own and only they could be flogged. There were certain government schools for the children of the nobles and other schools from which those of the peasant class were excluded. Each order had its own assemblies and officers. The nobility and the wealthy merchants did not associate but were distinct in their clubs and even in their costume. СНАР. XXVI Strata in A generation ago the inhabitants of each Roumanian village Social were divided into three classes: First, the distinguished vil- Roumania lagers, front-men, called fruntasi or oameni de frunta: Second, the middlemen, mylocasi, or oameni de mana adona, men of second hand: Third, the hind-men or codas (tail-men). Each man, according to his family, personal gifts, reputation and fortune, was ranged into one or other of these three classes, which had each their separate customs, rights and privileges. One cannot survey these strange formations without wondering from what motives and by what processes they are built up. Caste rests upon a theory of heredity which is a caricature of the truth. Unearned privilege is an affront to the natural sense of justice. That the idle should lord it over the industrious and useful smacks of "Alice in Wonderland." The stigma on manual labor flies in the face of the instinct of workmanship. It seems incredible, too, that productive folk should go on forever feeding a race of drones. A social order so preposterous needs, therefore, to be accounted for. The Gen- esis of sents a СНАР. Superior- Descent from the Gods as a Basis for Supe riority CHAPTER XXVII THE RISE OF GROSS INEQUALITIES ALL about us we see men rising or sinking in responsibility, influence, or power on account of their personal qualities, but this does not result in distinct social layers. Social strata there will not be unless there is some kind of inheritance — of occupation, of prestige, of office, of authority, of property on the one hand; of lowly calling, of unfreedom, and of disability on the other. One of the earliest social differentiations is that between the sexes. In the predatory epoch, out of which grew the barbarian culture, the subordination of women and their treatment as chattels arose from the fact that they could not fight. Since the core of the tribe was the body of warriors, and all other activities became subsidiary to the martial activity, fighting capacity gave the point of view from which persons and sexes were rated. The mere workers, including women and those weak of body, fell, therefore, into a lower social position. Another early basis for hereditary superiority was afforded by kinship with the divinity. When the intermingling of men of different kindreds had broken down the tribal system and substituted the tie of a common worship for the tie of blood, not all the members of the community could be thought of as children of its god. But since such gods were, in origin, the deities of certain old families, the members of these families might plume themselves on their descent from the gods and make such a pedigree a basis for aristocratic pretensions. Thus, among the Greeks as well as among the Semites, royal and noble houses long continued to trace their stem back to a divine forefather. But by far the commonest basis of aristocracy is wealth. A great fortune not only exempts a family from humilific employments and enables it to bedazzle with a splendid style of living, but through nearly all history it has commanded ennoblement. Birth, no doubt, explains the ranking of individuals, but the root cause of the rank differences among families has been wealth— CHAP. XXVII monest tion of wealth, moreover, in a large block, and therefore not gained in Ровѕевordinary ways. The ups and downs of fortune which happen sion of all about us in consequence of individual differences in ability, weath enterprise, character, or diligence shed little light on the origins the Comof fixed classes. Through the thousand channels it controls, the Foundadominant class always propagates the idea that social distinctions Social Supehave originated in differences in personal capacity and virtue, Fiority and that they owe nothing to crime, fraud, corruption, favoritism, or privilege. The truth is, however, that the fortunes which become dynamos of social power are far from being mere byproducts of the ordinary distribution of wealth according to economic traits. Priority is one basis of acquisitive advantage. In the mediaeval towns, the determination as to which of the fugitive serfs should be master and which servant chiefly depended on which ran away the earlier. It was not long before the "old burgher families drew a line against the newcomers. The former ran the guilds, ruled the town, monopolized trade, and reserved for themselves the benefits from the communal lands. The city thus became divided into "burghers" and "inhabitants." In Australia adventurous sheepmen early pushed on into the public domain in advance of the government surveys, and "squatted" with their flocks on vast areas from which their shepherds excluded all settlers. Whole districts of valuable crop country lay untilled in the hands of pastoralists, who soon became wealthy and powerful men. When the state later attempted to resume its rights over these tracts the "wool kings" were too strong to be dispossessed, and the government had to content itself with exacting a small rent upon the area occupied. Booty may give a seigneurial class its start. Thus