“Oh, we have friends,” MacGuire responded. “How do you get the money to do that?” the general asked. MacGuire replied it would all be taken care of: train tickets, hotels, everything. What rank-and-file veteran could afford a five-day trip to Chicago in the middle of the Great Depression, Butler wondered. Once they were at the convention, they would spread out around the assembly and start a chant to demand that Butler be given the floor. Butler, the salesman said, would travel in secret with a few hundred legionnaire friends. He was trying to persuade Butler to come to the next Legion convention, in Chicago, to give a speech denouncing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt-specifically his recent decision to take the dollar off the gold standard.

MacGuire, represented himself as a member of the American Legion, a veterans’ organization founded at the end of the Great War. Two mammoth red satin umbrellas, given to Butler by villagers on his last overseas mission, to China, swayed gently overhead atop their fifteen-foot poles. The visitor was sitting in the vaulted main hallway the Butlers used as a living room, his cannonball-shaped head framed by the retired general’s old command flags, medals, swords, and assorted tropical bric-a-brac. Smedley Butler sized up the one doing all the talking-the bond salesman in the tailored suit. This image is in the public domain via WikiCommons. That will smash the war racket - that and nothing else.A picture of a double medal of honor recipient Smedley Butler. The soldiers are! Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war.

Why shouldn't they? They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. “Let the workers in these plants get the same wages - all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers - yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders - everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches! Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month!Īll that they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill.and be killed” Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. They were just told it was to be a 'glorious adventure'. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United State patents. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. The was the 'war to end wars.' This was the 'war to make the world safe for democracy.' No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. “Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.

In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.

General smedley butler coup