I. ad Latomum (1535 ff.) Compare _Juvellanos_, in _Laborde_,
Itinéraire déscriptif, IV, 176. _Townsend_, Journey through Spain,
II, 207, 117. _Buckle_, History of Civilization, II, ch. I. The
census of 1788 gave the number of priests and monks, soldiers,
mariners, nobles, lawyers, tax-gatherers, authors, students and
domestics, at 1,221,000, in a total of 3,800,000 men; from which
number there was a multitude of beggars, vagrants etc. to be
deducted. _Laborde_, Itinéraire, II, 32 ff. The seventeen
universities and the numberless small Latin schools, with their
gratuitous instruction, and their many scholarships, misled a
disproportionately large number to engage in study. At the beginning
of this century, there were at least 200,000 priests, nuns
(_Geistliche_), etc., in a population of from three to three and a
half millions only. (_Ebeling_, Erdbeschreibung von Portugal, 66.)
_Senior_ shows that the poverty of the Osman is caused by too many
state employees, tax-farmers and retail merchants. (Journal kept in
Turkey and Greece, 1857-58.) Thus, also, _J. Tucker_, Four Tracts,
1774, 18, contrasts men engaged in industry with rich idlers, whose
increase, possibly by immigration, would make the people a nation of
“gentlemen and ladies, footmen, grooms, laundresses etc.”
_Schmitthener_, N. Œk., 656, calls a condition such as that of
Spain, “national-economical phthisis.”
_ 340 Tucker_, Progress of the U.S., 137. The following data also will
serve for a comparison: In Belgium, in 1856, it was estimated that,
leaving persons _sans profession_ out of consideration, 45.6 per
cent. were agriculturists, 37.2 industrials, 6.7 in commerce, 2.8 in
the liberal professions, 1.5 _force publique_, 2.1 _propriétaires,
rentiers, pensionnés_, 3.7 _domesticité_. In Prussia, in 1871, of
the entire male population, 28.6 per cent. were engaged in
agriculture, forest-culture, hunting and fishing: 32.3 per cent. in
mining, industry, building, and in founderies: 8.56 in trade and
commerce; 20.3 in personal services and handiwork not belonging to
any of the groups above mentioned; 2.3 in the army and navy; 3.7 in
other callings; 2.7 were renters, pensioners, and persons who lived
by selling or renting houses, reserving lodgings for themselves
therein, and persons who gave no account of their calling. (Preuss.
statisc. Zeitschr., 1875, 32. ff.) It is, however, surprising that
_Engel’s_ Amtl. Jahrbuch, III, 1867, gives only 48 per cent. as
belonging to the first category, and 25 to the second. In the
kingdom of Saxony in 1861, 25.1 per cent. of the population were
agriculturists and foresters; 56.1 were engaged in industry; 7.7 in
trade and commerce; 6.8 in art, science, the service of the state
and of private persons; while 4.1 per cent were without any
particular calling, or returned none. Bavaria, in 1852, had 67.9 per
cent. of its population engaged in agriculture; 22.7 in the trades
and in manufactures; 5.5 per cent., persons living on the interest
of their money, and by performing the higher class of personal
services; 1.9 in the army; and 2 per cent. of listed poor. In
_Hermann_, Beiträge zur Statistik des Königreichs Bayern. In France,
according to the official reports, there were:
_Agriculteurs_ 61.46 per cent. in 1851, 51.49 per cent. in 1866;
_Industriels et commerçants_ 25.95 per cent. in 1851, 32.78 per
cent. in 1866;
_Professions libérales_ 9.73 per cent. in 1851, 9.48 per cent. in
1866.
To which it must be added, that, in 1851, there were 2.86 _sans
profession ou dont les professions n’ont pu être constatées_; and
that, in 1866, on the other hand, there were 2.87 per cent. in
_professions se rattachant à l’agriculture, industrie et commerce.
(Legoyt.)_ In England and Wales, leaving the domestic class out of
consideration (women without an independent means of employment,
school children, servant girls etc.), and also the “indefinite
class,” there were, in 1861, 25.3 per cent. of the population
engaged in agricultural pursuits; 60.7 in industrial; 7.8 in
commercial; and 6.06 in professional pursuits. In Italy, omitting
housewives, children and infirm persons, there were, in 1862, 57.4
per cent. of the population engaged in agriculture; 22.9 in
industrial pursuits; 4 in commerce; and 3.9 per cent. in the army
and in the liberal professions. (Annali univ. di Statistica, Febbr.,
1866.) On Holland, in the middle of the 17th century, see _J. de
Wit_, Mémoires, 34 seq.
_ 341 Csaplovics_, Gemälde von Ungarn II, 1. _Torrens_, The Budget: On
commercial and colonial Policy, 106 ff.
342 Precisely as there are more people ruined by spirituous liquors than
by bread. Time thieving is also more frequent among servants. There
is scarcely anything in agriculture analogous to the lazzaroni who
wait all day to help a gondola to land, to unload a coach, etc.
There is more in the chase, in the fisheries, or in the cattle
raising.
343 Compare _Bastiat_, Harmonies économiques, ch. 17. Hence _Sismondi_
accounts it one of the chief merits of the constitutional state,
that in it, the _population gardienne_ does not regulate its own
remuneration. (N.P., I, 144.) _Saint Simon_, indeed, says that the
French members of the _Chambre_, in his time, drew a revenue from
the state, three times as large as from their own resources, and
were, therefore, deeply interested in increasing the budget. (Vues
sur la Propriété et la Législation, 1818.) I would call attention
also to the national over-estimation and over-crowding of learned
callings from which Germany suffered, even as far back as the time
of Louis XIV. (_v. Schröder_, Fürstl. Schatz-und Rentkammer, 302
ff.); to the disproportionate number of keepers of public houses,
which is related to the system of popular assemblies, and is a
regular attendant upon Democracy (_Bronner_, Der C. Aargau, I, 451.)
Taxation-legislation may here become a good means of popular
education.
344 This was recognized very early by _Gregor. Tolsan_, l.c. _Ad.
Müller_, Elemente, II, 255. _Storch_, Handbuch, II, 229 ff.
(_Schleiermacher_, Christ. Sitte, 668.) _A. Smith,_ W. of N., II,
ch. 5, ascribed greater productiveness to agricultural than to
industrial labor; in the former case, not only human labor was put
in operation, but the forces of nature were compelled to coöperate
with them. Similarly, _Malthus_, Additions (1817) to the Essay on
the Principle of Population, B. III, ch. 8-12. Principles of P. E.,
217 ff. Both thus explain the rent of land, and so far as products,
which have only value in exchange are concerned, they are right.
Hence it is all the more surprising that _Carey_, the zealous
advocate of a protective tariff and opponent of rent, comes back in
this to Adam Smith. Principles of Social Science, 1858, II, 35, and
passim. Compare also _J. B. Say_, Traité, II, ch. 8; _Sismondi_, N.
P., II, ch. 5. For the best refutation of this view, see _Ricardo_,
Principles, ch. 2, 3. Does not all labor put the force of nature in
operation? _Ad opera nihil aliud potest homo, quam ut corpora
naturalia admoveat, reliqua natura intus transigit._ (_Bacon._)
Similarly, _Verri_, Meditazioni, III, 1. An expression escapes even
_Ricardo_ himself (ch. 7), to the effect, that capitalists are the
producing class.
345 Relying on very superficial statistics of England and France,
_Ganilh_ advocates a theory of the productive forces of the several
branches of economy the very reverse of _Adam Smith’s_. He places
foreign trade first; then follow wholesale trade, industry and
agriculture. (Théorie, I, 240 seq.)
346 Ausland, 1846, No. 54. Expressions still used in Europe, such as
_Spindelmagen_ (spindle-relation), _Kunkellehen_ (apron-string-hold)
etc., for instance, suggest this most ancient and purely family
division of labor. The lower classes of the population, even in the
most civilized countries, are wont to preserve some of the peculiar
customs of very primitive times. Hence it is that among
proletarians, the division of labor between males and females is
still very small. The employments usual at different stages of life
among men, and the costumes worn by them are much more uniform than
among the higher classes. See _Riehl_, Die Familie, 1855, passim.
347 As _Dankwardt_ shows, the _jus civile_ of the earliest Roman time is
based on the condition of isolated labor, the later _jus gentium_,
on the division of labor. N. Œk. und Jurisprudenz, 1857, Heft. I.
_ 348 Saxo Gramm._, Hist. Dan. V, 101. _Turner_, Hist. of the A. Saxons
B. VII, ch. 11. Nibel., 351 ff. There is a French proverb: _du temps
que la reine Berthe filait_. Queen Bertha was a mythic daughter of
Charlemagne. It may be that the character meant is the old German
spinning goddess Berchta. Concerning the daughter of Otto the Great,
see _Dithmar_, Merseb. II. _Homer_, Od. V, 31 ff.; X, 106; XXIII,
189 ff. _Herodot._, VIII, 137. _Livy_, I. 57.
_ 349 Eden_, State of the Poor I, 558 ff. In the interior of Peru, the
priest is also usually a shop-keeper (_Pöppig_, Reise, II, 365); in
Canada, as in many of the villages of the Alps which are not often
visited, a hotel keeper. In countries with an unadvanced
civilization, the little division of labor that exists is also very
awkwardly regulated. Thus in Russia, weak children are very
frequently put to work on farms, while powerful men are found in the
city offering all kinds of eatables and the pictures of saints for
sale. (_Storch_, Gemälde des russischen Reichs II, 364. _v.
Haxthausen_, Studien I, 335.)
_ 350 Babbage_, Economy of Machinery, 1833, 201. _L. Faucher_, Angleterre
II, Ch. “_la Ville des Serruriers_.” The industrial statistics of
Paris, furnished by _H. Say_ in 1847 and 1848, show that in that
city alone there are 325 different branches of industry, 17 of which
are concerned with the production of food; 21 with building; 32 with
the manufacture of furniture; 21 with that of clothing; 36 with that
of thread and tissues; 7 with skins and leathers; 14 with vehicles,
saddlery, and military equipment; 33 with chemicals and pottery; 33
with working in metal, glass etc.; 35 in that of the precious metals
and jewels; 27 with printing, engraving and paper; 15 with that of
wooden-ware and wicker-ware; 34 with _articles de Paris_. Journal
des Economistes, Janv., 1853, 107. According to the industrial
almanac of Birmingham, there are in that city manufacturers of
buttons in gold, silver, metal, mother-of-pearl etc.; manufacturers
of hammers, ink-stands, coffin-nails, dog-collars, tooth-picks,
stirrups, fish-hooks, spurs, pack-needles etc.
351 And so with the subdivisions. Flannel is manufactured almost
exclusively in Halifax, woolen blankets between Leeds and
Huddersfield etc.
352 The same division of labor was developed among the Dutch in the 17th
century, and excited then the wonder of the English. See _Sir W.
Temple,_ Observations upon the U. Provinces, 1672, ch. 3. Works, I,
128, 143. In 1615, _Montchrêtien_ held up the Flemish as a model to
the French, in this respect.
353 On the bees, see _Virgil, Georg._ IV, 158.
354 The principle of the division of labor was known to the ancients:
_Xenophon_, Cyri Discipl., VIII, 2, 5. _Plato_, de Rep., II, 369,
III, 394, IV, 443; _Isocrat_., Busir., 8. _Aristot_., Polit., II, 8,
8. Among the more modern writers, compare _Thomas Aquin_., De Reg.
pr., I, 1, II, 3. _Luther_ (Works by Walch, I, 388), in his
Commentary on Genesis, 3, 19. _Petty_, Several Essays, 1682, p. 113.
Considerations upon the East India Trade, London, 1701. _Roscher_,
Geschichte der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre, 118. _Mandeville_,
The Fable of the Bees, enlarged edition of 1723, p. 411. _Berkeley_,
Querist, 1735, No. 415, 430, 520 ff., 586: “What is everybody’s
business is nobody’s.” _Harris_, on Money and Coins (1757), I, 16.
_J. J. Rousseau_, Emile (1762), L. III. _Turgot_, Sur la Formation
et la Distribution des Richesses, § 3, p. 50, 62, 66. _Diderot_,
Encyclopédie de l’Art, s. v. Art. _J. Tucker_, Four Tracts (1774),
p. 25 ff. _Boccaria_, Economia pubblica, I, 1, 9. But the author to
whom we owe most on this score is undoubtedly _Adam Smith_. To him
we are indebted almost entirely for our knowledge of the natural
laws developed in § 59 seq.
355 According to _Adam Smith_, a nailer can make 2,300 nails (_Rau_ says
3,000 shoemaker’s tacks in the Odenwalde) per day; a smith who is
only occasionally employed in the manufacture, from 800 to 1,000;
and smiths who never made nails before, from 200 to 300. A clever
filer makes 200 strokes in a minute; a skilled comb-maker can make
in a day from 60 to 70 combs of such fineness that there are from 40
to 48 teeth to the inch in them; eight Liege brick-makers, working
together, produce 4,800 bricks per day; children employed in a
needle manufactory, in making the eyes of needles, grow so skillful
at it that they can make a small hole in the finest hair and draw
another hair through it. _Rau_, Lehrbuch I, § 115. The old proverb,
“practice makes perfect,” is followed even by thieves in their great
division of labor. See _Thiele_, Die jüdischen Gauner I, 87.
