Abstract

What American Labor Does Not See

The Spanish War is an excellent illustration of a profitable war and England's recent series of small foreign wars, ending with the Boer War, was immensely profitable. But to lay out specifications for such a war now, with any kind of assurance that they can be followed, is very difficult and hereafter doubtless will be quite impossible. The Wilson Administration has from the beginning taken wise and able measures with labor. In comparison, for example, with British labor, labor in the U.S. has had a very imperfectly developed philosophy. A long course of protectionist arguments has trained it to know nothing, officially at least, of the difference between real and apparent wages, the foundation of monopoly and its relation to wages and prices, and the general raison d'etre of the phenomenon of a propertyless dependent class existing in such numbers as are found in a country like the U.S.