The daily Alaskan., 1918-03-08
"A Rich Man s
 War k,
By HARVEY o'HIGGINS

reIuSeu eNSupllOu- IS "aS SOohS hack driver, with no one dependent on him. But he was not eager to fight; he had been reading The Masses. What we l got to fight forf' he argued. It's a rich mans war;"
 It 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 intuition makers drew enormous dlvi- 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. It 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- plOitatlOn. That power has been sought, for how many decades, in times of peace, by how many social reformers. The war won 1t. If 1t Is a 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 1t. 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 a substitute to take his place. He cannot do so in this war. The only 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.
 It Is q 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 1t 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 comparatively exempt.
 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 glariugly evident. But in England they are So striking that they amount to revolution. There, 1t Is the poorer classes that have gained in material comfort, iu political power, in control uf their conditions If life, in happiness and iu freedom. It Is not merely that wages have been raised. that the cost of living has been controlled, that the people have taken over the direction OS 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 wUrkingman has been given larger place in the gov crnmert uuaucils and the idle rich man . smaller place-his income taxed to the bone and his profits reduced 10 extinction. Il Is, above all, that in- dust-y itself has obtained democratic government of its own, so that the workingluau now sits with the em- ployer at the board of business man. agcment 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 50 years have been obtained overnight. A revolution that could not have been effected in a century of peace has been forced hy 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 rich mans war; let the working man oppose it." are as blind as those socialists in Great Britain who orig lual!y raised the same cry and similar Iy opposed their own advantage.
 We have already obtained, in this country, measures Of state socialism that looked'as far away as the mlllen- 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- lending themselves. We, too, shall hare to 'democratlze 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- Gustry and our commerce will not be able to live in the same world as Brit ;sh 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