Читать книгу American World Policies - Walter Edward Weyl - Страница 4

It was in the year 1898 that the United States made its earliest plunge into imperialism. Then for the first time we secured "dominions beyond the sea"; dominions too thickly populated to be adapted for purposes of colonisation. By our earlier conquests and purchases (Louisiana, Florida, Texas, California, New Mexico), we had secured relatively empty territories which a flow of emigrants from our Eastern States could rapidly Americanise. But in Porto Rico, the Philippines and Hawaii, there was neither prospect nor intention of colonising. The impulse that led to their taking was the desire to possess their wealth, to rule and "civilise" them, and above all not "to haul down the flag." It was an impulse not very different from that which led to the European partition of Africa.3

The change in our policy was startling. We had seemed, after the Civil War, to have reached a stage of satiety, to be through with expansion. Henceforth the ocean was to be our boundary; we were not, like the slave-owners before the war, to scheme for new lands in Central America and the Caribbean. When in 1867 Russia offered us a territory almost three times as large as Germany for a sum about equal to the value of the Equitable Building, we accepted only to oblige Russia and because we believed that we were in honour bound to buy. We refused to purchase St. Thomas and St. Johns, although Denmark offered to sell cheap, and we declined to annex San Domingo or to entertain Sweden's proposal to purchase her West Indian possessions. Again in 1893, instead of annexing Hawaii, we vainly sought to bolster up the sovereignty of a native Queen. Then suddenly Porto Rico, the Philippines and Guam were annexed; Hawaii was incorporated and Samoa was divided up with Germany.

In part this change in foreign policy was due to military considerations. The possession of Hawaii, Panama and Guantanamo in Cuba was obviously necessary for the defence of our coasts. Just as the Monroe Doctrine was intended to protect us from the approach of great military powers, so these new acquisitions were desired to pre-empt near-lying bases, from which, in enemy possession fleets might assail our trade or cut off our communications.4

Such strategic considerations, however, do not explain the whole of our new imperialistic policy. Economic motives played their part. We changed our foreign policy because at the same time we were undergoing a commercial and industrial revolution.

As a result of this industrial change our merchants had begun to think in terms of foreign markets and our financiers in terms of foreign investments. We had passed through the stage in which our industrial life was completely self-sufficing. We were becoming a manufacturing nation, requiring markets for the disposal of surplus products. We were, it appeared, being drawn into a great international competition, in which markets in China, South America and backward countries were the prizes. Simultaneously our foreign commerce had changed. Our growing population had made increasing demands upon our food products, leaving less to be exported, and at the same time our exports of manufactures had increased. In 1880 we exported manufactures (ready for consumption) to the value of ninety-three millions of dollars; in 1898 to the value of two hundred and twenty-three millions.

Other industrial factors tended also to bring about a change in our national ideals. We were beginning to believe in the economic efficiency of trust organisation, and our industry, conducted on a larger scale, was being increasingly concentrated. A new class was in financial control of our great industries. The trust magnate, the new conductor of vast industrial enterprises, was looking forward toward a strong unified banking control over industries and a definite expansion of American trade in foreign countries. American capitalists were beginning to believe that their economic needs were the same as those of the European capitalists, who were enticing their nations into imperialism.

Psychologically, also, we were ripe for any imperialistic venture, for we enormously exaggerated the progress we had made towards industrialisation, and were thinking in terms of Europe. We suddenly believed that we too were over-filled with capital and compelled to find an outlet for investments and trade. Innumerable editorials appeared, presenting the arguments for imperialism that had been urged ad nauseam in Europe. We could not resist, it was argued, the ubiquitous economic tendency toward expansion. In all countries, including America, capital was to become congested. An over-saving of capital, invested in manufacturing plants, produced far in excess of the possible consumption of the people. We had reached a stage of chronic over-production, in which increased saving and increased investment of capital would permanently outstrip consumption. Everywhere wealth was being heaped up; the savings-banks overflowed; the rate of interest fell and capital sought desperately for new investments. The capitalist system must either expand or burst.

