THE SAME TREATMENT, MR. ROOSEVELT, AND THE SAME SUBMISSION OF THE GOVERNING POLITICIANS
By P. ALBIZU CAMPOS
The North American internal crisis has imposed dictatorship on the Yankee people. Mr. Roosevelt, as dictator, is viewed with distrust by his own compatriots. The important New York daily, The New York Times, has editorially stated that the greatest good that can be done for Mr. Roosevelt is to criticize him severely. In another editorial it warns Yankees to prepare for the harshest reality: the failure of the present North American administration. This opinion carries deep significance because the New York Times has always inclined toward defending the norms of the Yankee Democratic Party.
The distrust in Mr. Roosevelt’s policy stems from the forced fear of every dictatorship and from the known actions of the dictator. The same New York Times, echoing the most serious North American opinion, affirms that no one knows what to expect from Mr. Roosevelt’s statements. For example, when he was a candidate for the presidency he gave to understand that he would maintain the gold standard, but as soon as he assumed the dictatorship he abandoned said standard. He affirmed in his electoral campaign that he would abandon speculation, and as soon as they elected him president he delivered his country to a speculative orgy from which no one knows how it will exit; and, as a notorious case, we will cite the ridiculous position in which he placed the North American delegation at the last economic conference in London, giving the most contradictory instructions to the Yankee plenipotentiaries, which forced the French delegation to consider said international conference concluded.
The North Americans tolerated the abandonment of the gold standard for several reasons, among which we will point out the most important.
First. Before Mr. Roosevelt assumed the dictatorship, neither the amorphous Yankee mass nor the great interests that dominate and exploit it without mercy believed in the efficacy of his government. Organized crime was stronger than public power, placing the United States in the sad situation in which China finds itself.
That distrust produced the flight of North American capital toward France. To prevent the outflow of gold it was necessary to decree an embargo, and for that it was necessary to abandon that standard.
Mr. Roosevelt rose to the dictatorship. Organized crime remains stronger than public power. Despite the abandonment of the gold standard the retreat of North American capital toward France continues. Neither Mr. Roosevelt nor his “Brain Trust” finds a solution to this enigma. To evade the embargo on gold, the Yankee merchandise exporter orders the foreign buyer to deposit the value of the price in the Bank of France.
Mr. Roosevelt has also had to yield to the clamor of Yankee miners who own gold mines. The official price of the precious metal in the United States is fixed by law at twenty-one dollars per ounce ($21.00).
“Abroad, due to the depreciation of the dollar, the market price is around thirty dollars per ounce ($30.00). The dictatorship has had to permit the export of gold ore.” The Yankees cannot get over their astonishment at seeing their beloved golden calf melting before their very eyes.
Second. — It was also alleged as reason to abandon the gold standard that, with the depreciation of the dollar, Yankee merchandise could compete in price with the merchandise of competing nations in the great international markets. The dollar has lost almost forty percent (40%) of its value, but the foreign markets remain closed to Yankee merchandise. Instead of increasing North American exports, imports exceed exports.
This is because the United States cannot open markets if it does not lower its tariffs to offer tariff reciprocity. But here lies the terrible dilemma in which North American industry finds itself. Due to its technical inferiority—despite being able to utilize labor at any price, having twelve million unemployed men, and some fifty million indigents (50,000,000) who depend on them—it is not possible to compete under conditions of tariff reciprocity.
The one-sided rule cannot be applied to any nation that knows how to defend its interests. The Yankee tariff policy has been able to triumph only in Puerto Rico, to the ruin of our country.
The constant decrease of exports sustains the industrial overproduction. Although the depreciation of the dollar has artificially raised prices in the Yankee internal market by the amount of the depreciated value of the dollar, consumption remains stagnant. So that the working people can buy at the previous rate, their wages have been increased in the proportion in which prices have risen. But industry cannot increase its production if it has no foreign markets, it cannot employ more workers, and the frightful problem of unemployment remains.
The causes that inform this chaotic situation have their roots in the purposes behind the measures adopted by Mr. Roosevelt. The great financial interests back the dictatorship as long as it guarantees their predominance. To form an exact idea of that oligarchy, it suffices to point out the fact proven by the North American Congress itself: that twenty-four men (24) dominate three-quarters of North American wealth. The United States is estimated to have a population of more than one hundred and twenty-five million inhabitants.
How to redistribute that wealth is the true Yankee problem. But the dictatorship has been established to prevent redistribution. The problem is of such magnitude that both the worker and the capitalist doubt the dictatorial efficacy. The capitalist is putting himself to safety by transferring his liquid assets to France. The worker must remain in the United States out of necessity. The amorphous Yankee community feels the feverish premonition of great revolutionary upheavals.
We know of no Yankee entity, capitalist or working class, that has felt the need to express gratitude to Mr. Roosevelt for his work of government. Due to the distrust that his political aims inspire and his enormous personal ambition—a family trait—no one has offered him unconditional support.
Without taking into account the opinion of the radical Yankee labor leaders, who roundly condemn the policy of the present North American dictatorship, it is worthy of observation the most conservative attitude in appraising that policy that Mr. Green, President of the American Federation of Labor—the organized minority of workers formed to shield the great capitalists in their iniquitous exploitation of the enormous Yankee working masses—has assumed.