_Fregier_, Des Classes Dangéreuses.
356 Children, with their thinner fingers, can point twice as many
needles in the same time as a grown person.
357 The manufacture of English needles demands, on the part of workmen,
degrees of skill so different that their pay varies from 6 pence to
20 shillings per day. If the most skillful workman were to
manufacture whole needles alone, he would partly be obliged to be
satisfied with one-fortieth of what he might otherwise receive.
_Babbage_, loc. cit.
358 In the case of machines and in the chemical branches of industry,
the labor increases in a much smaller ratio than the material used
in production.
359 In opposition to monopolies, and to practical constraint which has
its source in ignorance etc.
360 Hence _Torrens_ calls foreign trade the “territorial division of
labour.” (Essay on the Production of Wealth (1821), 155 ff.)
361 See _Bastiat_, Harmonies, ch. 1, for a very beautiful exposition of
the doctrine that each man receives much more from society than he
accomplishes on his part, for it.
362 The working together of a great number of persons is often carried
on to the detriment of agriculture, for each then waits for all the
others to work, throws all the blame on them etc. (_Columella_, I,
9.) As many a housekeeper must have observed, two seamstresses or
ironers accomplish, in a day, less than one, in two days. Of course,
this rule does not apply in the case of work which cannot be
performed by one man, under any circumstances, or the magnitude of
which would easily discourage him, and in which mutual aid is easily
obtained; as in the raising of heavy loads, the construction of
roads, dikes etc.
_ 363 Ad. Smith_, B., II, Introd. _Hufeland_, Neue Grundlegung, I, 215.
In many instances, a division of labor, of course, favors the saving
of capital. If every workman needed all the tools necessary to the
work in which he participates, three-fourths of them would have to
lie idle at present. _J. Rae_, New Principles on the Subject of
Political Economy, 164.
364 This necessity is observable, although in a peculiar form, even
where what has been called the “despotic organization of labor”
prevails, instead of freedom.
365 In the highlands of Scotland, in Adam Smith’s time, there were no
smiths who manufactured nails only; for the reason that no smith had
a market for more than 1,000 nails a year, that is not for so many
as might be manufactured in a single day.
366 It is of course very different when there is question of a foreign
market, even if it be only indirectly. Thus, for instance, there are
in the Hartz mountains, persons who are simply post-makers,
trough-makers, chess-wood-makers, block-hewers, shingle-makers etc.
367 Too much should not be inferred from the existence among the
Egyptians of physicians, specialists for the several members of the
body. _Herodot._, II, 84. Something analogous is to be found even
among barbarous nations; but it is accounted for entirely by the
superstition of the people. See _Klemm_, Kulturgeschichte, I, 266.
368 In the whole of Hesse, there were under Philip the Magnanimous, only
two apothecaries, one at Cassel and one at Marburg. _Rommel_, Gesch.
v. Hessen, IV, p. 419, note. And there were no bakers among the
Romans before the time of the war with Perseus. All the bread needed
by the family was baked by the wife or by female domestics. _Plin._,
H. N. XVIII, 28. The common oven in new towns marks the period of
transition. Even yet, in the central part of France, there are
localities where each family bakes its own bread for a whole month
in advance; and, in the Alpine departments for even a year in
advance. _M. Chevalier_, Cours II, 366.
369 It is obvious from the foregoing that, in decaying nations, in which
the market contracts and capital decreases, the division of labor
also must grow less.
370 According to _Arago_, a horse uses the same amount of force to draw
20 cwt. along an ordinary road that he does to draw 200 over a
railroad track, or 1,200 on a canal. He could carry scarcely 2 or 3
on his back! Moniteur, 1838, No. 116. It is, however, certain that
the introduction of our railroads has somewhat detracted from the
advantages of coasts.
371 Compare _Humboldt_, Essai politique sur l’Ile de Cuba, II, 205.
_ 372 Strabo_, II, 121 ff. In Europe, there is one mile of coast to every
31 square miles in the interior; in North America, to 56; in South
America, 91; in Asia, 100; in Africa, 142. (_Humboldt._)
373 If the original connection of the Caspian sea and the sea of Aral
with the Frozen Ocean were still in existence, it is probable that
an Asiatic Scandinavia would have been formed in consequence.
374 What is true of the sea in this respect may be claimed, also, though
in a less degree, for the streams that carry the civilizing fruits
of the coasts far into the interior. Nearly all large cities not
situated on the harbors of coasts derive their importance from
rivers; especially when they have been built on spots adapted by
nature to the transhipment of merchandise. That Venice finally
eclipsed Genoa is to be ascribed, in greatest part, to its control
of an important stream, the Po. The economic importance of Holland,
of Hamburg and Bremen will, in the long run, bear the same relation
to one another as the geographical importance of the valleys of the
Rhine, Elbe and Weser. As nothing is more disastrous to a nation
than the loss of its coast (we need only cite the efforts of the
Lybian kings and, later, of Philip of Macedon to conquer the Greek
colonies on their coasts; and in more recent times, of Russia before
Peter the Great, or of the Zollverein without the shores of the
German sea), so, also, the economic and political influence of a
stream increases as one approaches its mouth. Hence the
justification of the great interest taken by Germany and Austria in
the question of the Danubian principalities. The United States
recognized this fact when they purchased Louisiana for 80,000,000
francs. _Bignon_, Hist. de France III, 111 seq. Readers of history
are familiar with the important part played by the three Asiatic
Mesopotamias: that between the Euphrates and the Tigris; that
between the Ganges and the Brahmapootra; that between the Hoang-Ho
and the Yang-tse-Kiang, to which finally the Punjab might be added.
This relation is recognized by popular consciousness, in the case of
the Ganges, by the belief in the sacredness of the stream. No river
has had so much influence on civilization as the Nile: its
periodical risings have made the labor of agriculture
extraordinarily easy; their extent and regularity favored the
progress of astronomy; the flooding over of the land led to geodesy;
the hydraulic labors necessitated by the rising of the waters
produced a school of architecture to which the river furnished an
excellent means of transportation for the enormous masses to be
moved. _K. Ritter_, Erdkunde, I, p. 880 seq; VI, p. 1,168 seq. In
this matter, also, America and Europe have the advantage over Asia
and Africa. While the Danube is, in places, scarcely three German
miles from the Rhine—which, however, flows in an almost opposite
direction—in Asia, the eastern streams are separated from the
western, and the northern from the southern, by a strip of land
difficult to be traveled, and about 300 German miles in extent.
Besides, the principal streams of northern Asia have their exit into
the Frozen Ocean, a fact which diminishes their importance greatly.
The source of the Missouri is only about one mile distant from the
Columbia river, although the two flow towards opposite seas.
375 The law governing the march of civilization from the mountain to the
plain and to coast lands was observed even by _Strabo_, XIII, 592,
and partly by _Plato_, De Leg., 677 ff.
376 Thus, for instance, that all the customers of a shoemaker together
form a shoe-association etc. _Dunoyer_, Liberté du Travail, L. IV,
ch. 10.
_ 377 Storch_, Handbuch, III, 188 ff. The Dutch traveler, _Usselinx_,
speaks in a similar way of the imitativeness and many-sidedness of
the Swedes (Argonautica Gustavica, 20). Chilian servants (_peones_)
are a good combination of the cook, the muleteer, builder, courier
etc. Once they have passed over a road, they never forget it. A
knife stands them in stead of most tools, and pieces of leather in
stead of nails. _Pöppig_, Reise, I, 171 ff.
_ 378 von Haxthausen_, Studien, I, 63, 113. In 1827, a Russian hatter got
12 rubles for a hat, a German one 35 (_Schön_, N. Œkonomie, 78).
379 See the report of a large manufacturer in _Kohl_, England und Wales,
p. 332 seq.
_ 380 Raynal_, Histoire des Indes (1780), L. XV. And so _Rousseau_,
Discours sur l’Inegalité (1754), who also declaims against all kinds
of capital; were there no ladders, men would climb better; and throw
a stone better if they had no slings. There is certainly a
misunderstood truth in this saying. It is assuredly very salutary,
in the actual state of society, in which every one’s business is
transacted for him by some one else, that a time should occasionally
come when no one can take our place, and a man can only call upon
himself. And herein lies the immense value which just war, when not
much prolonged, but which is brought to a happy termination,
sometimes has upon the life of a people.
381 The American savages are, on an average, weaker than the whites. In
a fist-fight the Kentuckians and Virginians showed themselves far
superior to the Indians. See _Lawrence_, Lectures, 403, _supra_, §
40.
382 For a very unprejudiced estimate of the dark and bright sides of the
division _of labor_, even before Adam Smith’s time, see _Ferguson_,
History of of Civil Society (1767), IV, I, V, 3 ff. Also _Garve_,
Versuche, III, 41. _Adam Smith_ was not blind to the dark side of
the division _of_ labor, which, in part, he would remove by popular
instruction at the expense of the state, and by a species of
compulsory education. W. of N., V, ch. 1, 3, art. 2. One of the
chief peculiarities of _J. Möser’s_ Political Economy is his great
opposition to all highly developed division of labor. Patr. Ph., I,
2, 21, III, 32, 34.
_ 383 von Ledebur_, Reise in Altai, I, 384. The working together of wife
and child, introduced recently by manufacturers, cannot be
considered as a higher grade of the division of labor, but only as a
very unfavorable change in the kind of it; inasmuch as it were
better to employ the women in their domestic avocations and to leave
children to their studies and their sports. Among the higher
classes, it should be made the part of female education, to
counterbalance, in the family, the effects of the ever increasing
division of labor among the male portion, by the development of that
which is universally human—art, sociability, house-keeping etc.
_ 384 Schleiermacher_, Christliche Sitte, 465 ff., 676 ff., 154 ff. From
a similar feeling, although much exaggerated, the Greeks of the
classic age proper considered all callings followed for gain
dishonorable, not excepting even those of the physician and of the
teacher. _Plato_, de Rep., I, 347 ff. _Aristot._, Rhet., I, 9, 27:
μηδεμίαν ἐργάζεσθαι βὰναυσον τέχνην, ἐλευθέρον γάρ τὸ μὴ πρὸς ἄλλον
ζην.
385 As, for instance, the superintendent of a manufactory must have a
better general training, but can get along with less of a special,
than his workmen.
_ 386 Thucydides_ says of the contemporaries of Pericles: “The same men
devote themselves, among us, in part to domestic and political
business; in part, others who busy themselves with agriculture and
industry have no mean knowledge of the affairs of state. We call
those who take no part in the former not people loving their ease,
but useless men.” (II, 40.) During the succeeding period, Athens was
destroyed mainly by the ever increasing division of labor between
citizens and soldiers. For, “to separate the arts which form the
citizen and the statesman, the arts of policy and war, is an attempt
to dismember the human character, and to destroy those very arts we
mean to improve.” (_Ferguson._) We know from _Valerius Maximus_,
that the Roman soldiers from the time of Marius had, doubtless, a
better technic training than their ancestors who who defeated
Hannibal; but was it in a military or political sense that they were
thus better trained? The beautiful definition of Cato intimates
something of the same nature; the good orator was _vir bonus dicendi
peritus_. (_Quintilian_, XII, I.) And so _Garve_, Versuche, IV, 51
ff., expects from the political elevation of citizenship, of those
possessed of the right of citizens, not only usefulness in a
particular direction but the development of the whole man, a thing
hitherto expected only of the nobility.
387 As one’s peculiar calling does not take up all his life, we must
draw a clear distinction between the one-sidedness of labor and the
one-sidedness of life, (_von Mangoldt_, Volkswirthschaftslehre,
227.) Only the last is to be avoided at all hazards; and we find it
in the middle ages, with its limited divisions of labor, perhaps
more frequently than where civilization has attained a higher stage.
During the middle ages, it was not unusual to make feelings which
every one should cultivate at times, if only temporarily, the
lasting calling of some. Thus one prayed his whole life long, or was
engaged in contemplation, and relieved others of the necessity of
performing these duties. The consequence was, that the latter sank
as deeply in worldliness and want of the interior spirit as the
former were plunged in idleness and hypocrisy. But, on the other
hand, when, in our day, the printer relieves the writer of a portion
of the labor which might be his, the personal development of neither
suffers.
_ 388 L’uomo è un’ tal potenza, che unita all’ altra non fa un eguale
alla somma, ma al quadrato della somma._ (_Genovesi._) As to how the
action of every individual man is a species of division and union of
different kinds of labor, see _Stein_, Lehrbuch, 24.
389 Compare _Ad. Müller_, Elemente der Staatskunst, III, 1809. _Fr.
List_, System der polit. Œkonomie, 222 ff., 409 ff. _Wakefield_, in
his edition of Adam Smith, distinguishes two degrees of coöperation,
simple and complex. In the case of simple labor, the same sort of
work is performed at the same time and place by several individuals,
as, for instance, by a lot of hod-carriers in building. In the other
case, there are different kinds of work performed at different times
and places, but all intended for the one greater end. Agriculture
affords room for the first especially, and it is known also to a
great number of animal species.
