Robert Edward Edmondson, professional American who sells the lowdown on the National Administration and Jews from his office at 80 Washington street, is prepared to clean up the country.
So he announced at his office yesterday. He said that through coming November elections he hopes to secure the promises of Congressmen to oppose the Administration and thereby turn back the tide of Jewish influence, which he believes holds the country in its grasp and hinders the return to prosperity.
Edmondson’s occupation is publishing and selling pamphlets exposing the nation’s government by the “U. S. Jewish Advisory Council”; i. e. the New Dealers. While stacks of brochures waiting to be sent through the mails indicate he may do a thriving business, the modest appearance of his one small room, occupied by himself and a middle-aged woman assistant indicates that his scheme has not caught on very well.
Edmondson says he exists solely on the merits of the material he turns out. No subsidies will he admit. The pamphlets sell for a penny each, plus postage.
The material is strangely reminiscent of that of Pelley, Silver Shirt leader, but shorn of his mysticism.
GIVES THE LOWDOWN
One of the pamphlets purports to be an expose of the “Invisible Government,” composed exclusively of Jews and Gentiles acting under Jewish orders. The inner circle of a diagram drawn by Edmondson is labelled the Roosevelt “Personal Government.” This government, according to the diagram, is encircled by the “Jewish Radical Minority influence.”
Radiating from this circle and apparently the personnel of the influence, the diagram gives the names of “Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury; Herbert Feis (Prof. Frankfurter protege) the brains of the State Department; Prof. Rex G. Tugwell, Asst. Sec’y Agr.; Soviet Admirer (Ezekiel-Tugwell AAA Bill Co-authors); etc.
Edmondson turned against the Administration with the inauguration of the NRA, which he coniders a fiendish plot devised by Jewish members of the United States Chamber of Commerce and executed by Jewish individuals and groups of Jewish interests against the “small fellow.”
WANTS HOOVER PROSPERITY
He would prefer a return to the era of Hoover Prosperity rather than continue with the New Deal. He declared that the economic situation of the country was returning to normalcy before Hoover left office, and that “if Roosevelt had only the good sense to continue with the natural tide back to prosperity all would have been well.” He expressed dissatisfaction with the President’s reduction of unemployment from 13,000,000 to 10,000,000, and stated that the job could be done more quickly and thoroughly by someone else. He would not say who could have done a better job, and indicated he could not identify his prosperity prophet.
BETTER NAZIS THAN NEW DEAL
“The Nazis, if they were in Washington, could do a better job than the present administration,” he claimed.
The small-time publisher insists that he “personally is not anti-Semitic.” When asked whether or not he did not consider his activities an added incentive to the rising feeling throughout the world against the Jew, he conceded that the Jews might suffer here with his plan going into effect. He repeatedly referred to the Jews as the “Jewish Radical Minority Group” governing the country, and insisted that Jews and radicals are synonymous.
Edmondson related his conversation with a New York rabbi in which he stated that he would strive to gain his end, which he defined as “government by the majority,” regardless of how it affects the Jews. When asked by the rabbi whether or not he expected those Jews in public office to leave, Edmondson quoted himself as saying that he thought it would be a good idea, although the Jews were free to do as they see fit.
‘DRIVE JEWS OUT’
Edmondson was pressed for a “constructive policy” with regard to restoring economic normalcy in the United States. He said that his ideas, which hold as the ultimate goal the ousting of Jews from office, is the extent of his constructive policy.
In the pamphlet “The Deadly Parallel” the Edmondson service asks readers, “Which is more representative of American institutions?” and lists on the side of “prominent administrators and advisors, mostly credited in the public press with favoring policies antagonistic to American traditions,” Bernard Baruch, “unofficial President,” Louis Brandeis, “Braintrust Godfather;” Felix Frankfuter, “Unofficial Advisor” and “Karl Marx Professor;” Samuel Untermyer, “Unofficial Stock Exchange Nemesis;” and many others.
BETTER THAN NEW DEAL
On the other side, the side of “the famous practical Americans who, under Constitutional Democracy’s individual reward system, helped to build United States prestige and wealth from zero to unequalled pre-eminence,” Edmondson lists “W. W. Atterbury, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad; Winthrop W. Aldrich, chairman of the Chase National Bank; John W. Davis, former Democratic presidential candidate; Charles G. Dawes, former Republican vice-president; E. G. Grace, president of the Bethlehem Steel Corp; J. P. Morgan, great Republican industrial banker; Andrew Mellon, noted financier, reduced N. S. national debt from twenty-six to sixteen billions while Republican Secretary of the U. S. Treasury; John D. Rockefeller, noted philanthropist; Alfred E. Smith, former Democratic candidate for president; O. M. W. Sprague, international monetary system expert; A. P. Sloan Jr., president of the General Motors Corp.”, and a number of others.
DOESN’T LIKE PRESIDENT
These names are followed by the statement: “In all national crises, Washington, Lincoln, and other great Presidents of the Republic, enlisted America’s distinguished practical patriots against enemies at home and abroad,” and the question: “Why does the Roosevelt New Deal Control discredit and deprive America of representative wisdom in its hour of supreme politico-economic distress?”
Edmondson, a sprucely-dressed gentleman well past the stage of life where one is considered physically and mentally alert, claims to have been a newspaperman a freelance. Thirty years ago, according to his story, he left the profession, after working for the old New York Herald and a Hearst newspaper. He did not say how long he worked for either of these publications, but to demonstrate his editorial acuteness he offered to edit this copy, a manipulation which the shortage of time unfortunately makes impossible.
HAS WALL STREET TRADE
He stated that the circulation of his pamphlets is mostly among brokers and those interested in economics and denies knowledge of any great support being given his philosophy by Nazis and American Fascists of various blends. In a brochure giving his pedigree, this mild-mannered old gentleman asks the questions: “How Does Edmondson Carry On? Can’t ‘they’ smear, frame, and stop him as ‘they’ have others?” Just who would care to smear, frame, or stop this fine, upstanding citizen is not revealed.
He says “all patriotic communications are welcomed as a trust, and immediately disposed of in such a way as to circumvent enemy subversions.”
Among his better known pamphlets are “Who Is Backing Robert Edmondson in the American Majority Fight Against Minority Jewish-Radical-Bolshevist Politico-Economic Leadership?” “Bankrupt Leadership”; “The Deadly Parallel”; “Misrepresentative Minority Government”; “The Real Issue”; “Invisible Government”; “Prof. Felix Frankfurter, as seen by Former President Theodore Roosevelt”; “Americans Tricked”; “A Minority War Danger,” and others.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.