Origin and motives.--Slavery taught steady labor.--Servitude of group to group.--Slavery and polygamy.--Some men serve others.--Freedom and equality.--Figurative use of "slave."-- Ethnography of slavery.--Family slavery.--Slavery amongst North American savages.--Slavery in South America.--Slavery in Polynesia and Melanesia.--Slavery in the East Indies.--Slavery in Asia.--Slavery in Japan.--Slavery in higher civilization.-- Slavery amongst Jews.--Slavery in the classical states.-- Slavery at Rome.--Slave revolts.--Later Roman slavery.--Slaves in the civil wars; clientage.--Manumission. Natural liberty.-- Slavery as represented in the inscriptions.--Rise of freedom in industry.--Freedmen in the state.--Philosophers opponents of slavery.--The industrial colleges.--Laws changed in favor of slaves.--Christianity and slavery.--The colonate.-- Depopulation.--Summary view of Roman slavery.--The Therapeuts.--Slavery amongst the Germanic nations.--The sale of children.--Slavery and the state.--Slavery in Europe. Italy in the Middle Ages.--Slavery in France.--Slavery in Islam.-- Review of slavery in Islam.--Slavery in England.--Slavery in America.--Colonial slavery.--Slavery preferred by slaves.--The future of slavery.--Relation of slavery to the mores and to ethics.

+270. Origin and motives.+ Slavery is a thing in the mores which is not well covered by our definition. Slavery does not arise in the folkways from the unconscious experimentation of individuals who have the same need which they desire to satisfy, and who try in separate acts to do it as well as they can. It is rather due to ill feeling towards members of an out-group, to desire to get something for nothing, to the love of dominion which belongs to vanity, and to hatred of labor. "The simple wish to use the bodily powers of another person, as a means of ministering to one's own ease or pleasure, is doubtless the foundation of slavery, and as old as human nature."[625] "There is an extraordinary power of tyranny invested in the chiefs of tribes and nations of men that so vastly outweighs the analogous power possessed by the leaders of animal herds as to rank as a special attribute of human society, eminently conducive to slavishness."[626] The desire to get ease or other good by the labor of another, and the incidental gratification to vanity, seem to be the fundamental principles in slavery, when philosophically regarded, after the rule of one man over others has become established. The whole group, however, must approve of the custom and must enforce it; otherwise it cannot exist. It appears that slavery began historically with the war captive, if he or she was not put to death, as he was liable to be by the laws of war. Those laws put the defeated, with his wife, children, and property, at the mercy of the victors. The defeated might be tortured to death, as was done amongst the North American Indians, or they might be saved from death by the women.

Then they were put to help the women and were rated as women.

Slavery, therefore, in its origin, was a humanitarian improvement in the laws of war, and an alleviation of the status of women. It seems to be established that it began where the economic system was such that there was a gain in making a slave of a war captive instead of killing him. It follows that slavery, wherever it has existed, has affected all the mores of the society. It promised great results gratis. It will appear below that it has been a terrible afrit, a demon which promised service but which became a master. When adopted into the folkways it has dominated and given tone and color to them all. That is the reason for giving it a place here.

+271. Slavery taught steady labor.+ It seems to be also right to understand that slavery proved to be a great schoolmaster to teach men steady work. If that view is correct, we must understand that no men would do any hard, persistent work if they could help it. The defeated were forced to it, and learned to submit to it. Then they helped the whole society up to a higher status, in which they also shared.[627] Von Gotzen gives some proof of this when he states that he and his troop of carriers sat by the camp fire evenings and that one after another told his life. "Nearly all had been, as children, brought from the inner country to the coast by slave dealers. Now they were proud of this slavery, proud of belonging to the 'cultivated' and of not being any longer 'wild' men."[628] In that view slavery is a part of the discipline by which the human race has learned how to carry on the industrial organization. There are some tasks which have been very hard and very disagreeable. Comrades in an in-group have never forced these on each other. It seemed to be good fun, as well as wise policy, to make members of a rival out-group do these tasks, after defeating them in war. For women the grinding of seeds (grain) always was a heavy burden until modern machinery brought natural powers to do it. For men the rowing of boats (galleys) has been a very hard kind of work.[629]

After slavery came to exist it was extended to other cases, even to some classes of cases in the in-group. Of these cases the first was that of debt. Amongst the Eveans a debtor who cannot pay is put to death. This, however, is a very exceptional rule.[630] The course of thought is, that a debtor has used another man's product and is bound to replace it. He therefore falls into servitude to his creditor in fact, whether it is so expressed or not. He must live on and work for the creditor.

Another case in which slavery was introduced was that of crime.

The criminal fell under obligations of restitution of value to an individual or to the whole (chief). Other cases of extension of slavery will appear below. We have many cases of groups exploited by other groups. The former are then inferior and despised groups who are tyrannized over by others who have beaten them in war or easily could do so.

+272. Servitude of group to group.+ Agriculture is a peaceful occupation, the pursuit of which breeds out the physical strength of nomadism. The cases in which nomads rule over tillers belong, in general, under this head, more especially because such a difference in the economy of life produces mutual contempt and hatred. The Israelites entered Canaan as nomads, and their relation to the Canaanites was that which is here described.

Another case is presented by the smiths, who generally appear as the earliest handicraftsmen, but are regarded with doubt and suspicion. They are not slaves, but they are treated as outcasts.

Very often, in case of conquest by an invading tribe, the smiths remain under the invaders as a subject and despised caste. The Masarva are descendants of Betchuanas and Bushmen. They stand in a relation of slaves to the Betchuanas, Matabele, and Marutse, in whose land they dwell, except that they may not be sold.[631] The Vaganda are subject to the Vahuma.[632] The latter keep out of sight, being inferior in civilization but greater in power. Von Gotzen also met with the Vahuma as rulers over the Vahuta, i.e.

