Why We Need Regulation: Andrew Mellon and the Johnstown Flood

In the 1880’s, fifty of the wealthiest Pittsburgh citizens, including Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon decided to create a private fishing resort at South Fork, Pennsylvania. They purchased the earthen South Fork Dam, lowered its level so that a road could run along the top of the dam, raised the level of the lake, stocked it with fish and built cottages. They did not replace the discharge pipes which a previous owner had removed and sold as scrap metal.

On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam burst after heavy rains, leading to the Johnstown Flood.



The owners of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club hired lawyers (members of their club) and were absolved of any blame. The flood was deemed “an act of God”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood#cite_note-6



Decades later, when Andrew Mellon was Herbert Hoovers’ Secretary of the Treasury, during the Great Depression, he said:



We all know what happened when the farmers were liquidated. When crop prices fell and the Dust Bowl rolled over the country, out of work farmers hit the roads looking for jobs that did not exist, compounding the unemployment problem. The nation had plenty of people who were ready and able to work, but there were no jobs. A rumor of two openings at a plant would attract hundreds of applicants. Men---and women---rode boxcars from city to city looking for work. People who had always considered themselves hard working, honest Americans were filled with self doubt---and anger----whenever other Americans who still had jobs and homes looked at them with disgust. Only sometimes, the disgust really concealed fear, because if someone who looked and sounded just like you could be forced to live on the streets through no fault of his own, that meant that the same thing could happen to you. .

FDR embodied the opposite of the everyman for himself and us versus them mentality of people like Andrew Mellon, which was based upon Puritan dogma about material wealth being a sign of God’s grace. FDR brought a we are all in this together attitude. When he commissioned photographers to record the many human faces of poverty, it forced Americans to recognize that no one deserved to be out of work or hungry or homeless . God had not decreed any of this. This was an act of human stupidity and greed, not an act of God. When he created jobs for people who wanted to work, they regained their self esteem and their sense of optimism.



Now that we find ourselves staring into the gaping mouth of a Second Great Depression, we get to contemplate what it means to liquidate real estate, as Andrew Mellon so bluntly put it. For most middle class families, the home is the main family wealth. That, plus Social Security, are what people have to fall back on when they approach their retirement years. You can borrow against the family home when it is time to send the kids to college—and then they will be prosperous enough to help take care of mom and dad when they are too old to work. The house represents security. However, the crisis in the mortgage industry threatens this balance---- and at the same time, John McCain wants to place Social Security in the hands of the people who have made our Stock Market a roller coaster. If the Great Depression was about tearing the family farms apart and giving their land to corporate farms, the Second Great Depressions seems to be about stripping average middle class America of our independence and making us wage slaves for life. Like the residents of Johnstown, we must bow our heads and go about our jobs, praying that our corporate masters will decide to favor us with a paycheck this week and that they will stock the grocery store shelves of the company store—and please let milk prices stay where they are and not rise too high. And always, nagging at the back of our minds is the worry that the dam will break and we will be swept away….
That is how they want us to live. In fear. That is the real reason why the New Federalists say that they plan to roll the country back to before the days of FDR. What came before FDR? Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. When middle America is scared enough, it goes to work, it does as it is told, it keeps its mouth shut, it is grateful for the crumbs that are trickled down. And it learns to fear and despise those who are even less fortunate, because it knows that they are willing to work for lower wages and fewer benefits.



We all know that the New Federalists want to get rid of all the things that FDR gave us, but do you know what that includes? A minimum wage. The Securities and Exchange Commission. Labor standards. Unions. The New Federalists are nothing but a front for a group of self styled aristocrats who want to be the Rothschilds of the United States----with the rest of us as their serfs.

The current economic crisis is no accident. When Phil Gramm (former economics professor) started rolling back the regulations put in place under FDR to correct the excesses that caused the Great Depression, he knew what he was doing. In January, 2001, I predicted that by the end of the Bush-Cheney administration we would be in this kind of economic mess. Hell, Grover Norquist boasted about his plans to bankrupt the federal government. The $10 billion/ month Iraq war that is going to continue forever has helped his scheme succeed beyond his wildest dreams.

