XXV. THE AGE OF VIOLENCE

I

JUST as prosperity has given way to economic depression as the normal phase of post-war imperialism, and has become a mere pause between panics, so does the calm of peace yield to the hysteria of war. Previously, war was considered the exceptional and untoward event, the conflicts since Napoleon being mainly local and episodic. The World War, however, was a catastrophe of such a devastating nature as to change the whole character of world events. It led to the collapse of capitalism in the Soviet Union and to the breakdown of Europe. It produced such convulsions that revolution followed upon revolution in all parts of the world. Try as it will, capitalist Europe to this day has not been able to suppress for any length of time revolutionary manifestations.

In the nineteenth century, war was simply one of the many useful by-products of industrial evolution; its destructive character was quickly remedied by a magnificent growth of the productive processes which the war stimulated and accelerated. War itself was but a hand-maiden of industry, advancing the flag where trade was to follow. (*1)

Under imperialism, matters have become reversed. War becomes an industry in and of itself, attaining increasingly menacing proportions. To administer to its war needs, the capitalist class organizes an ever-growing State which enters into every productive process, laying its heavy hand upon individual initiative and upon free trade in accordance with militarist dictates. The rise of militarism is a concomitant part of the State’s development. All functions are subsumed to the State and an attempt is made to attain complete economic self-sufficiency which will enable the nation better to struggle in wartime. In order to accomplish this end, and to integrate its forces in preparation for war, the State undertakes the establishment of monopolies and the co-ordination of private industry. It adopts an elaborate system of tariffs to protect its economic might and to regulate its foreign trade according to its war plans. It does not take into account the facts that such tariffs mean the ultimate thwarting of the productive forces within the country, the stagnation of certain branches of industry, and the artificial stimulation of others, that similar methods result in the burial of inventions, which otherwise might have been put into practical operations either in archives or latent in the minds of potential inventors. The sole test is the immediate advantage given the military.

Whereas in the nineteenth century war had provided a spur for industry, by the twentieth century, so devastating had become the instruments of destruction that, in the short years of the World War, more goods and wealth were destroyed in Europe than could be produced in the score of years following the peace. Europe up to the present has not been able to attain the per capita wealth and income levels that it had achieved prior to the war. In proportion as war became the chief business of the State, it was revealed that the main occupation of capitalism in the twentieth century was no longer to construct, but to destroy.

Moreover, the very acts of destruction laid the foundation for new and more terrible havoc to come, just as in peace the destructive nature of the crisis creates the basis for deeper depressions. The World War itself tremendously accelerated the ability of mankind to destroy itself. Deadly inventions were stimulated by the War and increased enormously during the period of fighting. So it is, too, that the treaties of peace will bring on eventually new and even more devastating wars.

As war becomes transformed into a modern industry, the inventions which were laid at the feet of peace now are carried elsewhere. Inventors turn from private industry to the patronage of the State. The contradictions of imperialism prevent the trusts from utilizing to the maximum their productive capacities or from making the best applications of the ever increasing host of inventions presenting themselves. The State is forced to resort to the organization of laboratories and research bureaus, to stimulate discovery and inventions, and to organize its many universities and higher centers of learning for the express purpose of advancing technological knowledge.

But the primary interest of the State is not peace, but war. “Peace established by the State, or resting in the discretion of the State, is necessarily of the nature of an armistice, in effect terminable at will and on short notice… . At the best, the State, or the government, is an instrumentality for making peace, not for perpetuating it.” (*2)

Thus the inventive ability of mankind, which heretofore had been directed towards constructive processes of peace-time endeavor, now become directed towards destructive activities for war. Peace becomes a feverish preparation for military activities. (*3)

Just as the closing down of any single major industry would threaten the whole structure of the economic system, so the termination of military industry would create chaos in modern life. Production depends upon consumption. As markets relatively dwindle, some disposition must be made of surplus products. Some of the surplus is squandered by the wealthy parasites themselves in all manner of perverted luxuries, but this is but a minute portion of the surplus at hand. Another part of the surplus is wiped out during periods of economic crises, when machines rust and factories are broken up, etc. In such periods, milk is dumped into the rivers so that the fish die, or thrown into the sewers so that the sewers are clogged; bananas are tossed into the ocean by the boatload; fish are scattered on the seashore until their infested remains threaten to wipe out whole communities; coffee is burned by the thousands of tons, and so it goes, ad nauseam.

But even this destructiveness is not sufficient to open up the factories. War at this moment plays the sole creative factor in history, because only through war is the destruction of goods so widespread and thorough as to compel all industry to work at maximum capacity and efficiency. It is only in wartime that all inventions are utilized, that the nation can rise to unprecedented heights.

Today, peacetime business has become the servile slave of Mars. War is not only the chief industry of the nation, it is practically the sole obsession dominating all business. Today no invention is realized and put to use or even conceived without its implications to military affairs being brought forth at once and worked out by the chief of staff, whose prime departments at present are indeed the engineering. Is there an investigation into the stratosphere? Then we may be sure the military department is actively calculating the application of its results to the radius of cruising bombers. Is there research in cosmic rays? Then it is certain that the war arm of every government is feverishly at work trying to discover new methods of remote control by which to lay down a murderous barrage against the enemy. Thus, even commercial inventions, which on the surface seem to have nothing whatever to do with warlike activity, are seized upon and developed with an eye mainly on this activity. How different was the situation in the nineteenth century when even such explosives as dynamite had a far greater use in the constructive processes of the building industry than in destructive munition making!

If, prior to the World War, industry could exclaim that peace was stifling it, today, even in peace, industry works practically entirely under military departments. Especially is this true in time of crisis, when industries are closing down and the owners are calling upon the government for subventions and subsidies to sustain them. Then the government utilizes the opportunity to put these concerns at work on matters pertaining to the building up of the State and of the armed forces of the country. (*4) Thus at the present time, under the plea that it is necessary to put the unemployed to work, the United States government has launched the most expensive military armament campaign in its history. If the industries were not furnishing war material today they would be in far more desperate straits than they are. Especially is this true for the basic industry of all, iron and steel.

Any diminution of war industry would be bound to affect most disastrously the iron and steel corporations. For this reason the armament cartels have established agencies to foment, deliberately, hostilities between nations so as to require increased armaments. The armament ring is to be found behind every jingoist expression, military organization, patriotic and nationalist demonstration. Nor can it be said that this armament ring is purely selfish in its propaganda, since the iron and steel trusts could easily demonstrate that, should their plants close down, the whole national economy of the nation would be affected adversely. The fact of the matter is that only war can maintain and build up the productive occupations and activities of the basic industries of the country under imperialism.

Here we have the basic impulse in the drive for war. In the nineteenth century, colonies were seized on the plea that the surplus population of the home countries demanded an outlet; this is still a stereotyped excuse given by imperialists. Sometimes war was justified on the ground that the vast indemnities taken would help business at home. (*5) In the twentieth century these reasons obviously are invalid. War today is not for gain, but for loss, not for the acquisition of more wealth, but to dissipate the mountain of surpluses threatening to choke the social order to death! (*6) War is the only factor today adequate to release the energies of the people, to unfetter the productive forces from the stifling relations that peace has imposed.

Consider the question of colonies. Germany went into the business of seizing colonies at the very moment when German industry was expanding so greatly that emigration from that land, even to the United States, had practically ceased. Thus, population pressure and seizure of colonies by no

means coincided. (*7) Another example: Great Britain has the largest colonial empire in the world, yet the number of British who have emigrated from Britain to the colonies of Africa or of Asia is an exceedingly negligible portion of the British population. The British in these dependencies are those primarily connected with the military regime of repression or the administration of commercial interests. Again: the colonies of Italy have been far more costly than beneficial and have proven to be a steady drain upon the financial resources of the Italians.

All these considerations, however, do not imply that in every case the seizure of colonies does not pay financially. The British colonies, on the contrary, have enabled Britain to develop its merchant marine to the magnificent might which it now maintains. The amount of loot that Britain has seized from the colonies has more than paid for the military expenses, particularly in India; France, Germany, Italy, and other countries have not been so fortunate.

However, the important point is that whether colonies furnish outlets for immigration or not makes no difference; they are not essential because the industrial country is poor and must have more wealth. This may have been the situation in the days of antiquity or even in the early days of capitalism. But not today. Nor does the acquisition of colonies result in any reduction of the home population, since it is impossible to deport the surplus population from the ruling country. The seizure of colonies now is important primarily as a means of preventing other countries from grabbing them first, of obtaining military vantage points in case of war, and as affording a reasonable excuse for wasting the productive forces of the country.

Furthermore, the development of colonies only increases the contradictions of imperialist. As we have seen, already the home imperialist countries suffer from a surfeit of goods and capital of which they cannot dispose. When the ruling class seize more territory, it means that the conquerors have more workers available for exploitation at a time when they are expelling workers from the factories; it means they will have more goods for disposal in a period of overproduction. If factories are developed in the colonies, then similar factories must close down at home. If, previously, a country represented a buying market, now, as a colony seized by the former seller nation, it represents a mass of goods that must be sold elsewhere. Thus, the very seizure of a colony increases the demand for further markets by the victorious country and raises the contradictions to even a higher point.

It has been said that the obtaining of indemnities helps an industrial country. How meager this argument is can be seen in the Franco-Prussian War. Prussia, after the war of 1870, was able to impose an indemnity of five billion francs upon France. To pay this indemnity, France at once greatly increased her productive powers and rapidly strengthened herself thereby. The payment of the indemnity was accomplished relatively easily. On the other hand, Germany did not know what to do with the five billions. They aggravated the overproduction already existing and induced a serious industrial crisis, leading to the great growth of revolutionary forces in Germany.

