The Guggenheim Effect On The Earth

(The following article about the Guggenheim Dynasty that has historically owned a portion of the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

In The Guggenheims 1848-1988 book, John Davis described some of the environmental effects of the Guggenheim family’s late 19th century and early 20th century business activity:

“Piles of debris and broken rocks, and heaps of slag are all that remain of former Guggenheim operations in Colorado. In Bingham Canyon, Utah, where the Guggenheims created the world’s first open-pit copper mine, there is now a vast devastation, the earth so gouged and lacerated as to seem the scene of some cosmic disaster. Kennecott: an entire mountain destroyed in Alaska. Chuquicamata: an entire mountain destroyed in Chile. Rivers everywhere contaminated with the detritus of Guggenheim mines and smelters.”

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: The Guggenheim-Patterson Alliance and Newsday’s Hidden History

The Guggenheim World War I Profits

(The following article about the Guggenheim Dynasty that has historically owned a portion of the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It first appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)


In the early 20th century, the Guggenheim family also formed the American Congo Company to operate an African mine in the Congo and also bought the Chuquicamata copper mines in Chile. As a result, when World War I began the Guggenheim family controlled 75 percent to 80 percent of the world’s silver, copper and lead and could dictate the prices of all three metals. Between 1915 and 1918, the Guggenheim family’s mines and smelters operated 24 hours a day at full capacity and the family was accused of war profiteering by some U.S. newspapers and some members of the U.S. Congress. Due to its World War I profits, the Guggenheim family became one of the five wealthiest families in the United States by the early 1920s.

During the Roaring Twenties, the Guggenheim family decided to relinquish its control over ASARCO and also to sell its Chilean copper mines to the Anaconda Company for $70 million. The 1923 sale of the Chuquicamata Chilean mines by the Guggenheim family represented, at the time, the largest-ever private sale of mining property.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: The Guggenheim Effect On The Earth

Daniel Guggenheim And Alaska's Natural Resources

(The following article about the Guggenheim Dynasty that has historically owned a portion of the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

A year after Meyer Guggenheim’s death in 1905, his son, Daniel Guggenheim, formed “The Alaska Syndicate” in partnership with two other super-rich businessmen, J.P. Morgan and Jacob Schiff. According to The Guggenheims 1848-1988 book:

“Dan Guggenheim’s ambition became nothing less than to control all the natural resources of Alaska.

“Accordingly, the Alaska syndicate which soon came to be known as the `Guggenheim Trust,’ bought Kennecott Mountain and a hundred thousand acres of adjoining territory in the Wrangell chain, bought two hundred miles of railroad right-of-way to the sea, bought seacoast land at Katalla Bay, Valdez, and Cordova, bought the Northwestern Steamship Company, bought Northwestern Commercial, a service company, bought every Alaskan coal mine they could get their hands on, bought endless forests, and, perceiving that ships could transport fish as well as copper, bought, as a sideline, Northwestern Fisheries, the most important fishing and canning industry in the Western United States, Canada, and Alaska, for good measure.”

Within 6 years, the Guggenheim Trust operation in Alaska was producing another $3 million per year in dividends.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: The Guggenheim World War I Profits

The Guggenheim Fortune Historically

(The following article about the Guggenheim Dynasty that has historically owned a portion of the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It first appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown.)

The Guggenheim family obtained its wealth in the late 1800s and early 1900s by owning mines and smelters, utilizing cheap labor and making windfall profits from the lifting, refining and marketing of metals during World War I.

In 1881, Meyer Guggenheim had bought a one-third interest for $5,000 in two lead and silver mines in Colorado. Within a year, there was a rich strike of silver and $17,000 per month was now being earned from the labor of the miners who spent 12 hours a day digging up the Guggenheim family’s silver.

Throughout the 1880s, armed state militias and hired thugs were used as needed by the Guggenheim family to break the frequent strikes of miners in its Colorado mines. But by 1888, Meyer Guggenheim was earning $750,000 per year from his two lead and silver mines. Eventually, the Guggenheim family earned $15 million from its initial $5,000 investment before the two mines were exhausted of their silver deposits.

To increase family profits, Meyer Guggenheim formed the Philadelphia Smelting & Refining Company and built a smelter in Pueblo, Colorado to refine the silver from his mines. After armed strikebreakers were used by Meyer to crush a strike of smelter workers, the Guggenheim family moved from Philadelphia to New York City in 1889. Armed force was also used to evict miners who squatted on claims owned by the Guggenheims in Colorado.

In the 1890s, the Guggenheim family began to do business in Mexico. After agreement was reached with a pliant Mexican government, the Guggenheims built a smelter in Monterrey, Mexico in which “thugs” were “employed to herd the peons into the blazing smelter at gunpoint,” according to the book The Guggenheims 1848-1988: An American Epic by John Davis. Because Mexican labor was even cheaper than Colorado labor in the 1890s, the Guggenheim family’s Monterrey, Mexico smelter was much more profitable than its Pueblo, Colorado smelter.

