The methods of these men are monotonously similar. They lend, they invest, they support revolutions, they invoke "the protection of the flag." They need not pay attention to the public opinion of the backward countries; they do not believe such countries have a public opinion. All that these speculators need is the support of their home government, and that they may secure through bribery, newspaper influence and patriotism. The first two cost money and are worth all they cost; the third can be had for nothing. As for the excuse for intervention, it is that used by the wolf when he took a fancy to the lamb. Money is loaned at usurious rates to some rogue who poses in history as the President of the lamb republic or to some spendthrift imbecile of a Khedive. Concessions are secured. By a concession in this instance is meant a solemn contract, by which, for and in consideration of nothing, duly paid in hand, the whole nation, its territory and population, are turned over in perpetuity. The negotiations are ratified by a battle cruiser; a few marines are landed, a few barelegged natives are buried in a tropical back-yard, a treaty of peace and amity is concluded between the Imperial Power and its latest morsel, and the real business of imperialism begins. It is good business and pays big dividends.
But to whom do the dividends go? What profit has the French artisan or peasant in all these grand concessions from the illustrious Sultan of Morocco? How does the English workman prosper when English capital employs cheap Indian labour to undersell British factories? Obviously the immediate profits accrue to large capitalists rather than to the mass of the people. If a French peasant can invest his savings in Morocco, he may earn a few extra dollars per year on his holdings of a thousand francs, but his whole interest payment forms a small proportion of his annual income. To the financier, on the other hand, who directs the investment of hundreds of millions, a concession in Morocco is of value.
The case of French foreign investments is pertinent. As a result of the activity of great bankers, who rule both finance and politics, some forty billion francs have been invested in foreign countries. The individual investor has little choice and no intelligent direction in these large affairs. It is even possible that the whole course of French investments has been disadvantageous; that too much French capital has been sent abroad to cultivate foreign fields (or pay for war preparations) and too little has been absorbed at home. The profit to bankers does not prove that the loans are equally profitable to the nation. In any definite imperialistic policy, as that in Morocco, this difference in interest between the directors and small owners of capital becomes even clearer. The promoters can afford even to risk war, while for the small investor, who, after all, can invest elsewhere, the net gain is less apparent, especially as the war, if it comes, must be fought by him and be paid for by him.
From the beginning, therefore, a revolt or opposition has been manifested (in certain sections of the industrial nations) to the whole principle and policy of imperialism. This revolt relies for support upon those elements in the population who believe either that they are not benefited by imperialism or only slightly benefited. Liberal and socialistic sentiment forms the core and centre of this opposition. For the most part the socialists are theoretically opposed to imperialism on the ground that it is immoral, brutal, anti-democratic and uneconomic. It does not, they believe, pay the people who in the end pay for it.
This anti-imperialistic philosophy of the Socialists is chiefly derived from the anti-colonial attitude of the liberals of the early nineteenth century. That attitude was founded on opposition to special trade privileges, which was the basis of the old colonial policy, and also on the belief that colonies did not benefit the mother country. In the middle of the eighteenth century Turgot had declared that "colonies are like fruits which cling to the tree only till they ripen," and he predicted that "as soon as America can take care of herself, she will do what Carthage did." When the American colonies later fulfilled this prediction by securing their independence, and when it was perceived that this separation did not lessen England's commerce with America, the opponents of colonialism, who were also advocates of free trade, were reinforced in their convictions. The only true extension was trade, and to secure trade political domination was unnecessary.
It was by no means contended even by the most doctrinaire free trader that an increase in the population and wealth of new countries, such as the United States and Canada, was undesirable. All they opposed was political dominion by the home country and the adoption of a restrictive trade policy. Similarly the orthodox Socialists of to-day make a sharp distinction between colonisation and imperialism, between the acquisition, by conquest or otherwise, of lands suitable for settlement and the seizure of populous countries to which emigration is impossible. In this distinction it is not the intention but the fact that counts; whatever the motives of the explorers, the new country becomes a colony if it furnishes homes. Such colonising is a direct national gain, benefiting all classes. The redemptioner, who was carried off to the British settlements in America, did in the end improve his economic condition, and his descendants, like those of the free immigrants, now form the population of the country. On the other hand tropical dominions, like Porto Rico or Egypt, can provide profits for investors but no homes for settlers.
This distinction negates by definition the claim that imperialism is an outlet for a redundant population. Of the emigrants from the United Kingdom during the last thirty years only a microscopic percentage went to Britain's tropical colonies. In British India in 1911 only one in every two thousand was British born. Similarly, most French, German, Belgian and Dutch colonies furnish no outlet to the surplus populations of these nations. Even in Algeria the Europeans constitute only one-seventh of the population, and in Tunis only about one-tenth. The entire European population in all German, French and British possessions (exclusive of the five self-governing colonies), is less than the net immigration to the United States every two or three years.[[1]]
The opponents of imperialism moreover claim that all the regions fit for colonisation are already pre-empted. There is room for many millions in the five self-governing colonies of Great Britain, as there is in Siberia and South America, but where can place be found in regions newly acquired by imperialism? Where can homes be had to-day for some twenty million Germans (the excess of German population in a single generation), to say nothing of tens of millions of Italians, British, Austrians and Poles? It is frequently claimed that the new medical science, which conquers tropical diseases, will make these regions habitable by the whites. But though the sanitary improvement in the Canal Zone permitted thousands of Americans to help build the canal, it did not result in the actual physical work of construction being performed by white men. Despite sanitary improvements, the Jamaica negro could endure a hard day's work under the tropical sun far better than a man from Illinois. The economic advantage of the lower-priced coloured labour is still more decisive. While in the highly organised industries of England, Germany or the United States, high wages frequently mean small labour cost, in the lower-geared industries of the tropics the coloured man, black or yellow, easily holds his own. Since the European excess of births over deaths is about forty millions per decade, the impossibility of finding a place for this excess population in tropical and subtropical countries is manifest.
If the countries still to be overrun are not adapted for colonisation, the benefits accruing from imperialism, according to these anti-imperialists, will go to merchants, manufacturers and investors and not to wage-earners. It is often claimed that this trade which arises from an imperialistic policy is not great enough to exercise a beneficent influence upon the fortunes of the masses. Prof. Hobson, writing in 1902, states that during the period since 1870, when Great Britain launched into its latest imperialistic policy, British foreign commerce did not grow as rapidly as population, and actually declined in proportion to wealth. The British colonies increased their trade with other nations more rapidly than with the home country. The newly acquired colonies, the last fruits of imperialism, were the least profitable. Their commerce was small, fluctuating and of low quality. Mr. Hobson therefore comes to the conclusion "that our modern imperialistic policy has had no appreciable influence whatever upon the determination of our external trade."[[2]]
When we consider individual countries which have been the cause of much rivalry and dissension, we discover that their commerce is often extremely small. France has almost monopolised the trade of Martinique, but in 1913 her total trade with that country was less than a sixtieth of her trade with the United Kingdom and less than a fiftieth of her trade with Germany. The specifically tropical countries, for which the nations are fighting, do not have a commerce worth a fraction of the cost of their acquisition.[[3]] Nor are the investments in the imperialistic domain nearly so large as those in countries over which the European nations exercise no political control. France has invested largely in Russia and the Balkans; Germany has put capital into the United States, South America and Asia Minor; England has gigantic sums in countries over which she exercises no dominion. The profits from imperialistic investments are merely a bonus. Though they loom large in the popular imagination, they are only a small part of the national income, and even at the best these profits go to capitalists and not to the people.