The World War illustrated the futility of the indemnity principle still further. The great drain that was forced upon Germany compelled her to construct a far more magnificent technical productive machine than she had ever attained in her history, and today she represents a far more serious competitor to Britain than before the war. On the other hand, whatever indemnity Germany suffered, the victorious powers, particularly the United States, were compelled to lend to her, and when Germany financially was destitute, Britain, France, and the United States were forced to rush in to save their deadliest capitalist competitor.

It has been said that additional wealth releases the population of the home country from factory toil. Indeed, such has been the tendency in imperialist life, as exemplified by England and Scotland, which are becoming increasingly luxury countries, countries where servants, butlers, and panderers to luxuries and pleasures are produced, rather than factory operatives. Thus the imperialist country tends to lose its virility, its relations to the real productive processes of life, and generates a huge parasitic class. The sole basis for the existence of these parasites is the military might which they have established to enforce their rule. But as they degenerate in every sense, they lose their military fire as well, and are bound to fall before the countries to which industry has been transferred.

"Generally speaking, it would be true to say that no one believes that war pays and nearly every one believes that policies which lead inevitably to war do pay. Every nation sincerely desires peace; and all nations pursue courses which, if persisted in, must make peace impossible."

“All nations are quite ready to condemn ‘in the abstract,’ armaments, economic nationalism, international suspicion and mistrust, while each one individually clings to his armament, adds to his tariff, invents new modes of economic nationalism, and insists upon an absolute national sovereignty which must make international order impossible, and the prolongation of anarchy and chaos inevitable.” (*8)

2

The development of war industry has reached unparalleled proportions at the present moment. A complete revolution in military tactics is now being completed whereby no longer will there be any distinction between the front and the rear. The whole nation will be called to arms and there will be formed practically four armies of the population: first, the army that actually fights at the front, an army conscripted from the most virile elements of the population; second, a vast army of helpers taken from the ranks of the permanently unemployed and trained by military discipline to support the army in its field work; third, the regular industrial labor army created from all the laborers working in factories and industries; and fourth, the remainder of the population, mobilized in reserves. Complete regimentation will be the basic rule of such a society. A capitalist nation sentimental enough not to redress its ranks on such a basis will be doomed to destruction in a common war. Fascism, and fascism alone, attempts to carry forward this principle to its ultimate conclusions; for this reason, the dictatorial tendencies of fascism are absolutely inevitable so long as capitalism continues to endure. Fascism is a legitimate product of the supersession of war.

Front and rear are made into one also by the actions of the enemy. New scientific developments are of such a nature that they can be used efficiently only when employed on a vast scale. Magnificent bombers, traveling at three hundred miles an hour, capable of a radius of three thousand miles, cannot be confined to use merely on a front line. The utility of such great inventions is negated unless they can be employed on cities far in the rear of the actual fighting. This action is made all the more necessary by the intimate correlation of industry to war and the subordination of industry to military affairs. It is now possible to crush the enemy by destroying his sources of production. In the long run, this is the most humane method to terminate conflict.

All circumstances being equal, that country will win the war which has the greatest economic might, which can pour into the struggle the largest amount of steel, gas, deadly microbes, etc. It is vital to the enemy country to destroy the sources of these supplies; thus it will be impossible to spare the towns and points of production. Indeed, it may well be that the safest place in time of war will be in the very front line trench! Owing to the greatly increased destructiveness of weapons, wars today tend to become ones of mutual exhaustion and annihilation. How different was it a hundred years ago when Napoleon could write: “It was the opinion of Frederick that all wars should be short and rapid; because a long war insensibly relaxes discipline, depopulates the state, and exhausts its resources.” (*9)

The consolidation of the front and rear is illustrated in the United States by the National Defense Weeks carried out every year by the military department of the government. National Defense Week is a test to ascertain how quickly industry can be transformed from a peacetime to a wartime basis. Owners of factories are required to report exactly what war goods they can produce, how quickly they can transform their plants, maximum production possible, etc. In this way the country rehearses for the awful conflicts to come.

The correlation of industry to war is illustrated in the complete mechanization of the army. The rate of increase in the number of machines of destruction has accelerated to an enormous degree since the World War. The ordnance department for some time has maintained sixteen-inch mobile cannon which can fire accurately at a range of over thirty miles; during the war the “Big Berthas” of the Germans actually landed shells at a range of over eighty miles. To these developments has been added the possibility of rapid fire.

A marked advance has occurred in the development and use of the machine gun, every regiment now being accompanied not only by an ever-increasing number of heavy machine guns but a relatively large proportion of light machine guns as well. (*10) The rifle itself has undergone an important modernization by which, under average conditions, a soldier may fire, without reloading, fifty shots a minute. (*11) Thus the quantity of lead that can be hurled by each man in war has considerably increased. (*12) Supplemental advances in munitions have been developed; they now are equipped with time fuses and are composed of various elements, shrapnel, chemicals, combustible inflammatory materials, etc., according to the need. Even gas bullets that can diverge from a straight line have been invented. The development of the torpedo has enormously increased the accuracy and destructiveness of this missile, both in submarine and in aviation warfare.

The tank, an innovation during the World War, has evolved into a regular department of the army. Whereas, during the war, the tank generally required repairs every sixty miles, and lumbered along at the rate of four miles an hour, today there are tanks that are veritable fortresses, weighing over seventy tons, containing several pieces of medium sized ordnance.

Other tanks can move at the rate of seventy miles an hour, and have a cruising radius of nearly a thousand miles without repair.

With the development of the tank has gone the complete motorization of the army. In the United States, for example, the cavalry has been practically abolished, and all soldiers are transported by motor vehicles of one sort or another. The lorry, the cycle, even the cab were used extensively in the World War.

Unparalleled developments have occurred in aviation. Bombers now are capable of three hundred miles an hour with a cruising radius of several thousand miles. They may carry torpedoes of the most explosive materials, each weighing one ton. Research is being carried on to render them completely noiseless; this may well be accomplished before the next common war. A vast number of planes are ready for use, each of the countries being engaged in a frenzied military armament and aviation race.

To prevent the wholesale destruction of Paris by a mass air attack from Germany has been declared impossible. The British General Staff has affirmed the same in regard to London. Such declarations may be merely propaganda of the militarists to insure sufficiently large appropriations from frightened parliaments. There is no doubt, however, that the military staff relies not so much upon the defense of their own cities as upon the ability and readiness to strike first and annihilate the physical resources of the enemy country. Thus the war becomes one of mutual annihilation.

This, of course, has not prevented the general staffs from making defense plans against bombers. Entire civilian populations are being drilled constantly in the use of gas masks and in mutual aid during raids in time of war. Cities are being tunneled for the construction of gas chambers wherein the population may take refuge. New electrical anti-aircraft devices have been created that can detect the sound of an airplane four miles away, and, by trigonomic calculations, enable the mechanic at once to train his gun upon the object approaching. Such have been the improvements made in the efficiency of the anti-aircraft gun that the norm now recorded is one hit for every eight shots fired. Pursuit planes of remarkable speed are being built, the British having developed a plan that can reach the “ceiling” in ten minutes and from high altitudes pour their fire into the approaching bombers.

Immense progress has been made in chemical warfare; new gases have been invented against which no defense is available, and which affect not merely the respiratory tracts but the entire body. The protection provided for the soldier and civilian against these gases is ridiculously inadequate, and does not prevent persons so “protected” from becoming completely unfit for active service of any sort. The gases are heavier than air and penetrate every crevice. Subterranean chambers established by municipal officials are potential death traps. The heavier-than-air gas, once settled on an object, may remain intact for over two weeks, maintaining its death-dealing properties. (*13)

A great advance also has been made in naval warfare. Not only are the ships faster and more dangerous, but new features have been added to submarine and aircraft carriers. Submarine warfare amply proved its tremendous potency during the World War; the aircraft carrier has yet to show its worth.

There must be mentioned now those inventions which at present are kept secret by the various capitalist governments but which no doubt will be let loose with awful results once war is begun. While the exact inventions remain undisclosed, we can predict their character. First of all, biology has been utilized to furnish an important weapon in future world struggles. There is no question but that there will be released in the coming war vast streams of deadly microbes that will infect the food and water supplies of entire populations and from which no escape will have been provided for the ordinary civilian population. This weapon was used but sparingly during the War; doubtless its uses in the coming war will astound humanity.

Most important of all, however, are the inventions pertaining to electrical appliances and remote control. Already there has been created an airplane which can take off, fly in a given direction, can release a torpedo, and return to its base, without a pilot and directed entirely by radio control. More than that, the torpedo itself may be guided by remote control so as to be deflected from its normal course in the air to insure complete and perfect accuracy in reaching a designated objective. The progress of television and X-ray and cosmic ray researches make it possible that higher physics may contribute most potent instruments of death and destruction.

Finally, there is, of course, the careful organization of the entire population for actual military participation. Universal military training, specialized Military Training Camps, Reserve Officers Training Corps, Boy Scouts, various social organizations pertaining to war, such as rifle clubs, sports groups, etc., and veterans’ associations of all sorts will have been added to the regular army and national militias. It goes without saying that the pursuit of all this activity has instituted an immense increase in the military budgets of each country. The United States, the most pacific of the big countries, now spends approximately a billion dollars a year on its war machine.

The World War was frightfully devastating to civilization. The dead alone have been estimated at thirteen million and the severely wounded at twenty million, making a total of thirty-three million. “If all the losses of the hundred years which lie between the Napoleonic Wars and the World War of 1914-1918 are counted, the result will prove a fraction only of the number of deaths during the World War.” (*14) Of the total British enlistment of 6,211,427, the total casualties amounted to 2,437,964, and the British losses were less, proportionately, than either the French, Austrian, German, or Russian.

In the last war, the ratio of dead to seriously wounded was ten to twenty-two, a much larger proportion than in other wars (*15) and far greater than in accidents. In the case of automobile accidents, for example, it has been found that the ratio of fatalities to those seriously injured is four to twenty-one. We have not considered those who suffered temporary disability and minor injuries.

