by Henry Ford

(Reprinted from the 16 July 1921 Issue of the house journal of the Ford Motor Co., the Dearborn Independent and slightly edited by Raymond Bray to eliminate the numerous uses of "which" for "that" in the original.)

The international Jewish banker who has no country but plays them all against one another, and the International Jewish Proletariat that roams from land to land in search of a peculiar type of economic opportunity, are not figments of the imagination except to the non-Jew who prefers a lazy laxity of mind.

Of these classes of Jews, one or both are at the heart of the problems that disturb the world today. The immigration problem is Jewish. The money question is Jewish. The tie-up of world politics is Jewish. The terms of the Peace Treaty are Jewish. The diplomacy of the world is Jewish. The moral question of the illicit liquor business is Jewish.

These facts are unfortunate as well as unpleasant for the Jew, and it is squarely up to him to deal with the facts and not to waste time in trying to destroy those who define the facts. These facts are interpreted by the Jew and the anti-Semite with strange extremes of blindness. The Jew never gets the world's point of view at all; he always gets the anti-Semite's point of view; and the anti-Semite is equally at fault in always getting the Jew's point of view. What both need is to get society's point of view, which is the one being set forth in this present series of articles.

To say that the immigration problem is Jewish does not mean that Jews must be prohibited entry to any country; it means that they must become rooted to a country in loyal citizenship, as no doubt some are, and as no doubt most are not. To say that the money question is Jewish does not mean that Jews must get out of finance; it means they must rid finance of the Jewish idea, which has always been to use money to get a strangle-hold on men and business concerns, instead of using finance to help general business. To say that the tie-up of the world politics is Jewish does not mean that Jews, as human beings, are to be denied a voice in affairs; it means that they must give up trying to make the world revolve around the Jewish nation as its axis. To describe the influence of the Jew on the theater is not to demand that he leave the theater, but it is to demand that he rid the theater of his idea that sensualism is entertaining.'

The Jewish Question is first for the Jews to solve; if not, the world will have to solve it for them. They may stay in business, say the theater, for example, if they will cease spoiling the theater; if they do not cease, the theater will be taken away from them just as certainly as that day follows night. The world has been patient and the world will be fair, but the world knows the limit of imposition.

It is not the true Jewishness of the Jew, nor yet the nationalism of the Jew that is on trial, but his anti-national internationalism. A true Mosaic Jew--not a Talmud Jew-- would be a good citizen. A nationalist Jew would at least be logical. But an international Jew has proved an abomination, because his internationalism is focused on his own racial nationalism, which in turn is founded on his ingrained belief that the rest of humanity is inferior to him and by right his prey. Jewish leaders may indulge in all the platitudes they possess, the fact that they cannot deny is that the Jew has for centuries regarded the "goyim" as beneath him and legitimately his spoil.

The Internationalism of the Jew is confessed everywhere by him. Listen to a German banker:

"We are international bankers. Germany lost the war?--what of it?--that is an affair of the army. We are international bankers."

And that was the attitude of every international Jewish banker during the war. The nations were in strife? What of it? It was like a Dempsey-Carpentier bout in New Jersey, or a baseball game in Chicago--an affair of the fighters--"we are international bankers."

A nation is being hamstrung by artificial exchange rates; another by the sucking of money out of its channels of trade; what of it to the international banker?--he has his own game to play. Hard times bring more plums tumbling off the tree into the baskets of the international bankers than does any other kind of times. Wars and panics are the Jewish international bankers' harvests.

Citizens wake up with a start to find that even the white nations are hardly allowed to see each other nowadays except through Jewish eyes. When the United States supposedly speaks to France, through whom does she speak? All that France sees is Otto H. Kahn! Why must a Jew represent the United States of America in France? When France supposedly speaks to the United States, through whom is it done? Through Viviani, Jewish in every thought and method. Now they are talking of sending Millerand over, another Jew. Britain sends Lord Reading. Germany sent Dr. Dernberg. And to other countries the United States sent Morgenthau, Strauss, Warburg, and lesser Jewlings.

