The American Empire

E-text prepared by Peter Vachuska, Martin Pettit, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

The American Empire

by

Scott Nearing

Author of "Wages in the United States" "Income" "Financing the Wage-Earner's Family" "Anthracite" "Poverty and Riches," etc.

New York The Rand School of Social Science 7 East 15th Street 1921

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1921, by the Rand School of Social Science

First Edition, January, 1921 Second Edition, February, 1921

Contents

Part I

What Is America?

Chapter Page

I The Promise of 1776 7

II The Course of Empire 14

Part II

The Foundations Of Empire.

A. The Conquest Of America.

III Subjugating the Indians 26

IV Slavery for a Race 38

V Winning the West 49

VI The Beginnings of World Dominion 60

B. Plutocracy.

VII The Struggle for Wealth and Power 74

VIII Their United States 88

IX The Divine Right of Property 103

Part III

Manifest Destiny.

X Industrial Empires 120

XI The Great War 143

XII The Imperial Highroad 158

Part IV

The United States--A World Empire.

XIII The United States as a World Competitor 177

XIV The Partition of the Earth 192

XV Pan-Americanism 202

XVI The American Capitalist and World Empire 218

Part V

The Challenge To Imperialism.

XVII The New Imperial Alignment 229

XVIII The Challenge in Europe 243

XIX The American Worker and World Empire 256

The American Empire

I. The Promise Of 1776

1. _The American Republic_

The genius of revolution presided at the birth of the American Republic, whose first breath was drawn amid the economic, social and political turmoil of the eighteenth century. The voyaging and discovering of the three preceding centuries had destroyed European isolation and laid the foundation for a new world order of society. The Industrial Revolution was convulsing England and threatening to destroy the Feudal State. Western civilization, in the birthpangs of social revolution, produced first the American and then the French Republic.

Feudalism was dying! Divine right, monarchy, aristocracy, oppression, despotism, tyranny--these and all other devils of the old world order were bound for the limbo which awaits outworn, discredited social institutions. The Declaration of Independence officially proclaimed the new order,--challenging "divine right" and maintaining that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Life, liberty and happiness were the heritage of the human race, and "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Thus the rights of the people were declared superior to the privileges of the rulers; revolution was justified; and the principles of eighteenth century individualism were made the foundation of the new political state. Aristocracy was swept aside and in its stead democracy was enthroned.

2. _The Yearning for Liberty_

The nineteenth century re-echoed with the language of social idealism. Traditional bonds were breaking; men's minds were freed; their imaginations were kindled; their spirits were possessed by a gnawing hunger for justice and truth.

Revolting millions shouted: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" Sages mused; philosophers analyzed; prophets exhorted; statesmen organized toward this end.

Men felt the fire of the new order burning in their vitals. It purged them. They looked into the eyes of their fellows and saw its reflection. Dreaming of liberty as a maiden dreams of her lover, humanity awoke suddenly, to find liberty on the threshold.

Through the ages mankind has sought truth and justice. Vested interests have intervened. The powers of the established order have resisted, but the search has continued. That eternal vigilance and eternal sacrifice which are the price of liberty, are found wherever human society has left a record. At one point the forces of light seem to be winning. At another, liberty and truth are being ruthlessly crushed by the privileged masters of life. The struggle goes on--eternally.

Liberty and justice are ideals that exist in the human heart, but they are none the less real. Indeed, they are in a sense more potent, lying thus in immortal embryo, than they could be as tangible institutions. Institutions are brought into being, perfected, kept past their time of highest usefulness and finally discarded. The hopes of men spring eternally, spontaneously. They are the true social immortality.

3. _Government of the People_

Feudalism as a means of organizing society had failed. The newly declared liberties were confided to the newly created state. It was political democracy upon which the founders of the Republic depended to make good the promise of 1776.

The American colonists had fled to escape economic, political and religious tyranny in the mother countries. They had drunk the cup of its bitterness in the long contest with England over the rights of taxation, of commerce, of manufacture, and of local political control. They had their fill of a mastery built upon the special privilege of an aristocratic minority. It was liberty and justice they sought and democracy was the instrument that they selected to emancipate themselves from the old forms of privilege and to give to all an equal opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Political democracy was to place the management of community business in the hands of the people--to give them liberty in the control of public affairs. The highest interest of democracy was to be the interest of the people. There could be no higher interest because the people were supreme. The people were to select the public servants; direct their activities; determine public policy; prescribe the law; demand its enforcement; and if need be assert their superior authority over any part of the government, not excepting the constitution.[1]

Democracy, in politics, was based on the idea that public affairs could best be run by the public voice. However expert may be the hand that administers the laws, the hand and the heart that renders the final decision in large questions must belong to the public.[2]

The people who laid the foundations for democracy in France and the United States feared tyranny. They and their ancestors had been, for centuries, the victims of governmental despotism. They were on their guard constantly against governmental aggression in any form. And they, therefore, placed the strictest limitations upon the powers that governments should enjoy.

Special privilege government was run by a special class,--the hereditary aristocracy--in the interest and for the profit of that class. They held the wealth of the nation--the land--and lived comfortably upon its produce. They never worked--no gentleman could work and remain a gentleman. They carried on the affairs of the court--sometimes well, sometimes badly; maintained an extravagant scale of social life; built up a vicious system of secret international diplomacy; commanded in time of war, and at all times; levied rents and taxes which went very largely to increase their own comfort and better their own position in life. The machinery of government and the profits from government remained in the hands of this one class.

Class government from its very nature could not be other than oppressive. "All hereditary government over a people is to them a species of slavery and representative government is freedom." "All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.... To inherit a government is to inherit the people as if they were flocks and herds."[3]

4. _The Source of Authority_

The people were to be the source of authority in the new state. The citizen was to have a voice because he was an adult, capable of rendering judgment in the selection of public servants and in the determination of public policy.

All through history there had been men into whose hands supreme power had been committed, who had carried this authority with an astounding degree of wisdom and integrity. For every one who had comported himself with such wisdom in the presence of supreme authority, there were a score, or more likely a hundred, who had used this power stupidly, foolishly, inefficiently, brutally or viciously.

Few men are good enough or wise enough to keep their heads while they hold in their hands unlimited authority over their fellows. The pages of human experience were written full of the errors, failures, and abuses of which such men so often have been guilty.

The new society, in an effort to prevent just such transgressions of social well being, placed the final power to decide public questions in the hands of the people. It was not contended, or even hoped that the people would make no mistakes, but that the people would make fewer mistakes and mistakes less destructive of public well-being than had been made under class government. At least this much was gained, that the one who abused power must first secure it from those whom he proposed to abuse, and must later exercise it unrestrained to the detriment of those from whom the power was derived and in whom it still resided.

The citizen was to be the source of authority. His word, combined with that of the majority of his fellows, was final. He delegated authority. He assented to laws which were administered over all men, including himself. He accepts the authority of which he was the source.

5. _The American Tradition_

This was the American tradition. This was the language of the new, free world. Life, liberty and happiness; popular sovereignty; equal opportunity. This, to the people of the old countries was the meaning of America. This was the promise of 1776.

When President Wilson went to Europe, speaking the language of liberty that is taught in every American schoolroom, the plain people turned to him with supreme confidence. To them he was the embodiment of the spirit of the West.

Native-born Americans hold the same idea. To them the Declaration of Independence was a final break with the old order of monarchical, imperial Europe. It was the charter of popular rights and human liberties, establishing once for all the principles of self-government and equal opportunity.

The Statue of Liberty, guarding the great port of entrance to America, symbolizes the spirit in which foreigners and natives alike think of her--as the champion of the weak and the oppressed; the guardian of justice; the standard-bearer of freedom.

This spirit of America is treasured to-day in the hearts of millions of her citizens. To the masses of the American people America stands to-day as she always stood. They believe in her freedom; they boast of her liberties; they have faith in her great destiny as the leader of an emancipated world. They respond, as did their ancestors, to the great truths of liberty, equality, and fraternity that inspired the eighteenth century.

The tradition of America is a hope, a faith, a conviction, a burning endeavor, centering in an ideal of liberty and justice for the human race.

Patrick Henry voiced this ideal when, a passionate appeal for freedom being interrupted by cries of "Treason, treason!" he faced the objector with the declaration, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

Eighteenth century Europe, struggling against religious and political tyranny, looked to America as the land of Freedom. America to them meant liberty. "What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude," wrote Tom Paine. "The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration, the model of the present." ("The Rights of Man," Part II, Chapter 3.) The promise of 1776 was voiced by men who felt a consuming passion for freedom; a divine discontent with anything less than the highest possible justice; a hatred of tyranny, oppression and every form of special privilege and vested wrong. They yearned over the future and hoped grandly for the human race.

Footnotes:

[1] "It is, Sir, the people's constitution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people."--Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne, 1830. "Speeches and Orations." E. P. Whipple, Boston, Little, Brown and Co., p. 257.

[2] Tom Paine held ardently to this doctrine, "It is always the interest of a far greater number of people in a Nation to have things right than to let them remain wrong; and when public matters are open to debate, and the public judgment free, it will not decide wrong unless it decides too hastily!" "Rights of Man," Part II, Ch. 4.

[3] "Rights of Man," Thomas Paine. Part II, Chapter 3.

II. The Course Of Empire

1. _Promise and Fulfillment_

A vast gulf yawns between the inspiring promise that a handful of men and women made to the world in 1776, and the fulfillment of that promise that is embodied in twentieth century American life. The pre-war indifference to the loss of liberty; the gradual encroachments on the rights of free speech, and free assemblage and of free press; the war-time suppressions, tyrannies, and denials of justice; the subsequent activities of city, state, and national legislatures and executives in passing and enforcing laws that provided for military training in violation of conscience, the denial of freedom of belief, of thought, of speech, of press and of assemblage,--activities directed specifically to the negation of those very principles of liberty which have constituted so intimate a part of the American tradition of freedom,--form a contrast between the promise of 1776 and the twentieth century fulfillment of that promise which is brutal in its terrible intensity.

Many thoughtful Americans have been baffled by this conflict between the aims of the eighteenth century and the accomplishments of the twentieth. The facts they admit. For explanation, either they may say, "It was the war," implying that with the cessation of hostilities and the return to a peace basis, the situation has undergone a radical change; or else they blame some individual or some organization for the extinction of American liberties.

Great consequences arise from great causes. A general break-down of liberties cannot be attributed to individual caprice nor to a particular legislative or judicial act.

The denial of liberty in the United States is a matter of large import. No mayor, governor, president, legislature, court, magnate, banker, corporation or trust, and no combination of these individuals and organizations could arbitrarily destroy the American Republic. Underneath personality and partisanship are working the forces which have stripped the American people of their essential liberties as the April sun strips the mountains of their snow.

No one can read the history of the United States since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence without being struck by the complete transformation in the forms of American life. The Industrial Revolution which had gripped England for half a century, made itself felt in the United States after 1815. Steam, transportation, industrial development, city life, business organization, expansion across the continent--these are the factors that have made of the United States a nation utterly apart from the nation of which those who signed the Declaration of Independence and fought the Revolution dreamed.

These economic changes have brought political changes. The American Republic has been thrust aside. Above its remains towers a mighty imperial structure,--the world of business,--bulwarked by usage and convention; safeguarded by legislation, judicial interpretation, and the whole power of organized society. That structure is the American Empire--as real to-day as the Roman Empire in the days of Julius Caesar; the French Empire under the Little Corporal, or the British Empire of the Great Commoner, William E. Gladstone.

Approved or disapproved; exalted or condemned; the fact of empire must be evident even to the hasty observer. The student, tracing its ramifications, realizes that the structure has been building for generations.

2. _The Characteristics of Empire_

Many minds will refuse to accept the term "empire" as applied to a republic. Accustomed to link "empire" with "emperor," they conceive of a supreme hereditary ruler as an essential part of imperial life. A little reflection will show the inadequacy of such a concept. "The British Empire" is an official term, used by the British Government, although Great Britain is a limited monarchy, whose king has less power than the President of the United States. On the other hand, eastern potentates, who exercise absolute sway over their tiny dominions do not rule "empires."

Recent usage has given the term "empire" a very definite meaning, which refers, not to an "emperor" but to certain relations between the parts of a political or even of an economic organization. The earlier uses of the word "empire" were, of course, largely political. Even in that political sense, however, an "empire" does not necessarily imply the domain of an "emperor."

According to the definition appearing in the "New English Dictionary" wherever "supreme and extensive political dominion" is exercised "by a sovereign state over its dependencies" an empire exists. The empire is "an aggregation of subject territories ruled over by a sovereign state." The terms of the definition are political, but it leaves the emperor entirely out of account and makes an empire primarily a matter of organization and not of personality.

During the last fifty years colonialism, the search for foreign markets, and the competition for the control of "undeveloped" countries has brought the words "empire" and "imperialism" into a new category, where they relate, not to the ruler--be he King or Emperor--but to the extension of commercial and economic interests. The "financial imperialism" of F. C. Howe and the "imperialism" of J. A. Hobson are primarily economic and only incidentally political.

"Empire" conveys the idea of widespread authority, dominion, rule, subjugation. Formerly it referred to political power; to-day it refers to economic power. In either case the characteristics of empire are,--

1. Conquered territory.

2. Subject peoples.

3. An imperial or ruling class.

4. The exploitation of the subject peoples and the conquered territory for the benefit of the ruling class.

Wherever these four characteristics of imperial organization exist, there is an empire, in all of its essential features. They are the acid-test, by which the presence of empire may be determined.

Names count for nothing. Rome was an empire, while she still called herself a republic. Napoleon carried on his imperial activities for years under the authority of Republican France. The existence of an empire depends, not upon the presence of an "emperor" but upon the presence of those facts which constitute Empire,--conquered territory; subject peoples; an imperial class; exploitation by and for this class. If these facts exist in Russia, Russia is an empire; if they are found in Germany, Germany is an empire; if they appear in the United States, the United States is an empire none the less surely,--traditions, aspirations and public conviction to the contrary notwithstanding.