The total combatant dead in the- World War has been estimated at thirteen million. The ratio of dead to wounded was thirteen to twenty; the ratio of seriously wounded to otherwise wounded was six to fourteen. Of all those wounded only 44.5 per cent were restored to normal ability; 52 per cent were partially restored and their ability reduced; over 3 per cent were total loss. (*16)

Nor does this figure embrace the tremendous losses occasioned by massacres, disease and starvation as a result of the conditions engendered by the War. Of the Armenians, Syrians, Jews and Greeks alone, four million were massacred during the course of the War. Especially terrible were the effects on the children; in many places all perished. “In conclusion it may fairly be estimated that the loss of civilian life due directly to war or to causes induced by war equals, if indeed it does not exceed, that suffered by the armies in the field." (*17) To this total must be added the large number of children who normally would have been born; all countries showed a great fall in the birth rate. The actual monetary loss has been stated to have been far above a quarter of a trillion dollars. (*18)

The complete co-ordination of front and rear becomes realized not only when war breaks out, but in preparation for it, whereby war training penetrates every feature of social life. Every activity is now subordinated to the coming conflicts.

The same categorical imperative which drives a country to war has induced statesmen and theoreticians to idealize military measures. “There are certain compensations for war. War and preparation for war develop national consciousness—increase national and individual efficiency; they lead to industrial expansion, to invention, they bring order and discipline to men; they develop unselfishness and charity; they strike down needless distinctions; and through war or a threat of war, the masses have often achieved personal liberty. Military training benefits the individual and the nation; it teaches obedience, respect for authority, punctuality, team play; it promotes physical development and personal hygiene. Military training is a valuable preparation for any civil career.” (*19)

Here we have some of the efficient social reasons for war. Democratic and liberal apologists for war have gone to great lengths to point out that hand in hand with the duty to fight in war must go the right of political participation in the government; thus the growth of democracy and of war proceed simultaneously. The converse argument might also be stated: if a man will not kill at the behest of the ruling class, he cannot be trusted with a vote. In history, ballots have always been part of ballistics.

In Germany, these arguments blossomed out in their richest hues. The struggle for German unity was one which had been carried on for centuries entirely by the sword, against Sweden, against Poland, against Austria, against Russia, against France, and against England. Accordingly, the entire aristocratic ruling class enthusiastically endorsed the military system. Without the slightest cant or hypocrisy, the Kaiser Junker regime meant to achieve power and position with every means at its disposal. The philosophy of Frederick the Great in this respect is well stated in the following rule which he laid out for himself: “Kindle and prolong war between my neighbors.” (*20) With Frederick the Great, politics and villainy were synonymous terms. (*21)

This philosophy was amply reflected by the mouthpieces of the aristocracy in the universities: “The German university professors have always been the most enthusiastic defenders of the (military) system. You hear nowhere in Germany more belittling of the peace and disarmament movements than among the university professors … . " (*22) Illustrations of this are innumerable. Nietzsche, Professor of Greek, wrote: “Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long … ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause. War and courage have done more great things than charity… .” “… be not considerate of thy neighbor!” “Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay! … And for such precepts to be called holy, was not truth itself thereby slain?” (*23)

The idea of Nietzsche that war makes men heroic and transforms them into supermen found its echo in the writings of Treitschke, who believed that war is sublime and makes men sacrifice their egoism. (*24) “That the Germans do not fit into the bustle of peaceful nations is the proudest ornament of the German character. Their manhood does not feminize itself in long peace. War has always been their chief business.” (*25)

The German, Muensterberg, could write: “… war too is not simply a disruption of the international peace, but can become a positive creator of better and higher forms of the life of mankind… . First of all, only war can adjust the power of countries to the changing stages of their inner development…. The world’s progress has depended at all times upon the expansive ascendancy of the sound, strong, solid and able nations and the shrinking of those which have lost their healthy qualities and have become unfit or decadent… . The laws of the equity courts applied to nations must stifle progress… .” (*26)

German political scientists hastened to add their reasons for the value of war. They pointed out that the suppression of war would imply the suppression of all States and the remoulding of civilized community into a single political system. The German who worshiped the State as an end in itself conceived such a fruition of civilization as unspeakably horrible. If States were therefore to exist, war was inevitable, since separate States are by nature in a state of war with each other, and conflict must be regarded as the essence of their relations, while real friendship is accidental. In the intercourse of State with State there were no laws and there could be none. Might made right. War was the fundamental institution of the State. Everything had to be calculated on the basis of possibility of war.

“In politics decisions may be postponed, but when the opportunity presents itself, let he who has the power and feels himself prepared cut the knot with the sword. For great historical questions this is the only rational and permanent solution.” “Between States there is but one sort of right, the right of the stronger.” (*27)

German professors justified the existence of a separate German State by claiming that this State was the culmination of civilized effort, since it represented the kultur of the Teutons, and the Teutons were the aristocrats of the community, while the Latins, on the contrary, belonged to the degenerate mob. (*28) To these people, “The Teutonic race is called upon to circle the earth with its rule, to exploit the treasures of nature and of human labor power, and to make the passive races servient elements in its cultural development.” (*29)

Above these war mongers was the military staff of Germany. General von Moltke wrote. “The army takes the first place among the institutions of every country. It alone makes possible the existence of all the other institutions.” “Perpetual peace is a dream, and it is not even a beautiful dream. War is part of the eternal order instituted by God.” (*30) And General von Clausewitz asserted, quoting from General von der Goltz: “’The statesman who, knowing his instrument to be ready, and seeing War inevitable, hesitates to strike first is guilty of a crime against his country."’ (*31) Over all was the Kaiser, who allying himself with God, called on the army to fight in the name of the Lord, whose Spirit had descended upon him by virtue of his being the German Emperor! (*32)

The omnipresence of war leads to important realignments of social relationships. Certain powerful trusts, such as the armament ring, the explosive and chemical industries, etc., consolidate their power and become intimately correlated to the State machine. The tremendous rise of the national debt in wartime leads to the subservience of the State to the policies of the bankers to whom the nation is indebted.

Just as war is a method of terminating depressions, it becomes a last effort to stave off revolution. “The issue, then, is clear; for every great state in the world it is ultimately a question of war abroad or war at home, and the feeling of most men, be they English, German, French, or American, will be that it is better to fight against a foreign foe than to fight against one’s own countrymen. The idea, then, that under a Capitalistic system of production war can be eliminated by any other means than the triumph of the most militarily … efficient nation must be dismissed as a gross and dangerous illusion.�" (*33)

In the nineteenth century, war could be an instrument for integrating the forces of the nation and reviving national patriotism. In the twentieth century, war becomes an historic instrument in the hands either of the revolutionary proletarian or reactionary capitalist forces. By means of war, the social set-up is broken completely, and the classes physically determine their share of the distribution of wealth. War may be started in order to strengthen the power of the reactionaries, or it may be unopposed or even welcomed by revolutionists as giving them the opportunity of advancing their cause.

Apologists appear to defend war according to their interests. War becomes necessary in order to enable the white man to raise the culture of the black, to free the slaves, to help the poor, to teach respect, honor, reverence, duty, uprighteousness, and discipline to the lower orders. War teaches the workers to know their place; which, evidently, is the grave. War is acclaimed as a means of driving out parasitism by making all suffer under an equal strain, by putting all to work or to fight. War, as an act of violence, is justified on the theory of the general beneficence of violence; a blood purge is needed to cleanse the impurities of the old order and to make way for the new. By means of war, too, individualism gives way to collectivism and comradeship.

Military chauvinists take added data from biology and preach a myth of racial purity that heaps eulogies upon one race, the race to which they themselves belong, as embodying the quintessence of racial heroism. They prate of the value of eugenics and maintain that a natural selection of the fittest has taken place, bringing their race to the top. A sort of new Malthusianism is born which affirms that there is not sufficient good for equal distribution, wherefore the more degraded nations must be deprived forever of the best in life.

Nor are there lacking apologists who stress the superiority of the culture, religion, morals, and customs of the nation to which they belong, and the necessity to spread this inevitable system of blessings all over the world, by force if need be.

Even philosophers such as the peaceful pragmatists under John Dewey in the United States are brought into the war conflicts. “In the United State, John Dewey unintentionally did great service to those who were drumming up sentiment against Germany by ringing the changes on certain aspects of German philosophy in his book on German philosophy and Politics (New York, 1915), which had a new vogue when America went to War.” (*34) Thorstein Veblen also helped, as did others.

Psychology also produces its quota of militarist defenders. Through war, people rise to new intellectual and emotional heights. Decay and degeneracy are prevented. In the course of vital combat and struggle, the soul of man is reborn, it again becomes unfettered. Egotism gives way to sacrifice for others, for country and for culture. Such psychologists often take an anti-intellectualist point of view, announcing that so long as human nature exists, the fighting instincts of man must be realized in war; emotions and passions inevitably flow on to truth, not the pacific lucubrations of the erudite.

On the part of the proletariat, a thoroughly objective position is taken on the question of war. The revolutionist is not opposed to every war. As he favors civil war, so he favors colonial wars against imperialism. The revolutionist, too, understands that the struggle for power can be won only through ruthless physical combat.

War, like economic crises, inevitably leads to social revolution. If the ruling class enter into war to escape revolution, war itself only accelerates it. Thus the statements of the military apologists that only through war can man rise to new heights and become superman is echoed by the revolutionists, who change capitalist war into civil war and, by establishing the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, take the first steps to increase man’s stature by a head.

3

During war, the State becomes an all-embracing institution, entering into every phase, even the most intimate, of social and personal life; no aspect of life is overlooked. In the World War, for example, there was established in the United States a Federal Food Administration responsible to the President, which made an attempt to conserve the resources of the country and which established co-operation with various agencies, such as trade and commercial concerns, educational institutions, women’s organizations, libraries, religious and fraternal groups, hotels and restaurants, transportation companies, etc, for the elimination of waste in consumption. A direct appeal was made to the consumer to conserve the necessities of life as much as possible, and attempts were made to effect control through licensing, price fixing, limitations on profits, prohibition of certain trade practices, etc.

