that under peculiar circumstances, particularly because of credit relations, the declaration of a war may hasten on an impending crisis, or even bring a financial one about, the usual and general effect of a war is just the reverse. A great war usually keeps a crisis out, for the reason that, economically it has the same effect as a crisis and can take its place. After a great war an era of prosperity usually sets in, for the same reason that great prosperity usually follows a great crisis. The longer the war, the greater the destruction of property, both actual and potential, the greater the prosperity that will follow it.
A policy of imperialism, aside from the actual wars which it may lead to, has in itself the same effects, and that is why it is beneficial to capitalism. Among the economic causes of the great popularity of imperialism must not only be counted the desire for new markets and their actual attainment, but the economic causes of the policy of hunting for new markets itself. We will illustrate this by an example. During the last presidential campaign in the United States the anti-imperialists made very much of certain statistics compiled by the late Edward Atkinson, showing that the expense to the United States in keeping and governing the Philippines was greater than what the whole trade of the United States with those islands amounted to. The anti-imperialists argued that it was the height of folly to pay more than a dollar for the opportunity of selling a dollar's worth of goods. From their own shop-keeper's point of view that is undoubtedly true. Not so from the standpoint of the modern, means-of-production-producing capitalism. There arise times when goods must be gotten rid of at any expense. As these goods consist of means of production they can not be given in charity to the workingmen, nor destroyed bodily the way the western and southern farmers and planters destroy part of their crops, when they are too plentiful, in order to keep up the prices. These goods being capital, can only be gotten rid of by being sold or "invested." Hence this apparent craze for
