Upton Sinclair

(Shows how the competition for foreign markets leads nations automatically into war.)

In a discussion of the world's economic situation, published in 1906, the writer portrayed the ruling class of Germany as sitting in front of a thermometer, watching the mercury rising, and knowing that when it reached the top, the thermometer would break. This thermometer was the German class system of government, and the mercury was the Socialist vote. In 1870 the vote was 30,000, in 1884 it was 549,000, in 1893 it was 1,876,000, in 1903 it was 3,008,000, in 1907 it was 3,250,000, in 1911 it was 4,250,000. Writing between 1906 and 1913, I again and again pointed out that this increase was the symptom of social discontent in Germany, caused by the overproduction of invested capital throughout the world, and the intensification of the competition for world markets. I pointed out that a slight increase in the vote would be sufficient to transfer to the working class of Germany the political power of the German state; and I said that the ruling class of Germany would never permit that to happen—when it was ready to happen Germany would go to war, to seize the trade privileges of some other nation.

There was a time when wars were caused by national and racial hatreds. There are still enough of these venerable prejudices left in the world, but no student of the subject would deny that the main source of modern wars is commercial rivalry. In 1917 we sent Eugene V. Debs to prison for declaring that the late world war was a war of capitalist greed. But two years later President Wilson, who had waged the war, declared in a public speech that everybody knew it had been a war of commercial rivalries.

The aims of modern war-makers are two. First, capitalism must have raw materials, including coal and oil, the sources of power, and gold and silver, the bases of credit. Parts of the world which are so unfortunate as to be rich in these substances become the bone of contention between rival financial groups, organized as nations. Some sarcastic writer has defined a "backward" nation as one which has gold mines and no navy. We are horrified to read of the wars of the French monarchs, caused by the jealous quarrels of mistresses; but in 1905 we saw Russia and Japan go to war and waste a million lives because certain Russian grand dukes had bribed certain Chinese mandarins and obtained concessions of timber on the Yalu River. We now observe France and Germany vowed to undying hate because of iron mines in Lorraine, and the efforts of France to take the coal mines of Silesia from Germany, and give them to Poland, which is another name for French capitalism.

The other end sought by the war-makers is markets for manufactured products, and control of trade routes, coaling stations and cables necessary to the building up of foreign trade. England has been "mistress of the seas" for some 300 years, which meant that her traders had obtained most of these advantages. But then came Germany, with her newly developed commercialism, shoving her rival out of the way. The Englishman was easy-going; he liked to play cricket, and stop and drink tea every afternoon. But the German worked all day and part of the night; he trained himself as a specialist, he studied the needs of his customers—all of which to the Englishman was "unfair" competition. But here were the populations of the crowded slums, dependent for their weekly wage and their daily bread upon the ability of the factories to go on turning out products! Here was the ever-blackening shadow of unemployment, the mutterings of social discontent, the agitators on the soap-boxes, the workers listening to them with more and more eager attention, and the journalists and politicians and bankers watching this phenomenon with a ghastly fear.

So came the great war. Social discontent was forgotten over night, and England and France plunged in to down their hated rival, once and for all time. Now they have succeeded: Germany's ships have been taken from her, and likewise her cables and coaling stations; the Berlin-Bagdad Railroad is a forgotten dream; the British sit in Constantinople, and the traffic goes by sea. American capitalism wakes up, and rubs its eyes after a debauch of Presbyterian idealism, and discovers that it has paid out some $20,000,000,000, in order to confer all these privileges and advantages upon its rivals!

Ever since I can remember the world, there have been peace societies; I look back in history and discover that ever since there have been wars, there have been prophets declaiming against them in the name of humanity and God. As I write, there is a great world conference on disarmament in session in Washington, and all good Americans hope that war is to be ended and permanent peace made safe. All that I can do at this juncture is to point out the fundamental and all-controlling fact of present-day economics: that for the ruling class of any country to agree to disarmament and the abolition of war, is for that class to sign its own death warrant and cut its own throat. American capitalism can survive on this earth only by strangling and destroying Japanese capitalism and British capitalism, and doing it before long. The far-sighted capitalists on both sides know that, and are making their preparations accordingly.

What the members of the peace societies and the diplomats of the disarmament conferences do is to cut off the branches of the tree of war. They leave the roots untouched, and then, when the tree continues to thrive, they are astounded. I conclude this chapter with a concrete illustration, cut from my morning newspaper. We went to war against German militarism, and to make the world safe for democracy—meaning thereby capitalist commercialism. We commanded the German people to "beat their swords into plough-shares"; that is, to set their Krupp factories to making tools of peace; and they did so. We saddled them with an enormous indemnity, making them our serfs for a generation or two, and compelling them to hasten out into the world markets, to sell their goods and raise gold to pay us. And now, how does their behavior strike us? Do we praise their industry, and fidelity to their obligations? Here are the headlines of a news despatch, published by the Los Angeles Times on December 10, 1921, at the top of the front page, right hand column, the most conspicuous position in the paper. Read it, and understand the sources of modern war!