It comes with something of a shock to learn that Foch is coming to the United States. We have not seen a Frenchman since Joffre visited us. It is good to see man of the white race come across the sea as if to reassure us that white men still live in those countries. The business of the Peace Conference was done by Jews--has it come to a point where international diplomacy is to become a Jewish monopoly also? Must the special conversations between France, Britain and the United States be held through Jewish interpreters, while Anglo-Saxons and true Frenchmen do the routine embassy work--or shall it be possible for the non-Jewish nations to see one another occasionally through non-Jewish representatives?

Internationalism is not a Jewish conviction, but a Jewish business device. It is most profitable. In diplomacy and at the immigrant station, internationalism pays. Jews interpret nation to nation in the high rites of special conversations between governments; Jewish interpreters swarm at the ports of every country also, where the poor swarm in. It was stated in the House of Lords the other day that most of the trouble in Palestine was caused by Jewish interpreters. It was charged that the Jewish administration added an extra language to the official list in order to make Jewish interpreters indispensable.

Go through the government of the United States, where the income tax secrets are kept, where the Federal Reserve secrets are kept, where the State Department secrets are kept--and you will find Jews sitting at the very spot where International Jewry desires them to sit, and where nothing is kept from their knowledge.

Go abroad and come back to your country, and a Jew will open the gate to let you in, or close it to keep you out--as he chooses.

"Will you be going to Detroit while you are here?" asked a Jewish government agent of a gentleman entering the country on a visit a few weeks ago.

"I may go to Detroit," was the reply.

"Well, you go to the damned DEARBORN INDEPENDENT and tell them a Jew let you into this country," said the government agent.

What the visitor replied is known, but had better not be quoted. The American Jewish Committee might shriek that the people were being incited to pogroms.

The incident, however, is but a sample of what is occurring every day. The truth about the Jewish Question in the United States is perhaps the one form of truth that cannot be indiscriminately told.

The international Jewish bankers regard themselves as in similar fashion "letting" the nations do this or that, regarding the nations not as fatherlands but as customers--and as customers in the Jewish sense.

If an army wins or loses, if a government succeeds or fails, what of it?--that is their affair--we are international bankers," and we win, whoever loses.

For international Jewish bankers, the war is not over. The period of actual hostilities and the emergencies of the nations were but the opening of the trade. The ready cash was skimmed in then--all the cash the world had. True, some of it had to be distributed among the people as war wages and bonuses, in order to keep the struggle going, but this was soon recovered through the means of high prices, artificial scarcities and the orgy of extravagance deliberately organized and stimulated among the people. That phase over, and money disappeared.

Is there any more tragic joke than that diligently disseminated in this country--"The United States has more gold than any other country in the world"? Where is it? How long since you have seen a piece of gold? Where is all this gold--is it locked up in the Treasury of the United States Government? Why, that government is in debt, desperately trying to economize, cannot pay a soldier bonus because the finances of the country cannot stand it! Where is that gold? It may be in the United States, but it does not belong to the United States.

The American farmer, and those American industries that were not "wise" to the tricks of international Jewish bankers, and who were nipped by small loans, are wondering where all this money is. Furthermore, Europe, suffering from every possible lack, is looking to us and wondering where the money is.

This dispatch in a London paper may throw light on the matter: (italics are ours)

"It is learned today that new gold shipments aggregating $2,800, 000 are consigned to Kuhn, Loeb & Company, New York, making nearly $129,000,000 imported by that firm since the movement started. In responsible banking circles the belief is expressed that some of the German coin recently imported by the firm is from Russia, instead of Germany, as generally supposed."

This dispatch, coupled with one printed in a former article that showed Warburg & Company of Germany arranging with Kuhn, Loeb & Company of New York for a $5,000,000 loan to Norway, is not devoid of light on the question--Where is the money?

