The late war was not a war to end war, nor was it a war for disarmament. German militarism is not destroyed; the appropriations for military and naval purposes, made by the great nations during the last two years, are greater than they have ever been in any peace years that are known to history.

The world is preparing for war to-day as actively as it was in the years preceding the War of 1914. The years from 1914 to 1918 were the opening episodes; the first engagements of the Great War.

There is no question, among those who have taken the trouble to inform themselves, but that the War of 1914 was fought for economic and commercial advantage. The same rivalries that preceded 1914 are more active in the world to-day than ever before. Hence the possibilities of war are greater by exactly that amount. The imperial struggle is being continued and a part of the imperial struggle is war.

8. Again!

This monstrous thing called war will occur again! Not because any considerable number of people want it, not even because an active minority wills it, but because the present system of competitive capitalism makes war inevitable. Economic rivalries are the basis of modern wars and economic rivalries are the warp and woof of capitalism.

To-day the rivalries are economic—in the fields of commerce and industry and finance. To-morrow they will be military.

Already the nations have begun the competition in the building of tanks, battleships and airplanes. These instruments of destruction are built for use, and when the time comes, they will be used as they were between 1914 and 1918.

Again there will be the war propaganda—subtle at first, then more and more open. There will be stories of atrocities; threats of world conquest. "Preparedness" will be the cry.

Again there will be the talk of "My country, right or wrong"; "Stand behind the President"; "Fall in line"; "Go over the top!"

Again fear will stalk through the land, while hate and war lust are whipped into a frenzy.

Again there will be conscription, and the straightest and strongest of the young men will leave their homes and join the colors.

Again the most stalwart men of the nations will "dig themselves in" and slaughter one another for years on end.

Again the truth-tellers will be mobbed and jailed and lynched, while those who champion the cause of the workers will be served with injunctions if they refuse to sell out to the masters.

Again the profiteers will stop at home and reap their harvests out of the agony and the blood of the nation.

Again, when the killing is over, a few old men, sitting around a table, will carve the world—stripping the vanquished while they reward the victors.

Again the preparations will begin for the next war. The people will be fed on promises, phrases and lies. They will pay and they will die for the benefit of their masters, and thus the terrible tragedy of imperialism will continue to bathe the world in tears and in blood.



XVIII. THE CHALLENGE TO IMPERIALISM

1. Revolutionary Protest

Since the Franco-Prussian War the people of Europe have been waking up to the failure of imperialism. The period has been marked by a rapid growth of Socialism on the continent and of trade-unionism in Great Britain. Both movements are expressions of an increasing working-class solidarity; both voice the sentiments of internationalism that were sounded so loudly during the revolutionary period of the eighteenth century.

The rapid growth of the European labor movement worried the autocrats and imperialists. Bismarck suppressed it; the Russian police tortured it. Despite all of the efforts to check it or to crush it, the revolutionary movement in Europe gained force. The speeches and writings of the leaders were directed against the capitalist system, and the rank and file of the workers, rendered sharply class conscious by the traditions of class rule, responded to the appeal by organizing new forms of protest.

The first revolutionary wave of the twentieth century broke in Russia in 1905. The Russian Revolution of 1917 destroyed the old regime and replaced it first by a moderate or liberal and then by a radical communist control. Like all of the proletarian movements in Europe the Russian revolutionary movement was directed against "capitalism" and "imperialism" and despite the fact that there was no considerable development of the capitalist system in Russia, its imperial organization was so thoroughgoing, and the imperial attitude toward the working class had been so brutally revealed during the revolutionary demonstrations in 1905, that the people reacted with a true Slavic intensity against the despotism that they knew, which was that of an autocratic, feudal master-class.

The international doctrines of the new Russian regime were expressed in the phrase "no forcible annexations, no punitive indemnities, the free development of all peoples." The keynote of its internal policy is contained in Section 16 of the Russian Constitution, which makes work the duty of every citizen of the Republic and proclaims as the motto of the new government the doctrine, "He that will not work neither shall he eat." The franchise is restricted. Only workers (including housekeepers) are permitted to vote. Profiteers and exploiters are specifically denied the right to vote or to hold office. Resources are nationalized together with the financial and industrial machinery of Russia. The Bill of Rights contained in the first section of the Russian Constitution is a pronouncement in favor of the liberty of the workers from every form of exploitation and economic oppression.

The Russian revolution was directed against capitalism in Russia and against imperialism everywhere. This dramatic assault upon capitalist imperialism centered the eyes of the world upon Russia, making her experiment the outstanding feature of a period during which the workers were striving to realize the possibilities of a more abundant life for the masses of mankind.

2. Outlawing Bolshevism

Capitalist diplomats were wary of the Kerensky regime because they did not feel certain how far the Russian people intended to go. The triumph of the Bolsheviki made the issue unmistakably clear. There could be no peace between Bolshevism and capitalism. From that day forward it was a struggle to determine which of the two economic systems should survive.