3. _The Preservation of Empire_

The first business of an imperial class is the preservation of the empire to which it owes its advantages and privileges. Therefore, in its very essence, imperialism is opposed to popular government. "The greatest good to the greatest number" is the ideal that directs the life of a self-governing community. "The safety and happiness of the ruling class" is the first principle of imperial organization.

Imperialism is so generally recognized and so widely accepted as a mortal foe of popular government that the members of an imperial class, just rising into power, are always careful to keep the masses of the people ignorant of the true course of events. This necessity explains the long period, in the history of many great empires, when the name and forms of democracy were preserved, after the imperial structure had been established on solid foundations. Slow changes, carefully directed and well disguised, are necessary to prevent outraged peoples from rising against an imperial order when they discover how they have been sold into slavery. Even with all of the safeguards, under the control of the ablest statesmen, Caesar frequently meets his Brutus.

The love of justice; the yearning for liberty; the sense of fair play; the desire to extend opportunity, all operate powerfully upon those to whom the principles of self-government are dearest, leading them to sacrifice position, economic advantage, and sometimes life itself for the sake of the principles to which they have pledged their faith.

Therein lies what is perhaps one of the most essential differences between popular government and empire. The former rests upon certain ideas of popular rights and liberties. The latter is a weapon of exploitation in the hands of the ruling class. Popular government lies in the hopes and beliefs of the people. Empire is the servant of ambition and the shadow of greed. Popular government has been evolved by the human race at an immense sacrifice during centuries of struggle against the forms and ideas that underly imperialism. Since men have set their backs on the past and turned their faces with resolute hope to the future, empire has repelled them, while democracy has called and beckoned.

Empires have been made possible by "bread and circuses"; by appealing to an abnormally developed sense of patriotism; by the rule of might where largess and cajolery have failed. Rome, Germany and Britain are excellent examples of these three methods. In each case, millions of citizens have had faith in the empire, believing in its promise of glory and of victory; but on the other hand, this belief could be maintained only by a continuous propaganda--triumphs in Rome, school-books and "boilerplate" in Germany and England. Even then, the imperial class is none too secure in its privileges. Always from the abysses of popular discontent, there arises some Spartacus, some Liebknecht, some Smillie, crying that "the future belongs to the people."

The imperial class, its privileges unceasingly threatened by the popular love of freedom--devotes not a little attention to the problem of "preserving law and order" by suppressing those who speak in the name of liberty, and by carrying on a generous advertising campaign, the object of which is to persuade the people of the advantages which they derive from imperial rule.

During the earlier stages in the development of empire, the imperial class is able to keep itself and its designs in the background. As time passes, however, the power of the imperialist becomes more and more evident, until some great crisis forces the empire builders to step out into the open. They then appear as the frank apologists, spokesmen and defenders of the order for which they have so faithfully labored and from which they expect to gain so much.

Finally, the ambition of some aggressive leader among the imperialists, or a crisis in the affairs of the empire leads to the next step--the appointment of a "dictator," "supreme ruler" or "emperor." This is the last act of the imperial drama. Henceforth, the imperial class divides its attention between,--

1. The suppression of agitation and revolt among the people at home;

2. Maintaining the imperial sway over conquered territory;

3. Extending the boundaries of the empire and

4. The unending struggle between contending factions of the ruling class for the right to carry on the work of exploitation at home and abroad.

4. _The Price of Empire_

Since the imperial or ruling class is willing to go to any lengths in order to preserve the empire upon which its privileges depend, it follows that the price of empire must be reckoned in the losses that the masses of the people suffer while safeguarding the privileges of the few.

As a matter of course, conquered and dependent people pay with their liberty for their incorporation into the empire that holds dominion over them. On any other basis, empire is unthinkable. Indeed the terms "dependencies," "domination," and "subject" carry with them only one possible implication--the subordination or extinction of the liberties of the peoples in question.

The imperial class--a minority--depends for its continued supremacy upon the ownership of some form of property, whether this property be slaves, or land, or industrial capital. As Veblen puts it: "The emergence of the leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership." ("Theory of the Leisure Class," T. Veblen, New York. B. W. Huebsch, 1899, p. 22.) Necessarily, therefore, the imperial class will sacrifice the so-called human or personal rights of the home population to the protection of its property rights. Indeed the property rights come to be regarded as the essential human rights, although there is but a small minority of the community that can boast of the possession of property.

The superiority of ruling class property rights over the personal rights and liberties of the inhabitants in a subject territory is taken as a matter of course. Even in the home country, where the issue is clearly made, the imperial class will sacrifice the happiness, the health, the longevity, and the lives of the propertyless class in the interest of "law and order" and "the protection of property." The stories of the Roman populace; of the French peasants under Louis XIV; of the English factory workers (men, women and children) during the past hundred years, and of the low skilled workers in the United States since the Civil War, furnish ample proof of the correctness of this contention. The life, liberty and happiness of the individual citizen is a matter of small importance so long as the empire is saved.

A crisis in imperial affairs is always regarded, by the ruling class, as a legitimate reason for curtailing the rights of the people. Under ordinary circumstances, the imperial class will gain rather than lose from the exercise of "popular liberties." Indeed, the exercise of these liberties is of the greatest assistance in convincing the people that they are enjoying freedom and thus keeping them satisfied with their lot. But in a period of turmoil, with men's hearts stirred, and their souls aflamed with conviction and idealism, there is always danger that the people may exercise their "unalienable right" to "alter or abolish" their form of government. Consequently, during a crisis, the imperial class takes temporary charge of popular liberties. Every great empire engaged in the recent war passed through such an experience. In each country the ruling class announced that the war was a matter of life and death. Papers were suppressed or censored; free speech was denied; men were conscripted against will and conscience; constitutions were thrust aside; laws "slumbered"; writers and thinkers were jailed for their opinions; food was rationed; industries were controlled--all in the interest of "winning the war." After the war was won, the victors practiced an even more rigorous suppression while they were "making the peace." Then followed months and years of protests and demands, until, one by one, the liberties were retaken by the people or else the war-tyranny, once firmly established, became a part of "the heritage of empire." In such cases, where liberties were not regained, the plain people learned to do without them.

Liberty is the price of empire. Imperialism presupposes that the people will be willing, at any time, to surrender their "rights" at the call of the rulers.

5. _The Universality of Empire_

Imperialism is not new, nor is it confined to one nation or to one race. On the contrary it is as old as history and as wide as the world.

Before Rome, there was Carthage. Before Carthage, there were Greece, Macedonia, Egypt, Assyria, China. Where history has a record, it is a record of empire.

During modern times, international affairs have been dominated by empires. The great war was a war between empires. During the first three years, the two chief contestants were the British Empire on the one hand and the German Empire on the other. Behind these leaders were the Russian Empire, the Italian Empire, the French Empire, and the Japanese Empire.

The Peace of Versailles was a peace between empires. Five empires dominated the peace table--Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States. The avowedly anti-imperial nations of Europe--Russia and Hungary--were not only excluded from the deliberations of the Peace Table, but were made the object of constant diplomatic, military and economic aggression by the leading imperialist nations.

6. _The Evolution of Empire_

Empires do not spring, full grown, from the surroundings of some great historic crisis. Rather they, like all other social institutions, are the result of a long series of changes that lead by degrees from the pre-imperial to the imperial stage. Many of the great empires of the past two thousand years have begun as republics, or, as they are sometimes called, "democracies," and the processes of transformation from the republican to the imperial stage have been so gradual that the great mass of the people were not aware that any change had occurred until the emperor ascended the throne.

The development of empire is of necessity a slow process. There are the dependent people to be subjected; the territory to conquered; the imperial class to be built up. This last process takes, perhaps, more time than either of the other two. Class consciousness is not created in a day. It requires long experience with the exercise of imperial power before the time has come to proclaim an emperor, and forcibly to take possession of the machinery of public affairs.

7. _The United States and the Stages of Empire_

Any one who is familiar with its history will realize at once that the United States is passing through some of the more advanced stages in the development of empire. The name "Republic" still remains; the traditions of the Republic are cherished by millions; the republican forms are almost intact, but the relations of the United States to its conquered territory and its subject peoples; the rapid maturation of the plutocracy as a governing class or caste; the shamelessness of the exploitation in which the rulers have indulged; and the character of the forces that are now shaping public policy, proclaim to all the world the fact of empire.

The chief characteristics of empire exist in the United States. Here are conquered territory; subject peoples; an imperial, ruling class, and the exploitation by that class of the people at home and abroad. During generations the processes of empire have been working, unobserved, in the United States. Through more than two centuries the American people have been busily laying the foundations and erecting the imperial structure. For the most part, they have been unconscious of the work that they were doing, as the dock laborer, is ordinarily unconscious of his part in the mechanism of industry. Consciously or unconsciously, the American people have reared the imperial structure, until it stands, to-day, imposing in its grandeur, upon the spot where many of the founders of the American government hoped to see a republic.

The entrance of the United States into the war did not greatly alter the character of the forces at work, nor did it in any large degree change the direction in which the country was moving. Rather, it brought to the surface of public attention factors of American life that had been evolving unnoticed, for generations.

The world situation created by the war compelled the American imperial class to come out in the open and to occupy a position that, while wholly inconsistent with the traditions of American life, is nevertheless in keeping with the demands of imperial necessity. The ruling class in the United States has taken a logical step and has made a logical stand. The masters of American life have done the only thing that they could do in the interests of the imperial forces that they represent. They are the victims, as much as were the Kaiser and the Czar on the one hand, and the Belgians and the Serbs on the other, of that imperial necessity that knows no law save the preservation of its own most sacred interests.

Certain liberal American thinkers have taken the stand that the incidents of 1917-1918 were the result of the failure of the President, and of certain of his advisers, to follow the theories which he had enunciated, and to stand by the cause that he had espoused. These critics overlook the incidental character of the war as a factor in American domestic policy. The war never assumed anything like the importance in the United States that it did among the European belligerents. On the surface, it created a furore, but underneath the big fact staring the administration in the face was the united front of the business interests, and their organized demands for action. The far-seeing among the business men realized that the plutocratic structure the world over was in peril, and that the fate of the whole imperial regime was involved in the European struggle. The Russian Revolution of March 1917 was the last straw. From that time on the entrance of the United States into the war became a certainty as the only means of "saving (capitalist) civilization."

The thoughtful student of the situation in the United States is not deceived by personalities and names. He realizes that the events of 1917-1918 have behind them generations of causes which lead logically to just such results; that he is witnessing one phase of a great process in the life of the American nation--a process that is old in its principles yet ever new in its manifestations.

Traditional liberties have always given way before imperial necessity. An examination of the situation in which the ruling class of the United States found itself in 1917, and of the forces that were operating to determine public policy, must convince even the enthusiast that the occurrences of 1917 and the succeeding years were the logical outcome of imperial necessity. To what extent that explanation will account for the discrepancy between the promise of 1776 and the twentieth century fulfillment of that promise must appear from a further examination of the evidence.

III. Subjugating The Indians

1. _The Conquering Peoples_

The first step in the establishment of empire--the conquest of territory and the subjugation of the conquered populations,--was taken by the people of the United States at the time of their earliest settlements. They took the step naturally, unaffectedly, as became the sons of their fathers.

The Spanish, French, and English who made the first settlement in North America were direct descendants of the tribes that have swept across Europe and portions of Asia during the past three or four thousand years. These tribes, grouped on the basis of similarity in language under the general term "Aryan," hold a record of conquest that fills the pages of written history.

Hunger; the pressure of surplus population; the inrush of new hordes of invaders, drove them on. Ambition; the love of adventure; the lure of new opportunities in new lands, called them further. Meliorism,--the desire to better the conditions of life for themselves and for their children--animated them. In later years the necessity of disposing of surplus wealth impelled them. Driven, lured, coerced, these Aryan tribes have inundated the earth. Passing beyond the boundaries of Europe, they have crossed the seas into Africa, Asia, America and Australia.

Among the Aryans, after bitter strife, the Teutons have attained supremacy. The "Teutonic Peoples" are "the English speaking inhabitants of the British Isles, the German speaking inhabitants of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, the Flemish speaking inhabitants of Belgium, the Scandinavian inhabitants of Sweden and Norway and practically all of the inhabitants of Holland and Denmark." ("Encyclopedia Britannica.")

This Teutonic domination has been established only by the bitterest of struggles. During the time when North America was being settled, the English dispossessed first the Spanish and later the French. Since the Battle of Waterloo--won by English and German troops; and the Crimean War--won by British against Russian troops--the Teutonic power has gone unchallenged and so it remains to-day.

The dominant power in the United States for nearly two centuries has been the English speaking power. Thus the Americans draw their inspiration, not only from the Aryan, but from the English speaking Teutons--the most aggressive and dominating group among the Aryans.

Three hundred years ago the title to North America was claimed by Spain, France and Great Britain. The land itself was almost entirely in the hands of Indian tribes which held the possession that according to the proverb, is "nine points of the law."

The period of American settlement has witnessed the rapid dispossession of the original holders, until, at the present time, the Indians have less than two per cent of the land area of the United States.[4]

The conquest, by the English speaking whites, of the three million square miles which comprise the United States has been accomplished in a phenomenally short space of time. Migration; military occupation; appropriation of the lands taken from the "enemy;" settlement, and permanent exploitation--through all these stages of conquest the country has moved.

