disadvantageous. An extra Dreadnought helped British capital more than
would the expenditure of the cost of such a vessel in increasing the
wages of school teachers. Yet it was because school teachers and other
wage-earners in Britain, as in many other countries, were poorly paid,
that the accumulating capital of the nations was forced increasingly
into foreign lands and into imperialistic ventures. Morocco, Egypt,
Korea and Manchuria offered larger rewards than did the highly {188}
competitive businesses which depended on the custom of French, English
and Russian peasants or wage-earners. The inequality in the
distribution of wealth proved to be a stimulus to imperialistic
competition.

Those who are satisfied with things as they are never tire of speaking
of this distribution of wealth as an immutable thing, protected by
economic laws more potent than legislative enactments. They insist
that law cannot control the expansion of capital or the distribution of
wealth. But our whole system of distribution is based on law. If
England had not preserved entail and primogeniture, if France had not
decreed the equal inheritance by all children, if the United States had
not adopted a liberal land policy, the distribution of wealth in each
of these countries would have been far different. Within wide limits
the economic course of the nation can be controlled.

Such a peaceful programme for creating a better distribution of wealth,
a wider consumption and therefore a larger employment of capital in
industries for home consumption has the added advantage that it is a
policy in complete harmony with the interests of great sections of the
population. The average man desires peace feebly; he does not think of
it day and night and is not willing to fight for it. But he is willing
to fight for things which actually contribute more towards peace than
do arbitration treaties. The demand of the workman for higher wages,
shorter hours and better conditions is, whether the wage-earner knows
it or not, a demand for international peace. Progressive income and
inheritance taxes, the regulation of railroads and industrial
corporations, the conservation of natural resources are all opposed to
an imperialistic policy leading to war. In short the entire {189}
democratic struggle against the narrow concentration of wealth, by
increasing the demand for capital within the country, tends to preserve
us from a meddlesome, domineering, d