During the years 1918 and 1919 the capitalist world organized one of the most effective advertising campaigns that has ever been staged. Every shred of evidence that, by any stretch of the imagination, could be distorted into an attack upon the Bolshevist regime, was scattered broadcast over the world. Where evidence was lacking, rumor and innuendo were employed. The leading newspapers and magazines, prominent statesmen, educators, clergymen, scientists and public men in every walk of life went out of their way to denounce the Russian experiment in very much the same manner that the propertied interests of Europe had denounced the French experiment during the years that followed 1789.

All of the great imperialist governments had at their disposal a vast machinery for the purveying of information—false or true as the case might demand. This public machinery like the machinery of private capitalism was turned against Bolshevism. The capitalist governments went farther by backing with money and supplies the counter revolutionary forces under Yudenich, Denekine, Seminoff, and Kolchak. Allied expeditions were landed on the soil of European and Asiatic Russia "to free the Russian people from the clutches of the Bolsheviki." A blockade was declared in which the Germans were invited to join (after the signing of the armistice), and the whole capitalist world united to starve into submission the men, women and children of revolutionary Russia.

No event of recent times, not even the holy war against the autocracy of militarist Germany, had created such a unanimity of action among the Western nations. Bolshevism threatened the very existence of capitalism and as such its destruction became the first task of the capitalist world.

The collapse of the capitalist efforts to destroy socialist Russia reflects the power of a new idea over the ancient form. The Allied expeditions into Russia met with hostility instead of welcome. The counter-revolutionary forces were overwhelmed by the red army. The buffer states made peace. The Allied soldiers mutinied when called upon to take part in a war against the forces of revolutionary Russia. "Holy Russia" became holy Russia indeed—recognized and respected by the proletarian forces throughout Europe.

3. The New Europe

Russia is the dramatic center of the European movement against capitalist imperialism, but the movement is not confined to Russia. Its activities are extended into every important country on the continent.

Since March, 1917, when the first revolution occurred in Russia, absolute monarchy and divine, kingly rights have practically disappeared from Europe. Before the Russian Revolution, four-fifths of the people of Europe were under the sway of monarchs who exercised dictatorial power over the domestic and foreign affairs of their respective nations. Within two years, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs were driven from the thrones of Germany, of Austria and of Russia. Other rulers of lesser importance followed in their wake, until to-day, the old feudal power that held the political control over most of Europe in 1914 has practically disappeared.

This is the obvious thing—a revolution in the form of political government—the kind of revolution with which history usually deals.

But there is another revolution proceeding in Europe, far more important because more fundamental—the economic and social revolution; the change in the form of breadwinning; the change in the relation between a man and the tools that he uses to earn his livelihood.

Every one knows, now, that Czars and Kaisers and Emperors did not really control Europe before 1914, except in so far as they yielded to bankers and to business men. The crown and the scepter gave the appearance of power, but behind them were concessions, monopolies, economic preferments, and special privilege. The European revolution that began in 1917 with the Czar, did not stop with kings. It began with them because they were in such plain sight, but when it had finished with them it went right on to the bankers and the business men.

War is destruction, organized and directed by the best brains available. It is merry sport for the organizers and for some of the directors, but like any other destructive agent, it may get out of hand. The War of 1914 was to last for six weeks. It dragged on for five years, and the wars that have grown out of it are still continuing. In the course of those five years, the war destroyed the capitalist system of continental Europe. Patches and shreds of it remained, but they were like the topless, shattered trees on the scarred battle-fields. They were remnants—nothing more. In the first place, the war destroyed the confidence of the people in the capitalist system; in the second place, it smashed up the political machinery of capitalism; in the third place, it weakened or destroyed the economic machinery of capitalism.

Each government, to win the war, lied to its people. They were told that their country was invaded. They were assured that the war would be a short affair. Besides that, there were various reasons given for the struggle—it was a war to end war; it was a war to break the iron ring that was crushing a people; it was a war for liberty; it was a struggle to make the world safe for democracy.

Not a single important promise of the war was fulfilled, save only the promise of victory. Hundreds of millions, aroused to the heights of an exalted idealism, came back to earth only to find themselves betrayed. With less promise and more fulfillment; with at least an appearance of statesmanship; with some respect for the simple moralities of truth-telling, fair-dealing, and common honor, there might have been some chance for the capitalist system to retain the confidence of the peoples of war-torn Europe, even in the face of the Russian Revolution; but each of these things was lacking, and as one worker put it: "I don't know what Bolshevism is, but it couldn't be any worse than what we have now, so I'm for it!"

Such a loss of public confidence would have proved a serious blow to any social system, even were it capable of immediately reestablishing normal conditions of living among the people. In this case, the same events that destroyed public confidence in the capitalist system, destroyed the system itself.

The old political forms of Europe—the czars, emperors and kaisers, who stood as the visible symbols of established order and civilization, were overthrown during the war. The economic forces—the banks and business men—had used these forms for the promotion of their business enterprises. Capitalism depended on czars and kaisers as a blacksmith depends on his hammer. They were among the tools with which business forged the chains of its power. They were the political side of the capitalist system. While the people accepted them and believed in them, the business interests were able to use these political tools at will. The tools were destroyed in the fierce pressure of war and revolution, and with them went one of the chief assets of the European capitalists.

