The denial of liberty in the United States is a matter of large import. No mayor, governor, president, legislature, court, magnate, banker, corporation or trust, and no combination of these individuals and organizations could arbitrarily destroy the American Republic. Underneath personality and partisanship are working the forces which have stripped the American people of their essential liberties as the April sun strips the mountains of their snow.
No one can read the history of the United States since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence without being struck by the complete transformation in the forms of American life. The Industrial Revolution which had gripped England for half a century, made itself felt in the United States after 1815. Steam, transportation, industrial development, city life, business organization, expansion across the continent—these are the factors that have made of the United States a nation utterly apart from the nation of which those who signed the Declaration of Independence and fought the Revolution dreamed.
These economic changes have brought political changes. The American Republic has been thrust aside. Above its remains towers a mighty imperial structure,—the world of business,—bulwarked by usage and convention; safeguarded by legislation, judicial interpretation, and the whole power of organized society. That structure is the American Empire—as real to-day as the Roman Empire in the days of Julius Caesar; the French Empire under the Little Corporal, or the British Empire of the Great Commoner, William E. Gladstone.
Approved or disapproved; exalted or condemned; the fact of empire must be evident even to the hasty observer. The student, tracing its ramifications, realizes that the structure has been building for generations.
2. The Characteristics of Empire
Many minds will refuse to accept the term "empire" as applied to a republic. Accustomed to link "empire" with "emperor," they conceive of a supreme hereditary ruler as an essential part of imperial life. A little reflection will show the inadequacy of such a concept. "The British Empire" is an official term, used by the British Government, although Great Britain is a limited monarchy, whose king has less power than the President of the United States. On the other hand, eastern potentates, who exercise absolute sway over their tiny dominions do not rule "empires."
Recent usage has given the term "empire" a very definite meaning, which refers, not to an "emperor" but to certain relations between the parts of a political or even of an economic organization. The earlier uses of the word "empire" were, of course, largely political. Even in that political sense, however, an "empire" does not necessarily imply the domain of an "emperor."
According to the definition appearing in the "New English Dictionary" wherever "supreme and extensive political dominion" is exercised "by a sovereign state over its dependencies" an empire exists. The empire is "an aggregation of subject territories ruled over by a sovereign state." The terms of the definition are political, but it leaves the emperor entirely out of account and makes an empire primarily a matter of organization and not of personality.
During the last fifty years colonialism, the search for foreign markets, and the competition for the control of "undeveloped" countries has brought the words "empire" and "imperialism" into a new category, where they relate, not to the ruler—be he King or Emperor—but to the extension of commercial and economic interests. The "financial imperialism" of F. C. Howe and the "imperialism" of J. A. Hobson are primarily economic and only incidentally political.
"Empire" conveys the idea of widespread authority, dominion, rule, subjugation. Formerly it referred to political power; to-day it refers to economic power. In either case the characteristics of empire are,—