1/12/17, 2:27 PMMilitary-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 Page 1 of 4http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040 My fellow Americans: Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all. Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together. II. We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment. III. Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad. Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It 1/12/17, 2:27 PMMilitary-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 Page 2 of 4http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html commands our whole attention, absorbs our ve ...

1. 1/12/17, 2:27 PMMilitary-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight
D. Eisenhower, 1961
Page 1 of
4http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
1961
Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p.
1035- 1040
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our
country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of
office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of
the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and
farewell, and to share a few final thoughts
with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who
will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the
coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find
essential agreement on issues of great moment, the
wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the
Nation.

2. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote
and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member
of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to
the intimate during the war and immediate
post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent
during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration
have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to
serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so
have assured that the business of the Nation
should go forward. So, my official relationship with the
Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude
that we have been able to do so much together.
II.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has
witnessed four major wars among great
nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these
holocausts America is today the strongest,
the most influential and most productive nation in the world.
Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we
yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not
merely upon our unmatched material progress,
riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the
interests of world peace and human
betterment.
III.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic
purposes have been to keep the peace; to
foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty,
dignity and integrity among people and among
nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and

3. religious people. Any failure traceable to
arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to
sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at
home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by
the conflict now engulfing the world. It
1/12/17, 2:27 PMMilitary-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight
D. Eisenhower, 1961
Page 2 of
4http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We
face a hostile ideology -- global in scope,
atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in
method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to
be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called
for, not so much the emotional and transitory
sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry
forward steadily, surely, and without complaint
the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty
the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite
every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent
peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether
foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a
recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly
action could become the miraculous solution to
all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of
our defense; development of unrealistic
programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion

4. in basic and applied research -- these and
many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may
be suggested as the only way to the road we
wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader
consideration: the need to maintain balance in
and among national programs -- balance between the private and
the public economy, balance between cost
and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly
necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance
between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties
imposed by the nation upon the individual;
balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare
of the future. Good judgment seeks balance
and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and
frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and
their government have, in the main,
understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the
face of stress and threat. But threats, new in
kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
IV.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military
establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant
action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his
own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that
known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or
indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no

5. armaments industry. American makers of
plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as
well. But now we can no longer risk emergency
improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to
create a permanent armaments industry of vast
proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and
women are directly engaged in the defense
establishment. We annually spend on military security more
than the net income of all United States
corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a
large arms industry is new in the American
experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even
spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house,
every office of the Federal government. We recognize the
imperative need for this development. Yet we must
not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil,
resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the
very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The
potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced
1/12/17, 2:27 PMMilitary-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight
D. Eisenhower, 1961
Page 3 of
4http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
power exists and will persist.

6. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our
liberties or democratic processes. We should
take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable
citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the
huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our
peaceful methods and goals, so that security and
liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our
industrial-military posture, has been the
technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes
more formalized, complex, and costly. A
steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction
of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been
overshadowed by task forces of scientists in
laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free
university, historically the fountainhead of free
ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in
the conduct of research. Partly because of the
huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a
substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every
old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic
computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal
employment, project allocations, and the
power of money is ever present
and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as
we should, we must also be alert to the equal

7. and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the
captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to
integrate these and other forces, new and old, within
the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward
the supreme goals of our free society.
V.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of
time. As we peer into society's future, we --
you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live
only for today, plundering, for our own ease
and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We
cannot mortgage the material assets of our
grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and
spiritual heritage. We want democracy to
survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent
phantom of tomorrow.
VI.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America
knows that this world of ours, ever growing
smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and
hate, and be instead, a proud confederation
of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must
come to the conference table with the same
confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral,
economic, and military strength. That table, though
scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the
certain agony of the battlefield.

8. Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a
continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to
1/12/17, 2:27 PMMilitary-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight
D. Eisenhower, 1961
Page 4 of
4http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and
decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and
apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in
this field with a definite sense of
disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the
lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows
that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which
has been so slowly and painfully built over
thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting
peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress
toward our ultimate goal has been made. But,
so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never
cease to do what little I can to help the world
advance along that road.
VII.
So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I
thank you for the many opportunities you have
given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that
service you find some things worthy; as for
the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance
in the future.

9. You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith
that all nations, under God, will reach the goal
of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to
principle, confident but humble with power,
diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to
America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may
have their great human needs satisfied; that those
now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that
all who yearn for freedom may experience its
spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will
understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who
are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the
scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance
will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the
goodness of time, all peoples will come to live
together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual
respect and love.
Running Head: THE REASONS APPLE HAS BEEN
SUCCESSFUL 1
2
REASONS FOR APPLE’S SUCCESS

10. The Reasons Apple has been Successful
Formal Business Report
for Professor Patricia Jobst
Business Communications
Student A
November 29, 2019
CONTENTS
OVERVIEW

11. BACKGROUND
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.1 Purpose of this report
1.2 Aims and Objectives
2. BUSINESS ANALYSIS
2.1 Current Status
2.2 Research Method
2.3 Item 1 Analysis
2.4 Item 2 Analysis
2.5 Item 3 Analysis
3. KEYS TO APPLE’S SUCCESS AND WHAT CAN BE
LEARNED
3.1 Keys to Success
3.2 What Other Companies Can Learn
3.3 Steve Jobs
4. CONCLUSION
5. RECOMMENDATIONS
REFERENCES
OVERVIEW
In 1974, Intel developed the first single chip microprocessor
available to the public at a reasonable price. By 1975, this
single invention enabled dozens of individuals and small
companies to introduce the first personal computers that we
would recognize today. Both Microsoft and Apple were a
couple of these personal computer trailblazers and the founders
are now some of the richest people in the world. Apple’s roots
can be traced to the Homebrew Computer Club in 1976, which
was a computer club for hobbyists in the Silicon Valley in