There was a third breakdown—far more important than the break in the political machinery of the capitalist system—and that was the annihilation of the old economic life.

Economic life is, in its elements, very simple. Raw materials—iron ore, copper, cotton, petroleum, coal and wheat—are converted, by some process of labor, into things that feed, clothe and house people. There are four stages in this process—raw materials; manufacturing; transportation; marketing. If there is a failure in one of the four, all of the rest go wrong, as is very clearly illustrated whenever there is a great miners' or railroad workers' strike, or when there is a failure of a particular crop. During the war, all four of these economic stages went wrong.

Between the years 1914 and 1918 the people of Europe busied themselves with a war that put their economic machine out of the running.

For a hundred years the European nations had been busy building a finely adjusted economic mechanism; population, finance, commerce—all were knit into the same system. This system the war demolished, and the years that have followed the Armistice have not seen it rebuilt in any essential particular, save in Great Britain and in some of the neutral countries.

Not only were the European nations unable to give commodities in exchange for the things they needed but the machinery of finance, by means of which these transactions were formerly facilitated, was crippled almost beyond repair. Under the old system buying and selling were carried on by the use of money, and money ceased to be a stable medium of exchange in Europe. It would be more correct to say that money was no longer taken seriously in many parts of Europe. During the war the European governments printed 75 billions of dollars' worth of paper money. This paper depreciated to a ridiculous extent. Before the war, the franc, the lira, the mark and the crown had about the same value—20 to 23 cents, or about five to a dollar. By 1920 the dollar bought 15 francs; 23 liras; 40 marks, and 250 Austrian crowns. In some of the ready-made countries, constituted under the Treaty or set up by the Allies as a cordon about Russia, hundreds and thousands of crowns could be had for a dollar. Even the pound sterling, which kept its value better than the money of any of the other European combatants, was thirty per cent. below par, when measured in terms of dollars. This situation made it impossible for the nations whose money was at such a heavy discount to purchase supplies from the more fortunate countries. But to make matters even worse, the rate of exchange fluctuated from day to day and from hour to hour so that business transactions could only be negotiated on an immense margin of safety.

Add to this financial dissolution the mountains of debt, the huge interest charges and the oppressive taxes, and the picture of economic ruin is complete.

The old capitalist world, organized on the theory of competition between the business men within each nation, and between the business men of one nation and those of another nation, reached a point where it would no longer work.

In Russia the old system had disappeared, and a new system had been set up in its place. In Germany, and throughout central Europe, the old system was shattered, and the new had not yet emerged. In France, Italy and Great Britain the old system was in process of disintegration—rapid in France and Italy; slower in Great Britain. But in all of these countries intelligent men and women were asking the only question that statesmanship could ask—the question, "What next?"

The capitalist system was stronger in Great Britain than in any of the other warring countries of Europe. Before the war, it rested on a surer foundation. During the war, it withstood better than any other the financial and industrial demands. Since the war, it has made the best recovery.

Great Britain is the most successful of the capitalist states. The other capitalist nations of Europe regard her as the inner citadel of European capitalism. The British Labor Movement is seeking to take this citadel from within.

The British Labor Movement is a formidable affair. There are not more than a hundred thousand members in all of the Socialist parties, in the Independent Labor Party and in the Communist Party combined. There are between six and seven millions of members in the trade unions.

Perhaps the best test of the strength of the British Labor Movement came in the summer of 1920, over the prospective war with Russia. Warsaw was threatened. Its fall seemed imminent, and both Millerand and Lloyd-George made it clear that the fall of Warsaw meant war. The situation developed with extraordinary rapidity. It was reported that the British Government had dispatched an ultimatum. The Labor Movement acted with a strength and precision that swept the Government off its feet and compelled an immediate reversal of policy.

Over night, the workers of Great Britain were united in the Council of Action. As originally constituted, the "Labor and Russia Council of Action" consisted of five representatives each from the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, the Executive Committee of the Labor Party and the Parliamentary Labor Party. To these fifteen were added eight others, among whom were representatives of every element in the British Labor Movement. This Council of Action did three things—it notified the Government that there must be no war with Russia; it organized meetings and demonstrations in every corner of the United Kingdom to formulate public opinion; it began the organization of local councils of action, of which there were three hundred within four weeks. The Council of Action also called a special conference of the British Labor Movement which met in London on August 13. There were over a thousand delegates at this conference, which opened and closed with the singing of the "Internationale." When the principal resolution of endorsement was passed, approving the formation of the Council of Action, the delegates rose to their feet, cheered the move to the echo, and sang the "Internationale" and "The Red Flag." The closing resolution authorized the Council of Action to take "any steps that may be necessary to give effect to the decisions of the Conference and the declared policy of the Trade Union and Labor Movement."

Such was the position in the "Citadel of European Capitalism." The Government was forced to deal with a body that, for all practical purposes, was determining the foreign policy of the Empire. Behind that Council was an organized group of between six and seven millions of workers who were out to get the control of industry into their own hands, and to do it as speedily and as effectually as circumstances would permit.