The Jewish international banking system may be easily described. First, there is the international Jewish headquarters. This was in Germany. It had ramifications in Russia, Italy, France, Great Britain and the South American states. (South American Jewry is very menacing.) Germany and Russia were the two countries scheduled for punishment by the International Jewish bankers because these two countries were most aware of the Jew. They have been punished; that job is done.

Jewish political headquarters, as related to the internal affairs of the Jews, was also located in Germany, but the headquarters dealing with the "goyim" was in France. Statements have been made that the political center of Jewry has been transplanted to the United States. But these statements have been made by American Jews whose wish may have been father to the thought. During the Wilson Administration it was possible for a Jew to think and to hope this, but affairs have slightly changed. The ousting of American Jews from the Zionist movement at the behest of Eastern Jews indicates that if the political center of world Jewry has shifted to the United States, the power is still in the hands of aliens here. The center is still in Jewry; the United States is merely a square on Jewry's world checker-board.

But, wherever the financial and political world centers may be, each country is separately handled. In every country--the United States, Mexico and the republics of South America; in France, England, Italy, Germany, Austria--yes, and in Japan--there is an international Jewish banking firm that stands at the head of the group for that country. Thus, the chief Jewish firm in the United States is Kuhn, Loeb & Company, of which one of the members is Paul M. Warburg, brother of M. Warburg & Company, of Hamburg; and another member of which is Otto H. Kahn, resident successively of Germany, Great Britain and the United States, and self-appointed financial spokesman for the United States to France and Great Britain. Great Britain and France seldom see a special American spokesman who is not a Jew. That may be the reason why they reciprocate by sending Jews to us, thinking perhaps that we prefer them.

Paul M. Warburg was the inventor, perfector and director of the Federal Reserve System of the United States. He is not the only Jew in the Federal Reserve System, but he was the chief Jew there. His mind counted for a great deal. There were others in the war government, of course; Bernard M. Baruch; Eugene Meyer, Jr.; Hoover's regiment of Jews; Felix Frankfurter; Julius Rosenwald--Hundreds of them, and everywhere; but the financial group alone is receiving our attention just now, and they are not so notably successful in getting the country out of financial difficulty as they were in other lines of effort.

The Federal Reserve System may not be a bad system, in spite of the fact that it yields government monetary functions to private financial corporations, but there are all sorts of testimony that it has been badly manipulated. Mr. Warburg, the reader will remember, spoke about certain things being "overcome in an administrative way," showing that there was a certain amount of "play" or loose motion in the system that could be manipulated either way. The fact remains that the country went swimmingly through the war by reason of the assistance of the System, and is coming very lamely through the Peace, as the result, monetary experts say, of the hindrance of the same System. Mr. Warburg, whose name was so prominently connected with the advertisement of the glory of the System, must also stand being mentioned in connection with the criticism.

Whatever money we are said to have as the per capita in the United States, it is a false statement. The money per capita should always be figured on the basis of money in circulation. The statistical "per capita" is not always in circulation. Less than half of it, as a rule. The rest is being juggled.

Whatever the gold in the country, the wealth is still greater. There is more wealth in the United States than there is gold in the world. One year's products of the farms of the United States exceeds in money value all the gold in the world.

Yet, under our present system, the burgeoning bulk of the country's wealth must pass through the narrow neck of Money. And the Money must pass through the still narrower neck of Gold. And the controller of the Gold, under the present system, controls the world. There is more wealth than there is money; there is more money than there is gold; money exists at the pleasure of gold; wealth moves at the pleasure of money. Whoever sits at the neck of money, opening or closing as he will, controls the movement of the world's wealth. And the world's prosperity depends on the movement of that wealth. When wealth stands still and does not pass from hand to hand, the world's circulation has stopped; the world becomes economically sick.

