[330] _Die Soc. Einrichtungen d. Pelauer._

[331] Pfeil, _Aus der Sudsee_, 112.

[332] Semper, _Palau Ins._, 118.

[333] Martius, _Ethnog. Brasil._, 91.

[334] _Ibid._, 402.

[335] Powers, _Calif. Indians_, 335.

[336] _Ibid._, 76, 79.

[337] _Smithson. Rep._, 1886, Part I, 232.

[338] _Bur. Eth._, XVIII, Part I, 232.

[339] _Smithson. Rep._, 1887, Part I, 647.

[340] Powers, 21.

[341] Schurz, 25.

[342] Jolly, _Recht und Sitte_, 96.

[343] JASB, II, 214.

[344] Ridgeway, 21.

[345] Vissering, _Chinese Currency_.

[346] Ridgeway, 156.

[347] Puini, _Le Origine della Civilta_, 64; _Century Dict._, s.v. "Knife-money."

[348] Vissering, _Chinese Currency_, 38.

[349] _U. S. Nat. Mus._, 1893, 723.

[350] _First Journey_ (Germ.), 61.

[351] _Globus_, LXXVI, 372.

[352] Exod. xxii. 16; xxi. 36.

[353] Deut. xiv. 24.

[354] Levit. xxvii. 13, 15, 19.

[355] Buhl, _Soc. Verhalt. der Isr._, 95.

[356] Ridgeway, _Origin of Currency and Weight Standards_, 36.

[357] Ridgeway, 3.

[358] Schurz, 15.

[359] Babelon, _Origines de la Monnaie_, 72.

[360] Schrader, _Prehist. Antiq. of Aryans_, 153; Ridgeway, 31.

[361] Weinhold, _D. F._, II, 52.

[362] Geijer, _Sveriges Historie_, I, 327; Sophus Muller, _Vor Oldtid_, 409.

[363] See Chapter VI.

[364] Sophokles, _Antigone_, 292 (Campbell's trans.).

[365] JAI, XXVI, 405.

CHAPTER IV

LABOR, WEALTH

Introduction.--Notions of labor.--Classical and mediaeval notions.--Labor has always existed.--Modern view of labor.-- Movable capital in modern society; conditions of equality; present temporary status of the demand for men.--Effect of the facility of winning wealth.--Chances of acquiring wealth in modern times; effect on modern mores; speculation involved in any change.--Mores conform to changes in life conditions; great principles; their value and fate.--The French revolution.-- Ruling classes; special privileges; corruption of the mores.-- The standard of living.

+157.+ The topics treated in Chapter III--tools, language, and money--belong almost entirely in the folkways. The element of esteem for tools is sometimes very great. They are made divine and receive worship.

Nevertheless, there is little reflection stimulated to produce a sense of their importance to welfare. Therefore the moral element pertaining to the mores is not prominent in them. When the moral element exists at all in regard to tools, language, or money, it is independent and rises to the conception of prosperity, its sense and conditions. There are notions at all stages of civilization about productive labor and wealth, as parts of the fate of man on earth and of the conditions of his happiness and welfare. At this point they take the character of a philosophy, and are turned back on the work, as regulative notions of how, and how much, to work. The mores of the struggle for existence are in those notions. From the time when men had any accumulated wealth they seem to have been struck by its effect on the character of the possessor. The creature seemed to be stronger than the creator. Here ethical reflections began. They have been more actively produced since it has been possible for men to acquire wealth in a lifetime by their own efforts. Envy has been awakened, and has been gratified by theoretical discussions of the power, rights, and duties of wealth. When wealth was due to the possession of land or to the possession of rank and political power, the facts about its distribution seemed to be like the differences in health, strength, beauty, etc. It now appears that the ethics of poverty are as well worth studying as those of wealth, and that, in short, every man's case brings its own ethics, or that there are no ethics at all in the matter. The ideas, however, which are current in the society at the time are conditions for the individual, and they are a part of the mores of the environment in which the struggle for existence must be carried on.

+158. Notions of labor.+ Nature peoples generally regard productive labor as the business of women, unworthy of men. The Jews believed in a God who worked six days and rested on the seventh. He differed from the Olympian gods of Greece, who were revelers, and from Buddha who tried to do nothing, or from Brahma who was only Thought. The Sabbath of rest implied other days of labor. In the book of Proverbs idleness is denounced as the cause of poverty and want.[366] Many passages are cited from the rabbinical literature in honor of productive labor and in disapproval of idleness.[367] In Book II, Chapter 62, of the Apostolic Constitutions, the basis of which is a Jewish work, it is taught that gainful occupations should be incidental and that the worship of God should be the main work of life. Hellenic shows and theaters are to be avoided. To this the Christian editor added heathen shows and sports of any kind. Young men ought to work to earn their own support. The Zoroastrian religion was a developed form of the strife between good forces and evil forces. The good men must enlist on the side of the good forces. This religion especially approved all the economic virtues, and productive efforts, like the clearing of waste land, or other labor to increase favorable conditions and to overcome harmful or obstructive influences, were religious, and were counted as help to the good forces.

