CHAP. The Law of Per sonal Exploitation Exploitation by means of Institutions amount to little. The one omnipresent and overshadowing kind is 4. Economic. This means making others work for you or taking for your own use the fruits of their unrequited toil. The temptation to exploit was especially strong before the era of machinery and mechanical power because if a man could not force others to accept the heavy work of grinding, dragging, carrying and delving, he had to do it himself. No doubt the modern sentiment against all forms of forced labor is owing in great part to our success in harnessing the forces of Nature to our service. Men do not like to exploit their fellow-men, but generally they have hated hard work more than they have hated the exploitation of others. All about us we see one human being making use of another, the wife becoming a barren parasite, the husband becoming a loafer on the earnings of his wife, the grown son hanging about home living on his parents, one brother or sister absorbing the earnings of another, friend taking advantage of friend and such like. The thing is common and its rule is simple. In any sentimental relation the one who cares less can exploit the one who cares more. In the man-woman relation and the motherchild relation we see this very plainly. Whenever the law perceives in a personal relation a golden opportunity to exploit, it tries to supply safeguards. It scrutinizes suspiciously gifts from ward to guardian and looks into the circumstances surrounding the death-bed willing of property to those about the testator. It limits freedom of contract so that infatuated persons may not divest themselves of their fundamental rights or mortgage their entire future in favor of another. Still, the law with all its benevolent intentions cannot prevent many temporary exploitations arising between individuals from differences in the strength of their mutual love, in the strength of their character and in the strength of their situation. The exploitation which most calls for examination is not that which exists despite the law, but that which being established in custom and law, has become institutionalized. It may be defined as any profiting of one element in society at the expense of other elements, which would disappear if the elements came to be equal in power. Under this definition the fact that many thoughtful persons regard the taking of rent for land or profits for capital as exploitation does not make it so. We should have to know whether the workers would abolish all return to the property owners in case they were in no wise dominated by this class. LINES OF EXPLOITATION Exploitation appears between a great variety of elements. The principal forms are: 1. Offspring by parents. Surviving patriarchal ideas as to the prerogatives of the parent coupled with the money value which machine production confers on the labor of the weak has led to an extensive exploitation of young children which in the United States shows least restraint in the mountain population of our South and in our immigrants from the more backward parts of Europe. Happily the law has interposed to shield the child from selfish exploitation by its natural guardians. CHAP. XII In Primi tive Soci ety the Men Have all the the Exploit, 2. Women by men. In the words of a native Australian "A man hunts, spears fish, fights and sits about." He does little else in primitive society, for practically all the work devolves upon the women. It is they who dress the skins, pitch the tent, make the garments, prepare the food and manufacture pottery, Wome baskets, and mats. The Indian never touches the game he has Drudgery brought in after he has dropped it at the tent door. The Eskimo man will not even draw the seal from the water after he has speared it. The division of function between the sexes is sharp everything in the nature of exploit going to man, all mere drudgery going to woman. In the hunting stage, this adjustment is not so unfair. But as game becomes scarcer and more and more the food supply comes from the little patches of corn or yams or manioc cultivated by the women, the men become parasites upon their wives. Hence, innumerable peoples in the lower agriculture show women exploited by men. "The Wallach," says Palmer, "has an inveterate horror of any labor that can be avoided as for the unavoidable, he has a very high ideal of the dignity of man' and considers that it is only right and fitting that he should spend the long summer days in a delicious siesta while his wife does all the work upon his little holding!" 1 Hogarth observes women in Turkey "carrying and laying the bricks of a rising house watched by a ring of squatting men 1 "Austro-Hungarian Life in Town and Country," p. 105. СНАР. Machine Parasitism Wealth Inter-convertible with Other Kinds of Power Wealth as an Acquisitive Instrument and adds "I have seen a mother pass and repass a rapid rocky stream, carrying in succession a husband and two grown sons; and on the bare stones of Taurus all the women of a migrating horde trailing their bleeding feet after the camels, horses and asses which bore their fathers, husbands and brothers." 2 Among the Hakkas of southern China as among the Dyaks of Borneo the idleness of the men arises from the power of tradition over the division of labor between the sexes. Formerly the men hunted and fought but, now that there is no hunting and no fighting, they have become little better than loafers. Inherited ideas as to what is "woman's work" keep the men from "buckling to." In Turkey, no doubt, woman's lot has been made worse by the influence of Mohammedan theology. The migration of industrial processes from the home has of late worked to the advantage of the home-staying woman and even called into being a new type, the parasite wife, who neither works nor bears children, and imagines that she is conferring an inexpressible boon when she allows a man to support her. Her "society" compensates him for everything, while his "society is not deemed of any value to her. 3. Poor by rich. Wealth above present necessities