390 Flemish weavers in England, French refugees in Protestant countries;
German miners in Spain, Scandinavia, Hungary and America.
391 This, so very largely developed in Egypt and India, where the
principle of caste obtains, is very little developed in the
despotisms of Asia. The great princes, in the latter countries,
build largely from vanity only. Hence their successors seldom
complete their works, and scarcely repair them. Nowhere else are
there so many half completed and yet decaying buildings. _Klemm_,
Kulturgeschichte, VIII, 86. _Riedel_, N. Œkonomie I, 259, very
correctly remarks that such kinds of coöperation as contribute most
to the propagation of skill, both in commerce and manual labor, have
less real division of labor, and vice versa.
392 Compare _Leplay_, La Réforme sociale en France (1864).
393 Concerning association in general, see _M. Chevalier_, Cours, III,
Leçon, 24, 25. On this subject so much talked of in our day, see,
more in detail, concerning its application to agriculture, my work,
Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, 4, § 39, 47 ff.; 68, 133 ff.; on
its application to industry, especially where there is question of
the relation of handiwork and manufactures to large factories; see
_Roscher_, Ansichten der Volkswirthschaft, II, Aufl., 1861,
Abhandlung, IV, V.
_ 394 Adam Smith_ remarked that the laws of the division of labor obtain
also in intellectual works; and indeed, among all nations in a very
low grade of civilization, the germs of all art and science are
found connected with theology; and later, the germs of all poetry
and history with the epic. The expression: _non defuit homini, sed
scientiæ, quod nescivit Salmasius_, is a clear proof of the
insignificance of the science of the time. Think of the increase
during the last hundred years of the branches of study in our German
universities. There are now thirty-four regular professors in the
Leipzig philosophical faculty, where then there were only nine. But
here also the principle proves true, that an excessive division of
labor, where the broader connection and the deeper foundation of all
sciences disappear from the consciousness, undermines intellectual
health and freedom. And the injury here is greater and more
irreparable than in the domain of mere physical labor. See
_Hufeland_, N. Grundlegung, I, 207 ff. If we have just become
Alexandrians, we have, however, no Aristotle to hope for.
_Jurisprudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi
atque injusti scientia_ (_Ulpian_). It is remarkable that nations
who possess no real national literature of their own, when they once
get beyond the bounds of utter barbarism, learn foreign languages
etc., most easily.
395 The socialistic utopia of _Ch. Fourier_ (Théorie des quatre
Mouvements, 1808. Théorie de l’Unité universelle, 1822. Le nouveau
Monde industriel et sociétaire, 1829) are based upon the following
fundamental ideas. A. The present civilization is that of a
topsy-turvy world, especially in so far as it ascribes a “moral” (a
word always used by him in an ironical sense) self-government to
man. In Fourier’s world, on the other hand, every man is supposed,
at all times, to give free rein to every _passion_; and the play of
these gratifications constitutes the _harmonie_, in which the
poorest find more enjoyment than do kings at the present time. (See
§ 207 of this work.) B. The main thing to further this is a radical
reform in the division and cooperation of labor as they exist at
present. Instead of the present villages and cities, we should have
only phalansteries, each with 2,000 inhabitants, and situated in the
center of the land cultivated by them. Instead of the present
nations and states, we should have a universal confederate republic,
hierarchically graded, with French as the universal language.
According to the demands of the _passion papillonne_, each one
should carry on the most different kinds of business side by side,
and each one of them at most two hours per day; i.e., every one
should be a dilettante, no one a master, and everything should be
done as badly as possible. _Proudhon_, Contradictions économiques,
ch. 3, objects to this, that a workman must, in some way, be held
responsible for his work. _Fourier_ himself calculates that, in his
_harmonie_ all pleasures are productive labor; and that by this
constant change, one might be satisfied with from 4-½ to 5-½ hours
of sleep, and that even children 2-½ years old might take part in
the work. Thus, there would be a great rivalry between apple-growers
and pear-growers, so great “that more intrigues in attack and
defense [_passion cabaliste_] would arise there than in all the
cabinets of Europe,” in the settling of which the growers of quinces
would act as intermediaries. There are, in addition to all this,
wonderful aids; a fructifying crown of light rises over the north
pole; oranges bloom in Siberia; the sea becomes as delicious as
lemonade; dangerous animals die, and in their stead anti-lions and
anti-whales come into being, animals useful to man, which draw his
ships for him during calms. These ideas are by no means retracted in
_Fourier’s_ later works, See Nouveau Monde (Oeuvres) IV, 447. The
propositions of _Robert Owen_, A new View of Society (1812), have
much similarity with those of Fourier. They differ only in the
absence of the French barrack-like character of the phalanxes, and
the fantastic character of the presentation of the doctrine. He
would have all the land divided into districts of 1,000 acres each;
each district to have a four-cornered town with 1,000 inhabitants,
following a system of production and consumption in common, but not
with full equality; carrying on both agriculture and other business.
A principal feature here is an entirely new system of education. The
author says that man has hitherto been the slave of an execrable
trinity: positive religion, personal property and indissoluble
wedlock. (Declaration of mental independence.)
396 Compare _Tacitus_, Histor., II, 44.
397 See _Iselin_, Geschichte der Menschheit (1764), III, 7. _Bazard_,
Exposition de la Doctrine de Saint Simon, 1831, 153. Among negro
nations deprivation of freedom is one of the most usual punishments
for crime; but the criminal has the option of substituting his wife
or child for himself. _L.A. de Oliveira Mendez_, in the Memor.
econom. of the Royal Academy of Lisbon, vol. IV, I, 1812. As to
slavery on account of crime among the Germans, see _Grimm,_ D.
Rechtsalterth., 328 seq.
398 Loss at play was a frequent cause of slavery among the ancient
Germans. _Tacit._, Germ., 24. For the principal causes of slavery
among the Israelites, see the books of Moses, II, 22, 3; III, 25,
39; IV, 21, 26 seq.; among the Indians, Laws of Menu, VIII, 415. The
first serfs of Russia were prisoners of war and their children. The
laws of Jaroslaws recognize, besides, the following causes:
insolvency, contracting marriage with a slave, the illegal breach of
a contract for service, flight, unconditional contract for service.
_Karamsin_, Russ. Gesch., II, 37.
399 At least seed and the means of subsistence until harvest time.
400 Cases of voluntary slavery to escape famine. _Papencordt_,
Geschichte der Vandalen, 186; _Victor_, Chron., V, 17; Tur., VII,
45; Lex Bajuv, VI, 3; L. Fris, XI, I. According to the Edictum
Pistense (a., 864), c., 34, one could free himself again by paying
back the purchase money and 20 per cent. in addition. It frequently
happened that people spontaneously accepted the condition of a
vassal in order to enjoy the protection of a powerful personage. See
_Stüve_, Lasten des Grundeigenthums, p. 74. In 1812, a young
Himalayan offered himself to the traveler Moorcroft as a slave in
order to obtain food during the famine. _K. Ritter_, Erdkunde, III,
p. 999. The same fact occurred, but in greater proportions under
Joseph in Egypt. _Moses_, I, 47, 18 seq.
_ 401 Cæsar_, B.G., VI, 13.
_ 402 Solon_ was the first to prohibit this commerce in Athens.
_Kindlinger_, in his Geschichte der deutschen Hörigkeit, p. 621,
speaks of a child promised as a slave before its birth, by its
parents, as a species of farm-rent. (See the Edictum Pistense, in
_Baluz_, II, 192.) In Chili, the poorest country people who were not
entirely white, sold their children in the towns, where they grew up
with the families of their masters, and were then kept as servants
in a state of semi-serfdom. There is, it is true, no law governing
this condition of things. (_Pöppig_, Reise, I, 201 ff.)
_ 403 Ritter_, XIII, 727. For instance, men in South America used for the
purpose of riding. _M. Chevalier_, Cours, I, 251; _Lœwenstern_, Le
Mexique, Souvenirs d’un Voyageur (1843); and _Stephens_, Travels in
Yucatan (1841), show how, even yet, in Central America, although the
Indians are legally free, yet, by their senseless way of running
into debt, a number of legal relations, amounting virtually to
_glebæ adscriptio_, arise. But compare, however, _Humboldt_,
Neuspanien, IV, 263. This condition of things has been produced in
Peru, also, by the payment of one or two years’ wages in advance.
(_Pöppig_, Reise, II, 225.)
404 Thus _Forbonnais_, Eléments du Commerce (1854) I, 364, says of trade
with savages: _il fait naître dans ces nations le goût du superflu
et des commodités, qui multiplie le, échanges et leur donne le goût
du travail._
405 In very uncivilized nations, among whom serfdom is not known, we
generally find the slavery of woman and the temporary bondage of the
son-in-law in order to secure the daughter in marriage. This is
still the case among the Laplanders. _Klemm_, Kulturgeschichte III,
p. 54. Slavery was unknown among the Greeks in the very earliest
times. _Herod._, VI, 263. _F. A. Wolf_, Darstell. der
Afterthumswissenschaft, III, doubts whether any great advance in the
higher development of the mind would have been possible without
slavery.
406 In Russia, where free peasants and serfs lived side by side, it has
been remarked that the latter were never so rich and never so poor
as the former. (_Kohl_, Reise durch Russland II, 8, 300.) The
Livonian peasants have become poorer since their emancipation.
(_Cancrin_, Œkonomie der menschlichen Gesellschaften, 41). Many of
the serfs refused to accept emancipation. (_Büsch_, Geldumlauf,
Einleitung, § 6.) And so _Martius_, Reise in Brasilien II, 552 ff.,
assures us that the negro slaves in Brazil are as a rule a very
merry set. He is also of the opinion that they are better clothed,
lodged, fed and employed than in their own country. For the
remarkable official defense of North American slavery directed by
_Calhoun_, to Lord Aberdeen, see the Allg. Zeitung, 1844, No. 145.
In this document, we find a comparison instituted between the free
negroes of the north and the slaves of the south. In the north,
there was one deaf-mute, a case of blindness and of insanity in
every 96; in the south, in every 672; a pauper, invalid and prisoner
in every 6 at the north, in every 54 at the south. In Maine, 1/12th
of the negroes were afflicted by disease; in Florida, 1/1105th(?).
The fact that the slave population of the United States increased,
between 1840 and 1860, from 2,873,698 to 4,441,830, while the free
negro population of Jamaica, between 1833 and 1843, underwent a
frightful decrease, is to the same purport. However, too much must
not be inferred from all this, as the negroes in America are very
far from being the children of the soil.
407 The servants in the Odyssey who cared for hogs and cattle etc. were
certainly in a better condition in many respects than the peasants
of Attica, who were free, but buried in debt until the time of
Solon. Concerning the mildness of the treatment of slaves in very
early Roman times, see _Plutarch_, Coriol., 24, and _Cato_, I, 3, 20
ff.; _Cato_, de Re rust, 5, 56 ff.; _Macrob._, Stat. I, 10 ff. On
the state of the serfs among the Germans, see _Grimm_, Deutsche
Rechtsalterthümer, p. 339 ff.; among the ancient Scandinavians etc.,
_Dahlman_, Geschichte von Dänemark, I, 163. See _Tacit._, Germ., 25.
408 Compare Landnamabok, I, 6.
409 The opinions of the ancients for and against slavery are found in
_Arist._ Polit. I, 2. See especially the beautiful passages in
_Philemon_: _Meineke_, Comicorum jr., 364, 410. _Aristotle_ even
thinks that there are cases in which master and slave might be
brought together by a mutual want, each of the other. The former
wants hands to execute the work of his brain; the latter a guiding
brain for his hands. Where the degree of dependence corresponds
exactly to the difference of ability, _Aristotle_, leaving its
abuses out of the question, declares slavery to be just. See, also,
Eth. Nicom., VIII, 11. Similarly the Pythagorean _Bryson_ in
_Stobœus_, Florid. LXXXV, 15. But _Aristotle_ would hold up
emancipation to all slaves as a reward they might have in prospect.
Polit VII, 9, 9; Œcon. I, 5. It is characteristic of the many
testaments of philosophers, found in _Diogenes Laertius_, that they
contain declarations giving slaves their freedom. The Essenes and
Therapeutics condemned slavery under all circumstances. _Philo._,
Opp. II, pp. 458, 482, Opp. I. See _Seneca_, De Benef. III, 20. The
_jus naturale_ of the age of the Cæsars recognized the freedom and
equality of man. Digest, XII, 664., L. 17, 32. The New Testament
does not reject it absolutely, but would sanctify it as well as all
other relations in life. Compare Luke, 17, 7; Eph. 6 5 ff.; Coloss.
3, 22; Tit. 2, 9. More especially, I Timothy, VI, 1 ff. It was not
until the ninth century that the opinion that slavery was
anti-Christian because men were all made in the image of God, arose.
_Planck_, Geschichte der kirchlichen Gesellschaftsverfassung, II,
350. Sachsenspiegel, III, 42. A writer as recent as _Pufendorf_
explains slavery as arising from a free contract; _faciam, ut des._
Jus naturæ (1672) VI, 3. More recently _Linguet_, Théorie des Lois
civiles (1767), V, ch. 30, and _Hugo_, Naturrecht, § 186 ff. have
endeavored to prove that slaves are in a condition preferable to
that of poor free men. And so _Möser_ Patriot Phantasien, II,. p.