12. California. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, members of the
Homebrew Computer Club brought their invention, the Apple-1
to a meeting and introduced the world to what would become
the largest business in the world by market capitalization today
(Rothman, 2015).
BACKGROUND
Apple is one of the most successful companies in history. From
its start in a garage, it has seen many successes and some
failures during its 45-year history. The Apple Computer
Company had a lot of early success with its second personal
computer, the Apple II. By the early 1980’s, IBM jumped into
the personal computer world and that created a lot of
competition for Apple. In 1984, Apple introduced the
Macintosh, which was a big leap forward, but it still struggled
to compete with the IBM/Microsoft based computers. These
struggles caused Apple to fire CEO Steve Jobs and bring in a
new CEO, John Sculley. Apple was profitable during this
period, but sales were stagnant for their premium priced
computers. Looking for renewed energy, Apple rehired Steve
Jobs in 1997 and he immediately came up with the new strategy
of “Think Different” (Beattie, 2019). Jobs understood that
Apple’s strength was branding and marketing, but the real
differentiator was the design and beauty of its products. The
emphasis on the user experience and the modern designs became
the normal for Apple’s development team and whole
organization. Apple’s user-friendly innovations include the
iPod, which owned the category from the beginning in 2001. As
Apple expanded into streaming services, iPods and iPhones in
2007, the word computer was dropped from its corporate name
and is now Apple, Inc. Today, the Mac personal computer is a
distant third in sales for Apple at 10%. The iPhone is Apple’s
leading product with about 50% of sales and its services
category is second with 20% of Apple’s sales.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Purpose of this report
The purpose of this report is to understand and identify the

13. reasons why Apple has become so successful. After reviewing
the reasons for and the strategies Apple has incorporated over
the years, what can other companies learn from Apple to
improve their businesses. Competition has been fierce for the
last 45 years and Apple has come out on top. Apple’s tactics
and strategies have changed over time to adapt to the customer
needs. Today, its mission is “to bringing the best user
experience to its customers through its innovative hardware,
software, and services” (Rowland, 2019). What can other
businesses learn from this groundbreaking company?
Aims and Objectives
The aims and objectives of this report will be to identify the
main reasons Apple has become so successful. The report will
review the early innovations and strategies that launched Apple.
The competition forced Apple to rethink the way it did business.
The current Apple vision statement is “We believe that we are
on the face of the earth to make great products and that’s not
changing” (Rowland, 2019). The Apple product mix has
changed dramatically over the last 20 years due to changes in
their business strategy driven by Steve Jobs. An analysis of the
change in product mix over time will be performed to show how
the changes in Apple’s strategy has affected its product mix. A
comparative analysis of revenue sources from 2006 to 2016 will
also be reviewed. A review and analysis of worldwide media
consumption will show what the current trends are and where
they might be heading. The main goal will be to identify the
reasons that Apple has been successful and see if these
strategies can be used by other companies to improve their
business results.
BUSINESS ANALYSIS
Current Status
Apple is known worldwide. Apple’s leading product is the
iPhone which represents about 50% of total sales revenues. The
next largest revenue generator is their services. Services
include Apple Music, the App Store, iCloud and Apple Pay.
iTunes has been retired as of September 2019. Apple’s services

14. are their fastest growing revenue generator. The iMac personal
computers have continued to increase in sales over the last 20
years, but only represents 11% of Apple’s revenues today due to
the massive increase in sales of iPhones and increased services
revenues. With the introduction of the iPod in 2001 and the
iPhone in 2007, Apple began to create a tight hardware,
software and content “iEcosystem” (Beattie, 2019) that has
become the business strategy used today. You can now buy
music online and download it to Apple Music and software can
be purchased in its App Store. Whenever you buy books,
movies or use Apple Pay, Apple gets a small cut. Wearables,
Home, Accessories plus the iPad represent the rest of the
revenues currently generated. Apple has created premium
products that are user friendly. The brand loyalty they have
created is almost fanatical.
Research Method
A review of the worldwide media consumption will show how
Apple has been able to continue to grow even as sales of
iPhones are in a slight decline. By understanding the global
trends over the last 10 years and seeing how Apple capitalized
on these trends will give a better understanding to how their
strategies worked. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007
revolutionized the way we use the internet. Mobile phones
were now mobile internet devices
and the interactive ease of use made the iPhone an instant
success. and is now the largest driver of revenues for Apple.
Item 1 Analysis
Currently, more than 30% of mass media is now consumed by
mobile internet users. Mass media consumption has increased
from about 5 hours a day to over 6 hours a day in 2019.
Television is still the most consumed, but it is in a slow decline
with the other media types of desktop, radio and newspaper.
Mobile internet has been the largest growth sector in mass

15. media consumption and Apple has been able foresee this and be
the leader in this sector as it grew. Not only did the iPhone
launch them, but by they recognized that by focusing on their
services and mobile content they continue to grow as a company
(Molla, 2017).
Item 2 Analysis
A comparison of sales revenues by product over has changed
dramatically since 2006. In the last 10 years, the iPhone has
grown to represent 50% of Apple’s revenues from zero. The
iPod, which represented 40% of Apple’s sales in 2006 does not
even exist in 2019. Apple has shown the ability to listen to its
customers and adapt to the fast-changing technology world.
Apple’s mission statement says, “to bringing the best user
experience to its customers through its innovative hardware,
software, and services” (Rowland, 2019). Creating the best user
experience through innovation, design and customer service has
been focus for Apple since the concept of integrating the
hardware/software/content that was developed by Steve Jobs in
the early 2000’s (Molla, 2017)
Item 3 Analysis
Apple Revenue by Quarter (in
Millions)
The final chart shows the sales trends by quarter for the last 10
years. The one thing you will notice is the yearly sales
revenues spike each year with the introduction of new products
in the spring. Steve Jobs was a showman and his yearly tech
releases were always highly anticipated and sales spiked after
the introduction of new products. Apple has grown over 5 times
in revenues over the last ten years, largely due to growth in