Meanwhile, the mantle of revolutionary activity descended upon Italy, where the red flag was run up over some the largest factories and some of the finest estates.

Throughout the war, the revolutionary movement was strong in Italy. The Socialist Party remained consistently an anti-war party, with a radical and vigorous propaganda. The Armistice found the Socialist and Labor Movements strong in the North, with a growing movement in the South for the organization of Agricultural Leagues.

The Socialist propaganda in Italy was very consistent and telling. The paper "Avanti," circulating in all parts of the country, was an agency of immense importance. The war, the Treaty, the rising cost of living, the growing taxation—all had prepared the ground for the work that the propagandists were doing. Their message was: "Make ready for the taking over of the industries! Learn what you can, so that, when the day comes, each will play his part. When you get the word, take over the works! There must be no violence—that only helps the other side. Do not linger on the streets, you will be shot. Remain at home or stay in the factories and work as you never worked before!"

That, in essence, was the Italian Socialist propaganda—simple, clear and direct, and that was, in effect, what the workers did.

The returned soldiers were a factor of large importance in the Italian Revolution. They were radicals throughout the war. The peace made them revolutionists. "The Proletarian League of the Great War" was affiliated with "The International of Former Soldiers," which comprised the radical elements among the ex-service men of Great Britain, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and a number of the smaller countries. There were over a million dues-paying members in this International, and their avowed object was propaganda against war and in favor of an economic system in which the workers control the industries. It was this group in Italy—particularly in the South—that carried through the project of occupying the estates.

The workers are in control of the whole social fabric in Russia where the revolution has gone the farthest. In Great Britain, where the labor movement is perhaps more conservative than in any of the other countries of Europe, the Government is compelled to deal with a labor movement that is strong enough to consider and to decide important matters of foreign policy. The workers of Italy have the upper hand. In Czecho-Slovakia, in Bulgaria, in Germany and in the smaller and neutral countries the workers are making their voices heard in opposition to any restoration of the capitalist system; while they busy themselves with the task of creating the framework of a new society.

4. The Challenge

This is the challenge of the workers of Europe to the capitalist system. The workers are not satisfied; they are questioning. They mean to have the best that life has to give, and they are convinced that the capitalist system has denied it to them.

The world has had more than a century of capitalism. The workers have had ample opportunity to see the system at work. The people of all the great capitalist countries—the common people—have borne the burdens and felt the crushing weight of capitalism—in its enslavement of little children; in its underpaying of women; in long hours of unremitting, monotonous toil; in the dreadful housing; in the starvation wages; in unemployment; in misery. The capitalist system has had a trial and it is upon the workers that the system has been tried out.

During this experiment, the workers of the world have been compelled to accept poverty, unemployment and war.

These terrible scourges have afflicted the capitalist world, and it is the workers and their families that have borne them in their own persons. In those countries where the capitalist system is the oldest, the workers have suffered the longest. The essence of capitalism is the exploitation of one man by another man, and the longer this exploitation is practiced the more skillful and effective does the master class become in its manipulation.

The workers look before them along the path of capitalist imperialism that is now being followed by the nations that are in the lead of the capitalist world. There they see no promise save the same exploitation, the same poverty, the same inequality and the same wars over the commercial rivalries of the imperial nations.

The workers of Europe have come to the conclusion that the world should belong to those who build it; that the good things of life should be the property of those who produce them. They see only one course open before them—to declare that those who will not work, shall not eat.

The right of self-determination is the international expression of this challenge. The ownership of the job is its industrial equivalent. Together, the two ideas comprise the program of the more advanced workers in all of the great imperial countries of the world. These ideas did not originate in Russia, and they are not confined to Russia any more than capitalism is confined to Great Britain. They are the doctrines of the new order that is coming rapidly into its own.

Capitalism has been summed up, heretofore, in the one word "profit." The capitalist cannot abandon that standard. The world has lived beyond it, however, and without it, capitalism, as a system, is meaningless. If the capitalists abandon profit, they abandon capitalism.

Without profit the capitalist system falls to pieces, because it is the profit incentive that has always been considered as the binder that holds the capitalist world together. Hence the abandonment of the profit incentive is the surrender of the citadel of capitalism. While profit remains, exploitation persists, and while there is exploitation of one man by another, no human being can call himself free.

The capitalists are caught in a beleaguered fortress in which they are defending their economic lives. Profit is the key to this fortress, and if they surrender the key, they are lost.

5. The Real Struggle

This is the real struggle for the possession of the earth. Shall the few own and the many labor for the few, or the many own, and labor upon jobs that they themselves possess? The struggle between the capitalist nations is incidental. The struggle between the owners of the world and the workers of the world is fundamental.

If Great Britain wins in her conflict with the United States, her capitalists will continue to exploit the workers of Lancashire and Delhi. Her imperialists will continue their policy of world domination, subjugating peoples and utilizing their resources and their labor for the enrichment.