154, seq. Those who with _Thaer_ separate the element of production,
“labor” from that of “intelligence,” justify slavery on the same
principle that Aristotle did, without knowing it. Per contra, see
_F. G. Schultze_, N. Œkonomie (1856), 418.
_ 410 Turgot_, Sur la Formation etc., § 21. The universal empire of the
Romans demonstrated this. Then it was, for instance, that during the
wars of Lucullus, a slave cost only four drachmas. (_Appian._, Bell.
Mithr., 78.) _Sardi venales_: on account of the glutting of the
market with Sardinian slaves, made through the victory of Tib.
Gracchus, 177, before Christ. Many of the lesser wars of the Romans
can be looked upon only as slave-hunts. But the great wars also were
followed by uprisings of slaves on account of the many new slaves
which they made. Thus 198 in Latium, 196 in Etruria. (_Bücher_,
Aufstände der unfreien Arbeiter von, 143-129, v. Chr., 1874.) During
the relatively peaceful periods which preceded many of the Roman
revolutions, pirates delivered over great masses of slaves. It
frequently happened that several thousand slaves were led to Delos
and sold in a single day. (_Strabo_, XIV, 668.) As emancipation was
a measure which people could not make up their minds to adopt, these
pirates satisfied a “want” for a time, and this partly explains the
otherwise incomprehensible forbearance of the state towards them.
_ 411 Gregor. Turon._, III, 15.
_ 412 Grimm_, D. Rechtsalterthümer, 323. It is a strange fact that
prisoners of war were in several remarkable instances sold as slaves
in Italy during the fifteenth century. (_Sismondi_, Hist. des
Républiques italiennes, IX, p. 312 seq.; XI, p. 138 seq.) And even
in the sixteenth century, the pope allowed those of states opposed
to him to be treated in this way. _Sismondi, supra_, XI, 251; XIII,
485. _Raynold_, Ann. eccl. 1506, § 25 ff.
413 This graduation of slave, serf and workman, has been carried out
especially by _Saint Simon_, Oeuvres, 328 ff. Even _Proudhon_ admits
that the condition of the lower classes is better now than formerly.
(Contradictions économiques, ch. X, 2.) Compare _M. Chevalier_,
Cours, I. Leçons 1 and 2, where he shows that our productive power
has increased during the last four or five centuries in the
production of iron in the proportion of 1 to from 25 to 30; in the
preparation of flour since the time of Homer in the proportion of
1:144; in the production of cotton during the last 70 years in the
proportion of 1:320. _Aristotle_ predicted, long ago, that “when the
shuttle would move of itself, and plectra of themselves strike the
lyre, we should need no more slaves.” Polit., 2, 5. Every step of
true progress brings us nearer the fulfillment of the prophecy.
414 The North American planters employed coarse tools rather than fine
ones, mules rather than horses, because their slaves took so little
care of them.
415 It can never obtain as much labor from the slave, as the fear of
losing his situation and of not being able to obtain another, will
from the free workman. (_Hume._) _Marlo_, Weltœkonomie, 1848, I, 2,
38, grants this to be true only where all the forces of nature are
appropriated by occupation, and the number of workmen is greater
than the want of workmen.
416 Even in Brazil, only free men are, as a rule, employed as sugar
refiners, distillers, teamsters etc. (_Koster_, Travels in Brazil,
1816, 362.) _Storch_, Russland unter Alexander I, Heft, 23, p. 255,
cites the opinion of an eminent Russian manufacturer, that it would
first be necessary to liberate the serf factory-hands. Masters have
generally given up employing their own serfs in manufactures,
allowed them to seek work for themselves, and only required them to
pay them a species of tax. When this plan was adopted, it was found
that they worked much better, (_v. Haxthausen_, Studien I, 61, 116.)
It was a consequence of slavery that, in antiquity, the very wealthy
purchased so little: _omnia domi nascuntur_! (_Petron._, 38.)
417 Thus _Homer_, Od. XVII, 322, in whose time even there were day
laborers, θῆτες or ἔριθοι. (Od. IV, 644; X, 85; XI, 490; XIV, 102.
_Hesiod_, Opera, 602.) And _Varro_, De Re rust. I, 17, advises that
difficult labor should be performed rather by day laborers. _Coli
rura ab ergastulis pessimum est et quidquid agitur a desperantibus._
_Plin._, H. N. XVIII, 7. _Omne genus agri tolerabilius sub liberis
colonis, quam sub villicis._ (_Columetta_, De Re rust I, 7.) It has
been estimated, that, in the West Indies, a negro slave performed
only one-third of the work performed by an Englishman in his own
country. (_B. Edwards_, History of the British West Indies, II,
131.) During the one afternoon, in every week, in which the negroes
were allowed to work on their own account, they accomplished as much
as on other entire days. Edinburgh R. IV, 842. Compare _Bentham_,
Traité de Législation I, 319. _Ch. Comte_, Traité de Législation,
1827, Livre V.; _Cairnes_, The Slave-Power, its Character, Career
and probable Designs, 1862; _Olmsted_, Journeys and Explorations in
the Cotton Kingdom, 1861.
418 While the older tyrants had prohibited idleness, Draco and Solon
even under pain of degradation (see places in _Büchsenschütz_,
Besitz und Erwerb, 260). _Socrates_ called the ἅργια the sister of
Freedom (Aelian, V.H.X, 14), and the σκολή the most beautiful of all
professions.
_ 419 B. Franklin_, Observations concerning the Peopling of New Countries
etc., 1751.
420 Monument erected to _Bernstorff_ by his peasants, 8, 15. The
_Zàmoiski_ estates yielded, 17 years after emancipation, three times
as much as they did when serfdom prevailed. _Coxe_, Travels in
Poland, I, 22. The transformation of the serfs into hereditary
farmers cost _Count Bernstorff_ 100,000 thalers; but the revenue
derived from his lands increased in consequence, in twenty-four
years, from 3,000 to 27,000 thalers. An English mower can mow a
field two and three times as great as a Russian mower in a given
time. If the former receives daily wages equivalent to seventy
pounds of wheat, and the latter to only twelve, the Englishman’s
labor is still the cheaper; for he turns out 100 pounds of hay while
the latter turns out only eight. _Jacob_, 43 seq. But the hiring out
of serfs in the large cities of Russia yielded less to their masters
than in the interior. _Storch_, Handbuch, II, 286.
_ 421 Tucker_, Progress of the United States, 1843, pp. 111 ff. We need
not call attention to the inaccuracy of these figures, nor remark
how little serviceable for our present purpose an average obtained
from the density of population in different parts of Russia, where
such densities are themselves so very different, would be.
422 The Spartans seemed to have counted on an adult free man for twice
as much coarse food as a bondsman. (_Thucyd._, VI, 16.)
_ 423 Stewart_, Principles, I, 7, in accordance with historical data,
says, that the peasantry in our days work for other people, because
they have wants which can be satisfied only in this way; because
“they are slaves of their own wants.” The unquestionable superiority
of free to slave labor, in point of economy, has been dwelt upon
especially by _Turgot_, Sur la Formation et la Distribution, § 28,
and by _Adam Smith_, Wealth of Nations, I, 8, III, 2. But see _J. B.
Say_, Traité, I, ch. 19, and _Storch_, Handbuch, II, 184. When
_Hume_, Discourses, No. 11, Populousness of ancient Nations,
demonstrates the greater cost of slavery from the fact that the
master of slaves must either breed or buy them, he forgets that in
the case of free workmen he is obliged to provide also for the
support of the workman’s children. Only, the slaveholder has,
indeed, to advance the whole at once.
_ 424 Humboldt_, Cuba, I, 177. _Ashworth_, Tour in the U.S. Cuba and
Canada, 1861. The slaves in Louisiana were so overworked that they
lived, on an average, scarcely seven years. Edinburg Rev., LXXXIII,
73. Even the Stoics were not agreed, whether it was right, in case
of shipwreck, to sacrifice a cheap slave in order to save a valuable
horse. (_Cicero_, de Off. III, 23.) Whether the self-interest of
masters is an inducement to the mild treatment of their slaves
depends on the price for which fresh slaves may be obtained. This is
a strong reason why a high degree of civilization, where there are
not counteracting influences, must make slavery less endurable. The
more valuable slaves are, the worse is their condition. In the
unfertile Bahamas, the price was £21; in Demarara, £86. In the
former place they were required to do little work and were well fed
and well clothed. Hence their numbers have increased there, while in
Demarara they have decreased. (Edinburgh Rev., XLVI, 496, 180.)
425 Proverb: _quot servi totidem hostes._ (_Macrob._, Sat. I, 11, 13.)
_ 426 Jefferson_, Notes on Virginia, 212. The chastity of both parties
especially suffers. The _leno_ of ancient comedy was a slave trader!
Compare L. 27, Digest, V, 3. In the English negro colonies, it was
not unusual for the guests of the planters, even in the best
families, on retiring, to ask the accompanying servant for a girl,
with as little concern as they would in England for a light. (Negro
Slavery, or a Creed of ... that state of Society as it exists in the
United States and in the Colonies of the West Indies, London, 1823,
53.)
427 Even the law of Upland forbade the sale of Christians. The children
of a slave and of a free person were born free. Emancipation was
considered a Christian act, to be performed for “the salvation of
one’s soul.” Voluntary slavery was prohibited in 1266, and Magnus
Erichson forbade slavery generally from the year 1335. See _Geijer_,
Geschichte von Schweden, pp. 157, 185, 273. _Estrup_, in _Falcks_ N.
Staatsburg Magazin, 1837, 179, ff.
428 L. Alam, 137, 1. L. Fris., 17, 5. Decree of 960 concerning the
abolition of the trade in Christian slaves between Germany, Italy
and the Byzantine Empire. _Tafel und Thomas_, Urkunden der
Staats-und Handelsgeschichte von Venedig, I, 18 ff.
_ 429 Tacit_. Germ. 25. In the Legg. Walliæ 206 (Wolton) we read: “_Hero
eadem potestas in servum suum ac in jumentum._”
430 The council of London in 1102 forbade men to be sold like beasts.
(Concil., ed. Venet. 1730, XII, 1100, No. 27.) _Guérard_,
Polyptiques d’Irminon, Prolegg., 220, describes a pedagogical model
emancipation by the Church of its own serfs. On the whole, the
church contributed more towards the emancipation of the serfs of
others than of its own. See ch. 39, C. XII, qu. 2; c. 3,4; De Rebus
eccl.
431 In Flanders since the end of the twelfth century. _Warnkönig_,
Flandrische Staats und Rechtsgeschichte (I, 244).
432 In what relates to Germany, compare _Sugenheim_, Geschichte der
Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft in Europa, 1861, p. 350 ff. The
destruction of the old manorial system (_Hofwesen_) in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, was often unfavorable to bondmen and
favorable to serfs. _Maurer_, Gesch. der Frohnhöfe, II, 92. In
Poland, where all were originally equal land-owners, many sank
gradually through poverty to the condition of the so-called
_kinetes_, who, although personally free, were not very far removed
from slaves. Beginning with the thirteenth century, a great number
of immunities, after the model of those accorded in Germany, were
granted, by means of which they lost, for the most part, their
direct subjection to the emperor and the empire alone. This was soon
followed as a consequence by their personal oppression. (_Röpell_,
Geschichte von Polen, I, p. 308 seq., and p. 570 seq.) In Bohemia,
the old form of serfdom had so far disappeared in the fourteenth
century, that it might be said it was known only to history. But
during the reign of the weak king, Ladislaus II, a new species of
serfdom came into vogue, the result of the preponderance of the
aristocratic element. _Palacky_, Gesch. von Böhmen, II, p. 33 seq.;
III, 31 seq. Aristocratic Denmark, before the peasant war of
1255-1258, subjected the free peasantry who had been leaseholders
for a term of years to unlimited socage duty. Waldemar III, reduced
to the same kind of service the land-owning peasantry, which
especially from the date of Margaret’s reign, developed into a
species of _glebæ adscriptio_. From the sixteenth century, when the
royal power almost disappeared, these public privileges were
abandoned to the nobility to such an extent that, in 1650, there
were scarcely 5,000 free peasants. _Dahlmann_, III, p. 73 seq.
However the severity of _traeldom_ made way in the fourteenth
century for the _vornedskap_ (modified bondage), a milder species of
vassalage. See _Kolderup Rosenvinge_, Grundriss der dänischen
Rechtsgeschichte, § 94.
433 The French expression _mainmorte_ comes originally from the
deprivation of the right of inheritance. In Beaumanoir’s time, 1283,
it was customary, after a number of serfs had lived together for a
year and a day, for their chattels movable to become the common
property of the community. (_Warnkönig_, Französische
Rechtsgeschichte, II, 157.)
434 In France, Louis X. made it a fiscal speculation to sell serfs their
liberty in whole districts, even against their will. His edict,
Ordonnances, I, 583, recognizes that all men are by nature free, and
that France is not without reason called the land of the Franks etc.
