Part 30

Along the highroad that leads to empire moves the American people, in the heyday of its youth, sturdy, vigorous, energy-filled, replete with power and promise--conquerors who have swept aside the Indians, enslaved a race of black men, subdued a continent, and begun the extension of territorial control beyond their own borders. More than a hundred million Americans--fast losing their standards of individualism--fast slipping under the domination of a new-made ruling class of wealth-lords and plutocrats--journey, not discontentedly, along the imperial highroad.

The preliminary work of empire-building has been accomplished--territory has been conquered; peoples have been subjected and a ruling class organized. The policy of imperialism has been accepted by the people, although they have not thought seriously of its consequences. They have set out, in good faith, as they believe, to seek for life, liberty and happiness. They do not yet realize that, along the road that they are now traveling, the journey will not be ended until they have worn themselves threadbare in their efforts to conquer the earth.

The American people,--lacking in political experience and in world wisdom; ignorant of the laws of economic and social change,--have committed themselves, unwittingly, to the world old task of setting up authority over those who have no desire to accept it, and of exacting tribute from those who do not wish to pay it.

The early stages of the journey led across a continent. The American people followed it eagerly. Now that the trail leads to other continents they are still willing to go.

"Manifest destiny" is the cry of the leaders. "We are called," echo the followers, and the nation moves onward.

There was some hesitancy among the American people during the Spanish War. Even the leaders were not ready then. Now the leaders are prepared--for markets, for trade, for investments. They are indifferent to political conquest, but economically they are prepared to go on--into Latin America; into Asia; into Europe. The war taught them the lesson and gave them an inkling of their power. So they move along the imperial highroad--followed by a people who have not yet learned to chant the songs of victory--but who are destined, at no very distant date, to learn victory's lessons and to pay victory's price. Along the path,--far away in the distance they see the earth like a ball, rolling at their feet. It is theirs if they will but reach out their hands to grasp it!

2. An Imperial People

This is the American people--locked in the arms of mighty economic and social forces; building industrial empires; compelled, by a world war, to reach out and save "civilization,"--capitalist civilization,--a people that, by its very ancestry, seems destined to follow the course of empire.

The sons and daughters of the native born American stock are, in the main, the descendants of the conquering, imperial races of the modern world. During recent times, three great empires--Spain, France and Great Britain--have dominated western civilization. It was these three empires that were responsible for the settlement of America. The past generation has seen the German empire rise to a position that has enabled her to shake the security of the world. The Germans were among the earliest and most numerous settlers of the American colonies. Those who boast colonial ancestry boast the ancestry of conquerors. The Anglo-Saxon-Teutonic races, the titular masters of the modern world; the races that have spread their power where-ever ships sail or trade moves or gain offers, furnished the bulk of the early immigrants to America.

The bulk of the early immigration to the United States was from Great Britain and Germany. The records of immigration (kept officially since 1820) show that between that year and 1840 the immigrants from Europe numbered 594,504, among them there were 358,994 (over half) from the British Isles, and 159,215 from Germany, making a total from the two countries of 518,209, or 87 percent of the immigrants arriving in the twenty-year period. During the next twenty years (1840-1860) the total of immigrants from Europe was 4,050,159, of which the British Isles furnished 2,386,846 (over half) and Germany 1,386,293, making, for these two countries, 94 percent of the whole immigration. Even during the years from 1860 to 1880, 82 percent of those who migrated to the United States hailed from Great Britain and Germany. American immigration, from 1820 to 1880, might, without any violence to facts, be described as Anglo-Teutonic, so completely does the British-German immigrant dominate this period.

Literally, it is true that the American people have been sired by the masters and would-be masters of the modern earth.

3. A Place in the Sun

The Americans, like many another growing people, have sought a place in the sun--widening their boundaries; grasping at promised riches. Unlike other peoples they have accomplished the task without any real opposition. Their "promised land" lay all about them, isolated from the factional warfare of Europe; virgin; awaiting the master of the Western World.

The United States has followed the path of empire with a facility unexampled in recent history. When has a people, caught in the net of imperialism, encountered less difficulty in making its imperial dream come true? None of the foes that the American people have encountered, in two centuries of expansion, have been worthy of the name. The Indians were in no position to withstand the onslaught of the Whites. The Mexicans were even less competent to defend themselves. The Spanish Empire crumpled, under attack, like an autumn leaf under the heel of a hunter. Practically for the taking, the American people secured a richly-stocked, compact region, with an area of three millions of square miles--the ideal site for the foundation of a modern civilization.

The area of the United States has increased with marvelous rapidity. At the outbreak of the Revolution (1776) the Colonies claimed a territory of 369,000 square miles. The Northwest Territory (275,000 square miles) and the area south of the Ohio River (205,000 square miles) were added largely as a result of the negotiations in 1782. The official figures for 1800 give the total area of the United States as 892,135 square miles. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) added 885,000 square miles at a cost of 15 millions of dollars. Florida, 59,600 square miles, was purchased from Spain (1819) for 5 millions of dollars; Texas, 389,000 square miles was annexed in 1845; the Oregon Country, 285,000 square miles, was secured by treaty in 1846; New Mexico and California, 529,000 square miles, were ceded by Spain (1848) and a payment of 15 millions was made by the United States; in 1853 the Gadsen Purchase added 30,000 square miles at a cost of ten millions of dollars. This completed the territorial possessions of the United States on the mainland (with the exception of Alaska) making a continental area of 3,026,798 square miles. Between 1776 and 1853 the area of the United States was increased more than eight fold. What other nation has been in a position to multiply its home territory by eight in two generations?