The scarcity of cash in hand has led to Credit. Credit is a form of barter. It is a form of dealing by which many transactions are carried on, only the final one being cleared in money. It is a device that has its dangers, in spite of the efforts of apologists to exploit its advantages. But one thing the system of Credit indubitably does--it allows the money masters to hang on to the Cash. When the world is caught, it is caught with paper, not with Cash. The Cash is always in the hands of those who extol the advantage of the Credit System. Who holds money holds power, and will hold it, until real barter or real money comes in fashion again.

In 1919-1920, according to one of the best monetary authorities in the United States, the total shrinkage in values of the products of our fields, mines, factories, mills and forests represented a sum greater than the total gold supply of the world. It runs as high as the total amount of Liberty Bonds outstanding.

People say, "Well, the prices were too high." Certainly they were too high, but who and what made them too high? It was the generosity with which money was supplied by the private Federal Reserve System. There was plenty of money. People say, "Well, the shrinkage is only in paper values; the real value of the product is still there." Certainly, but when you live under a system in which "real" value and "money" value are so intimately intertwined that it affects your bread and butter, the tenure of your farm, and the steadiness of your job, it is pretty hard to separate the two. Moreover, when your prosperity was due to the readiness of a group of men to let out money, and your adversity is due to the unwillingness of the same group, and your own welfare and your country's welfare is thus see-sawed up and down without any reference to natural law but solely upon determinations taken in committee rooms, you naturally inquire, "Who is doing this? Where is all the money gone? Who is holding it? Here is the wealth of the country; here is the need of the country; where is the money to transfer the wealth to the need? Every condition remains as it was, except money."

We have a Federal Reserve System that still is benefiting by the assistance of its perfector and director, Paul M . Warburg. And what is the condition in the United States?

Some of the biggest industrial institutions in the country now in the hands of creditors' committees.

Farmers being sold out by the hundreds, their horses bringing about $3 each.

Cotton and wool enough to clothe the nation, spoiling in the hands of the men who raised it and cannot dispose of it.

Every line of business, railroading, newspaper publishing, store-keeping, manufacturing, agriculture, building, in depression. Why? For lack of money.

Where is the money? This is a country that is supposed to be the financial center of the world--where is the money?

It is in New York. The Federal Reserve System, which Mr. Warburg desired to head up in one central bank, has just about turned out that way. The money is in New York. Here is the charge made to the governor of the Federal Reserve Board by a responsible public official who knows:

While there is a scarcity of money for the producing sections of the West and Northwest, then South and Southwest, "we find that individual banks in New York City are borrowing from the Reserve System, in a number of cases, more than $100,000,000 each; and sometimes as much as $145,000,000 is loaned there to a single bank--twice as much as some of the Reserve Banks have been lending recently to all the member banks in their districts."

One bank in New York borrowed $134,000,000 or $20,000,000 more than the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City was advancing to 1,091 member banks in that Reserve District, which covers the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, and parts of Missouri, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.

At the same time, another New York bank was borrowing from the Federal Reserve Bank about $40,000,000, which was more than the aggregate loans that the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis was lending to its 1,000 member banks in the great states of Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana and part of Wisconsin.

Another New York bank borrowed from the Federal Reserve Bank a sum that was greater by $30,000,000 than the Federal Reserve Bank at Dallas was lending to all the banks in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

Still another New York bank got a loan that equaled the total loans allowed by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to the 569 member banks of that very important district, which includes the whole state of Arkansas, parts of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi, and the larger part of Missouri.

Take the Fifth Federal Reserve District, served by the Federal Reserve Bank at Richmond, Virginia: one New York bank was able to borrow from the New York Reserve Bank more than the Richmond Reserve Bank would lend to all its member banks in Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and the larger part of West Virginia.

That is the situation. The twelve regional banks, which were supposed to make money serve all parts of the country equally, have apparently been "overcome in an administrative way" to such an extent that the New York Federal Reserve Bank is to all intents and purposes the Central Bank of the United States and serves the speculative part of the country with millions, while the productive part of the country is permitted to wilt with paltry thousands.