Even in 1298, Philip IV. had exchanged the serfdom to the crown of
several provinces for a land duty. The last ruler of Dauphiny gave
all the serfs of the crown their liberty gratis, in 1394.
(_Sugenheim_, p. 130.) When the so-called _coutumes_ were written,
there were only nine provincees in which by local law serfdom was
permitted. The defeat of the _jacquerie_ injured the cause of
emancipation in France in the same way that the suppression of the
war of the peasants did in Germany. About 1779, _mainmorte_ was
abolished in all lands of the crown, and its proof made almost
impossible in all others. (_Warnkönig_, II, 151 seq.) Yet it is said
that there were 150,000 _serfs de corps_ in France in 1789.
(_Cassagnac_, Causes de la Revolution, III, 11.) Koloman, who died
in 1114, forbade the slave trade in Hungary, and labored to raise
all Christian slaves to _conditionarii_ (renters). But the right of
migration was abolished in 1351. King Sigismund, and still more,
Matthias Corvinus, restored it, after the suppression of the war of
the peasants, but in 1514 it was again lost until 1586. Further
progress was arrested until the Urbarium of Maria Theresa.
435 In Italy, Frederick II. liberated all the serfs of the crown.
(Constitutt. Regni Sicil., 164.) A model instance of emancipation at
Bologna in 1256. The serfs of the state were simply set at liberty;
the freedom of those of private persons was purchased with the money
of the state, and a small corn-tithe laid on the emancipated as a
compensation for the expense incurred in their behalf. In the
future, there was not to be a bondman on Bologna territory. The
motives which led to this measure are a strange admixture of
Christianity and Democracy. (_Muzzi_, Annali di Bologna, 1840, I,
479.) Italy, at the end of the fourteenth century, was entirely free
from Christian serfdom. (_Muratori_, Antt. Ital., I, 798.) In the
canton of Berne, Switzerland, slavery was gradually abolished, the
process commencing about the beginning of the fifteenth century. It
continued, however, in the case of ordinary masters until 1798.
_Sugenheim_, p. 530 seq. In England, Alfred the Great’s efforts
towards the gradual abolition of slavery (_Wilkins_, Leges, 29)
remained without result. The steps taken by William I, towards a
much narrower end, however, seem to have been more successful.
(Leges Will. Conq., 225, 229; _Turner_, Hist. of England, I, 135.)
From the time of the Norman conquest, prisoners of war ceased to
recruit the ranks of slavery. Under Henry III and Edward I, socage
tenants became more and more frequent; but, before long, their
duties became less onerous, and might be discharged by others hired
for the purpose, instead of by themselves. The first remarkable
vestige of a class working for wages is met with in the law of 1351,
which may be considered an effort made by the nobility to oppose the
tendencies in favor of emancipation, which were a consequence of the
development of cities. (_Eden_, State of the Poor, I, 7, 12, 30,
41,) _Infra_, § 175. Although the peasant war under Wat Tyler and
Straw, who wished to abolish servitude at a blow, failed of its
object, we find that there were a great many instances of
emancipation by individuals in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries when death or sickness overtook them, in which they
declared the moral unfitness of slavery. (_Wycliffe_: “When Adam
dalve and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”) Elizabeth
liberated the last serfs of the crown. Compare 12 Charles II, ch.
24, 1660. Emancipation in the lowlands of Scotland was completed in
1574. (_Tytler_, Hist. of Scotland, II, 260.)
436 Modern Emancipation Laws: in Prussia, 1719, 1807, 1819; Lausitz;
1820, Westphalia; in Austria, 1781 (Bohemia and Moravia), 1782
(other German countries and Galicia); 1785 (Hungaria);
Schleswig-Holstein, 1804, after many of the landed gentry had
voluntarily emancipated their own serfs; in Bavaria, in 1808; in the
kingdom of Westphalia, in 1808; in Hessen-Darmstadt, in 1811; in
Württemberg, in 1817; in Baden, in 1783, 1820 in newly acquired
countries; in Mecklenburg, in 1820; in the kingdom of Saxony, in
1832; in Hanover, in 1833. The law of 1702, abolishing serfdom in
Denmark, was evaded until 1788, and in part, even until 1800 by the
_Schollband_ (clod-bond) introduced in its stead. The only Christian
people in Europe, who, until recently, kept serfs, was the Russian.
The serfs of Russia, in 1834, numbered 22,000,000, i.e., about 40
per cent. of the entire population. In the meantime, the law of
February 19, 1861, passed after four years of preparation, fixed the
date of emancipation at the beginning of the year 1863. Slavery has
been abolished in the United States since January 1, 1863; first of
all in all portions of the country engaged in rebellion.
437 There is a very interesting discussion in the Journ. des Economistes
for June 1863, of the question whether the owners of serfs are
entitled to compensation on their emancipation, by _Laboulaye_,
_Wolowski_, _Lavergne_, _Garnier_, _Simon_ and others. In the United
States it would have required $2,000,000,000 to fully compensate the
slave-holders for depriving them of their slaves. (Quart. R., Jan.,
1874, 142.) Compare my view, _Roscher_, Nationalökonomi des
Ackerbaues, § 124.
438 Leave a new-born child to its “natural freedom” for twenty-four
hours, and it will in all probability be dead at the end of the
time!
439 Compare Edinburgh Review, LXXXIII, 64 ff., April, 1851, 333.
_Klein’s_ Annalen XXV, 70, ff. Even in the fifth book of Moses, 15,
13, ff., we see that experience had taken into consideration that a
freed serf without capital or landed property might very readily be
in a worse condition than he was before. In the United States, the
anticipation that the emancipated negroes might diminish in numbers
has not been realized. The census of 1870 showed a negro population
of 4,880,000, nearly ten per cent. more than in 1860. The increase
of the number of churches, schools and savings banks also bears
testimony to the prosperity of the negro. (_R. Somers_, The Southern
States since the War, 1871.)
_ 440 J. S. Mill_, Principles, 10, ch. 7.
441 As to the Jews, see _Ewald_, Geschichte von Israel, I 2, p. 198. In
general, see _H. Wallon_, Hist, de l’Esclavage dans l’Antiquité, II,
1847.
_ 442 Thucyd._ IV, 27; _Xenoph._ De Re. rep. Art. I, 10 ff., _Aristoph._
Nubes, 6; _Antiph._ De Caede Herod, 727. In the “Frogs” of
Aristophanes, the relation between the slave Xanthias and his master
is eloquent testimony to the good treatment he received. Slaves
enjoyed great freedom of speech. (_Demosth._ Phil. III, iii.)
Concerning masters accused of cruelty, see _Demosth._ Mid. 529, 7.
Athen. VI, 266. The slave who had been ill-treated might seek refuge
in a temple, after which his master was compelled to sell him.
(_Schol. Aristoph._ Equitt. 1309. _Plutarch_, Thes. 36.)
443 Slaves might purchase their own freedom with their _peculium_. See
Petit. Legg., Art. II, 179. There were many who lived entirely on
their own account, paying a certain duty or tax to their masters,
and who were well able to make savings. _R. F. Hermann_,
Privatalterthümer, § 13, 9, 58, 11 ff. See the instance in _Plato_,
De Rep. VI, 495, where a slave who had grown wealthy asks the
daughter of his former master in marriage. Moreover, there was a
general indisposition to hold Greeks as slaves. (_Philostr._ Apoll.
VIII, 7, 12.) The case cited in _Demosth_. adv. Nicostr. 1249 ff.,
is all the stronger on this account.
444 Under Cleomenes, many purchased their freedom with their own means.
_Plutarch_, Cleom. 23. At an earlier period, men like Lysandros,
Gylippos, Kallikratidos had belonged to a class composed of the
children of slaves brought up as citizens.
_ 445 Cicero_, pro Muræna, IX, 22.
446 Think of the subterranean _ergastula_, the fettered door-keepers and
the gladiatorial exhibitions.
447 Even from the time of _Plautus_, the _servi honestiores_ were wont
to keep _vicarios_, or subordinate slaves. _Plaut._ Asin. I, 4,
_Seneca_ De Tranq. Anim. 8. Compare _Cicero_, Parad. V, 2. Of the
slaves of the state, the public scribes were sometimes found in
excellent circumstances.
448 The peculium was fully developed in the time of Plautus and Terence.
Compare _Terent._, Phorm. I, 1. It was customary to promise slaves
their freedom as soon as they had acquired a certain _peculium_.
(_Dionys. Hal._, Antt. Rom., IV, 24. _Tac._, Ann., XIV, 42.) Humane
masters permitted their slaves to dispose freely of their _peculium_
by will. (_Plin._, Ep., VIII, 16.) There were many of the Romans who
gave their slaves a fixed salary, from which they could make
savings. (_Senec._, Epist., 80, 7.) Shepherds raised some sheep for
themselves alone. (_Plaut._, Asin., III, 1, 36; _Varro_, R. R., I,
17, 7.) Premiums were offered for certain products (_Athen._, VI,
274 d), and there were cases even in which businesses were farmed
out to slaves. (Corp. Inscr. Gr., No. 4,713 f.) The _servi publici_
had the right to dispose of the half of what they owned, by will.
(_Ulpian_, XX, 16.) Contracts of loan were sometimes made between
master and slave. (_Plut._, Cato, I, 21, L., 49, § 2, Digest, XV,
1.)
449 Compare _Tacit._, Ann., XIII, 26 seq. During the time from 356 to
211 A.C., it seems that there were, on an average, 1,380 slaves
emancipated yearly. (_Dureau de la Malle_, Economie polit. des
Romains, I, 290 ff.)
450 Concerning the highly educated slaves of Atticus, of the like of
whom the Greeks had formerly few examples, see _Drumann_, Geschichte
Roms., V, 66. The high prices, 100,000, and even 200,000 sesterces,
paid for slaves, suppose a very high degree of education.
(_Martial_, I, 59; III, 62; XI, 70; _Seneca_, Ep., 27.) But even
_Cicero_ was ashamed of his affliction over the death of an
exceptionally clever slave. (Ad. Att., I, 12.)
451 At an earlier period, even the censor had punished cruel masters.
But most of what was done to prevent the arbitrary condemnation to
death of slaves, their castration etc., and to give them rights
against their masters for libidinous acts towards them, for cruelty
and insufficient support, or the furnishing them with bad food, was
done after the time of Hadrian. (Compare _Seneca_, de Benef., III,
22; de Ira, III, 40, _Sueton._, Claud, 25, Dom., 7; _Spartian._,
Hadr., 18; _Gaius_, I, 53; L., 1, § 2, Digest, I, 6; L., 1, § 8, D.,
I, 12; L., 1, § 2, D., XLVII, 8; L., 1; Cod., IX, 14; Contra, see
_Dio Cass_, I, V, 17.) However, the _vitæ necisque potestas_ existed
in the time of Justinian. (_Zimmern_, Geschichte des röm.,
Privatrechts, I, 2, 661 ff.)
_ 452 Salvian_, De Gubern. Dei, V, 8. _Theod._, Cad. V, 4. _Eumenis_,
Paneg Coast. 8, 9. _Trebell_, Poll. Claud., 9. _Justin._ Cad., XI,
26, 47. Compare _v. Savigny_, Ueber den romischen Colonat. Berliner
Akad., 1822-23.
453 The figures given in _Athen._, VI, 103, concerning the number of
bondmen in Greece are almost incredible. For Attica alone, the
estimates vary between 110,000 (_Letronne_, in the Mem. de
I’Académie des Inscr., 1822, 192, ff.) and 400,000 (_Athen._ 1. c.),
while the free men are estimated at from 130,000 to 150,000. In
Rome, during the time from the expulsion of the kings until the
destruction of Carthage, the number of the slaves remained about the
same. (_Blair_, State of Slavery among the Romans, 1833, 10, 15.) On
the other hand, _Dureau de la Malle_ is of opinion, that in 576
B.C., the number of slaves was to the number of free men as 1 to 25,
and in 225 B.C. (including the metics), as 22 to 27. (Economie
polit. des Romains I 270 ff., 296.) Compare _Cato_, de Re. rust. I,
3, IV, X, 1 XI; 1, XVII, XVIII, 1. In Germany, the number of
bondmen, from the eighth to the tenth century, was estimated to be
at least as great as that of free men. (_Grimm_, D.
Rechtsaltherthümer, 334.) Among the Anglo Saxons, before the Norman
conquest, it was much higher, even three-fourths of the entire
population. (_Turner_, Hist. of the A. S., VIII, 9.) Compare on the
subject of this whole chapter my paper in the Archiv. der polit
Œkonomie, N. F., IV, 30 ff.
_ 454 Klöntrupp_, Abhandlung der Lehre vom Zwangsdienste, 1801.
Frequently, the lord had only a right of preference in case the
children of the tenant desired to abandon the parental roof and take
service elsewhere.