16. China, which is not reflected in these charts (Molla, 2017).
China represents about 25% of Apple revenues today and a
majority of Apple’s products are produced there also.
KEYS TO APPLE’S SUCCESS AND WHAT CAN BE
LEARNED
Keys to Success
Innovation, design and vision was needed to create the iPhone.
The impact iPhone has had on mobile internet communications
unmatched. Apple has created a premium brand and they have
developed many loyal customers. The ease of use of Apple
products and the confidence that they will work are keeping
loyal customers. Apple has developed a wide range of products
and is not afraid to introduce other well-designed products and
services regularly. They are not afraid to lead and innovate
while being flexible enough to change their business plan to
allow for the changes they see in the market. The branded retail
Apple store has been a huge success. The experience is pure
Apple with great customer service in a unique environment.
Another big key to success was Steve Jobs’ ability to envision a
partnership with Bill Gates of Microsoft to let Apple put the
Office Suite of programs on its computers. This has helped
Apple lead the way in its App Store to keep loyal customers.
What Other Companies Can Learn
There are many strategies and tactics other companies can learn
from Apple to improve their businesses. Apple’s strategies do
not just apply in the tech industry, but in all industries. The
focus on user experience can be applied to all businesses.
Apple says user experience is a priority in the mission statement
which is a value every company can learn from. The long-term
strategy of having premium products driven by innovation and
flexibility can be applied to all industries. Building loyal
customers by providing outstanding products and services can
be applied to any business. Understanding that brand building
is important for the growth of any company and will determine
its success. Partnerships with the competition can actually
improve growth and profits as Apple saw with its partnership

17. with Microsoft in the late 1990’s.
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is one of the most recognized names in the world and
is synonymous with Apple. He expanded Apple into the music
industry with iPod and the mobile digital age with the iPhone.
He co-founded Apple and has been CEO twice in Apple’s
pursuit to innovate, grow and become one of the most liked and
profitable companies of all time. Apple has continued to grow
and innovate since Steve Jobs died of cancer in 2011. A lot of
people feel Apple is not a strong a company since Steve Jobs
death. It will be hard for Apple, much less any other company
to have a visionary leader like Steve Job, he was one of a kind
and can never be replaced.
CONCLUSION
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Apple have been innovators and
visionaries since their introduction of the personal computer in
California in 1976. Apple, Inc. has been able to introduce loyal
customers to new innovative, premium products and services for
45 years. Their customer base is now worldwide, with a quarter
of its sales and a majority of its production in China. The
ability to adapt and changes its business strategy over time has
been a key Apple’s success. The personal computer represents
about 10 % of sales now. Very popular products like the iPod
have come and gone. The iPhone has been the success story in
the last 10 years, but Apple is seeing sales slowdown and even
drop in the last few months. Apple will come out strong.
Maybe in 10 more years the iPhone will be gone like iTunes and
the iPod. The dynamic business plan, services, premium
products, sleek designs and incredible customer loyalty will
continue to drive growth and profits to Apple’s bottom line.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We probably will not see someone like Steve Jobs lead a
company like Apple again, but there is still a lot that can be
learned from his ideas. Apple will need to continue to “Think
Different” (Beattie, 2019) and be flexible to continue to excel.
Apple has developed a loyal customer base by exceeding

18. expectations, exceptional customer service while producing
high quality products. The strategy of integrating hardware,
software and content that was developed by Steve Jobs is still
being used today and should continue into the future. The
product mix has changed dramatically over the last twenty years
because of Steve Jobs strategy. Apple should continue to look
at trends and stay ahead of the competition. What new product
will be Apple’s bestseller in twenty years? As long as Apple
continues to bring the best user experience through innovative
products, they will continue to succeed, and we will find out
what is next.
There is a lot to be learned from Apple’s success. Building
brand loyalty by having great products and focusing on the
customer service can be done in any industry. It takes vision
and focus over time to grow a company like Apple. Apple’s
amazing rise to the top has taken forty-five years and will stay
there if it follows its own strategy for growth and follows its
mission and vision statements.
References

19. Beattie, Andrew. (2019, September 22) The Story Behind
Apple’s Success.
Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/042815/story-behind-apples-success.asp
Molla, Rani. (2017, June 26). How Apple’s iPhone changed the
world: 10 years in 10 charts.
Retrieved from
https://www.vox.com/2017/6/26/15821652/iphone-apple-10-
year-anniversary-launch-mobile-stats-smart-phone-steve-
jobsPorter, Sarah. (2018, August 2018) Five Big Things That
Have Changed Apple. Retrieved from
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45044963
Rothman, Lili. (2015, March 5). More Proof That Steve Jobs
Was Always a Business Genius.
Retrieved from https://time.com/3726660/steve-jobs-
homebrew/Rowland, Christine. (2019, February 13). Apple
Inc.’s Mission Statement and Vision Statement(An Analysis).
Retrieved from http://panmore.com/apple-mission-statement-
vision-statementViswanathan, Priya. (2019, November 13).
What Makes Apple so Profitable and Unique?Retrieved from
https://www.lifewire.com/what-makes-apple-so-special-and-
desirable-2373223
America's Empire of Bases
By Chalmers Johnson TomDispatch.com
January 2004
Chalmers Johnson was a professor at UC San Diego and a
former consultant for the CIA.
As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not

20. recognize
-- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States
dominates
the world through its military power. Due to government
secrecy,
our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons
encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on
every
continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of
empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely
to
be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping
the
dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to
understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the
degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our
constitutional order.
Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies,
technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in
other
nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are
creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft
carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty
Hawk,
Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D.
Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham
Lincoln,
George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and
Ronald
Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory
to
monitor what the people of the world, including our own
citizens,
are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.

21. Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries,
which design and
manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the now
well-publicized
Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary of the
Halliburton Corporation of
Houston, undertake contract services to build and maintain our
far-flung
outposts. One task of such contractors is to keep uniformed
members of the
imperium housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, amused, and
supplied with
enjoyable, affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of the
American economy
have come to rely on the military for sales. On the eve of our
second war on
Iraq, for example, while the Defense Department was ordering
up an extra
ration of cruise missiles and depleted-uranium armor-piercing
tank shells, it
also acquired 273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost
triple its 1999
order and undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply
Company of
Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of
Daytona Beach,
Florida.
At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases
It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of
bases. Official
records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive.
According to the
Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal

22. year 2003, which
itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the
Pentagon currently
owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and
HAS another
6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon
bureaucrats
calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace
just the foreign
bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross
domestic
product of most countries -- and an estimated $591,519.8
million to replace all
of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas
bases some
253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of
dependents and
Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an
additional 44,446
locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases
contain 44,870
barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns,
and that it
leases 4,844 more.
These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to
cover all the actual
bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to
mention, for
instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of
the huge Camp
Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg,
Brown & Root.
The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel,
Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan,
Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has

