Letter, Henry M. Leland to Kate Gleason

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Lincoln Motor Company
Detroit, Michigan

September 19th 1919.

MissKate Gleason,
Gleason Works,
Rochester, N.Y.

My dear Miss Gleason:

I am so thoroughly solicitous about the
outlook for the future that I must speak to some of the
loyal men of this country who should be open-eyed to the
gathering storm. I am aware that prophets of disaster
are lightly regarded during this unprecedented period of
plenty, and at the risk of seeming unduly alarmed I want
to open my heart to you. Instead of being far-fetched,
I beleive my fears are conservative and do not begin to
comprehend the seriousness of the menace which is threat-
ening everything worth living for in this country.

Not only is property menaced, but all
business interests are menaced; and the course we are
already traveling will eventually deprive us of all our
industry, of all our wealth and of everything that makes
civilization desirable. The actual conditions which we
are now experiencing are so startling, so inconsistent,
and so far-reaching that had any man ten years ago proph-
esied these conditions for the year 1920 he would have
been confined in the asylum. He would be considered an
unsafe man to be loose in a civilized community.

A small minority, not to exceed five
percent of the people, because they have been thoroughly
organized and because they had shrewd, unscrupulous
leadership, and because they found the willing ear of
those in authority, have so conspired that today we are
face to face with unprecedented conditions which are
being favorably received by many influential and intel-
lectual men and women. It is the treasonable purpose of
this small minority to take over and nationalize our
mines, our railroads, our great steel industries and our
great packing industry. Do not for a moment think that
the plans end when this has been accomplished. The
nationalizing of these plants would certainly be followed

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by the control of such institutions as the International
Harvester, the General Electric, and then your plant and
mine, and finally operate the entire industrial system.
And when this point has been reached we will find our-
selves drifting with the red current to nationalize
everything, the minority following the lead of unscrupulous
men in high places. We will then have the Soviet form of
Government and life will cease to be worth living. If
there were no alternative we might as well quit at once.

It is possible to see these things coming
before we get hit by them. Read the papers and think!
Study Russia and England, and Seattle and Vancouver and
Boston. Keep your eye on such conferences as Wilson’s
approaching labor and capital conference. You cannot
possibly help seeing recent history repeating itself.

Strange indeed that at such a time as
this so many leaders of our industrial and financial
interests and others who ought to be most vitally in-
terested, are wrapped up in their own affairs and appear
not to be conscious of the approaching catastrophe, and
seem to say “Tomorrow shall be as this day, only much
more abundant.” Still others are pleasure mad. We have
become obsessed by the amusement craze. 12,000,000 people
in the United States daily attend the movies, and the rest
of us ride without ceasing our various amusement hobbies.
All the while the thunders are rumbling. The whole thing
reminds one of the burning of Rome while Nero fiddled.
After all, Nero had little to lose; but we hold in trust
all the accumulated progress of the centuries.

The die has already been cast in Britain.
A labor and capital conference was called a few months
ago and attended by 400 representatives of industry on
the one side of the hall and by 400 representatives of
organized labor on the other side. In the center was
Lloyd George, a man not unlike in many respects our own
great dissembler. While the destinies of Britain, in-
dustrially, commercially and nationally, were being
settled at that meeting NO man on the side of the 400
men representing business was found to utter one word
of protest; and the doom of that nation, for some time
to come at least, was sealed amid their cowardly silence.
Shall America repeat that history?

A similar conference is called by Pres-
ident Wilson to convene within a few days. Judging by
our experiences during the last five years, the scene
in London is likely to be repeated in the United States.
Among those invited by the President to that conference
will there be men with vision enough, with courage

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enough, with character enough to stand up and protest
against the betrayal of our country and its institutions?

We have attached hereto a Detroit Free
Press editorial of September 16th, and we beg you to take
the time to read it through. Such editorials are justified
by the passing events of each day. The forces which have
been developing for the past seven years in accordance with
a deep laid scheme, and carried from step to step with much
shrewdness, cunning and deception, are rapidly approaching
a crisis. They have their many sided programme ready, and
unless a crimp is put into their programme it will reach
the predetermined conclusion, and this conclusion will be
the Russianizing of the United States and the destruction
of all our great free and most important institutions.

After the United States Reds have control
in several of our large cities and industrial centers, it
will cost millions of wealth and great sacrifice of human
lives even if we are able to restore the country to its
former basis. A mere tithe of this expenditure wisely and
judiciously expended before it is too late will save this
great loss of life and treasure.

Men of the United States of America, it is
time to think. These times demand strong men, courageous
men, self-sacrificing men. It is time to lay aside our
selfish and narrow views and interests and steel ourselves
against the enemies of your business, your home and your
country. Take it from me, you will soon enough be called
upon for action, and happy the man who has not forgotten
the lesson of Preparedness.

Very truly yours,
HML JMB                              Henry M. Leland