455 In _Adam Smith’s_ time, in England, the presumption was that a
servant had been hired for a year. (I, 2, 15 ed., Bas.) Frederick
the Great’s ordinance of 1769, on this subject, forbade any one to
enter into service for a shorter time than this (II, § 1 ff.), while
the Saxon ordinance of 1835, on the same matter, allowed engagements
by the month, in cities. _Darjes_, Erste Gründe der
Cameralwissenschaften, 2d ed. (1768), p. 432, demands that servants
should always hire themselves for at least four or five years, and
that their masters should have, during the whole of this time, the
right to enforce the contract. In North America, however, service by
the month has become customary and general, and no notice of the
dissolution of the contract is, as a rule, required. (Deutsche
Vierteljahrsschrift, 1853, II, 191.) In Switzerland, contracts for
service by the week are frequently made even by country servants.
(_Böhmert_, Arbeiterverhh., II, 157.)
456 In the south of England, farm hands were used to change service only
at Michaelmas. The choice of such a date made farmers very dependent
on them, as it fell in harvest time. (_Marshall_, Rural Economy of
the Southern Countries, II, 233.) A similar complaint in Cleves.
(_Schwerz_, Rheinischwestphälische Landw., 21 ff.) In Jülich, a half
year’s notice was required, during which time the servant who had
received it, performed his work with disgust, and stirred up his
fellow servants against their master. (_Schwerz_, II, 87.)
457 The families of day laborers, to whom the owner of the land gives
the use of a house, small garden, a cow etc., constitute such a
transition; and also, workmen who are fed. In Brandenburg, in 1644,
only married persons or widowers with children were permitted to
work as day laborers. (_Mylius, C. C. March._, V, 1, 3, 11.)
_ 458 Wakefield_, Swing Unmasked, or the Causes of rural Incendiarism,
1831.
459 By means of the former, the number of independent small householders
was much increased in the country. Masters feel indisposed to hire
young men liable to be subjected to military duty, because they may
be called away at the moment their services are most needed. The
returning soldier, as a rule, feels above doing menial service.
(_Schwerz_, passim, I, 191 ff., 236.) On this account, servants’
wages in Cleves rose much higher than those of day laborers. (194.)
In Belgium, a farm hand cost, on an average, 400 francs a year; a
day laborer, counting 300 working days to the year, only 339 francs.
(_Horn_, Statist. Gemälde, 175.) In the Palatinate, day laborers who
receive nothing but their wages cost their masters less than those
who receive only their food; and servants are the dearest of all.
(_Hanssen,_ Archiv der Politischen Œkonomie, N. F. X, 243.) If
servants were relatively more poorly paid in 1813 than day laborers
(_Lotz_, Revision, III, 147), it was because of the at least
temporary retrogression of civilization which every great war
causes.
_ 460 Engel_, Preuss. Statist. Jahrb., II, 261. Services which contribute
to personal convenience are naturally committed much less frequently
to independent day laborers than those which aid in production
proper. Hence it is, that, as civilization advances, house-servants,
especially of the female sex, constitute an ever-increasing portion
of the total number of servants. In Prussia, in 1816, the number of
servants who ministered to personal comfort was only 4.19 per cent.
of the total number of servants engaged in industry; of female
servants, it was 13.4 per cent. In 1861, on the other hand, the
percentages were 8.4 and 37.2. In Great Britain, of the total number
of servants over 20 years of age, only 2 per cent. were engaged in
personal services. In 1841, they were 3-½ per cent. (_Meidinger_.)
In France, in 1851, 2.5 per cent. of the whole population were in
_domesticité_. (Stat. off.)
461 In England, now more especially, out of farm-hand day laborers:
Edinburgh Rev., April, 1862.
462 A chief element in the earlier “organization of labor.” So, also, in
the Magdeburg Gesindeordnung (service-regulation) of 1789.
463 Saxon _Landesordnungen_ of 1482 and 1543. Cod. August. I, 3, 23. The
_Gesindeordnung_ (service regulation) of Frederick the Great,
threatened with the house of correction the receivers, and under
certain circumstances also the givers of wages higher than the fixed
rate of wages; but as a “matter of course,” the payment of wages
less than this was permitted. (V, § 7) Great care was taken that
wages greater than the law allowed should not be evaded by the
payment of _arrha_ or payment in produce. The same law forbade the
deprivation of the servant of his right to determine the service by
making of loans to him on long time (II, § 7.) Even _v. Berg_,
Handbuch des deutschen Polizeirechts, calls it a duty of the public
authorities charged with the protection of property and of the
public security, to see to it that there be no lack of good
servants, and that the public (as if those who sell their services
were not a part of it) should not be made the victims of exorbitant
demands in the matter of servants’ wages. _Jung_, more humane,
demands that the authorities shall protect, especially, the weaker
party. (Grundlehre der Staatswirthschaft, 1792, 700.) In Prussian
legislation, the Silesian rescript of March 13, 1809, is the
beginning of the new order of things. (_Rabe_, Samml. preuss.
Gesetze, X, 59 ff.) The _Obertribunal_, or high court, decided, in
1874, that the bringing back of absconding servants by the police,
which the law concerning servants of 1810 provided for, should not
be allowed to occur any more.
464 Ordinance of the elector of Saxony of 1766, prohibiting the
inhabitants of cities to take an apprentice from among the
peasantry, unless he had served at least four years as a farm hand,
beginning with his fourteenth year. Similarly, in Prussia in 1781.
465 In Berlin, even before the “populationistischen” period: _Fidicin_,
Histor. diplom. Beiträge zur Gesch. der Stadt Berlin, I, 101. (From
the year 1397.)
466 I Peter, 2, 18 ff.; I Timoth., 6, 12; Ephes., 6, 5; Philem., 15 ff.
467 In the German colonies of Mennonites in Russia, every youth serves a
few years in the family of some other peasant. This is considered a
sort of school. Wages are of course very large, and the treatment
very mild. _v. Haxthausen_, Studien, II, 185. Southwestern Germany
where small landed proprietors are many, something very analogous to
this continues. (_v. d. Goltz_, loc. cit., 452.)
468 For a masterly exposition of the doctrine that the right of
prescription or limitation is related to the politico-economical
necessity of property, see _John Stuart Mill_, Principles, 3, II,
ch. 2, sec. 2.
_ 469 Locke_, On Civil Government, II, §25-51; and so _L. Mendelssohn_,
Jerusalem (1783), 32; _Thiers_, Du Droit de la Propriété (1849).
470 Modern writers, in their attempt to find a philosophical basis for
the right of property, have taken two principal directions, the
first a juridical, the second a political one. The axiom, _res
nullius cedit primo occupanti_ (compare L. 3, Digest, XLI, 1),
explains only the smallest part of the relations of property, and
that only because of a very fortuitous circumstance. According to
_Hobbes_ (Leviathan, 24), property has its origin in the recognition
of it by the power of the state, by the _autorité publique_, the
_gouvernement_ (_Bossuet_, Politique tirée de l’Ecriture, Sainte, L.
3, 4), or as _Montesquieu_ (Esprit des Lois XXVI., 15) more mildly
expresses it, in the laws. The application of this principle would,
on account of the extreme changeableness of the laws of every state,
lead to most extreme insecurity, and to a steady oscillation from
one Utopia to another, from one revolution to another, if it were
not, at the same time, recognized that each one had a just title to
the acquisitions he had made, not because the law, for the time
being existing, acknowledged the right, but because they were the
product of his labor and saving. The theory which bases the right of
property on contract cannot be objected to with as much reason.
Thus, _Hugo Grotius_, Jus Belli et Pacis, II, 2, who even justifies
the occupation of things without an owner, on the supposition of the
existence of an implied contract. It is very characteristic of the
English, that in their political language, the words “liberty” and
“property” are so frequently found in each other’s company. In one
of his classic speeches made by Fox in 1784, he gives a definition
of liberty which begins with the words, “It consists in the safe and
sacred possession of a man’s property” etc. The recent doctrine, not
unfrequently to be met with, that every man has a right to an amount
of property corresponding to his wants, may be used to sanction all
kinds of socialistic inferences. An entirely bewildered and
bewildering description is to be found in _Proudhon’s_ Qu’est ce que
la Propriété, 1848, as the precursor of which _Brissot’s_ Recherches
philosophiques sur le Droit de Propriété et le Vol, may be
considered. In medieval times, there are always a multitude of other
titles to property besides production and saving. The title which is
held in highest esteem for the time being is always because of this
very extreme vis-a-vis of all other titles, strengthened and made
general.
471 The word socialism brought into use by _L. Reybaud_ is as ambiguous
as the word communism is simple and intelligible. But most
socialists agree that actual “society” (which is indeed to be
distinguished from the state) is, together with its foundations, the
existing relations of property and the family, entirely wrong. A
radical reconstruction, they say, is needed to remove forever the
chief evil of this system, viz.: the glaring difference between the
rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated. The difference
between the doctrines of the socialists and of Political Economy
does not, by any means, consist in this, that the former concerns
itself more with the welfare of the lower classes, or even that it
gives wider scope to economy in common. But socialism is, indeed, a
living or housekeeping in common (_Gemeinwirthschaft_), which goes
far beyond the feeling for the common interest (_Gemeinsinn_). Such
economy in common is always opposed to freedom, and, at its first
introduction, contrary to law. It can guarantee no compensation to
those who have suffered from violence or force, because it leads to
a thoughtless and wasteful exhaustion of the nation’s resources,
inasmuch as it weakens the incentive to industry and frugality.
Political Economy, on the other hand, recommends an _expropriation_
when the incentives to industry and frugality are thereby
strengthened; and the increased resources thus obtained serve it, as
full compensation to those whose property has been _expropriated_.
472 See _Roscher_, Betrachtungen über Socialismus und Communismus,
Berliner Zeitschrift für Geschichtwissenschaft, 1845, III, 422 ff.
_ 473 Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant_—the device on the
flags of the mutinous silk-weavers at Lyons, in 1832.
474 We are so assured by _Vauban_ (Dime Royale, 34 seq), of the later
years of the reign of Louis XIV, that nearly 1/10 of the French
people begged, that 5/10 could give no alms, because they were
themselves on the very brink of indigence; 3/10 were _fort malaisés,
embarassés de dettes et de procès_; scarcely one per cent. could be
said to be _fort à leur aise_. How much better off is the present
Parisian workman! And yet, at that time, there was not the least
spread of communistic doctrines. It is indeed seldom that completely
down-trodden men react against their wretchedness with great energy.
475 “If my _caprice_ be the source of law, then my _enjoyment_ may be
the source of the division of the nation’s resources.” _Stahl_,
Rechtsphilosophie, II, 2, 72.
476 That the socialism of _Plato_, De Repub., V, was no mere fancy, is
proved by the polemic which _Aristophanes_ directs against it in his
Ecclesiazuses. See also _Aristot._, Polit., II, 2, Schn. In the
contemporary practice of the Greeks, with the increasing
democratization of the state, it became more and more usual for it
to bear the expense of the outlay for the means of subsistence of
the great crowd. (See _Plutarch_, Cimo, 10.) Every act of public
life was paid for. Citizens were paid for attending popular meetings
three oboli per day, while the pay of the soldiers was six, and that
of the sailors three. (_Thucyd._, III, 17; VII, 27; VIII, 45.) The
pay of the commonest day laborer was from three to four oboli per
day. _Aristophan._, Eccl., 310, and _Pollux_, VII, 29. The number of
magistrates was very large, in order that as many as possible might
participate in this species of remuneration. Thus, in Athens, when
it had only about 20,000 inhabitants, there were 6,000 judges. In
addition to all this, there were numberless feasts, plays, banquets
etc., which were offered to the people gratis. The wealthy who were
compelled to meet all the expense thus incurred, lived in such a
state of terror of the populace, that they considered their own
impoverishment as a species of deliverance. (_Xenoph._, Conviv., 4,
and _Lysias_, pro Bonis.) _Isocrates_ called it much more dangerous
to be rich than to commit a crime, since in the latter case one
might obtain a pardon or a mild punishment. (De Permut., p. 160.)
(_Lysias_, De Invalido, de sacra Olea, seq.) There is little
difference between this state of things and a semi-community of
goods. Only that, indeed, the great mass of the slaves were excluded
from enjoying them. The contrast which somewhat later distinguished
the Cynics from the Cyreno-Epicureans affords a striking analogy to
that which, in our own times, exists between the pure socialists and
the worshipers of mammon after the fashion of Doctor Ure. Concerning
the Utopia of _Iambulos_, see _Diodor._, II, 55 ff.
477 Our sources of information concerning the division of the Roman
republic into a moneyed oligarchy, and the proletariat are very
numerous. Compare _infra_, § 205. The speeches of the Gracchi (e.g.
_Plut._, T. Gracchus, 9), and still more the violent discourses of
Catiline’s conspiracy (_Sallust_, Cat., 20, 23, 37-39), remind us
very forcibly of the shibboleths of modern socialism. We very
frequently meet with the expression of a longing desire to return to
the most uncivilized and hoary past, when there was no money and no
wealth—an aspiration which lies at the very foundation of communism.
Thus _Virgil_, Geo., I, 125, ff., _Tibull._ I, 3, 35, ff. _Propert._
II, 13, III, 5, 11; _Seneca_, Epist., 90; _Senec._, Oct. II,
_Hippol._, II, 2; _Plin._, H. N. XXXII, 3. On the other hand, the
practice of supporting the populace at the expense of great
candidates or of the state, was developed to a very great extent.
