CHAPTER XXXIII ESTRANGEMENT HOWEVER solidified the group may become, one can never CHAP. XXXIII There is and Final be sure that the current of events will not carry it upon some rock which will split it. Families are rent by quarrels, No Fixed neighborhoods by feuds, churches by controversies; while larger socializa unions, lacking personal acquaintance, are yet more unstable. tion So it is necessary to take into account a process, quite the reverse of socialization, which may be called estrangement. It is not that the ties knit up in the course of a common experience ravel out, as in the case of wanderers who in a far country gradually forget their fatherland. What happens is that these ties are strained or even snapped because a cross-current pulls one part of the group away from the other. No doubt, if all change could be arrested, the fellow-feeling among the members of a society would last and would descend to their children and children's children; but change is inevitable, and, although some changes solidify, others tend to cleave the group. For all that intercourse, common experience and common reading matter may be making a people into one big family, there is no assurance that a sharp turn in industrial development or a strange doctrine will not set them at loggerheads. Elements in Society Asunder by Incom Sometimes the spirit of faction gains mysteriously the upper hand and society polarizes into opposing groups which may have are Thrust no more substantial basis than the parties of Greens and Blues which sprang up from the colors of the jockeys in the chariot races of Rome and Byzantium and which endangered the state itself with their strife. Generally, however, it is antagonism of economic interests or ideas which rives society in twain. The growth of sectionalism during the half-century before the American Civil War illustrates how a new economic tendency may thrust people apart. After the invention of the cotton gin. the South more and more went over to cotton, a slave-made crop, so that slavery became its corner-stone. In the North patible Aims or Ideas CHAP. XXXIII Miners and Ranchers in California Alienation Caused by " ver '' Question slave labor was less productive than free labor, so that slavery The practice of extracting gold by washing down low-pay dirt with a jet of water under high pressure so clogged certain California river beds as to cause the rivers to overflow and smother rich bottom lands under a mantle of silt. The feeling between the ranchers of the valley and the miners of the foothills became very bitter before the legislature of the state put a curb on hydraulic mining. An acute fall in prices, beginning with the last quarter of the the Sil- nineteenth century and exceeding the decline in cost of production, by increasing the burden of debts, brought on a political conflict in America between creditors and agricultural debtors which culminated in the heated presidential campaign of 1896. Soon afterward the great increase in gold production started prices on an upward movement which drew that thorn out of our flesh. Penal "Blackbirding '' The Strug gle Over Public Lands The early population of Australia, although homogeneous enough, was torn over the question of tolerating the continuance of the penal transportation of convicts from England. The large landowners favored a system which automatically provided them with cheap labor. The artisans and small farmers opposed this flood, both in their own interest and for the sake of the future of the colony. Another source of bad blood was the opposition between the sugar-planters of North Queensland, who manned their cane fields with kidnaped South Sea Islanders held virtually in a condition of slavery, and the people of South Queensland who, living outside the sugar belt, could foresee the evils which "blackbirding" would fasten upon the country. Even the gold discoveries brought riot and bloodshed to Australia. In order to prevent the ranches and towns from being stripped of labor, the property-owners prevailed upon the government to undertake to check the mad rush to the gold fields by requiring a state license to dig gold. The gold-diggers rioted, burned licenses publicly, fortified their camp, and ran up a flag bearing the words, "Republic of Victoria." Much of the early political history of certain Australian colonies is made up of the struggles between "squatters" and "selectors." The former had seized upon great tracts of public land and in sisted upon using them for grazing while thousands of landless men were clamoring to be allowed to settle on this land and farm it. CHAP. Cleavages There is, indeed, no end of ways in which a new economic Historical slant may breed strife. A pastoral people falls asunder because the men of the plain take to the plow and the men of the shore to shipbuilding and trade, while the hill folk continue to watch their flocks. In republican Rome slaves, the booty of foreign conquest, thrust a wedge between the large landowners and the small cultivators. The English Black Death of 1349 fired a train which is said to have led to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The issuance of paper money, a natural makeshift in a young community, long vexed the peace of the American colonies. The Constitution laid the specter for three-quarters of a century only to see it reappear as the "greenback" question. The federal tax of 1791 on distilled spirits provoked a revolt among people west of the Alleghany Mountains, who had been accustomed to convert their corn into whiskey in order to carry it to a distant market. In the old seaboard South the farmers of the upland districts were opposed socially and politically to the planter aristocracy of the lowlands. Quarrels Policy of The possibilities of trouble mock the foresight of statesmen. Over the Government action to stamp out a popular vice may exasperate a district devoted to breeding race horses or to growing the vine or ment