This is the industrial rulers’ present politics.
This is the industrial rulers’ future program.
And the preacher must therefore salute the cash-register and baptize the cannon—or lose his job just like any other hired man who fails to please his economic master.
“Business is business,”—that is “the law and the gospel” of capitalism.
Let us study the matter a little further.
When a war is on the world’s stage the bright lights are so confusing that it is difficult to see the “leading citizens” in the background, “in the wings,” so to speak. For example:
The American people are still clapping their hands and hurrahing for “our noble Christian President” for his part in bringing about peace between Russia and Japan. But why—just why—did not the “noble Christian President” nobly interfere many months before he did interfere? The blood of tens of thousands of humble working-class soldiers in both armies was running down the hillsides in Manchuria in streams—months before. But no interference by the “noble Christian President” (recently so boisterously boastful of “his” own noble slaughtering on San Juan Hill).
Let us understand.
For many months it seemed that Christian Russia would surely win the war and still be able to pay interest and principal of American investments in Russia. Later the Russian Government and Russian credit became very unsteady. Immediately the capitalist actors in the background, with money invested in Russian enterprises, put on the pressure, applied “influence,” to our government, and then, and not till then, did President Roosevelt rush to the footlights of the world’s stage and whine and scream for peace.
For many months, while the blood of Japanese and Russian working class men was gushing from a million wounds, while the humble wives and children of these “common” men were wild with grief—all the while “our noble Christian President,” like all other Christian rulers, was as silent as a fish; but when principal and interest of American parasites got in danger, our “noble Christian President” promptly became nobly noisy and craftily pious and peaceful.