If the United States wins in her struggle with Great of the bankers and traders of London. Britain, her capitalists will continue to exploit the workers of Pittsburg and San Juan. Her imperialists will continue their policy of world domination, subjugating the peoples of Latin American first, and then reaching out for the control over other parts of the earth.

No matter what imperial nation may triumph in this struggle between the great nations for the right to exploit the weaker peoples and the choice resources, the struggle between capitalism and Socialism must be fought to a finish. If the capitalists win, the world will see the introduction of a new form of serfdom, more complete and more effective than the serfdom of Feudal Europe. If the Socialists win, the world enters upon a new cycle of development.



XIX. THE AMERICAN WORKER AND WORLD EMPIRE

1. Gains and Losses

The American worker is a citizen of the richest country of the world. Resources are abundant. There is ample machinery to convert these gifts of nature into the things that men need for their food and clothing, their shelter, their education and their recreation. There is enough for all, and to spare, in the United States.

But the American worker is not master of his own destinies. He must go to the owners of American capital—to the plutocrats—and from them he must secure the permission to earn a living; he must get a job. Therefore it is the capitalists and not the workers of the United States that are deciding its public policy at the present moment.

The American capitalist is a member of one of the most powerful exploiting groups in the world. Behind him are the resources, productive machinery and surplus of the American Empire. Before him are the undeveloped resources of the backward countries. He has gained wealth and power by exploitation at home. He is destined to grow still richer and more powerful as he extends his organization for the purposes of exploitation abroad.

The prospects of world empire are as alluring to the American capitalist as have been similar prospects to other exploiting classes throughout history. Empire has always been meat and drink to the rulers.

The master class has much to gain through imperialism. The workers have even more to lose.

The workers make up the great bulk of the American people. Fully seven-eighths (perhaps nine-tenths) of the adult inhabitants of the United States are wage earners, clerks and working farmers. All of the proprietors, officials, managers, directors, merchants (big and little), lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, and the remainder of the business and professional classes constitute not over 10 or 12 percent of the total adult population. The workers are the "plain people" who do not build empires any more than they make wars. If they were left to themselves, they would continue the pursuit of their daily affairs which takes most of their thought and energy—and be content to let their neighbors alone.

2. The Workers' Business

The mere fact that the workers are so busy with the routine of daily life is in itself a guarantee that they will mind their own business. The average worker is engaged, outside of working hours, with the duties of a family. His wife, if she has children, is thus employed for the greater portion of her time. Both are far too preoccupied to interfere with the like acts of other workers in some other portion of the world. Furthermore, their preoccupation with these necessary tasks gives them sympathy with those similarly at work elsewhere.

The plain people of any country are ready to exercise even more than an ordinary amount of forbearance and patience rather than to be involved in warfare, which wipes out in a fortnight the advantages gained through years of patient industry.

The workers have no more to gain from empire building than they have from war making, but they pay the price of both. Empire building and war making are Siamese twins. They are so intimately bound together that they cannot live apart. The empire builder—engaged in conquering and appropriating territory and in subjugating peoples—must have not only the force necessary to set up the empire, but also the force requisite to maintain it. Battleships and army corps are as essential to empires as mortar is to a brick wall. They are the expression of the organized might by which the empire is held together.

The plain people are the bricks which the imperial class uses to build into a wall about the empire. They are the mortar also, for they man the ships and fill up the gaps in the infantry ranks and the losses in the machine gun corps. They are the body of the empire as the rulers are its guiding spirit.

When ships are required to carry the surplus wealth of the ruling class into foreign markets, the workers build them. When surplus is needed to be utilized in taking advantage of some particularly attractive investment opportunity the workers create it. They lay down the keels of the fighting ships, and their sons aim and fire the guns. They are drafted into the army in time of war and their bodies are fed to the cannon which other workers in other countries, or perhaps in the same country, have made for just such purposes. The workers are the warp and woof of empire, yet they are not the gainers by it. Quite the contrary, they are merely the means by which their masters extend their dominion over other workers who have not yet been scientifically exploited.

The work of empire building falls to the lot of the workers. The profits of empire building go to the exploiting class.

3. The British Workers

What advantage came to the workers of Rome from the Empire which their hands shaped and which their blood cemented together? Their masters took their farms, converted the small fields into great, slave-worked estates, and drove the husbandmen into the alleys and tenements of the city where they might eke out an existence as best they could. The rank-and-file Roman derived the same advantage from the Roman Empire that the rank-and-file Briton has derived from the British Empire.

Great Britain has exercised more world mastery during the past hundred years than any other nation. All that Germany hoped to achieve Great Britain has realized. Her traders carry the world's commerce, her financiers clip profits from international business transactions, her manufacturers sell to the people of every country, the sun never sets on the British flag.

Great Britain is the foremost exponent and practitioner of capitalist imperialism. The British Empire is the greatest that the world has known since the Empire of Rome fell to pieces. Whatever benefits modern imperialism brings either for capitalists or for workers should be enjoyed by the capitalists and workers of Great Britain.

Until the Great World War the capitalists of Great Britain were the most powerful on earth with a larger foreign trade and a larger foreign investment than any other. At the same time the British workers were amongst the worst exploited of those in any capitalist country in Europe.

