US Chamber of Commerce Supported Slave Labor in Congo - Now Wants US Immigrant Wage Slaves

Yesterday, the big business Babbits here held a big confab at the City Club of Chicago calling for amnesty for illegal aliens.

Slavery was re-introduced in the Congo in 1888
 US Chamber of Commerce helped make it happen

They want cheap labor. Lots of it.

And as far as the US Chamber of Commerce and its Illinois affiliates are concerned: the American middle class be damned.

Well, it isn't the first time that the Chamber of Commerce has thrown its weight behind cheap labor.

In 1884, the Chamber of Commerce here in America was a pivotal force in getting the Congo in Central Africa into the murderous, exploitative paws of Belgian King Leopold II.

They prevailed and slavery was practically re-instituted there, a full 20 years after the American Civil War.

It still isn't entirely clear how many native Africans were enslaved, tortured, starved and murdered by Leopold's avaricious colonial henchmen, but it ranks as one of the great genocides of the late 19th and early 20th century.

And the American Chamber of Commerce, in its lust for trade concessions in that rubber-rich domain, helped make it all happen.

IL Chamber of Commerce honcho
Doug Whitley wants cheap illegal alien  labor

Here's how, according to Adam Hochschild in his acclaimed 1998 book, King Leopold's
Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa.

Late to the colonial game, Belgium's king Leopold II, of the minor German house of Saxe-Coburg, was starved for acclaim and cash. So around 1888 he set his sites on the unclaimed African central sub-Saharan lands of the Congo.

He needed legitimacy to get them and fearing possible competition from European colonial powerhouses, England and France, he lobbied the US President and Congress to get formal diplomatic recognition for his Congo colony.

According to Hochschild:

"Knowing how carefully President Arthur's Republicans listened to business, (Leopold's lobbyist) Sanford got the New York Chamber of Commerce (precursor to the US Chamber of Commerce) to pass a resolution endorsing U.S. recognition in support of Leopold's Congo claims. (p.80)

The American Chamber of Commerce, you see, didn't want to get shut out of the economic goodies as they had been in British, Dutch and French colonies. So they saw the recognition of this monarch, later known as the "Butcher of the Congo," as a swell business opportunity.

Congress followed suit and recognized Leopold's ambitions, and shortly thereafter via a Berlin conference on colonial matters, Belgium's claim to the enormous expanse of African lands was confirmed.

Leopold II, The Butcher of the Congo
was backed by US Chamber of Commerce

So then Leopold's armed Belgian thugs exploited African natives of the new domain as free labor -- first as porters and ivory gatherers -- and after the discovery of wild rubber vines -- as forced gatherers of that valuable commodity.

Overall, the saga of European colonial rule was, by no means pretty, but Leopold's murderous brutality, which lasted until his death in 1909, was in a class of its own.

Rape, pillage, beatings with rhinoceros hide whips, physical mutilation and outright murder became commonplace. Slavery was effectively re-instituted for the native African work force -- a full quarter century after it was abolished in the US by Abraham Lincoln.

And all this was made possible by your friends at the US Chamber of Commerce.

And today, under their magnificently amoral CEO, Tom Donohue, the US Chamber of Commerce is still in the cheap labor business.

Today they're advocating it via amnesty for the millions of 3rd world aliens illegally here.

And so are the Chamber's pals and cronies here in Chicago.

They've put together a thing called the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition. It has people like Doug Whitley, CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, Mark Segal of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and other shortsighted, avaricious dimwits like the Crate and Barrel's founder Carole Segal and the aptly named, Billy Lawless of the Illinois Restaurant Association.

They see no moral problem whatever with undermining the very fiber of the US and throwing the American middle class under the bus.

They want cheap labor.

It's part of their glorious Chamber of Commerce, crony-capitalist heritage.