Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

In addition, the Morgan trust exercised media control by its power of advertising. Writing in 1937, Lundberg says: 'More advertising is controlled by the J.P. Morgan junta than by any single 1. George Wheeler, Pierpont Morgan and Friends: The Anatomy of a Myth (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1973), pp. 283-84.

2. Congressional Record, Vol. 54, Feb. 9,1917, p. 2947

3. Lundberg, p. 257.

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financial group, a factor which immediately gives the banking house the respectful attention of all alert independent publishers.'

Morgan control over the media at that time is well documented, but he was by no means alone in this. During the 1912 hearings held by the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, it was revealed that Representative Joseph Sibley from Pennsylvania was acting as a funnel for Rockefeller money to various cooperative Congressmen. A letter was introduced to the Committee written by Sibley in 1905 to John D. Archbold, the man at Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company who provided the money. In that letter Sibley said: 'An efficient literary bureau is needed, not for a day or a crisis but a permanent healthy control of the Associated Press and kindred avenues. It will cost money but will be the cheapest in the end.'2

Lundberg comments further:

So far as can be learned, the Rockefellers have given up their old policy of owning newspapers and magazines outright, relying now upon the publications of all camps to serve their best interests in return for the vast volume of petroleum and allied advertising under Rockefeller control. After the J.P. Morgan bloc, the Rockefellers have the most advertising of any group to dispose of. And when advertising alone is not sufficient to insure the fealty of a newspaper, the Rockefeller companies have been known to make direct payments in return for a friendly editorial attitude.3

It is not surprising, therefore, that a large part of the nation's press, particularly in the East, began to editorially denounce Germany. The cry spread across the land to take up arms against

'the enemy of western civilization.' Editors became eloquent on the patriotic duty of all Americans to defend world democracy. Massive

'preparedness' demonstrations and parades were organized.

But it was not enough. In spite of this massive sales campaign, the American people still were not buying. Polls conducted at the time showed popular sentiment continuing to run ten-to-one in favor of staying out of Europe's war. Clearly, what was needed was something both drastic and dramatic to change public opinion.

1- Lundberg, p. 252.

2- Ibid , pp. 97, 249.

3. Ibid., p. 247.

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THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

MORGAN CONTROL OVER SHIPPING

Banking was not the only business in which Morgan had a

strong financial interest. Using his control over the nation's railroads as financial leverage, he had created an international shipping trust which included Germany's two largest lines plus one of the two in England, the White Star Lines. Morgan had attempted in 1902 to take over the remaining British line, the Cunard Company but was blocked by the British Admiralty which wanted to keep Cunard out of foreign control so her ships could be pressed into military service, if necessary, in time of war. The Lusitania and the Mauretania were built by Cunard and became major competitors of the Morgan cartel. It is an interesting footnote of history, therefore, that, from the Morgan perspective, the Lusitania was quite dispensable. Ron Chernow explains:

Pierpont assembled a plan for an American-owned shipping trust that w o u l d t r a n s p o s e his ' c o m m u n i t y of i n t e r e s t '

principle—cooperation among competitors in a given industry—to a global plane. He created ... the world's largest [fleet] under private ownership.... An important architect of the shipping trust was Albert Ballin, whose Hamburg-Amerika Steamship Line, with hundreds of vessels, was the world's largest shipping company.... Pierpont had to contend with a single holdout, Britain's Cunard Line.... After the Boer War, the Morgan combine and Cunard exhausted each other in debilitating rate wars.'1

As stated previously, Morgan had been retained as the official trade agent for Britain. He handled the purchasing of all war matt-rials in the United States and coordinated their shipping as well.

Following in the footsteps of the Rothschilds of centuries past, he quickly learned the profitable skills of war- time smuggling. Colin Simpson, author of The Lusitania, describes the operation: Throughout the period of America's neutrality, British servicemen in civilian clothes worked at Morgan's. This great banking combine rapidly established such a labyrinthine network of false shippers, bank accounts and all the paraphernalia of smuggling that, although they fooled the Germans, there were also some very serious occasions when they flummoxed the Admiralty and Cunard, not to speak of the unfortunate passengers on the liners which carried the contraband.2

1. Chernow, pp. 100-01.

2. Colin Simpson, The Lusitania (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1972), p. 50.

SINK THE LUSITANIA!