Red Clydeside

Political cartoons

Death and the profit-ghouls

8 Aug 1914

The cartoon highlights the anger felt by many British socialists at the huge profits being made by industrialists involved in the production of weapons and ammunition used to destroy whole countries and kill hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

The issue of wartime profiteering by industrial concerns involved in the production of armaments loomed large on the agenda of the British left during the first year or so of the war. The government eventually introduced legislation which prevented companies from making excessive profits from government orders for armaments.

From the outset, some companies made it their policy to donate any profits made from government armaments orders to medical and discharged-soldiers charities. Weir's of Cathcart in Glasgow was one such company, and the directors considered themselves to be performing a public duty at a time of national peril and rejected out of hand the notion that money should be made from such a situation.

Source: Gallacher Memorial Library, Glasgow Caledonian University Special Collections and Archives