"belongers," as they called them.[633] The Arabs hold the negroes of Borku in subjection and rob them of the date harvest.[634] In other parts of the same district a nomad section rules over a settled section of the same population.[635] Nomads hold themselves to be the proper ones to rule.[636] The Hyksos's invasion of Egypt is a case of the subjection of tillers by nomads, attended by all the contempt of men on one grade of civilized effort for those on another.[637] The combination of the two, the nomads forming the ruling caste of military nobles, forms a strong state.[638] The Tuaregs of the Sahara do not allow the inhabitants of Kauar to raise vegetables or grains, but force them to buy the same of them (the Tuaregs), which they bring to them from the Sudan to buy salt, which the Kauar dwellers must have ready.[639] The Akarnanians, in 1350, sold themselves to the barbarians, in a body, in order to escape want.[640] The Masai are another group of warriors and raiders. The Varombutta do their hunting and tilling for them.[641] The Makololo hold the Makalaka in similar serfdom, but the subjection is easy and the servitude light, because the subject individuals can easily run away.[642] The Hupa of California hold their neighbors in similar subjection and in tributary servitude.[643] Other cases are furnished by the Vanyambo, west of the Victoria Nyassa,[644] and the Djur, who long served the Nubians as smiths.[645] It gives us pleasure to learn that, about sixty years ago, the inferior tribes on Uvea (Tai), of the Loyalty group, revolted against the dominant tribe and nearly exterminated it.[646]

+273. Slavery and polygamy.+ Such instances show us the existence in human nature of a tendency of stronger groups to exploit weaker ones in the struggle for existence; in other words, slavery or forced labor is one way in which, in elementary civilization, the survival of the fittest group is brought about.

The slavery of individuals has not the same definite result on the competition of life. "We find polygamy and slavery continually at work dissolving the cohesion of old political institutions in the old civilized races of Asia and Africa. In an uncivilized society, like that of Zululand, they prevent such cohesion ever taking place. They help to keep the Kaffir tribes in perpetual unrest and barbarism, by destroying the germs of civilization and preventing its growth."[647] That the two have this effect in common may very probably be true, but in many respects they are antagonistic to each other. Slavery meets the necessity for many laborers which may otherwise be a cause for polygamy. Wherever slavery exists it affords striking illustrations of the tendency of the mores towards consistency with each other, and that means, of course, their tendency to cluster around some one or two leading ones. Africa now furnishes the leading proofs of this. The negro society is one in which physical force is the chief deciding element. The negroes have enslaved each other for thousands of years. Very few of them have ever become slaves to whites without having been previously slaves to other negroes. In 1875 it was reckoned that twenty thousand persons, chiefly women and children whose male relatives had generally been killed, were taken into slavery from around Lake Nyassa. The difficulties and expense of the slave trade in that region became so great that it could not be carried on except by alliance with one tribe which defeated and enslaved another and sold the survivors. The Arabs opened paths for ivory hunting. The slave dealers used these means of communication.

They established garrisons in order to exploit the territory, and ended by depopulating it.[648] Junker argues earnestly against the impression which has been established in Europe that Arabs are chiefly to blame for slavery. "There are places in Africa where three men cannot be sent on a journey together for fear two of them may combine and sell the third."[649]

+274. Some men serving others. Freedom and equality. Figurative use of "slavery."+ Must we infer, then, that there is a social necessity that some men must serve others? In the New Testament it is taught that willing and voluntary service of others is the highest duty and glory of human life. If one man's strength is spent on another man's struggle for existence, the survival of the former in the competition of life is impaired. The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind. The whole problem of mutual service is the great problem of societal organization. Is it a dream, then, that all men should ever be free and equal? It is at least evident that here ethical notions have been interjected into social relations, with the result that we have been taught to think of free and equal units willingly serving each other. That, at least, is an idealistic dream. Yet it no more follows from the fact that slavery has done good work in the history of civilization that slavery should forever endure than it follows from the fact that war has done good work in the history of civilization that war is, in itself, a good thing.

Slavery alleviated the status of women; the domestication of beasts of draft and burden alleviated the status of slaves; we shall see below that serfs got freedom when wind, falling water, and steam were loaded with the heavy tasks. Just now the heavy burdens are borne by steam; electricity is just coming into use to help bear them. Steam and electricity at last mean coal, and the amount of coal in the globe is an arithmetical fact. When the coal is used up will slavery once more begin? One thing only can be affirmed with confidence; that is, that as no philosophical dogmas caused slavery to be abolished, so no philosophical dogmas can prevent its reintroduction if economic changes should make it fit and suitable again. As steam has had put upon it the hard work of life during the last two hundred years, the men have been emancipated from ancient hard conditions and burdens, and the generalities of the philosophers about liberty have easily won greater and greater faith and currency. However, the mass of mankind, taught to believe that they ought to have easy and pleasant times here, begin to complain again about "wages slavery," "debt slavery," "rent slavery," "sin slavery," "war slavery," "marriage slavery," etc. What men do not like they call "slavery," and so prove that it ought not to be. It appears to be still in their experience that a free man is oppressed by contracts of wages, debt, rent, and marriage, and that the cost of making ready for war and of warding off sin are very heavy.

Political institutions readjust and redistribute the burdens of life over a population, and they change the form of the same perhaps, but the burdens are in the conditions of human life.

They are always present, and political institutions never can do away with them at all. Therefore slavery, if we mean by it subjection to the conditions of human life, never can be abolished.

+275. Ethnographical illustrations of slavery.+ In Togo male slaves work in the fields where yams are cultivated. Each carries a basket in which he has a chicken, which will live on worms and insects in the field. The slave is soon married. He has two days in the week to work for himself. One of his grown boys can replace him on the other four. He can buy a slave to replace him.

