My Life and Work
world that his taste ran in its own channel. There has been no
observable development in the method of making birds' nests since the
beginning of recorded observation, but that was hardly a reason why
human beings should not prefer modern sanitary homes to cave dwellings.
This was a part of John Burroughs's sanity--he was not afraid to change
his views. He was a lover of Nature, not her dupe. In the course of time
he came to value and approve modern devices, and though this by itself
is an interesting fact, it is not so interesting as the fact that he
made this change after he was seventy years old. John Burroughs was
never too old to change. He kept growing to the last. The man who is too
set to change is dead already. The funeral is a mere detail.
If he talked more of one person than another, it was Emerson. Not only
did he know Emerson by heart as an author, but he knew him by heart as a
spirit. He taught me to know Emerson. He had so saturated himself with
Emerson that at one time he thought as he did and even fell into his
mode of expression. But afterward he found his own way--which for him
was better.
There was no sadness in John Burroughs's death. When the grain lies
brown and ripe under the harvest sun, and the harvesters are busy
binding it into sheaves, there is no sadness for the grain. It has
ripened and has fulfilled its term, and so had John Burroughs. With him
it was full ripeness and harvest, not decay. He worked almost to the
end. His plans ran beyond the end. They buried him amid the scenes he
loved, and it was his eighty-fourth birthday. Those scenes will be
preserved as he loved them.
John Burroughs, Edison, and I with Harvey S. Firestone made several
vagabond trips together. We went in motor caravans and slept under
canvas. Once we gypsied through the Adirondacks and again through the
Alleghenies, heading southward. The trips were good fun--except that
they began to attract too much attention.
* * * * *
To-day I am more opposed to war than ever I was, and I think the people
of the world know--even if the politicians do not--that war never
settles anything. It was war that made the orderly and profitable
processes of the world what they are to-day--a loose, disjointed mass.
Of course, some men get rich out of war; others get poor. But the men
who get rich are not those who fought or who really helped behind the
lines. No patriot makes money out of war. No man with true patriotism
could make money out of war--out of the sacrifice of other men's lives.
Until the soldier makes money by fighting, until mothers make money by
giving their sons to death--not until then should any citizen make money
out of providing his country with the means to preserve its life.
If wars are to continue, it will be harder and harder for the upright
business man to regard war as a legitimate means of high and speedy
profits. War fortunes are losing caste every day. Even greed will some
day hesitate before the overwhelming unpopularity and opposition which
will meet the war profiteer. Business should be on the side of peace,
because peace is business's best asset.
And, by the way, was inventive genius ever so sterile as it was during
the war?
An impartial investigation of the last war, of what preceded it and what
has come out of it, would show beyond a doubt that there is in the world
a group of men with vast powers of control, that prefers to remain
unknown, that does not seek office or any of the tokens of power, that
belongs to no nation whatever but is international--a force that uses
every government, every widespread business organization, every agency
of publicity, every resource of national psychology, to throw the world
into a panic for the sake of getting still more power over the world. An
old gambling trick used to be for the gambler to cry "Police!" when a
lot of money was on the table, and, in the panic that followed, to seize
the money and run off with it. There is a power within the world which
cries "War!" and in the confusion of the nations, the unrestrained
sacrifice which people make for safety and peace runs off with the
spoils of the panic.
The point to keep in mind is that, though we won the military contest,
the world has not yet quite succeeded in winning a complete victory over
the promoters of war. We ought not to forget that wars are a purely
manufactured evil and are made according to a definite technique. A
campaign for war is made upon as definite lines as a campaign for any
other purpose. First, the people are worked upon. By clever tales the
people's suspicions are aroused toward the nation against whom war is
desired. Make the nation suspicious; make the other nation suspicious.
All you need for this is a few agents with some cleverness and no
conscience and a press whose interest is locked up with the interests
that will be benefited by war. Then the "overt act" will soon appear. It
is no trick at all to get an "overt act" once you work the hatred of two
nations up to the proper pitch.
There were men in every country who were glad to see the World War begin
and sorry to see it stop. Hundreds of American fortunes date from the
Civil War; thousands of new fortunes date from the World War. Nobody can
deny that war is a profitable business for those who like that kind of
money. War is an orgy of money, just as it is an orgy of blood.
And we should not so easily be led into war if we considered what it is
that makes a nation really great. It is not the amount of trade that
makes a nation great. The creation of private fortunes, like the
creation of an autocracy, does not make any country great. Nor does the
mere change of an agricultural population into a factory population. A
country becomes great when, by the wise development of its resources and
the skill of its people, property is widely and fairly distributed.