+159. Classical and mediaeval notions of labor.+ The Greeks and Romans regarded all labor for gain as degrading. The Greeks seem to have reached this opinion through a great esteem for intellectual pursuits, which they thought means of cultivation. The gainful occupations, or any occupations pursued for gain, were "banausic," which meant that they had an effect opposite to that of cultivation. The Romans seem to have adopted the Greek view, but they were prepared for it by militarism. The Middle Ages got the notion of labor from the Roman tradition. They mixed this with the biblical view. Labor was a necessity, as a consequence and penalty of sin, and directly connected, as a curse, with the "Fall." It was correlative to a curse on the ground, by which, also as a curse for sin, it was made hard to win subsistence by agriculture. The mediaeval philosophers, being clerics, held a life of contemplation to be far superior to one of labor or fighting. Labor was at best an evil necessity, a hardship, a symptom of the case of man, alienated from God and toiling to get back, if there was a way to get back, to the kingdom of God. The church offered a way to get back, namely, by sacraments, devotion, ritual, etc., that is, by a technically religious life, which could be lived successfully only if practiced exclusively. It occupied all the time of the "religious," technically so called. Labor was used for penance and for ascetic purposes. Often it was employed for useful results and with beneficial effect on useful arts. The purpose, however, was to ward off the vices of leisure. The ascetic temper and taste made labor sweet, so long as asceticism ruled the mores of the age.[368]

Labor for economic production was not appreciated by the church. The production of wealth was not a religious purpose. It was even discouraged, since disapproval of wealth and luxury was one of the deep controlling principles of mediaeval Christianity. The unreality of mediaeval world philosophy appeared most distinctly in the views of marriage and labor, the two chief interests of everyday life. Marriage was a concession, a compromise with human weakness. There was something better, viz. celibacy. Labor was a base necessity. Contemplation was better.

+160. Labor has always existed.+ +Wealth became possible.+ +Land.+ In all these cases the view of labor was dogmatic. It was enjoined by religion. There was some sense and truth in each view, but each was incomplete. The pursuit of gainful effort is as old as the existence of man on earth. The development of trade and transportation, slavery, political security, and the invention of money and credit are steps in it which have made possible large operations, great gains, and wealth.

Some men have seized these chances and have made a powerful class.

Rulers, chiefs, and medicine men have observed this power which might either enhance or supplant their own, and have sought to win it. In all primitive agricultural societies land is the only possession which can yield a large annual revenue for comfort and power. The mediaeval people of all classes got as much of it as they could. It would be very difficult indeed to mention any time when there were no rich men, and still harder to mention a time when the power of wealth was not admired and envied, and given its sway (sec. 150). Thus the religions and philosophies may have preached various doctrines about wealth, and may have found obedience, but the production of wealth, the love of wealth, and the power of wealth have run through all human history. The religions and philosophies have not lacked their effect, but they have always had to compromise with facts, just as we see them do to-day. The compromise has been in the mores. In so far as it was imperfect and only partly effected there have been contradictions in the mores. Such was the case in the Middle Ages. Wealth had great power. It at last won the day. In the fifteenth century all wanted it, and were ready to do anything to get it. Venality became the leading trait of the mores of the age. It affected the interpretation of the traditional doctrines of labor, wealth, the highest good, and of virtue, so that men of high purpose and honest hearts were carried away while professing disregard of wealth and luxury.

+161. Modern view of labor.+ It is only in the most recent times, and imperfectly as yet, that labor has been recognized as a blessing, or, at worst, as a necessity which has great moral and social compensations, and which, if rightly understood and wisely used, brings joy and satisfaction. This can only be true, however, when labor is crowned by achievement, and that is when it is productive of wealth. Labor for the sake of labor is sport. It has its limits, and lies outside of the struggle for existence, which is real, and is not play. Labor in the struggle for existence is irksome and painful, and is never happy or reasonably attractive except when it produces results. To glorify labor and decry wealth is to multiply absurdities. The modern man is set in a new dilemma. The father labors, wins, and saves that his son may have wealth and leisure. Only too often the son finds his inheritance a curse. Where is the error? Shall the fathers renounce their labors?

+162. Movable capital in modern society.+ +Conditions of equality.+ +Present temporary status of the demand for men.+ In modern times movable capital has been immensely developed and even fixed capital has been made mobile by the joint-stock device. It has disputed and largely defeated the social power of land property. It has become the social power. While land owners possessed the great social advantage, they could form a class of hereditary nobles. The nobles now disappear because their social advantage is gone. The modern financiers, masters of industry, merchants, and transporters now hold control of movable capital. They hold social and political power. They have not yet formed a caste of nobles, but they may do so. They may, by intermarriages, absorb the remnants of the old nobility and limit their marriages further to their own set. It is thus that classes form and reform, as new groups in the society get possession of new elements of social power, because power produces results. The dogmas of philosophers deal with what ought to be. What is and shall be is determined by the forces at work. No forces appear which make men equal. Temporary conditions occur under which no forces are at work which any one can seize upon.

Then no superiority tells, and all are approximately equal. Such conditions exist in a new colony or state, or whenever the ratio of population to land is small. If we take into account the reflex effect of the new countries on Europe, it is easy to see that the whole civilized world has been under these conditions for the last two hundred or three hundred years. The effect of the creation of an immense stock of movable capital, of the opportunities in commerce and industry offered to men of talent, of the immense aid of science to industry, of the opening of new continents and the peopling of them by the poorest and worst in Europe, has been to produce modern mores. All our popular faiths, hopes, enjoyments, and powers are due to these great changes in the conditions of life. The new status makes us believe in all kinds of rosy doctrines about human welfare, and about the struggle for existence and the competition of life; it also gives us all our contempt for old-fashioned kings and nobles, creates democracies, and brings forth new social classes and gives them power. For the time being things are so turned about that numbers are a source of power. Men are in demand, and an increase in their number increases their value. Why then should we not join in dithyrambic oratory, and set all our mores to optimism?

The reason is because the existing status is temporary and the conditions in it are evanescent. That men should be in demand on the earth is a temporary and passing status of the conjuncture which makes things now true which in a wider view are delusive. These facts, however, will not arrest the optimism, the self-confidence, the joy in life, and the eagerness for the future, of the masses of to-day.