All the New Federalists need is four more years ! Just four more years, and they will own every god damned thing in this country. And they will own every person in this country, too. Our young men will be in their military, mercenaries fighting wars for oil just as Major General Smedley Butler predicted in War is a Racket . Our children will be in their schools, being indoctrinated in creationism, patriotism and how to say "Yes, sir!" to authority. The parents will be so grateful to have a job---any job---that they will do as they are told and they will labor like dogs until the day they die. Representative voting will be a thing of the past. If there are ever too many of us, our corporate masters will engineer a new flu virus to kill off a bunch of us and deprive us of medical care during the epidemic. This is the dream of the descendants of the Andrew Mellons of this country. They are three quarters of the way there----

All the misery and hardship being caused by the current recession means nothing to John McCain, of the eleven houses and beer fortune, who continued to preach his mantra of deregulation now, deregulation forever ----until the economic crisis threatened to cost him the one thing he wanted, victory this November. That should tell you where he stands.

If someone had regulated dam construction and safety back in the 19th century, two thousand people would not have died in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. But it is the American way that no one wants to stand up to our heroes----those who have money---until after they have proven that are incompetent and need to be regulated for the good of the country. The traitorous conspiracy to overthrow FDR was hushed up, because it involved the 1930s equivalent of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and It just would not do to let people know that rich folks were capable of breaking the law. Same goes for those Americans who worked with Hitler during WWII. And the companies that did business with Saddam and Iran when it was illegal.

As a result, we still can not rid ourselves of this ridiculous notion that profit in material endeavors is somehow a sign of good character or God's favor and that even inherited wealth indicates superior breeding, so that an endorsement by someone named Rothschild or Trump is supposed to matter in the scheme of things more than an endorsement by someone named Mother Theresa or the Dali Lama.

And so the Johnstown Flood and the Great Depression will keep happening over and over again, until the day comes when it finally occurs to us to say "You know, having a lot of money does not make you a good person. Having a lot of money makes you a dangerous person. We had better keep our eyes open. Better yet, let's pass some regulations for the public good. "

My mother's from Johnstown.

And a big ol' kick for this thread.

And my great-great Aunt Elsie Frum (died at 108) was the last known survivor of the flood.

Some of the greatest people still here, but I must admit that of all the neat people I know only a couple are Conservative. Cons are here, but they are either ignorant rednecks or old-money rich.

That's the only good news out of this.

The robber barons have risen from their shadows once again, and will NEVER let go of the reins of power without a revolution.

the few remaining who remembers the Depression personally!

of those awful bread lines, have only men in them? What happened to the women and children? Did they not eat or did the photogs just not cover them...

and as hard as it was on these folks just imagine how HARD is must have been on the black families during this time?

and as hard as it was on these folks just imagine how HARD is must have been on the black families during this time?

If the father of that black family didn't shoot that rabbit, coon or possum, or catch those catfish, the family would have starved. This is a reality lost on much of America today.

I know many Republicans that still subscribe to the philosophy described about the wealthy assholes in the article. Lazy is their favorite word. And 'lazy' is always used to describe someone else. Funny, many of these wealthy have never worked a day in their lives having been born on third base and believing they had hit a triple. One Republican I know actually said "You have to keep people hungry so they will work." So this philosophy is not gone in the 21st century, it is alive and well and embodies the spirit of Republican governance.

we know how he thinks and it smells big time.

niece. Here is Richard Mellon Scaife's wiki entry which details his ties and illegal contributions to Nixon, his lead roll in the attempt to overthrow Bill Clinton and his other right wing political activities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife

My parents, in effect, died of the Great Depression. I despise the name, "Mellon."

That was a really great post!

A stunningly written portrayal of our history and our present.

My visit was prior to my awareness of the Great Betrayal, so I thought I was just learning "history".

You got it right: The New Federalists are nothing but a front for a group of self styled aristocrats who want to be the Rothschilds of the United States----with the rest of us as their serfs. Basically, everything we see is a front.

Seems like it will take more than regulation to deliver us from this hell, given a system that selects for psychopathy, the obscene wealth disparity that prevails, and a legal system that has nothing to do with honor or integrity. The psychopaths and charlatans must be exposed, finally and irrevocably, as the criminals they are if we are to live in anything but deception and misery. And that knowledge must be branded onto succeeding generations.

Thanks for another excellent post.

posts I've read on DU in a long while.

FDR embodied the opposite of the everyman for himself and us versus them mentality of people like Andrew Mellon, which was based upon Puritan dogma about material wealth being a sign of God’s grace. FDR brought a we are all in this together attitude. When he commissioned photographers to record the many human faces of poverty, it forced Americans to recognize that no one deserved to be out of work or hungry or homeless. God had not decreed any of this. This was an act of human stupidity and greed, not an act of God. When he created jobs for people who wanted to work, they regained their self esteem and their sense of optimism.