Foreign trade is full of delusions. We ought to wish for every nation as
large a degree of self-support as possible. Instead of wishing to keep
them dependent on us for what we manufacture, we should wish them to
learn to manufacture themselves and build up a solidly founded
civilization. When every nation learns to produce the things which it
can produce, we shall be able to get down to a basis of serving each
other along those special lines in which there can be no competition.
The North Temperate Zone will never be able to compete with the tropics
in the special products of the tropics. Our country will never be a
competitor with the Orient in the production of tea, nor with the South
in the production of rubber.
A large proportion of our foreign trade is based on the backwardness of
our foreign customers. Selfishness is a motive that would preserve that
backwardness. Humanity is a motive that would help the backward nations
to a self-supporting basis. Take Mexico, for example. We have heard a
great deal about the "development" of Mexico. Exploitation is the word
that ought instead to be used. When its rich natural resources are
exploited for the increase of the private fortunes of foreign
capitalists, that is not development, it is ravishment. You can never
develop Mexico until you develop the Mexican. And yet how much of the
"development" of Mexico by foreign exploiters ever took account of the
development of its people? The Mexican peon has been regarded as mere
fuel for the foreign money-makers. Foreign trade has been his
degradation.
Short-sighted people are afraid of such counsel. They say: "What would
become of our foreign trade?"
When the natives of Africa begin raising their own cotton and the
natives of Russia begin making their own farming implements and the
natives of China begin supplying their own wants, it will make a
difference, to be sure, but does any thoughtful man imagine that the
world can long continue on the present basis of a few nations supplying
the needs of the world? We must think in terms of what the world will be
when civilization becomes general, when all the peoples have learned to
help themselves.
When a country goes mad about foreign trade it usually depends on other
countries for its raw material, turns its population into factory
fodder, creates a private rich class, and lets its own immediate
interest lie neglected. Here in the United States we have enough work to
do developing our own country to relieve us of the necessity of looking
for foreign trade for a long time. We have agriculture enough to feed us
while we are doing it, and money enough to carry the job through. Is
there anything more stupid than the United States standing idle because
Japan or France or any other country has not sent us an order when there
is a hundred-year job awaiting us in developing our own country?
Commerce began in service. Men carried off their surplus to people who
had none. The country that raised corn carried it to the country that
could raise no corn. The lumber country brought wood to the treeless
plain. The vine country brought fruit to cold northern climes. The
pasture country brought meat to the grassless region. It was all
service. When all the peoples of the world become developed in the art
of self-support, commerce will get back to that basis. Business will
once more become service. There will be no competition, because the
basis of competition will have vanished. The varied peoples will develop
skills which will be in the nature of monopolies and not competitive.
From the beginning, the races have exhibited distinct strains of genius:
this one for government; another for colonization; another for the sea;
another for art and music; another for agriculture; another for
business, and so on. Lincoln said that this nation could not survive
half-slave and half-free. The human race cannot forever exist
half-exploiter and half-exploited. Until we become buyers and sellers
alike, producers and consumers alike, keeping the balance not for profit
but for service, we are going to have topsy-turvy conditions.
France has something to give the world of which no competition can cheat
her. So has Italy. So has Russia. So have the countries of South
America. So has Japan. So has Britain. So has the United States. The
sooner we get back to a basis of natural specialties and drop this
free-for-all system of grab, the sooner we shall be sure of
international self-respect--and international peace. Trying to take the
trade of the world can promote war. It cannot promote prosperity. Some
day even the international bankers will learn this.
I have never been able to discover any honourable reasons for the
beginning of the World War. It seems to have grown out of a very
complicated situation created largely by those who thought they could
profit by war. I believed, on the information that was given to me in
1916, that some of the nations were anxious for peace and would welcome
a demonstration for peace. It was in the hope that this was true that I
financed the expedition to Stockholm in what has since been called the
"Peace Ship." I do not regret the attempt. The mere fact that it failed
is not, to me, conclusive proof that it was not worth trying. We learn
more from our failures than from our successes. What I learned on that
trip was worth the time and the money expended. I do not now know
whether the information as conveyed to me was true or false. I do not
care. But I think everyone will agree that if it had been possible to
end the war in 1916 the world would be better off than it is to-day.
For the victors wasted themselves in winning, and the vanquished in
resisting. Nobody got an advantage, honourable or dishonourable, out of
that war. I had hoped, finally, when the United States entered the war,
that it might be a war to end wars, but now I know that wars do not end