The masses lived very largely by the sale of their right of suffrage
to the highest bidder. At the election of consuls in the year 54,
500,000 thalers were offered to the century called on to vote first.
(_Cicero_, ad Quintum II, 15; ad. A.H. IV, 15.) Even _Cato_ had a
part in such bribery. (_Sueton._, Caes., 19.) In the social reform
of the younger Gracchus, besides the limitation of large
land-ownership, the principal points were the following: the sale of
wheat under the market price, but only to the inhabitants of Rome
itself; the construction of great highways in Italy; colonization at
the expense of the state, and the increase of soldiers’ pay.
(_Ritsch_, Gracchen, 392 ff.) The socialistic plans of Rullus went
much further. Were his agrarian laws put in execution, he would have
confiscated very nearly the entire country in the interest of the
poor, and of their demagogues! (_Cicero_, De Lege agrar.) Rome twice
experienced a social revolution of the most frightful character, one
by which a great portion of all private goods fell into the hands of
the propertyless (soldiers), who knew nothing of how to turn it to
account or to invest it—under Sulla, and then under the later
Triumviri. (Compare _Appian_, Bell, civil., V, 5, 22.) Complaints
concerning the latter, in _Horat._, Epist., I, 2, 49; _Virgil_,
Buc., IX, 28; _Tibull._ I, 1, 19, IV, 1, 182; _Propert._, IV, 1,
129. The elder Gracchus had promised compensation to the last
possessors. _Tabulæ novæ_ of Cinna, Catiline, Cælius, Dolebella.
Clodius introduced the distribution of wheat, which according to
Cicero pro Sext., 25, ate up almost one-fifth of the public
revenues. About 320,000 persons were, in this way, supported for a
long period of time (_Sueton._, Caes, 41, _Dio C._, XLIII, 21; L.
LV, 10), but only in such a manner as to keep them from starvation.
(_Sallust_, 268 ed. Bip.) To all this was soon added distributions
of salt, meal and oil, also free baths, numberless public plays,
colossal banqueting, payment of one year’s rent etc. _Panem et
circenses!_ (Juvenal, X, 80 seq.) The mere distribution of money
under Augustus, in which from 200,000 to 320,000 men participated,
cost each time from 2,500,000 to 6,000,000 thalers. (Monum Ancyr.,
372 Wolf.) Extraordinary assistance was, by way of preference,
accorded to colonies of the poor. (_Sueton._, Caes, 42.) Concerning
this entire policy, see _Plin._, Paneg., 26 ff. Even in
Constantinople, at the time of its foundation, large distributions
of bread were made at the expense of Egypt, although there could
scarcely be any real pauperism in that new and flourishing city.
(_Theod._, Cod., XIII, 4, XIV 16; _Socrat._, II, 13.) I can only
allude to the plan proposed by the emperor Gallien by the
neo-platonist Plotin, to found a city in which the ideas of Plato’s
republic should be carried out. (Porphyr., V, Plotin., 8.)
478 During the two centuries of which the Reformation constituted the
middle point, the transition from the peasant system of agriculture
to the large farming system of modern times bore very heavily on the
inferior classes. Such, too, was the operation of the fall in price
of the precious metals. (§ 140.) The suppression of the many
monasteries caused an increase in the wretchedness of the poor; and
the numerous poor-laws enacted in England, Spain etc., were not
sufficient to supply a remedy. The feeling of the people during this
period of tribulation found expression in the War of the Peasants,
in the sect of Anabaptists, in the many reformations and
counter-reformations, in the revolt of the Netherlands, in the
conflicts for the crown in France and England etc. In Italy, the
contrast existing between the moneyed oligarchy and the proletariat
had been developed several centuries, but from the middle of the
sixteenth century, it had become much more oppressive by reason of
the universal impoverishment of the country. For an account of the
pantheistic “Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit,” with their
community of goods and of women, see _Ullmann_, Reformatoren vor der
Reformation, II, 18 ff. They were very numerous from the thirteenth
to the fifteenth century in Italy and France, as well as in Germany,
and lead us to the Adamites in the Hussite war. (_Aschbach_,
Geschichte K. Sigismunds, III, 109.) Earlier yet, we have the sect
of the Giovannali, who had their property and women in common, and
who, in 1355, had won the third of Corsica, but who were afterwards
suppressed by Genoa and the Church. (_Lebret_, Geschichte von
Italien, VI, 208 ff.) The coarse socialist, _John Balle_, bears
about the same relation to Wycliffe, that Münzer and Bockholt did to
Luther. (_Walsingham_, Hist. Angliæ in _Camden, Scriptt._, 275.)
Hans Böheim of Würzburg, 1476, seems to be the direct precursor of
Münzer. (_Ullmann_, I, 421 ff.) It was almost as usual in Luther’s
time, as in 1848, or in our day, to hear of the deep demoralization
of trade—the _Fuggerei_ of the Germany of the time—and of the
universal system of fraud that prevailed. See the citations in
_Hagen_, Deutschland’s Verhältnisse im Reform-Zeitalter, II, 313 ff.
Münzer’s fundamental principle: _Omnia simul communia!_ _Sebastian
Frank_, Chronica, Zeytbuch und Geschychtbibel etc., 1551, fol. VI,
16, 27, 116, 194, 414, 433. John Bockholt’s life presents us with a
striking contrast. While they were bringing his perfumed women,
sparkling with jewels, to his rose-covered bed, hung with curtains
of gold cloth, on which he was reclining, his subjects were a prey
to the horrors of famine, to such an extent that they were compelled
to salt the bodies of children who had died of starvation. How
frightful the end of this communistic benefactor of mankind!
Libertine community of goods and women. (_Calvin_, Instructio adv.
Libertinos, cap. 21.) English communists in the age of the
reformation. (_J. Story_, Comment. on the Constitution of the U.S.,
I, 36.) Even under Cromwell, there were many Englishmen who believed
that farmers were no longer obliged to pay rent to land-owners. On
the sect of Levellers, see _Walker_, History of the Independency,
II, 152. Even in _Erasmus_, we find some sympathy with communism.
(Enchirid. milit. Christ, 80.) _Contra_, see _Melanchthon_, Prolegg.
in Cic. de Off., Corp. Reform, XVI, 549 ff. The most remarkable
systematic works of this period are _Thomas More’s_, Utopia, 1516,
and _Campanella’s_ Civitas, solis, 1620. _Thomas More_ bluntly says
that all existing governments are in fact only permanent
conspiracies of the rich to further their own interests under the
mask of the common good, and to despoil labor. The abolition of
money, which should be continued in use only to carry on foreign
war, would, he contends, remove all misery. There was no really
private property in his Utopia. There should be a rigid
superintendence of all work by the public authorities, whose duty it
should be to see to it, that no one should abandon agricultural
pursuits. All should eat at a common table and dress after the same
fashion. Internal commerce should give way to a mutual exchange of
gifts under the supervision of the state. _Campanella_, besides a
community of goods, recommends continually varying occupation, to
last not more than four hours daily; education in common, especially
by means of pictures, popular encyclopedias etc., all under the
supreme guidance of a despotism to be composed of the wise, some
secular and some spiritual, operating through the confessional.
Socialists nearly always succeed better in the critical part of
their works than in the positive. Compare _R. Mohl_, Geschichte und
Literatur der Staatswissenschaften, § 1, 165 ff.
479 Considering the aversion exhibited against private property by _J.
J. Rousseau_, and the unlimited power which he accords to the
majority for the time being in the state (Contrat Social, 1761, II,
ch. 4), it cannot be denied that his freedom and equality contain,
to say the least, germs of communism by no means insignificant. But,
he would, in the present state of civil society, have a feeling of
respect for the rights of property implanted in the mind of the
child very early, and even before the feeling of liberty is
developed. (Emile, 1762, Livre II.) About the same time _Morelly_
published his Basiliade ou Naufrage des Iles flottantes, 1753, a
political romance in the interest of communism. See the same
author’s Code de la Nature, 1755. _Mably_, in his two works, Doutes
proposés aux Economistes, 1768, and La Législation ou Principes des
Lois, 1776, recommended the abolition of all inequality and a real
community of goods. The introduction of property seems to him, _une
faute qu’il était presque impossible de faire_. Even _Beccaria_
calls property a dreadful but perhaps a necessary right which has
left to the unfortunate nothing but a naked existence. (Dei Delitti
e delle Pene, 1765, cap. 22.) The French Reign of Terror came pretty
near carrying these ideas into effect. We need only refer to the
abolition of the census, the payments made to the workingmen who
attended the section meetings, two francs per diem, the enormous
extension of confiscation, requisitions and forced loans, the
revolution effected in the fortunes of individuals by the system of
issuing assignats, the maximum affixed to the price of all the
necessaries of life, the abolition of indirect taxes, and of what
remained of the economic institutions handed down from the middle
ages. According to _St. Just_: _l’opulence est une infamie; il ne
faut ni riches ni pauvres_. The Cahier des Pauvres demands, first of
all, that salaries “should no longer be estimated in accordance with
the murderous principles of unbridled luxury.” See Forster’s letter
dated November 15, 1793. (Sämmtl. Schriften, IX, 125.) On the
conspiracy of Baboeuf, who was executed in 1796, and who wanted to
see the completest equality and community of labor, of enjoyment and
education, the abolition of large cities etc., see _Buonarotti_, La
Conjuration de B., 1821. This book contributed powerfully towards
the revival of communistic ideas after the July revolution. Among
modern communists who are to be distinguished from the more ancient,
especially by the industrial coloring given to their theories,
_Cabet_, Voyage en Icarie, 1840, II, holds a very prominent place.
He declares the abolition of religion, of the family and of the
state, to be open questions, and desires to bring the practice of a
community of goods to a successful issue only through the peaceful
channel of conviction.
Compare _Reybaud_, Etudes sur les Réformateurs contemporains ou
Socialistes modernes, 1840. _L. Stein_, Der Socialismus und
Communismus des heutigen Frankreich. See, also, the learned history
of socialistic systems in _Marlo’s_ Weltökonomie, I, 2, 435 ff.; and
in what concerns the most recent time, _R. Meyer_, Der
Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes, II, 1874, seq.; a book
which, in spite of its many defects, both doctrinal and
journalistic, is as rich in thought, and in the knowledge of the
subject it treats of, as it is permeated by a love of truth
regardless of consequences. Among the opponents of socialism and
communism, _Malthus_, On Population, B. III, ch. 3, and _B.
Hildebrand_, Die Nationalökonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft, vol. I,
1848, hold a very distinguished place. _J. S. Mill_, Principles, II,
ch. 1, 3, calls attention to the fact that hitherto the principle of
free property has never been consistently carried out. The first
social arrangement of modern society was almost everywhere the
result of conquest and violence, large traces of which yet remain.
Things have always been made property which ought not to be
property. Governments have endeavored to intensify the darkness of
the dark side of property, and favored the concentration instead of
the diffusion of wealth etc. Hence, no one can claim that the social
wrongs, so-called, had their origin in property as such. _Schäffle_,
Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 1870, has made a very note-worthy
effort to recognize whatever of truth there is in socialism, and to
combat its errors.
_ 480 Saint Simon’s_ reproach to the liberals, that their fundamental
principle was: _ôte-toi de là, que je m’y mette_, is well known.
481 Compare _Malthus_, Additions to the Essay on Population, 1817, IV,
ch. 7.
482 The _travailleurs égalitaires_ wished to murder not only the king,
the court, and the ministry, but also the Liberals and all owners of
property.
483 As soon, indeed, as this true love disappears in the married state,
the community of goods even there degenerates only too easily into a
spoliation of the better party by the worse.
484 The community of goods of the first Christians at Jerusalem, so
frequently cited and extolled (_James_, I, 1), was only a community
of use, not of ownership (Acts IV, 32), and, throughout, a voluntary
act of love, not a duty (V. 4), least of all, a _right_ which the
poorer might assert. Spite of all this, that community of goods
produced a chronic state of poverty in the church of Jerusalem.
Hence, Paul had collections taken up for them on all sides, without,
however, anywhere establishing a similar institution. (Romans, 15,
26; I. Corinth., 16, 1.) Compare _Mosheim_, De vera Natura
Communionis Bonorum in Ecclesia Hierosol., in his Dissertatt. ad
Histor. Eccles. pertinentes, II, 1 ff. As to whether _Barnabas_
(Epist., 19) desired to say anything more, compare Epist. ad
Diognetum, 5. For a real recommendation of a community of goods, on
economic grounds, see _Joh. Chrysostom._, in Acta Apost., Hom. XI.
Also _Clemens Rom._ c. 2 C. 12, qu. 1. Community of goods among the
Essenes: _Philo._ Opp. II. 457 ff. _Joseph. Bell_, Jud., II. 8.
_Bellermann_, Geschichtliche Nachrichten über die Essener. (1821.)
In many monasteries, there has been and is a species of community of
goods. There was once a singular contest on this subject, carried on
between the Minorites and the Pope, in the time of Louis of Bavaria.
