was a Democrat whom FDR picked to be his Vice President knowing that he probably wouldn’t survive his fourth term. Can you imagine Joe Biden being elevated to the Presidency (in whatever circumstance) and then immediately repealing ObamaCare and calling a commission on eligibility requirements resulting in a Constitutional amendment? Of course not. Why? Because Joe Biden has no personal integrity. None of them today do. None of them. They are, ALL OF THEM, whores and psychopaths. But Truman had a shred of integrity and reversed Roosevelt’s imperious tyranny. That was a different time, a different culture, and literally, a different country. The U.S. was able to shake off Roosevelt’s brand of Marxism and get back on track because the halls of government were still walked by men with a backstop of integrity and morality. That backstop no longer exists, which is why we are screwed.
Finally, a quick word on how Marxists relate to Unions. The unions think that the Marxist ruling class is “on their side” . . . right up until the bullet actually enters their cranium. Marxism DESPISES the middle class. Marxism is all about destroying the middle class – but the middle class is actually split into two separate parts. The first part is what we call the “upper middle class”. You may have heard the French term “bourgeois” (buzh-wah). The noun form of “bourgeois” is “bourgeoisie” (buzh-wah-ZEE). That’s the upper middle class. Marxists use guilt to induce self-loathing among the upper middle class. Many of them, especially those who do not have strong faith in God, fall for it and thus essentially hand themselves over to the Marxist elites. Sound familiar?
For those in the upper middle class who don’t fall for the self-loathing Marxist agitprop, persecution and death comes early in the Marxist revolution process. The self-loathers are the second group to be eliminated. Academics, clergy, artists, business owners and politicians outside the elite cadre, even though they supported the Marxist elites, are killed early in the purging process. Why? Because the Marxist elites know that once these people figure out that all of their “social justice” talk is complete bee-ess, these people COULD turn on them and expose their fraud to the lower-middle class, or “proletariat”. So, the Marxist elites eliminate that risk. For the love of God, PLEASE read the history of the Soviet Union. Lenin and Stalin eventually killed damn near EVERYONE who ascended through the Communist Party. They had to keep continually elevating and then murdering people in order to maintain their decadent lifestyle and fraud without being ratted out to the suffering proletariat who would certainly revolt against the Marxist elites if they knew the truth.
The proletariat, or lower-middle class, is a bit different. In the beginning of the revolution process the Marxist elites rely heavily on the lower-middle class, blue collar workers. They agitate and organize workers and form unions. Josef Stalin was a union organizer. They do this by stirring up class envy between the lower middle class and the upper middle class. (Sound familiar?) Every business owner is cast as a “greedy fat cat”. “Equality” and “fairness” are the buzzterms used to incite the workers against their employers. The Marxist elites promise the proletariat “equality and fairness” if they will only give them power and loyalty and support the Marxist revolution. But it is all a lie. The Marxist elites don’t give a crap about the proletariat – in fact, they DESPISE them. They view them as expendable animals whose only purpose is to deliver the Marxist elites to power. Once the revolution is complete, the proletariat – now fully integrated into the destitute lower class – no longer serves a purpose. Not only do they not serve a purpose, but they are a massive drain on the Marxist oligarchy’s government. They eat and get sick and use resources. They also get disgruntled when they realize that the elitists used them, promised them the moon, and then delivered poverty, starvation and disease. In order to maintain power, Marxists have to squash the proletariat under the jackboot of a police state driven by violence and terror.
And so, in FDR’s tyrannical actions from 1943-1945 we see a microcosm of the agitation-suppression cycle of the union-elitist relationship. The Marxists start out all kissy-kissy with the unions, but then transition to threats and brutality as soon as they have accumulated power. This is why Marxists began their infiltration of our culture 50 years ago in the SCHOOLS. It is critically important that both the lower middle class and the upper middle class today have NO KNOWLEDGE of history and thus cannot recognize what is happening, and more importantly how it is going to end. These pathetic union members honestly believe that Barack and Michelle Obama, who take multi-million-dollar vacations on a near-monthly basis, actually care about them when the truth is that they despise them and laugh at their gullibility. And none of them have the foggiest idea who Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong or Pol Pot were, much less that these four men alone consciously murdered well over one hundred million (100,000,000) of their own people in roughly 60 years.