Certain superficial developments in the United States formed the groundwork of these gloomy prophecies. We had just passed through a commercial depression, during which prices and interest rates fell and great numbers of workers were left unemployed. These facts were exploited by political leaders and industrial magnates, who thought in terms of the subordination of American foreign policy to the needs of big business. It is not surprising therefore that they became infected with the new imperialism, which in Europe had been growing steadily for over fifteen years, and that they came to the conclusion that America could not hold hands off while the markets and investment fields of the world were divided up among her rivals.

"The United States," wrote Charles A. Conant, one of the intellectual leaders of this movement (in 1898), "cannot afford to adhere to a policy of isolation while other nations are reaching out for the command of new markets. The United States are still large users of foreign capital, but American investors are not willing to see the return upon their investments reduced to the European level. Interest rates have greatly declined here within the last five years. New markets and new opportunities for investment must be found if surplus capital is to be profitably employed."

Like so many of the pamphleteers of 1898, Mr. Conant was convinced that imperialism offered the only cure "for the enormous congestion of capital." No civilised state, he contended, would accept the doctrine that saving should be abandoned. And while human desires were expansible, he doubted whether the demand for goods could possibly increase with sufficient rapidity to absorb the new productive capacities of the nation. "There has never been a time," he writes, "when the proportion of capital to be absorbed has been so great in proportion to possible new demands. Means for building more bicycle factories than are needed, and for laying more electric railways than are able to pay dividends, have been taken out of current savings within the last few years, without producing any marked effect upon their amount and without doing more, at the most, than to stay the downward course of the rate of interest."

It therefore follows conclusively that the American conquest of markets and fields for investment must go on. The method of such a conquest is of little importance. "In pointing out," he says, "the necessity that the United States shall enter upon a broad national policy, it need not be determined in just what manner that policy shall be worked out. Whether the United States shall actually acquire territorial possessions, shall set up captain generalships and garrisons, whether they shall adopt the middle ground of protecting sovereignties nominally independent, or whether they shall content themselves with naval stations and diplomatic representations as the basis for asserting their rights to the free commerce of the East, is a matter of detail."

I have quoted Mr. Conant at length because he is so largely typical of the state of mind of the American plutocracy in the year 1898. It would have been easily possible, however, to have presented any amount of confirmatory material of exactly the same nature. An article by W. Dodsworth in the October, 1898 number of the Nineteenth Century is along the same lines. Here again we read of an unprecedented industrial revolution during the preceding half century and a vast increase in foreign trade and accumulated wealth. Again we read of the falling rate of interest and of the failure of trusts and combines to resist the outside pressure of necessitous capital, seeking to force its way into industries. It was held quite impossible for consumption to absorb the products of an over-fertile industry. "I am no pessimist," writes Mr. Dodsworth, "but I cannot conceal my deep conviction that, if this relief is not forthcoming, a stage of grave industrial collapse, attended with the agitation of equally grave political issues, becomes only too probable, and the energies of our seventy-five millions of producers may have to be restrained until we learn to appreciate the penalty of our neglect of foreign enterprise."

Such were the arguments with which in 1898 the United States plunged into imperialism. We were to break out of the narrow circle which confined our economic life to become the work-shop of the world as England had once been, to export and export and ever increasingly export until all the nations should be our debtors. Our capital, like our wares, was to go to all countries. It flattered our pride when, a few years later, Europe trembled at the spectre of an American commercial invasion and even England wondered whether she could withstand the flood of cheap manufactured American goods, dumped on her shores. We pictured a vastly increasing trade with our new colonial possessions and with China; we envisaged opportunities, not only of an immense American investment, but of an even greater American trade.