The Minorites claimed that property was a thing, so much to be
condemned, that even food, at the moment of eating it, did not
belong to the person using it. The Pope taught on the other hand,
that even Christ and the Apostles possessed property, part personal
and part in common. (_Raynaldi_, Ann. eccl., XV, 241, 285 ff.)
Community of goods of the Homiliates, later of the Brothers of
Common Life, after the manner of the monks, but of a much higher
kind. (_Ullmann_, Reformatoren v.d. Reform, II, 62 ff.) The first
settlers of New Haven, Connecticut, held their property in common.
Land was divided among families in proportion to the number of
persons in them, and of the number of cattle they had brought with
them; and all sales and purchases were made on account of the whole
community. And so in Massachusetts during the first seven years of
the colony’s existence. (_Ebeling_, Geschichte und Erdbeschreib. der
Vereinigten Staaten, II, 391, I, 557.) _Herrnhut_ community of goods
in Pennsylvania, from 1742 to 1762, but which was done away with
when the number of colonists became too great. (_Ebeling_, IV, 717.)
Community of goods of the Shakers and Lutheran Rappers.
(_Buckingham_, Eastern States, II, 214, 427. _Prinz Neuwied_, Reise
in Nord Amerika, I, 136, ff.) Russian sects with community of goods.
(_v. Haxthausen_, I, 366, 407.) _Harless_, christliche Ethik § 501,
distinguishes very well between the “anti-christian” and “pseudo
christian” stand point, from which it is sought to establish the
doctrine of a community of goods. The Christian view of this subject
(compare Ephes., 4, 28, I; Thess., 4, 11, II, 3, 12; Matth., 6, 24;
Pet. 4, 10; Matth., 26, 7-11) is accused of hypocrisy by many
socialists. It is very easy, they say, when one is himself in
comfortable circumstances, to represent to the poor that their
poverty is a school for heaven, and to preach a contempt for riches
etc. They entirely forget, that the first promulgation of the Gospel
was made at a time when the worst kind of pauperism prevailed; and
that even the Master Himself, and the greater number of His Apostles
belonged to the lowest stratum of society. _Luke_, 9, 58. Many of
the Fathers of the Church, however, in their exhortations to
benevolence, used language in which modern Socialists have found a
rich mine which they have sedulously worked. (Compare
_Villegardelle_, Histoire des Idées sociales, 1846, 61 ff.)
485 Even _Aristotle_ says that what is common to many is a matter of
little concern to any one. (Polit., II, 1.) _Bastiat_ remarks: “We
compete to-day to see who works most and best. Under another regime,
we should emulate one another to see who should work least and
worst.” (Harmonies Econ., ch. VIII.) When the first settlers of
Virginia, in 1611, gave up the system of common labor and of
joint-stock companies, as much work was performed in a day as
formerly in a week, or as much by three workmen as formerly by
thirty. (_Purchas_, Pilgrims, iv, 1866. _Bancroft_, History of the
United States, I, 161.) Even in New England, therefore among men
both steady and accustomed to labor, who for conscience sake had
sacrificed so much, a community of goods was accompanied
uninterruptedly by famine. A change for the better took place, for
the first time in 1623 with the introduction of the institution of
private property which was followed in 1624 by the right of
inheritance. (_Bancroft_, I, 340.) The military colonies of Algeria,
also, in which husbandry in common was carried on, begged, at the
end of a year, that the system should be abandoned, for the reason
that it was good for nothing but to generate idlers; and yet, these
colonists were all powerful men of about the same age, and
accustomed to order and service in common. They were, moreover,
assisted by the nation with pay and food. Compare _Bugeaud’s_
account: Revue des deux Mondes, June 1, 1848. “The French
associations (after 1848), whose object was labor in common, have
nearly all died out.” _M. Chevalier_ in the Journal des Débats, Feb.
3, 1851. In the United States, sixteen phalansteries of Fourierites,
founded between 1840 and 1846, had all collapsed in 1855. (_D.
Vierteljahrsschrift_, October, 1855, 205 ff.)
486 Even in New Harmony, the members considered the task which they had
to perform to obtain food, clothing and shelter, as villeinage in
the worst sense of the term. (_H. Bernhard v. Weimar_, Nordamerikan.
Reise, V, 134 ff.; 151, 310, ff.) It is very inconsistent in
socialists to continue the proprietorship and heirship of the state.
To be consistent they should give both these rights only to mankind
as a whole. Compare _Kiraly_, Ueber Socialismus und Comm., 1868, 35.
487 It would not be entirely fair to take a partisan view of the
_ateliers nationaux_ of 1848, and claim them as a practical
refutation of socialistic utopias, since no serious experiment was
made with them. Compare _E. Thomas_, Histoire des Ateliers nationaux
considérés sous le double Point de Vue politique et social, 1848.
488 Socialists generally overlook the fact, that the greater number of
enjoyments from which the poorer classes are excluded, by the right
of property, would not exist at all were it not for that very right.
(_Spittler_, Politik, 356 ff.) This remark may also be made of
_Hugo’s_ ingenious objections. (Naturrecht, § 208 ff.) One of the
most effective pieces of socialistic declamation is that the lower
classes have a much shorter average of life than the upper. Hence
the institution of private property is charged with being a species
of spoliation of the poor of so many years of life, and the entire
“present society” condemned on that account. Here again it is not
borne in mind, that a few centuries ago the general average of life
was probably still smaller; and that it was precisely the growth and
development of “present society” that lengthened the days of the
poorer classes even, although it may have lengthened those of the
rich in a still greater proportion. See § 246.
489 But a community of goods would not, by a great deal, accomplish as
much as is generally supposed. In Prussia, for instance, in 1867,
only about three per cent. of the entire number of families in the
community had a yearly income of 1,000 thalers; only nine per cent.
had 500 thalers or more, and only 6,465 returned an income of more
than 4,000 thalers, while only 590 returned one of 16,000 thalers.
(Preuss. statist. Ztschr, 1868, 83. _Held_, Die Einkommensteuer, 197
ff) How little, therefore, could the poor here gain by the
spoliation of the rich! Besides, the purely personal consumption of
the rich is, after all, not so great; and if all luxury were
abandoned, an innumerable number of men would lose their gains.
(Compare _Ad. Smith_, Wealth of Nations, I, ch. 11, 2.) It would be
to kill the hen that had hitherto laid the golden egg in order to
divide its flesh a little more equally.
_ 490 Babeuf_ declared all arts and sciences to be evils. He would have
no one learn anything but Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and a little
of the Geography of France; and have the strictest censorship
enforced to keep every one within these limits. Compare the able
criticism of _Proudhon_, Contradictions, ch. 12.
491 According to _Umpfenbach_, Nationalökonomie, 201, where a community
of goods obtains, there can be but the alternative, viz.: whether
each person or each family shall receive just the same amount. (The
former would be more in harmony with principle, but what an
over-population would be the consequence!) Precisely so, too, if
each person were to come and take his own portion (anarchy!), or if
it were parcelled out to each by a board of distributors
(despotism!).
492 This expression came into vogue, principally, through _L. Blanc_,
Organization du Travail (1841), the leading ideas in which work are
the following: The suppression of competition by the establishment
of state industries; equality of remuneration for labor; equality
and legislative determination of the rate of interest; the choice of
superintendents by the workmen. With many modern socialists, the
shibboleth is not so much _liberté_ as _solidarité_. Besides,
_Fichte’s_ Naturrecht (1796), and his geschlossener Handelsstaat,
are, without doubt, among the most remarkable works favoring an
“organization of labor.” They aim at the destruction of the present
social system, which, at most, needs only to be reformed and
rejuvenated; and to galvanize the dead body into a new and different
life (Medea’s magic cauldron!). Compare _Corvaja_, Bancocrazia o il
gran Libro sociale, 1840.
493 Cabet’s Icarian colony in America numbered 298 adults and only 107
children. Yet spite of this condition, so favorable to production,
it did but a very sorry business. Its government was very similar to
that of a house of correction or a penitentiary. Even in religious
matters, spite of all pretended toleration, those members who did
not agree with Cabet were described in the official weekly paper as
_des infames ou des aveugles_. (D. Vierteljahrsschrift, 1855,
October, 205 ff.)
494 An eastern sage says, that land possesses the ideal of legal
security through which a beautiful woman, decked with pearls, might
travel without danger. What would such a sage say of a European
country, in which even orphan children have their property not only
preserved to them, but find it increased from having been placed at
interest, as soon as they reach their majority? (_Barrow_.)
495 “The equality of communism is the worst species of inequality,
because it guarantees to one for two hours of poor labor as much as
it does to an other for four hours of good work.” (_Bastiat_,
Harmonies économiques, ch. 8.)
_ 496 Proudhon_, Qu’est-ce que la Propriété, 283, says, very justly, that
“a community of goods is the spoliation of the strong by the weak.”
497 Called a negative community of goods, by _Zacchariä_, Vierzig Bücher
vom Staate, IV, 146, in contradistinction to the positive and
universal community of gain, as desired by the communists.
498 Community of goods and of women among the Ichthyophages on the Red
Sea, who lived in caves, went naked for the most part, plundered all
shipwrecked people, and never reached an advanced age. _Diodor._,
III, 15 ff. _Peripl._, Maris Erythr., 12. Concerning the Scythians,
see _Strabo_, VII, 300; the Spaniards, _Plutarch_, Marius, 6; the
Rhetians, _Dio Cass._ LIV, 22; the Triballi, _Isocr._, Panath., §
237; the Kilici, _Sext._, Empir. Pyrrh. Hypot. III, 24. Community of
goods among the Caribs who performed all their work in common, and
had, at least in the case of males, a common table and common stores
with supplies. (_Petr. Martyr_, Dec. VII, 1. _Rochefort_, II, c. 16.
_B. Edwards_, History of the West Indies, I, 43 ff.) Among the
Kuskowimers of Russian America, all the able-bodied men of the tribe
live together. (_v. Wrangell_, Nachrichten, 129.) Among the
inhabitants of the Aleutian islands, at least in times of scarcity
of food, the produce of the fisheries is divided according to their
need. (_V. Wrangell_, 185.) The organization of labor is rigidly
enforced among the Otomacs, on the banks of the Orinoco, and they
are, nevertheless, more civilized than their neighbors. (_Depons_,
Voyage, I, 295.) A community of goods must, however, be considered
an advance, in the case of an isolated people; and it is an error to
look upon it as the most primitive condition, as does, for instance,
_Ambrosius_, De off. Minist. I, 28, and _Frederick II_, in the
preface to his general code. (Allgemein. Gesetzbuche, 1231.) The
hospitality of the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands borders on a
community of goods. (_Mariner_, Freundschaftsinseln, 75, 81.
_Klemm_, Kulturgeschichte, IV, 398.) Concerning the beginnings of
property among the Esquimaux, See _Klemm_, II, 294.
499 Οὐκ ἄδοξον ἧν παρὰ τοῖς παλαιοῖς ληστεύειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἔνδξον. (_Didym._,
ad Odyss. II, 73, IX, 252.)
500 In Mexico, the Spaniards found land ownership among the most
distinguished of the natives, but only a species of possession in
common and common store houses among the peasantry. (_Robertson_,
History of America, § VII.) Hence, the agriculture of the country
was so unimportant that the little army of the _conquistadores_
frequently produced a famine by their marches.
501 The Tcherkesses considered robbery honorable provided the robber was
not caught _in flagrante_. Compare _Koch_, Reise in den kaukasischen
Isthmus, I, 370 ff. _Bell_, Journal of a Residence in Circassia, I,
181, II, 201. The organized robber bands of ancient Egypt, when it
was so highly civilized (_Diodor._, I, 80) may, on the other hand,
be accounted for by similar conditions actually existing in the
large cities of our own day.
502 What a frightful organization of labor we find in Sparta, combined
with a community of goods! Let us recall the exposing of children
authorized by law, the mode of education which must have cost the
life of all whose constitution was weak, the _cryptia_, the stern
hierarchy of age etc. _Plut._, Inst. Lac. 2, appreciates the bad
taste of the black broth at its true value. The Cretan community of
goods was based chiefly on the unnatural relation created by the
authorities known as paiderastia; and which was a very efficient
means to prevent over-population. (_Plat._, De Legg, I, 636.
_Arist._, Polit. II, 8.)
503 Remarkable reasons therefor in _Cæsar_, Bell. Gall., VI, 22.
504 There are, especially in Russia, a multitude of such institutions
among the inhabitants of the country still. See _Roscher_,
Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, § 71 ff.
505 In the Corpus Juris Canonici, that crown of medieval theology,
politics and jurisprudence, the ideal of a community of goods
occupies a place almost as prominent as in the works of modern
socialists. The only difference is, that in the former the
opposition to private property arises from a one-sided religiousness
and contempt of the world, while, in the latter, it arises generally
from irreligiousness and over-estimation of worldly goods.
506 This does not include the cost of the schools, churches and
benevolent institutions.
507 According to _Lassalle_, System der erworbenen Rechte, 1861, § 259,
history shows that law, as civilization advances, curtails more and
more the proprietary sphere of private individuals, inasmuch as it
tends more and more to place a greater number of objects outside the
circle of individual ownership.