Layer on top of this the fact that the Union oligarchs have stolen wages and looted “retirement and pension” accounts for into the TRILLIONS of dollars – accounts that simply WILL NOT pay out because the money IS NOT THERE – a dynamic which did not exist 70 years ago, and you see that while there is nothing new under the sun, this is indeed a whole ‘nother level of evil.
That was most interesting, thank you for posting it!
I’m glad you did. I thought so, as well. Makes the considerable effort to post it worthwhile.
Steel Seizure case too, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952). Different president (Truman), but it was a government seizure of private property.
A very interesting chapter in history. Unfortunately those who would actually gain from reading it, e.g. the blue collar union types with dem on the brain, probably wouldn’t make it past the first paragraph.
FDR’s failed entitlement polices gave this county the second worst 15 years of its history. FDR was scum, plain and simple.
Thanks for posting this. The link to a FR article in my tagline is from a booklet written in 1939 about FDR and the New Deal. Somewhere in there is a line about somebody telling FDR that he should add to a speech something about how he should make it clear that he sees some policy as helping business; and not wishing for the government to take over companies. FDR replied something like “Leave the speech as it is, we want to keep our options open.”
Read about what he did to the tire company in Indianapolis BEFORE the war.
PS you only THINK you are pissed now.
I watched the recent Ken Burns series on the Roosevelts. It was a fawning, loving look. However, one thing it didn’t seem to pull inches about was both TR and FDRs willingness to do whatever they wanted without regard for the constitution. In fact I was unaware of how much it started with TR.
punches
Excellent post, well worth the read! Thanks!
I don’t disagree that FDR was an awful President but lets be fair the rot started under Lincoln.
Ping.
As mentioned in related threads, with the exception of the federal entities indicated in the Constitution's Clauses 16 & 17 of Section 8 of Article I as examples, entities under the exclusive legislative control of Congress, the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate intrastate labor wages. This is evidenced by the following excerpt.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Also, as I questioned in a related thread, what is the scope of the Seattle Socialist Group concerning the $15 minimum wage? For the city? For the state?
If only a local minimum wage then let the city exercise its 10th Amendment power to establish minimum wage. Or impliment minimum way statewide. And if Washington State voters don't like the trail-blazing minimum wage, but then sit on their hands and don't work with their local government reps to do something about it, then let Social Darwinism do its job. We can always delete Seattle and / or Washington State from the maps and remove a star from the flag. There is no constitutional protection from stupidity.
Socialist justice Louis Brandeis had indicated that the states are laboratories of democracy.
Laboratories of democracy
Having grown up durring his Presidency I was taught to hate FDR from the time I could sit in a high chair.
Meal time was a lesson in government and history, 7 days a week!
Lincoln was tyrannical
Wilson was tyrannical
FDR was tyrannical
Nixon/LBJ were tyrannical
Bush was tyrannical
Obama is tyrannical
They all asked for, and got, more executive power. In all cases it was claimed that this increased power was necessary to guarantee a win. That power was supposed to be returned to the legislature or the states when the war was won, but never was.
Republicans and Democrats, liberals and so-called conservatives have all conspired to give more-and-more power to the executive branch and more-and-more power to the feds.
Fear leads to insecurity leads to Big Government. But at least we're getting what most of us are asking for. The few benighted souls who still care about freedom and subsidiarity are just going to have to stop whining and get with the program.
FDR was a sleazy tyrant and another thing that irks me about him is that he was so power hungry as to go beyond the traditional 2 terms. I’m glad he died when he did and didn’t go on for a 5th term.....
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