23. established colossal base
structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-
and-a-half
years since 9/11.
For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been
an American
military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists
only one Marine
base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine
Corps bases,
including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186
acres in the center
of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's
Central Park, by
contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note
all of the $5-
billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain,
which have long
been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there
were an honest
count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top
1,000 different
bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not
even the Pentagon
-- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been
distinctly on the rise
in recent years.
For their occupants, these are not unpleasant places to live and
work. Military
service today, which is voluntary, bears almost no relation to
the duties of a

24. soldier during World War II or the Korean or Vietnamese wars.
Most chores like
laundry, KP ("kitchen police"), mail call, and cleaning latrines
have been
subcontracted to private military companies like Kellogg,
Brown & Root,
DynCorp, and the Vinnell Corporation. Fully one-third of the
funds recently
appropriated for the war in Iraq (about $30 billion), for
instance, are going into
private American hands for exactly such services. Where
possible everything is
done to make daily existence seem like a Hollywood version of
life at home.
According to the Washington Post, in Fallujah, just west of
Baghdad, waiters in
white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties serve dinner to the
officers of the
82nd Airborne Division in their heavily guarded compound, and
the first Burger
King has already gone up inside the enormous military base
we've established at
Baghdad International Airport.
Some of these bases are so gigantic they require as many as
nine internal bus
routes for soldiers and civilian contractors to get around inside
the earthen
berms and concertina wire. That's the case at Camp Anaconda,
headquarters of
the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, whose job is to police
some 1,500 square
miles of Iraq north of Baghdad, from Samarra to Taji. Anaconda
occupies 25
square kilometers and will ultimately house as many as 20,000
troops. Despite

25. extensive security precautions, the base has frequently come
under mortar
attack, notably on the Fourth of July, 2003, just as Arnold
Schwarzenegger was
chatting up our wounded at the local field hospital.
The military prefers bases that resemble small fundamentalist
towns in the Bible
Belt rather than the big population centers of the United States.
For example,
even though more than 100,000 women live on our overseas
bases -- including
women in the services, spouses, and relatives of military
personnel -- obtaining
an abortion at a local military hospital is prohibited. Since there
are some
14,000 sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults each year in
the military,
women who become pregnant overseas and want an abortion
have no choice
but to try the local economy, which cannot be either easy or
pleasant in
Baghdad or other parts of our empire these days.
Our armed missionaries live in a closed-off, self-contained
world serviced by its
own airline -- the Air Mobility Command, with its fleet of long-
range C-17
Globemasters, C-5 Galaxies, C-141 Starlifters, KC-135
Stratotankers, KC-10
Extenders, and C-9 Nightingales that link our far-flung outposts
from
Greenland to Australia. For generals and admirals, the military
provides
seventy-one Learjets, thirteen Gulfstream IIIs, and seventeen
Cessna Citation

26. luxury jets to fly them to such spots as the armed forces' ski and
vacation center
at Garmisch in the Bavarian Alps or to any of the 234 military
golf courses the
Pentagon operates worldwide. Defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld flies around
in his own personal Boeing 757, called a C-32A in the Air
Force.
Our "Footprint" on the World
Of all the insensitive, if graphic, metaphors we've allowed into
our vocabulary,
none quite equals "footprint" to describe the military impact of
our empire.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers and
senior members of
the Senate's Military Construction Subcommittee such as
Dianne Feinstein (D-
CA) are apparently incapable of completing a sentence without
using it.
Establishing a more impressive footprint has now become part
of the new
justification for a major enlargement of our empire -- and an
announced
repositioning of our bases and forces abroad -- in the wake of
our conquest of
Iraq. The man in charge of this project is Andy Hoehn, deputy
assistant
secretary of defense for strategy. He and his colleagues are
supposed to draw
up plans to implement President Bush's preventive war strategy
against "rogue
states," "bad guys," and "evil-doers." They have identified

27. something they call
the "arc of instability," which is said to run from the Andean
region of South
America (read: Colombia) through North Africa and then
sweeps across the
Middle East to the Philippines and Indonesia. This is, of course,
more or less
identical with what used to be called the Third World -- and
perhaps no less
crucially it covers the world's key oil reserves. Hoehn contends,
"When you
overlay our footprint onto that, we don't look particularly well-
positioned to
deal with the problems we're now going to confront."
Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by
counting up
colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base.
By following the
changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about
our ever larger
imperial stance and the militarism that grows with it. Militarism
and imperialism
are Siamese twins joined at the hip. Each thrives off the other.
Already highly
advanced in our country, they are both on the verge of a
quantum leap that will
almost surely stretch our military beyond its capabilities,
bringing about fiscal
insolvency and very possibly doing mortal damage to our
republican
institutions. The only way this is discussed in our press is via
reportage on
highly arcane plans for changes in basing policy and the
positioning of troops
abroad -- and these plans, as reported in the media, cannot be

28. taken at face
value.
Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, commanding our 1,800
troops occupying the
old French Foreign Legion base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti
at the entrance to
the Red Sea, claims that in order to put "preventive war" into
action, we require a
"global presence," by which he means gaining hegemony over
any place that is
not already under our thumb. According to the right-wing
American Enterprise
Institute, the idea is to create "a global cavalry" that can ride in
from "frontier
stockades" and shoot up the "bad guys" as soon as we get some
intelligence on
them.
"Lily Pads" in Australia, Romania, Mali, Algeria . . .
In order to put our forces close to every hot spot or danger area
in this newly
discovered arc of instability, the Pentagon has been proposing --
this is usually
called "repositioning" -- many new bases, including at least four
and perhaps as
many as six permanent ones in Iraq. A number of these are
already under
construction -- at Baghdad International Airport, Tallil air base
near Nasariyah,
in the western desert near the Syrian border, and at Bashur air
field in the
Kurdish region of the north. (This does not count the previously

29. mentioned
Anaconda, which is currently being called an "operating base,"
though it may
very well become permanent over time.) In addition, we plan to
keep under our
control the whole northern quarter of Kuwait -- 1,600 square
miles out of
Kuwait's 6,900 square miles -- that we now use to resupply our
Iraq legions and
as a place for Green Zone bureaucrats to relax.
Other countries mentioned as sites for what Colin Powell calls
our new "family of
bases" include: In the impoverished areas of the "new" Europe -
- Romania,
Poland, and Bulgaria; in Asia -- Pakistan (where we already
have four bases),
India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and even,
unbelievably,
Vietnam; in North Africa -- Morocco, Tunisia, and especially
Algeria (scene of
the slaughter of some 100,00 civilians since 1992, when, to
quash an election,
the military took over, backed by our country and France); and
in West Africa --
Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and Sierra Leone (even though it has
been torn by civil war
since 1991). The models for all these new installations,
according to Pentagon
sources, are the string of bases we have built around the Persian
Gulf in the last
two decades in such anti-democratic autocracies as Bahrain,
Kuwait, Qatar,
Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
Most of these new bases will be what the military, in a switch
of metaphors, calls