The "Historical Register of the United States Army" (F. B. Heitman, Washington, Govt. Print., 1903, vol. 2, pp. 298-300) contains a list of 114 wars in which the United States has been engaged since 1775. The publication likewise presents a list of 8600 battles and engagements incident to these 114 wars. Two of these wars were with England, one with Mexico and one with Spain. These, together with the Civil War and the War with Germany, constitute the major struggles in which the United States has been engaged. In addition to these six great wars there were the numerous wars with the Indians, the last of which (with the Chippewa) occurred in 1898. Some of these Indian "wars" were mere policing expeditions. Others, like the wars with the Northwest Indians, with the Seminoles and with the Apaches, lasted for years and involved a considerable outlay of life and money.

When the Indian Wars were ended, and the handful of red men had been crushed by the white millions, the American Indians, once possessors of a hunting ground that stretched across the continent, found themselves in reservations, under government tutelage, or else, abandoning their own customs and habits of life, they accepted the "pale-face" standards in preference to their own well-loved traditions.

The territory flanking the Mississippi Valley, with its coastal plains and the deposits of mineral wealth, is one of the richest in the world. Only two other areas, China and Russia, can compare with it in resources.

This garden spot came into the possession of the English speaking whites almost without a struggle. It was as if destiny had held a door tight shut for centuries and suddenly had opened it to admit her chosen guests.

History shows that such areas have almost always been held by one powerful nation after another, and have been the scene of ferocious struggles. Witness the valleys of the Euphrates, the Nile, the Danube, the Po and the Rhine. The barrier of the Atlantic saved North America.

Had the Mississippi Valley been in Europe, Asia or Northern Africa, it would doubtless have been blood-soaked for centuries and dominated by highly organized nations, armed to the teeth. Lying isolated, it presented an almost virgin opportunity to the conquering Teutons of Western Europe.

Freed by their isolated position from the necessity of contending against outside aggression, the inhabitants of the United States have expended their combative energies against the weaker peoples with whom they came into immediate contact,--

1. The Indians, from whom they took the land and wrested the right to exploit the resources of the continent;

2. The African Negroes who were captured and brought to America to labor as slaves;

3. The Mexicans, from whom they took additional slave territory at a time when the institution of slavery was in grave danger, and

4. The Spanish Empire from which they took foreign investment opportunities at a time when the business interests of the country first felt the pressure of surplus wealth.

Each of these four groups was weak. No one of them could present even the beginnings of an effectual resistance to the onslaught of the conquerors. Each in turn was forced to bow the knee before overwhelming odds.

2. _The First Obstacle to Conquest_

The first obstacle to the spread of English civilization across the continent of North America was the American Indian. He was in possession of the country; he had a culture of his own; he held the white man's civilization in contempt and refused to accept it. He had but one desire,--to be let alone.

The continent was a "wilderness" to the whites. To the Indians it was a home. Their villages were scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Gulf to Alaska; they knew well its mountains, plains and rivers. A primitive people, supporting themselves largely by hunting, fishing, simple agriculture and such elemental manual arts as pottery and weaving, they found the vast stretches of North America none too large to provide them with the means of satisfying their wants.

The ideas of the Indian differed fundamentally from those of the white man. Holding to the Eastern conception which makes the spiritual life paramount, he reduced his material existence to the simplest possible terms. He had no desire for possessions, which he regarded--at the best--as "only means to the end of his ultimate perfection."[5] To him, the white man's desire for wealth was incomprehensible and the white man's sedentary life was contemptible. He must be free at all times to commune with nature in the valleys, and at sunrise and sunset to ascend the mountain peak and salute the Great Spirit.

The individual Indian--having no desire for wealth--could not be bribed or bought for gold as could the European. The leaders, democratically selected, and held by the most enduring ties of loyalty to their tribal oaths, were above the mercenary standards of European commerce and statesmanship. Friendly, hospitable, courteous, generous, hostile, bitter, ferocious they were--but they were not for sale.

The attitude of the Indian toward the land which the white men coveted was typical of his whole relation with white civilization. "Land ownership, in the sense in which we use the term, was unknown to the Indians till the whites came among them."[6] The land devoted to villages was tribal property; the hunting ground surrounding the village was open to all of the members of the tribe; between the hunting grounds of different tribes there was a neutral territory--no man's land--that was common to both. If a family cultivated a patch of land, the neighbors did not trespass. Among the Indians of the Southwest the village owned the agricultural land and "periodically its governor, elected by popular vote, would distribute or redistribute the arable acres among his constituents who were able to care for them."[7] The Indians believed that the land, like the sunlight, was a gift of the Great Spirit to his children, and they were as willing to part with the one as with the other.

They carried their communal ideas still farther. Among the Indians of the Northwest, a man's possessions went at his death to the whole tribe and were distributed among the tribal members. Among the Alaskan Indians, no man, during his life, could possess more than he needed while his neighbor lacked. Food was always regarded as common property. "The rule being to let him who was hungry eat, wherever he found that which would stay the cravings of his stomach."[8] The motto of the Indian was "To each according to his need."

Such a communist attitude toward property, coupled with a belief that the land--the gift of the Great Spirit--was a trust committed to the tribe, proved a source of constant irritation to the white colonists who needed additional territory. As the colonies grew, it became more and more imperative to increase the land area open for settlement, and to such encroachments the Indian offered a stubborn resistance.

The Indian would not--could not--part with his land, neither would he work, as a slave or a wage-servant. Before such degradation he preferred death. Other peoples--the negroes; the inhabitants of Mexico, Peru and the West Indies; the Hindus and the Chinese--made slaves or servants. The Indian for generations held out stolidly against the efforts of missionaries, farmers and manufacturers alike to convert him into a worker.

The Indian could not understand the ideas of "purchase," "sale" and "cash payment" that constitute essential features of the white man's economy. To him strength of limb, courage, endurance, sobriety and personal dignity and reserve were infinitely superior to any of the commercial virtues which the white men possessed.

This attitude of the Indian toward European standards of civilization; his indifference to material possessions; his unwillingness to part with the land; and his refusal to work, made it impossible to "assimilate" him, as other peoples were assimilated, into colonial society. The individual Indian would not demean himself by becoming a cog in the white man's machine. He preferred to live and die in the open air of his native hills and plains.

The Indian was an intense individualist--trained in a school of experience where initiative and personal qualities were the tests of survival. He placed the soles of his moccasined feet firmly against his native earth, cast his eyes around him and above him and melted harmoniously into his native landscape.

Missionaries and teachers labored in vain--once an Indian, always an Indian. The white settlers pushed on across mountain ranges and through valleys. Generations came and went without any marked progress in bringing the white men and the red men together. When the Indian, in the mission or in the government school did become "civilized," he gave over his old life altogether and accepted the white man's codes and standards. The two methods of life were too far apart to make amalgamation possible.

3. _Getting the Land_

The white man must have land! Population was growing. The territory along the frontier seemed rich and alluring.

Everywhere, the Indian was in possession, and everywhere he considered the sale of land in the light of parting with a birth-right. He was friendly at first, but he had no sympathy with the standards of white civilization.

For such a situation there was only one possible solution. Under the plea that "necessity knows no law" the white man took up the task of eliminating the Indian, with the least friction, and in the most effective manner possible.

There were three methods of getting the land away from the Indian--the easiest was by means of treaties, under which certain lands lying along the Atlantic Coast were turned over to the whites in exchange for larger territories west of the Mississippi. The second method was by purchase. The third was by armed conquest. All three methods were employed at some stage in the relations between the whites and each Indian tribe.

The experience with the Cherokee Nation is typical of the relation between the whites and the other Indian tribes. (Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Vol. 5. "The Cherokee Nation," by Charles C. Royce.)

The Cherokee nation before the year 1650 was established on the Tennessee River, and exercised dominion over all the country on the east side of the Alleghany Mountains, including the head-waters of the Yadkin, the Catawba, the Broad, the Savannah, the Chattahoochee and the Alabama. In 1775 there were 43 Cherokee towns covering portions of this territory. In 1799 their towns numbered 51.

Treaty relations between the whites and the Cherokees began in 1721, when there was a peace council, held between the representatives of 37 towns and the authorities of South Carolina. From that time, until the treaty made with the United States government in 1866, the Cherokees were gradually pushed back from their rich hunting grounds toward the Mississippi valley. By the treaty of 1791, the United States solemnly guaranteed to the Cherokees all of their land, the whites not being permitted even to hunt on them. In 1794 and 1804 new treaties were negotiated, involving additional cessions of land. By the treaty of 1804, a road was to be cut through the Cherokee territory, free for the use of all United States citizens.

An agitation arose for the removal of the Cherokees to some point west of the Mississippi River. Some of the Indians accepted the opportunity and went to Arkansas. Others held stubbornly to their villages. Meanwhile white hunters and settlers encroached on their land; white men debauched their women, and white desperadoes stole their stock. By the treaty of 1828 the United States agreed to possess the Cherokees and to guarantee to them forever several millions of acres west of Arkansas, and in addition a perpetual outlet west, and a "free and unmolested use of all the country lying west of the western boundary of the above described limits and as far west as the sovereignty of the United States and their right of soil extend" (p. 229). The Cherokees who had settled in Arkansas agreed to leave their lands within 14 months. By the treaty of 1836 the Cherokees ceded to the United States all lands east of the Mississippi. There was considerable difficulty in enforcing this provision but by degrees most of the Indians were removed west of the river. In 1859 and 1860 the Commissioner of Indian affairs prepared a survey of the Cherokee domain. This was opposed by the head men of the nation. By the Treaty of 1866 other tribes were quartered on land owned by the Cherokees and railroads were run through their territory.

Diplomacy, money and the military forces had done their work. The first treaty, made in 1721, found the Cherokee nation in virtual possession of the mountainous regions of Southeastern United States. The twenty-fourth treaty (1866) left them on a tiny reservation, two thousand miles from their former home. Those twenty-four treaties had netted the State and Federal governments 81,220,374 acres of land (p. 378). To-day the Cherokee Nation has 63,211 acres.[9]

A great nation of proud, independent, liberty-loving men and women, came into conflict with the whites of the Carolinas and Georgia; with the state and national governments. "For two hundred years a contest involving their very existence as a people has been maintained against the unscrupulous rapacity of Anglo-Saxon civilization. By degrees they were driven from their ancestral domain to an unknown and inhabitable region" (p. 371). Now the contest is ended. The white men have the land. The Cherokees have a little patch of territory; government support; free schools and the right to accept the sovereignty of the nation that has conquered them.

The theory upon which the whites proceeded in taking the Indian lands is thus stated by Leupp,--"Originally, the Indians owned all the land; later we needed most of it for ourselves; therefore, it is but just that the Indians should have what is left."[10]

4. _The Triumph of the Whites_

The early white settlers had been, in almost every instance, hospitably or even reverentially welcomed by the Indians, who regarded them as children of the Great White Spirit. During the first bitter winters, it was the Indians who fed the colonists from their supplies of grain; guided them to the better lands, and shared with them their knowledge of hunting, fishing and agriculture. The whites retaliated with that cunning, grasping, bestial ferocity which has spread terror through the earth during the past five centuries.

In the early years, when the whites were few and the Indians many, the whites satisfied themselves by debauching the red men with whiskey and bribing them with baubles and trinkets. At the same time they made offensive and defensive alliances with them. The Spanish in the South; the French in the North and the English between, leagued themselves with the various tribes, supplied them with gunpowder and turned them into mercenaries who fought for hire. Heretofore the Indian had been a free man, fighting his wars and feuds as free men have done time out of mind. The whites hired him as a professional soldier and by putting bounties on scalps, plying the Indians with whiskey and inciting them by every known device, they converted them into demons.

There is no evidence to show that up to the advent of the white men the Indian tribes did any more fighting among themselves than the nobles of Germany, the city states of Italy or the other inhabitants of western Europe. Indeed there has recently been published a complete translation of the "Constitution of the Five Nations," a league to enforce peace which the Indians organized about the year 1390, A. D.[11] This league which had as its object the establishment of the "Great Peace" was built upon very much the same argument as that advanced for the League of Nations of 1919.

When the whites first came to North America, the Indians were a formidable foe. For years they continued to be a menace to the lonely settler or the frontier village. But when the white settlers were once firmly established, the days of uncertainty were over, and the Indians were brushed aside as a man brushes aside a troublesome insect. Their "uprisings" and "wars" counted for little or nothing. They were inferior in numbers; they were poorly armed and equipped; they had no reserves upon which to draw; there was no organization among the tribes in distant portions of the country. The white millions swept onward. The Indian bands made a stand here and there but the tide of white civilization overwhelmed them, smothered them, destroying them and their civilization together.

The Indians were the first obstacle to the building of the American Empire. Three hundred years ago the whole three million square miles that is now the United States was theirs. They were the American people. To-day they number 328,111 in a population of 105,118,467 and the total area of their reservations is 53,489 square miles. (Statistical Abstract of the U. S., 1918, pp. 8 and 776.)

Footnotes:

[4] The total number of square miles in Indian Reservations in 1918 was 53,490 as against 241,800 square miles in 1880. (Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1918, p. 8.)

[5] "The Indian of To-day," C. A. Eastman. New York, Doubleday, 1915, p. 4.

[6] "The Indian and His Problem," F. E. Leupp. New York, Scribners, 1910, p. 23.

[7] Ibid., p. 24.

[8] Ibid., p. 10.

[9] "Referring to your inquiry of November 20, 1919, concerning the Cherokee Indian Reservation, you are advised that the Cherokee Indian country in the northeastern part of Oklahoma aggregated 4,420,068 acres.

"Of said area 4,346,223 acres have been allotted in severalty to the enrolled members of said Cherokee Indian Nation, Oklahoma. Twenty-two thousand eight hundred and eighty acres were disposed of as town lots, or reserved for railway rights of way, churches, schools, cemeteries, etc., and the remaining area has been sold, or otherwise disposed of as provided by law.

"The Cherokee tribal land in Oklahoma with the exception of the possible title of said Nation to certain river beds has been disposed of.

