СНАР. XXV Finally the Managers But Not Whom It poor, but under the later empire they were the exclusive privilege of the wealthy and one of their most luxurious forms of enjoyment. The thirty-three endowed grammar schools of London were all metamorphosed to teach the children of the higher class. Harrow, one of the most expensive of English schools, was founded by a bricklayer for the free education of the ranks in which he had been born. Male trustees twist foundations left for the sexes equally, to the service of the male sex. For instance, the endowments of Christ's Hospital given for the most destitute classes and “for girls as much as for boys" were found in 1865 to be educating 1,100 boys and only 25 girls, nearly all from the middle classes. Finally the institution becomes an end in itself. The univerServes Its sity exists for the benefit of its dons. The state prison is conducted as a provider of cheap labor for the prison contractor. A local charity becomes the means of enhancing the social prestige of the ladies back of it. The courts of chancery instituted for the protection of orphans whose money was liable to misappropriation by unscrupulous relatives had become in Dickens' time a machine which sucked up all their money in interminable lawsuits, the lawyers being far more dangerous to the orphans than the guardians from whom the lawyers were to protect them. Military orders like the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitalers, founded to defend the Holy Sepulcher, came to fight each other more than they fought the Mussulman. In a millennium and a half the assembly (ecclesia) of the believers in a religion of love was transformed into a great temporal monarchy throttling intellectual freedom and cruelly destroying its exposers and critics. In View of version an Not Con- Society Since the independent structure is never safe from perversion, ity to Per- organized society should beware of bestowing upon it favors and Institution privileges. An unmodifiable charter should never be granted. Buildings actually used for public worship, education, or relief may be left tax free, but the exemption should not extend to other Have Fair property of a private corporation. The one-sided partnership, so common in some of our states, whereby the public furnishes an annual subsidy to be expended at the discretion of the private charity, has shown the ugliest tendencies and should cease. Public funds should never be given to an educational institution not under public control. No legitimate service should be withheld Play but Nothing More by the state in order to leave the field clear for the private agency. The public asylum, school, university, library, or research institute should be set up in order to correct and spur the private institute. The self-constituting governing board should be looked upon with suspicion, and the state's right of visitation, report, supervision, and revision should not be allowed to lapse through disuse. СНАР. XXV CHAPTER XXVI STRATIFICATION CHAP. Stratifica tion Is a Social ESIDES the social layers which result from conquest there are layers which form within a people in consequence of certain processes. Such stratification is virtually a social disease which checks the natural sifting of human beings, clogs the Disease rise of capables and the descent of incapables, benumbs the higher faculties of the masses, arrests the circulation of sympathy and, if not remedied, ends in the paralysis, perhaps the break-up, of the group. Examples of stratified society are numerous enough in both ancient and modern times. 66 Old Babylonia under King Hammurabi was a group of cityprovinces in process of unification through the influence of a nationalized religion, a powerful centralized government, a closely interdependent commerce, and a well-recognized legal system which protected property rights and stimulated agriculture and industry. The state was personified in the priest-king, in whom were joined personal prestige and divine authority. Crown lands were held under a feudal tenure by a class of priests, devotees, nobles, military and civil officials, in whose interest the laws were in certain respects carefully framed. To presumably the same social status belonged a class of landowners, bankers, and merchants. Next in the social scale came the tradesmen and artisans, followed by the tenant farmers who held their lands under the metayer system. In the next stratum were the free wageearning laborers; while last of all came a great body of house and other slaves, upon whose labor the entire economic structure was largely based." 1 "Babylonian society was pyramidal. The King was the apex, and the broad base rested upon a foundation of slaves. Social control was mediated from class to class. Caste and status are embedded in the code. In precise tariffs human values are set forth." 2 1 Vincent, "The Laws of Hammurabi," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. IX, p. 741. 2 Ibid., p. 753 Ancient Babylonia CHAP. Caste in Roman Empire Inherit- Society a Pagoda of Several Stories The caste system of the later Roman Empire was not built up by Roman conquests but was the product of forces within society. Says Dill: "An almost Oriental system of caste has made every social grade and every occupation practically hereditary, from the senator to the waterman on the Tiber, or the sentinel at a frontier post. In a society where poverty is almost branded with infamy, poverty is steadily increasing and wealth becoming more insolent and aggressive. The middle or bourgeois class was almost extinguished. Roman financial administration was paralysed, and at its close the real victors and survivors were the great landholders, surrounded by their serfs and dependents." "The tendency of the later Empire was to stereotype society by compelling men to follow the occupation of their fathers, and preventing a free circulation among different callings and grades of life. The man who brought the grain of Africa to the public stores of Ostia, the baker who made it into loaves for distribution, the butchers who brought pigs from Samnium, Lucania or Bruttium, the purveyors of wine and oil, the men who fed the furnaces of the public baths, were bound to their callings from one generation to another. It was the principle of rural serfdom applied to social functions. Every avenue of escape was closed. A man was bound to his calling not only by his father's but by his mother's condition. Men were not permitted to marry out of their guild. If the daughter of one of the baker caste married a man not belonging to it, her husband was bound to her father's calling. Not even a dispensation obtained by some means from the imperial chancery, not even the power of the Church could avail to break the bond of servitude." 4 In the fourth century A.D. Roman society formed a pyramid. At the base was the plebs, comprising the corporations of artisans and merchants. In the middle came the smaller proprietors, distinguished into simple curiales and principales. The top story comprised those who had the title of Roman senator. These classes were strictly separated. "There is nothing in common,' said the law, "between the curiales and the senators, between the plebeians and the curiales." All these classes paid taxes, but not the same taxes. The members of the collegia paid special contributions to the state, but bore none of the municipal burdens. 3" Roman Society," p. 100. 4 Ibid., p. 194. |