Of course, such conservation efforts failed completely to curb the avariciousness of Big Business. The wealth of America was great enough to enable the Administration, under Hoover, to declare, “We can not and we do not wish with our free institutions and our large resources of food to imitate Europe and its policed rationing, but we must voluntarily and intelligently assume the responsibility before us as one in which everyone has a direct and inescapable interest.” (*35)

An attempt was made to harness rampant American individualism by making it profitable for the individual to increase production. On the farms, a tremendous expansion of acreage and crops took place, engendering a corresponding increased need for machinery. Here, again, it is seen that only war could develop the latent productivity of America. This development, however, laid the basis for a more serious crisis and a terrific wastefulness of the soil after the war. Industry, too, was harnessed to the State on the “cost plus” basis, private enterprise receiving a certain profit estimated on the cost. This scandalous method of operation induced businessmen to operate in the most wasteful fashion, greatly padding their costs, in order to bloat their profits. The poor, however, were asked to save their peach pits for use in making gas masks. But when the Hoover Commission came to investigate the garbage pail of the poor, to scold them for waste, it found it empty and learned that poverty had compelled a natural economy far more potent than its propaganda.

Immediately after the declaration of war, Wilson set up a Committee on Public Information, consisting of George Creel, Chairman, and the Secretaries of State, War, and the Navy. This Committee issued seventy-five million copies of an assortment of propaganda items to encourage the public morale. It hired seventy-five thousand speakers, assembled one thousand four hundred provocative drawings, issued a daily publication to the Press and similar agencies, and also furnished twice a month a periodical known as the National School Service to each of the six hundred thousand public school teachers in the country. It enlisted the aid of three thousand college professors of history to prepare pamphlet material, and, in addition to these worthies, practically every writer and artist of prominence, and every advertising expert was drafted into service. Besides, the Committee regimented every film company and every minister. (*36)

In the United States especial attention was paid to the mobilization of the church, which ardently gave its blessing to the war and in the name of God urged the fight to be waged to the finish. The older clergy and the women church helpers were mobilized for parish work at home in order that the younger clergymen might be free to go with the soldiers into the trenches and barracks.

Such ministers did their best to glorify the war area, to point out that life in the trenches inspired a wonderful spiritual revival and became a sort of cleansing of the soul in fire. Particularly effective work was done by chaplains and religious organizations at the front. General Pershing is reported to have said:—There is no one factor contributing more to the morale of the army in France than the Y.M.C.A. The value of the organization cannot be overestimated. Give me nine hundred men who have the Y.M.C.A. rather than a thousand men who have none and I will have better fighters every time. Incidentally, the Catholic clergy, too, were unanimous for the war, as was every church denomination that met in convention during 1917.

Of particular value was the country church, since in the agricultural village the church is the real social center and frequently the only meeting place. The government issued a pamphlet containing a war program for country churches with an edition of fifty thousand copies and also maintained a weekly news service to ministers. The church in the village and in the countryside was a potent factor in mobilizing the people completely for war. (*37)

The Committee on Public Information assumed the supervision of the films and the stage. Especially important was the cinema as a powerful weapon for the propaganda of the masses. The movies satisfied the demands of the audience in a direct, visual, picturesque, and vital manner, and required nothing from them. Since every person in the audience, literate or illiterate, had paid a fee for admission, he tended to give his attention voluntarily to what was put on the screen. Furthermore, a single picture could be exhibited simultaneously throughout many thousands of theaters in the land. This medium of propaganda had a scope unparalleled. Supplementing the movie was the legitimate theater. Although the stage served a narrower and smaller audience, it contained live flesh and blood actors who could create a most intense atmosphere, even more so than the screen. Both the theater and the movie brought together large mass gatherings in which enthusiasm spread by contagion. The development of the talking picture and of television will make these instruments of propaganda even more powerful in the next war.

In the last war, radio was in its infancy. Today this medium is greatly developed; by means of it the government will be able to issue its propaganda to all listeners, even in their homes, thus immensely increasing efficiency in mobilization and arousing patriotism. By means of loud speakers set up in the street, on the roofs of buildings, on trucks, in small villages and large towns, in the countryside, the war message can be delivered immediately throughout the land and even the world.

Needless to say, the staffs and pupils of the schools, colleges, and universities will be mobilized completely during the coming war. This will be especially necessary since the highest centers of learning will be the recruiting grounds for the officers of the army. What took place at Columbia University during the last World War is indicative of the technique employed. On March 13, 1917, five hundred officers of Columbia sent a telegram to the President of the United States approving his stand. On April 6, when war was declared, a mass meeting of students and faculty was held and immediately thereafter the enrollment of students, faculty, and alumni began. The registrar mailed fifty-three thousand cards. This Columbia University plan for mobilizing was adopted by the Federal Bureau of Education and by the Department of the Interior and sent out as a model to the presidents of colleges and universities all over the United States. (*38) Those who did not enlist were mobilized in all sorts of researches and other practical activities for the advancement of the War; professors of engineering advised on personnel, material, and construction. Those teaching chemistry and social sciences, and the economists and statisticians also helped, as did the staff of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. All types of special courses were inaugurated for students to enable them to become efficient in war. A Red Cross ambulance unit was established and men were called into service for it. Members of the Department of Agriculture and students acquainted with rural conditions worked out plans for returning boys to the land, etc. Columbia established a Division of Intelligence and Publicity which prepared a series of pamphlets on problems and duties of citizens in many phases of the war question.

Since the time of this activity, the government has greatly improved its technique of complete mobilization of all departments of social life. Each of these social-educational agencies will have its separate place and importance in the next war.

Since nothing can replace personal contact in wartime, the church is incomparable as an agency of war mobilization, particularly in dealing with backward rural masses, the poorest elements of the adult population, and women. Second in importance to the church, in the more prosperous agrarian communities, is the radio; in the countryside and in the small town, motion pictures and posters are second. To influence the youth of the country, the chief mechanism is primarily the school and then the movies. For the city population, the main agencies for reaching the broadest masses are the movies, the mass demonstration, the parade, posters, etc. For the older city population the press is the best medium; for the aged and the housewife, the radio and the photograph.

Some of these instruments are better for arousing a war spirit at the start of hostilities, while others increase their efficiency as the war progresses. The church, for example, can play its best role only if it constantly repeats its pacifist pretensions before the war. This will enable it to whip up a war spirit better after war is actually declared.

The church is the traditional institution of the dead. When the mass of dead begins to mount, the church truly comes into its own; then the fury of its hysteria reaches its highest intensity. That is why, no doubt, the chaplain, priest, and semi-religious organizations travel so closely to the soldiers at the front. It means that the regiments are soon to become corps of cadavers. In the rear, the mountain of corpses is turned over to the church, enabling it to invoke all the solemnity vested in it by the superstitions of the ages, and to swear by all the dead, in the name of immortality and of God that the war is a holy one, that it must be waged until the enemy is exterminated. The coming into prominence of the church in time of war is only another illustration of the atavistic and destructive character of war and the breakdown of normal scientific civilized life that it implies.

However, in spite of its omniscience, the State begins to lose its perfect social control as the war progresses. Secret councils and nuclei are organized by revolutionary elements in the army, on the frontier, in the factory and neighborhood, in all existing organizations. Strikes break out, mutinies occur, which gradually flare up into general violent demonstrations, leading toward revolution. The mobilization of these revolutionary masses is accomplished primarily not through the press or the other recognized social agencies, since the work proceeds entirely illegally, but almost solely by personal contact, man-to-man approach, through whispers and secret gatherings, the murmur gradually growing into a roar that deafens everybody. The destructive character of capitalism and the State, so dramatically heightened by war activity, brings in its train the social organizations of those who suffer from the war to end the slaughter.

4

Related to the problem of war is the problem of waste and its connections with the productive systems. We have already remarked that so great is the destructive character of peace during present depressions that only through war can capitalism be revived. So great is the waste in peace-time, for instance, that in spite of the enormous destructiveness of the World War, in some countries actually more was produced by the fraction remaining at home than formerly had been by a full quota of workers. This was due, of course, to the fact that war compelled a maximum utilization of all the activities of the people.

This situation was well illustrated by the economy of the United States. According to the Secretary of War, in 1918, four million five hundred thousand men, or about 14.2 per cent of the working male population, were drafted into the army, and seven million more men, or about 23.8 per cent of the working male population, were employed entirely in war work. Thus a total of eleven million five hundred thousand men or 38 per cent of the working male population were taken away from normal peace-time endeavors. To this must be added the two million of the nine million working women whose labor was diverted for war work. To sum up, out of a total of forty-two million recorded in the census as gainfully employed, fourteen million were used for war activity; and yet far more was produced during the war than during peace. (*39) Here is a graphic illustration of the tremendous waste in time of peace. So large is it that even when the waste of war is subtracted, the mass of goods produced was greater, as a result of destructive activity, than it was prior to the war.

