From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: the republocrats 17: Imperialism grows at a gallop /ww
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Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 21:57:56 GMT

The Republocrats, 17: Imperialism grows at a gallop

By Vince Copeland

Number 17 in a series.

Perhaps the best short answer to the thesis of "accidental"
imperialism is the actual discussion in the Senate and in the
newspapers following the 1899 Senate resolution on the Philippines.
Albert Beveridge, a freshman Republican senator from Indiana,
startled the country and became a national hero with a speech
containing the following super-hawk sentiments:

"Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours
forever: `Territory belonging to the United States,' as the
Constitution calls them. And just beyond the Philippines are
China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We
will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon
our duty in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the
mission of our race, trustees under God, for the civilization of
the world. And we will move forward to our work not howling out
regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens, but with gratitude
for a task worthy of our strength and thanksgiving to Almighty God
that he has marked us as his chosen people, henceforth to lead in
the regeneration of the world."

U.S. ships had been trading with Asia for over a century. And
attempts had been made to take over Japan in the 1850s. But U.S.
business had never actually taken territory so close to China
itself as this. The imperialists of 1898 and 1900 were keenly aware
of all this and talked about the China prospects at every
opportunity.

"China is our natural customer," said Beveridge, and "gives a base
at the door of all the East."  Looking far ahead to the age of
Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, who asserted that the U.S. is a
"Pacific power," he said: "The power that rules the Pacific is the
power that rules the world." (Quoted in Claude G. Bowers,
"Beveridge and the Progressive Era," Houghton Mifflin, 1932)

Riches of the Philippines

Beveridge did not forget to explain that the riches of the
Philippines themselves were so fabulous that its hardwood could
supply U.S. needs for more than a century; the plantations and
mines were immensely productive, too. Nor did he forget the
character of the new country as a great outlet for U.S.
manufactured goods. This warmed the soul of big business but raised
doubts among small business, which could not begin to take part in
the export trade.

By and large the Democrats opposed the takeover of the Philippines
and would make it an issue in the 1900 election. But they said
little during the euphoria over Beveridge's speech.

It remained for Republican Senator George F. Hoar of  Massachusetts
to give some kind of answer to this unabashed imperialism on the
Senate floor. Hoar was now 72 and had entered the Senate at the
beginning of Reconstruction when Beveridge was six years old. He
had lived and legislated through a swiftly changing age.

"...Yet Mr. President, as I heard his eloquent description of
wealth and glory and trade, I listened in vain for those words
which the American people have been wont to take upon their lips in
every solemn crisis of our history. I heard much calculated to
excite the imagination of youth seeking wealth, or youth charmed by
the dream of empire. But the words Right, Duty, Freedom were
absent, my friend must permit me to say, from that eloquent speech.
I could think of this brave young Republic of ours, listening to
what he had to say, of but one occurrence:

"`The devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and
showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,
and sayeth unto him, All these things will I give to thee if thou
will fall down and worship me. Then sayeth Jesus unto him, `Get
thee behind me, Satan.'"

The aging senator was obviously not qualified to answer the bold
speech on its merits and was no match for Beveridge in any case.
But he remained, as far as that was possible in the new political
atmosphere and the changing party tradition, loyal to the ideals of
his Republican youth. He must have loomed like a ghost above the
spit and polish of the new millionaires' club. He must have seemed
like a stranger in a strange place, with shreds of the struggle for
equality still hanging on him from the battles for elementary
democracy in a bygone epoch.

While the newspapers were almost unanimous in their praise of the
Beveridge speech, the holdout Springfield (Mass.) Republican of
Hoar's state editorialized:

"Mr. Beveridge talks like a young Attila come out of the West, and
if his Americanism is now the true brand, then indeed is the
Republic no more."

Speech okayed by Wall Street

The speech not only anticipated the sentiments of the dominant
Republicans and their big business patrons; it also expressed them
more directly. Beveridge had shown this speech to some of the most
important Wall Street kings of high finance several days before
delivering it in the Senate. George Perkins, a Morgan partner,
found it excellent. So did Ira Dodd of Dodd, Meade and Co., a
Morgan-influenced publishing firm, as did President McCall of the
New York Life Insurance Company, also Morgan dominated.

It was becoming almost a required custom for the very topmost
politicians, Democrats and Republicans, to show the drafts of their
speeches, if not the whole word-for-word oration, to the real
rulers for approval. And whereas speech-writers were not unknown in
the 19th and early 20th centuries, such important speech-critics as
big bankers, stock manipulators, wholesale bribers of city
councils, and steel and coal barons were operating with full
authority behind the scenes.

