CHAP. XXIX Parts United Only the Stand be Laborer his life for a nominal wage. He can change employers only in case some one pays his debt, and this binds him to a new master. In general, the rural population of the tropical parts of Latin America are in a like state of dependence and subserviency. The appearance of very large employers in places remote from In Some the centers of population, monopolizing employment of a certain of the kind or within a certain district, as also the more and more cun- States ningly concerted action of employers, through their associations, Labor are creating in some parts of the United States a half-feudal de- Unions pendence of the wage-earner. Workingmen are herded in com- tween the pany towns, lodged in company houses, forced to trade at com- Ind pany stores, paid in company money, and hampered in their comings, goings, and meetings by armed company underlings. In some cases even churches and schools are built and controlled by the company. Moreover, a hundred lumber companies united. in an association may confront the applicant for labor with a printed form to sign, in which he declares that he is competent to do the work required and is familiar with all its duties, and furthermore requests his previous employers to furnish the company information as to his character and record. This means that as condition of obtaining employment the applicant must waive his right to sue under the law for injuries received in the course of his work and to sue under the law for defamation of character. SUBORDINATION AND FIXITY Feudal De pendence upon the Giver of work ence Ex Depend cludes All Possibility of Compe tition between the and When the inferiors are severally in a state of dependence upon the superiors, the healthful circulation of families between the upper and the nether levels in the social system ceases. The upper people, even if they are victors in a universal rivalry to accumulate and rise, proceed to curb and stifle this rivalry in order Superiors to bequeath to their children their own high social position. Com- Inferiors petition is too clogged and feeble to bring about rearrangements of the elements in society. There is no staircase by which brogans may mount and patent-leather boots descend. Peasant ability finds hardly a path up, while sloth or incapacity does not drop a “gentle " family into the toiling mass. Generation after generation, high families stay up, while lowly families stay down. Handicapped by dependence, ignorance, and unfair laws, the farm hand, no matter how hard-working and capable, never becomes an owner of land, never breaks into the charmed circle. In the West CHAP. Economic ence Saps coast countries of South America no laborer rises through tenancy to ownership as he does at times in Argentina and far oftener in the United States. With the whole machinery of law and the state in their hands, the proprietors see to it that the clever lads from the people shall not elbow aside their own sons, be they never so lazy and spendthrift. In Chile, for example, the ruling class keeps the bright boys. from the mud huts of the inquilinos out of the better-paid occupations by providing a public elementary-school system which does not connect with the free state high school and university. Only private schools fit pupils to enter the state system; so that the children of those too poor to pay tuition have no access to the government service and the liberal professions. SUBORDINATION AND CHARACTER All about us we see how the constant immediate dependence of one human being upon the favor of another blights native selfrespect and self-assertiveness. The "tip" in lieu of a fixed wage, by making the servant dependent upon the served, fosters obsequiousness in the one and the patronizing spirit in the other. The growing economic dependence of wives upon husbands owing to the disappearance of household industries from the home threatens to sap the character of the married woman and constitutes a serious obstacle to her rising to a higher position in the home and in society. The dependence of professors of the ethical or social sciences upon governing boards composed of wealthy men or reflecting, perhaps anticipating, the wishes of politicians or donors, jeopardizes that vigor of character and candor of utterance essential to their largest service. The dependence of the clergyman upon the financial "pillars" in his church leaves him less free to apply the touchstone of Christian principles to current business practices. Advertiser or "interest" control over newspapers is making many newspaper men feel like helots. Dependence wilts manhood as surely as the tropic sun wilts Northern energy. However stiff the native backbone of a race, a few generations under the yoke will make them worms. The type of character we stigmatize as "Asiatic" testifies, not to the presence of innate weakness in the races of Asia, but to their long subjection to arbitrary power. The nearer is a class to the bottom of the social heap, the worse will its members be de formed in spirit, and the less often will they exhibit the normal traits of freemen. СНАР. XXIX Born De Unlovely Traits In born dependents, servility, sycophancy, lying, and petty pendents thievery are as natural as it is natural for a starving crop to be Exhibit yellow; yet these by-products of pressure are pointed to as proofs and Conof a poor moral endowment. Against a background of such temptible faults stand out the more brilliantly the high spirit, manliness, and sense of honor of the hereditary superiors. Character-contrasts social in origin are interpreted as inborn. To divert attention from their underpinning of privilege, the superiors point to the low-caste and say: "Look, they are the dull-witted, the incapable; we are the well-born, the fittest. Our mastership and our reward are of Nature's own giving. We are the cream that rises to the top of the milk." It is impossible for inferiors generally to prove their mettle until they have freedom and knowledge, and hardly can they win these so long as they are shut out from government. But, since. beings so benighted are clearly