It has been estimated that in the United States, on a given day during periods of prosperity, out of approximately forty million gainfully employed, the man-power of at least eight million people is wasted in fruitless and vicious activities; six million more are idle; the manpower of at least four million more is wasted in inefficient productive methods, while that of another two million five hundred thousand is wasted in faulty distribution. (*40)

A whole series of studies on capitalist decay and waste in American life has recently been made by various experts. One writer finds the proportion of productive wealth devoted to profit-making constantly shrinking; (*41) another estimates the growing proportion of overhead costs of production costs; (*42) a third points out the implications of the fact that wealth under modern capitalism is taking an increasingly liquid form, intensifying the financial panics in time of economic rises; (*43) a fourth demonstrates that the rate of replacement of machinery lags far behind the cut in costs of production of that machinery. (*44)

It is no wonder, therefore, that American engineers have questioned increasingly the efficacy of the capitalist mode of production, that they have denounced the capitalists as saboteurs and criminals who must be displaced by engineers. The pioneer of this group was Thorstein Veblen who, in a series of volumes, railed against the profit and price system. “The expediency of so having the nation’s industry managed on a footing of private ownership in the pursuit of private gain, by persons who can show no equitable personal claim to even the most modest livelihood, and whose habitual method of controlling industry is sabotage—refusal to let production go on except it affords them an unearned income—the expediency of all this is coming to be doubted by those who have to pay the cost of it.” (*45)

The theories of Veblen have been taken up by engineers with socialistic leanings and latterly by the Technocrats. These engineers amply have demonstrated that the normal waste of capitalism in post-war imperialism is as enormous as in war, although war is needed as a supplementary activity, since peace cannot waste enough to keep industry going. They make a full analysis of the enormous increase in productivity that has occurred, especially since the end of the War. For example, it is pointed out that in the incandescent lamp industry one man can produce in one day what nine hundred men produced in 1914. The Buick Motor Company reports an increase in production of 1,400 per cent from 1912 to 1927, with an increase labor force of only 10 per cent. The ocean liner, California, had one hundred and twenty firemen on the vessel; now it has three. “The All American Technological Society, headed by General W. I. Westervelt, recently announced: ‘We find that between ten and twelve million men and women, engaged in the various technological activities of our productive and distributive system, produce and distribute all the raw materials and finished commodities required by a population of one hundred twenty-five million.�" (*46)

Nor does all this increase of production necessarily result from the application of new machinery. The American Railways System is a good illustration of what changes are possible with the same basic means of production. In 1920 there were employed two million one hundred sixty thousand men on the railroads. Ten years later the number of men was reduced to one million three hundred thousand, although 7 per cent more freight was being carried on the same lines.

Apparently no matter to what extent capitalism may attempt to choke the productive forces, these forces burst their fetters at every possible opportunity. The flood of inventions steadily increases. The patents granted in the United States, for example, have risen from two hundred and eight thousand in 1890 to three hundred and fourteen thousand in 1910, to four hundred and twenty-one thousand in 1930. (*47) Is it any wonder that engineers, contemplating such a situation, should move for a new social order and declare, “The capitalistic formula has run out…. Capitalism might be revived by war, by ruthless inflation, or by a series of great new industries. So revived, however, it can be a matter of only a few years before the demands of the capital goods sector overtake the new expansion, and another, and final, crisis is reached.” (*48)

Accurate studies of the peacetime wastefulness of capitalism have been made. One author points out how energy is wasted in plants not economically located, in the building up of unnecessarily large cities, in the cultivation of too much land, in the abuse of natural resources, in the processes of competition, in the too early scrapping of materials, in finance changes, in style changes, in overproduction, etc., etc. (*49)

Again an American engineering society analyzes the sources of waste in the productive process alone and attributes them to: (1) faulty material control, waiting for material; (2) faulty design control, no standardization of machines or materials; (3) lack of production control, bad scheduling of work; (4) lack of cost control, faulty accounting; (5) lack of research; (6) faulty labor supply control; (7) ineffective workmanship; (8) unemployment; (9) idle material; (10) idle plant; (11) restriction of output; (12) preventable sickness and accidents. (*50) The engineers then determined to consider each factory analysis in comparison with a model plant actually in operation, to find out who was to blame for the waste. It discovered that the waste was in every case largely due to the management and not to labor or outside causes, eighty-one per cent of the waste in the metal trades, for example, being placed on the shoulders of the owners and operators (*51) In this way, the American Engineering Society was able to verify the charge of sabotage that has been hurled by the technicians against the capitalists.

Looking at the United States today, we can easily see that the waste of peace is fully comparable to the destruction of war. During the period of the present depression, while twenty million workers have been looking for work, normal waste has been tremendously increased. Production is brushed aside, machinery is abandoned to rust or is doomed to be discarded, antiquated before its time. The product is not consumed but left to rot. The gap between capacity to produce and actual production increases so greatly as to threaten the very ability of industry to grow. Mountains of goods are destroyed, plowed under, or sunk, in a deliberate policy of destruction. The soil is so wastefully mishandled as to produce national calamities through droughts, erosions, floods, sand storms, that could be prevented by a rational management of the natural resources. (*52)

The income of the United States was approximately eighty-five billion dollars in 1929. In 1932 it was estimated at around forty-five billion dollars. We can assume that there was an average decrease of thirty billion dollars each year during the now seven years of crisis, as compared with 1929. Thus the people have lost an income which they could have produced under 1929 conditions amounting already to the staggering total of two hundred and ten billion dollars. Besides, there was a decrease in actual capital values as well. Certainly the World War did not cost the United States or any country as much as the depressions. (*53)

Peace is literally bankrupting the capitalism of the United States. Soon the federal debt will amount to over forty billion dollars and is increasing approximately at the rate of four billion a year. The total debt, public and private, has advanced to one hundred and fifty billion dollars, or approximately half the entire wealth of the country. (*54) Federal and State taxes now amount to fifteen billion dollars a year, or about one-third of the total income.

And yet the United States is in a relatively favorable condition. The situation is drastically worse in such a country as Germany. The question invariably must come up before the ruling group as to how long such a strain can be endured. Prolonged, it can lead only to madness whose political expression is fascism and whose release is war. Here we find the driving urge, the disastrous waste of peace that compels Germany and other countries to re-arm and to plunge into military adventures. War at least strains every nerve and sinew of the nation; depression only rots them. Bursting the straight-jacket of the Versailles Peace, German fascism has become a raving maniac expressing only in the clearest form, however, the insanity of the entire epileptic capitalist world: "La paix nous tue"—peace is killing us! This is the agonizing cry of capitalism the world over.

5

Peace is matching war even with reference to violence. The breakdown of capitalist life in the twentieth century discloses a constant trend toward violence in everyday normal intercourse. This collapse of law and order was particularly noticeable after the war. In Europe, the demobilization of the soldiers, the intense class conflicts, riots, and revolutions created a background for the use of direct physical action on the part of individual members of society as well as of classes to satisfy their needs.

The rise of criminality in the twentieth century is reminiscent of the sixteenth century when the old order was breaking down under the impact of modern capitalism. During the transition period, the old rigid State could not but treat the new modes of life as criminal. The laws of the State and the wishes and customs of the individuals representing the new processes of economic life steadily diverged. “Harrison assures us that Henry VIII executed his laws with such severity that seventy-two thousand great and petty thieves were put to death during his reign,” (*55) and under Elizabeth not a year went by but three to four hundred persons were hanged for their crimes. So it is in the twentieth century, but on an immensely grander scale.

Is it not clear that, where the State considers the entire population potentially criminal, and where the annual number of offences equals the complete population of the country, a social system has broken down? Yet, in the United States today practically everyone has been, is, or will be in the toils of the law.

The rise of criminality has been especially marked in the United States. In this, as in other matters, America is constantly smashing all records. The rate of crime is far higher in the twentieth century as compared to the nineteenth, in the post-war period as compared to pre-war, and in the period of depression as compared to that of prosperity.(*56) The immense amount of crime and its cost annually in the United States would be unbelievable were it not reflected in innumerable reports from governmental authorities.

In a speech delivered by J. E. Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U. S. Department of Justice, before the annual convention of the Daughters of the American Revolution, April 23, 1936, the speaker, a politician with a weather-eye to the future, pointed out that there were in the United States on that day one hundred and fifty thousand murderers roaming at large. He estimated that during the lifetime of those who form the present population, nearly a quarter of a million persons would commit murder, and more than three hundred thousand persons, a figure equivalent to the population of an entire metropolis, would be murdered. The number of recorded offenses of murders, felonious assault, burglaries, and larcenies, including automobile thefts, that is, solely serious offenses, amounted annually to close to a million and a half in the United States.(*57)

If this is the annual total for recorded serious offenses, what must be the total for all criminal offenses recorded by the police? Adequate statistics are not available, but a fair calculation can be made from the reports of local agents of police. The City of Cleveland, for example, reported that for 1929 while the total number of persons charged with serious offenses was 3,193, the total charged with minor offenses amounted to 101,582. (*58) This means that about 3� per cent of the total crimes for which arrests were made were of a major character. In Cincinnati, the figures for the same year were 3,139 arrests for major crimes and 112,915 for minor, or 2.7 per cent of the total being serious offenses. Thus, from these figures, we might perhaps assume that 3 per cent is the national average of serious crimes to the total. This, however, is not accurate, since the figures given by cities have to do with arrests made rather than with offenses recorded, and the proportion of arrests in serious offenses known to the police is sometimes three or four times as great as the arrests in minor offenses. Thus, the total number of minor offenses known to the police cannot be gauged accurately merely by the statistics of arrests.

However, were we to use these proportions, it would appear, therefore, since there are annually a million and a half recorded serious offenses, that there are at least fifty million minor crimes committed annually in the United States; the total might indeed range to one hundred million. And these, of course, are crimes known to the police. To this vast sum we must add the incalculably larger number of crimes committed which are not recorded or known or which are concealed from the public. Thus, even these inadequate figures show that crime has penetrated to the very fibre of American life and affects almost every citizen. Such facts are unprecedented in the history of civilization.

The rapid increase of crime can be seen on every side. In Iowa, for example, although the population increased 150 per cent from 1870 to 1925, the rate of commitment to the reformatories and penitentiaries of the State grew 500 per cent. In the urban counties of the State, the rate of conviction per hundred thousand population in five-year periods jumped from 3.45 in 1870 to 17.35 in 1925, and “The rate of crime, both of convictions and of sentences, is highest in the urban counties and lowest in the rural counties. The relationship seems to be in almost direct ratio to the extent of urban conditions… .” (*59)

The crime rate respects no persons and has climbed into the Capital itself. “This investigation has established, on the basis of fact, that Washington has a disgracefully high crime rate and that law enforcement here is neither aggressive nor efficient.’’ (*60) Washington, D. C., stands second in murder, first in robbery, second in burglary, first in manslaughter, second in auto-theft per hundred thousand population, of all the cities in the country.

