It is not true that every peasant from one of the old Russian
communes is the immediate servant of a rich man, as is every employee of
Mr. Rockefeller. It is as false as the statement that no poor people in
America can read or write. There is an element of Capitalism in all
modern countries, as there is an element of illiteracy in all modern
countries. There are some who think that the number of our
fellow-citizens who can sign their names ought to comfort us for the
extreme fewness of those who have anything in the bank to sign it for, but
I am not one of these.
In any case, the position of Krupp has certain interesting aspects. When
we talk of Army contractors as among the base but active actualities of
war, we commonly mean that while the contractor benefits by the war, the
war, on the whole, rather suffers by the contractor. We regard this
unsoldierly middleman with disgust, or great anger, or contemptuous
acquiescence, or commercial dread and silence, according to our personal
position and character. But we nowhere think of him as having anything to
do with fighting in the final sense. Those worthy and wealthy persons who
employ women's labour at a few shillings a week do not do it to obtain the
best clothes for the soldiers, but to make a sufficient profit on the
worst.
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