The entire nineteenth century is one long and terrible record of master-class exploitation inside the British Isles. The miseries of modern India have been paralleled in the lives of the workers of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. Gibbins, in his description of the conditions of the child workers in the early years of the nineteenth century ends with the remark, "One dares not trust oneself to try and set down calmly all that might be told of this awful page of the history of industrial England."[58]

Even more revolting are the descriptions of the conditions which surrounded the lives of the mine workers in the early part of the nineteenth century. Women as well as men were taken into the mines and in some cases, as the reports of the Parliamentary investigation show, the women dragged cars through passage-ways that were too low to admit the use of ponies or mules.

England, mistress of the seas, proud carrier of the traffic of the world, the center of international finance, the richest among all the investing nations—England was reeking with poverty. Beside her factories and warehouses were vile slums in which people huddled as Ruskin said, "so many brace to a garret." There in the back alleys of civilization babies were born and babies died, while those who survived grew to the impotent manhood of the street hooligan.

The British Empire girdled the world. For a century its power had grown, practically unchallenged. Superficially it had every appearance of strength and permanence but behind it and beneath it were the hundreds of thousands of exploited factory workers, the underpaid miners, the Cannon Gate of Edinburgh and the Waterloo Junction of London.

Capitalist imperialism has not benefited the British workers. Quite the contrary, the rise of the Empire has been accompanied by the disappearance of the stalwart English yeoman; by the disappearance of the agricultural population; by the concentration of the people in huge industrial towns where the workers, no longer the masters of their own destinies, must earn their living by working at machines owned by the capitalist imperialists. The surplus derived from this exploited labor is utilized by the capitalists as the means of further extending their power in foreign lands.

Imperialism has brought not prosperity, but poverty to the plain people of England.

There is another aspect of the matter. If these degraded conditions attach to the workers in the center of the empire, what must be the situation among the workers in the dependencies that are the objects of imperial exploitation? Let the workers of India answer for Great Britain; the workers of Korea answer for Japan, and the workers of Porto Rico answer for the United States. Their lot is worse than is the lot of the workers at the center of imperial power.

Empires yield profits to the masters and victory and glory to the workers. Let any one who does not believe this compare the lives of the workers in small countries like Holland, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland, with the lives of the workers in the neighboring empires—Russia, Germany, France and Great Britain. The advantage is all on the side of those who live in the smaller countries that are minding their own affairs and letting their neighbors alone.

4. The Long Trail

The workers of the United States are to-day following the lead of the most powerful group of financial imperialists in the world. The trail is a long one leading to world conquest, unimagined dizzying heights of world power, riches beyond the ken of the present generation, and then, the slow and terrible decay and dissolution that sooner or later overtake those peoples that follow the paths of empire. The rulers will wield the power and enjoy the riches. The people will struggle and suffer and pay the price.

The American plutocracy is out to conquer the earth because it is to their interest to do so. The will-o'-the-wisp of world empire has captured their imaginations and they are following it blindly.

The American people, on November 2, 1920, gave the American imperialists a blanket authority to go about their imperial business—an authority that the rulers will not be slow to follow. First they will clean house at home—that housecleaning will be called "the campaign for the establishment of the open shop." Then they will go into Mexico, Central America, China, and Europe in search of markets, trade and investment opportunities.

Behind the investment will come the flag, carried by battle-ships and army divisions. That flag will be brought front to front with other flags, high words will be spoken, blood will flow, life will ebb, and the imperialists will win their point and pocket their profit.

Behind them, in November, and at all other times of the year, there will be the will, expressed or implied, of the working people of the United States, who will produce the surplus for foreign investment; will make the ships and man them; will dig the coal and bore for the oil; will shape the machines. Their hands and the hands of their sons will be the force upon which the ruling class must depend for its power. They will produce, while the ruling class consumes and destroys.

The trail is a long one, but it leads none the less certainly to, isolation and death. No people can follow the imperial trail and live. Their liberties go first and then their lives pay the penalty of their rulers' imperial ambition. It was so in the German Empire. It is so to-day in the British Empire. To-morrow, if the present course is followed, it will be equally true in the American Empire.

5. The New Germany

One of the chief charges against the Germans, in 1914, was that they were not willing to leave their neighbors in peace. They were out to conquer the world, and they did not care who knew it. It was not the German people who held these plans for world conquest, it was the German ruling class. The German people were quite willing to stay at home and attend to their own affairs. Their rulers, pushed by the need for markets and investment opportunities, and lured by the possibilities of a world empire, were willing to stake the lives and the happiness of the whole nation on the outcome of these ambitious schemes. They threw their dice in the great world game of international rivalries—threw and lost; but in their losing, they carried not only their own fortunes, but the lives and the homes and the happiness of millions of their fellows whose only desire was to remain at home and at peace.

