Neighborhood without mutual aid is likely to beget bickering, cliquism and feuds. Farmers often lose their social traits when. there is nothing they do together with their hands or their minds. They may be individually prosperous, yet fail to provide themselves with good roads, good schools, and opportunities for stimulating social intercourse. Upright they may be, yet divided by social, racial, and religious schisms. The remedy is to get them to cooperate in the importation of lecturers, entertainers, and travelling libraries, in the improvement of the roads, in the betterment of the schools, in building and furnishing an assembly hall for common use, in mutual fire insurance, in cooperative purchasing, in collectively discussing and thinking out problems which touch the farmers' life, in joint action on behalf of desired legislation and in creating occasions for sociable enjoyment. The varied practice of mutual aid socializes character and engenders social morality. Resort to Growing sory Co A common task may be performed by voluntary cooperation or by compulsory cooperation. In the Middle Ages even military defence was sometimes provided for by common understanding.10 operation In the valley of the Wei River in China one sees river dikes, roads, irrigation mains and town walls which owe nothing to authority. There is a tendency, however, for functions which might be discharged by means of voluntary association to devolve upon the state. The citizens maintain a paid police instead of taking turns at "watch and ward." Paid men fight fire instead of volunteer companies. The streets are cared for by a brigade of sweepers instead of a "clean-up" bee. We Are The main motives for abandoning free cooperation are: 1. Selfish individuals refuse to do their part in creating con- Away from ditions like order, security, or salubrity, which benefit all alike. 2. Certain services of joint benefit such as sanitation, educa 19" The allodial proprietors of Languedoc devised another method of &fense which gave them the same security and at the same time permitted them to escape the ruinous protection of a feudal lord. The method was, in brief, for several neighboring proprietors to join together and form a sort of league or confederation, in which all guaranteed reciprocal assistance to each. As long as the alliance held, each member was bound, in the interests of the common defense, to occupy those positions in the domains of his allies which were most menaced. The obligations of each member varied according to the importance of his property and according to the needs of adequate defense." Munro and Sellery, * Medieval Civilization," 210-11. Voluntary Cooperation on Ac count of Its Prac tical Dif. ficulties СНАР. XXI "Voluntary" Cooperation may be ing than Coopera tion, conservation, street cleaning, food-inspection, provision for recreation, etc., are appreciated least by the ignorant who need them most. 3. The waste of energy in keeping up as many voluntary associations as there are tasks calling for combined effort is avoided by using a single inclusive compulsory organization, e.g., the municipality. The necessity of creating under the voluntary plan as many distinct associations as there are general interests arises out of the fact that the library users are not identical with the school users, the playground users, the water users; with those who want steam rollers, or hose carts, or street sprinklers, or garbage carts, or irrigation ditches, or free antitoxin. Since the circles do not coincide, a special association would have to be organized for each service. 4. What once was done by the intermittent efforts of all fire fighting, pursuit of criminals with "hue and cry," watching dikes and irrigation canals, road mending, street cleaning, lifesaving has been turned over to the continuous efforts of a few who know their business-firemen, police, street-cleaners, inspectors, and coastguards. Now that money is given instead of service, it is simpler to support these services out of taxes than to pass a subscription paper for each. 5. "Voluntary" cooperation loses voluntariness to the extent that social pressure is applied in order to whip slackers into line. Less Will On the other hand, under popular government, the support of each public service may be willing for all but a very small mition Under nority of tax payers. If four-fifths of the citizens approve a school tax, while half of those who contribute to a cause do so in order to placate public opinion, the former cooperation is voluntary rather than the latter. Govern ment In a word, the voluntary method of caring for common needs is little used after the community has become too large for its members to know one another and to act readily in concert; after it has become so differentiated that the sense of common needs to be cared for is dull; and after the community can be better served by the trained man than by the volunteer citizen. THE SOCIAL DIVISION OF LABOR When the services to be combined or interchanged are unlike, we have a social division of labor. Part of society renders cer tain services while the rest render it counter-services. This arrangement may grow up spontaneously as we see in the trades and professions-or of set purpose as we see in the various public services. In the former case the services are paid for by the individual recipients of service, in the latter case by the group collectively. The earliest partition of social service is that between the workers and the fighters. Barton shows that "a semi-agricultural cultivation of the palm in the oases was the chief food supply of the Arabs almost from the time of their settlement in the peninsula. No company of men