is potential social power, inasmuch as it may be the means of establishing an exploitive control over other men. The wily Jacob acquiring the famishing Esau's birthright for a mess of pottage is a symbol of how a temporary surplus may be converted into a permanent advantage. Wealth, which is economic power may be converted into many other kinds of power-political, legal, social, ecclesiastical, religious, etc.; but these in turn can be converted into wealth. Rich men may use their money to get into politics, but once there they may use their political power to gain more money. They may use their money to acquire for themselves more legal rights and then use their legal rights to gain more money. They may use their money to win a control over needy men and use this control to gain more money. Thus the formula for the exploitive utilization of riches is Wealth-Power- More Wealth. By bribery the wealthy shift the main burden of taxation upon those too poor to bribe. Thus the great landowners of the Roman Empire bought or wheedled for themselves individual or 2" A Wandering Scholar in the Orient," pp. 67-8. collective immunities from visitation by the tax gatherers. From their tenants they raised small armies and drove away the revenue officers. They bribed the officials until the tax registers became a tissue of frauds. If fresh taxes were imposed they saw to it that the burden fell on others. If the emperor granted a remission of taxes they saw to it that the lion's share of the benefit fell to them. In the same way a few years ago American multimillionaires residing in New York City were paying taxes on from a twentieth up to a tenth of what their fortunes proved to be when probated. The attorney most conspicuous in the formation of "trusts in industry admits that by means of a present he induced the assessment official to let him write in the figures on which the numerous combinations he represented paid taxes. The rich may harass the small proprietor until he sells out cheap. In the Roman Empire the law was unable to protect the small landowner against the aggressions and encroachments of his senatorial neighbor. Consequently he abandoned his holding, sold it at a nominal price, or donated it to the great man with the understanding that he might remain on it at the pleasure of his master. This tenure was known as precarium. The same technique contributed to the extraordinary concentration of wealth in the United States. The numerous owners of anthracite coal lands in eastern Pennsylvania were forced to sell to the big coal companies because the latter by controlling the coal-carrying railroads were able to levy upon their competitors exorbitant charges for carriage. In the end the little holders let their coal lands go for a pitiful price. A like control over the carriers enabled the dominant petroleum concern to acquire our Eastern oil lands at fraction of their value. Often in the American West the big rancher used his numerous cowboys and gunmen to ruin the "homesteader and chase away the small cattleman in order that he might himself grow rich on grazing stolen from the public lands. In the grazing country north of Lake Titicaca the large landowner uses his hirelings to terrorize the neighboring native proprietors into the payment of quasi-feudal dues. The Indian who "joins farms" with a white man must annually deliver his neighbor a quintal of alpaca wool (worth $22.50) at the customary price of $8.00. He must also furnish one sheep worth sixty CHAP. XII Weak Law Makes Rich Men Strong CHAP. Converting a Temporary Misfortune into a Perpetual cents, for which he receives twenty cents. Then, too, he must help the white man during sheep shearing and sheep killing without other wages than food, coca and rum. The institution of debt slavery permits the rich to take advantage of the misfortunes of the poor by loan contracts which sink the borrower and his descendants into perpetual bondage in case Hereditary the loan is not repaid at the appointed time. Centuries before Obligation the tsars bound the peasants to the soil, many Russian cultivators had lost their liberty of removal from one manor to another in consequence of owing money to the landlord. They were chained to the estate, unless they found some other landlord willing to pay the money they owed and thereby acquire the right to remove them to his own manor. In tropical America the institution of peonage permits the planter to bind the agricultural laborer to his hacienda by means of a small advance of cash or goods. The Leverage of Usury The Power of Wealth More Primitive than Governments and May Be Greatest When the State Is Weakest A few years ago investigation by the U. S. Immigration Commission disclosed the fact that immigrant peonage existed in every State in the Union save Oklahoma and Connecticut. Altho in the South and West many aliens were being held to labor against their will under intolerable conditions, it was in the lumber camps of Maine that the commission found "the most complete system of peonage in the country." An exorbitant charge for the use of capital is another means by which the monied man exploits the poor. We read of Java: "It is not the large European capitalist, but the small native or Oriental capitalist, who is the most conscienceless exploiter of peasant labor. Many of the Javanese peasants have their crops mortgaged for three years in advance, and are forced to pay interest at the rate of from 10 to 50 per cent. a month." "Were it not for the protection afforded to the natives by their land laws a considerable part of their land would soon pass into the hands of Chinese usurers through mortgage foreclosures." There is no greater error than to suppose with the anarchists that the state is the one great engine of exploitation. Often government offers the sole check upon the power of the rich to hire armed men to work their will upon small proprietors whose lands they covet. The anarchy in France under the weak Mer Ross, "South of Panama," p. 152. * Bulletin U. S. Department of Labor, "Labor Conditions in Java," P. 933. |