Discover the little known historical backstory of one of the greatest and most nefarious Wall Street scams, that of the Panama Canal.
The Treaty That Wall Street Wrote, by Murray N. Rothbard
Viewpoint: The Panama Canal Caper, by Murray N. Rothbard
Rothbard cites the book below.
The Untold Story of Panama — Book by Earl Harding
Definitive investigative account naming names of the culprits involved in this infamous Wall Street scam of obtaining the land on which to build the Panama Canal.
Well worth reading this online edition of the 1959 hardback book.
I have an autographed copy of this rare volume.
For a fine modern day re-telling of the tale, “of the financial speculation, fraud, and international conspiracy that led to the building of the Panama Canal,” check out Ovidio Diaz Espino, How Wall Street Created A Nation: J. P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal.
To place this nefarious scheme in historical context, see Murray N. Rothbard’s seminal Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy, available online below.
Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy — Book by Murray N. Rothbard
This fiery monograph shows a side of Murray Rothbard not seen in his theoretical treatise: his ability to employ “power elite” analysis to understand the relationship between money, power, and war.
Rather than allow the left to dominate this approach to history; Rothbard shows how wealthy elites are only able to manipulate world affairs via their connection to state power. Those mainstream historians might deride Rothbard’s history as a “conspiracy” approach, Rothbard himself is only out to show that world affairs are not random historical forces but the consequence of choices and paths chosen by real human beings.
Here he gives the grim details of how a network of banks, bond dealers, and Wall Street insiders have both favored war and profited from it.
Great background information on the Panama Canal conspiracy.
The contents of this volume includes a long and thoughtful introduction by Anthony Gregory and an afterword by Justin Raimondo
America’s 60 Families — Book by Ferdinand Lundberg
Great background information on the Panama Canal conspiracy.
Triumphant Plutocracy: The Story of American Public Life from 1870 to 1920 — Book by Richard Franklin Pettigrew
Former U. S. Senator Provides Searing Indictment of the Criminal Elites Which Ran America
By its candid, “speaking truth to power” presentation, Triumphant Plutocracy: The Story Of American Public Life From 1870 To 1920, is unlike any other political memoir by a former United States Senator.
But then author Richard F. Pettigrew was in a class by himself when it came to forthright honesty, integrity and dedication to principle in his fifty years of public service to the nation.
Here is what Pettigrew states in his opening paragraph:
“The American people should know the truth about American public Life. They have been lied to so much and hoodwinked so often that it would seem only fair for them to have at least one straight-from-the-shoulder statement concerning this government ‘of the people, by the people and for the people,’ about whose inner workings the people know almost nothing.”
He goes on to say:
“It is fifty years since I began to take an interest in public affairs. During those years I have been participating, more or less actively, in public life — first as a government surveyor, then as a member of the Legislature of Dakota; as a member of the House of Representatives and, finally as a member of the United States Senate. Since 1880 I have known the important men in both the Republican and Democratic parties; I have known the members of the diplomatic corps; I have known personally the last ten presidents of the United States, and I have known personally the leading business men who backed the political parties and who made and unmade the presidents. For half a century I have known public men and have been on the inside of business and politics. Through all of that time I have lived and worked with the rulers of America.”
Plutocracy means rule by the rich, those wealthy criminals who have used and manipulated the political mechanism of the government to plunder and exploit the rest of us.
The book’s title, Triumphant Plutocracy, is a grim, ironic play upon Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie’s earlier banal book, Triumphant Democracy.
Triumphant Plutocracy is a searing indictment of the criminal elites which composed the governing class of America during this period.
Like Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope, this is an insider revealing the shocking truth of how the world really works in the corridors of power.
Its brilliant account of what was really going on in American life during the fifty years after the Civil War to that of World War I provides compelling reading.
And because it is a first-person account, there is much found in this book that is found nowhere else.
Pettigrew holds nothing back.
He names names.
He relates his candid conversations and behind-the-scenes interactions with the rich and powerful.
The frank accounts of his meetings with Theodore Roosevelt are alone worth the price of the book.
(By the way, TR did NOT “charge up San Juan Hill” in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Pettigrew has some fascinating information on that myth.)
Pettigrew details the land grabbing seizure of public lands, the fraud and thievery by the bankers, railroads, trusts, and tariff manipulators at the expense of the public.
He spares no one.
Pettigrew is particularly eloquent on the criminal aggression of American imperialism and the rise of the American empire, that empire that continues to bankrupt our republic and earn us nothing but hate and enmity throughout the world.
First published in 1921, it is terrific to have this classic back in print.
The great investigative journalist George Seldes was one of my personal heroes.
In his autobiography, Witness To A Century: Encounters With The Noted, the Notorious,and the Three SOBs, Seldes relates an interesting tale about this volume in chapter 22 of his book, “Lenin Speaks of His American Mentors.”
Seldes was in Moscow for the fifth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. He was one of the few American journalists who met V. I. Lenin and spent personal face-time with him.
Lenin discussed the tremendous impact two Americans had had upon him.
First, the Socialist politican and writer Daniel De Leon, who had shaped Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism, and second, Pettigrew, whose book Lenin was presently reading.
Seldes made a note of the title of this work, which he wanted to promptly obtain when returning to America. Seldes put down the title as Plutocratic Democracy.
For years he searched for a copy, but found that no book by that title existed.
When I read this account, I wrote Seldes to inform him that the book truly did exist, and that I have a first-edition copy.
I included a photocopy of the title page and table of contents in my correspondence.
Seldes graciously wrote me back, thanking me for correcting his error.
He soon died after that at the age of 104.
Like Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope, or Jules Archer’s The Plot To Seize The White House, Triumphant Plutocracy is one of the most important and revealing books you will ever read.
11:00 am on October 4, 2020