Thus they often attain to wealth, freedom, and power. A female slave, if married to a free man, becomes free. This form of slavery is only a mode of service. The slave lives with the family, and enjoys domestic consideration. There is also debt slavery, the whole family being responsible for the debt of a member.[650] Klose, however, describes the ruin wrought by slave raids. "Murder and incendiarism are the orders in this business.

Great villages and districts are made deserts and are depopulated by the raids." "It is not in negro nature to subject one's self voluntarily to labor. The negro wants to be compelled to work."

The fetich priest gives him a harmless drink, which is to be fatal to him if he tries to run away.[651] The Ngumba in south Kamerun hold their slaves in huts near their own houses. A mishandled slave can leave his master and demand the protection of another. A debtor who cannot pay becomes slave of his creditor until the debt is paid in value, but this does not free him. He can pay also by his wife or daughter.[652] Amongst the Ewe-speaking tribes a woman who is condemned to a fine may sell or pawn her children, if her husband will not give her the amount to be paid. The husbands often hold back until the women pawn the children to them, whereby they obtain complete control of the children.[653] Their slaves are criminals and debtors, or, if foreigners, are victims of war or of kidnapping. They are not regarded with contempt, are well treated, do not have as hard a lot as an English agricultural laborer, and often attain to wealth and honor. The master-owner may not kill a slave.[654] In Bornu the women slaves find favor in the eyes of their masters, and by amiability win affection. If they have children they win a firm position, "for only the most stringent circumstances could compel a Moslem, whose ideas are reasonably correct, to sell the mother of his children."[655] The Somal and Afar do not deal much in slaves. They use women and a pariah class. A Somal is never slave to a Somal, and war captives are not made slaves. Also amongst the Galla it appears that debtor slavery does not exist.

Criminal slavery does, however, exist, and is used by the chiefs.

It is honorable to treat slaves well. In Kaffa the slaves are lazy and pretentious, because they know that their owners do not look to them for labor, but speculate on their children, whom they will sell.[656] In general, in East Africa, the master-owner has not the power of life and death, and the slave has a right of property. "A headman (of a village) in debt sells first his slaves, then his sisters, then his mother, and lastly his free wives, after which he has nothing left."[657] Stuhlmann[658] says that slaves in Uganda are well treated, as members of the family.

Brunache[659] says the same of the Congo tribes so far as they have not been contaminated by contact with whites. This may be regarded as characteristic of African slavery. The Vanika of eastern Africa are herding nomads. They cannot use slaves, and make war only to steal cattle.[660] Bushmen love liberty. They submit to no slavery. They are hunters of a low grade. They hate cattle, as the basis of a life which is different from (higher than) their own. They massacre cattle which they cannot steal or carry away.[661] Mungo Park described free negroes reduced to slavery by famine.[662] In Ashanti a man and a woman discovered in the act in the bush, or in the open air, are slaves of him who discovered them, but they are redeemable by their families.[663]

Ashanti slavery is domestic and very mild. The slave marries his master's daughter and plays with the master. He also eats from the same dish.[664] Slavery of this form is never cruel or harsh. Debt slavery is harder, for the services of the pawn count for nothing on the debt.[665] The effect of the abolition of slavery in Algeria was stupor amongst master-owners and grief amongst slaves. The former wondered how it could be wrong to care for persons who would have been eaten by their fellow-countrymen if they had succumbed to the hard struggle for existence at home.

The latter saw themselves free--really free--in the desert, with no supply of food, clothing, or other supplies, and no human ties.[666] In all families of well-to-do people little negroes are found. The author saw one who told her that the lady of the house had suckled him.[667] It is reported from eastern Borneo that a white man could hire no natives for wages. They thought it degrading to work for wages, but if he would buy them they would work for him.[668] In spite of what has been said above about slavery on the west coast of Africa it is to be remembered that the master-owner has the power of life and death and that he often uses it. If he is condemned to death for a crime, he can give a slave to be executed in his place.[669] In eastern Angola, if a woman dies in childbirth, her husband has to pay her parents. If he cannot, he becomes their slave.[670] In South Africa Holub found that the fiercest slave chasers were blacks, who had slaves at home and treated them worse than Mohammedans ever did.[671] Formerly a Kaffir would work in the diamond mines for three marks a day until he got money enough to buy cattle and to buy a woman at home, a European suit, a kettle, and a rifle.

Then he went home and set up an establishment. Then he would return to earn more and buy more wives, who would support him to his life's end.[672] The stronger Hottentot tribes hold classes of their own population, or mountain Damara and Bushmen, in servitude, although no law defines a "slave." Those people hold the treatment they receive to be due to their origin. Amongst all South African tribes the rich exert their power to subjugate the poor, who hang upon them in a kind of clientage, hoping to receive something. Cruelty and even murder are not punished by the judges.[673]

+276. Family slavery.+ The savage form of slavery in Africa furnishes us one generalization which may be adopted with confidence. Whenever slaves live in a family, sharing in the family life and associating freely with the male members of it in work, religion, play, etc., the slavery is of a very light type and implies no hardship for the slave.

+277. Slavery in North America among savages.+ Slavery is believed to have existed amongst the Indians of Virginia. "They made war, not for land or goods, but for women and children, whom they put not to death, but made them do service."[674] The young men and slaves worked in the fields of the Mississippi valley.