Germany's offense was her ambition to gain at the expense of her neighbors. Lacking a place in the sun, she proposed to take it by the strength of her good right arm. This is the method by which all of the great empires have been built and it is the method that the builders of the American Empire have followed up to this point. The land which the ruling class of the United States has needed has heretofore been in the hands of weak peoples—Indians, Mexicans, a broken Spanish Empire. Now, however, the time has come when the rulers of the United States, with the greatest wealth and the greatest available resources of any of the nations, are preparing to take what they want from the great nations, and that imperial purpose can be enforced in only one way—by a resort to arms. The rulers of the United States must take what they would have by force, from those who now possess it. They did not hesitate to take Panama from Colombia; they did not hesitate to take possession of Hayti and of Santo Domingo, and they do not propose to stop there.

The people of the world know these things. The inhabitants of Latin America know them by bitter experience. The inhabitants of Europe and of Asia know them by hearsay. Both in the West and in the East, the United States is known as "The New Germany."

That means that the peoples of these countries look upon the United States and her foreign policies in exactly the same way that the people of the United States were taught to regard Germany and her foreign policies. To them the United States is a great, rich, brutal Empire, setting her heel and laying her fist where necessity calls. Men and women inside the United States think of themselves and of their fellow citizens as human beings. The people in the other countries read the records of the lynchings, the robberies and the murders inside the United States; of the imperial aggression toward Latin America, and they are learning to believe that the United States is made up of ruthless conquerors who work their will on those that cross their path.

The plain American men and women, living quietly in their simple homes, are none the less citizens of an aggressive, conquering Empire. They may not have a thought directed against the well-being of a single human creature, but they pay their taxes into the public treasury; they vote for imperialism on each election day; they read imperialism in their papers and hear it preached in their churches, and when the call comes, their sons will go to the front and shed their blood in the interest of the imperial class.

The plain people of the German Empire did not desire to harm their fellows, nevertheless, they furnished the cannon-fodder for the Great War. America's plain folks, by merely following the doctrine, "My country, right or wrong—America first!" will find themselves, at no very distant date, exactly where the German people found themselves in 1914.

6. The Price

The historic record, in the matter of empire, is uniform. The masters gain; the workers pay.

The workers of the United States will not be exempt from these inexorable necessities of imperialism. On the contrary they will be called upon to pay the same price for empire that the workers in Britain have paid; that the workers in the other empires have paid. What is the price? What will world empire cost the American workers?

1. It will cost them their liberties. An empire cannot be run by a debating society. Empires must act. In order to make this action mobile and efficacious, authority must be centered in the hands of a small group—the ruling class, whose will shall determine imperial policy. Self-government is inconsistent with imperialism.

2. The workers will not only lose their own liberties, but they will be compelled to take liberties away from the peoples that are brought under the domination of the Empire. Self-determination is the direct opposite of imperialism.

3. The American workers, as a part of the price of empire, will be compelled to produce surplus wealth—wealth which they can never consume; wealth the control of which passes into the hands of the imperial ruling class, to be invested by them in the organization of the Empire and the exploitation of the resources and other economic opportunities of the dependent territory.

4. The American workers must be prepared to create and maintain an imperial class, whose function it is to determine the policies and direct the activities of the Empire. This class owes its existence to the existence of empire, without which such a ruling class would be wholly unnecessary.

5. The American workers must be prepared, in peace time as well as in war time, to provide the "sinews of war": the fortifications, the battle fleet, the standing army and the vast naval and military equipment that invariably accompany empire.

6. The American workers must furthermore be ready, at a moment's call, to turn from their occupations, drop their useful pursuits, accept service in the army or in the navy and fight for the preservation of the Empire—against those who attack from without, against those who seek the right of self-determination within.

7. The American workers, in return for these sacrifices, must be prepared to accept the poverty of a subsistence wage; to give the best of their energies in war and in peace, and to stand aside while the imperial class enjoys the fat of the land.

7. A Way Out

If the United States follows the course of empire, the workers of the United States have no choice but to pay the price of Empire—pay it in wealth, in misery, and in blood. But there is an alternative. Instead of going on with the old system of the masters, the workers may establish a new economic system—a system belonging to the workers, and managed by them for their benefit.

The workers of Europe have tried out imperialism and they have come to the conclusion that the cost is too high. Now they are seeking, through their own movement—the labor movement—to control and direct the economic life of Europe in the interest of those who produce the wealth and thus make the economic life of Europe possible.

The American workers have the same opportunity. Will they avail themselves of it? The choice is in their hands.

Thus far the workers of the United States have been, for the most part, content to live under the old system, so long as it paid them a living wage and offered them a job. The European workers felt that too in the pre-war days, but they have been compelled—by the terrible experiences of the past few years—to change their minds. It was no longer a question of wages or a job in Europe. It was a question of life or death.

Can the American worker profit by that experience? Can he realize that he is living in a country whose rulers have adopted an imperial policy that threatens the peace of the world? Can he see that the pursuit of this policy means war, famine, disease, misery and death to millions in other countries as well as to the millions at home? The workers of Europe have learned the lesson by bitter experience. Is not the American worker wise enough to profit by their example?

FOOTNOTE:

[58] "Industry in England," H. deB. Gibbins. New York, Scribner's, 1897, p. 390.