When it can occur that four New York banks can borrow from the New York Federal Reserve Bank as much money as the banks of 21 states were able to borrow from the five Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Dallas and Richmond--there would seem to be need of explanation somewhere.

Where did this money loaned in New York come from? It came from those parts of the country where money was scarcest. In May, 1920, the word went out over telephones--"The tie-up will come on the 15th." And it came. Credit was stopped. Payment was pressed. A stream of money, literally squeezed out of the producing sections of the country, began to roll toward New York. Otherwise those giant loans just recorded would have been impossible. It was pressure, Federal Reserve pressure, politely known as deflation, and that is the way it worked. The banks of the West were squeezed dry that the banks of New York might overflow.

"The money was withdrawn from legitimate business in various parts of the country to be loaned at fancy rates in Wall Street," says the official referred to above.

The speculative banks, it has been discovered, were able to borrow money at six percent, which money they loaned at as high as 20, 25, and 30 percent.

Federal Reserve deflation created a scarcity that speculative banks utilized. The Federal Reserve policy took the money out; New York banks borrowed the money taken out and loaned it at tremendous rates--rates that people paid to stave off the ruin caused by the moneyless condition that the ill-measured deflation process brought on.

And all this time the Federal Reserve System was in the best financial condition of its whole career. In December, 1920, it had 45 percent of its reserves, which was a higher reserve than it had in December, 1919. But at this writing (July, 1921) the reserve has reached 60 percent.

The money is in New York. Go out through the agricultural states, and you will not find it. Go into the districts of silent factories and you will not find it. It is in New York. The Warburg Federal Reserve has deflated the country. A System that was intended to equalize the ups and downs of financial weather has been used "in an administrative" way to deplete the country of money.

The Federal Reserve idea was doubtless right; if it had not been, it could not have been established. But it has been manipulated. It has not been a "federal" reserve; it has been a private reserve. It has been operated in the interest of bankers and not of everyone in general. Capable of being used to carry the country gradually back to a natural law of business and to a natural level of prices, it was used to bludgeon business at a critical time and to bludgeon it in such a way that money-lenders profited when producers suffered.

If that is the fact, there is no American banker but will say that the method was wrong; economically wrong, logically wrong, commercially wrong, if not criminally wrong.

Today the Federal Reserve boasts of its own reserve as if that were a sign of national economic health. With the country struggling to live, the Federal Reserve ought to be low, not high. The height that the reserve has reached is a measure of the depth of the country's depression.

If the Federal Reserve would let out a part of that flood of money--a high financial authority suggests that less than 10 percent would do it-- it would be like an infusion of blood into the nation's veins.

Kuhn, Loeb & Company, the Speyers and the other Jewish money-lenders have money for Mexico, Norway, Germany, and all sorts of commercial companies being organized to do business overseas, and it is American money. The Warburg Federal Reserve System has been badly misused, badly manipulated, and the country is suffering from it.

Still, the people know not what to do. Money is still a mystery. Banking is still sacrosanct. What would be perfectly apparent if done in ordinary business intercourse with a $5 bill, is exceedingly complicated when the sum is five millions and the parties are (1) country banks, (2) Federal Reserve banks and (3) Wall Street speculative institutions. Yet they are only Tom, Dick and Harry with a $5 bill, after all.

The matter is somewhat affected by the gags that are placed on many men competent to criticize. High officials are more or less tied up, by campaign contributions in which all financial concerns have an interest. Legislative officials are, too many of them, indebted to these same interests. A schedule of the private debts of some of the men who have aspired to the Presidency in the last eight years would be very illuminating--almost as illuminating as a schedule of the names of Jews at whose homes they stayed while on journeys through the country. Men who are thus tied up with the present financial system cannot say what in their minds they know.

It is all illustrated in the testimony of T. Cushing Daniel before a committee of Congress. It shows to what an extent the power of this private corporation called the central bank can reach: