Advertisement of Death

"The unions have such a big job in preventing war that this quotation from an advertisement of the Cleveland Automatic Machine Co. printed in American Machinist is appropriate. The Cleveland Co. is boosting their new high explosive shells.

"The material is so high in tensile strength and is very special because it has a tendency to fracture into small pieces upon explosion of the shell. Two explosive acids are used to explode the shell in the large cavity. The combination of these two acids causes terrific explosions having more power than anything of its kind yet used. Fragments become coated with the acids used in exploding and wounds caused by them mean death in terrible agony within four hours. . . .

"From what we are able to learn of conditions in the trenches it is not possible to get medical assistance to anyone in time to prevent fatal results. It is necessary to immediately cauterize the wounds in the body or head or to amputate the limbs as there seems to be no antidote that will counteract the poison. . . ."

Shocked, horrified, scandalized and enraged were readers of Labor Action, organ of the American Workers' Party, to find the foregoing quotation in their paper last month. It appeared in a column "In the Unions," written by a brawny, pipe-smoking youth named Karl Lore, 24, whose father, Ludwig Lore, writes "Behind the Cables" in the New York Post.

But readers who turned to current issues of American Machinist for the original advertisement failed to find it. Asked where he got it last week, Columnist Lore explained that he had quoted it from an editorial column in the Kern County Union Labor Journal, edited in Bakersfield, Calif, by one Wallace Watson. Editor Watson said he had picked up the text of the advertisement from a column in the April issue of the New Leader written by Socialist Norman Thomas.

The Thomas column, headed "Timely Topics," introduced the advertisement with the words: "All young men ought to be interested in knowing how much more scientific are the means by which they may die in the next war." Columnist Thomas had received the text from one Alan Clark, active member of the Socialist Party in Berkeley, Calif. It came typewritten on a plain piece of paper headed: "Facsimile of an advertisement appearing in the American Machinist."

What Columnist Lore, Editor Watson, Columnist Thomas and Socialist Clark did not know, or deliberately failed to mention, was that the explosive shell advertisement had appeared in American Machinist just once--on May 6, 1915. Its publication then caused a great popular outcry which aroused the U. S. State Department and caused Secretary of Commerce Redfield to deal a stinging rebuke to American Machinist. Few months ago it was reprinted, in its true historical seating, in the book Merchants of Death by Engelbrecht & Hanighen (TIME, May 7).

From Merchants of Death the advertisement story stemmed out in a new direction. Early last April on the floor of the U. S. Senate, North Dakota's Nye quoted it from the book, but failed to mention its date. Referring to it as "an advertisement having to do with a new discovery," Senator Nye cried in the present tense: "Now, here is a manufacturer, one who enjoys huge profits in time of war, one whose greatest prosperity is dependent upon war, --here is one who develops not an instrument, not a tool, that is going to accomplish alone death or the disability of someone engaged in war but is going to accomplish death 'in terrible agony,' to use his own language."

The usually alert editors of the New Republic read Senator Nye's speech, printed his quotation from the advertisement, added indignantly:

"The manufacturer of this admirable shell is obviously hoping to make a little money on it. In fact he is likely to make a good deal. ..." A week later the New Republic reprinted the advertisement of death, still without historical perspective, as the headpiece for a full page advertisement on the New Republic's editorial fearlessness.

When last spotted, the 19-year-old advertisement was quoted, again without date, in a letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun.

One Cleveland munitions maker was doing a thriving business last week without paid advertising. Lake Erie Chemical Co. worked at capacity, turning out gas bombs at $6 each for riot duty in Toledo and elsewhere. Its customers were National Guardsmen, police and rioters. To all comers last week it offered a new bomb which becomes so hot that human targets cannot pick it up and throw it back at attackers.

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