THE END



INDEX.

Advertising imperialism, 169

America, conquest of, 27

America first, 170

America for Americans, 202

American capitalists, 218 " " program of, 226 " empire, costs of, 160 " " course of, 158 " " development of, 15 " " economic basis of, 74 " " growth of, 161 " imperialism, 23 " Indian, 29 " industries, growth of, 178 " people, ancestry, 159 " protectorates, 207 " Republic, disappearance of, 72 " tradition, failure of, 12 " worker and empire, 256

Anti-imperialism, 68

Appropriation of territory, 213

Automobile distribution, 183

Bankers, unity of, 150

Bethlehem Steel Co., 132

British Empire, gains of, 198 " " position of, 234 " Labor, position of, 250

Business control, 148

Canada, investments in, 206

Capitalism and Bolshevism, 244 " " war, 225 " breakdown of, 248 " law of, 223

Cherokees, dealings with, 33

Class government, 10 " struggle, in Europe, 254

Coal reserves, 180

Cohesion of wealth, 86, 118

Competition, ferocity of, 223

Competitive industry, 75

Conquering peoples, 26

Conquest of the West, 49

Council of Action, organization, 250 " " National Defense, 148

Cuban independence, 66 " treaty, 208

Dictatorship, possibility of, 222

Dominican Republic, relations with, 209

Education for imperialism, 169

Empire and British workers, 258 " characteristics of, 15 " definition of, 16 " evolution of, 22 " prevalence of, 17 " price of, 20, 264 " stages in, 19 " workers and, 262

Empires, the Big Four, 231

Europe, financial breakdown, 249 " revolution in, 246

Financial imperialism, 135

Foreign investments, 131

France, gains of, 197

Government and business, 99

Great Peace, 36

Great War, 143 " " advantages of, to the United States, 157 " " next incidents of, 235 " " results of, 240

Guaranty Trust Company, 136

Hawaii, annexation of, 62 " revolution in, 63

Hayti, conditions in, 210

Immigrants, race of, 160

Imperial alignment, 229 " goal, 222 " purpose, 165 " sentiments, 166 " task, 237 " " nature of, 228

Imperialism, advantages of, 256 " beginnings of, 65 " challenge to, 243 " cost of, 261 " establishment of, 72 " failure of, 243 " psychology of, 170

Imperialists, training of, 219

Incomes, in the United States, 115

Industrial combination, 81 " organization, 78 " revolution, 76

International exploitation, 128 " finance, 135 " Harvester Co., 133

Investing nations, 127

Investment bankers, 86

Investments in the United States, 130

Italy, gains of, 197

Job ownership, 94

Labor, colonial shortage of, 38

Landlordism, 105

Land ownership, 103 " policy, 104

Latin America, 203

Liberty, desire for, 8

Manifest destiny, 171

Mastery, avenues of, 92

Mexican War, provocation of, 55 " " success of, 56

Mexico, conquest of, 54

Monroe Doctrine, 202 " " logic of, 207

National City Bank, 138

Navy League, 146

Negro civilization, in Africa, 40 " slaves, values of, 47

Negroes, numbers enslaved, 43

New Europe, 246

Next War, contestants in, 236 " " preparations for, 241 " " pretexts for, 238

New Orleans, struggle for, 50

Ownership, advantages of, 114

Panama, relations with, 213 " revolution in, 215 " seizure of, 214

Patriotism, 147

Peace Treaty, provisions of, 224 " " results of, 194

Personal incomes, sources of, 116

Philippines, conquest of, 69

Plutocracy, 117 " control of, 148 " dictatorship of, 92 " domestic power of, 153 " economic gains of, 151 " growing power of, 143

Popular government, 9

Population, increase of, 50

Preparedness, 145

Press censorship, 210

Product ownership, 96

Profiteering, 151

Property, Indian ideas of, 30 " ownership, security of, 107 " rights, and civilization, 113 " rights of, 103 " safeguards to, 108

Public opinion, control of, 98

Resources of the United States, 179

Revolution in Europe, 246

Russia, Allied attack on, 245 " world position of, 231

Slave Coast, 39 " power, defeat of, 61 " trade, America's part in, 44 " " beginnings of, 39 " " conditions of, 43 " " development of, 42

Slavery, and expansion, 60 " beginnings of, 39 " in the United States, 45

Slaves, early demand for, 41

Southwest, conquest of, 51, 57

Sovereignty, source of, 11

Spanish War, 65

Standard Oil Co., 134

Surplus, disposal of, 123 " pressure of, 121

Teutonic peoples, 26

Texas, annexation of, 52

Timber reserves, 180

Transportation facilities, 183

Undeveloped countries, 124

United States, capital of, 181 " " financial power of, 154 " " past isolation, 192 " " position of, 221 " " products of, 184 " " resources of, 179 " " shipping, 188 " " wealth and income, 189 " " world attitude to, 263 " " world power of, 177

Wealth and income, 189 " of the United States, 89 " ownership, 90

Western Hemisphere, and the United States, 200

World conquest, 218

Workers' business, 257

Yellow peril, 232

THE END