CHAP. The Presence of Inferiors, unless They Are Engaged in Rendering Service, Communicates a Taint Sympathy Becomes latter looks down upon his clerk, the clerk looks down upon the woman who lets him lodgings, and she in turns looks down on the man who cobbles her shoes. In reverse, the man who works with his hands looks up to the petty shopkeeper and he looks up to the big tradesman. This one looks up to the banker or manufacturer, who looks up to the landed gentry, who look up to the peers, while at the apex of the whole organization stands the throne. Each class avoids its supposed inferiors as if their presence tainted the air. In India low-caste people are excluded from the temples. In England there is a rule that the railway porter shall not put any one into an apartment occupied by one of the nobility. Moreover, a holder of a first-class or a second-class ticket is entitled to a refund in case a passenger with a ticket of a lower class (his own compartment being full) is put in his compartment. The theory is that the ticket holder has paid for exclusiveness as well as for accommodation. An American university crew about to row in an English regatta was challenged on the ground that according to the regulations the contesting crews must be "gentlemen," while in fact some of the American oarsmen were working their way through college! In a quiet way the lowly born, save the winners of scholarships, are effectually excluded from the great endowed schools like Eton, Harrow, and Rugby, and from the two old universities. Among ourselves the great focal points of caste spirit are army and navy. A junior officer seen talking in a human way to an enlisted man or putting a hand on his shoulder is reprimanded. The lieutenant marrying the daughter of a sergeant is boycotted and driven from the army. An officer has been known to raise a disturbance in a theater on finding his seat next to that of a sergeant, and an admiral has recorded objection on class grounds to the commissioning of the gallant chief of a battleship gun squad. As society becomes aristocratic, humane feeling becomes classbound. Thus an English newspaper gave thanks that while six hundred persons lost their lives in a Chicago theater fire, none of them was of any distinction. On the other hand, tenderness for the highborn makes even-handed justice impossible. It was easy to find law for imprisoning Stead, the fearless London journalist who in his "Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon" exposed the villanies of men in high social position, but none was found for СНАР. XXIX Hereditary Depend ence punishing the villains themselves. The worst discoveries of the commission which investigated the frauds committed by British officers in the purchase of army stores during the Boer War were never made public, because of the eminence of the persons involved. No doubt their own class ostracized them, but it would not give the lowborn a handle for scoffing. Inequality is never so hopeless as when the inferior becomes Origins of dependent for security or livelihood upon the favor of the social Economic superior. Before the reign of law the weak had to seek the protection of the strong. In Homeric times power regularly fell to the strong hand. Amidst conditions of insecurity, the submitting of one's self to the powerful constituted a kind of insurance; one consented to periodic exactions and dues in order to escape utter ruin. So men commended their lives and goods to individuals who appeared to be strong enough to protect them unless, indeed, they fell directly beneath such power through being conquered by it. The feudalism Caesar found among the Gauls sprang neither from the conquest of one people by another nor yet from the fidelity of retainers to a military chief, but arose out of economic inequality coupled with state weakness. The state, being rudimentary, was unable to exact obedience of the great as well as of the small. Hence, the weak man, finding no shelter in the public powers, became an ambact, i.e., he sought the support of some strong man and paid for it with service. He addressed himself to one of the great men and besought protection against all other grandees. If the state, instead of keeping the social classes in balance, recruits its officials chiefly from the superior class, the lower orders will sink into dependence. Thus, under the Roman Empire justice was administered, not as with us by experts, but by high functionaries such as governors and prefects, all chosen from the senatorial nobility. Between the official and the local nobles soon grew up such fellow-feeling and mutual favor that ordinarily no man of humble station could win a lawsuit against a noble. Accordingly the weak man seeking justice had to provide himself with a powerful patron. The handing over of state powers to the social superiors instead of committing them to paid and responsible public servants completes the subjection of those economically dependent on such su If the Superiors Own and Run the Inferiors Depend- ence on СНАР. The Relinquishment of the Powers of Government to the Supe- rior in a Status of periors. Says Fustel de Coulanges of the effects of the grants of immunity by the Frankish kings of the seventh century: Imagine a well-constituted administrative corps of dukes, counts, and centeniers who should be faithful representatives of the state and who should command the obedience of the people; it will be impossible that the great landowner should become an absolute master. In the public functionary the weak will find a support. Freemen will have no need of other patronage. The small landowners will not be under the necessity of yielding up themselves and their holdings. Tenants will have a regular contract and the guaranty of the laws. Freedmen and coloni will have certain well-defined rights. Even the serfs will be protected. But behold, the grant of immunity removes the public functionary, forbidding him "to enter." For the great landowner such an officer no longer exists nor does he exist for the mixed population inhabiting the domains of the great landowner.1 With justice, police, and power of taxation all in the hands of the proprietor the dependence of this population upon him becomes very great. Economic calamity bearing