One other effect of the war has already begun to reveal itself in the
emigration from America of thousands of Servians, Austrians, Russians,
Germans, Frenchmen, going home to take their places in the ranks. While
many of these men are brave and honorable citizens, the fact that they
respond to such a call proves them not yet Americans. The war will tend
to remove a goodly part of the distinctly foreign element in the
country, the part not yet amalgamated, and therefore the part most alien
to our institutions and the most difficult to place in our social
structure. If the war continues, Europe will draw every able-bodied man
who can be influenced to go. Far more important, immigration will
probably become negligible not only during the war, but for some time
after it. Usually the reason for leaving home lies in the crowded
population of European States and the lack of opportunity for
advancement, plus the glib tongue of some agent of a contractor or of a
steamship company. In recent years those who have come have not been
desirable additions to our population because they came from nations
alien in blood, language, religion and institutions, and were not
therefore easily knit into our national structure and absorbed. There
will be little, if any, further immigration. The men are wanted for the
army and will not be allowed to leave during the war. After peace is
restored, they will be imperatively needed in the fields and factories
and every effort will be made to retain them. In fact, it does not take
any wild stretch of the imagination for one acquainted with the results
of the Thirty Years' War and of the Napoleonic wars to conceive that,
from the view of economic opportunity and rewards, Europe might become a
more favorable scene for the truly capable and ambitious than America is
today. The tendency of a war is to absorb the best of a nation and to
leave the dregs. For the power of organization and the fire of
initiative Europe will at no distant date be ready to pay well.
The Effect of Economic Readjustment.
Unquestionably the economic readjustment which the war will force upon
the United States will have an immediate and serious effect on
individuals. Some will profit largely and promptly. All who at present
possess large stocks of food, leather, oil, woolen cloth will be able to
dispose of them at enormous profits. From the greater volume of freight
the railroads will benefit directly. But while the farmers and
cattle-men, the steel and oil kings are rejoicing in the opportunity,
all industries which depend chiefly upon exportation or which
manufacture an amount beyond the normal American demand, will be closing
the factories or curtailing the output. For a time certain individuals,
perhaps a relatively large number of individuals, will suffer
inconvenience, loss, anxiety, and even privation. But the vast demand
for labor in other industries, and the almost certain extensive demand
for relatively unskilled labor ought not to make the period of
transition long or the amount of suffering considerable. After all, the
vast majority of the people of the United States are connected with
farming, with the manufacture or production of the very things for which
there will most likely be a great demand, or with the transportation and
distribution of both imports and exports to the rest of the community.
In certain industries, like the manufacture of cotton cloth, which is
localized in New England to such an extent that whole districts are
dependent upon it for a livelihood, the distress will be great, for the
factories closed upon the declaration of war and the workers are a long
distance from the Western fields, where laborers are only too scarce.
The cheapening of transportation, the rapidity of communication, the
superior mobility of the population today over ten years ago, make it
probable that these people will soon find new places.
Concomitant with the war came a rise of prices. Foodstuffs especially
advanced sharply and will certainly continue to rise until some material
increase of the supply is assured beyond a peradventure. The tendency in
England and above all on the Continent for the cities to buy great
supplies to guard against possible want will increase this tendency.
But, without question, should the war last, a rise in the whole level of
prices of everything, including labor, will take place in the United
States. It will affect some individuals adversely, but for most will be
in the long run almost negligible. For those who actually produce or
handle goods which advance in price the result will be a profit, because
the price of the commodity they have to sell will almost certainly
advance sooner and faster than the prices of the commodities they
themselves are compelled to buy. In time the two will equalize and they
will be precisely where they were before the war; they will pay out with
one hand what they take in with the other. In nearly all cases where the
individual produces or shares in the production of an actual commodity a
general rise in prices, even to the extent which this war threatens to
produce, will be to him only a temporary advantage or disadvantage.
True, wages and salaries in industrial pursuits will not quite keep pace
with the rise in foodstuffs, and factory workers and clerks will not
benefit to the same extent nor as soon as the farmers will. People whose
incomes are derived from stocks in the businesses which prosper will
probably receive much more than they pay by reason of the increased
prices of other commodities, and certainly cannot be worse off than
before.
America's Real Sufferers.
The real sufferers in America will be those who hold stock in the
enterprises which fail or cease to operate, and that far larger class
who are dependent on a fixed salary. Professors and teachers of all
sorts and grades; people living on annuities or small incomes derived
from bonds or real estate; those dependent on the rent derived from
leases for a term of years of dwelling houses, office buildings and the
like, these will lose a material amount, exactly in proportion to the
rise in prices. To that extent, the purchasing power of the stated
number of dollars they receive will depreciate and that much they will
lose beyond a peradventure. In time, some relief will be afforded by a
tardy rise in salaries, by the expiration of leases and the payment of
bonds, but the actual losses of the intervening years have never been in
any way refunded in like cases in the past.
For some individuals, then, the European war will spell strict economy;
for a comparatively few, let us hope, ruin. For the country as a whole,
considered as a social and economic unit, a long war will introduce an
era of astounding prosperity. Never before has the country had, and
certainly it will never again have, almost a monopoly of the world's
trade thrust into its hands. The United States will have only one real
competitor, England, and, should the English Navy prove itself less
capable than is expected, or should England and her colonies be forced
to order a general mobilization of their armies, the United States might
conceivably remain the only great mercantile community to which the
world could look for supplies. No such eventuality need be predicated to
prove that the continuation of this war or a series of wars will create
a demand for manufactured goods such as our merchants have never dreamed
of. And they will command war prices. It means employment with rich
reward for capital and labor alike--a vastly increased foreign market, a
much greater domestic market, high prices, and a steadily voracious
demand for the entire output. The result will be the rapid
diversification of industry in the United States, the creation of
industries never before possible because of European competition, the
invention of machines to meet new needs. The normal economic development
will be accelerated decades.
After the close of the European war, when manufacturing and production
are resumed, America will find herself overproducing and face to face
with another economic readjustment necessary to meet the new situation.
Then will ensue a commercial crisis with all its attendant suffering and
trouble such as the United States has probably never seen and which will
be violent and serious in proportion to the length of the war.