The latter were not overworked.[675] The Algonquins made slaves of their prisoners, especially of the women and children.[676]

The Illinois are represented as an intermediate party who got slaves in the South and sold them in the West.[677] The Wisconsin tribes used to make captives of Pawnees, Osages, Missouris, and Mandans. When Pawnees were such captives (slaves) they were treated with severity.[678] In the Gulf region of North America slavery was common from the earliest times. That slaves might not escape, a sinew in the leg was cut, by the Six Nations.[679] On the northwestern coast of North America slavery was far more developed than east of the Rocky Mountains. In Oregon and Washington slavery was interwoven with the social polity. Slaves were also harshly treated, as property, not within the limits of humanity. For a man to kill a half dozen of his own slaves was a sign of generous magnanimity on his part. One tribe stole captives from its weaker neighbors. Hence the slave trade is an important part of the commerce of all the tribes up to Alaska.[680] In 1841 it was reckoned that one third of the entire population from northern British Columbia to southern Alaska were "slaves of the most helpless and abject description." "The great supply was obtained by trade with the southern Indians, in which the Tsimshian acted as middlemen. They were kidnapped or captured by the southern Indians from their own adjacent tribes and sold to the Tsimshian, who traded them to the northern Thlinkit and interior Tinne tribes for furs." "Slaves did all the drudgery, fished for their owner, strengthened his force in war, were not allowed to hold property or to marry, and when old and worthless were killed. The master's power was unlimited." The slave must commit any crime at the command of the master. The slaves were set free at some ceremonies, but they were put to death at the funerals of chiefs, or as foundation sacrifices, or in reparation for insults or wrongs. The northern Indians were more warlike and would not make good slaves. The Oregon flatheads were docile and industrious.[681] The Chinooks became the wealthiest tribe in the region by acting as middlemen to sell war captives taken inland as far from home as possible.[682] Amongst the Thlinkits slaves are forbidden to wear the labret, and sex intercourse with a slave woman disgraces a free man.[683] "Amongst the early Central Americans the slave who achieved any feat of valor in war received his liberty and was adopted by the Capulli, or clan."[684] In Mexico there were slaves of three classes,--criminals, war captives, and persons who had voluntarily sold themselves or had been sold by their parents.

The captor generally sacrificed a prisoner, but might hold him as a slave. Those who sold themselves did so to get a fund for gambling. There was a public slave mart at Azcapuzalco. The system is described as kind, but slaves might lose their lives through the act of the master at feasts or funerals.[685] "Actual slavery of the Indians in Mexico continued as late as the middle of the seventeenth century."[686] It is evident that slavery existed all over North and Central America, but was more developed on the Pacific coast than in the Mississippi valley.

The meat eaters of the buffalo region had less opportunity to use the institution.[687]

+278. Slavery in South America.+ In South America we also meet with at least one case of a tribe, or part of a tribe, which is in clientage to another tribe. This is a subdivision of the third rank of the Mbaya, who voluntarily entered into a relation of clientage to the Mbaya, giving them service under arms, and in house and field, without being their slaves, being protected in return by the powerful and feared tribe.[688] The Guykurus carry on frequent wars to get captives, whom they keep in stringent servitude. "There is, perhaps, no tribe of South American Indians, among whom the state of slavery is so distinctly marked as among them." Slaves and free do not intermarry, lest marriage be profaned. There is no way in which a slave may become free.[689] The Guykurus are the strongest tribe in the valley of the Paraguay. They have horses and were called by the Portuguese Cavalleiros.[690] In Brazil it was thought that the cultivation of the country was impossible unless the Indians were made slaves. The early laws and orders of the kings of Portugal seem to reveal a sincere desire to control greed and cruelty. In 1570 private slave raids were forbidden and slavery was confined to those captured in public and just war. Lisbon, however, became a great slave mart by the law that slaves passing from one colony (Africa) to another (America) must pass through Lisbon and pay a tax there. Peter Martyr is quoted that slavery was necessary for Indians who, if they had no master, would go on with their old customs and idolatry. Slavery killed them, however. It did not make them laborers.[691] In general, in the valley of the Yapura, in the first half of the nineteenth century, slaves were war captives who were very unkindly treated.[692] The aborigines began to sell their war captives to Europeans soon after the latter arrived. They wanted rosewood especially, and they took Indians to Africa as slaves.[693] Boggiani[694] expresses the opinion in regard to the savages of the Chaco, as the meadow region on the Paraguay river is called, that slavery amongst a people of more civilized mores, is, for them, "an incalculable benefit," and that "to hinder slavery, in such circumstances, would be a capital error." "It is necessary to force them to come out of their brutelike condition, and to awaken their intelligence, which is not wanting, if they receive practical and energetic direction." Bridges[695] says that one Fuegian is thrown into clientage to another by their mode of life. "For a young man, with no wife and few relatives, must live with some one who can protect him, and with whom he can live in comfort, whose wife or wives can catch fish for him, etc."

+279. Slavery in Polynesia and Melanesia.+ Polynesia, Melanesia, and the East Indies, especially the last, present us pictures of a society which is old and whose mores have been worn threadbare, while their stage of civilization is still very low.

Codrington[696] says: "There is no such thing as slavery, properly so called. In head-hunting expeditions prisoners are made for the sake of their heads, to be used when occasion requires, and such persons live with their captors in a condition very different from that of freedom, but they are not taken or maintained for the purposes of slaves." Ratzel[697] says: "Slavery prevailed everywhere in Melanesia, originating either in war or debt. Sometimes it was hard; sometimes not." Somerville says that "slaves are kept chiefly for their heads, which are demanded whenever any occasion necessitates them, such as the death of the owner." He is speaking of the Solomon Islands.[698]

What Finsch says of the Melanesians may be extended to all the inhabitants of the South Sea islands.[699] They will not work because they do not need to. They have few wants. Pfeil wants to make the people of German Melanesia work, in order that they may contribute to the tasks of the human race. The problem presents one of the great reasons for slavery in history.

+280. Slavery in the East Indies.+ The chief of Chittagong[700]

wrote to the English governor, in 1774, that slavery in his district was due to the sale of himself by any person who was destitute, and had no friends or position. He and his wife must serve the master and his wife in any desired way, including services which a free servant would not perform, "through fear of demeaning himself and disgracing his family." Abolition of this slavery would produce complaints by the masters, and would not please the servants who are used to it. "Until lately the universal custom prevailed in the hills of having debtor slaves."