Up to now we have spoken of the number of offenses. We can now turn to the number of persons arrested and convicted. In the same speech cited above, Mr. Hoover declared that in the United States there were three million convicted criminals and that one out of every twenty-five persons in the United States is “inclined” towards criminality. From the number of offenses given above, this would seem to be an underestimation rather than otherwise. In the present year, 1936, there are about two hundred thousand prisoners, or one to approximately every four hundred and forty odd persons over fifteen years of age. The commitments to prison in the United States in 1933 totaled close to seven hundred thousands. (*61) In New York State alone in 1934 there were recorded 563,697 convictions. Counting New York State roughly as ten per cent of the national total, this would mean that over five and one-half million people were convicted of crimes in the United States that year. Solely in New York City in 1934, there were approximately five hundred and fifty-seven thousand arrests. When we consider how large a ratio the number of offenses bears to the number of arrests, what a small proportion of those arrested actually are indicted, and what a small proportion of those indicted are tried and convicted, how few of those convicted are committed, we can get an indication of the enormous criminality prevailing in the country. The seven hundred thousand annual commitments in the United States, of course, does not include the large number of those convicted who are fined rather than sent to prison, or whose sentences are suspended, or who are released on probation or for parole. According to Mr. Hoover, the average murderer serves only four years in prison.

In spite of their enormity, the incompleteness of these figures can be seen from the mournful reports of various governmental bodies which have investigated the situation. The Chicago report, for example, gives the following summary of its findings: “Many professional criminals escape the penalties of the law and prey at will upon society. Poor and petty criminals are often punished more heavily than is just. The treatment of those sentenced to penal institutions is pitifully ineffective … .. The present machinery catches poor, petty, and occasional criminals, and punishes them severely, but fails signally to suppress the professional criminal.” (*62) Those arrested tend to become criminals permanently and the criminals are intimately linked up with police, with the bar, with officials, bondsmen, the prosecutor’s office, and the intricate nexus existing between these elements and alcoholism, drug peddling, prostitution, gambling and vice.

The same report illustrates its findings as to the heavy pressure on the poor by pointing out that over 80 per cent of those committed to jail were sentenced for non-payment of fines, of which thirty-five per cent were for non-payment of fines less than fifteen dollars and 56 per cent for fines less than twenty dollars.

Sinister, too, is the fact that the average age of the prisoners is constantly becoming lower. Of the total arrested in 1935, for example, 55 per cent were less than thirty years of age, 15 per cent less than twenty, 37 per cent less than twenty-five. (*63) The largest number of arrests were in the nineteen-year age group. These figures were compiled from the fingerprint cards in the possession of the United States government. As, in many states, youthful prisoners are not fingerprinted, the increase in the percentage of youth who have been arrested as criminals is really larger. A great number of these youthful criminals are charged with major crimes. In 1935, the figures showed that more than 36 per cent of the persons whose arrest records were examined during the year had previous fingerprint cards on file, while 6 per cent more bore notations that the individual had been arrested before.

To cap the climax of this astounding situation, it must be emphasized that the most important aspect of criminality, racketeering, has not been touched by the authorities. Racketeering is the transition line between legitimate business and so-called criminal operations. The widespread character of racketeering in America is eloquent testimony of the fact that Big Business generally is tainted with criminality and that the criminal is but the business man who has been caught.

A voluminous survey was made in 1929 by the Chicago Crime Commission. (*64) The survey included a study of organized crime in Chicago, including the systematic exploitation of prostitution, the rule of the underworld, the beer wars, the widespread bomb terrorization, racketeering, and the relationship of the gangster to the politician. It closed on the mournful note: “In fact, during this period the rule of the underworld, instead of being checked, has in fact extended its territory and consolidated its power.” (*65) Again. “This entrance of the gunman and gangster into the control of what had heretofore been normal economic activities is the most flagrant example of the rule of the gang.” (*66) The report emphasizes, “It must be recognized that bootlegging and ‘racketeering’ present an altogether new problem of law enforcement, entirely different from the question of punishing old established crimes like murder and robbery.” (*67) It ends with the statement that “the present study has indicated how, in the past, crusades against crime have repeatedly failed, although public opinion had each time been inflamed to white heat.” (*68) And after reaching this conclusion, the Committee had nothing better to offer than to declare that in the last analysis, control is governed by public opinion and that “no one agency can cope with the range of problems presented by organized crime in gambling, commercialized vice, bootlegging, and gang activities.” (*69)

The Illinois Crime Survey is valuable in reporting, even though in a sketchy manner, the relationship of crime to regular business and to the State. It takes up such matters as election violence, discipline in the stockyards, and the race riot provocations of the corporation managements. It discusses how laundry and other associations are formed through bombing methods. It deals, too, with the strong-arm squads existing in the trade unions of Chicago. Here is heard a faint sounding of the fact that the enormous criminality in the United States is connected intimately with the normal processes of social activity itself.

The matter of criminality can be treated also from the point of view of cost to society. Only a small fraction of the cost has been estimated in statistical form. In a Special Report of the United States Commission on Law Observance, Volume XII, George W. Wickersham, Chairman, dealt with the cost of crime in the United States. In 1929-1930 alone the cost of federal criminal justice was estimated at fifty-three million dollars. Incomplete statistics on state police forces added five million, five hundred thousand dollars more. The cost of state penal and correctional institutions and parole agencies produced another fifty odd million. The cost in 82 per cent of the cities of over twenty-five thousand with a combined population of over forty-six million, amounted to two hundred and forty-four million dollars, and if we double this figure to cover all the cities, we have a grand public cost of over six hundred million dollars spent annually on criminal justice. To this must be added the private expenditure for protection against crime, the cost of state industrial police, watchmen, guards, etc., which amounts to another two hundred million dollars annually. There are also private detective agencies throughout the country, the financial operations of which are not estimated in the report.

The report did not attempt to estimate the private losses annually due to crime, although it showed that the losses which were insured amounted to forty-seven million dollars, and that the full cost of insurance against crime was at least one hundred and six million dollars annually. The post office department estimates of mail frauds per year were sixty-eight million dollars. This omits such items as insurance frauds, fraudulent bankruptcies, secondary frauds, confidence games, forgery, counterfeiting, etc.

Nor does the report attempt to appraise the indirect losses to a community through crime. It does show, however, that if the prisoners and law-enforcement officers alone were put to work, the wages paid them would equal three hundred million dollars annually.

Of the highest significance is the fact that losses to society through racketeering were omitted from the report. Surely this amounts to several billion dollars annually taken from the pockets of the people. When we consider that the total income at the height of prosperity of the United States was eighty-five billion dollars, we are forced to come to the conclusion that perhaps 10 per cent of the national income went into the pockets of racketeers and criminals, or to the officers of the State and their allies in law enforcement!

6

The question arises, what are the causes for this astounding balance sheet of criminality in the United States? Two principal sets of causes can be assigned as contributing to this phenomenon, causes that reflect present day general conditions throughout the world and which are peculiarly refracted in the prism of American life.

The first basic reason for the phenomenal criminality in America and elsewhere is that the social order is definitely breaking down. The State and law are no longer identical with morals, and must act ever more severely. On the other hand, the masses consider the State only as an incubus, or as a monster to be hated and feared. That these conditions are world-wide can be observed by the fact that in every country during and after the war, and during the post-war depression, large increases of crime have been recorded.

It may be retorted that of all the capitalist states, that of the United States is the strongest and most stable. According to our theory, the crime rate in that country should be smallest; in fact, the increase of crime in the United States is incomparably higher than that of any other country in the world. In criminology, as in economics, America is equal to all Europe put together.

Our answer is that, precisely because the United States is the strongest capitalist country existing in a world which is breaking down as a whole, here antagonism to the State takes the form of individual criminality. In Europe hostility to the existing order, the desire of the poor to defend or improve their standards, takes the form not of individual striving to get out of their class, but of mass formations, riots, demonstrations, strikes, insurrections, revolutions. These events are no longer in the field of criminal jurisdiction, but rather in the realm of politics. Crime in Europe is mass crime—that is, political revolutionary activity. if, in conjunction with this mass revolt, there occur individual acts of terror, these are fused with the general situation. The class-consciousness of the groups in Europe prevents them from attempting to ameliorate their conditions by acts of petty crime against property. Solutions are to be found not in the province of economics, but in that of politics; the problem is not whether there should be an individual and temporary redistribution of wealth, but who should rule whom; that is, it is a question of a conquest of power.

The situation is entirely different in America. The political storms abroad whip up a raging ocean of violence which dashes against the shores of the United States, eroding its stability. The political structure of the United States has not been long established nor well tested. On the contrary, the State grew in an extremely belated and haphazard fashion. Scarcely was America out of its infant swaddling clothes than it was forced to become part of a senile and decayed passing order. There is no luxury of time given to America, as was given to England, for example, where there was a long period of well-nurtured maturity. America is destined to dash through its period of maturity, a period marked by Welfare- Liberalism and social reform. It is hurled at once from middle nineteenth century politics to that of the middle twentieth century. It must move from rampant individualism to vigorous fascism. All the middle periods are telescoped, with a speed typical of American tempo.

During this transition period toward collectivism, and while the masses are not yet class conscious, a deep social maladjustment becomes apparent everywhere. Individualist actions which were perfectly tolerable in a libertarian society now become criminal in a complex industrialist order. The people must be disciplined and ordered; these strike back in their old individualist fashion—they become criminals. In America, class formations have not yet become rigidified. Those who suffer under the contradictions of capitalism, especially the youth, believe it possible by their own individual action to get out of their stratum of the poor and exploited classes. In America, the temptation to do so becomes unbearable in the light of the immense wealth and tremendous capacity to produce that meet one everywhere. The question, why this poverty in the midst of plenty, is a question that a bewildered individual in America cannot answer according to social laws, nor is he willing to justify the excuse which he finds at hand.

Acts of violence in the United States have not been peculiar to the present period. They were part of America from the beginning, in the extirpation of the Indians, in the enslavement of millions of Negroes, in the bondage of further millions of white indentured servants, in the unbridled conditions of the frontier, in the ruthless aggrandizement of the wealthy. What is significant, however, is that, while it was this very violence which in previous centuries helped to build up America and which was not at all considered of a criminal nature, today this behavior destroys the State and must be punished by the forces of repression. In other words, previously individual violence and direct action were the highest fruits of previous American Liberalism; that such actions today are crimes is an eloquent sign of the disappearance of Liberalism and the preparations for fascism that exist in America.

The second basic cause for the advance of criminality in the United States is the fact that in the era of imperialism it is the ruling class, the imperialists and their agents, which is forced to take illegal and criminal action for which its members are never punished. They plunge the world into repeated wars and into constant crises. Like snarling dogs in the manger, they neither produce nor allow others to produce. It is no longer, then, the revolutionist who takes to sabotage in order to obtain more wages in the factory or to improve his lot. It is the capitalist class that deliberately destroys the processes of production in the present era. Capitalism can exist only through the most fearful waste; when the pace of destruction is not fast enough, it opens the sluices of war.

In an era of permanent depression and war, the ruling group is compelled increasingly to turn to violence against its own people. By means of violence the oligarches compel the formation of cartels and trusts. By violence they break up the organization of workers. With similar measures they eliminate their business rivals. In a period when masses of people vote, it is only by violence and criminality that the ruling class can control elections.

Nothing better illustrates this fact than the situation in the United States which arose when, partially because of the original weakness of the State, the rapidly rising trusts were forced to arm themselves directly. They created a vast private industrial police, sometimes as in Pennsylvania, connected with the State apparatus itself and having the standing of regular police officers, which included thousands of people. No large strike occurs without detective agencies and private employment bureaus handing over to these companies hundreds and sometimes thousands of guards to be armed and deputized for acts of violence.

It is not at all uncommon in the United States for a company to employ gangsters to blow up the factories and property of its rivals in order to compel merger and monopoly consolidation. For this purpose some employers even have utilized the entire officialdom of trade unions, whereby the unions became weapons for these employers to strike down the plants of rival concerns that would not enter the combine. Frequently gangsters are hired to bomb and terrorize numbers of small storekeepers and independent producers into entering into agreements to maintain certain price levels.

In short, we witness in the United States two distinct sets of crimes. On the one hand is the old type, aimed against business property and the wealthy. The members of this criminal group were originally rebellious elements of the poor, products of the slums and vicious conditions of city life who take this individualist reaction to emerge from their poverty and to strike back at the forces oppressing them. The second category of crime is entirely different. It is a category generated and developed by Big Business itself, which utilizes the gangster and the racketeer as important instruments to accelerate the centralization of its power. This second section is far more important and deadly to the social order than the first and is rapidly increasing. The Jesse jameses are insignificant in comparison to the Al Capones. The Jesse jameses were an expression of Liberalism; the Al Capones are an expression of trustified racketeering capital.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in America, criminality was only the social counterpart of rampant Liberalism. The Liberal wanted to minimize the State; the criminal broke its provisions. Both believed in individual direct action. It was not necessary to fight the State in order to obtain a livelihood, nor was the State strong enough to be called upon in every eventuality. Each man had to took out for himself. The law of the frontier was the law of disorder. Collective action took the form of lynching. What a man wanted he could attain directly, either by stalking off into the wilderness and evading social relations, or by individual actions against his fellow human. Everyone was too busy trying to secure wealth to pay much attention to anything else except when the depredations were so heinous as to threaten to destroy the system itself. The liberal view that "the sky was the limit" made the country a paradise for individual action.

Since practically the entire attention of the nation was given to enhancing production and the economic factors, those who went into politics were generally business failures or weaklings, or those who, as lawyers retained by business men and real estate speculators, had some particular goal to achieve thereby. The average hard-working individual in the United States looked upon the State official with somewhat amused contempt. The government apparatus, being turned over, therefore, to the relatively unfit, who used their positions to recoup their losses, became easy prey for graft and corruption. Real wealth was not in the hands of the State; it was in the hands of private industry. The treasury of the State was but an insignificant portion of the total wealth, and no one cared how it was administered. Thus systematically it could be looted and plundered. Those who entered politics coolly calculated the opportunities for graft and peculation which it offered. Under such circumstances, respect for the law and for the law officer became conspicuous by its absence in the United States.

The situation has been aggravated by the fact that, in America, the wealthy have none of the prestige and standing which they enjoy in European and other old established countries. Within the memory of each generation, the common people were able to watch the wealthy obtain their riches and to note the methods carefully. As the wealthy themselves were generally not from the genteel classes of Europe, they did not bother to conceal the tough mechanism by which they obtained their property. It was the common knowledge of all, seen by all, the avaricious, the criminal methods by which the capitalists were evolving in this country. Swindling, cheating, murder, criminality of all sorts, were part of the routine by which men became owners of Big Business. (*70) No one in America but a moron could believe that the millions secured in a decade by given individuals, who had entered this country penniless, could have been obtained by honest toil alone. That the people did not rebel against this situation was basically due to the fact that enough wealth was on hand throughout the nation to afford them a good livelihood as well, Attacks upon the rich were considered manifestations of meanness and envy.

With a venal and corrupt governmental apparatus, with a ruthless and crude capitalist class absorbing the untold wealth of the country, many of the youth of the poorer classes turned to the methods by which Big Business had obtained power, in an effort to do likewise. These comprised the army of unfortunates who were caught and convicted.

The situation has changed entirely in the twentieth century, especially during the present depression. The army of governmental employees—eight hundred thousand federal alone—now reaches the astounding total of approximately three million. The number of people who are directly dependent upon the State for their livelihood can be counted as close to sixty million. (*71) The amount of money spent annually by the government during the crisis has mounted to about 25 per cent of the total national income. In one stride America, with its backward political State, is overtaking and surpassing Europe.

Along with this change of front towards governmental authoritarianism controlled by Big Business, there has taken place a decided turn in the course of criminality. On the one hand, individual actions formerly legitimate have been made criminal offenses. In the nineteenth century to be penniless was no crime. Today, one of the chief methods of filling the jails is through arrests for vagrancy. Other methods include arrests “on suspicion” and for “disorderly conduct.” During the period of prohibition, wholesale seizures were enacted as part of prohibition enforcement. In the last century, the liberty of the individual to wager his money was generally respected. Today an increasing number of arrests are made for betting and gambling. These categories of crime have entrapped chiefly the poorer elements of the population. The great increase in the number of laws has also brought into the net large numbers of the middle class for violation of traffic and vehicle ordinances. Those arrested on such charges are generally not sentenced to jail, however, but merely given fines.

It must not be supposed that these vast numbers of arrests are unwelcome to the governmental authorities. Criminality is the meat and sustenance of the very existence of many of them. Without these arrests, they would have no jobs and could appeal for no funds. For this reason, primarily, the police constantly trail those who have been released from jail and who make efforts to reform their behavior. Moreover, were mass arrests not vital to the life of capitalism they could not have grown to such an extent nor would they have been tolerated.

The fact is that the mass of people in the United States must be disciplined. They must be taught their place. They must learn to respect law and order. It is believed that they will emerge from jail more docile than before, more obedient to the dictates of capital. The jail takes the place of universal military service in other countries for the breaking of the spirit of the masses and for their regimentation behind the officers of the State. Undoubtedly this belief furnishes the most important motive for the periodic wholesale arrests in Negro quarters in the South and among the

poor whites in the mill towns of that region. There is also always the possibility that, when arrested, these individuals may break under the strain, may become semi-criminal elements attached to the police department and who can be used by it to increase the network of its influence.

Further, the fact that these wholesale arrests allow the State to continue its tradition of slavery and forced labor which is part of American life must be considered. Chain gangs build the roads of the South at practically no cost at all. Prisoners are farmed out to individual owners of lumber camps for the production of turpentine, etc. (*72) The threat of arrest can compel masses of Negroes and poor whites to offer their services free to the plantation owner of the South or at such wages as he deigns to pay. These wholesale arrests of the poor have become an enormous weapon for the disciplining of the masses of the people to compel them to realize that the era of Liberalism is no more. It is these arrests which so greatly swell the total of criminal statistics in this country.

At the same time, with the rise of the State and Big Business, an entirely new set of criminals enters the field protected by these elements. Within the political parties, a veritable swarm of gangsters and crooks place their hands upon the public till. Every increase in governmental authority is an increase in their power to blackmail and to swindle. Is there a prohibition amendment? It means that every officer has the power to permit drinking and the violation of the law, at a price. Are there laws against vice and prostitution? They afford the opportunity for officers to stand at the door of houses of prostitution for a consideration, to inform all those who enter that they are legally protected. Should a prostitute attempt to flee from a house of ill fame, the political gang controlling the police will insure that she is brought to jail, and then returned.

The enormous number of gangs existing in the large cities of the country are well known to the police. They are tolerated because these gangs are connected with the political machinery of the city. They are needed in times of election to terrorize the polls, to murder their rivals, .to miscount the votes. Without these gangsters, what would maintain the control of the corrupt political officials? Who controls the State is now a matter of vital concern for millions who live from the State. The treasury is no longer a small item in the national wealth. It is constantly increasing in relative importance. Hordes of intellectuals, professional men, members of the bar, real estate agents, bondsmen, insurance companies, and endless others are interested in the modus operandi of the government. All these elements must control their election districts and their political party machines. And the gangster, the criminal on whom the law can press its finger, is the best servile element for its purposes. There is no more chance of breaking the hold of gangsters and the underworld than there is of breaking the political machines of capitalism itself. These gangsters are not attackers of the State; they are its protectors and defenders. This is the type of crime representative of the twentieth century.