Not for the first time in the last few days, FDR's famous the only thing we have to fear is fear itself speech came to mind. Being unfamiliar with the particulars of the rest of the speech, I looked it up.

...the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

What an amazing leader to have given a speech so powerful that, a generation on, it still holds the seeds of naked truth leavened with comfort and hope. For your inspiring post, as well as the impetus needed to look up and reread the first Inaugural Address of our thirty-second President, thank you.

Bookmarked. K&R.

This quote sounds just like the solutions Bernanke and Poulson are proposing now.

'Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers."

I'll post that in our morning Stock Market Watch thread tomorrow. I'm sure everyone ther will appreciate seeing it.

Thanks for posting.

That is disgusting.

peace~

Thank you from someone who's here because her family just made it up the side of the mountain in South Fork with the floodwater raging at their feet.

And I still can't figure out why all my relatives back in that town are still Republicans. :spank:

The only question is how we choose to move forward. Will we wring our collective hands and say 'how could this have happened', or will we press every single one of our elected representatives to change the laws that have enabled these greed driven men for all these years.

This is old news to a Pgh. native, and a labor history student at Pitt. Don't forget that their money in no small part came from Andrew Carnegie of the steel fortunes. Remember the murder of steelworkers in Homestead by hired Pinkerton's? Never forget what anti-union ruthless bastards they are. This is the fate they want for all of us peons that labor so they can amass huge fortunes. When they brag about their charity work, remind them that an act of charity can't make up for the harm this family has done to us all. By the way it is now Bank of New York-Mellon. I would rather throw what money I have in the ocean then bank with these criminals.

...for the entire devastated state of our once great country that preached tolerance and had respect for the little man. We NOW face a far WORSE depression than the thirties...and ALL OF IT is DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE to the republican backed capitalistic annihilation of the average American. The middle class is sinking so the VAST MAJORITY of people will lose middle class status, while the republican elite steal all the money and just bask in their glory.

The republican party is not just a bad idea...it is the WORST act of HUMANITY in the HISTORY of the PLANET. Destroying all that is part of the republican party is the ONLY way that we can every get our conscience and our love of man back.

Until it is banned... decry, denounce, and do your utmost to DESTROY the republican party.

Thanks.
It all comes back to greed and the evisceration of regulations.

:kick: & R

between then and now. I always think that everyone running for the office of president ought to spend several days at the FDR home and museum at Hyde Park, NY. What FDR gave the American people when he was running for office was HOPE. I seem to recall that is a big part of a certain candidate's appeal, and we really do need it. Never underestimate hope.

Great work on this post. Thank you for your diligence. People NEED to study history. That is why David McCullough, a Johnstown native and great historian, has railed against No Child Left Behind, as that failed educational policy has made some schools (NOT MINE, I WILL NOT SUBMIT!!!) squeeze out the arts and HISTORY. Don't think that that is an unintentional consequence. The current regime would be very, very happy if we were to be QUITE ignorant of history, and I think this fine post illustrates why.

The CA Teachers Association hate NCLB and have rallied hard against it. And now reports are out how schools in CA are failing left and right because of it.

You are spot on. Boy, was this depressing but terrbily true.

I grew up in central Pennsylvania in the 1950's and while we did get the story of the tragic results, we never heard a word of this part of the history, either in my schools OR my home. I do remember many times overhearing, "Don't spit! Remember the Johnstown Flood."

Bush wanted to stage a coup to overthrow FDR, who was hated as a traitor to his class.

This current meltdown was planned (Fed/Treasury looking the other way for years as banks made no-income/no-assets loans) as part of Grover Norquist's "shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub". Well, this is the drowning; drowning by bankruptcy.

No $$ for Medicare.
No $$ for Medicaid.
No $$ for Social Security.
No $$ for Student Loans.

The death of the New Deal.

A death blow against America's middle class and working poor; a class FDR helped create. A class with enough capital and enough education to be a nuisance to their financial overlords.

A massive transfer of wealth while bridges collapse, schools fall into disrepair, and millions go without health insurance.

The Death of the New Deal.

The Johnstown Flood: Trickle-down economics at work!

and thread. K&R

edit: I guess I just missed the 24 hr cut off for rec. I will bookmark it, though. Thank you for this