The debtor gave one of his children or a female relative to serve as a menial until the debt should be paid. The pawned persons "were treated as members of the creditor's family and never exposed to harsh usage." The effect of interference by the English was that the wives and daughters of the great men suddenly had to do all the housework. "Debtor and creditor lost confidence in each other."[701] "There is a detestable and actual slavery in these hills, which is now only carried on by independent tribes, beyond English jurisdiction. This is the captivity to the bow and spear,--men and women taken prisoners by force in war, and sold from master to master. The origin of this custom was the want of women."[702] In the Chin hills there are slaves who are war captives, or criminals, or debtors, and others who are voluntary slaves, or slaves by birth. The master had full power of life and death, but, in fact, slaves were well treated.

The people made raids on the Burmese lowlands and seized captives who were held for ransom. A slave man cohabits with a slave woman and brings up his children with affection "in the same humble, but not necessarily unhappy, position as his own."[703] In Ceylon there were slave persons of all ranks. Those of royal rank were princes who were prisoners or criminals. Any one might obtain slaves by purchase, or accept voluntary slaves who looked to him for good support.[704] A Malay will buy of a chief a number of war captives whom he takes to an island. Then he goes to a Chinaman and tells him that the slaves want to work on that island, but still owe the speaker the cost of transportation. The Chinaman pays this and gives to the slaves, on credit, clothes, etc., including money with which to gamble. Wages are low and interest high. They never can pay their debts and get their freedom again. This kind of slave trade has depopulated northern Nias.[705] On Sumatra, when a debtor is called upon to pay and cannot, or when he dies and does not leave enough property to pay his debts, his children fall into semi-slavery. They can perhaps persuade some one to pay their debts and accept their services.

If their master formally three times demands payment of them which they cannot give, they fall into full slavery. Slavery exists in the Malay seaport towns, but not in the rural districts, where life is too simple.[706] In times of famine and want parents sell their children into slavery for a little rice.

Children, especially daughters, constitute a large part of the fortune of a house father.[707]

At Koetei, on the Mahakkam in Borneo, all well-to-do people have debtors in pawn, whose position is somewhat better than that of slaves. The debtors seem content and submissive. Captives taken on head-hunting expeditions are held as slaves until human sacrifices are wanted.[708] The souls of all those who are put to death at the death of a Dyak rajah become his servants in the other world. In this world the killer can command, as his fetich, the soul of the killed. On the death of a great man his debtor slaves are bound to the carved village post, which indicates the glory of head-hunting, and are tortured to death.[709] "Slavery is greatly practiced" on Timorlaut. A thief, debtor, slanderer, or defamer may become the slave of the one he has wronged. The slave trade is also active between the islands.[710] The slaves of the sea Dyaks adopt their customs and become contented.

Sometimes they win affection and are adopted, freed, and married to free women. Slaves and masters eat together the same food in the rural villages.[711] Among the land Dyaks slaves, by destitution and debt, "are just as happy as if perfectly free, enjoying all the liberty of their masters, who never think of ill-using them."[712] In old times one who set a house on fire was liable to become the slave of any one who was burned out.[713] Slaves on Timor do not seem to care for liberty. Their livelihood would not be so certain. There is a kind of slavery to the kingdom, not to any individual, but the slave cannot be sold by the king.[714] In the Barito valley a debtor slave has to do any kind of work. He may be punished by blows, or fines added to his debt, which may also be increased by any breaches of customs, or by the value of broken tools or vessels. A month after a child is born to him ten gulden are added, also expenses of education when the child is ready to go to work. He may be slain at a feast of the dead by his master. The owner can torment the debtor by new fines, and keep up the debt or even increase it.[715] In the Katingan valley there are no debtor slaves, because after three years a debtor who cannot pay becomes an hereditary slave, and cannot get his liberty even if he should get the means to pay his debt.[716] If he ever gets the means to pay and attempts to free himself he is compelled to pay fees, taxes, and customary dues to the "spirits of the house," etc. When he leaves his master's house he must not return to it for a year or two, nor eat anything brought from it--"to prove his independence." Then he gives a feast and becomes free.[717] "Slavery and pawnship are, in the nature of the case, the same."[718] The Dyaks put their Eden on a cloud island. They have a myth that the daughters of the great Being let down seven times seven hundred cords of gold thread in order to lower mortals upon a mountain, but the mortals were overhasty and tried to lower themselves by bamboos and rattans. The god, angry at this, condemned them to slavery. The myth, therefore, accounts for a caste of slaves. Formerly also war captives and criminals who could not pay fines became slaves.

Debts cause men to fall into pawnship. Extravagant living, and gambling, lead to this condition. If a man becomes pawn for a debt his whole household goes with him. All have to work very hard to try to satisfy a greedy master. The pawn is entitled to one tenth of the harvest, or of the gain by trade. Free men despise pawns.[719] Wilken[720] says of the Bataks that a slave, by diligence and thrift, can always buy himself. In addition to all the ill chances of gambling, extravagance, making love to another man's wife, etc., by which a man may become a debtor slave, customs exist which are traps for the unwary. Sago and rice are left in the woods, in some islands, until wanted. If a man passes the store, he is supposed to take away the spirit of the goods. If caught, he and all his family become slaves. If a man dies who was wont to fish at a certain place, the place becomes taboo to his ghost. Any one who fishes there becomes a slave to his family. Also, if a district is in mourning, any one who breaks the mourning customs is made a slave.[721] The education of the Chinese in ethical doctrines has made slavery amongst them slight and mild. It is attributed to poverty, which forces parents to sell their daughters.[722] The owners must provide female slaves with husbands, and the law forbids the separation of husband and wife, or of parents and little children.[723] It appears that slavery is forbidden by law, but is tolerated in the case where the parents are poor. Boys once enslaved continue in bondage and their children follow them, but there is no legal possession. Girls become free at marriage.[724]

+281. Slavery in Asia.+ Slavery in Asia is of a kind which puts the slave largely at the mercy of his owner, but the mores have taught the slave owner to use his power with consideration. This is generally, not universally, true. Nivedita says[725] that "slavery in Asia, under the regime of great religious systems, has never meant what Europe and America have made of it.... It is a curious consequence of this humanity of custom [or rather, of the judgment in the mores as to the wisest course of conduct in a class of cases] that the word 'slave' cannot be made to sting the Asiatic consciousness as it does the European."