in the Dark Ages peaceful agricultural communities hired scholae, or bands of unruly men gathered about hirdmen, or temporary chieftains, to protect them. But the warrior bands had more opportunities for enrichment than the peaceful tillers in the communities. Success in fighting brought them droves of cattle, iron, and slaves. Says Kropotkin: There was plenty of waste land and no lack of men ready to till it, if only they could obtain the necessary cattle and implements. . . . And if one of the hirdmen of the armed brotherhoods offered the The First Comers into Aris tocrata Booty as a Corner Stone of Nobility CHAP. XXVII Historic ally a Large Block of Land Has Been the Economic Basis of Nobility Ancient Japan peasants some cattle for a fresh start, some iron to make a plough if not the plough itself, his protection from further raids, and a number of years free from all obligations, before they should begin to repay the contracted debt, they settled upon the land. And when... these pioneers began to repay their debts, they fell into servile obligations toward the protector of the territory.1 GRANTS OF LAND AS FOUNDATION OF A LEISURE CLASS Mobile productive property is comparatively a late thing in the world, so that, through most of human history, a landed estate has constituted the economic basis of a noble family. Hence grants of land play a leading rôle in social destiny. When the elders of Israel importuned Samuel for a king, the aged prophet warned them: "He will take your fields and your vineyards and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants." 2 Early Egyptian kings bestowed on distinguished military officers portions of the crown domains. The absorption of the Roman ager publicus by senators and other insiders made them enormously rich and started the senatorial aristocracy on its career of six centuries. William the Conqueror distributed his newly won kingdom into about sixty thousand parcels of nearly equal value from each of which was due a "knight's service on horseback." As the Castilians drove back the Moors in Spain the land thus won was divided into huge fiefs and given to magnates on condition of their rendering military service. In Japan in the seventh century a people essentially patriarchal in constitution was divided into governing and supporting classes. The former consisted of a civil nobility of rank and office, the higher ranks and offices being accompanied with definite grants of rice land to be held during tenure of office and exempted from the payment of tributes and forced labor. In 1586, under Queen Elizabeth, the plan for peopling the province of Munster in Ireland proposed to divide it into seignories of from 4,000 to 12,000 acres, to be offered to the younger sons of gentlemen, who would "have the manrode of so many families and the disposing of so many good holdings," being "a thing fit for gentlemen of good behaviour and credit and not for any man of inferior calling." Wallace describes how inequality arose among the Cossacks when communal lands became private property. CHAP. XXVII Unequal Grabbing Public Hereditary Inequality "As the population augmented and the opportunities for marauding decreased, the majority had to overcome their repugnance to husbandry; and soon large patches of plowed land or waving grain were to be seen in the vicinity of the 'stanitsas,' as the Cossack villages are termed. At first there was no attempt to Economic regulate this new use of the ager publicus. Each Cossack who wished to raise a crop plowed and sowed wherever he thought fit, and retained as long as he chose the land thus appropriated; and when the soil began to show signs of exhaustion, he abandoned his plot and plowed elsewhere. But this unregulated use of the communal property could not long continue. As the number of agriculturists increased, quarrels frequently arose and sometimes terminated in bloodshed. Still worse evils appeared when markets were created in the vicinity, and it became possible to sell the grain for exportation. In some stanitsas the richer families appropriated enormous quantities of the common land by using several teams of oxen, or by hiring peasants in the nearest villages to come and plow for them; and instead of abandoning the land after raising two or three crops they retained possession of it, and came to regard it as their private property. Thus the whole of the arable land, or at least the best parts of it, became actually, if not legally, the private property of a few families, whilst the less energetic or less fortunate inhabitants of the stanitsa had only parcels of comparatively barren soil, or had no land whatever, and descended to the position of agricultural laborers. "If this had taken place in a British colony, or in some other community living under the laissez faire system of administration, the communal land would have been in this way permanently converted into private property, and those who were not proprietors would have been obliged to gain a livelihood as servants or to emigrate elsewhere." 3 Favoritism in the DisPublic posal of It is the New World, however, that affords the best view of Shameless the manufacture of social superiors by grants of land. Throughout Spanish America the agricultural natives were divided among, and "commended" to, the conquerors, and as the growth of a colony brought more land within reach it was always passed out America "Russia," p. 362. Spanish |