It is to be supposed that the leaders of the governmental politics in Puerto Rico, both liberals and coalitionists, are informed of these facts. To national stupor, we have read their statements, in agreement in declaring that the North American dictator, Mr. Roosevelt, is deserving of the tribute of Puerto Ricans.
Why?, we ask them. We pose the question because we find not one single reason for such an extraordinary affirmation either in the manifesto that the coalitionist directors address to Puerto Ricans nor in that which the leadership of the Liberal Party publishes with the same purpose.
We understand that the governmental factions are at the mercy of Mr. Roosevelt’s will, and that liberals and coalitionists alike feel obligated to flatter the Yankee dictator in order to position themselves advantageously to achieve the longings of the budget. The most abject colonial politics has its modesty, and we know of no historical precedent as shameful as this one, in which representatives of an intervened nation such as ours, subjected to the most iniquitous exploitation by the Yankee power, dare to declare committed the national gratitude to the dictator of the empire that subjugates it.
Puerto Ricans will be able to render national tribute to the North American official who signs, out of respect for others’ rights, the treaty in which the independence of the Homeland is recognized. Do the liberal and coalitionist leaders know what it means for Puerto Rico to render in these moments a national tribute to the dictator Roosevelt?
On the eve of the Pan-American Convention to be held in Montevideo next December, this recognition of the supposed goodness of Roosevelt toward our nation will be capitalized upon by the United States to disorient Latin American opinion. It is known by all that the Yankees find themselves isolated and without markets, and today they yearningly implore the friendship of the Latin American nations, victims of their imperialism.
Have these compatriots of ours lost all sense of responsibility in presenting a popular representation?
No foreign despotism deserves tribute.
Those who have fulfilled their duty gloriously deserve tribute. The only duty that Yankee despotism has toward Puerto Rico is to withdraw immediately from our territory. As long as it persists in its outrage of wanting to govern our Homeland and wanting to exploit it, it deserves the continuous attack of every Puerto Rican. All of its mandataries must be equally hateful to us and branded as enemies.
What has Mr. Roosevelt done in Puerto Rico? He has continued the exploitation of the country by the great Yankee interests. There are our workers dying of hunger and illness, condemned and subjected to begging. He entertains them with the same methods he uses in his own land, through his megaphone in Puerto Rico, Mr. Gore. The Yankee press has condemned these Roosevelt procedures, branded in the United States as “gas bag”—a sack of air—to give false hopes to the people. The representative of Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Gore, spends his time announcing the arrival of one million dollars per day. It seems that he has hypnotized the budget politicians in that way. No one sees the million or a single cent. The workers form lines of beggars at the city hall of each municipality, and after waiting an entire day they return to their homes empty-handed. The coffee and tobacco farmers find themselves ruined without a market for their product. Only sugar commands a good price. But the industry is dominated by the Yankee interests. It maintains the same miserable wages as always, and is importing machinery to save on labor, thus increasing the misery and pain of the people.
The Yankee interests pay no taxes. The treasury has been forced by a ruling of the Yankee courts to condone the Central Guánica the payment of eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000) in taxes. The Insular Legislature wanted to conduct an investigation, but took fright and left the matter on the table.
The same happened with the legislative investigation into the gasoline monopoly. The Legislature by unanimous vote maintained the respectful silence the case required. The head of the intervention, and representative of Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Gore, when questioned by journalists about the gasoline monopoly, kept a great silence for the first time in his life.
Mr. Roosevelt imposed the banking moratorium on Puerto Rico to defend the Yankee banks that do business in Puerto Rico, ruining many depositors. In decreeing the abandonment of the gold standard, Mr. Roosevelt depreciated the dollar by forty percent (40%), reducing by that amount the liquid capital of Puerto Rico, and exposing the country to total ruin, or to absolute submission to Yankee finance.
Roosevelt repeated in the same degree the terrible blow suffered by national Puerto Rican wealth when the nation had imposed upon it the exchange of its gold and silver currency for Yankee paper, at a discount of forty percent.
Roosevelt has not thought of how to raise the price of coffee or tobacco, which is wealth belonging largely to Puerto Ricans. By imposing half a cent of tax on each pound of those products consumed in the United States, a respectable fund would be raised for immediate aid to the farmers.
But Mr. Roosevelt did not forget to impose the tax on cotton articles or fiber competing with cotton, to subsidize the Yankee farmer devoted to cotton cultivation. Nor did he fail to impose upon us the tax on wheat flour to raise funds for the benefit of North American wheat producers. These taxes constitute a burden on the Puerto Rican consumer amounting to some fifteen million dollars annually for the benefit of the Yankee farmer. Mr. Roosevelt has refused to return, for the benefit of the Puerto Rican farmer currently ruined, the proceeds of these taxes.
There are some of the outstanding acts of Mr. Roosevelt in Puerto Rico.
Gentlemen leaders of the Coalition and gentlemen leaders of the Liberal Party, colonial politics also imposes responsibilities.
The submission that is the most formal annulment of right confers no powers.
He who accepts the will of foreign despotism has no right to speak in the name of the Homeland.
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS