War profiteering

“ The war, more than anything else, has served to open the eyes of the workers, to tear the false veil from bourgeois democracy, and to reveal to the people the whole abyss of war-time speculation and profiteering. In the name of freedom and equality the bourgeoisie has conducted this war; in the name of freedom and equality the purveyors of war-munitions have become incredibly rich. ”

“ There can be no Profiteering. The Government owns everything till the war is over. Every Man, Woman and Child, from Henry Ford and John D. down, get their Dollar and a Quarter a day the same as the Soldier. The only way a man could profiteer in war like that would be to raise more Children.
If any man went before the People on a platform of that kind and put it over, he could remain President till his Whiskers got so long he could make a fortune just picking the lost Golf Balls out of them. ”

“ It has assumed control for the duration of the war over a great number of the larger private undertakings, it has limited profits by imposing an 80 per cent. excess profits tax, and it has intervened to prevent profiteering in the essential requirements of the nation. ”

“ How much better for you and for your people, to take the step which at once shortens the war, and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event! How much better to thus save the money which else we sink forever in the war! How much better to do it while we can, lest the war ere long render us pecuniarily unable to do it! How much better for you, as seller, and the nation, as buyer, to sell out and buy out that without which the war never could have been, than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one another's throats! ”

“ The indirect pecuniary cost of the war is caused, first, by diverting some 150,000 men, engaged in the war directly or remotely, from the works of productive industry, to the labors of war, which produce nothing; and, secondly, by disturbing the regular business of the country, first by the withdrawal of men from their natural work; then, by withdrawing large quantities of money from the active capital of the nation; and, finally, by the general uncertainty which it causes all over the land, thus hindering men from undertaking or prosecuting successfully their various productive enterprises. ”

“ Apart from selling our liquid capital assets in return for foreign goods, and apart from borrowing from foreign countries for the same purpose, our power to provide our own army and navy with all they want and have any surplus over for our Allies has indeed depended entirely on our extraordinary efforts in production—not in normal production, but in war production—and also on the extent to which we have been able to reduce our civil consumption of all kinds. ”

“ Just imagine sixty million dollars a day or twenty-one billions and nine hundred millions of dollars a year of new trade created by the war suddenly have to stop when peace is concluded! Where in this world can Europe and America look for a market to consume this enormous saving from the war? ”

“ It cannot be said that the manufactures which could not support themselves against foreign competition, in periods of peace, would spring up of themselves at the recurrence of war prices. It must be obvious to every one, that, apart from the difficulty of great and sudden changes of employment, no prudent capitalists would engage in expensive establishments of any sort, at the commencement of a war of uncertain duration, with a certainty of having them crushed by the return of peace. ”

“ For the sake of this important sum, our army is to be modelled by a new regulation, and the success of the war is to be impeded, the security of our commerce to be hazarded, and our colonies are to be endangered.
Frugality is, undoubtedly, a virtue, but is, like others, to be practised on proper occasions: to compute expenses with a scrupulous nicety, in time of war, is to prefer money to safety, and, by a very perverse kind of policy, to hazard the whole for the preservation of a part. ”

“ The man who refuses to sell at a fine price whatever he may have that is necessary for the conduct of the war is a profiteer. One man seeks to help his country at his own expense, the other seeks to help himself at his country's expense. ”

“ It was Bismarck who said: 'If you will give me a printing press, I will find you the money.' In finding the money required for an exhausting war a nation is driven to all sorts of desperate financial expedients which may very seriously affect its economic life, but if a nation wants to continue fighting and can produce, or be induced to produce, the things that are absolutely necessary for life and warfare, the government will get hold of those things somehow. If it cannot get them in any other way, ultimately it will take them. ”

“ For there exist, in every nation, sources of wealth, sufficient—if equitably distributed and constructively applied for the good of all—to allay that economic unrest which is the main incentive by which modern nations are led into war. But in every country alike there are interests which refuse to pay that price, and which will, if threatened, precipitate their country into war rather than be held at a ransom which would merely readjust wealth more equitably to the true sources of its production. ”

“ The war has cost the country five or six hundred millions of money. This has not been a nominal expence, a playing at ducks and drakes with the King's picture on the water, or a manufacturing of bank-notes, and then lighting our pipes with them, but a real bona fide waste of the means, wealth, labour, produce, or resources of the country, in the carrying on of the war. ”

“ I acknowledge, too, that the resources of a commercial country, which supports its trade, even in war, by invincible fleets, and takes care not to hurt it in the methods of imposing or collecting its taxes, are immense, and inconceivable till the trial is made; especially where the Government, which demands the supplies, is agreeable to the people. But yet an unlimited and continued expense will in the end be destructive. What matters it whether a State is mortally wounded by the hand of a foreign enemy, or dies by a consumption of its own vital strength? ”

“ This argument is simply the embodiment of the old delusion, so common among people who handle the machinery of finance, that you can really increase the supply of necessary goods by increasing the supply of money, which is nothing else than claims to goods expressed either in pieces of metal or pieces of paper. As we have seen, all that we have been able to raise abroad has been required for advances to our Allies and Dominions, consequently we have had to fall back upon our own home production for everything needed for our own war costs. ”

“ Much has been heard since the war began of the profiteer, on both sides of the Atlantic, and on both sides of the quarrel. But the profiteer is not a phenomenon peculiar to war-time. Like the poor, he is always with us ”

“ The recent cry of the American farmer: "Produce only what you need for your own keep," is a crude effort to imitate the successful tactics of the business world in limiting production to the volume that will yield the greatest possible profit to the owner.
War-menace constitutes another indication of the chaos existing in modern economic society. The purpose of economic activity is to produce wealth. The purpose of war is to destroy it. The two are therefore in direct antagonism; yet the greatest war machines are maintained by the greatest industrial nations. ”

“ Exclusive of those who, either as contractors, or in some other way, are concerned with the large supplies wanted for the support of the army and navy, there is a class of capitalists who are enriched by the war. These are the money lenders, who shall have been bold enough to take up the public loans: unless indeed it should be intended to break public faith, and, on the return of peace, to question the obligation to pay them, upon the pretence of their enormous profits. What these profits are may be again illustrated by the example of Great Britain. ”

“ This establishment should be so regulated in its details as to prevent frauds and abuses, restore confidence among the Osages, and produce the most satisfaction to them, and benefit of the United States. In peace the net profits of the trade will more than defray the whole expense. In war those profits will very much diminish the expense. ”

“ Reason and experience teach us that the policy of financing a war for the most part by borrowing the necessary money, is in itself one of the worst financial burdens that war imposes upon men. But wealth is always a powerful factor in the Government. ”

“ Nothing is plainer than that any sane business man in this country must have foreseen that if America entered the war these profits would be immensely reduced, and some of them cut off entirely, because our Government would step in and take charge ”

“ Armaments cannot be safely left to private profit.
Endless, indeed, are the ramifications of a private industrial interest so wealthy and so well organized, and dependent for its profits upon national expenditure in instruments of warfare, and, consequently, in the ultimate resort, upon war itself. The general influence exerted upon public life as a whole by the very fact that this industry is a private one, and possesses a large body [104] of shareholders usually belonging to the upper strata of society, cannot be regarded otherwise than as an unhealthy and dangerous element in the nation. ”

“ We shall not say that those desired the war who are now shamelessly profiting by the war. All that they want is profit, and how the profit is made is of no moment to them. They accommodate themselves equally well to war and to peace, to peace and to war, for all is grist which comes to their mill. Let us give one example among a thousand to show how indifferent these men of money become to everything but money. ”

“ If this be really so, then international law sets the profit of the merchant above the life of nations. The theory of the United States appears to be that the conduct of war is to be governed by the interests of commerce, even if they touch those of the belligerents. The truer theory is, I believe, that commerce, in so far as it touches the interests of the belligerents, is entirely subordinated to the exigencies of war. ”

“ We were straining everything to do a patriotic service to the country in time of war, but we came up against the competition for these essentials by ruthless capitalists who had no thought but to milk the government by selling them supplies at an enormous profit. ”

“ Having now made the world safe for democracy, it felt at liberty to destroy its expensive and unnecessary war industry, venting its spite meanwhile on the industrialists.
Manufacturers, who before final accounting had anticipated profits, now found themselves facing losses instead. Some, the less well-financed, had gone into bankruptcy; others had reorganized and [Pg 16] kept in business. Overall, it was estimated that representative suppliers of war goods had taken a write-down of nearly a billion dollars, or about one-half their “apparent” net worth. ”

“ Yet commerce and industry—the glittering prizes which every nation covets when it builds a dreadnought or enlarges its army—demand that the creative forces of peace supplant the destructive wastes of war.
To-day the financial relationships of nations are inextricably entangled. The big banks in the capitals of the world are in communication with each other every second of the day. ”

“ But mere money is one of the cheapest things in all the world. The price of war never can be paid in gold. Not in national treasuries can you see the payment of that price, where smug, well-groomed politicians sign bonds and bills of credit. If you would see the payment of that price of war, you must go to the place of war. With all your senses open, step upon the battlefield. ”

“ Numerous manufacturers, merchants and financiers in a moderate way of business, to whom war, even if successful, would mean bankruptcy, because their enterprises depend on credit, and are chiefly supported by foreign capital. ”

“ Let me say at the outset that my criticism does not refer to the principle of an eighty per cent. war profits tax. Indeed, I have from the very beginning advocated a high tax on war profits. To permit individuals and corporations to enrich themselves out of the dreadful calamity of war is repugnant to one's sense of justice and gravely detrimental to the war morale of the people. ”

“ There are great outcries against profiteers, for making exorbitant profits out of the War, and against munition workers, for delaying work in order to get higher wages. I do not defend either of them; they are unimaginative and selfish, and I do not care how severely they are dealt with; but I do say that the majority of them are not wicked in intention. A good many of the more innocent profiteers are men whose sin is that they take an offer of two shillings rather than an offer of eighteenpence for what cost them one and a penny. ”

“ They see that an enormous amount of money is being spent on the war, and they jump to the conclusion that this money, if not spent upon the war, would have been put into capital investments and so have increased the tools and equipment of industry. In fact, a great deal of the money now spent upon the war would have been spent, if there had been no war, not upon increasing the equipment of production, but upon purely frivolous and extravagant consumption. ”

“ Again, though commerce and finance have on the whole always suffered heavily through war, it is notorious that a great many persons and companies have made vast fortunes, both in this and in previous wars; and it is not likely that none of them expected to do so beforehand. Some, no doubt, were completely taken by surprise by their own profits; and no one would for a moment suggest that because a firm made money out of some war therefore its directors desired the war. But evidently there do exist a number of moneyed interests to which a outbreak of war means success and prosperity. ”