The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1917-11-03
"a Rich Mans 'warsss~.su
IBy Harvey O'Higgins.)

refused exemption. He was a youfie
hack driver, with no one dependent
on him. But he was not eager to
night; he had been reading The Mass
es. What We 1 got to fight for?"
he argued. "It'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-
dcnds. The Steel Trust the Goat
Trust. the Meat Trust, the railroad
and the shipping magnates charged
all that the wartime traffic woula
bear, and had no war taxes to pay 1t
was to their interest to keep this ma
ton out of the conflict in order to
preserve their gains. With our en-
trance upon hostilities. the govern
ment obtained the power to tax pros
fits, to fix prices, to control the food
supply. to protect the poor from exl
ploitattion 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? Tile war won it. If it is
rich mans war, the rich have been
singularly deluded in procuring it.
And, in the matter of the draft,
they have been equally blind The first
conscription act of our civil war 'alE
lowed the rich man to buy exemption
by paying $500 for it. There is no
such clause in the present law. In
the later days of the Civil War the
rich man could buy exemption by
paying a substitute to take his place.
He can not do SO in this war. The
only exemptions allowed today are al
lowed to the poor man who has de-
pendents or to the workers in the in
dustries and professions that are nee
essary 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 Gle 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 laborer
and the poor are everywhere cohf-
exempt. = 'n'
For, the first time in the history of
the world war is being waged that
falls most heavily upon the classes
who, in times past, have most profted
by war.
In this country, as yet, the results
of that new aspect of the conflict are
not glaringly evident But in Eng
land they are SO striking that they
amount to a revolution. There, it is
the poorer classes that have gained
IN material comfort. in political pow
er, in control Of their conditions of
life, in happiness and in freedom. 1t
Is not merely that wages have been
that the cost Of living has
been controlled, that the people have
taken oyer the direction Of the rail
roads, and Of the coal mines, and Of
the food supply. and of the organized
industries Of the nation. 1t is not
merely that the workingman has been
given q larger place in the govern
ment councils and the idle rich man
a smaller place-his income taxed
to the bone and his profits reduced
to extinction. 1t is, above all, that
industry itself has obtained demo-
cratic government of its own, so that
the workingman now sits with the
employer at the board of business
management 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 a century of peace
has been forced by three years Of war
The conditions which forwarded that
revolution are the conditions that
are so rapidly advancing a similar
revolution here. Our socialists, who
cry This is a rich mans war; let the
workingman oppose it," are as blind
as those socialists in Great Britain
who originally raised the same cry
and similarly opposed their own ad-
vantage.
We have already obtained, in this
country, measures Of State socialism