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the Socialist Eugene Debs and the conservative Samuel Gompers, agreed that
conquest and empire were dangerous, in large measure because they feared
the loss of American jobs to foreign workers who would accept lower wages
[a charge echoed in the late 1900s by anti-globalization activists].
Perhaps most pointedly, anti-imperialists argued that such conquests would
pervert American principles. Senator George Hoar lamented “the danger that
we are to be transformed from a Republic, founded on the Declaration of
Independence ... into a vulgar, commonplace empire, founded upon physical
force.” The Anti-Imperialist League, in which Twain, William Jennings Bryan
and Clarence Darrow were active, was tormented by the specter of Filipino
blood on American hands, and even “more deeply resent[ed] the betrayal of
American institutions” such as representative government at home, interna-
tional law, and self-government for others. Twain even offered new lyrics to the
“Battle Hymn of the Republic”: “Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launch-
ing of the sword /He is searching out the hoardings where the strangers’
wealth is stored /He has loosed his fateful lightning, and with woe and death
has scored /His lust is marching on.” Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy
Adams, often debated the issue of American imperialism with Theodore
Roosevelt and other expansionists after 1898. “I incline now to anti-imperial-
ism, and very strongly to anti-militarism,” Adams observed. “If we try to rule
politically, we take the chances against us.” Populist leader William Jennings
Bryan anticipated that the “just resistance” of the United States to Spanish rule
in Cuba and the Philippines would “degenerate into a war of conquest,” giving
others the right to charge America with “having added hypocrisy to greed.”
Imperialism, he sharply added, “would be profitable to the Army contractors;
it would be profitable to the shipowners, who would carry live soldiers to the
Philippines and bring dead soldiers back; it would be profitable to those who
would seize upon the franchises, and it would be profitable to the officials
whose salaries would be fixed here and paid over there; but to the farmer, to
the laboring man, and to the vast majority of those engaged in other occupa-
tions, it would bring expenditure without return and risk without reward.”Capital vs. Labor, the Struggle Continues
Bryan’s criticism was fitting, for he was connecting America’s new conquests
abroad with continued labor problems at home. The Pullman Strike of 1894