"In reference to the Eastern band of Cherokees, you are advised that said Indians who have been incorporated hold title in fee to certain land in North Carolina, known as the Qualla Reservation and certain other lands, aggregating 63,211 acres."--Letter from the Office of Indian Affairs. Dec. 9, 1919, "In re Cherokee land."

[10] "The Indian and His Problem," F. E. Leupp. New York, Scribners, 1910, p. 24.

[11] See Bulletin 184, New York State Museum, Albany, 1916, p. 61.

IV. Slavery For A Race

1. _The Labor Shortage_

The American colonists took the land which they required for settlement from the Indians. The labor necessary to work this land was not so easily secured. The colonists had set themselves the task of establishing European civilization upon a virgin continent. In order to achieve this result, they had to cut the forests; clear the land; build houses; cultivate the soil; construct ships; smelt iron, and carry on a multitude of activities that were incidental to setting up an old way of life in a new world. The one supreme and immediate need was the need for labor power. From the earliest days of colonization there had been no lack of harbors, fertile soil, timber, minerals and other resources. From the earliest days the colonists experienced a labor shortage.

The labor situation was trebly difficult. First, there was no native labor; second, passage from Europe was so long and so hazardous that only the bold and venturesome were willing to attempt it, and third, when these adventurers did reach the new world, they had a choice between taking up free land and working it for themselves and taking service with a master. Men possessing sufficient initiative to leave an old home and make a journey across the sea were not the men to submit themselves to unnecessary authority when they might, at will, become masters of their own fortunes. The appeal of a new life was its own argument, and the newcomers struck out for themselves.

Throughout the colonies, and particularly in the South where the plantation culture of rice and tobacco, and later of cotton, called for large numbers of unskilled workers, the labor problem was acute. The abundance of raw materials and fertile land; the speedy growth of industry in the North and of agriculture in the South; the generous profits and expanding markets created a labor demand which far outstripped the meager supply,--a demand that was met by the importation of black slaves from Africa.

2. _The Slave Coast_

The "Slave Coast" from which most of the Negroes came was discovered by Portuguese navigators, who were the first Europeans to venture down the West coast of Africa, and, rounding the "lobe" of the continent, to sail East along the "Gold Coast." The trade in gold and ivory which sprang up as a result of these early explorations led other nations of Europe to begin an eager competition which eventually brought French, Dutch, German, Danish and English commercial interests into sharp conflict with the Portuguese.

Ships sailing from the Gold Coast for home ports made a practice of picking up such slaves as they could easily secure. By 1450 the number reaching Portugal each year was placed at 600 or 700.[12] From this small and quite incidental beginning there developed a trade which eventually supplied Europe, the West Indies, North America and South America with black slaves.

Along the "Slave Coast," which extended from Cape Verde on the North to Cape St. Martha on the South, and in the hinterland there lived Negroes of varying temperaments and of varying standards of culture. Some of them were fierce and warlike. Others were docile and amenable to discipline. The former made indifferent slaves; the latter were eagerly sought after. "The Wyndahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were generally the most highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful and submissive."[13]

The natives of the Slave Coast had made some notable cultural advances. They smelted metals; made pottery; wove; manufactured swords and spears of merit; built houses of stone and of mud, and made ornaments of some artistic value. They had developed trade with the interior, taking salt from the coast and bartering it for gold, ivory and other commodities at regular "market places."

The native civilization along the West coast of Africa was far from ideal, but it was a civilization which had established itself and which had made progress during historic times. It was a civilization that had evolved language; arts and crafts; tribal unity; village life, and communal organization. This native African civilization, in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was confronted by an insatiable demand for black slaves. The conflicts that resulted from the efforts to supply that demand revolutionized and virtually destroyed all that was worthy of preservation in the native culture.

When the whites first went to the Slave Coast there was comparatively little slavery among the natives. Some captives, taken in war; some debtors, unable to meet their obligations, and some violators of religious rites, were held by the chief or the headman of the tribe. On occasion he would sell these slaves, but the slave trade was never established as a business until the white man organized it.

The whites came, and with guile and by force they persuaded and compelled the natives to permit the erection of forts and of trading posts. From the time of the first Portuguese settlement, in 1482, the whites began their work with rum and finished it with gun-powder. Rum destroyed the stamina of the native; gun-powder rendered his intertribal wars more destructive. These two agencies of European civilization combined, the one to degenerate, the other to destroy the native tribal life.

The traders, adventurers, buccaneers and pirates that gathered along the Slave Coast were not able to teach the natives anything in the way of cruelty, but they could and did give them lessons in cunning, trickery and double dealing. Early in the history of the Gold Coast the whites began using the natives to make war on commercial rivals. In one famous instance, "the Dutch had instigated the King of Fetu to refuse the Assins permission to pass through his territory. These people used to bring a great deal of gold to Cape Coast Castle (English), and the Dutch hoped in this way to divert the trade to their own settlements. The King having complied and plundered some of the traders on the way down, the Assins declared war against him and were assisted by the English with arms and ammunition. The King of Sabol was also paid to help them, and the allied army (20,000 strong) inflicted a crushing defeat on the Fetus."[14]

On another occasion, the Dutch were worsted in a war with some of the native tribes. Realizing that if they were to maintain themselves on the Coast they must raise an army as quickly as possible, they approached the Fetus and bargained with them to take the field and fight the Komendas until they had utterly exterminated them, on payment of $4,500. But no sooner had this arrangement been made than the English paid the Fetus an additional $4,500 to remain neutral![15]

Before 1750, when the competition for the slaves was less keen, and the supply came nearer to meeting the demand, the slavers were probably as honest in this as they were in any other trade with the natives. The whites encouraged and incited the native tribes to make war upon one another for the benefit of the whites. The whites fostered kidnaping, slavery and the slave trade. The natives were urged to betray one another, and the whites took advantage of their treachery. During the four hundred years that the African slave trade was continued, it was the whites who encouraged it; fostered it; and backed it financially. The slave trade was a white man's trade, carried on under conditions as far removed from the conditions of ordinary African life as the manufacturing and trading of Europe were removed from the manufacturing and trading of the Africans.

3. _The Slave Trade_

With the pressing demand from the Americas for a generous supply of black slaves, the business of securing them became one of the chief commercial activities of the time. "The trade bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on the Atlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with the active assistance of its respective sovereign."[16]

The catching, holding and shipping of Negroes on the African coast was the means by which the demand for slaves was met. With a few minor exceptions, the whites did not engage directly in slave catching. In most instances they bought their slaves from native brokers who lived in the coast towns. The brokers, in turn, received their slaves from the interior, where they were captured during wars, by professional raiding parties, well supplied with arms and ammunition. Slave-catching, begun as a kidnaping of individuals, developed into a large-scale traffic that provided the revenue of the more war-like natives. Villages were attacked and burned, and whole tribes were destroyed or driven off to the slave-pens on the coast. After 1750, for nearly a hundred years, the demand for slaves was so great and the profits were so large that no pains were spared to secure them.

The Slave Coast native was compelled to choose between being a slave-catcher or a slave. As a slave-catcher he spread terror and destruction among his fellows, seized them and sold them to white men. As a slave he made the long journey across the Atlantic.

The number of slaves carried away from Africa is variously estimated. Claridge states that "the Guinea Coast as a whole supplied as many as from 70,000 to 100,000 yearly" in 1700.[17] Bogart estimates the number of slaves secured as 2,500 per year in 1700; 15,000 to 20,000 per year from 1713 to 1753; in 1771, 47,000 carried by British ships alone; and in 1768 the slaves shipped from the African coast numbered 97,000.[18] Add to these numbers those who were killed in the raids; those who died in the camps, where the mortality was very high, and those who committed suicide. The total represents the disturbing influence that the slave trade introduced into the native African civilization.

In the early years of the trade the ships were small and carried only a few hundred Negroes at most. As the trade grew, larger and faster ships were built with galleries between the decks. On these galleries the blacks were forced to lie with their feet outboard--ironed together, two and two, with the chains fastened to staples in the deck. "They were squeezed so tightly together that the average space allowed to each one was but 16 inches by five and a half feet."[19] The galleries were frequently made of rough lumber, not tightly joined. Later, when the trade was outlawed, the slaves were stowed away out of sight on loose shelves over the cargo. "Where the 'tween decks space was two feet high or more, the slaves were stowed sitting up in rows, one crowded into the lap of another, and with legs on legs, like rider on a crowded toboggan." (Spears, p. 71.) There they stayed for the weeks or the months of the voyage. "In storms the sailors had to put on the hatches and seal tight the openings into the infernal cesspool." (Spears, p. 71.) The odor of a slaver was often unmistakable at a distance of five miles down wind.

The terrible revolt of the slaves in the West Indies, beginning in 1781, gave the growing anti-slavery sentiment an immense impetus. It also gave the slave owners pause. The cotton-gin had not yet been invented. Slavery was on a shifty economic basis in the South. Great Britain passed the first law to limit the slave trade in 1788; the United States outlawed the trade in 1794. In 1824 Great Britain declared the slave trade piracy. During these years, and during the years that followed, until the last slaver left New York Harbor in 1863, the trade continued under the American flag, in swift, specially constructed American-built ships.

As the restrictions upon the trade became more severe in the face of an increasing demand for slaves, "the fitting out of slavers developed into a flourishing business in the United States, and centered in New York City." _The New York Journal of Commerce_ notes in 1857 that "down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively little interruption for an indefinite number of years." A writer in the _Continental Monthly_ for January, 1862, says:--"The city of New York has been until of late the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce; although the cities of Boston and Portland, are only second to her in distinction." During the years 1859-1860 eighty-five slavers are reported to have fitted out in New York Harbor and these ships alone had a capacity to transport from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves a year.[20]

The merchants of the North pursued the slave trade so relentlessly because it paid such enormous profits on the capital outlay. Some of the voyages went wrong, but the trade, on the whole, netted immense returns. At the end of the eighteenth century a good ship, fitted to carry from 300 to 400 slaves, could be built for about $35,000. Such a ship would make a clear profit of from $30,000 to $100,000 in a single voyage. Some of them made as many as five voyages before they became so foul that they had to be abandoned.[21] While some voyages were less profitable than others, there was no avenue of international trade that offered more alluring possibilities.

Sanctioned by potentates, blessed by the church, and surrounded with the garments of respectability, the slave trade grew, until, in the words of Samuel Hopkins (1787), "The trade in human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has depended.... By it the inhabitants have gotten most of their wealth and riches." (Spears, p. 20.) After the vigorous measures taken by the British Government for its suppression, the slave trade was carried on chiefly in American-built ships; officered by American citizens; backed by American capital, and under the American flag.

The slave trade was the business of the North as slavery was the business of the South. Both flourished until the Proclamation of Emancipation in 1863.

4. _Slavery in the United States_

Slavery and the slave trade date from the earliest colonial times. The first slaves in the English colonies were brought to Jamestown in 1619 by a Dutch ship. The first American-built slave ship was the _Desire_, launched at Marblehead in 1636. There were Negro slaves in New York as early as 1626, although there were only a few hundred slaves in the colonies prior to 1650.

Since slave labor is economical only where the slaves can be worked together in gangs, there was never much slavery among the farmers and small business men of the North. On the other hand, in the South, the developing plantation system made it possible for the owner to use large gangs of slaves in the clearing of new land; in the raising of tobacco, and in caring for rice and cotton. The plantation system of agriculture and the cotton gin made slavery the success that it was in the United States. "The characteristic American slave, indeed, was not only a Negro, but a plantation workman."[22]

The opening years of the nineteenth century found slavery intrenched over the whole territory of the United States that lay South of the Mason and Dixon line. In that territory slave trading and slave owning were just as much a matter of course as horse trading and horse owning were a matter of course in the North. "Every public auctioneer handled slaves along with other property, and in each city there were brokers, buying them to sell again, and handling them on commission."[23]

The position of the broker is indicated in the following typical bill of sale which was published in Charleston, S. C., in 1795. "Gold Coast Negroes. On Thursday, the 17th of March instant, will be exposed to public sale near the exchange ... the remainder of the cargo of negroes imported in the ship _Success_, Captain John Conner, consisting chiefly of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having been here through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to the climate."[24]

Such a bill of sale attracted no more attention at that time than a similar bill advertising cattle attracts to-day.

During the early colonial days, the slaves were better fed and provided for than were the indentured servants. They were of greater money value and, particularly in the later years when slavery became the mainstay of Southern agriculture, a first class Negro, acclimated, healthy, willing and trustworthy, was no mean asset.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century slavery began to show itself unprofitable in the South. The best and most accessible land was exhausted. Except for the rice plantations of South Carolina and Georgia, slavery was not paying. The Southern delegates to the Constitutional Convention, with the exception of the delegates from these states, were prepared to abolish the slave trade. Some of them were ready to free their own slaves. Then came the invention of the cotton gin and the rise of the cotton kingdom. The amount of raw cotton consumed by England was 13,000 bales in 1781; 572,000 bales in 1820; and 3,366,000 bales in 1860. During that period, the South was almost the sole source of supply.

The attitude of the South, confronted by this wave of slave prosperity, underwent a complete change. Her statesmen had consented, between 1808 and 1820, to severe restrictive laws directed towards the slave trade. After cotton became king, slaves rose rapidly in price; land, once used and discarded, was again brought under cultivation; cotton-planting spread rapidly into the South and Southwest; Texas was annexed; the Mexican War was fought; an agitation was begun for the annexation of Cuba, and Calhoun (1836) declared that he "ever should regret that this term (piracy) had been applied" to the slave trade in our laws.[25]

The change of sentiment corresponded with the changing value of the slaves. Phillips publishes a detailed table of slave values in which he estimates that an unskilled, able-bodied young slave man was worth $300 in 1795; $500 to $700 in 1810; $700 to $1200 to in 1840; and $1100 to $1800 in 1860.[26] The factors which resulted in the increased slave prices were the increased demand for cotton, the increased demand for slaves, and the decrease in the importation of negroes due to the greater severity of the prohibitions on the slave trade.