+282. Slavery in Japan.+ In Japan slavery was a common punishment, in early times, for crime. Debtors unable to pay became slaves of their creditors, and thieves were made slaves of those whom they had robbed.

The attempt to introduce Christianity into Japan and the resistance to it led to the slavery of many Christian converts, if they refused after torture to recant. This was an alternative to death. Slaves were tattooed with marks to show ownership. "Slaves were bought and sold like cattle in early times, or presented as tribute by their owners,--a practice constantly referred to in the ancient records." Their sex unions were not recognized. "In the seventh century, however, private slaves were declared state property, and great numbers were then emancipated, including nearly all,--probably all, who were artisans, or followed useful callings. Gradually a large class of freedmen came into existence, but until modern times the great mass of the common people appear to have remained in a condition analogous to serfdom."[726]

+283. Slavery in higher civilization.+ It appears quite clear that men in savagery and barbarism used each other, if they could, to serve their interests, and slavery resulted. The hardships of life caused it. The rules of war were "Woe to the vanquished!" and "To the victors the spoils." Debt was a relation which might come about between two men from incidents in the struggle for existence, or from loans of money and goods. All mischance might be converted into lack of resources (money and goods), and he who borrowed fell into dependence and servitude. All violations of custom and law led to fines; all need of civil authority made it necessary to pay fees. The debtor pledged his future working time. His relation to his creditor was personal. That he was a borrower proved that he had nothing which could form a property security. The laws of Hammurabi provide that a debtor may give his wife and children as pawn slaves, but only for three years. In the fourth year the creditor was to set them free. The pawn persons were to be well treated. A slave given in pawn might be sold, but not if it was a female slave with children.[727] To aid or conceal a fugitive slave was a capital offense.[728] Many Chaldean contracts have been found in which the debtor bound himself to work for the creditor until he should pay the debt.[729] It appears that the Babylonian slaves could form a _peculium_ and carry on business with it as a capital, paying their owners a tax upon it.[730]

+284. Slavery amongst Jews.+ The Jewish law had a provision like that in the law of Hammurabi, except that the limit was six years instead of three. A debtor was not to be a slave, but to give service until the year of jubilee.[731] In 2 Kings iv. 1 the widow tells Elisha that her husband's creditors will come and take her two sons to be bondmen. The creditors of some of the Jews who returned from exile threatened to make them debtor slaves. Nehemiah appealed to them not to do so.[732] In Matt. xviii. 25 the man who could not pay was to be sold with his wife and children. Kidnapping was punishable by death.[733] In Job xxxi. 15 we find the ultimate philosophico-religious reason for repudiating slavery: "Has not He who made me made him [the slave] also in his mother's womb?" The laws of the "Book of Covenants" begin with laws about slaves.[734] A male slave, with his wife, is to be freed in the seventh year, unless he prefers to remain a slave. A man may sell his daughter into slavery, i.e. to be a concubine. There was no difference in principle between a daughter given to wife and one sold to be a concubine. In Deut. xv. 12 the female slave is also set free in the seventh year, and persons so freed are to be given gifts when they depart. The slaves were war captives, or bought persons, or criminals.[735] The lot of slaves was not hard. The owners had not the power of life and death. The slave could acquire property.[736] If the slave was an Israelite he was protected by especial restrictions on the master in behalf of fellow-countrymen.[737]

+285. Slavery in the classical states.+ Slavery came to the two great classical states from the antecedent facts of savage and barbaric life.

When Aristotle came to study slavery he could not find a time when it was not. We have seen how it had become one of the leading institutions of uncivilized society, and how it had been developed in different forms and degrees. The two great classical states, more especially Rome, built their power on slavery. Both states pursued their interests with little care for the pain they might inflict on others, or the cost in the happiness of others. The Roman state began by subjugating its nearest neighbors. It used its war captives as slaves, increased its power, conquered more, and repeated the process until it used up all the known world. The Phoenicians were merchants, who kidnapped men, women, and children, if they found opportunity, and sold them into slavery far from home. The Ionians, who grew rich by commerce, bought slaves and organized states in which slaves did all the productive work. In both Greece and Rome productive work came to be despised. One is amazed to find how easily any one who went on a journey might fall into slavery, or how recklessly the democracy of one city voted to sell the people of a defeated city into slavery, yet how unhesitatingly everybody accepted and repeated the current opinions about the baseness of slave character.