unfit to have a voice in governing, social inferiority tends to perpetuate itself. Those of low degree stay low until some vast upheaval such as the invention of gunpowder or of printing, the discovery of the New World, the growth of cities, or the rise of the capitalistic method of production gives able and ambitious commoners their chance to win knowledge or wealth and break into the master circle. Social Inferior ity Per petuates Itself SUBORDINATION AND CHARITY A Great Develop ment of Charity Is Often religious doctrines or humanitarian ideals beget in the superiors a sense of responsibility for the welfare of their dependents. Generosity and charity are not only considered becoming in the social superior, but, wanting them, he may be ostra- Symptom cized by his own class. An American who goes to reside on an English estate to which he has fallen heir is astonished to learn how much a country family is expected to give away. Far from being a good sign, such a growth of charity often means simply that healthful competition does not exist, and that by cunning devices the ruling class has so "stacked the cards" against the unprivileged that many of them are not able to look out for themselves. Whenever in normal times more than 2 or 3 per cent. of a population is helped by the well-to-do, it is safe to infer that CHAP. the possessing element has made itself the keeper of the doors of opportunity. An Upper Up-Comers A Closed Undergoes Degenera tion but Gains Good Looks THE FATE OF CLOSED CLASSES Fifty years ago Bagehot wrote: In all countries new wealth is ready to worship old wealth, if old wealth will only let it, and I need not say that in England new wealth is eager in its worship. Satirist after satirist has told us how quick, how willing, how anxious, are the newly-made rich to associate with the ancient rich. Rank probably in no country whatever has so much "market value as it has in England just now, Of course, there have been many countries in which certain old families, whether rich or poor, were worshiped by whole populations with a more intense and poetic homage; but I doubt if there has ever been any in which all old families and all titled families received more ready observance from those who were their equals, perhaps their superiors, in wealth, their equals in culture, and their inferiors only in descent and rank. The possessors of the "material" distinctions of life . . . rush to worship those who possess the immaterial distinctions. Nothing can be more politically useful than such homage, if it be skilfully used; no folly can be idler than to repel and reject it. An upper class shrewd enough to perceive and act on this principle may maintain itself indefinitely. The new blood it absorbs corrects the thinning of "blue" blood. The heroes and achievers admitted brighten its fading prestige and lend color to its claim of natural superiority. But it is human nature for those who control a good thing to keep it all for themselves and their children. The greater the luster of a nobility, the more loath are its members to share this luster with outsiders. Hence, unless the iron hand of a monarch holds open the door in order to placate his commoners or to stimulate the zeal of his servants, an upper class closes itself to upstarts and becomes a hereditary caste. Thenceforth it moves slowly but fatally toward its doom. As their achieving ancestors recede into the distance the patricians more and more owe their exalted position to privilege rather than to personal worth or conspicuous service. With the aid of the props which an aristocracy well knows how to provide the highborn fool or weakling stays up, while the lowborn man of ability is shut out from wealth and honor. Shielded from that natural elimination of the unfit to which the common people are exposed, a closed upper class loses in the course of four or five generations the virility of its achieving ancestors and becomes an imposture. Nevertheless, thanks to mating continually with the most beautiful women in the population, it gains in good looks and is never so patrician in feature as in the period when it is unable to produce from its loins enough men of brains and force to vindicate its privileges. Its tendency to beget handsome fools does not, however, cause an aristocracy to abate by one jot its pretensions to better clay. It nurses carefully its prestige and spares nothing in pose, manner, and surroundings that will keep up the illusion of its superiority. It realizes that entailed estates are not everything, for if their owners miss too many kinds of distinction they will cease to be looked up to. So it not only cherishes and parades its ancestral glories, but, whenever a new source of prestige appears, it promptly gets close to it. Aristocrats take under their patronage such dispensers of glory as minstrels, troubadours, poets, artists, orators, priests, and clerics. If hardihood is admired, their young men will be sportsmen and explorers; if letters are honored, they will play Macaenas; if learning is prized, they will varnish themselves with a thin coating of scholarship. Aristocrats of long lineage dare not let themselves be outshone. They must be the best groomed, the best mannered, the most splendid, must be seen against the richest background or in the brightest limelight. They must be among the first to fly, to navigate under water, to scale a peak, to cross a desert, or to visit a closed land. War with its command of the many by the few gives them their chance, for nobles have a traditional affinity for the martial. Moreover, they exalt themselves by appealing to a theory of heredity that science smiles at, and cry down the rôle opportunity plays in individual destiny. Thus an effete hereditary caste contrives to keep itself at the apex of society until in some crisis it fails to meet the test and its hollowness is plain to all men. Then its privileges are abolished, it collapses like an empty sack, and the way is open for a new and abler group of families to climb into its vacant seats, or else for the social system to be modified in the direction of giving freer play to competition. |