Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1917-11-29
"A Rich Man S
War"
By HARVEY O'HICCINS

he had been reading The Masses.
"What We l got to fight for?" he
argued. 'Tt's rich mans war;"
1t is. But not in the sense that he
meant.
AS long as this country, at peace,
was supplying Europe with food and
munitions the rich man gained. The
munition makers drew enormous divi-
dents. The steel trust, the coal
trust, the meat trust, the railroad
and the shipping magnates charged all
that the wartime traffic would bear,
and had no war taxes to pay. 1t was
to their interest to keep this nation
out Of the conflict in order to preserve
their gains. With our entrance upon
hostilities, the government obtained
the power to tax profits, to fix prices,
to control the food supply, to protect
the poor from exploitation and de-
prive the rich of the fruits Of ex-
plOitation. That power has been
sought, for how many decades, in
times of peace, by how many social
reformers. The war won it. If it is
rich mans war, the rich have been
singularly deluded in procuring 1t.
And, in the matter of the draft,
they have been equally blind. The first
conscriptiOn act of our Civil war al
lowed the rich man to buy exemption
by paying $500 for it. There is no
such clause in the present law. In
the later day Of the Civil war the
rich man could buy exemption by pay
ing substitute to take his place. He
exemptions allowed today are allowed
to the poor man who has dependents
or to the workers in the industries and
professions that are necessary to the
life and efficiency Of a modern nation
in war time
1t is rich mans war, therefore, in
the sense that the sons of the rich are
the most liable to die in it. It is a
rich mans war in the sense that the
rich are chiefly paying for it with
their lives, with their money, with
their time and service, and with the
loss of their special privileges, while
the wOrkingman, the small farmer, the
producer, the productive 1abOrer and
the poor are everywhere comparatively
exempt.
For the first time in the history of
the world a war is being waged that
falls most heavily upon the classes
who, in times past, have most profited
by war.
In this country, as yet, the results
of that new aspect of the conflict are
not glaringly evident. But ia England
they are SO striking that they amount
to revolution. There, it is the poorer
classes that have gained in material
comfort, in political power, in control
of their conditions of life, in happiness
and in freedom. 1T is not merely that
wages have been raised, that the cost
of living has been controlled, that the
people have taken over the direction
of the railroads, and Of the coal mines,
and of the food supply, and Of the
organized industries of the nation. It
is not merely that the workingman has
ernment councils and the idle rich
man smaller place-his income taxed
to the bone and his profits reduced to
extinction. 1t is, above all, that in
dustry itself has obtained democratic
government Of it's own, so that the
workingman now sits with the en-
plOyer at the board Of business man
agement and helps to make the rules
under which he works and to regulate
the conditions of his labor.
The reforms for which British
socialists have been struggling for so
years have been obtained overnight.
A revolution that could not have been
effected in century of peace has been
forced by three years Of war. The
conditions which forwarded that revo-
luton are the conditions that are so
rapidly advancing a similar revolution
here. Our socialists, who cry, "This
is a rich mans war; let the working
man oppose it" are as blind as those
socialists in Great Britain who orig
inally raised the same, cry and similar
ly opposed their own advantage.
We have already obtained, in this
country, measures of state socialism
that looked'as far away as the millen-
ium to our socialists three years ago.
We shall have to carry the still more
incredible reforms that have carried
in England if we are to defend our
selves as well as the English are de-
Tending themselves. We, too, shall
have to "democratize industry" as the
phrase is, if we expect our working
man to reinforce our battle line as
the British workingman has rein
forced the British front. And not only
that. After the war is over, our in
dustry and our commerce will not be
able to live in the same world as Brit
ish industry and commerce-to say
nothing of the French and German
If our workingman is not as loyal and
satisfied and happy and efficient as
theirs. Our revolution will have to
continue, because the life Of the ma
fiOD in nnaco &C in war will dpDan0