What is the secret of US’ untold fortune? “Oh, we’ve just been working hard.”
Historian and writer James Bradley at the presentation of his book China Mirage:
“When we hear the name Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first thing that should come to mind is China. Because it was one of the major influences on young Roosevelt’s life. His mother, Sarah Delano Roosevelt, grew up in Hong Kong. She was the one who paid Franklin’s bills. Franklin Roosevelt never had a high-paying job. For most of his life, he was a civil servant. Yet he had yachts, townhouses in New York, a summer home in Maine. Where did he get all this money? From his mother’s family–Delano. Where did the Delanos get their money from? His grandfather Warren Delano was an American drug lord in China, the largest American opium trader in that country.
“It’s the same as if the Cali cartel, which supplies cocaine to the U.S., had nurtured the president of Colombia. It seems wild to us. But Warren Delano was an opium trafficker, that is, a criminal from the Chinese point of view.
“You think I’m giving you an unusual example from history? Not at all. If you drive up and down the East Coast of the United States, there are traces of the Chinese opium trade.
“Take Yale University. The Tomb, now the headquarters of the Skull and Bones Society on the Yale campus, is still funded by the Russell Trust. The Russell Trust was the largest drug trafficker in China, and Warren Delano worked for them. Yale University was built on land given to it by opium drug lords.
“The most famous building on the Columbia University campus is the Lowe Library. It is named in honor of Abbott Law, who traded opium in China with Warren Delano. Princeton University’s first major donor was Stephen Green. Stephen Green took over Russell and Company’s opium operations after Warren Delano, having gotten rich, returned to the United States.
“America’s first industrial city, Lowell, Massachusetts, was founded by opium merchants. The first railroads on the East Coast? Opium money. How did the great American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson have so much time to do philosophy? Because he married the owner of an opium fortune. Take the Council on Foreign Relations. It’s the Coolidge Family, opium again. Chiquita banana company, AT&T phone company? Same thing. Dig into the history of any person with the last name Forbes. For example, in the family tree of (former) U.S. Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry. What do you see there? You’ll see a fortune made in the drug trade because his great-grandfather traded opium in China.
“When the Chinese talk about a century of humiliation, that’s what they mean. We sold them opium under the roof of the British, French and American fleets. Warren Delano was consul in Canton, he welcomed the first ships of the American navy in the First Opium War. If you come to Canton, what is now Guangzhou, you will see a statue dedicated to the man who asked Warren Delano to stop supplying drugs to China. Go to Chinatown in New York, there are two statues erected there. One to Confucius, the other to an official named Lin Zhe Xu (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Zexu), who begged Warren Delano to give up the drug trade in China.”
