war, in the increased taxation it always involves and in the impoverishment of our customers which it always produces, is certain, widespread, and often enduring. The recent wars in Egypt and the Soudan, whatever other results they may have, will assuredly have the effect of tending still further to prolong and intensify our commercial depression.
If our manufacturers and merchants as a body would consider this question in all its bearings they would surely arrive at the conclusion that all war, wherever or by whomsoever waged, is bad for trade, since it impoverishes alike the winner and the loser, the invader and the invaded, while it inevitably destroys a number of actual or possible customers. The moral arguments against war would doubtless be more generally effective if it were clearly seen that, always and everywhere, its direct and necessary effect is to produce more or less of depression of trade.
But if war injures the capitalist, the manufacturer, and the trader, still more docs it injure the worker, and on this point I can not do better than quote the forcible words of Mr. Mongredien.[1] After describing the various destructive agencies and methods of war, he says: "As wealth dwindles somebody must suffer, and the suffering mainly falls on the poor and weak. The capitalist is mulcted of part of his wealth, but he can wait. The labor-seller is mulcted of the necessaries of life, and he and his dear ones can not wait. The less there is to produce the less there is to distribute. Need we say which class it is that will run short? It is on you, labor-sellers of the world, that the burden chiefly falls. It is you who are the slayers and the slain. You form the rank and file who deal the blows and on whom the blows are dealt. To your chiefs belong the honor and the rewards. As for you, you are under contract to suffer and to cause suffering; to inflict and to endure death; to destroy instead of creating wealth; and to use every effort to suppress the fund out of which labor is paid. The war-system, pernicious to every class, is a special curse to yours. Are you content to view it as a necessity? In this our protest against it, we look for your special assistance by thought, word, and pen. Public opinion is made up of assenting units." Since these words were written the working-men of England have obtained the means not only of verbally protesting, but of actually deciding against war, if it so pleases them. If they will vote for no representatives but such as will pledge themselves to oppose all but strictly defensive wars, and never to begin a war until we are actually attacked, then war will rarely occur, war expenditure will be reduced, and, so soon as other nations follow our example and that of the United States, one of the chief causes of depression of trade will cease to exist.
- ↑ "Wealth Creation," by Augustus Mongrieden, p. 115.
