Lay the Axe at the Root of War

Charles Erskine Scott Wood

[Extracts from a pamphlet, "Ave! Caesar. Imperator. Morituri te Salutant."
Reprinted from Everyman, November 1917]

EVERYONE knows that England is a country of aristocracy and ancient feudal titles. But because we have no titles or books of peerage, and because the public schools and the Fourth of July have kept us in a Fool's Paradise we really believe we are different. We talk so much of our "Democracy" and "Liberty" we believe we have them. The truth is the United States is a Democracy only in theory (in so far as it is a democracy at all). It is in fact a Plutocracy and the worst exploited country on earth. The stupidist of us see in a dim way that the early liberty and equality of the forefathers has disappeared and that there has grown up a plutocratic class and proletariat shading off into slums. But the stupid do not see that the loss of liberty to the common man and the loss of a certain economic equality and the rise of plutocracy have one and the same cause - and that cause is this English and American Industrial Feudalism we are calling "Democracy." This itself rests on these root feudal evils : First, Land the mother of all wealth, held in both countries in absolute unconditioned private ownership, and regardless of any monopolistic advantage inherent in the land which makes its possession by an individual dangerous to the people as a whole. In short, the mother earth in both countries is absolutely and unconditionally owned by private individuals by the old feudal paper title of fee simple, which title is conveyable from one person to another. It is inevitable that in course of time by economic gravity all the monopolistically valuable areas, growths and deposits will gravitate into the possession of a shrewd acquisitive few (not at all the "Best" or "Fittest" or "Most Far Sighted," unless to acquire be the highest aim of man and to be born first be far sighted). In a new country like the United States, the whole country has gradually become the prize of those exploiting and speculating men first on the ground - and the enormous wealth of a virgin continent has become theirs. The others remaining in effect feudal tenants, wage earners, job hunters. Second : To this feudalism must be added its child, viz. : the private ownership of the economic machinery for the service of Society - Railroads, Banks, the Circulating Medium (money), Water, Light and Mills so powerful in capitalization, army of employees and output as to be a menace to the freedom of the individual.

Are we really to achieve in this world-purging a true Democracy, a death of feudalism? If we are to do this then we need reforms at home as well as in Germany. This survival of the principal feudal title to land has produced a result patent to all. In England and America there now exists a shocking disparity in wealth - not accounted for by the superior brains or morals of the industrial barons or the inferior brains or morals of the industrial serfs. There must be some inequality of opportunity, some institution at work; not just the natural difference in human ability operating in a free economic environment. When society is divided into a few having a dangerous control of opportunity and jobs and the many dependent on these few for actual existence, either by charity or chance to work, the dependents or serfs cannot be free. There can be no Democracy.

The slums of London, Manchester, Birmingham, New York, Chicago and other cities, in-dictate something rotten somewhere. It is a diseased social system which not only remains consenting to, but which automatically produces and insists on a concentration of wealth at one end, and a rising tide of poverty, crime and degeneracy at the other. All the political democracy in the world would not compensate for actual industrial serfdom and would become useless to the serfs. "He owns my life who owns the means whereby I live." But with Industrial Democracy, freedom of the individual is inevitable. A man uncontrolled as to his means of existence is a free man.

Where such discrepancies in the distribution of wealth exist the indigent workman is as much a serf as under the earlier feudal system. Out of either and both of these feudal systems, German or English, come wars, and if we are to cause wars to cease we must cause these systems to cease. There is no difference in social and political effect between an hereditary aristocracy and a self-made plutocracy. The hereditary is older, that is all, but both begin the same way - getting control of the land and making the people tenants. Titles are nothing, robes and childish gegaws are nothing. The control of the means of subsistence is the real power.

The English system, the United States system, automatically produces kings, lords and barons at one end and. dependents at the other. The older feudal lords fought each other for large dominions - more subjects and greater power in exploitation. So do our barons. The system in the great basic principle is unchanged and inevitably the result is unchanged. Wars are only the symptom of a disease. The disease is industrial feudalism, and the progress of the disease is steady. When the monopolizing few, or privileged few, have fully exploited their own country and people, they are driven to the world at large for further fields of exploitations. They seek the weaker peoples as their natural feeding ground, competitions and conflicts arise between the ruling classes of the strong predatory countries, and hence wars. It is as simple as two dogs and a bone. Until you can abolish the force of gravity and deny that like causes produce like effects all conferences and discussions are of little value which do not seek to abolish Industrial Feudalism as the cause of wars.

Instead of looking to Germany and England for economic and truly democratic revolution we must take the beam out of our own eye; our efforts for peace must be efforts to change our plutocratic system here and now. If our Industrial Feudalism continues the United States will be the promoter of the next great war. People have talked of war in horror since Christ, yet wars have been bred and bred again like thunderstorms, but the people have never laid the axe - no, not so much as a penknife to the root of the disease. To do so should now be the effort of every true patriot - one whose country is the world - all mankind his countrymen; of every true pacifist - one who cares not to make a peace for peace's sake, beneath which new wars will breed, but earnestly hopes for an enduring peace of the world and brotherhood of man.