30. "lily pads" to which our troops could jump like so many well-
armed frogs from
the homeland, our remaining NATO bases, or bases in the docile
satellites of
Japan and Britain. To offset the expense involved in such
expansion, the
Pentagon leaks plans to close many of the huge Cold War
military reservations
in Germany, South Korea, and perhaps Okinawa as part of
Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld's "rationalization" of our armed forces. In the wake of
the Iraq victory,
the U.S. has already withdrawn virtually all of its forces from
Saudi Arabia and
Turkey, partially as a way of punishing them for not supporting
the war strongly
enough. It wants to do the same thing to South Korea, perhaps
the most anti-
American democracy on Earth today, which would free up the
2nd Infantry
Division on the demilitarized zone with North Korea for
probable deployment to
Iraq, where our forces are significantly overstretched.
In Europe, these plans include giving up several bases in
Germany, also in part
because of Chancellor Gerhard Schrí¶der's domestically popular
defiance of
Bush over Iraq. But the degree to which we are capable of doing
so may prove
limited indeed. At the simplest level, the Pentagon's planners do
not really seem
to grasp just how many buildings the 71,702 soldiers and airmen
in Germany
alone occupy and how expensive it would be to reposition most
of them and

31. build even slightly comparable bases, together with the
necessary infrastructure,
in former Communist countries like Romania, one of Europe's
poorest countries.
Lt. Col. Amy Ehmann in Hanau, Germany, has said to the press
"There's no place
to put these people" in Romania, Bulgaria, or Djibouti, and she
predicts that 80%
of them will in the end stay in Germany. It's also certain that
generals of the
high command have no intention of living in backwaters like
Constanta,
Romania, and will keep the U.S. military headquarters in
Stuttgart while holding
on to Ramstein Air Force Base, Spangdahlem Air Force Base,
and the
Grafenwí¶hr Training Area.
One reason why the Pentagon is considering moving out of rich
democracies
like Germany and South Korea and looks covetously at military
dictatorships and
poverty-stricken dependencies is to take advantage of what the
Pentagon calls
their "more permissive environmental regulations." The
Pentagon always
imposes on countries in which it deploys our forces so-called
Status of Forces
Agreements, which usually exempt the United States from
cleaning up or paying
for the environmental damage it causes. This is a standing
grievance in
Okinawa, where the American environmental record has been

32. nothing short of
abominable. Part of this attitude is simply the desire of the
Pentagon to put
itself beyond any of the restraints that govern civilian life, an
attitude
increasingly at play in the "homeland" as well. For example, the
2004 defense
authorization bill of $401.3 billion that President Bush signed
into law in
November 2003 exempts the military from abiding by the
Endangered Species
Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
While there is every reason to believe that the impulse to create
ever more lily
pads in the Third World remains unchecked, there are several
reasons to doubt
that some of the more grandiose plans, for either expansion or
downsizing, will
ever be put into effect or, if they are, that they will do anything
other than make
the problem of terrorism worse than it is. For one thing, Russia
is opposed to
the expansion of U.S. military power on its borders and is
already moving to
checkmate American basing sorties into places like Georgia,
Kyrgyzstan, and
Uzbekistan. The first post-Soviet-era Russian airbase in
Kyrgyzstan has just
been completed forty miles from the U.S. base at Bishkek, and
in December
2003, the dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, declared that
he would not
permit a permanent deployment of U.S. forces in his country
even though we
already have a base there.

33. When it comes to downsizing, on the other hand, domestic
politics may come
into play. By law the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closing
Commission
must submit its fifth and final list of domestic bases to be shut
down to the
White House by September 8, 2005. As an efficiency measure,
Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld has said he'd like to be rid of at least one-
third of domestic
Army bases and one-quarter of domestic Air Force bases, which
is sure to
produce a political firestorm on Capitol Hill. In order to protect
their respective
states' bases, the two mother hens of the Senate's Military
Construction
Appropriations Subcommittee, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
and Dianne
Feinstein, are demanding that the Pentagon close overseas bases
first and bring
the troops now stationed there home to domestic bases, which
could then
remain open. Hutchison and Feinstein included in the Military
Appropriations
Act of 2004 money for an independent commission to
investigate and report on
overseas bases that are no longer needed. The Bush
administration opposed
this provision of the Act but it passed anyway and the president
signed it into
law on November 22, 2003. The Pentagon is probably adept
enough to

34. hamstring the commission, but a domestic base-closing furor
clearly looms on
the horizon.
By far the greatest defect in the "global cavalry" strategy,
however, is that it
accentuates Washington's impulse to apply irrelevant military
remedies to
terrorism. As the prominent British military historian, Correlli
Barnett, has
observed, the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq only
increased the threat of
al-Qaeda. From 1993 through the 9/11 assaults of 2001, there
were five major
al-Qaeda attacks worldwide; in the two years since then there
have been
seventeen such bombings, including the Istanbul suicide
assaults on the British
consulate and an HSBC Bank. Military operations against
terrorists are not the
solution. As Barnett puts it, "Rather than kicking down front
doors and barging
into ancient and complex societies with simple nostrums of
'freedom and
democracy,' we need tactics of cunning and subtlety, based on a
profound
understanding of the people and cultures we are dealing with --
an
understanding up till now entirely lacking in the top-level
policy-makers in
Washington, especially in the Pentagon."
In his notorious "long, hard slog" memo on Iraq of October 16,
2003, Defense
secretary Rumsfeld wrote, "Today, we lack metrics to know if
we are winning or

35. losing the global war on terror." Correlli-Barnett's "metrics"
indicate otherwise.
But the "war on terrorism" is at best only a small part of the
reason for all our
military strategizing. The real reason for constructing this new
ring of American
bases along the equator is to expand our empire and reinforce
our military
domination of the world.
https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/153/26
119.html
<accessed March 25, 2020>
Chalmers Johnson's latest book is The Sorrows of Empire:
Militarism, Secrecy,
and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan). His previous book,
Blowback: The
Costs and Consequences of American Empire, has just been
updated with a new
introduction.
War Is A Racket
By Major General Smedley Butler
Contents
Chapter 1: War Is A Racket
Chapter 2: Who Makes The Profits?
Chapter 3: Who Pays The Bills?