These vast additions to the continental possessions of the United States were made as the result of a trifling outlay. The most serious losses were involved in the Mexican War when the casualties included more than 13,000 killed and died of wounds and disease. The net money cost of the war did not exceed $100,000,000. In return for this outlay--including the annexation of Texas--the United States secured 918,000 square miles of land.

There is no way to estimate the loss of life or the money cost of the Indian Wars. For the most part, the troops engaged in them suffered no more heavily than in ordinary police duty, and the costs were the costs of maintaining the regular army. The total money outlay for purchases and indemnities was about 45 millions of dollars. Within a century the American people gained possession of one of the richest portions of the earth's surfaces--a portion equal in area to more than three times the combined acreage of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the British Isles--in return for an outlay in money and life that would not have provided for one first class battle of the Great War.

Additions to the territory of the country were made with equal facility during the period following the Civil War. Alaska was purchased from Russia for $7,200,000; from Spain, as a result of the War of 1898, the United States received the Philippines, Porto Rico, and some lesser islands, at the same time paying Spain $20,000,000; Hawaii was annexed and an indemnity of $10,000,000 was paid to Panama for the Canal strip. During the second half of the nineteenth century, 716,666 square miles were added to the possessions of the United States. The total direct cost of this territory in money was under forty millions. These gains involved no casualties with the exception of the small numbers lost during the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars.

One hundred and thirty years have witnessed an addition to the United States of more than two and a half million square miles of contiguous, continental territory, and three-quarters of a million square miles of non-contiguous territory. The area of the United States in 1900 was four times as great as it was in 1800 and more than ten times as great as the area of the Thirteen Original Colonies. For the imperialist, the last century and a half of American history is a fairyland come true.

Other empires have been won by the hardest kind of fighting, during which blood and wealth have been spent with a lavish hand. The empire of the French, finally crushed with the defeat of Napoleon, was paid for at such a huge price. The British Empire has been established in savage competition with Holland, Spain, France, Russia, the United States, Germany and a host of lesser powers. The empires of old--Assyria, Egypt, Rome--were built at an intolerable sacrifice. So terrible has been the cost of empire building to some of these nations that by the time they had succeeded in creating an empire the life blood of the people and the resources of the country were devoured and the empire emerged, only to fall an easy prey to the first strong-handed enemy that it encountered.

No such fate has overtaken the United States. On the contrary her path has been smoothed before her feet. Inhabiting a garden spot, her immense territory gains in the past hundred and fifty years have been made with less effort than it has cost Japan to gain and hold Korea or England to maintain her dominion over Ireland.

Once established, the old-world empire was not secure. If the territory that it possessed was worth having, it was surrounded by hungry-eyed nations that took the first occasion to band together and despoil the spoiler. The holding of an empire was as great a task as the building of empire--often greater because of the larger outlay in men and money that was involved in an incessant warfare. Little by little the glory faded; step by step militarism made its inroads upon the normal life of the people, until the time came for the stronger rival to overthrow the mighty one, or until the inrushing hordes of barbarians should blot out the features of civilization, and enthrone chaos once more.

How different has been the fate of the people of the United States! Possessed of what is probably the richest, for the purposes of the present civilization, of any territory of equal size in the world, their isolation has allowed them more than a century of practical freedom from outside interference--a century that they have been able to devote to internal development. The absence of greedy neighbors has reduced the expense of military preparation to a minimum; the old world has failed to realize, until within the last few years, what were the possibilities of the new country; vitality has remained unimpaired, wealth has piled up, industry has been promoted, and on each occasion when a greater extent of territory was required, it has been obtained at a cost that, compared with the experience of other nations, must be described as negligible.

So simple has been the process of empire building for the United States; so natural have been the stages by which the American Empire has been evolved; so little have the changes disturbed the routine of normal life that the American people are, for the most part, unaware of the imperial position of their country. They still feel, think and talk as if the United States were a tiny corner, fenced off from the rest of the world to which it owed nothing and from which it expected nothing.

The American Empire has been built, as were the palaces of Aladdin, in a night. The morning is dawning, and the early risers who were not even awakened from their slumbers by the sound of hammer and engine, are beginning to rub their eyes, and to ask one another what is the meaning of this apparition, and whether it is real.

4. The Will to Power

The forces of America are the forces of Empire,--the geography, the economic organization, the racial qualities--all press in the direction of imperialism. There is logic behind the two centuries of conquest in which the American people have been engaged; there is logic in the rise of the plutocracy. Now it remains for the rulers of America to accept the implications of imperialism,--to thrill with the will to power; to recognize and strengthen imperial purpose; to sell imperialism to the American people--in other words to follow the call of manifest destiny and conquer the earth.

The will to power is very old and very strong. Economic and social necessity on the one hand, and the driving pressure of human ambition and the love of domination on the other, have given it a front place in human affairs. The empires of the past were driven into being by this ardent force. As far back as history bears a record, one nation or tribe has made war on its more fortunately situated neighbor; one leader has made cause against his fellow ruler. The Egyptians and Carthaginians have conquered in Africa; the Persians, Assyrians and Babylonians conquered in Asia; the Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Spanish, Dutch, French, and British built their empires on one or more of the five continents. Conqueror has succeeded conqueror, empire has followed empire. Spoils, domination, world power, have been the objects of their campaigns.