Oozing Patriotism and Blood

 

The Age of Betrayal: Oozing Patriotism and Blood

Peter Schultz

 

             A quotation from Jack Beatty’s book, The Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900:

 

            “Besides God’s revelation to McKinley of the destiny of the American branch of the ‘Anglo-Saxon race’ to rule over ‘weaker races,’ industrial capitalism drove expansion….The home market could not soak up the overspill….Plundering Africa and Asia for customers and raw materials, the European powers showed brooding class Americans they had company in fearing confinement – and in seeing trade as a hedge against unemployment and discontent at home, imperialism as a solvent for radicalism…’We escape the menace and peril of socialism and agrarianism, as England escaped them, by a policy of colonization and conquest,’ Henry Watterson, the editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, told a New York reporter the month Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill. Oozing patriotism and blood, farm boys were safe from Populism.” [pp. 388-389]