36. Chapter 4: How To Smash This Racket!
Chapter 5: To Hell With War!
Smedley Darlington Butler
Born: West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
Educated: Haverford School
Married: Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905
Awarded two congressional medals of honor:
1. capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914
2. capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917
Distinguished service medal, 1919
Major General - United States Marine Corps
Retired Oct. 1, 1931
On leave of absence to act as
director of Dept. of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932
Lecturer -- 1930’s
Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932
Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940
For more information about Major General Butler,
contact the United States Marine Corps.
CHAPTER ONE
War Is A Racket
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the
most vicious. It is the only one
international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are
reckoned in dollars and the
losses in lives.

37. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not
what it seems to the majority of
the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about.
It is conducted for the benefit
of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of
war a few people make huge
fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the
conflict. At least 21,000 new
millionaires and billionaires were made in the United
States during the World War. That
many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax
returns. How many other war
millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle?
How many of them dug a trench?
How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-
infested dug-out? How many of
them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and
shrapnel and machine gun
bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an
enemy? How many of them were
wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are
victorious. They just take it. This
newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few
-- the selfsame few who wrung
dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the
bill.

38. And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed
gravestones. Mangled bodies.
Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic
instability. Depression and all its
attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and
generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion
that war was a racket; not until I
retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the
international war clouds gathering,
as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and
agreed to stand side by side. Italy
and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and
Germany cast sheep’s eyes at
each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion],
their dispute over the Polish
Corridor.
The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia
[Yugoslavia] complicated matters.
Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at
each other’s throats. Italy was
ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was
Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking
ahead to war. Not the people -- not those who fight and pay and
die -- only those who foment
wars and remain safely at home to profit.
There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and
our statesmen and diplomats
have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

39. Hell’s bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be
dancers?
Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what
they are being trained for. He, at
least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day,
Il Duce in "International
Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, said:
"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes
the future and the development of
humanity quite apart from political considerations of the
moment, believes neither in the
possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War
alone brings up to its highest tension all
human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people
who have the courage to meet it."
Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-
trained army, his great fleet of
planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious for it,
apparently. His recent stand at
the side of Hungary in the latter’s dispute with Jugoslavia
showed that. And the hurried
mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the
assassination of Dollfuss showed
it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling
presages war, sooner or later.
Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant
demands for more and more arms,

40. is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only
recently increased the term of
military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.
Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs
of Europe are on the loose. In
the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when
Russia and Japan fought, we
kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan.
Then our very generous
international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend
is to poison us against the
Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China
mean to us? Our trade with China is
about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have
spent about $600,000,000 in
the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers
and industrialists and speculators)
have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.
Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to
protect these private investments
of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all
stirred up to hate Japan and go
to war -- a war that might well cost us tens of billions of
dollars, hundreds of thousands of
lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands
of physically maimed and
mentally unbalanced men.
Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating
profit -- fortunes would be made.
Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a
few. Munitions makers. Bankers.
Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They
would fare well.

41. Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn’t
they? It pays high dividends.
But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it
profit their mothers and sisters,
their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their
children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war
means huge profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn’t own a bit of territory
outside the mainland of North
America. At that time our national debt was a little more
than $1,000,000,000. Then we
became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted
aside, the advice of the Father of
our country. We forgot George Washington’s warning about
"entangling alliances." We went
to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World
War period, as a direct result
of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt
had jumped to over
$25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during
the twenty-five-year period was
about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping
basis, we ran a little behind year
for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours
without the wars.

42. It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average
American who pays the bills
to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket,
like bootlegging and other
underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of
operations is always transferred to
the people -- who do not profit.
CHAPTER TWO
Who Makes The Profits?
The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has
cost the United States some
$52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every
American man, woman, and child.
And we haven’t paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our
children will pay it, and our
children’s children probably still will be paying the cost of that
war.
The normal profits of a business concern in the United
States are six, eight, ten, and
sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is
another matter -- twenty, sixty,
one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per
cent -- the sky is the limit. All
that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.
Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed
into speeches about patriotism,
love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the
wheel," but the profits jump and
leap and skyrocket -- and are safely pocketed. Let’s just take a
few examples:

43. Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people --
didn’t one of them testify before a
Senate committee recently that their powder won the war?
Or saved the world for
democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They
were a patriotic corporation.
Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period
1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a
year. It wasn’t much, but the du Ponts managed to get
along on it. Now let’s look at their
average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918.
Fifty-eight million dollars a year
profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the
profits of normal times were
pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted
aside the making of rails and
girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well,
their 1910-1914 yearly earnings
averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal
citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly
turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump -- or
did they let Uncle Sam in for a
bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a
year!
Or, let’s take United States Steel. The normal earnings
during the five-year period prior to
the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along
came the war and up went the
profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was
$240,000,000. Not bad.
There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let’s

44. look at something else. A little
copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.
Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the
pre-war years 1910-1914 of
$10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to
$34,000,000 per year.
Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the
1910-1914 period. Jumped to an
average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let’s group these five, with three smaller companies. The total
yearly average profits of the
pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came
the war. The average yearly
profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.
A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren’t the only ones.
There are still others. Let’s take
leather.
For the three-year period before the war the total profits of
Central Leather Company were
$3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year.
Well, in 1916 Central Leather
returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per
cent. That’s all. The General
Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years
before the war of a little over
$800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to
$12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per

45. cent.
International Nickel Company -- and you can’t have a war
without nickel -- showed an
increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to
$73,000,000 yearly. Not bad?
An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.
American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a
year for the three years before
the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.
Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth
Congress, reporting on corporate
earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of
122 meat packers, 153 cotton
manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340
coal producers during the war.
Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the
coal companies made between
100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the
war. The Chicago packers
doubled and tripled their earnings.
And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If
anyone had the cream of the
profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than
incorporated organizations, they do
not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were
as secret as they were immense.
How the bankers made their millions and their billions I
do not know, because those little
secrets never become public -- even before a Senate
investigatory body.
But here’s how some of the other patriotic industrialists and

