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tion makers wanted contracts, or because war meant better business, but because competitive business is war.
Two hundred years ago France was the leading country of the world. The English developed the factory system, and pushed France out of first place. The supremacy of France ended in 1815 with the Napoleonic Wars.
For a hundred years England has been the supreme industrial and commercial nation. It is only during the past forty years that Germany has come to the front. Her rise has been spectacular, however. Armed with her industrial, social, educational and military efficiency, she has threatened the world supremacy of England in the fields of industry, commerce and finance. England knew and understood the danger; Germany saw her real foe. It was for this reason that England and Germany flew at one another's throats.
9. The Wolf Struggle of Nations.
England was the first nation to develop the modern system of competitive factory industry. Her capitalists owned the resources and the machines. They hired workers, paid them less in wages than they created in product, and took the surplus (rent, interest, dividends, profits) for their own. This surplus the owners could not consume, so they invested it in new mills and mines at home. These new investments created new floods of surplus. The capitalists then went abroad in search of investments. They found iron ore in Cuba, and Chile, and oil in Mexico. German, English and American capitalists invested their surplus there. There was hard feeling, friction, conflict. Who was to exploit their choice bits of the earth?