Homer says that a slave has only half the soul of a man.[738] The love stories in the _Scriptores Erotici_ very often contain an incident of kidnapping. The story of Eumaeus must have been that of many a slave.[739] It is also only rarely and very incidentally that the classical writers show any pity for slaves, although they often speak of the sadness of slavery.[740] If any man, especially a merchant, who went on a journey incurred a great risk of slavery, why was not slavery a familiar danger of every man, and therefore a matter for pity and sympathy? In the great tragedies the woes of slavery, especially the contrasts for princes and princesses, heroes and heroines, are often presented. Polyxena, in Euripides's _Hekuba_, 360, bewails her anticipated lot as a slave. A fierce master will buy her. She will have to knead bread for him, to sweep and weave, leading a miserable life, given as wife to some base slave. She prefers to be sacrificed at Achilles's tomb. When the Greeks were going to kill her, she asked them to keep their hands off. She would submit. Let her die free. "It would be a shame to me, royal, to be called a slave amongst the dead." In the _Trojan Women_ the screams of the Trojan women are heard, as they are distributed by lot to their new Greek masters. The play is full of the woes of slavery. At Athens slaves enjoyed great freedom of manners and conduct. They dressed like the poorest freedmen. No one dare misuse the slave of another simply because he was a slave. If the master abused a slave, the latter had an asylum in the temple and could demand to be sold. Slaves could pursue any trade which they knew, paying a stipulated sum to their owners, and could thus buy their manumission. Their happiness, however, depended on the will of another.[741] In the law they were owned as things were, and could be given, lent, sold, and bequeathed. They could not possess property, nor have wives in assured exclusive possession against masters. Their children belonged to their masters. Plato thought that nature had made some to command, others to serve.[742] He thought the soul of a slave base, incapable of good, unworthy of confidence.[743] Aristotle thought that every well-appointed house needs animate and inanimate tools. The animate tools are slaves, who have souls, but not like those of their masters. They lack will.

Slaves are like members of the master, ruled by his will. Their virtue is obedience.[744] He says that there were men in his time who said that slavery was an injustice due to violence and established by law.[745]

+286. Slavery at Rome.+ It is in ancient Rome that we find slavery most thoroughly developed. Any civilization which accomplishes any great results must do so by virtue of force which it has at its disposal. The Romans conquered and enslaved their nearest neighbors. By virtue of their increased power they extended their conquests. They repeated this process until they had consumed all the known world. The city of Rome was a center towards which all the wealth of the world was drawn. There was no reverse current of goods. What went out from Rome was government,--peace, order, and security. The provinces probably for a time made a good bargain, although the price was high. In the earliest times slaves were used for housework, but were few in number per household. In 150 B.C. a patrician left to his son only ten. Crassus had more than five hundred. C. Caec. Claudius, in the time of Augustus, had 4116.[746] In the early days a father and his sons cultivated a holding together. Slaves were used when more help was needed. There was one slave to three sons and they lived in constant association of work and play. When conquest rendered slaves numerous and cheap, free laborers disappeared.[747] Ti. Semp. Gracchus, in 177 B.C., after the war in Sardinia, sold so many Sardinian slaves that "cheap as a Sardinian"

became a proverb.[748] His son Tiberius is reported to have been led into his agrarian enterprise by noticing that the lands of Etruria were populated only by a few slaves of foreign birth.[749] Bucher[750] puts together the following statistics of persons reduced to slavery about 200 B.C.: after the capture of Tarentum (209 B.C.), 30,000; in 207 B.C., 5400; in 200 B.C., 15,000.[751] Roman slaves were not allowed to marry until a late date. They were systematically worked as hard as it was possible to make them work, and were sold or exposed to perish when too old to work. Such was the policy taught by the older Cato.[752] The number on the market was always great; the price was low; it was more advantageous to work them so hard that they had no time or strength to plot revolts. This is the most cynical refusal to regard slaves as human beings which can be found in history. They were liable to be tortured in their owners' cases in court. They might be given over to the gladiatorial shows and set to fight each other, or wild beasts.

Seventy-eight gladiators condemned to fight to the death revolted in 74 B.C. under Spartacus, who defeated five armies. Crassus was sent against him with eight legions. Lucullus was recalled from Thrace and Pompey from Spain. Spartacus was cut to pieces in his last battle.

Crassus crucified six thousand prisoners along the road from Capua to Rome.[753]

+287. Slave revolts.+ The severity of the Roman system of slavery is shown by the number of revolts and the severe proceedings in each of them. There was such a revolt in 499 B.C. The guilty were crucified. The following year there was another.[754] In 416 there was another. The aim always was to take the citadel and burn the city.[755] Sicily was covered with a swarm of slaves at the beginning of the second century B.C. They were especially Syrians, very tough and patient. They were managed under Cato's plan: "Work or sleep!" In 196 B.C. the slaves in Etruria revolted and were suppressed with great severity.[756] In 104 those of Sicily revolted. They were subdued four years later and the last remnant were sent to Rome to fight beasts. They killed themselves in the arena.[757] The later Roman system was that the mob of the city put the world in the hands of one or another, and he gave them bread and games as their part of the plunder. The _frumentaria_ were the permanent and steady pay of the "world conquerors." They made herding the best use of Italian land.

"Where before industrious peasants prospered in glad contentment, now unfree herdsmen, in wide wastes, drove the immense herds of Roman senators and knights."[758] The Sicilian landowners left their shepherds to steal what they needed, so that they were educated to brigandage. The greatest sufferer was the small freeman.[759] There is a story in Diodorus,[760] of Damophilos, an owner of great _latifundia_, whose slaves came to him to beg clothes. He replied: "Do the travelers, then, go naked through the country? Are they not bound to pay toll to him who needs clothes?" He caused them to be flogged and sent them back to work. The misery of the slave population seems to have reached its acme at Enna where two roads across the island cross each other. The town lies 3000 feet high. It was a great fortress down into the Middle Ages.[761] At this place began a slave revolt, led by a Syrian skilled in sorcery. The slaves took the city and engaged in rapine and murder. A band was sent to capture Damophilos. The men killed him, and the women his wife. Their daughter was sent in security to her relatives.[762] It was ten years before peace was restored to the island.

+288. Later Roman slavery. Slaves in the civil wars. Clientage.+ Down to about 200 B.C. slavery, although mechanical and cruel, was domestic. The slave was a member of the household, on intimate terms with the master or his children, shared in the religious exercises, and the graves of slaves were under religious protection.[763] In the second century B.C.