46. speculators chiseled their way
into war profits.
Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business
with abnormal profits. They made
huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like
the munitions manufacturers and
armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a
dollar whether it comes from
Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too.
For instance, they sold Uncle
Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were
4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs,
and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one
pair to a soldier. Some of
these shoes probably are still in existence. They were
good shoes. But when the war was
over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left
over. Bought -- and paid for. Profits
recorded and pocketed.
There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people
sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of
thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there
wasn’t any American cavalry
overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however.
Somebody had to make a profit
in it -- so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably
have those yet.
Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold
your Uncle Sam 20,000,000
mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the

47. boys were expected to put it
over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches -- one
hand scratching cooties on their
backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well,
not one of these mosquito nets
ever got to France!
Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make
sure that no soldier would be
without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards
of mosquito netting were sold to
Uncle Sam.
There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in
those days, even if there were no
mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted
just a little longer, the enterprising
mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle
Sam a couple of consignments
of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting
would be in order.
Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get
their just profits out of this war.
Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So
$1,000,000,000 -- count them if you live
long enough -- was spent by Uncle Sam in building
airplane engines that never left the
ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion
dollars worth ordered, ever got into a
battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made
their little profit of 30, 100, or
perhaps 300 per cent.
Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and
uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for

48. them -- a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer.
And the stocking manufacturer
and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and
the steel helmet manufacturers
-- all got theirs.
Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment
-- knapsacks and the things
that go to fill them -- crammed warehouses on this side.
Now they are being scrapped
because the regulations have changed the contents. But the
manufacturers collected their
wartime profits on them -- and they will do it all over again the
next time.
There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the
war.
One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen
48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were
very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was
only one nut ever made that was
large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that
holds the turbines at Niagara Falls.
Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the
manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the
wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around
the United States in an effort to
find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was
indeed a sad blow to the wrench
manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the
wrenches. Then he planned to
sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.

49. Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn’t
ride in automobiles, nor should
they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a
picture of Andy Jackson riding in a
buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to
Uncle Sam for the use of colonels!
Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got
his war profit.
The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it,
too. They built a lot of ships that
made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of
the ships were all right. But
$635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn’t
float! The seams opened up
-- and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody
pocketed the profits.
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and
researchers that the war cost your
Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was
expended in the actual war
itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits.
That is how the 21,000
billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000
profits is not to be sneezed
at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry
and its wartime profits, despite
its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.
Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department
has been studying "for some time"
methods of keeping out of war. The War Department

50. suddenly decides it has a wonderful
plan to spring. The Administration names a committee --
with the War and Navy
Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall
Street speculator -- to limit
profits in war time. To what extent isn’t suggested. Hmmm.
Possibly the profits of 300 and
600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into
gold in the World War would be
limited to some smaller figure.
Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation
of losses -- that is, the losses
of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able
to ascertain there is nothing in the
scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm,
or to limit his wounds to one
or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.
There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more
than 12 per cent of a regiment
shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a
division shall be killed.
Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling
matters.
CHAPTER THREE
Who Pays The Bills?
Who provides the profits -- these nice little profits of 20, 100,

51. 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent?
We all pay them -- in taxation. We paid the bankers their
profits when we bought Liberty
Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the
bankers. These bankers collected
$100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control
the security marts. It was easy
for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us --
the people -- got frightened and
sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then
these same bankers stimulated
a boom and government bonds went to par -- and above.
Then the bankers collected their
profits.
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
If you don’t believe this, visit the American cemeteries on
the battlefields abroad. Or visit
any of the veteran’s hospitals in the United States. On a tour of
the country, in the midst of
which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited
eighteen government hospitals for
veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men --
men who were the pick of the
nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at
the government hospital; at
Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me
that mortality among veterans
is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.
Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the
fields and offices and factories and
classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were
remolded; they were made over; they
were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the

52. day. They were put shoulder
to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely
changed. We used them for a
couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of
killing or of being killed.
Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make
another "about face" ! This time
they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without]
mass psychology, sans officers’ aid
and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn’t
need them any more. So we
scattered them about without any "three-minute" or
"Liberty Loan" speeches or parades.
Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually
destroyed, mentally, because they
could not make that final "about face" alone.
In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these
boys are in pens! Five hundred
of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around
outside the buildings and on the
porches. These already have been mentally destroyed.
These boys don’t even look like
human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically,
they are in good shape; mentally,
they are gone.
There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more
and more are coming in all the
time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting
off of that excitement -- the
young boys couldn’t stand it.
That’s a part of the bill. So much for the dead -- they have paid
their part of the war profits.

53. So much for the mentally and physically wounded -- they are
paying now their share of the
war profits. But the others paid, too -- they paid with
heartbreaks when they tore themselves
away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform
of Uncle Sam -- on which a
profit had been made. They paid another part in the
training camps where they were
regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and
their places in the lives of their
communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and
were shot; where they were
hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the
cold and in the rain -- with the
moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.
But don’t forget -- the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents
bill too.
Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a
prize system, and soldiers and
sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid
bonuses, in many instances,
before they went into service. The government, or states,
paid as high as $1,200 for an
enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize
money. When we captured any
vessels, the soldiers all got their share -- at least, they were
supposed to. Then it was found
that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the
prize money and keeping it, but
conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers
couldn’t bargain for their labor,

54. Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn’t.
Napoleon once said,
"All men are enamored of decorations . . . they positively
hunger for them."
So by developing the Napoleonic system -- the medal business -
- the government learned it
could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be
decorated. Until the Civil War
there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of
Honor was handed out. It made
enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals
were issued until the
Spanish-American War.
In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys
accept conscription. They were
made to feel ashamed if they didn’t join the army.
So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought
into it. With few exceptions
our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the
Germans. God is on our side .
. . it is His will that the Germans be killed.
And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to
kill the allies . . . to please the
same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up
to make people war conscious
and murder conscious.
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to
die. This was the "war to end
all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for

55. democracy." No one mentioned to
them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying
would mean huge war profits.
No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot
down by bullets made by their
own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which
they were going to cross might
be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents.
They were just told it was to be
a "glorious adventure."
Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was
decided to make them help pay for
the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.
All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their
dear ones behind, give up their
jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could
get it) and kill and kill and
kill . . . and be killed.
But wait!
Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard
or a laborer in a munitions
factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from
him to support his dependents,
so that they would not become a charge upon his community.
Then we made him pay what
amounted to accident insurance -- something the employer pays
for in an enlightened state --
and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.
Then, the most crowning insolence of all -- he was virtually

56. blackjacked into paying for his
own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy
Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got
no money at all on pay days.
We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought
them back -- when they came
back from the war and couldn’t find work -- at $84 and $86.
And the soldiers bought about
$2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!
Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays
too. They pay it in the same
heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights,
as he lay in the trenches and
watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds
and tossed sleeplessly -- his
father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons,
and his daughters.
When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his
mind broken, they suffered
too -- as much as and even sometimes more than he.
Yes, and they, too, contributed their
dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers
and shipbuilders and the
manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought
Liberty Bonds and contributed to
the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus
of manipulated Liberty Bond
prices.
And even now the families of the wounded men and of the
mentally broken and those who
never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and
still paying.