5. _Slavery for a Race_

The American colonists needed labor to develop the wilderness. White labor was scarce and high, so the colonists turned to slave labor performed by imported blacks. The merchants of the North built the ships and carried on the slave trade at an immense profit. The plantation owners of the South exploited the Negroes after they reached the states.

The continuance of the slave trade and the provision of a satisfactory supply of slaves for the Southern market depended upon slave-catching in Africa, which, in turn, involved the destruction of an entire civilization. This work of destruction was carried forward by the leading commercial nations of the world. During nearly 250 years the English speaking inhabitants of America took an active part in the business of enslaving, transporting and selling black men. These Americans--citizens of the United States--bought stolen Negroes on the African coast; carried them against their will across the ocean; sold them into slavery, and then, on the plantations, made use of their enforced labor.

Both slavery and the slave trade were based on a purely economic motive--the desire for profit. In order to satisfy that desire, the American people helped to depopulate villages,--to devastate, burn, murder and enslave; to wipe out a civilization, and to bring the unwilling objects of their gain-lust thousands of miles across an impassable barrier to alien shores.

Footnotes:

[12] "History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915, vol. I, p. 39.

[13] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1908, p. 43.

[14] "A History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915, vol. I, p. 144.

[15] Ibid., p. 150.

[16] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, p. 20.

[17] "History of the Gold Coast," W. W. Claridge. London, Murray, 1915, vol. I, p. 172.

[18] "Economic History of the U. S.," E. L. Bogart. New York, Longmans, 1910 ed., p. 84-5.

[19] "The American Slave Trade," J. R. Spears. New York, Scribners, 1901, p. 69.

[20] "The Suppression of the American Slave Trade," W. E. B. DuBois. New York, Longmans, 1896, p. 178-9.

[21] "The American Slave Trade," J. R. Spears. New York, Scribners, 1901, p. 84-5.

[22] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, p. VII.

[23] Ibid., p. 190.

[24] Ibid., p. 40.

[25] Benton, "Abridgment of Debates." XII, p. 718.

[26] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, p. 370.

V. The Winning Of The West

1. _Westward, Ho!_

The English colonists in America occupied only the narrow strip of country between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic Ocean. The interior was inhabited by the Indians, and claimed by the French, the Spanish and the British, but neither possession nor legal title carried weight with the stream of pioneers that was making a path into the "wilderness," crying its slogan,--"Westward, Ho!" as it moved toward the setting sun. The first objective of the pioneers was the Ohio Valley; the second was the valley of the Mississippi; the third was the Great Plains; the fourth was the Pacific slope, with its golden sands. Each one of these objectives developed itself out of the previous conquest.

The settlers who made their way across the mountains into the valley of the Ohio, found themselves in a land of plenty. The game was abundant; the soil was excellent, and soon they were in a position to offer their surplus products for sale. These products could not be successfully transported across the mountains, but they could be floated down the Ohio and the Mississippi--a natural roadway to the sea. But beside the Indians, who claimed all of the land for their own, there were the Spaniards at New Orleans, doing everything in their power to prevent the American Colonists from building up a successful river commerce.

The frontiersmen were able to push back the Indians. The Spanish garrisons presented a more serious obstacle. New Orleans was a well fortified post that could be provisioned from the sea. Behind it, therefore, lay the whole power of the Spanish fleet. The right of navigation was finally obtained in the Treaty of 1795. Still friction continued with the Spanish authorities and serious trouble was averted only by the transfer of Louisiana, first to the French (1800) and then by them to the United States (1803). Napoleon had agreed, when he secured this territory from the Spaniards, not to turn it over to the United States. A pressing need of funds, however, led him to strike an easy bargain with the American government which was negotiating for the control of the mouth of the Mississippi. Napoleon insisted that the United States take, not only the mouth of the river, but also the territory to the West which he saw would be useless without this outlet. After some hesitation, Jefferson and his advisers accepted the offer and the Louisiana Purchase was consummated.

The Louisiana Purchase gave the young American nation what it needed--a place in the sun. The colonists had taken land for their early requirements from the Indians who inhabited the coastal plain. They had enslaved the Negroes and thus had secured an ample supply of cheap labor. Now, the pressure of population, and the restless, pioneer spirit of those early days, led out into the West.

Until 1830 immigration was not a large factor in the increase of the colonial population, but the birth-rate was prodigious. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, Franklin estimated that the average family had eight children. There were sections of the country where the population doubled, by natural increase, once in 23 years. Indeed, the entire population of the United States was increasing at a phenomenal rate. The census of 1800 showed 5,308,483 persons in the country. Twenty years later the population was 9,638,453--an increase of 81 per cent. By 1840 the population was reported as 17,069,453--an increase of 77 per cent over 1820, and of 221 per cent over 1800.

The small farmers and tradesmen of the North were settling up the Northwest Territory. The plantation owners of the South, operating on a large scale, and with the wasteful methods that inevitably accompany slavery, were clamoring for new land to replace the tracts that had been exhausted by constant recropping with no attempt at fertilization.

Cotton had been enthroned in the South since the invention of the cotton gin in 1792. With the resumption of European trade relations in 1815 the demand for cotton and for cotton lands increased enormously. There was one, and only one logical way to meet this demand--through the possession of the Southwest.

2. _The Southwest_

The pioneers had already broken into the Southwest in large numbers. While Spain still held the Mississippi, there were eager groups of settlers pressing against the frontier which the Spanish guarded so jealously against all comers. The Louisiana Purchase met the momentary demand, but beyond the Louisiana Purchase, and between the settlers and the rich lands of Texas lay the Mexican boundary. The tide of migration into this new field hurled itself against the Mexican border in the same way that an earlier generation had rolled against the frontier of Louisiana.

The attitude of these early settlers is described with sympathetic accuracy by Theodore Roosevelt. "Louisiana was added to the United States because the hardy backwoods settlers had swarmed into the valleys of the Tennessee, the Cumberland and the Ohio by hundreds of thousands.... Restless, adventurous, hardy, they looked eagerly across the Mississippi to the fertile solitudes where the Spaniard was the nominal, and the Indian the real master; and with a more immediate longing they fiercely coveted the Creole provinces at the mouth of the river."[27] This fierce coveting could have only one possible outcome--the colonists got what they wanted.

The speed with which the Southwest rushed into prominence as a factor in national affairs is indicated by its contribution to the cotton-crop. In 1811 the states and territories from Alabama and Tennessee westward produced one-sixteenth of the cotton grown in the United States. In 1820 they produced a third; in 1830, a half; and by 1860, three-quarters of the cotton raised. At the same time, the population of the Alabama-Mississippi territory was:--

200,000 in 1810. 445,000 in 1820. 965,000 in 1830. 1,377,000 in 1840.

Thus thirty years saw an increase of nearly seven-fold in the population of this region.[28]

Meanwhile, slavery had become the issue of the day. The slave power was in control of the Federal Government, and in order to maintain its authority, it needed new slave states to offset the free states that were being carved out of the Northwest.

Here were three forces--first the desire of the frontiersmen for "elbow room"; second the demand of King Cotton for unused land from which the extravagant plantation system might draw virgin fertility and third, the necessity that was pressing the South to add territory in order to hold its power. All three forces impelled towards the Southwest, and it was thither that population pressed in the years following 1820.

3. _Texas_

Mexico lay to the Southwest, and therefore Mexico became the object of American territorial ambitions. The district now known as Texas had constituted a part of the Louisiana Purchase (1803); had been ceded to Spain (1819); had been made the object of negotiations looking towards its purchase in 1826; had revolted against Mexico and been recognized as an independent state in 1835.

Texas had been settled by Americans who had secured the permission of the Mexican Government to colonize. These settlers made no effort to conceal their opposition to the Mexican Government, with which they were entirely out of sympathy. Many of them were seeking territory in which slavery might be perpetuated, and they introduced slaves into Texas in direct violation of the Mexican Constitution. The Americans did not go to Texas with any idea of becoming Mexican subjects; on the contrary, as soon as they felt themselves strong enough, they declared their independence of Mexico, and began negotiations for the annexation of Texas to the United States.

The Texan struggle for independence from Mexico was cordially welcomed in all parts of the United States, but particularly in the South. Despite the protests of Mexico, public meetings were held; funds were raised; volunteers were enlisted and equipped, and supplies and munitions were sent for the assistance of the Texans in ships openly fitted out in New Orleans.

No sooner had the Texans established a government than the campaign for annexation was begun. The advocates of annexation--principally Southerners--argued in favor of adding so rich and so logical a prize to the territory of the United States, citing the purchase of Louisiana and of Florida as precedents. Their opponents, first on constitutional grounds and then on grounds of public policy, argued against annexation.

Opinion in the South was greatly aroused. Despite the fact that many of her foremost statesmen were against annexation, some of the Southern newspapers even went so far as to threaten the dissolution of the Union if the treaty of ratification failed to pass the Senate.

The campaign of 1844 was fought on the issue of annexation and the election of James K. Polk was a pledge that Texas should be annexed to the United States. During the campaign, the line of division on annexation had been a party line--Democrats favoring; Whigs opposing. Between the election and the passage of the joint resolution by which annexation was consummated, it became a sectional issue,--Southern Whigs favoring annexation and Northern Democrats opposing it.

So strong was the protest against annexation, that the treaty could not command the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate. The matter was disposed of by the passage of a joint resolution (March 1, 1845) which required only a majority vote in both houses of Congress. President Polk therefore took office with the mandate of the country and the decision of both houses of the retiring Congress, in favor of annexation.

Mexico, in the meantime, had offered to recognize the independence of Texas and to make peace with her if the Texas Congress would reject the joint resolution, and refuse the proffered annexation. This the Texas Congress refused, and with the passage, by that body, of an act providing for annexation, the Mexican minister was withdrawn from Washington, and Mexico began her preparations for war.

President Polk had taken office with the avowed intention of buying California from Mexico. The rupture threatened to prevent him from carrying this plan into effect. He therefore sent an unofficial representative to Mexico in an effort to restore friendly relations. Failing in that, he and his advisers determined upon war as the only feasible method of obtaining California and of settling the diplomatic tangle involved in the annexation of Texas.

4. _The Conquest of Mexico_

The Polk Administration made the Mexican War as a part of its expansionist policy.

"Although that unfortunate country (Mexico) had officially notified the United States that the annexation of Texas would be treated as a cause of war, so constant were the internal quarrels in Mexico that open hostilities would have been avoided had the conduct of the Administration been more honorable. That was the opinion of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, and Tyler.... Mexico was actually goaded on to war. The principle of the manifest destiny of this country was invoked as a reason for the attempt to add to our territory at the expense of Mexico."[29]

After the annexation of Texas it became the duty of the United States to defend that state against the threatened Mexican invasion.

Mexican troops had occupied the southern bank of the Rio Grande. General Zachary Taylor with a small force, moved to a position on the Nueces River. Between the two rivers lay a strip of territory the possession of which was one of the sources of dispute between Mexico and Texas. What followed may be stated in the words of one of the officers who participated in the expedition: "The presence of the United States troops on the edge of the territory farthest from the Mexican settlements was not sufficient to provoke hostilities. We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico begin it" (p. 41). "Mexico showing no willingness to come to the Nueces to drive the invaders from her soil, it became necessary for the 'invaders' to approach to within a convenient distance to be struck. Accordingly, preparations were begun for moving the army to the Rio Grande, to a point near Matamoras. It was desirable to occupy a position near the largest center of population possible to reach without actually invading territory to which we set up no claim whatever" (p. 45).[30]

The occupation, by the United States troops, of the disputed territory soon led to a clash in which several United States soldiers were killed. The incident was taken by the President as a sufficient cause for the declaration of a state of war. The House complied readily with his wishes, passing the necessary resolution. Several members of the Senate begged for a delay during which the actual state of affairs might be ascertained. The President insisted, however, and the war was declared (May 13, 1846).

The declaration of war was welcomed with wild enthusiasm in the South. Meetings were called; funds were raised; volunteers were enlisted, equipped and despatched in all haste to the scene of the conflict.

The North was less eager. There were protests, petitions, demonstrations. Many of the leaders of northern opinion took a public stand against the war. But the news of the first victories sent the country mad with an enthusiasm in which the North joined the South.

The United States troops, during the Mexican War, won brilliant--almost unbelievable successes--against superior forces and in the face of immense natural obstacles. Had the war been less of a military triumph there must have been a far more widely-heard protest from Polk's enemies in the North. Successful beyond the wildest dreams of its promoters, the victorious war carried its own answer to those who questioned the worthiness of the cause. Within two years, the whole of Mexico was under the military control of the United States, and that country was in a position to dictate its own terms.

The demands of the United States were mild to the extent of generosity. Under the treaty the annexation of Texas was validated; New Mexico and Upper California were ceded to the United States; the lower Rio Grande was fixed as the southern boundary of Texas, and in considerations of these additions to its territory, the United States agreed to pay Mexico fifteen millions of dollars.

Under this plan, Mexico was paid for territory that she did not need and could not use, while the United States gave a money consideration for the title to land that was already hers by right of conquest, and of which she was in actual possession.

The details of the treaty are relatively unimportant. The outstanding fact is that Mexico was in possession of certain territory that the ruling power in the United States wanted, and that ruling power took what it wanted by force of arms. "The war was one of conquest in the interest of an institution." It was "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."[31]

Congressman A. P. Gardner of Massachusetts summarized the matter very pithily in his debate with Morris Hillquit (New York, April 2, 1915), "We assisted Texas to get away from Mexico and then we proceeded to annex Texas. Plainly and bluntly stated, our purpose was to get some territory for American development." (Stenographic report in the _New York Call_, April 11, 1915.)