Expressing himself even more boastfully if less religiously, but
putting his finger on the economic source of the war's popularity,
Chauncey Depew waxed forth at the Republican convention of 1904:

"The American people now produce $2 billion worth more than they
can consume and we have met the emergency, and by the providence of
God, by the statesmanship of McKinley and by the valor of Roosevelt
and his associates, we have our market in Cuba ... in Puerto Rico,
in Hawaii ... in the Philippines, and we stand in the presence of
800 million people, with the Pacific as an American lake, and the
American artisans producing better and cheaper goods than any
country in the world.... Let production go on ... let the factories
do their best, let labor be employed at the highest wages, because
the world is ours. ..."

Despite his talk of high wages, Depew probably understood quite
well that the main export to the Philippines and/or to China, etc.,
would be capital goods, that is, the means of hiring labor at
super-exploitative wages, ultimately to compete with U.S. labor.

This process had already been going on around the edges, so to
speak, when he delivered this cocky message. And he himself was
closely connected to just those capital goods industries which were
seeking this kind of foreign market.

It is estimated that U.S. foreign investment, much of it in Latin
America at the time, totaled $700 million in 1897, just before the
Spanish-American War. By 1914 this had grown to $3.5 billion--five
times as much. Without the war this could not have happened. The
figure may not sound so big in comparison with the total product of
the United States, even in those days. But it must be emphasized
that then--and now--the owners of this foreign investment were the
same small number of people who run the government and the
political parties.

The railroad tracks, steamship docks, mines, sweatshop factories,
etc., were getting into place for more young people to die for
their increase and perpetuation. This would be delayed until 1917,
however, when the Democratic Party played the part that the
Republicans had in 1898.

Election of 1900: McKinley again

Big money was well satisfied with the Republican William McKinley
and once more united behind him in the election of 1900. He had
proved to be most compliant and agreeable and managed to fill his
Cabinet with the most outstanding representatives of big business.
He did this again at the beginning of his second term.

His election campaign was run by Mark Hanna, who went on the attack
against the "free silver" advocates while painting McKinley as an
advocate of sound money and thus a friend of the working people.
This was the general Republican line and, as in the 1896 campaign,
they captured a great many industrial workers' votes, often by
threatening--as in 1896--that businesses would be shut down if
William Jennings Bryan were elected.

Bryan did not emphasize free silver as much as he had in 1896, nor
did he repudiate it. He attacked the imperialism of the Republicans
very strongly and fairly effectively. While McKinley won again, the
wave of super-patriotism washed up only another percentage point or
two in the plurality of his victory. McKinley got 7,207,023 votes
to Bryan's 6,358,138. Bryan had slightly more votes than in 1896.
But the wonder is, in light of today's apparent indifference to
foreign conquest, how vigorously he and the Democrats opposed the
imperialist drive.

`Down with imperialism!'

The Democratic platform explicitly condemned imperialism and called
for the U.S. to get out of the Philippines. At the Kansas City
convention, there were festoons of flags and slogans, as at most
conventions. But here the slogans had a radical bite. On one large
sign was painted the U.S. flag and beneath it the words: "The flag
of the Republic forever, of an empire, never!"

The Democratic Party was still leaning leftward, although many of
the gold-standard crowd had come back to it, including some
anti-imperialists among the wealthy.

Bryan took the lead in declaiming against the imperialist course
that the Republican-led government had taken. Both Bryan and his
party thought this course could be reversed if they were elected.
They probably had little understanding of the more or less
inevitable character of imperialist expansion, arising out of the
economic realities of the productive system and its push for ever
more markets.

"[Bryan] counseled merchants that trade is profitable only when
mutually advantageous. He admonished missionaries that their duty
was to teach the gospel of love and not to act as advance agents
for fleets and armies." ("Bryan" by Louis W. Koenig, p. 330)

His view of imperialism, like his view of business, was not dynamic
but static. He wanted to keep things as they were (eliminating
corruption and outright illegality, of course) and saw nothing
wrong with the smaller businesses, including some
multi-million-dollar ones, just so long as they did not become too
big.

"Imperialism, Bryan contended, was a new chapter in the struggle
between plutocracy and democracy. The two major parties were
instruments of the struggle. The Republican Party was dominated by
those `influences which constantly tend to elevate pecuniary
considerations and ignore human rights.' The Democratic Party, in
contrast, was friendly to `the honest accumulation of wealth; it
has no desire to discourage industry, honesty and thrift'. ...
Property rights, he argued, are most secure when human rights are
respected." (Koenig, p. 326)

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21 St.,
New York, NY 10010; "workers@mcimail.com".)

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