could gain possession of an oasis and hold it for cultivation without organization for defense. Such an oasis would not support them the year round, they must either hunt or keep flocks and herds. In Arabia there was little hunting. If flocks and herds were kept they must be led forth to pasture. While some were cultivating the oasis, the younger and hardier men took the more dangerous part of leading the flocks and herds out to graze." "1 Payne declares the primitive functional cleavage is between workers and warriors. "An agricultural tribe permanently settled upon productive lands which its labor has rendered additionally valuable, stands in a new relation to neighboring tribes. While its permanently stationary condition exposes it to attacks, which its women, food stores and miscellaneous possessions naturally invite, the social changes produced by increasing reliance en agriculture render its members as a whole incapable of offering effectual resistance. Hence the warrior class. Such a class, having as its primary function the defense of the community against external aggression, is found in all advancing agricultural tribes. Where an aggregate of such tribes, as happens in favorabe circumstances, has been welded into a nation and has consequently come to make a figure in history, this class has always been the principal agent in the process. An advancement not defended by an adequate military organization would be foredoomed to extinction." 12 This exchange of service for protection he calls "the first social covenant," and adds,13 "The social covenant can be shown in some instances to be definitely formulated and handed down 11"A Sketch of Semitic Origins," pp. 33-411 Opt., Vol. II, pp. 1, 2. is Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 36-7. СНАР. The Giving of Protec tion in Re turn for Support is "the First Social Coven ant' Origin of Feudal Dependence Hired and Ex ploiters of the Work in precise terms from generation to generation. Such was the Taine traces the old French noblesse to hard-hitting fighters who in the anarchy of the tenth century gather a force which can protect a district. Each canton acquires a local police corps in which from father to son one is always a policeman. The peasant now sows in security. He knows that in case of danger he can find asylum in the palisade at the base of the castle. By degrees a tacit contract grows up between the chieftain of the donjon and the early settlers in the open country. They will serve and pay him if he will protect them. As for the wretched who take refuge with him from the general disorder he plants them on soil which without him would be uninhabitable and they become his serfs.13 ers. Of course such a relation degenerates inevitably into exploitation because the cultivators cannot deal as equals with the fightAble to intimidate the population they protect these local chieftains become headstrong lords, absorbing the best of everying Popu- thing and scorning every business but fighting. Many a local population which in the Dark Ages agreed to feed a wandering band of armed men in return for their military protection were crushed into serfdom by these hired guards. When the "king's 13" The Ancient Régime," ch. I. lation peace" spread over the land and defence was cared for by a royal army the scions of feudal chieftains became an elegant parasitic noblesse. CHAP. The ancient societies had no armies distinct from the civil Rise of the Standing population. The free man was at once citizen and soldier. The Army Roman Empire created a professional army of four hundred thousand soldiers, by means of which one hundred and twenty millions of souls lived in a peace and security such as the earlier societies have never known. But the people lost their liberties for good and all, while the martial spirit so decayed among the civil population that, once their troops had been beaten, they put up but a feeble resistance to the barbarians. Army Militia The union of weapons and prestige in the same hands makes it Standing very difficult to keep the military always subordinate to the civil Versus authority, i.e., to keep the armed servant from becoming master. In Europe the army has been the private preserve of the aristocracy and therefore a hotbed of reactionary intrigue. Dreading army ascendency our forefathers decried a standing army and put undue faith in a militia. The modern device of universal military service rather than an overlarge professional army avoids. the peril of a gulf between the military and the civil parts of society. Another frequent differentiation is that between the governing class and the rest of society. This class arises out of those who, possessing wealth and leisure, have gained the intelligence and organization for the control of public affairs. Usually, but not always, it cultivates in its members martial spirit and proficiency in arms. Such an element gains the upper hand because it has the qualifications for governing, whereas the unlettered masses are too ignorant and narrow-minded to rule the state. In EngLand of the eighteenth century, the country gentlemen; in our South, the planters; the Junkers in East Prussia; the hacendados in Chile, exemplify a governing class. The two former have had to let in traders and capitalists. The last is still a governing class because in Chile trade is in the hands of foreigners, who have no share in politics. Such a class may give vigorous and intelligent government but it never uses government to promote social ends or to elevate the masses. In time it is almost sure to come into serious economic dependence upon the government it controls. Witness Origin of the Gov erning Class How it Conceives ment |