or return which falls far short of being an equivalent. The virtual slavery of the indebted peon is camouflaged by crediting him with wages for his labor and charging him outrageous prices for the scanty supplies he obtains from the planter's store. His laboring like a slave for mere food and clothes appears as a double transaction of purchase and sale. The ghastly slavery of the Indians on the Putumayo in eastern Peru hid itself in the books of the British company as the exchange of raw rubber at an incredibly low price for food and clothes at a price five or ten times their real worth. Under the system maintained formerly by the Dutch government in Java "Each native was obliged to plant six hundred coffee trees and keep them in bearing and deliver the crop cleaned and sorted at the government warehouse at a fixed price-nine and twelve florins the picul previous to 1874, although forty and forty-five florins were paid in the open market of the ports." 10 Forced labor being unknown to American law the operators of Southern lumber or turpentine camps until lately provided themselves with the negro labor they could not attract by wages by having able-bodied negroes arrested on some flimsy or trumped-up charge. By paying their fines when they were sentenced to the chain-gang to work out these fines the operators gained control of the negroes' labor power at a trifling expense. A few years ago it was common for the American street railway company to blind the public to the great value of the franchi-e voted it by its creatures in the city council by assuming a rather formidable number of petty obligations as, e.g., to keep the tracks clear of snow and to pave the street between the tracks and for eighteen inches on either side! In the same way the tribute extracted from a dependency takes the guise of a payment for "protection" by the suzerain. In Ecuador the tithe has been taken away from the clergy but the fact that the least charge for the performance of the marrage ceremony is eight dollars, a sum which it will take a peon at east a month to save, manifests the exploitive spirit. A Complex Society Is Full of 9 Opportunities for masked exploitation multiply as social relations become involved and social interdependence more extended. Once every man offered his sacrifice himself, but the custom of letting the priest do it opens the door to sacerdotal Exploiters 10 E. R. Scidmore, "Java," Ch. VIII. Lurking places for СНАР. XII Exploitation Ends When No Is Weak, Ignorant, or Unorganized abuses. Once every man might conduct his own cause, but the custom of appearing in court only by attorney delivers the litigant to the legal profession. Reliance upon bought food or milk gives the adulterator his chance. In the South a toocommercial farming has often enslaved the cultivator to the storekeeper with his mortgage and crop liens. Producing for the market instead of home consumption exposes the farmer to the exactions of elevator men, grain buyers and common carriers. The remedy is "Raise your own stuff." The investment of capital gives an advanced people a means of exploiting a backward people quite as productive as the brutal extraction of tribute. The spread of the opium evil among the Chinese under the stimulation of British traders, who even forced a war rather than be interfered with, illustrates the perils which lurk in trade. 10. Whatever equalizes social elements in respect to intelligence, courage, organization, discipline or situation narrows the in Society power of the one to exploit the other. Gunpowder levelled up the townsmen with the barons and knights of the Middle Ages The appearance of intelligence and capacity in the French commoners before the Revolution made the privileges of the nobles and clergy an anachronism. Many negro leaders believe that if the Southern negroes gain industrial skill and accumulate property they will not for long be kept out of their rights. Popular education is an anti-exploitation policy. Organization among farmers causes a prompt change of attitude in exploiting middlemen and carriers. From Ireland to Argentina organization among rural tenants has quickly broken landlord oppression. Labor organization is rightly hated by employers for its destroys much of their economic advantage. Modern economic analysis weakens the kept classes because, by tracing their high social position to privilege rather than to intrinsic superiority, it dissipates their prestige. The doctrine that all are equally sons of God undermines the conviction that "God will think twice before he damns a person of quality." CHAP. Inborn CHAPTER XIII OPPOSITION THERE is a natural spirit of opposition. The contrary type is well exemplified by that Scotch worthy of whom Opposition Macaulay wrote, "His hostility was not to popery or to Protestantism, to monarchical government or to republican government, to the house of Stuart or to the house of Nassau, but to whatever was, at the time, established." Such "Lorn kickers" pose as champions of threatened rights, knightly defenders of the minority, when, in fact, what animates them is the spirit of contradiction. Simmel detects in himself a "gentle, often scarcely conscious, and even immediately vanishing, impulse to say No to an assertion or appeal." He infers that often one personality in encountering expressions of the personality of another cannot assert itself otherwise than by some form of opposition.1 Struggle on a Con Ends in an Equilibrium INTERFERENCE OF INTERESTS AS A CAUSE OF OPPOSITION Clash of interest, even when it does not breed hostility, begets opposition in case either party has in prospect an advantage. So long as either believes that by expending x it can force its opponent to cede it x+, there will be strife unless the other party yields without resistance. In case both become convinced that an advantage of x can be extorted only by an expenditure of x, there will be an armed peace until the situation of the moment is crystallized in some agreement, treaty, law or institution, after which opposition ceases. Whether conflict will end thus in an equilibrium or will concave Field tinue until one or the other contestant is disposed of, depends on the nature of what may be called the terrain. If the struggle takes place, as it were, in a bowl, then the farther the stronger pushes the weaker, the harder it is to make him yield still more ground. This is illustrated by two well-matched states when, 1 "The Sociology of Conflict," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. IX, pp. 490, 672, 798. after an initial advantage, A invades B. The farther the invading army penetrates, the longer the line of communications it has to protect and the greater the resistance offered by the enemy population. Or take the recent diplomatic duel between Japan and China. In realizing on her temporary military and financial superiority to China, Japan comes to a point at which the popular boycott on Japanese goods provoked by her high-handed methods threatens to neutralize the commercial advantages she has extorted. CHAP. XIII on a Field Ends in the Triumph of batent One Com Over the Other If, conversely, the terrain is, as it were, an inverted bowl, the Struggle stuation does not stabilize itself. The farther the stronger Convex pushes the weaker the easier it is to make him yield still more ground. Such a case results in the complete triumph of the one and elimination of the other. This is exemplified by maritime rivals Rome and Carthage, Genoa and Pisa, Venice and Genoa -which fight until one or the other is overcome. Here there is no stabilizing frontier as there may be between land powers. For sea powers there can be no frontier. The same sea is in all ports and wherever the sea flows the hostile ships may sail and meet and fight. Some combatants grow weaker as they lose while others grow stronger. A military empire held together by self-interest or fear crumbles under heavy blows. On the other hand, when loyalty 5 roused and sentiments of sympathy and justice stir others to act on behalf of the losing side, an equilibrium is in sight. In class struggles public opinion often rallies to the aid of the weaker side when the other presses its advantage to the utmost. Before the American Civil War the West preserved a balance of power between North and South. In the strife between labor and capital the farmers and professional men lean to the side that is berg crowded to the wall. Interference of interests is likely to engender hatred, for our innate pugnacity is stirred against those who continually come between us and our goal. Rationalists, like statesmen, politicians, and business men, may harbor no ill will toward those who persist in getting in their way, but the masses are more emotional. The animosity of the white workers of California toward the migrant Chinese, of the English-speaking coal miners of Pennsylvania toward the Slavic immigrants who displaced them, of Northern wage earners toward the negroes from the South who May Become Chronic After Hatred Has Been Aroused |
