Part Two
The Myth of
“A Rich Man’s War”
The Myth of
“A Rich Man’s War”
Since Pacifism and semi-seditious agitation have become both unpopular and risky, the propagandists of disunion have been at pains in endeavoring to insidiously affect public sentiment by spreading the fiction that America’s entrance into the war was fomented by “big business” from selfish reasons and for the purpose of gain. In the same line of thought and purpose they proclaim that this is “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” and that wealth is being taxed here with undue leniency as compared to the burden laid upon it in other countries.
These assertions are in flat contradiction to the facts:
Nothing is plainer than that business and business men had everything to gain by preserving the conditions which existed during the two and a half years prior to April, 1917, under which many of them made very large profits by furnishing supplies, provisions and financial aid to the Allied nations, taxes were light and this country was rapidly becoming the great economic reservoir of the world.
Nothing is plainer than that any sane business man in this country must have foreseen that if America entered the war these profits would be immensely reduced, and some of them cut off entirely, because our Government would step in and take charge; that it would cut prices right and left, as in fact it has done; that enormous burdens of taxation would have to be imposed, the bulk of which would naturally be borne by the well-to-do; in short, that the unprecedented golden flow into the coffers of business was bound to stop with our joining the war; or, at any rate, to be much diminished.
The best indication of the state of feeling of the financial community is usually the New York Stock Exchange. Well, every time a ship with Americans on board was sunk by a German submarine in the period preceding our entrance into the war, the stock market shivered and prices declined.