the poppy. A new industry or a chance to build up an export trade may make one region restive under a tax or a trade policy acceptable to all the rest. The people of our Atlantic Coast may resent the obstacles to trade with the Orient raised by an immigration policy demanded by the people of the Pacific Coast. In California, with the rise of fruit-growing, there broke out a great agitation by orchardists against the general property tax, under which they had to pay taxes on their fruit trees for some years before they came into bearing. Then, too, quite aside from clash of economic interest, the soulmolds of a people may so change that the types they turn out chafe one another. Thus the commercial regions become critical and progressive, while the rural parts cherish old dynastic loyalties. The town artisans become free-thinking, but the peasants remain devout. As cities grow we see more of an urban type having little in common with the farming population. Mining Discord ant Types Develop CHAP. XXXIII Culture Oppositions Religious "Wars of Religion"' the precious metals fosters a restless speculative spirit that goes ill with the home-loving conservative spirit bred by agriculture. Machine industry gathers myriads into its tentacular grasp and sets its stamp upon them. Mixing of bloods brings race war nearer by multiplying the number of aspiring mulattoes and nearwhites to whom the "color line " is intolerable. Unequal appropriation of culture weakens fellow-feeling. Thanks to foreign influences, the residents of the littoral become cosmopolitan, while the people of the interior stick to the "good old ways" and resent what they deem the apostasy of the ports. From the Book of Maccabees one may divine what strifes were produced by the penetration of Hellenism into the peoples about the Eastern Mediterranean during the century after Alexander the Great. Since Peter the Great Russia has swung like a pendulum between the party standing for imitation of Europe and the party standing for Muscovite tradition. The Chinese in contact with foreigners want to introduce railroads, sanitation, and girls' schools, which the back country regards as impious. Stalled in an eighteenth-century stage of development, the isolated people of our Appalachians imagine our cities to be sinks of wickedness, while our cities look upon these old-fashioned mountain-dwellers as degenerates. Like-mindedness is ruptured also by movements in the sphere of ideas. The ancient Jews were torn by the discord between Pharisees and Sadducees. After Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire schisms and heresies gave trouble. Africa was convulsed by the Donatist movement; Egypt was dissatisfied owing to Monophysitism and, no doubt, for this gave herself the more readily to the Arab conquerors. The persecuted Montanist sectaries of Phrygia revolted in the sixth century. The Mohammedans, too, split into Shiites and Sunnites, and only a little over a century ago they lost Arabia to the Puritanic sect of Wahabees. In the eighth century the Christians of the East were rent by the quarrel over the use of images, and the migration of fifty thousand Greek image-worshipers to Southern Italy gave that region a Hellenic stamp which it has not yet lost. Later, Latin and Greek Christianity went asunder and entered upon divergent paths of development. The rise of Protestantism in the sixteenth century, coupled with the repressive policy of the Church, CHAP. XXXIII Clash of Science plunged most European peoples into civil strife and gave birth to the bloody "wars of religion." Since Galileo the contradictions between dogma and science have produced countless estrange- Dogma ments. Nor should one overlook the disturbances following the with rise of such sects as the Anabaptists, the Mormons, the Babists, the Taipings, the Boxers, the Mahdists, and the Senussites. Probably nowhere has the social tissue been more often cleft by eccentric religious movements than in Russia and the United States. Contro versy Over ism In South America to-day we see bitter controversies engendered by the introduction of ideas of religious liberty, separation Modernof church and state, lay education, civil marriage and divorce. A lifetime ago the propagation of anti-slavery doctrines among us aroused much hatred and hostility. From time to time we have been rent by angry disputes over vaccination, woman's rights, faith-healing, Darwinism, "higher" Biblical criticism, land-value taxation, and liquor regulation. At present such doctrines as the right of labor to the whole produce, workers' control over industry, class war, "direct action," the single standard of morals for both sexes, birth control, and the sterilization of the unfit lead to sharp dissension and even to violence. In a generation these will, perhaps, have entered a milder phase, but meanwhile new questions will drift into the spotlight. New Ideas Lead to Dissension ment Social Cohesion The fermentation set up by the spread of new knowledge or of Estrangeideas based thereon is inevitable if there is to be progress in Lessens culture. But how rarely we see a clean fight between truth and error! How often conflict is between systems of ideas equally arbitrary! Indeed, it is the clash of ideas farthest from a fact basis which rouses most animosity. Now, when controversies reach the pitch of alienating fellow-countrymen, the consequences may be serious. Migration, secession, or civil war is possible, and, in any case, there is less good will and willingness to work together. National defense may be fatally weakened, government thwarted in carrying out essential policies, facility in civic and social cooperation lost. Friendly intercourse may become less general, while clannishness and sectarianism grow until the people are divided by internal frontiers which are no less real for being invisible. To preserve the social peace and to keep alive the we-feeling is 1 See Ross, "Social Psychology," p. 313. |