As the State rises to become the greatest industry of all, it is bound to attract to itself the men of genius who heretofore have entered only the more lucrative private services. The same type that became captains of industry, will try to become captains of the State; they will demand more and more power as their hold increases. Trustified capital in control of the State will have great use for the gangsters and racketeers and gunmen it has created. They will now become unofficial representatives of repression similar to the fascist organizations abroad. The wholesale criminality of the American people will have to be met by still further repressions by the government as the State becomes further centralized at the head of a vigorous executive. More and more the criminality of the people will turn into class political action, as the criminality of the employers will turn to fascism. America will then be well on the way towards the final conflict, entering with the greatest violence into the same cycle of political contradictions which can be seen so markedly in Europe.

Footnotes

1. “If we look back over the past century we shall find that it is only in the last quarter of it that the burden of armaments in time of peace has begun in many countries to grow much faster than the general wealth.” (The Political Economy of War, F. W. Hirst, p. 73.)

2. T. Veblen: An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace, p. 7.

3. “To some extent the armament race undoubtedly contributed to industrial progress before the war, even though the price paid for it afterwards was a heavy one.” (P. Einzig: The Economics of Rearmament, p. 26.)

4. “The spectacular reduction in German unemployment during 1933 was due in a high degree to the increase in the Government’s armament expenditure.” (P. Einzig: The Economics of Rearmament, p. 105.)

5. John Stuart Mill believed that the foundation of colonies was the best work the capital of the old countries could do.

6. In his Raw Materials, Population Pressure and War (1935), Norman Angell points out that conquest of territory is not necessary to ensure adequate supplies of raw materials and that successful war enables a nation neither to collect debts nor to dispose of the surplus that cannot be sold at home.

7. France never believed her colonies would be a relief for overpopulation. (see S. H. Roberts: History of French Colonial Policy, 1870-1925, I, 37.)

8. Norman Angell: The Great Illusion, 1933, pp. 4-5.

9. Napoleon I: Maxims of War, p. 42. (1861 edition.)

10. Whereas the normal complement of arms previously contained but two and a half heavy machine guns to every one thousand men, now this force carries eleven heavy and forty-nine light machine guns.

11. The rate previously was fifteen shots per minute.

12. The infantry can now fire � lb. of metal per man. per minute. The average for the tanks has been estimated at 6.7 lbs. per minute.

13. When, in 1928, the new gas, cacodyl-isocyanide was invented, Dr. H. I. Jones, its inventor, of Chicago, declared: "It is a deadly poison and would destroy armies as a man would snuff out a candle. It always kills….Now it is much cheaper to destroy life wholesale with this new gas. It may be manufactured at the rate of thousands of tons a day and it costs much less than powder and cannon, yet it will destroy armies more thoroughly."

14. F. W. Hirst: The Consequences of the War to Great Britain, p. 295. See also E. L. Bogart: Direct and Indirect Costs of the Great World War, pp. 270-272.

15. The average ratio in other wars was calculated as ten to thirty-five. (See, E. L. Bogart: work cited, p. 273.)

16. The same, p. 273.

17. The same, p. 282.

18. The same, p. 299. This includes the estimated economic loss due to loss of manpower.

19. G. W. Crile: A Mechanistic View of War and Peace, p. 43.

20. Quoted by M. Smith: Out of Their Own Mouths, p. I.

21. See The Confessions of Frederick the Great (Putnam Son’s, 1915), p. 70.

22. H. Muensterberg: The War and America, p. 120.

23. F. Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra, pp. 52, 243. (1924, MacMillan edition Vol. XI.)

24. See, A. L. Gowans: Selections from Treitschke’s Lectures on Politics, (1914 edition).

25. M. Smith: work cited, p. 84, quoting from Maximilian Harden in Zukunft, August 29, Sept. 5, 1914.

26. H. Muensterberg: The War and America, pp. 190-191.

27. See, M. Smith: Out of Their Own Mouths, pp. 35-36, quoting from Lasson: Das Kulturideal und der Krieg.

28. The same, p. 70, quoting from L. Woltmann: Die Germanen in Frankreich.

29. The same, p. 70, quoting from L. Woltmann: Politische Anthropologie.

30. The same, pp. 150-151.

31. C. von Clausewitz: On War, I, vii.

32. See, William II’s Proclamation to the Army of the East, 1914, given in M. Smith: work cited, p. 4.

33. V. W. Germains: The Struggle for Bread, pp. 244-245.

34. H. D. Lasswell: Propaganda Technique in the World War, p. 93.

35. U. S. Food Administration: Bulletin No. 6, quoted by P. H. Hibbard: Effects of the Great War Upon Agriculture, p. 105.

36. See, G. Creel: How We Advertised America.

37. See, E. deS. Brunner: The Country Church in the New World Order, especially Chapter IX.

38. See, “Mobilization of a University,” Columbia University Quarterly, XIX, 285-295, No. 3. (June, 1917.)

39. See, S. Chase: The Tragedy of Waste, pp. 5-6. We give the figures in round numbers.

40. The same, p. 270.

41. R. R. Doane in The Measurement of American Wealth finds “In 1914 ‘productive’ wealth devoted to profit making was estimated at 62 percent of all American wealth; in 1921, at 57 percent; in 1932, at 52 percent.” This conclusion is given in S. Chase: Government in Business, p. 10.

42. See, W. Rautenstrauch: Who Gets the Money. “In other words, in 1917, when producers got one dollar for making goods, overhead people got another dollar for the various services, leading up to the sale of goods to the consumer. But in 1932 when producers got one dollar, overheaders got $2.30. In 1929, they got $1.60. overhead costs marched rapidly forward during the 1920’s and broke into a run with the coming of the depression. Business on the downgrade, overhead on the upgrade—here is abundant evidence of shocking management.” Given in S. Chase: Government in Business, p. 104.

43. See, A. A. Berle: Liquid Claims and National Wealth, p. 73. According to this book while the ratio of liquid wealth to the total was but 16 percent in 1880, this had mounted to 40 percent in 1930 and rested at 34 percent in 1933.

44. “… if technical invention were four times as fast, the rate of replacement might justifiably be doubled; if the cost of machinery for a given production schedule were cut to one quarter, the rate of replacement ought to be doubled again.” S. Chase: work cited, quoting Coyle: “The Capital Goods Fallacy” in Harpers Magazine, December, 1934.

45. T. Veblen: In Inquiry into the Nature Of Peace, p. 323.

46. S. Chase: The Economy of Abundance, pp. 15-16.

47. The same, p. 76.

48. The same, p. 153.

49. The same, pp. 6-8.

50. See, “Waste in Industry,” Federated American Engineering Societies.

51. See, J. Davis: Capitalism and Its Culture, pp. 54-55.

52. “Denuded forests, floods, droughts, a disappearing water table, erosion, a less stable and equable climate, a vanishing wild life—these are some of the notable results of unchecked and ruthless exploitation by men who euphemistically refer to themselves as ‘rugged individualists.’ “ (H. L. Ickes: The New Democracy, p. 19.)

53. An Associated Press despatch dated December 21, 1936, declared: “An international labor office study estimates the world depression from 1930 to 1934 cost at least $149,000,000,000 … A fateful figure, equal to the total cost of the World War,’ said Vladimir Woytinsky, author of the study.”

54. Compare, E. Clark: The Internal Debts of the U. S., Table 1, p. 10.

55. John Wade: History of the Middle and Working Classes, p. 49.

56. For example, the homicide rate in twenty-eight cities was 5.1 in 1900, and 10.3 in 1924 per hundred thousand. See, H. C. Brearley: Homicide in the United States, p. 16.

57. Mr. Hoover gives the following annual total: 12,000 murders, 47,000 cases of felonious assault, 284,000 burglaries, 780,000 larcenies and 247,000 automobile thefts. These figures are substantiated by the U. S. Department Uniform Crime Reports, December, 1935.

58. Uniform Crime Reports, Vol. 1, No. 4 (April, 1930), p. 19. These Reports were issued by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Later the Reports were taken over by the U. S. Bureau of Investigation.

59. C. N. Burrows: Criminal Statistics in Iowa, p. 110.

60. Special Report on Crime Conditions by Committee on the District of Columbia, House of Representatives, House Resolution 94, 74^th Congress, First Session, House Report No. 1646, p. 5 (July 25, 1935).

61. See, U. S. Bureau of Census: Prisoners in State and Federal Prisons in 1933, p. I (1935).

62. Report of the Chicago City Council Commission on Crime, C. E. Merriam, Chairman, pp. 9-10. (March, 1915.)

63. See, U. S. Bureau of Investigation: Uniform Crime Reports, Vol. VI, No. 4, p. 27.

64. See, The Illinois Crime Survey, Editor John B. Wigmore, published by the Illinois Association for Criminal justice in Cooperation with the Chicago Crime Commission, 1929.

65. The Illinois Crime Survey, p. 1093.

66. The same, p. 1093.

67. The same, p. 1093.

68. The same, p. 1096.

69. The same, p. 1099.

70. For the criminality of the capitalist see, G. Myers: The History of Great American Fortunes, 3 Vols.; also see, G. Myers: History of the Supreme Court.

71. This includes, of course, those on relief, but does not include those who receive their income from private sources which are subsidized and supported by the government. Compare, S. Chase: Government in Business p. 49. Mr Chase gets a total of fifty-one million persons, but underestimates the number supported on the payrolls, and does not include pensioners, veterans, institutional inmates, children fed in schools, etc.

72. The A. F. of L. bureaucracy bemoans the fact that between 1923 and 1932 the figures of 12 federal and 114 state prisons show an increase in the number of productive prisoners from 51,800 to 82,300. (See, M. Woll: Labor, Industry and Government, p. 269.)

Return to the A. Weisbord Internet Archive