
INTRODUCTION 

To clearly understand the circumstances which existed during the 1930s
and 1940s, and are the subject of this booklet, it would be helpful to
first put the hemp / petrochemical conflict into historical perspective.
The events which took place in the years leading up to World War II were
a continuation of a struggle between agricultural and industrial
interests that began before the American Revolution, a struggle which
has yet to be decided, even today. 


AGRICULTURE VS. INDUSTRY 

The historical record, at least as it has been presented to us in the
public school system, is that the Civil War was fought to end slavery.
This is not the whole story. The truth of the matter is that it was also
a clash between Northern industrialists and Southern agriculturists,
over control of the expansion into the newly opened West. 

In 1845, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "I hold it a paramount duty of us in the
free states due to the union of the states, and perhaps to liberty
itself, to let the slavery of other states alone." (1) 

Concerning the Western territories, he said "The whole Nation is
interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want
them for homes and free white people. This they cannot be, to any
considerable extent, if slavery be planted within them." (2) 

Lincoln was caught in the middle between the Northern industrialists and
the Southern agriculturists, who both wanted to dominate Western
expansion because of the wealth it offered. The industrialists knew that
the agriculturists depended on slavery because cotton, upon which
Southern wealth was based, was very labor intensive and required the
inexpensive labor that slavery provided. They knew that if the Western
lands were declared "free states" then the Southern agriculturists would
be unable to compete, and would be forced to leave Western expansion,
and its potential profits, to the Northern industrialists. 

Quoting "The Irony of Democracy," by Thomas R. Dye and T. Harmon
Zeigler,

     "The importance of the Civil War for America's elite structure was
     the commanding position that the new industrial capitalists won
     during the course of the struggle.  .  .  .  The economic
     transformation of the United States from an agricultural to an
     industrial nation reached the crescendo of a revolution in the
     second half of the nineteenth century.
     
     "Civil War profits compounded the capital of the industrialists and
     placed them in a position to dominate the economic life of the
     nation.  Moreover, when the Southern planters were removed from the
     national scene, the government in Washington became the exclusive
     domain of the new industrial leaders."  (3)

The Northern industrialists used this increased capital to build the
system of transcontinental railways, linking the Northeast with both the
South and West. The labor for this undertaking was from the Northeastern
Establishment's own source of cheap labor - recently freed slaves and
poor immigrants from Europe and China - who suffered under living
conditions which were often little better than those which existed under
the Slave System just a few years before. 

It was during the years between the Civil War and the beginning of the
Twentieth Century that the Northern industrialists altered the role of
the American government. Originally established by the Revolution to
protect and preserve the lives, property and freedoms of all Americans
from repressive government, it was transformed into an agency to protect
the economic future of Northern industrialists. 

"[T]he industrial elites," according to Dye and Zeigler, "saw no
objection to legislation if it furthered their success in business.
Unrestricted competition might prove who was the fittest, but as an
added precaution to insure that the industrial capitalists themselves
emerged as the fittest, these new elites also insisted upon government
subsidies, patents, tariffs, loans, and massive giveaways of land and
other natural resources." (4) 

The struggle between Western farmers and the railroads owned by the
Northern industrialists is a good example. To protect their interests,
citizens created "the Grange," an organization which helped to enact
state laws regulating the "ruthless aggression" of the railroads. In
1877, these laws were upheld by the Supreme Court in the Munn v.
Illinois decision. But, a few years later, Justice Stephen A. Field
changed the role, and the very definition, of the corporation. He gave a
new interpretation to the Fourteenth Amendment that actually gave
corporations legal status as citizens . . . as artificial persons. (5) 

It was not long after this change in the interpretation of the
Fourteenth Amendment that John D. Rockefeller, the father of the
modern-day corporation, created the great Standard Oil Corporation
which, by the late 1880s, gained control over 90% of all the oil
refineries in America. (6) 

The roots of 20th Century American politics can best be illustrated by
the 1896 Presidential Election, won by Republican William McKinley by a
landslide. The McKinley campaign was directed by Marcus Alonzo Hanna of
Standard Oil and raised a $16,000,000 campaign fund from wealthy fellow
industrialists, (an amount that was unmatched in Presidential campaigns
until the 1960s). The major theme of the campaign, and one that would
echo far into the future, was "what's good for business is good for the
country." (7) 

This emerging political and judicial misuse of power in America was
feared by Thomas Jefferson who, in 1787, wrote, "I think our governments
will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they remain chiefly
agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in
any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large
cities as in Europe they will become corrupt as in Europe." (8) 

It is important to remember that the American Revolution was a clash
between the agriculturists in the colonies, and the British
industrialists who controlled the government in England. Almost 100
years later the Civil War was fought as a continuation of the same basic
struggle, but with the victory going back to the industrialists. This
began the erosion of the American government "of the people, for the
people and by the people." The buying of the 1896 Presidential Election,
by Hanna of Standard Oil and the Northern industrial interests, was the
next important step on the long road to the American government "of the
corporation, for the corporation and by the corporation." 

A few years later, World War I would forge an even closer relationship
between corporations and government in the United States, as well as
around the world. Anthony Sampson, in his book "The Arms Bazaar," notes
that "the American companies, led by US Steel and du Pont, were
transformed by war orders. US Steel, which had absorbed Carnegie's old
steel company, had made average annual profits in the four pre-war years
of $105 million, while in the four war years they were $240 million; and
du Pont's average profit went up from $6 million to $58 million. . . . 

"Certainly the arms companies had become much richer through the war,
and there were widespread suspicions that they were actually trying to
prolong it." (9) 

The bottom line is, of course, victory or profit, and in what
proportions? To what lengths would this nation's top industrial leaders
go to secure their share of the profits before and during the next "war
to end all war?" 



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NOTES: INTRODUCTION

1. American Political Tradition, Hofstadter, p.  109.  (As reprinted in
   The Irony of Democracy, Thomas R.  Dye and L.  Harmon Zeigler, p.
   72)

2. American Political Tradition, p.  113.  (As reprinted in The Irony of
   Democracy, p.  72)

3. Irony of Democracy, p.  73

4. Ibid., p.  74

5. Ibid., p.  75

6. Ibid., p.  76

7. Ibid., p.  82

8. Ibid., p.  62

9. The Arms Bazaar, Anthony Sampson, p.  65