particularly upon the smaller property-holders will crush them into permanent dependence in case the law tolerates such a relation. The loss of an independent status by the petty landowners of the Roman Empire seems to have been connected with wars and disasters in the third century, which brought many farmers into debt to the great proprietors. This burden, together with the advantage of the big man in all legal contests, compelled great numbers to part with their land by pretended sale or gift and to occupy it under the precarium tenure. The small peasant who solicited protection began by transferring to the protector almost everything he had. He did not leave his holding, but his sons had no claim on it. By donation or fictitious sale the man transferred the land to his protector, receiving in return a gracious permission to live out his days upon it. The proprietor might impose on the precarist any conditions he pleased. He might exact an annual rental or require manifestations of gratitude and deference, the obsequium. Since no formal contract defined the dependent's obligations, he might be lawfully dispossessed at any moment. His tenure was entirely at the pleasure of the patron. Hence he must gain and constantly keep 4" Origines du système féodal," pp. 411, 412. the good will of the great man. He had to be always in the attitude of a suppliant. Short of slavery, no system more destructive of manliness can be imagined; yet under the later Empire freemen and property-owners unsheltered by the state were continually turning over their holdings to neighboring great proprietors, in order to receive them again under a precarious tenure. The Church bitterly denounced the spread of the practice, but was unable to arrest it. The outcome of the unchecked exercise of economic power is thus described by Fustel de Coulanges: Clientage spread till it embraced the majority of people. Besides his slaves and coloni the household of a rich man included a numerous personnel of clients, some of high birth and rank. CHAP. XXIX Fatal because the State Furnish Equal Protection The society of the Roman Empire looked monarchic. But by the Failed to régime of the great landowner and by the practice of patronage it was thoroughly aristocratic. Insensibly the freeman had formed the habit of becoming a subject, not of the state or of the prince, but of another man. Everywhere was the patron, the seigneur; everywhere, too, the client. Under its various forms clientage embraced all classes, constituting, as it were, a staircase where men ranged themselves in a hierarchy.5 When the English government became mistress of the Scottish Highlands, the law, by construing the chief-clansman relation as if it were the landlord-tenant relation, plunged the bulk of the Highlanders into a condition of acute economic dependence. Says Professor John Stuart Blackie: Scottish Absolute freedom of contract between any two parties implies perfect equality of social position, and perfect independence as to the lordism consequence of accepting or rejecting the offered conditions of the contract, but how little this is the case as between a small Irish or Highland tenant and a big landlord. To talk of freedom of contract between an omnipotent Hebridean Chamberlain and a poor Highland crofter is a trick of verbal legerdemain. The poor Highland crofter, whose situation has been made uncomfortable by a factorial ordinance in favor of a big farmer or a deerstalker, has no resource, he must accept the unfavorable conditions, or wander into another glen, where he will quite possibly find the fences of another deer forest barring his way, or drift in despair into the black slums of some smoky Glasgow." 5" Origines du système féodal," pp. 245-47. 6"Scottish Highlanders and the Land Laws," pp. 136-37. CHAP. The Old Régime in the Philippines Peonage As to the withering of character under such dependence, Professor Blackie remarks: If, under the pressure of the dreadful thunderclouds of eviction, Donald had sometimes shown more of the cunning of the fox than the boldness of the lion, he is only doing what a moral necessity imposed upon him, as indeed it would upon any body of human beings associated together under like unfavorable influences. When fear of penal loss and arbitrary treatment becomes the dominant element in the feelings of a whole people, their only defence seems to lie in a retreat behind the shield of habitual untruthfulness and resignation. How deeply this has poisoned the blood of the Irish Celts in these latter days! tates. At the beginning of the American régime in the Philippines the mass of the agricultural Filipinos were tenants on large esThe owner was the amo or master; his tenants were his dependientes. Most of them were hereditary bonded debtors of the amo. The debtor himself might not know the origin of the obligation which came down to him from his father, he was ignorant of its amount, nor did he understand how it increased or might be decreased. In crisis or trouble he appealed to his amo, thus adding new links to his chain. He had nothing laid by for the future nor any means of storing food to carry him from one harvest to the next. The dependientes were bound, not only to work for the amo on account of their "debts," but also to stand by him in all matters. They supported the political party he supported. If he took part in a revolution they fought for him, and if he joined the Aglipay secession from the Catholic church, they also became Aglipayanos. Throughout the western part of our continent, from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, free agricultural labor as we know it does not exist. Slavery has disappeared, but the institution of peonage binds the rural masses to the owners of the haciendas. In Southern Colombia, for example, four days in each week the agricultural laborer is bound to work at a wage of from five to ten cents a day in return for the use of a plot for his house and truck patch. Of course, such pitiful earnings do not suffice for the needs of his family, so he is obliged to run into debt to his amo for money or supplies. Since he can never work off this debt and the law does not permit him to leave the estate until it is liquidated, the peon becomes virtually a serf bound to work all |