Roman expansion gained momentum and produced power and wealth. The factions of the city were fighting for control of the booty. Roman character became mechanical and hard. This affected the type of slavery.

By 100 B.C. Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans had developed a system of holding slaves which was cruel and reckless, and slaves had acquired a character of hatred, venom, and desire for revenge. They were malignant, cunning, and hypocritical.[764] In the civil wars each leader sought the help of slaves. Sulla set free 10,000 of them, whom he put in the tribes of the city.[765] After the battle of Cannae the Romans armed 8000 slaves whom they enfranchised.[766] aemilius Paulus sold 15,000 Epirotes. Marius made 90,000 Teutons captives at Aquae Sextiae and 60,000 Cimbrians at Vercellae. When Marius offered liberty to slaves only three followed him.[767] Sulla promised liberty to the slaves of the proscribed, if they would bear testimony against their masters. One did so. Sulla freed him, but then put him to death. Thus the slaves were the sport of political factions and leaders. The Roman conquests caused everywhere a certain servile temper. All conquered people were depressed into quasi-slavery. All had to pay a head tax, which was a mark of servitude.

The Roman system reduced all to servitude. A late emperor called the senators "slaves in the toga." When all were rendered _nil_ under the emperor the slaves gained. They were not in worse case than the rest.[768] During the conquests entire peoples became clients. If any one did not attach himself as client to a great family he was lost.

Freed women, for this reason, almost always fell into vice.[769]

Clientage became the refuge of loafers. "Romans did not give anything gratis." All who were outside the social system had to seek the patronage of a great man. For his protection he took pay in money or service. The status was a modified slavery.

+289. Manumission. Natural liberty.+ The slave dealers developed tricks far surpassing those of horse dealers in modern times.[770] By enfranchisement the owner got rid of the worst worry of slavery, and tied the freedman to himself by a contract which it was for the interest of the freedman to fulfill. The owner made a crafty gain.[771]

Tacitus[772] says that, in his time, the Roman people was almost entirely freedmen. If that is so, we must notice that the "people,"

under the empire, are a different set from what they were under the republic. When the Romans got an educated artisan as a slave they set him to teach a number of others. When no more outsiders were conquered and enslaved the slaves taught each other. The work then became gross and ran down.[773] This was another of the ways in which Rome consumed the products and culture of the world. Very few instances, real or fictitious, of sympathy with slaves can be cited. In the story of _Trimalchio_, Encolpius and his friends beg off a slave who is to be whipped for losing the garment of another slave in the bath. At a supper at which Augustus was present a slave broke a vase. His master ordered him cast to the _murenae_ in a tank. The slave begged Augustus to obtain for him an easier death, which Augustus tried to do. The master refused.

Augustus then gave the slave complete grace, broke the host's other vases himself, and ordered the tank filled up.[774] Under Nero, Pedanius having been murdered, his slaves, four hundred in number, were all condemned to death, according to law. The populace rose against this sentence, which was fulfilled, but it shows that there was a popular judgment which would respond upon occasion.[775] "Not once, in all antiquity, does a serious thought about the abolition of slavery arise."[776] It was the basis of the entire social and political order.

They were in terror of the slaves and despised them, but could not conceive of a world without them. Probably we could not either, if we had not machines by means of which we make steam and electricity work for us. Individuals were manumitted on account of the gain to the master. The owner said, in the presence of a magistrate, "I will that this man be free, after the manner of the Quirites." The magistrate touched the head of the slave with his rod, the master boxed his ears, and he was a free man.[777] The law provided a writ, "resembling in some respects the writ of _habeas corpus_, to compel any one who detained an alleged freedman to present him before a judge."[778] The Roman lawyers also, if they could find a moment during gestation when the mother had been free, employed legal fiction to assume that the child had been born at that moment.[779] Florentinus defined slavery as "a custom of the law of nations by which one man, contrary to the law of nature, is subjected to the dominion of another."[780] Ulpian likewise said that, "as far as natural law is concerned, all men are equal."[781]

+290. Slavery as represented in the inscriptions.+ "The inscriptions reveal to us a better side of slave life, which is not so prominent in our literary authorities." They show cases of strong conjugal affection between slave spouses, and of affection between master and slave.[782]

In the first century the waste of the fortunes won by extortion from the provinces, and the opening of industrial opportunities by commerce, with security, gave great stimulus to free industry. The inscriptions "show the enormous and flourishing development of skilled handicrafts," with minute specialization. "The immense development of the free proletariat, in the time of the early empire, is one of the most striking social phenomena which the study of the inscriptions has brought to light." The time was then past when Roman society depended entirely on slave labor for the supply of all its wants.[783] Dill thinks that "the new class of free artisans and traders had often, so far as we can judge by stone records, a sound and healthy life, sobered and dignified by honest toil, and the pride of skill and independence."[784] The slave acted only under two motives, fear and sensuality. Both made him cowardly, cringing, cunning, and false, and at the same time fond of good eating and drinking and of sensual indulgence. As he was subject to the orders of others, he lacked character, and this suited his master all the better. The morality of slaves extended in the society, and the society was guided by the views of freedmen in its intellectual activity. The strongest symptom of this was the prevalence of a morality of tips, which put on the forms of liberality. It was no more disgrace to take gifts than to give them. Senators took gifts from the emperor, and all, including the emperor, reckoned on legacies. Thus the lack of character spread.[785] Slavery proved a great corrupter of both slaves and owners.

It was the chief cause of the downfall of the state which had been created by it. It made cowards of both owners and slaves. "The woes of negro slaves were insignificant, like a drop to an ocean, in comparison with the sufferings of ancient slaves, for the latter generally belonged to civilized peoples."[786]