From the lips of a popular professor of contemporary history, who is also an able commentator on current affairs, comes a modern expression of opinion on the function of armed force with regard to the interests of this American democracy. His position is so typical of common uninformed opinion that it is worth restating and examining for its errors. He said:
There are certain fundamentals which we must regard. First, that of security. Good luck in the form of natural defenses, amicable neighbors, and an isolated site, has insured it in part. A strong navy completes the safeguard. . . . The sooner America realizes that it cannot even guard her reckless individuals exploiting their interests in the outlying trades of civilization, the sooner we will avoid foreign complications resulting in war.
In other words, he agrees in the first place with Charles Austin Beard, who has been called America’s outstanding liberal thinker, and yet believes that we should have a Navy strong enough to defend the continental limits of the United States. Then he goes on to hold that it is not the business of the nation to protect the profit- seeking activities of the individual merchant and trader in far climes. “Why should we maintain a large battle fleet to put money into the pockets of the American business man who deals beyond the seas? Can he not take his own risks?” These are rhetorical questions often posed as if they were conclusive facts. They are, after all, only questions. They are not even based upon facts. The surest way to demolish their political worth is to answer them.
The answer is that what American diplomatic effort, consular energy, and naval strength actually protect is not the profit of the individual abroad but rather the opportunity to work of the laborer at home.
When England was sending her “merchant adventurers” abroad on the seas, perhaps the privateer who carried the Queen’s commission was the principal person who profited from the golden doubloons or rich jewels pirated from the galleons of Spain. But today the profit of the individual is very slight.
For instance, there are gunboats on the Yangtze. These protect the cargo ships from bandit raids. They enable American kerosene to be carried into the far reaches of Szechwan and there sold to Chinese who in turn sell hog bristles of a superior quality which make clean the mouths of tooth- brushing Americans. The exchange is trade to mutual advantage. But let us not talk of advantages to the Chinese who desire light in a dim hut or to Americans who desire cleanliness of dental enamel. Let us go to the question of sheer profit. Who profits the most—the man who trades or the man back home?
If the use of names will be pardoned both by the owners and by the readers, may I ask this question concerning personal friends? And answer it myself?
Every stick of Oregon lumber which “Cy” Seymour sells in Tientsin brings more “profit” to the Dollar Lumber Company than to him. And this is not all gross profit to the company either. Most of it goes to what the financiers call operating expenses. Every sale of American timber in China means money to the man who owns the land in Oregon, to the community which collects taxes on that land, to the man who wields the ax or saw, to the man who made that ax, to the railway company, switchman, trackman, engineer, dispatcher who helps that lumber get to the seacoast, to the man who helped lay that track, to make the rails, to manufacture the freight car, to dig the coal or handle the oil that operates that locomotive, to the longshoreman who shifts that lumber from car to ship, to the men who made that ship and the parts which comprise that ship.
Every drop of kerosene sold by “Al” Reynolds means money in the pockets of the man on whose land the oil well was dug, of the well-drilling crews of the fields, of the men who built or maintain the pipe line by the sweat of their hands, of the men who constructed the “tank” car or the “tank” ship.
Every bit of tobacco brought to China from Virginia for manufacture by the British American Tobacco Company into a “Ruby Queen” or a “Hatamen” cigarette means money back home. The farmer who raised that tobacco is interested; every person who handles it.
Every Ford automobile sold by “Mack” McGowan means money in the pockets of the worker in the factory in Detroit.
Business abroad means industry at home. Gladstone said to add an inch to the garment of each of the four hundred million Chinese would keep the factories of Lancashire running day and night for a year in a frantic effort to catch up. Cotton trade to China means funds in the fields of Alabama, pay checks in the factories of Lowell. The business man abroad is a salesman for home products. His “profit” is negligible beside the advantage to the worker in the native land. His success as a salesman may mean employment or unemployment. This is the real basis of the desire for “foreign trade” and “world markets.” This is the fundamental of British policy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was the underlying factor in the quest for colonies of the European powers desiring “spheres of influence” and “special interests” in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It motivated the expansion of a Germany rapidly becoming industrialized under Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm. It was the reason John Hay secured the promises of the powers, at the turn of the century, not to dismember China and to keep the door of trade open to all equally, and so of course to keep it open to American trade. Work must be created for the increasing population of factory laborers at home. Call it imperialism if you wish; it still means profit to the common working man; it may even mean pay.
To say, therefore, that a Navy is created to “guard reckless individuals exploiting their interests in the outlying trades of civilization” is to distort the problem. It is not a fair statement, because it is not full.
Certainly more Americans are interested in foreign trade than the mere trader. The worker and the investor and the citizen who has an insurance policy are all interested. It is not a fair statement to say that the American Navy exists to protect the profiteering interests of the trader, and that the rest of the people of the country maintain that Navy for his sole benefit. It is a fair question to ask the American people if they believe such trade is worth the cost to the people as a whole, considering how closely the interests of so many people may be affected by the increase, maintenance, or lapse of such trade.
The answer to the question is political. Its answer may translate widespread economic interests into political policy and national action. It is not my business to answer the question—merely to insist that the question asked should reflect the full implications of the facts concerned.