Liberalism: Power, Economic Crisis, Reform, War 63its economic strength to gain international political power. Decades later, a
prominent American, Henry Luce, would call the 1900s “The American
Century,” and one could see the outlines of it in the way that challengers to
Capitalism were crushed and the American empire was built.
Not everyone was on board with the new imperialism, however. “Shall
we?”—one of America’s most treasured writers ever asked—“That is shall we
go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or
shall we give those poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old-
time, loud, pious way, and commit the new century to the game; or shall we
sober up and sit down and think it over first?” These words, in an essay titled
“To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” came from Mark Twain, who in addition
to inventing Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and warning about the
“Gilded Age,” was also a zealous anti-imperialist. “Would it not be prudent
to get our Civilization-tools together, and see how much stock is left on hand
in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books,
and Trade-Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable
ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and
arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to
continue the business or sell out the property and start a new Civilization
Scheme on the proceeds?” The person in the darkness, as Twain wrote it, was
one of the billions of individuals who did not have the “blessings” of western
“civilization” yet cast upon him or her, who had yet had Christian missionar-
ies descend upon Asia or Africa or Latin America, who had not yet been
invaded by the Kaiser of Germany, the Czar of Russia, or the President of the
United States. Who had not yet, like the Boxers in China or freedom fighters
in the Philippines, had to face down the barrels of western guns and surrender
independence to the new empires.
Twain was surely the most famous of those who criticized America’s
expansion into new parts of the world in 1898 and after, but he had plenty
of company in his anti-imperialist protests. The wars of 1898, critics charged,
gave "militarists" too much power; the United States could acquire coaling
stations or new trading opportunities without war or empire, they explained.
Many dissenters contended that the United States had no right or need to
“civilize” other peoples, especially considering its own treatment of blacks at
home. Conversely, some did not want America to assume control over and
responsibility for nonwhite, and thus inferior, peoples. Labor leaders, such as