The Oroville weekly gazette. [volume] (Oroville, Wash.) 1905-19??, 1917-10-26
"a RICH MANS WAR;"
(By Henry O'Tliggins.)

upon ulHi. nut lie WAS not eager 10 |
fight. He had been reading The Masses |
"What've | got to fight forg' he argued |
It's q 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 div
idends. Tho Steel Trust, the Coal
Trust, the Meat Trust the railroads |
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 food supply, to protect the
poor from exploitation and deprive the
rich of the fruits of exploitation. That
power has been sought, for how many
decades in times of peace, by how
many social reformers? The war won
it. II it is rich mans war, the rich
have been singulaily deluded in pro-
curing 1t.
And, in the matter of the draft, they
have been equally blind The first con-
scription act of our Civil War allowed
the rich man to buy exemption by pay
ing $500 for it. There is no such clause
in the present law. In later days of the
Civil War the rich man could buy en-
emption by paying substitute to take
his place. He cannot do so in this
war. The only exemptions allowed to-
day 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. 1t 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 working
man, the small farmer, the producer,
the productive laborer 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 in England they
arc so striking they amount to revo-
luton. 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 liv-
ing has been controlled, that the peo-
pie have taken over the direction of
of the food supply, and of the organ
lied industries of the nation. 1t is not
merely that the workingman has been
given large place in the government
councils and the idle rich man
smaller place-his income tax to the
bone and his profits reduced to extinc-
ton. 1t Is, ebove all. that industry it.
self has obtained a democratic gov
eminent of its own, so that the work.
ing man now sits with his employer at
the board of business managers and
helps to make the rules under which
he works and to regulate the condi-
lions of his labor.
The reforms for which British So
cialists have been struggling for so
years have been obtained overnight. A
| revolution that could not have been
affected in century of peace has
been forced by three years of war. The
conditions which forwarded that revo-
luton are the conditions which so rap
idly advancing similar revolution
here. Our socialists who cry This is a
! rich mans war; let the working man
oppose it" are as blind as those social
lists in Great Britain who originally
raised the same cry and similarly op-
posed 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 ourselves
as well as the English are defending
themselves. We, too, shall have to de
mocratize industry" as the phrase is, if
we expect our workingmen to rein
force our battle line as the British
workingmen have reinforced the Brit
ish front. And not only that. After the
war is over, our industry and our COM
merce will not be able to live in the
same world as British industry and
cOmmerce-to say nothing of the
French and German-if our working
man is not loyal and satisfied and
happy and efficient as theirs. Our
revolution will have to continue, be-
cause the life of the nation in peace,
as in war, will depend upon continuing
it.
"A rich mans war! A war that has
exterminated half of the evils of op-
preston of which the predatory rich
have been accused! A war that has re-
duced their power, curtailed their
privileges, confiscated their profits! A
war that has made England, in three
years, radical democracy, not only
politically, but industrially! If any So
cialist thinks that such war is rich
mans war; he thinks so because his
mind has ceased to function-because
he has reduced thought to a dogma
and bleats a mechanical utterance like
a toy lamb-because he has taken his
stand on the economic formula, like
the lamb on it's bellows, unable to