Another Mexican subsidiary company was formed by the Guggenheim family to operate its Tepezala copper mines and its Aguascalientes smelter in Mexico. By 1895, from its Colorado and Mexican smelters alone, the Guggenheim family was earning a net profit exceeding $1 million a year and had become economically and politically powerful in Mexico. Another new family company, “Guggenex,” was the nickname for the Guggenheim Exploration Company, which was formed to explore the whole globe for potentially lucrative mines from which to lift minerals.

In the 1890s, Meyer Guggenheim also began to play the stock market and his family began to buy stock in the Rockefeller-owned American Smelting & Refining Company [ASARCO]. ASARCO was a trust of 23 smelter operators, developed to give Rockefeller interests control of all U.S. underground mineral resources. As a result of its ASARCO stock purchases and crafty maneuvering, the Guggenheim family was able to gain a 51-percent-controlling interest in what was originally intended to be just another Rockefeller-controlled monopoly.

By the early 1900s, the Guggenheim family controlled the mining and the smelting industry in the United States. In 1905, Meyer Guggenheim died, leaving an estate of $2.3 million. But prior to his death, Meyer Guggenheim had already transferred most of his wealth to the next generation of seven Guggenheim sons, so that each one could be a multi-millionaire before Meyer Guggenheim died.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: Daniel Guggenheim And Alaska’s Natural Resources

The Hidden History Of The Tribune Company's `Times-Mirror-Newsday'--Part 2

(The following article about the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown)

After the Tribune Company’s Daily News started to publish its sometimes called “Scabloid” edition in the early 1990s, the circulation of Times-Mirror-Newsday’s newspaper in New York City began to increase. Yet the Guggenheim and Chandler dynasties, which shared a connection to Times-Mirror-Newsday with the Rockefeller dynasty in the early 1990s, have always been more interested in maximizing profits and monopolizing mass media power than in democratizing New York City’s economic life and providing increased mass media access for New York City’s antiwar activists, artists and writers. Hence, it’s not surprising that antiwar street people didn’t receive more than marginal daily coverage in the columns of Los Angeles’ Rockefeller/Guggenheim/Chandler press during the 1990s (before it became a division of the Tribune media-monopoly conglomerate in 2000).

Downtown asked then-New York Newsday Managing Editor Toedtman to respond to the criticism that after Gulf War I began in early 1991, Newsday provided less daily coverage to antiwar activists and antiwar demonstrators.

“Just look at page four and page six of the newspaper today. If we weren’t covering any antiwar activity, you wouldn’t find the story of an antiwar protest in Bush [I]’s church and of a Manhattan antiwar demonstration. We’ve done any number of stories on antiwar protest around the nation,” said Toedtman.

An examination of the Feb. 18, 1991 issue cited by Toedtman does reveal that brief stories of three antiwar protests appear on page four, page six, page twenty-one and page twenty-five. The front page of the same issue, however, has a headline which reads: “On Your Mark, Get Set” and a picture of U.S. Marine tanks, and pages five, page six, page seven, page fourteen and page fifteen all contain Pentagon puff-pieces. And on the day after an antiwar protest of 10,000 to 15,000 in New York City, a “City Business” spread is printed rather than a “City Peace Movement” spread.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: The Guggenheim Fortune Historically

The Hidden History of The Tribune Company's Times-Mirror-Newsday--Part 1

(The following article about the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown)

“Of all the Guggenheim investments the most profitable has been the Times-Mirror Corp. which bought Harry’s Newsday for $75 million in 1970. Since that sale the value of the Times-Mirror stock that various Guggenheim individuals and institutions received has increased ten-fold and could possibly exceed $1 billion by the mid-1990s.” (John Davis in The Guggenheims 1848-1988: An American Epic)

“It is my opinion that the nation’s newspaper press is doing basically, a most comprehensive job of self-censorship in the nation’s best interest.” (Times-Mirror-Newsday Director Otis Chandler in 1961)

Laurance Rockefeller’s senior associate since 1973, Clayton Frye Jr., was one of the directors of Los Angeles’s Times-Mirror-Newsday mass media conglomerate in 1991. Frye sat on the Audit Committee and Finance Committee of the Times-Mirror-Newsday corporate board. Times-Mirror-Newsday Director Frye also was a director in 1991 of Rockefeller & Company, Inc., whose office was then located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan.

Downtown asked in 1991 the then-communications director of Rockefeller Financial Services, George Taylor, whether any connection then existed between Rockefeller & Company and the newspaper Newsday.

“First of all, there is absolutely no connection between Rockefeller & Company and Newsday,” Taylor answered.

Downtown also asked Taylor in 1991 why then-Rockefeller & Company Director Frye sat on the board of Newsday’s then-parent company, Times-Mirror.