What we believed of ourselves, Europe only too credulously believed of us. Leading European economists and publicists were completely convinced that the United States was irrevocably embarked on "the sea of imperialism." "The recent entrance of the powerful and progressive nation of the United States of America upon imperialism," wrote Prof. John A. Hobson in 1902, "… not only adds a new formidable competitor for trade and territory, but changes and complicates the issue. As the focus of political attention and activity shifts more to the Pacific States, and the commercial aspirations of America are more and more set upon trade with the Pacific Islands and the Asiatic coast, the same forces which are driving European States along the path of territorial expansion seem likely to act upon the United States."5 Professor Hobson and other foreign observers believed that our great trusts, which were being formed with reckless suddenness, would enormously increase the capital seeking an outlet, and that new imperialistic ventures would result. "Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii," he insisted, "are but the hors d'oeuvre to whet an appetite for an ampler banquet."6

This development toward a congestion of capital, though confidently anticipated both in the United States and in Europe, did not take place. About the end of the century an enormous extension of the general field for foreign investment raised interest rates all over the world. The demand for capital grew with astonishing rapidity. In part this was due to British, French and German foreign investments, but it was also the result of a quickened economic tempo in all countries. New industries were created, wages rose (though in most countries not so rapidly as prices) and the outlets for the supposed superfluous capital were greater than ever.

Especially in the United States was the development contrary to that which had been anticipated. Capital was not rendered idle because of any slackening in the nation's consuming capacity, for the men of average and small income were able to purchase more than ever before. The farmers alone, whose property increased in value from twenty and a half billions of dollars in 1900 to forty-one billions in 1910 (an increase of over 100 per cent. as compared with less than 28 per cent. in the previous decade) added stupendously to a new demand for goods of all sorts. Of automobiles, unknown in 1898, there are in 1916 almost three millions. Innumerable other industries arose and expanded; the anticipated arrest of accumulation did not occur.

The result of this economic development soon made itself apparent. We discovered, fortunately for us, that we were not at this time to become the work-shop of the world. We could not continue to produce articles cheaper than England or Germany, and undersell these countries in their home markets. We discovered that our own country still furnished an admirable field for investment. While our foreign commerce increased, it continued to form only a small part of our whole trade. So long as vast new opportunities for the investment of capital in the United States presented themselves, we ceased to worry about foreign or colonial outlets, and for every dollar of American money invested in Porto Rico and the Philippines, hundreds of dollars were invested in the states. Our capital though accumulating at an ever-increasing rate, did not equal the demand.7

In other words, the conditions in America did not yet warrant an imperialistic policy. We were economically younger than we had thought; more elastic, with greater capacity for internal growth. As a result of this discovery, our sudden enthusiasm for dominions beyond the seas died down. We were disgusted and bored by the Philippine war; we hated the rôle of oppressors, in which we unwillingly found ourselves. We hated the water cure, punitive expeditions, and the endless controversies over the status of Filipinos under American law. The anti-imperialistic elements in America, men whose interests did not lie in foreign trade and speculation, stolidly opposed the retention of the islands. Had the election of 1900 been fought upon this single issue it would probably have been won by the anti-imperialists. Even though we kept the islands, we set definite limitations to our imperialistic ventures. We secured for the Philippines an administration which prevented the exploitation of the natives and the importation of Chinese labour. We set our faces against any policy of sacrificing the interests of the indigenous population to the interests of American financiers. And to-day, could we do it with due regard to the interests of the Filipinos, we would retire from the archipelago.

As we look over this experiment, we cannot help recognising that it was a precocious, an unripe imperialism. For us it was too early to secure Asiatic islands; too early to worry about American investments in foreign lands. It was an imperialism carried out somnambulistically. Our taking the Philippines was an accident, unforeseen and undesired.8 Our hope of being the work-shop and banking centre of the world, of being the heart of a great empire like that of Britain, and of doing all this within a short period, was a dream, which vanished with the new demands made upon American capital by an increasing economic expansion.

The truth is that this unripe imperialism did not represent the interests of the majority nor even of any considerable group of our capital owners. It was doomed to disappearance once the revival of American industry offered opportunities, not only for the ordinary capitalist, but for that more speculative investor, who in other countries clamours for imperialism. The experiment revealed, however, that the same forces which act upon capital in Europe act also upon capital in America, and that the United States, given the right conditions, is liable to the same ambitions as are imperialistic countries and is as likely to engage in war to satisfy these ambitions. The imperialistic trend acts upon all nations at a given stage in their economic development. It cannot be stopped by traditions of peacefulness or by mere protestations, however sincere. It is a part of the great economic strife, out of which devastating wars arise.