No. It implies that if you throw out all non-materialistic factors, you can skew the economic factors to make your case -- if you're biased enough and unscrupulous enough.
Businesses can make out well from wars - if their side wins. But that doesn't mean that they wanted war or that they were the driving force behind the war.
Cochran and Miller - Stromberg's cited source -- explicitly say as much. Stromberg -- and you -- just throw out all evidence that doesn't confirm what you already believe and then are surprised that what's left confirms your theory.
I may be cynical, but I believe their primary motivation is money and power, and these other issues are merely vehicles to obtaining that goal.
By that logic you and everybody who agrees with you is also a cynical opportunist or else a dupe.
If you have some general theory about human motivation, what makes you (and maybe a few people who agree with you) the exceptions to that rule?
Statement of Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, petitioning Lincoln and Stanton for relief [bold text mine for emphasis]:
I shall never forget how he suddenly lifted his head and turned on us a black and frowning face.
"'Gentlemen, he said, in a voice full of bitterness, 'after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the country. The Northwest has opposed the South as New England has opposed the South. It is you who are largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until we had it. You called for Emancipation, and I have given it to you. Whatever you have asked you have had. Now you come here begging to be let off from the call for men which I have made to carry out the war you have demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a right to expect better things of you. Go home, and raise your 6,000 extra men.
And you, Medill, you are acting like a coward. You and your 'Tribune' have had more influence than any paper in the Northwest in making this war. You can influence great masses, and yet you cry to be spared at a moment when your cause is suffering. Go home and send us those men.'
"I couldn't say anything. It was the first time I ever was whipped, and I didn't have an answer. We all got up and went out, and when the door closed, one of my colleagues said: 'Well, gentlemen, the old man is right. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.' "
Source: Ida Tarbell, (Joseph Medill meeting with Lincoln), Life of Lincoln, McClure, Phillips & Co., 1900, Vol. III, p. 149
The above was originally posted by 4CJ many years ago.
Medill’s Chicago Tribune was a longtime supporter of Lincoln, the Republicans, and the Union. [Source: Lincoln and the Press. by Robert S. Harper]. I suppose that the Chicago Tribune and other such Northern papers were the MSM of that time period.