“As to Mr. Frye’s membership on the Times-Mirror board, it’s a personal association of his own. The board of directors is a diversified group of people,” Taylor replied.

Asked by Downtown to describe what kind of business Rockefeller & Company Inc. engages in, Taylor said that “Rockefeller & Company is a registered investment company.” He could not say whether Rockefeller & Company invested in Times-Mirror in 1991 because “any of its holdings are confidential.”

When Downtown then asked whether Times-Mirror Director Frye was Laurance Rockefeller’s representative on the Times-Mirror corporate board, Taylor replied:

“Mr. Frye is a senior associate of Mr. Laurance Rockefeller. But Mr. Frye’s connection to Times-Mirror is purely on his own. As a matter of fact, he spent more than 15 years on the board of another company that later became part of Times-Mirror, which is why he’s now on the Times-Mirror board.”

According to Taylor, “Rockefeller Financial Services is the personal office of the Rockefeller family” and Rockefeller & Company operates under the Rockefeller Financial Services umbrella.

[The now-defunct] New York Newsday’s then-managing editor, James Toedtman was a former editor of the Baltimore News-American who worked for Newsday in the 1960s and for the Boston Herald-American in the early 1980s. According to Toedtman, with regard to Rockefeller family special influence on Newsday in 1991, there was “absolutely none. We don’t do special coverage of the Rockefeller family” activity in New York.

But the Rockefeller family and its associates still exercised much power over New York daily and U.S. political life in the early 1990s. Yet the Times-Mirror-Newsday newspapers rarely informed their readers about how Rockefeller power makes their influence felt in defense of Rockefeller family corporate interests or oil company investments in either New York, Saudi Arabia or Kuwait during the early 1990s.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

Next: The Hidden History Of The Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday—Part 2

`Columbia'

“Oh, educate
Columbia
Pursue the truth
Columbia
Exalt the mind
Columbia
Research and find
Columbia
And humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool.”

Invite the spies
Columbia
The C.I.A.
Columbia
Give them a room
Columbia
To recruit goons
Columbia
And “humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool.”

Help the Navy
Columbia
ROTC
Columbia
Teach a course for
Columbia
“The Art of War”
Columbia
And “humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool.”

Secret research
Columbia
You’d best not snitch
Columbia
At Hudson Labs
Maybe some bombs?
For electric war
Design lasers
And “humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool.”

The Columbia protest folk song was written in Furnald Hall on the campus of Columbia University in late 1966 to protest Columbia University’s collaboration with the U.S. war machine that waged unjust war in Vietnam and the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] that overthrew the democratically-elected governments of Iran and Guatemala during the 1950s. In 2008, Columbia University still allows the CIA to recruit on campus and still allows war-related research work for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] and the Joint Warfare Analysis Center [JWAC} to be done on Columbia University’s campus. But on April 24-27, 2008 at Columbia University’s campus, there is going to be a 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1968 Columbia Anti-War Student Revolt.

Speaking of the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt, Time magazine reported in its May 17, 1968 issue that “protests against IDA are somewhat misplaced, since the Institute has nothing to do with the prosecution of the war in Vietnam” and “the reports generally deal with future rather than immediate technical problems.” Yet two months before the Columbia University-sponsored IDA held its 1966 Jason Division secret weapons research study session at the Dana Hall girls’ school in Wellesley, Massachusetts between June 13, 1966 and June 25, 1966, MIT Professor of Physics J.R. Zacharias stated the following in an April 15, 1966 letter to former IDA Vice-President A.G. Hill:

“A group of us have been discussing with the Department of Defense the possibility of conducting a special study of the military and technological options open to the U.S. in Vietnam…Our hope is that by re-examining the present military tactics, especially in the light of technological opportunities that may not have been adequately considered, military alternatives might emerge that would be less costly and more likely to lead to a political solution.

“The Department of Defense has shown strong interest in our conducting such a study, and discussions with the Department are now under way. A steering committee for the study will include Carl Kaysen, George Kistiakowsky, Jerome Wiesner, Eugene Skolnikoff and myself…

“We are planning an exploratory discussion meeting of the group on Wednesday, May 4, at M.I.T. and would be very pleased if you could join us. The meeting will be held in the Penthouse of the M.I.T. Faculty Club, 50 Memorial Drive, at 9:00 a.m.

“I would appreciate your keeping information about this study confidential…”

Coincidentally, in May 1968 a member of the board of directors of Time magazine’s parent company (Time Inc.) named Maurice T. Moore (the brother-in-law of Henry Luce) also sat on the Columbia University board of trustees—between the chairman of IDA’s board of trustees, William A.M. Burden, and IDA trustee and Columbia University President Grayson Kirk.

For another protest folk song about Columbia University’s complicity with the U.S. war machine during the Vietnam War Era, titled "Bloody Minds," you can check out the “Columbia Songs for a Democratic Society” site at the following link:

www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music


Next: The Hidden History Of The Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday—Part 1