5. _Conquering the Conquered_

The work of conquering the Southwest was not completed by the termination of the war. Mexico ceded the territory--in the neighborhood of a million square miles--but she was giving away something that she had never possessed. Mexico claimed title to land that was occupied by the Indians. She had never conquered it; never settled it; never developed it. Her sovereignty was of the same shadowy sort that Spain had exercised over the country before the Mexican revolution.

The new owners of the Southwest had a very different purpose in mind. No empty title would satisfy them. They intended to use the land. The Indians--already in possession--resented the encroachments of the invaders, but they fared no better than the Mexicans, or than their red-skinned brothers who had contended for the right to fish and hunt along their home streams in the Appalachians. The Indians of the Southwest fought stubbornly, but the wars that meant life and death to them were the merest pastime for an army that had just completed the humiliation of a nation of the size and strength of Mexico. The Indians were swept aside, and the country was opened to the trapper, the prospector, the trader and the settler.

The Mexican War was a slight affair, involving a relatively small outlay in men and money. The total number of American soldiers killed in the war was 1,721; the wounded were 4,102; the deaths from accident and disease were 11,516, making total casualties of 5,823 and total losses of 15,618.[32]

The money cost of the Mexican War--the army and navy appropriations for the years 1846 to 1849 inclusive--was $119,624,000. Obviously the net cost of the war was less than this gross total,--how much less it is impossible to say.

No satisfactory figures are available to show the cost in men and money of the Indian Wars in the Southwest. "From 1849 to 1865, the government expended $30,000,000 in the subjugation of the Indians in the territories of New Mexico and Arizona."[33] Their character may be gauged by noting from the "Historical Register" (Vol. 2, p. 281-2) the losses sustained in the four Indian Wars of which a record is preserved. In the Northwest Indian Wars (1790 to 1795) 896 persons were killed and 436 were wounded; in the Seminole War (1817 to 1818) 46 were killed and 36 were wounded; in the Black Hawk War (1831-2) the killed were 26 and the wounded 39; in the Seminole War (1835-1842) 383 were killed and 557 wounded. These were among the most serious of the Indian Wars and in all of them the cost in life and limb was small. Judged on this standard, the losses in the Southwest, during the Indian Wars, were, at most, trifling. The total outlay that was involved in the conquest of the vast domain would not have covered one first class battle of the Great War, and yet this outlay added to the territory of the United States something like a million square miles containing some of the richest and most productive portions of the earth's surface.

This domain was won by a process of military conquest; it was taken from the Mexicans and the Indians by force of arms. In order to acquire it, it was necessary to drive whole tribes from their villages; to burn; to maim; to kill. "St. Louis, New Orleans, St. Augustine, San Antonio, Santa Fe and San Francisco are cities that were built by Frenchmen and Spaniards; we did not found them but we conquered them." "The Southwest was conquered only after years of hard fighting with the original owners" (p. 26). "The winning of the West and the Southwest is a stage in the conquest of a continent" (p. 27). "This great westward movement of armed settlers was essentially one of conquest, no less than of colonization" (p. 370).[34] None of the possessors of this territory were properly armed or equipped for effective warfare. All of them fell an easy prey to the organized might of the Government of the United States.

Footnotes:

[27] "The Winning of the West," Theodore Roosevelt. New York, Putnam's, 1896, vol. 4, p. 262.

[28] "American Negro Slavery," U. B. Phillips. New York, Appleton, 1918, pp. 171-2.

[29] "History of the United States," James F. Rhoades. New York, Macmillan, 1906, vol. I, p. 87.

[30] "Personal Memoirs," U. S. Grant. New York, Century, 1895, vol. I.

[31] "Personal Memoirs," U. S. Grant. New York, Century, 1895, vol. I, pp. 115 and 32.

[32] "Historical Register of the United States Army," F. B. Heitman. Washington, Govt. Print., vol. 2, p. 282.

[33] "The Story of New Mexico," Horatio O. Ladd. Boston, D. Lothrop Co., 1891, p. 333.

[34] "The Winning of the West," Theodore Roosevelt. Vol. I, p. 26, 27, and Vol. II, p. 370.

VI. The Beginnings Of World Dominion

1. _The Shifting of Control_

During the half century that intervened between the War of 1812 and the Civil War of 1861 the policy of the United States government was decided largely by men who came from south of the Mason and Dixon line. The Southern whites,--class-conscious rulers with an institution (slavery) to defend,--acted like any other ruling class under similar circumstances. They favored Southward expansion which meant more territory in which slavery might be established.

The Southerners were looking for a place in the sun where slavery, as an institution, might flourish for the profit and power of the slave-holding class. Their most effective move in this direction was the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of territory following the Mexican War. An insistent drive for the annexation of Cuba was cut short by the Civil War.

Southern sentiment had supported the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Florida Purchase of 1819. From Jefferson's time Southern statesmen had been advocating the purchase of Cuba. Filibustering expeditions were fitted out in Southern ports with Cuba as an objective; agitation was carried on, inside and outside of Congress; between 1850 and 1861 the acquisition of Cuba was the question of the day. It was an issue in the Campaign of 1853. In 1854 the American ministers to London, France and Madrid met at the direction of the State Department and drew up a document (the "Ostend Manifesto") dealing with the future of Cuba. McMaster summarizes the Manifesto in these words: "The United States ought to buy Cuba because of its nearness to our coast; because it belonged naturally to that great group of states of which the Union was the providential nursery; because it commanded the mouth of the Mississippi whose immense and annually growing trade must seek that way to the ocean, and because the Union could never enjoy repose, could never be secure, till Cuba was within its boundaries." (Vol. viii, pp. 185-6.) If Spain refused to sell Cuba it was suggested that the United States should take it.

The Ostend Manifesto was rejected by the State Department, but it was a good picture of the imperialistic sentiment at that time abroad among certain elements in the United States.

The Cuban issue featured in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in 1858. It was hotly discussed by Congress in 1859. Only twenty years had passed since the United States, by force of arms, had taken from Mexico territory that she coveted. Now it was proposed to appropriate territory belonging to Spain.

The outbreak of hostilities deferred the project, and when the Civil War was over, the slave power was shattered. From that time forward national policy was guided by the leaders of the new industrial North.

The process of this change was fearfully wasteful. The shifting of power from the old regime to the new cost more lives and a greater expenditure of wealth than all of the wars of conquest that had been fought during the preceding half century.

The change was complete. The slaves were liberated by Presidential Proclamation. The Southern form of civilization--patriarchal and feudal--disappeared, and upon its ruins--rapidly in the West; slowly in the South--there arose the new structure of an industrial civilization.

The new civilization had no need to look outward for economic advantage. Forest tracts, mineral deposits and fertile land afforded ample opportunity at home. It was three thousand miles to the Pacific and at the end of the journey there was gold! The new civilization therefore turned its energies to the problem of subduing the continent and of establishing the machinery necessary to provide for its vastly increasing needs. A small part of the capital required for this purpose came from abroad. Most of it was supplied at home. But the events involved in opening up the territory west of the Rockies, of spanning the country with steel, and providing outlets for the products of the developing industries were so momentous that even the most ambitious might fulfill his dreams of conquest without setting foot on foreign soil. Territorial aggrandizement was forgotten, and men turned with a will to the organization of the East and the exploration and development of the West.

The leaders of the new order found time to take over Alaska (1868) with its 590,884 square miles. The move was diplomatic rather than economic, however, and it was many years before the huge wealth of Alaska was even suspected.

2. _Hawaii_

The new capitalist interests began to feel the need of additional territory toward the end of the nineteenth century. The desirable resources of the United States were largely in private hands and most of the available free land had been pre-empted. Beside that, there were certain interests, like sugar and tobacco, that were looking with longing eyes toward the tempting soil and climate of Hawaii, Porto Rico and Cuba.

When the South had advocated the annexation of Texas, its statesmen had been denounced as expansionists and imperialists. The same fate awaited the statesmen of the new order who were favoring the extension of United States territory to include some of the contiguous islands that offered special opportunities for certain powerful financial interests.

The struggle began over the annexation of Hawaii. After numerous attempts to annex Hawaii to the United States a revolution was finally consummated in Honolulu in 1893. At that time, under treaty provisions, the neutrality of Hawaii was guaranteed by the United States. Likewise, "of the capital invested in the islands, two-thirds is owned by Americans." This statement is made in "Address by the Hawaiian Branches of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Sons of Veterans, and the Grand Army of the Republic to their compatriots in America Concerning the Annexation of Hawaii." (1897.) These advocates of annexation state in the same address that: "The revolution (of 1893) was not the work of filibusterers and adventurers, but of the most conservative and law-abiding citizens, of the principal tax-payers, the leaders of industrial enterprises, etc." The purpose behind the revolution seemed clear. Certain business men who had sugar and other products to sell in the United States, believed that they would gain, financially, by annexation. They engineered the revolution of 1893 and they were actively engaged in the agitation for annexation that lasted until the treaty of annexation was confirmed by the United States in 1898. The matter was debated at length on the floor of the United States Senate, and an investigation revealed the essential facts of the case.

The immediate cause of the revolution in 1893 was friction over the Hawaiian Constitution. After some agitation, a "Committee of Safety" was organized for the protection of life and property on the islands. Certain members of the Hawaiian government were in favor of declaring martial law, and dealing summarily with the conspirators. The Queen seems to have hesitated at such a course because of the probable complications with the government of the United States.

The _U. S. S. Boston_, sent at the request of United States Minister Stevens to protect American life and property in the Islands, was lying in the harbor of Honolulu. After some negotiations between the "Committee of Safety" and Minister Stevens, the latter requested the Commander of the _Boston_ to land a number of marines. This was done on the afternoon of January 16, 1893. Immediately the Governor of the Island of Oahu and the Minister of Foreign Affairs addressed official communications to the United States Minister, protesting against the landing of troops "without permission from the proper authorities." Minister Stevens replied, assuming full responsibility.

On the day following the landing of the marines, the Committee of Safety, under the chairmanship of Judge Dole, who had resigned as Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii in order to accept the Chairmanship of the Committee, proceeded to the government building, and there, under cover of the guns of the United States Marines, who were drawn up for the purpose of protecting the Committee against possible attack, a proclamation was read, declaring the abrogation of the Hawaiian monarchy, and the establishment of a provisional government "to exist until terms of union with the United States have been negotiated and agreed upon." Within an hour after the reading of this proclamation, and while the Queen and her government were still in authority, and in possession of the Palace, the Barracks, and the Police Station, the United States Minister gave the Provisional Government his recognition.

The Queen, who had 500 soldiers in the Barracks, was inclined to fight, but on the advice of her counselors, she yielded "to the superior force of the United States of America" until the facts could be presented at Washington, and the wrong righted.

Two weeks later, on the first of February, Minister Stevens issued a proclamation declaring a protectorate over the islands. This action was later repudiated by the authorities at Washington, but on February 15, President Harrison submitted a treaty of annexation to the Senate. The treaty failed of passage, and President Cleveland, as one of his first official acts, ordered a complete investigation of the whole affair.

The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations submitted a report on the matter February 26, 1894. Four members referred to the acts of Minister Stevens as "active, officious and unbecoming participation in the events which led to the revolution." All members of the committee agreed that his action in declaring a protectorate over the Islands was unjustified.

The same kind of a fight that developed over the annexation of Texas now took place over the annexation of Hawaii. A group of senators, of whom Senator R. F. Pettigrew was the most conspicuous figure, succeeded in preventing the ratification of the annexation treaty until July 7, 1898. Then, ten weeks after the declaration of the Spanish-American War, under the stress of the war-hysteria, Hawaii was annexed by a joint resolution of Congress.

The Annexation of Hawaii marks a turning point in the history of the United States. For the first time, the American people secured possession of territory lying outside of the mainland of North America. For the first time the United States acquired territory lying within the tropics. The annexation of Hawaii was the first imperialistic act after the annexation of Texas, more than fifty years before. It was the first imperialistic act since the capitalists of the North had succeeded the slave-owners of the South as the masters of American public life.

3. _The Spanish-American War_

The real test of the imperial intentions of the United States came with the Spanish-American War. An old, shattered world empire (Spain) held Porto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines. Porto Rico and Cuba were of peculiar value to the sugar and tobacco interests of the United States. They were close to the mainland, they were enormously productive and, furthermore, Cuba contained important deposits of iron ore.

Spain had only a feeble grip on her possessions. For years the natives of Cuba and of the Philippines had been in revolt against the Spanish power. At times the revolt was covert. Again it blazed in the open.

The situation in Cuba was rendered particularly critical because of the methods used by the Spanish authorities in dealing with the rebellious natives. The Spaniards were simply doing what any empire does to suppress rebellion and enforce obedience, but the brutalities of imperialism, as practiced in Cuba by the Spaniards, gave the American interventionists their opportunity. Day after day the newspapers carried front page stories of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. Day after day the ground was prepared for open intervention in the interests of the oppressed Cubans. There was more than grim humor in the instructions which a great newspaper publisher is reported to have sent his cartoonist in Cuba,--"You provide the pictures; we'll furnish the war."

The conflict was precipitated by the blowing up of the United States battleship _Maine_ as she lay in the harbor of Havana (February 15, 1898). It has not been settled to this day whether the _Maine_ was blown up from without or within. At the time it was assumed that the ship was blown up by the Spanish, although "there was no evidence whatever that any one connected with the exercise of Spanish authority in Cuba had had so much as guilty knowledge of the plans made to destroy the _Maine_" (p. 270), and although "toward the last it had begun to look as if the Spanish Government were ready, rather than let the war feeling in the United States put things beyond all possibility of a peaceful solution, to make very substantial concessions to the Cuban insurgents and bring the troubles of the Island to an end" (p. 273-4).[35]

Congress, in a joint resolution passed April 20, 1898, declared that "the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent.... The United States hereby disclaims any intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people."

