of national power. The politicians will bid for the labor vote as they have bid for the Irish vote; indeed, it is the startling success of Mr. Parnell which has so profoundly influenced the leading workers and thinkers in the labor ranks. Mr. Parnell has made Parnellites of the Liberal party; we shall see the leaders of both parties before long anxious to do whatever the labor leaders may require.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Webb, Industrial Democracy, Introduction to the 1902 edition; History of Trade Unionism; Problems of Modern Industry; Socialism in England. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement. Ensor, Modern Socialism, especially valuable for the programmes of the various English labor parties and leaders. Mackay (editor), A Plea for Liberty, a protest and argument against state interference. Porritt, Party Conditions in England, in the Political Science Quarterly, June, 1906.

PART IX

THE EMPIRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I

THE ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF IMPERIALISM

IN every European country domestic politics is complicated by questions involved in securing new markets for manufactures and new areas for the profitable investment of capital. Though these great motives are supplemented by religious sentiments and by philosophic conceptions concerning the world's civilization, they are without doubt the great impelling forces in what is called "imperialism." The problem of how far domestic prosperity and true civilization are connected with the free outlet of these forces, and the military and naval support of mercantile operations, is one of the gravest and most important that has ever confronted Western nations. In Great Britain the opinion of statesmen and publicists has passed through many phases. For a time during the middle of the nineteenth century many of the leading thinkers were dominated by a belief that colonies would in time become independent States, and that additional imperial complications should not be undertaken. Since 1870, however, under the steady pressure of the forces mentioned above, the borders of the British empire have been steadily advanced, and there has been a strongly growing sentiment that the empire should be bound more and more closely together and that opportunities for new additions should not be allowed to escape. A very thorough analysis of the inner character of imperialism and its many problems is to be found in Mr. Hobson's Imperialism: a Study. It is not without its con

troversial aspects, but it is one of the most stimulating books of our time on this very important subject.

§ 1. The Economic Argument for Imperialism1

No mere array of facts and figures adduced to illustrate the economic nature of the new imperialism will suffice to dispel the popular delusion that the use of national force to secure new markets by annexing fresh tracts of territory is a sound and necessary policy for an advanced industrial country like Great Britain. It has indeed been proved that recent annexations of tropical countries, procured at great expense, have furnished poor and precarious markets; that our aggregate trade with our colonial possessions is virtually stationary; and that our most profitable and progressive trade is with rival industrial nations, whose territories we have no desire to annex, whose markets we cannot force, and whose active antagonism we are provoking by our expansive policy.

But these arguments are not conclusive. It is open to imperialists to argue thus: "We must have markets for our growing manufactures; we must have new outlets for the investment of our surplus capital and for the energies of the adventurous surplus of our population: such expansion is a necessity of life to a nation with our great and growing powers of production. An ever larger share of our population is devoted to the manufactures and commerce of towns, and is thus dependent for life and work upon food and raw materials from foreign lands. In order to buy and pay for these things we must sell our goods abroad. During the first three-quarters of the century we could do so without difficulty by a natural expansion of commerce with continental nations and our colonies, all of which were far behind us in the main arts of manufacture and the carrying trades. So long as England held a virtual monopoly of the world markets for certain important classes of manufactured goods, imperialism was unnecessary. During the last thirty years this manufacturing and trading supremacy has been greatly impaired; other nations, especially Germany, the United States, and Belgium, have advanced with great rapidity, and while they have not crushed or even stayed the increase of our external trade, their competition is making it more and more difficult to dispose of the full surplus of our manufactures at a profit.

1

Hobson, Imperialism: a Study, chap. vi. By permission of J. A. Hobson, Esq., and James Pott & Company, Publishers.

The encroachments made by these nations upon our old markets, even in our own possessions, make it most urgent that we should take energetic means to secure new markets. These new markets must lie in hitherto undeveloped countries, chiefly in the tropics, where vast populations live capable of growing economic needs which our manufacturers and merchants can supply. Our rivals are seizing and annexing territories for similar purposes, and when they have annexed them, close them to our trade. The diplomacy and the arms of Great Britain must be used in order to compel the owners of the new markets to deal with us; and experience shows that the safest means of securing and developing such markets is by establishing "protectorates" or by annexation. The present value of these markets must not be taken as a final test of the economy of such a policy; the process of educating civilized needs which we can supply is of necessity a gradual one, and the cost of such imperialism must be regarded as a capital outlay, the fruits of which posterity will reap. The new markets may not be large, but they form serviceable outlets for the overflow of our great textile and metal industries, and when the vast Asiatic and African populations of the interior are reached, a rapid expansion of trade may be expected to result.

"Far larger and more important is the pressure of capital for external fields of investment. Moreover, while the manufacturer and trader are well content to trade with foreign nations, the tendency for investors to work towards the political annexation of countries which contain their more speculative investments is very powerful. Of the fact of this pressure of capital there can be no question. Large savings are made which cannot find any profitable investment in this country; they must find employment elsewhere, and it is to the advantage of the nation that they should be employed as largely as possible in lands where they can be utilized in opening up markets for British trade and employment for British enterprise.

"However costly, however perilous, this process of imperial expansion may be, it is necessary to the continued existence and progress of our nation; if we abandon it, we must be content to leave the development of the world to other nations, who will everywhere cut into our trade, and even impair our means of securing the food and raw materials we require to support our population. Imperialism is thus seen to be, not a choice, but a necessity."

2. Economic Forces in American Imperialism

The practical force of this economic argument in politics is strikingly illustrated by the recent history of the United States. Here is a country which suddenly breaks through a Conservative policy, strongly held by both political parties, bound up with every popular instinct and tradition, and flings itself into a rapid imperial career for which it possesses neither the material nor the moral equipment, risking the principles and practices of liberty and equality by the establishment of militarism and the forcible subjugation of peoples which it cannot safely admit to the condition of American citizenship.

Is this a mere wild freak of spread-eaglism, a burst of political ambition on the part of a nation coming to a sudden realization of its destiny? Not at all. The spirit of adventure, the American "mission of civilization," are, as forces making for imperialism, clearly subordinate to the driving force of the economic factor. The dramatic character of the change is due to the unprecedented rapidity of the industrial revolution in the United States during the last two decades. During that period the United States, with her unrivalled natural resources, her immense resources of skilled and unskilled labor, and her genius for invention and organization, has developed the best-equipped and most productive manufacturing economy the world has yet seen. Fostered by rigid protective tariffs, her metal, textile, tool, clothing, furniture, and other manufactures have shot up in a single generation from infancy to full maturity, and, having passed through a period of intense competition, are attaining, under the able control of great trust-makers, a power of production greater than has been attained in the most advanced industrial countries of Europe.

An era of cut-throat competition, followed by a rapid process of amalgamation, has thrown an enormous quantity of wealth into the hands of a small number of captains of industry. No luxury of living to which this class could attain kept pace with its rise of income, and a process of automatic saving set in upon an unprecedented scale. The investment of these savings in other industries helped to bring these under the same concentrative forces. Thus a great increase of savings seeking profitable investment is synchronous with a stricter economy of the use of existing capital. No doubt the rapid growth of a population, accustomed to a high and an always ascending standard of comfort, absorbs in the