According to the Socialist Worker, "The Green Party campaign of Ralph Nader for president in 2000 was a lightning rod for grievances throughout U.S. society - and helped to bring together activists from different movements who had never worked together before. But while elections do matter, struggle matters more. That's how our side has won in the past--and will again in the future." (November 8, 2002).
According to Kevin Phillips, in his new book Wealth & Democracy, it was in January, 2000, on the eve of the stock market crash, that a movement to draft Ralph Nader to run for president (not exactly a "mainstream" crowd, he says) - rallied at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, at which they reportedly read from a letter of November 21st, 1864, written by Abraham Lincoln to Colonel William F. Elkins. Looking beyond the American civil war (1861-65), Abraham Lincoln had prophesied: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war." Yea, verily, amen. Phillips then claims the Lincoln passage which was read out by the Nader supporters, and often quoted by "anti-corp" people, had been taken from the book "Democracy At Risk - Rescuing Main street from Wall street" by Jeff Gates, a Georgia Green Party activist, who, in turn, got it from page 40 in "The Lincoln Encyclopedia" by Archer H. Shaw (New York: Macmillan, 1950). For his part, Archer H. Shaw sourced the quote to p. 954 of Volume 2 of "Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait", by Emanuel Hertz (New York: Horace Liveright Inc, 1931) but the full quote actually provided by Hertz himself was: "Yes, we may all congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its close. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country's altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying hour for the republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless." Some American historians questioned the authenticity of this exact quote. So did folksinger Pete Seeger, who sent a fax to the Abraham Lincoln Association seeking verification. Correctly so, because no such letter actually exists in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, a chronological compilation with supplements compiled by the Abraham Lincoln Association. The quote was in fact originally cited in Hertz's 1931 book without providing any date, source, or other identifying information. Caroline Thomas Harnsberger quoted it in her book "The Lincoln Treasury" (Wilcox & Follett Co., 1950) citing the earliest known documentation for it by George H. Shibley in "The Money Question" (Chicago: Stable Money Publishing Company, 1896), but she said that "this letter, often quoted is considered by the Abraham Lincoln Society to be spurious" Emmanuel Hertz's "The Hidden Lincoln; from the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon" (New York: Viking Press, 1938) says Herdon compiled many of Lincoln's utterances, written and oral, into a collection, which served as a basis for subsequent "authoritative" treatises on Abraham Lincoln. But Herndon himself was critical of various "big-name" authors who relied mainly on his compilation for primary sources: "They are aiming, first, to do a superb piece of literary work; second, to make the story with the classes, as against the masses. It will result in delineating the real Lincoln about as well, as does a wax figure in the museum." Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who owned almost all of his father's papers, dismissed the quote as inauthentic in an unpublished letter on March 12, 1917. He said he tracked the source of the quote to a Spiritualist séance in an Iowa country town, and that the quote had supposedly been voiced by Abraham Lincoln through a medium. Robert stated "[B]elief in its authenticity should therefore be held only by those who place confidence in the outgivings of so-called Mediums at the gatherings held under their auspices". Yea. He had no recollection of any person called Elkins who was a personal friend of his father. In the letter he sent on 14 March, 1917, Robert Todd he merely denied the authenticity of the quote "without attempting to give the details of my examination". The quote had already appeared in chapter 6 of Jack London's 1908 novel The Iron Heel, which claimed that Lincoln had said it, just before his assassination: The first use of Lincoln's purported statement about corporations really dates back to 1873. Since that time, it has been cited by those with populist and anti-trust sympathies. On December 15, 1931, Pennsylvania's Louise T. McFadden gave a speech in the House of Representatives featuring the Lincoln quote. Two days later, however, Congressman Morton D. Hull produced a letter from H.H.B. Meyers, director of the Legislative Reference Section of the Library of Congress, which informed him that there was no record of any such statement by Lincoln. Meyers said that Lincoln lived before big corporations came in existence, and it would never have occurred to him to make such a statement. John C. Nicolay and John Hay (both Lincoln's personal secretaries), previously declared the quote a forgery. The "corporations enthroned" statement, Nicolay declared categorically, was "a bald, unblushing forgery. The great President never said it or wrote it, and never said or wrote anything that by the utmost license could be distorted to resemble it.". In 1890, Nicolay traced the origins of the quote to a pamphlet by the Caldwell Remedy Company issued on May 10, 1888. "It's simply Lincoln's own status as a cultural exemplar that make these spurious quotations seem credible," Rodney Davis, co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College in Galesburg, told Associated Press on December 1, 2003. Illinois state historian Thomas Schwartz tracked down numerous other erroneous attributions to Abraham Lincoln. In fact, the National Committee to Draft Ralph Nader for President met at the Lincoln Memorial on 19 January 1999, and not in January 2000 as Kevin Phillips suggests in his book. For furher reading: William E. Barton, The Life of Abraham Lincoln 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1925), II, pp. 367, 392; Roy P. Basler, "Abe Between Quotes," Saturday Review, XXXIII (March 11, 1950): 12. Gabor S. Boritt, "Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream". Urbana, 1994. Richard H. Luthin, "Fakes and Frauds in Lincoln Literature," Saturday Review, XLII (February 14, 1959):15; Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Last, Best Hope of Earth : Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America (Harvard University Press, fourth printing, 1995). Thomas F. Schwartz, "Lincoln never said that", For the People (Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 1, Number 1, Spring 1999), pp. 4-6 http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/7382193.htm?template=contentModules/printstory. jsp Warning lights are flashing down the Quality Control Somebody threw a spanner, and they threw him in the hole There's rumours in the loading bay, and anger in the town Somebody blew the whistle, and the walls came down There's a meeting in the boardroom, they're trying to trace the smell There's leaking in the washroom, there's a sneak in personnel Somewhere in the corridors, someone was heard to sneeze goodness me, could it be, Industrial Disease?' The caretaker was crucified, for sleeping at his post They're refusing to be pacified, it's him they blame the most The watchdog's got rabies, the foreman's got the fleas And everyone's concerned, about Industrial Disease There's panic on the switchboard, tongues are ties in knots Some come out in sympathy, some come out in spots Some blame the management, some blame the employees And everybody knows, it's the Industrial Disease The work force is disgusted, dows tools and walks Innocence is injured, experience just talks Everyone seeks damages, and everyone agrees that these are 'classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze' On ITV and BBC, they talk about the curse Philosophy is useless, theology is worse History boils over, there's an economics freeze Sociologists invent all kinds of new words, that mean 'Industrial Disease' Doctor Parkinson declared: 'I'm not surprised to see you here You've got smokers cough from smoking, Brewer's droop from drinking beer I don't know how you came to get, the Bette Davis knees But worst of all young man, you've got Industrial Disease' He wrote me a prescription, he said 'you are depressed But I'm glad you came to see me, to get this off your chest Come back and see me later, - next patient please Send in another victim, of Industrial Disease' I go down to Speaker's Corner, I'm thunderstruck They got free speech, tourists, police and trucks Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong There's a protest singer, singing a protest song - he says "they wanna have a war, so they can keep us on our knees They wanna have a war, so they can keep their factories They wanna have a war, to stop us buying Japanese They wanna have a war, to stop Industrial Disease They're pointing out the enemy, to keep you deaf and blind They wanna sap you energy, incarcerate your mind They give you Rule Britannia, gassy beer, page three Two weeks in Espana, and Sunday striptease Meanwhile the first Jesus says, 'I'd cure it soon Abolish Monday mornings, and Friday afternoons' The other one's out on hunger strike, he's dying by degrees How come Jesus gets Industrial Disease ? - Dire Straits