The war itself was of no great moment. There was little fighting on land, and the naval battles resulted in overwhelming victories for the American Navy. The treaty, ratified February 6, 1899, provided that Spain should cede to the United States Guam, Porto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines, and that the United States should pay to Spain twenty millions of dollars. As in the case of the Mexican War, the United States took possession of the territory and then paid a bonus for a clear title.

The losses in the war were very small. The total number of men who were killed in action and who died of wounds was 289; while 3,949 died of accidents and disease. ("Historical Register," Vol. 2, p. 187.) The cost of the war was comparatively slight. Hostilities lasted from April 21, 1898 to August 12, 1898. The entire military and naval expense for the year 1898 was $443,368,000; for the year 1899, $605,071,000. Again the need for a larger place in the sun had been felt by the people of the United States and again the United States had won immense riches with a tiny outlay in men and money.

Now came the real issue,--What should the United States do with the booty?

There were many who held that the United States was bound to set the peoples of the conquered territory free. To be sure the specific pledge contained in the joint resolution of April 20, 1898, applied to Cuba alone, but, it was argued, since the people of the Philippines had also been fighting for liberty, and since they had come so near to winning their independence from the Spaniards, they were likewise entitled to it.

On the other hand, the advocates of annexation insisted that it was the duty of the United States to accept the responsibilities (the "white man's burden") that the acquisition of these islands involved.

As President McKinley put it:--"The Philippines, like Cuba and Porto Rico, were entrusted to our hands by the providence of God." (President McKinley, Boston, February 16, 1899.) How was the country to avoid such a duty?

Thus was the issue drawn between the "imperialists" and the "anti-imperialists."

The imperialists had the machinery of government, the newspapers, and the prestige of a victorious and very popular war behind them. The anti-imperialists had half a century of unbroken tradition; the accepted principles of self-government; the sayings of men who had organized the Revolution of 1776; written the Declaration of Independence; held exalted offices and piloted the nation through the Civil War.

The imperialists used their inside position. The anti-imperialists appealed to public opinion. They organized a league "to aid in holding the United States true to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It seeks the preservation of the rights of the people as guaranteed to them by the Constitution. Its members hold self-government to be fundamental, and good government to be but incidental. It is its purpose to oppose by all proper means the extension of the sovereignty of the United States over subject peoples. It will contribute to the defeat of any candidate or party that stands for the forcible subjugation of any people." (From the declaration of principle printed on the literature in 1899 and 1900.) Anti-imperialist conferences were held in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Indianapolis, Boston and other large cities. The League claimed to have half a million members. An extensive pamphlet literature was published, and every effort was made to arouse the people of the country to the importance of the decision that lay before them.

The imperialists said a great deal less than their opponents, but they were more effective in their efforts. The President had said, in his message to Congress (April 1, 1898), "I speak not of forcible annexation, for that cannot be thought of. That, by our code of morals, would be criminal aggression." The phrase was seized eagerly by those who were opposing the annexation of the Spanish possessions. After the war with Spain had begun, the President changed front on the ground that destiny had placed a responsibility upon the American people that they could not shirk. Taking this view of the situation, the President had only one course open to him--to insist upon the annexation of the Philippines, Porto Rico and Guam. This was the course that was followed, and on April 11, 1899, these territories were officially incorporated into the United States.

Senator Hoar, in a speech on January 9, 1899, put the issue squarely. He described it as "a greater danger than we have encountered since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth--the danger that we are to be transformed from a republic, founded on the Declaration of Independence, guided by the counsels of Washington, into a vulgar, commonplace empire, founded upon physical force."

Cuba remained to be disposed of. With the specific guarantee of independence contained in the joint resolution passed at the outbreak of the war, it seemed impossible to do otherwise than to give the Cubans self-government. Many influential men lamented the necessity, but it was generally conceded. But how much independence should Cuba have? That question was answered by the passage of the Cuban Treaty with the "Platt Amendment" attached. Under the treaty as ratified the United States does exercise "sovereignty, jurisdiction and control" over the island.

4. _The Philippines_

The territory acquired from Spain was now, in theory, disposed of. Practically, the Philippines remained as a source of difficulty and even of political danger.

The people of Cuba were, apparently, satisfied. The Porto Ricans had accepted the authority of the United States without question. But the Filipinos were not content. If the Cubans were to have self-government, why not they?

The situation was complicated by the peculiar relations existing between the Filipinos and the United States Government. Immediately after the declaration of war with Spain the United States Consul-General at Singapore had cabled to Admiral Dewey at Hong Kong that Aguinaldo, leader of the insurgent forces in the Philippines, was then at Singapore, and was ready to go to Hong Kong. Commodore Dewey cabled back asking Aguinaldo to come at once to Hong Kong. Aguinaldo left Singapore on April 26, 1898, and, with seventeen other revolutionary Filipino chiefs, was taken from Hong Kong to Manila in the United States naval vessel _McCulloch_. Upon his arrival in Manila, he at once took charge of the insurgents.

For three hundred years the inhabitants of the Philippines had been engaged in almost incessant warfare with the Spanish authorities. In the spring of 1898 they were in a fair way to win their independence. They had a large number of men under arms--from 20,000 to 30,000; they had fought the Spanish garrisons to a stand-still, and were in practical control of the situation.

Aguinaldo was furnished with 4,000 or 5,000 stands of arms by the American officials, he took additional arms from the Spaniards and he and his people cooperated actively with the Americans in driving the Spanish out of Luzon. The Filipino army captured Iloilo, the second largest city in the Philippines, without the assistance of the Americans. On the day of the surrender of Manila, 15-1/2 miles of the surrounding line was occupied by the Filipinos and 600 yards by the American troops. Throughout the early summer, the relations between the Filipinos and the Americans continued to be friendly. General Anderson, in command of the American Army, wrote a letter to the commander of the Filipinos (July 4, 1898) in which he said,--"I desire to have the most amicable relations with you and to have you and your people cooperate with us in military operations against the Spanish forces." During the summer the American officers called upon the Filipinos for supplies and information and accepted their cooperation. Aguinaldo, on his part, treated the Americans as deliverers, and in his proclamations referred to them as "liberators" and "redeemers."

The Filipinos, at the earliest possible moment, organized a government. On June 18 a republic was proclaimed; on the 23rd the cabinet was announced; on the 27th a decree was published providing for elections, and on August 6th an address was issued to foreign governments, announcing that the revolutionary government was in operation, and was in control of fifteen provinces.

The real intent of the Americans was foreshadowed in the instructions handed by President McKinley to General Wesley Merritt on May 19, 1898. General Merritt was directed to inform the Filipinos that "we come not to make war upon the people of the Philippines, nor upon any party or faction among them, but to protect them in their homes, in their employments, and in their personal and religious rights. Any persons who, either by active aid or by honest submission, cooperate with the United States in its effort to give effect to this beneficent purpose, will receive the reward of its support and protection."

The Filipinos sent a delegation to Paris to lay their claims for independence before the Peace Commission. Meeting with no success, they visited Washington, with no different result. They were not to be free!

On September 8, 1898, General Otis, commander of the American forces in the Philippines, notified Aguinaldo that unless he withdrew his forces from Manila and its suburbs by the 15th "I shall be obliged to resort to forcible action." On January 5, 1899, by Presidential Proclamation, McKinley ordered that "The Military Government heretofore maintained by the United States in the city, harbor, and bay of Manila is to be extended with all possible dispatch to the whole of the ceded territory." On February 4, 1899, General Otis reported "Firing upon the Filipinos and the killing of one of them by the Americans, leading to return fire." (Report up to April 6, 1899.) Then followed the Philippine War during which 1,037 Americans were killed in action or died of wounds; 2,818 were wounded, and 2,748 died of disease. ("Historical Register," Vol. II, p. 293.)

The Philippines were conquered twice--once in a contest with Spain (in cooperation with the Filipinos, who regarded themselves as our allies), and once in a contest with the Filipinos, the native inhabitants, who were made subjects of the American Empire by this conquest.[36]

5. _Imperialism Accepted_

The Philippine War was the last political episode in the life of the American Republic. From February 4, 1899, the United States accepted the political status of an Empire. Hawaii had been annexed at the behest of the Hawaiian Government; Porto Rico had been occupied as a part of the war strategy and without any protest from the Porto Ricans. The Philippines were taken against the determined opposition of the natives, who continued the struggle for independence during three bitter years.

The Filipinos were fighting for independence--fighting to drive invaders from their soil. The United States authorities had no status in the Philippines other than that of military conquerors.

Continental North America was occupied by the whites after a long struggle with the Indian tribes. This territory was "conquered"--but it was contiguous--it formed a part of a geographic unity. The Philippines were separated from San Francisco by 8,000 miles of water; geographically they were a part of Asia. They were tropical in character, and were inhabited by tribes having nothing in common with the American people except their common humanity. Nevertheless, despite non-contiguity; despite distance; despite dissimilarity in languages and customs, the soldiers of the United States conquered the Filipinos and the United States Government took control of the islands, acting in the same way that any other empire, under like circumstances, unquestionably would have acted.

There was no strategic reason that demanded the Philippines unless the United States desired to have an operating base near to the vast resources and the developing markets of China. As a vantage point from which to wage commercial and military aggression in the Far East, the Philippines may possess certain advantages. There is no other excuse for their conquest and retention by the United States save the economic excuse of advantages to be gained from the possession of the islands themselves.

The end of the nineteenth century saw the end of the Republic about which men like Jefferson and Lincoln wrote and dreamed. The New Century marked the opening of a new epoch--the beginning of world dominion for the United States.

Footnotes:

[35] "A History of the American People," Woodrow Wilson. New York, Harpers, 1902, Vol. V, pp. 273-4.

[36] For further details on the Philippine problem see Senate Document 62, Part I, 55th Congress, Third Session.

VII. The Struggle For Wealth And Power

1. _Economic Foundations_

The people of the United States, through their contests with the American Indians, the Mexicans and the Filipinos, have established that "supreme and extensive political domination" which is one of the chief characteristics of empire.

But the American Empire does not rest upon a political basis. Only the most superficial portions of its superstructure are political in character. Imperialism in the United States, as in every other modern country, is built not upon politics, but upon industry.

The struggle between empires has shifted, in recent years, from the political and the military to the economic field. The old imperialism was based on military conquest and political domination. The new "financial" imperialism is based on economic opportunities and advantages. Under this new regime, territorial domination is subordinated to business profit.

While American public officials were engaged in the routine task of extending the political boundaries of the United States, the foundations of imperial strength were being laid by the masters of industrial life--the traders, manufacturers, bankers, the organizers of trusts and of industrial combinations. These owners and directors of the nation's wealth have been the real builders of the American Empire.

As the United States has developed, the economic motives have come more and more to the surface, until no modern nation--not England herself--has such a record in the search for material possessions. The pursuit of wealth, in the United States, has been carried forward ruthlessly; brutally. "Anything to win" has been the motto. Man against man, and group against group, they have struggled for gain,--first, in order to "get ahead;" then to accumulate the comforts and luxuries, and last of all, to possess the immense power that goes with the control of modern wealth.

The early history of the country presaged anything but this. The colonists were seeking to escape tyranny, to establish justice and to inaugurate liberty. Their promises were prophetic. Their early deeds put the world in their debt. Forward looking people everywhere thrilled at the mention of the name "America." Then came the discovery of the fabulous wealth of the new country; the pressure of the growing stream of immigrants; the heaping up of riches; the rapacious search after more! more! the desertion of the dearest principles of America's early promise, and the transcribing of another story of "economic determinism."

Until very recent times the American people continued to talk of political affairs as though they were the matters of chief public concern. The recent growth and concentration of economic power have showed plainly, however, that America was destined to play her greatest role on the economic field. Capable men therefore ceased to go into politics and instead turned their energies into the whirl of business, where they received a training that made them capable of handling affairs of the greatest intricacy and magnitude.

2. _Every Man for Himself_

The development of American industry, during the hundred years that began with the War of 1812, led inevitably to the unification of business control in the hands of a small group of wealth owners.

"Every man for himself" was the principle that the theorists of the eighteenth century bequeathed to the industrial pioneers of the nineteenth. The philosophy of individualism fitted well with the temperament and experience of the English speaking peoples; the practice of individualism under the formula "Every man for himself" seemed a divine ordination for the benefit of the new industry.

The eager American population adopted the slogan with enthusiasm. "Every man for himself" was the essence of their frontier lives; it was the breath of the wilderness.

But the idea failed in practice. Despite the assurances of its champions that individualism was necessary to preserve initiative and that progress was impossible without it, like many another principle--fine sounding in theory, it broke down in the application.

The first struggle that confronted the ambitious conqueror of the new world was the struggle with nature. Her stores were abundant, but they must be prepared for human use. Timber must be sawed; soil tilled; fish caught; coal mined; iron smelted; gold extracted. Rivers must be bridged; mountains spanned; lines of communication maintained. The continent was a vast storehouse of riches--potential riches. Before they could be made of actual use, however, the hand of man must transform them and transport them.

These necessary industrial processes were impossible under the "every man for himself" formula. Here was a vast continent, with boundless opportunities for supplying the necessaries and comforts of life--provided men were willing to come together; divide up the work; specialize; and exchange products.

Cooperation--alone--could conquer nature. The basis of this cooperation proved to be the machine. Its means was the system of production and transportation built upon the use of steam, electricity, gas, and labor saving appliances.

When the United States was discovered, the shuttle was thrown by hand; the hammer was wielded by human arm; the mill-stones were turned by wind and water; the boxes and bales were carried by pack-animals or in sailing vessels,--these processes of production and transportation were conducted in practically the same way as in the time of Pharaoh or of Alexander the Great. A series of discoveries and inventions, made in England between 1735 and 1784, substituted the machine for the tool; the power of steam for the power of wind, water or human muscle; and set up the factory to produce, and the railroad and the steamboat to transport the factory product.