57. CHAPTER FOUR
How To Smash This Racket!
WELL, it’s a racket, all right.
A few profit -- and the many pay. But there is a way to
stop it. You can’t end it by
disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace
parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning
but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be
smashed effectively only by
taking the profit out of war.
The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital
and industry and labor before the
nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the
Government can conscript the
young men of the nation -- it must conscript capital and
industry and labor. Let the officers
and the directors and the high-powered executives of our
armament factories and our
munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders
and the manufacturers of all
the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the
bankers and the speculators, be
conscripted -- to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in
the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all
the workers, all presidents, all

58. executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes,
and all generals and all admirals
and all officers and all politicians and all government office
holders -- everyone in the nation
be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid
to the soldier in the trenches!
Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all
those workers in industry and
all our senators and governors and majors pay half of
their monthly $30 wage to their
families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.
Why shouldn’t they?
They aren’t running any risk of being killed or of having their
bodies mangled or their minds
shattered. They aren’t sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren’t
hungry. The soldiers are!
Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over
and you will find, by that time,
there will be no war. That will smash the war racket -- that and
nothing else.
Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some
say. So capital won’t permit the
taking of the profit out of war until the people -- those who do
the suffering and still pay the
price -- make up their minds that those they elect to office shall
do their bidding, and not that
of the profiteers.
Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war
racket is the limited plebiscite to
determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of

59. all the voters but merely of
those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying.
There wouldn’t be very much
sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory
or the flat-footed head of an
international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a
uniform manufacturing plant -- all
of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of
war -- voting on whether the
nation should go to war or not. They never would be called
upon to shoulder arms -- to sleep
in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon
to risk their lives for their
country should have the privilege of voting to determine
whether the nation should go to
war.
There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those
affected. Many of our states have
restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is
necessary to be able to read and write
before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would
be a simple matter each year
for the men coming of military age to register in their
communities as they did in the draft
during the World War and be examined physically. Those
who could pass and who would
therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war
would be eligible to vote in a
limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to
decide -- and not a Congress
few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer
still of whom are in physical

60. condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have
the right to vote.
A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to
make certain that our military
forces are truly forces for defense only.
At each session of Congress the question of further naval
appropriations comes up. The
swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always
a lot of them) are very adroit
lobbyists. And they are smart. They don’t shout that "We need a
lot of battleships to war on
this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be
known that America is menaced
by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell
you, the great fleet of this
supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000
people. Just like that. Then
they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the
enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For
defense purposes only.
Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For
defense. Uh, huh.
The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous
coastline on the Pacific. Will the
maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no.
The maneuvers will be two
thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the
coast.
The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond
expression to see the united
States fleet so close to Nippon’s shores. Even as pleased

61. as would be the residents of
California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist,
the Japanese fleet playing at
war games off Los Angeles.
The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically
limited, by law, to within 200
miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the
Maine would never have gone to
Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There
would have been no war with
Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is
ample, in the opinion of experts,
for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive
war if its ships can’t go further
than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to
go as far as 500 miles from
the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army
should never leave the territorial
limits of our nation.
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war
racket.
1. We must take the profit out of war.
2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms
to decide whether or not
there should be war.
3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

62. CHAPTER FIVE
To Hell With War!
I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I
know the people do not want
war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into
another war.
Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in
1916 on a platform that he had
"kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he
would "keep us out of war." Yet,
five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
In that five-month interval the people had not been asked
whether they had changed their
minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and
marched or sailed away were not
asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.
Then what caused our government to change its mind so
suddenly?
Money.
An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly
before the war declaration and
called on the President. The President summoned a group
of advisers. The head of the
commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is
what he told the President and
his group:
"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the
allies is lost. We now owe you

63. (American bankers, American munitions makers, American
manufacturers, American
speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.
If we lose (and without the help of the United States we
must lose) we, England, France and
Italy, cannot pay back this money . . . and Germany won’t.
So . . . "
Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations
were concerned, and had the press
been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio
been available to broadcast the
proceedings, America never would have entered the World War.
But this conference, like all
war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our
boys were sent off to war they
were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy"
and a "war to end all wars."
Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy
than it had then. Besides, what
business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or
England or France or Italy or Austria
live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are
Fascists or Communists? Our
problem is to preserve our own democracy.
And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to
assure us that the World War was
really the war to end all wars.
Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of
arms conferences. They don’t
mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another

64. have been nullified. We send our
professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians
and our diplomats to these
conferences. And what happens?
The professional soldiers and sailors don’t want to disarm. No
admiral wants to be without a
ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean
men without jobs. They are not
for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms.
And at all these conferences,
lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are
the sinister agents of those who
profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do
not disarm or seriously limit
armaments.
The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not
been to achieve disarmament
to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and
less for any potential foe.
There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of
practicability. That is for all nations
to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every
rifle, every tank, every war plane.
Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.
The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with
battleships, not by artillery, not
with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with
deadly chemicals and gases.

65. Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and
ghastlier means of annihilating its
foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for
the shipbuilders must make their
profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder
and rifles will be made, for the
munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the
soldiers, of course, must wear
uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.
But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and
ingenuity of our scientists.
If we put them to work making poison gas and more and
more fiendish mechanical and
explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no
time for the constructive job of
building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting
them to this useful job, we can all
make more money out of peace than we can out of war -- even
the munitions makers.
So...I say,
TO HELL WITH WAR!
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html