American industry, up to 1812, was still conducted on the old, individualistic lines. Factories were little known. Men worked singly, or by twos and threes in sheds or workrooms adjoining their homes. The people lived in small villages or on scattered farms. Within the century American industry was transformed. Production shifted to the factory; about the factory grew up the industrial city in which lived the tens or hundreds of thousands of factory workers and their families.

The machine made a new society. The artisan could not compete with the products of the machine. The home workshop disappeared, and in its place rose the factory, with its tens, its hundreds and its thousands of operatives.

Under the modern system of machine production, each person has his particular duty to perform. Each depends, for the success of his service, upon that performed by thousands of others.

All modern industry is organized on the principle of cooperation, division of labor, and specialization. Each has his task, and unless each task is performed the entire system breaks down.

Never were the various branches of the military service more completely dependent upon each other than are the various departments of modern economic life. No man works alone. All are associated more or less intimately with the activities of thousands and millions of their fellows, until the failure of one is the failure of all, and the success of one is the success of all.

Such a development could have only one possible result,--people who worked together must live together. Scattered villages gave place to industrial towns and cities. People were compelled to cooperate in their lives as well as in their labor.

The theory under which the new industrial society began its operations was "every man for himself." The development of the system has made every man dependent upon his fellows. The principle demanded an extreme individualism. The practice has created a vast network of inter-relations, that leads the cotton spinner of Massachusetts to eat the meat prepared by the packing-house operative in Omaha, while the pottery of Trenton and the clothing of New York are sent to the Yukon in exchange for fish and to the Golden Gate for fruit. Inside as well as outside the nation, the world is united by the strong hands of economic necessity. None can live to himself, alone. Each depends upon the labor of myriads whom he has never seen and of whom he has never heard. Whether we will or no, they are his brothers-in-labor--united in the Atlas fellowship of those who carry the world upon their shoulders.

The theory of "every man for himself" failed. The practical exigencies involved in subjugating a continent and wresting from nature the means of livelihood made it necessary to introduce the opposite principle,--"In Union there is strength; cooperation achieves all things."

3. _The Struggle for Organization_

The technical difficulties involved in the mechanical production of wealth compelled even the individualists to work together. The requirements of industrial organization drove them in the same direction.

The first great problem before the early Americans was the conquest of nature. To this problem the machine was the answer. The second problem was the building of an organization capable of handling the new mechanism of production--an organization large enough, elastic enough, stable enough and durable enough--to this problem the corporation was the answer.

The machine produced the goods. The corporation directed the production, marketed the products and financed both operations.

The corporation, as a means of organizing and directing business enterprise is a product of the last hundred years. A century ago the business of the United States was carried on by individuals, partnerships, and a few joint stock companies. At the time of the last Census, more than four-fifths of the manufactured products were turned out under corporate direction; most of the important mining enterprises were corporate, and the railroads, public utilities, banks and insurance companies were virtually all under the corporate form of organization. Thus the passage of a century has witnessed a complete revolution in the form of organizing and directing business enterprise.

The corporation, as a form of business organization is immensely superior to individual management and to the partnership.

1. The corporation has perpetual life. In the eyes of the law, it is a person that lives for the term of its charter. Individuals die; partnerships are dissolved; but the corporation with its unbroken existence, possesses a continuity and a permanence that are impossible of attainment under the earlier forms of business organization.

2. Liability, under the corporation, is limited by the amount of the investment. The liability of an individual or a partner engaged in business was as great as his ability to pay. The investor in a corporation cannot lose a sum larger than that represented by his investment.

3. The corporation, through the issuing of stocks and bonds, makes it possible to subdivide the total amount invested in one enterprise into many small units.[37] These chances for small investment mean that a large number of persons may join in subscribing the capital for a business enterprise. They also mean that one well-to-do person may invest his wealth in a score or a hundred enterprises, thus reducing the risk of heavy losses to a minimum.

4. The corporation is not, as were the earlier forms of organization, necessarily a "one man" concern. Many corporations have upon their boards of directors the leading business men, merchants, bankers and financiers. In this way, the investing public has the assurance that the enterprise will be conducted along business lines, while the business men on the board have an opportunity to get in on the "ground floor."

The corporation has a permanence, a stability, and a breadth of financial support that are quite impossible in the case of the private venture or of the partnership. It does for business organization what the machine did for production.

The corporation came into favor at a time when business was expanding rapidly. Surplus was growing. Wealth and capital were accumulating. Industrial units were increasing in size. It was necessary to find some means by which the surplus wealth in the hands of many individuals could be brought together, large sums of capital concentrated under one unified control, the investments, thus secured, safeguarded against untoward losses, and the business conservatively and efficiently directed. The corporation was the answer to these needs.

"United we stand" proved to be as true of organizers and investors as it was of producers. The corporation was the common denominator of people with various industrial and financial interests.

The corporation played another role of vital consequence. It enabled the banker to dominate the business world. Heretofore, the banker had dealt largely with exchange. The industrial leader was his equal if not his superior. The organization of the corporation put the supreme power in the hands of the banker, who as the intermediary between investor and producer, held the purse strings.

4. _Capitalist against Capitalist_

The early American enterprisers--the pioneers--began a single-handed struggle with nature. Necessity forced them to cooperate. They established a new industry. The factory brought them together. They organized their system of industrial direction and control. The corporation united them. They turned on one another in mortal combat, and the frightfulness of their losses forced them to join hands.

The business men of the late nineteenth century had been nurtured upon the idea of competition. "Every man for himself and the devil take the hindermost" summed up their philosophy. Each person who entered the business arena was met by an array of savage competitors whose motto was "Victory or Death." In the struggle that followed, most of them suffered death.

Capitalist set himself up against capitalist in bitter strife. The railroads gouged the farmers, the manufacturers and the merchants and fought one another. The big business organizations drove the little man to the wall and then attacked their larger rivals. It was a fight to the finish with no quarter asked or given.

The "finish" came with periodic regularity in the seventies, the eighties and the nineties. The number of commercial failures in 1875 was double the number of 1872. The number of failures in 1878 was over three times that of 1871. The same thing happened in the eighties. The liabilities of concerns failing in 1884 were nearly four times the liabilities of those failing in 1880. The climax came in the nineties, after a period of comparative prosperity. Hard times began in 1893. Demand dropped off. Production decreased. Unemployment was widespread. Wages fell. Prices went down, down, under bitter competitive selling, to touch rock bottom in 1896. Business concerns continued to fight one another, though both were going to the wall. Weakened by the struggle, unable to meet the competitive price cutting that was all but the universal business practice of the time, thousands of business houses closed their doors. The effect was cumulative; the fabric of credit, broken at one point, was weakened correspondingly in other places and the guilty and the innocent were alike plunged into the morass of bankruptcy.

The destruction wrought in the business world by the panic of 1893 was enormous. The number of commercial failures for 1893 jumped to 15,242. The amount of liabilities involved in these failures was $346,780,000. This catastrophe, coming as it did so close upon the heels of the panics that had immediately preceded it, could not fail to teach its lesson. Competition was not the life, but the death of trade. "Every man for himself" as a policy applied in the business world, led most of those engaged in the struggle over the brink to destruction. There was but one way out--through united action.

The period between 1897 and 1902 was one of feverish activity directed to coordinating the affairs of the business world. Trusts were formed in all of the important branches of industry and trade. The public looked upon the trust as a means of picking pockets through trade conspiracies and the boosting of prices. The Sherman Anti-Trust Law had been passed on that assumption. In reality, the trusts were organized by far seeing men who realized that competition was wasteful in practice and unsound in theory. The idea that the failure of one bank or shoe factory was of advantage to other banks and shoe factories, had not stood the test of experience. The tragedies of the nineties had showed conclusively that an injury to one part of the commercial fabric was an injury to all of its parts.

The generation of business men trained since 1900 has had no illusions about competition. Rather, it has had as its object the successful combination of various forms of business enterprise into ever larger units. First, there was the uniting of like industries;--cotton mills were linked with cotton mills, mines with mines. Then came the integration of industry--the concentration under one control of all of the steps in the industrial process from the raw material to the finished product,--iron mines, coal mines, blast furnaces, converters, and rail mills united in one organization to take the raw material from the ground and to turn out the finished steel product. Last of all there was the union of unlike industries,--the control, by one group of interests, of as many and as varied activities as could be brought together and operated at a profit. The lengths to which business men have gone in combining various industries is well shown by the recent investigation of the meat packing industry. In the course of that investigation, the Federal Trade Commission was able to show that the five great packers (Wilson, Armour, Swift, Morris and Cudahy) were directly affiliated with 108 business enterprises, including 12 rendering companies; 18 stockyard companies; 8 terminal railway companies; 9 manufacturers of packers' machinery and supplies; 6 cattle loan companies; 4 public service corporations; 18 banks, and a number of miscellaneous companies, and that they controlled 2000 food products not immediately related to the packing industry.[38]

Business is consolidated because consolidation pays--not primarily, through the increase of prices, but through the greater stability, the lessened costs, and the growing security that has accompanied the abolition of competition.

Again the forces of social organization have triumphed in the face of an almost universal opposition. American business men practiced competition until they found that cooperation was the only possible means of conducting large affairs. Theory advised, "Compete"! Experience warned, "Combine"! Business men--like all other practical people--accepted the dictates of experience as the only sound basis for procedure. Their combination solidified their ranks, preparing them to take their places in a closely knit, dominant class, with clearly marked interests, and a strong feeling of class consciousness and solidarity.

It was in the consummation of these combinations, integrations and consolidations that the investment banker came into his own as the keystone in the modern industrial arch.

5. _The Investment Banker_

The investment banker is the directing and coordinating force in the modern business world. The necessities of factory production demanding great outlays of capital; the immense financial requirements of corporations; the consolidation of business ventures on a huge scale; the broadened use of corporate securities as investments--all brought the investment banker into the foreground.

Before the Spanish War, the investment banker financed the trusts. After the war he was entrusted with the vast surpluses which the concentration of business control had placed in a few hands. Business consolidation had given the banker position. The control of the surplus brought him power. Henceforth, all who wished access to the world of great industrial and commercial affairs must knock at his door.

This concentration of economic control in the hands of a relatively small number of investment bankers has been referred to frequently as the "Money Trust."

Investment banking monopoly, or as it is sometimes called, the "Money Trust" was examined in detail by the Pujo Committee of the House of Representatives, which presented a summary of its report on February 28, 1913. The committee placed, at the center of its diagram of financial power, J. P. Morgan & Co., the National City Bank, the First National Bank, the Guaranty Trust Co., and the Bankers Trust Co., all of New York. The report refers to Lee, Higginson & Co., of Boston and New York; to Kidder, Peabody & Co., of Boston and New York, and to Kuhn, Loeb & Co., of New York, together with the Morgan affiliations, as being "the most active agents in forwarding and bringing about the concentration of control of money and credit" (p. 56).

The methods by which this control was effected are classed by the Committee under five heads:--

1. "Through consolidations of competitive or potentially competitive banks and trust companies which consolidations in turn have recently been brought under sympathetic management" (p. 56).

2. Through the purchase by the same interests of the stock of competitive institutions.

3. Through interlocking directorates.

4. "Through the influence which the more powerful banking houses, banks, and trust companies have secured in the management of insurance companies, railroads, producing and trading corporations and public utility corporations, by means of stock holdings, voting trusts, fiscal agency contracts, or representation upon their boards of directors, or through supplying the money requirements of railway, industrial, and public utility corporations and thereby being enabled to participate in the determination of their financial and business policies" (p. 56).

5. "Through partnership or joint account arrangements between a few of the leading banking houses, banks, and trust companies in the purchase of security issues of the great interstate corporations, accompanied by understandings of recent growth--sometimes called 'banking ethics'--which have had the effect of effectually destroying competition between such banking houses, banks, and trust companies in the struggle for business or in the purchase and sale of large issues of such securities" (p. 56).

Morgan & Co., the First National Bank, the National City Bank, the Bankers Trust Co., and the Guaranty Trust Co., which were all closely affiliated, had extended their control until they held,--

118 directorships in 34 banks with combined resources of $2,679,000,000.

30 directorships in 10 insurance companies with total assets of $2,293,000,000.

105 directorships in 32 transportation systems having a total capital of $11,784,000,000.

63 directorships in 24 producing and trading companies having a total capitalization of $3,339,000,000.

25 directorships in 12 public utility corporations with a total capitalization of $2,150,000,000.

The investment banker had become, what he was ultimately bound to be, the center of the system built upon the century-long struggle to control the wealth of the continent in the interest of the favored few who happened to own the choicest natural gifts.

6. _The Cohesion of Wealth_

The struggle for wealth and power, actively waged among the business men of the United States for more than a century, has thus by a process of elimination, subordination and survival, placed a few small groups of strong men in a position of immense economic power. The growth of surplus and its importance in the world of affairs has made the investment banker the logical center of this business leadership. He, with his immediate associates, directs and controls the affairs of the economic world.

The spirit of competition ruled the American business world at the beginning of the last century, the forces of combination dominated at its close. The new order was the product of necessity, not of choice. The life of the frontier had ingrained in men an individualism that chafed under the restraints of combination. It was the compelling forces of impending calamity and the opportunity for greater economic advantage--not the traditions or accepted standards of the business world--that led to the establishment of the centralized wealth power. American business interests were driven together by the battering of economic loss and lured by the hope of greater economic gains.

Years of struggle and experience, by converting a scattered, individualistic wealth owning class into a highly organized, closely knit, homogeneous group with its common interests in the development of industry and the safeguarding of property rights, have brought unity and power to the business world.

Individually the members of the wealth-controlling class have learned tha