B. STRIKING OFF THE CHAINS

IV

SLAVERY IS A WEED

"Slavery they can have everywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil."

-EDMUND BURKE

If all people were Tarzans, there would be despotism everywhere. Democracy would not exist because it comes the hard way. It has to be constructed on purpose by effort and sacrifice, while despotism comes when men do not try. It is as instinctive for a masterful man to boss and for a submissive man to obey, as it is for a boy to go fishing or a girl to play with a doll. Let man alone, and fail to give a definite and specific education to the contrary, and he soon will be living under the masterful man, who always stands. ready to walk in and grab the power. There is always a despot just around the corner waiting for us to weaken.

Despotism is the natural form of government. The family is the smallest social unit and the nearest to man's instincts. It is supposed that all other larger

social units, including all forms and kinds of governments, have developed from it. Every family has its unwritten set of rules and regulations, its codes of conduct, its ways of behaving. Usually all members share the benefits. It is one for all, and all for one. But rarely do all members of a family share in making the decisions. The father is usually the head, although in some cases it is the mother.

The fact that father, mother, and children live together and that the group is bound by love and affection, usually hides the truly despotic character of the family. But if one were to go to South America or China or Russia where the large family (known as the patriarchal family) is common he would soon detect the tyranny. In China, for instance, a family may contain a hundred or more people-a great-grandmother and father, several grandparents, their children and grandchildren "unto the third and fourth generation." They all live in one compound, several houses, but they are all a unit, and they are ruled by one of the old people. A Russian, brought up north of Moscow, who escaped from one of these huge families states that any restriction he has suffered in days since has by comparison seemed like liberty to him. Each member of the family got his orders. He was told what to do and when. This one should cook, that one farm; this one become a musician, that one teach school. Every innovation was suppressed; every new idea discouraged. The younger generations were told, "Things were not like

that when I was young." "In these days the youth are degenerating. They are not as polite, intelligent, and hardworking as we were long ago. What is the world coming to?" Sometimes boys and girls think their fathers and mothers tyrannical; but Americans know nothing of tyranny in comparison to the family in which every decision is made by great-grandfather— what one is to do, when he is to go to work, whom he is to marry, what he may say and when.

It is commonly supposed that it was a family like this that grew into the tribe. A big group, set off by itself, with servants, slaves, and hangers-on, became a clan. Scientists think that such a group was the origin of all government. Certainly most primitive tribes have a form of social organization that resembles that of an overgrown family.

This development of the family into the clan, and then into a larger and more complicated unit of government, brought two types of despotism, authority in the chief and authority in a ritual. Man has a way of forming a habit. He tends to develop traditions. A boy on his way to school goes by the same streets and enters by the same door; he tends to put on his right shoe first, or left; or by custom, buttons his coat top button first, or middle, or bottom. These are habits that by repetition become fixed; and enough habits fixed in a tribe or group of people become a body of tradition. So, it is supposed, was the way in which our remote ancestors came to build their plan of government and life..

Scholars who study the habits of primitive tribes of course find all varieties of government and ways of living. One cannot make generalizations that are universally true. Nevertheless the usual primitive tribe apparently has developed over a long period of time a regular and habitual way of bringing up the young, of eating, hunting, fishing, farming, and warfare; and this has been so long established that it has become a tradition, so fixed and accepted that it really governs the tribe.

So, among the Pueblo Indians, for instance, the chiefs, warriors, women, and children live their lives according to an ancient pattern worked out long ago and handed down from generation to generation without change. It is a ritual. The young have to learn it, and learn it exactly. The aim of education is to duplicate the preceding generation with no change. Because this plan has worked well in the past, it is thought, it ought to work well in the future. So far as the young are concerned, "Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die." And this do and die is not an exaggeration, because it was the custom in one ancient tribe every twenty-five years publicly to kill with great ceremony the most disobedient boy in the tribe. This was a rite looked forward to by all, and doubtless was referred to frequently in advance by many a parent. In this way were the traditions guarded.

So at the two extremes there are diverse plans of

government among the primitive peoples, a tribe living exactly to the schedule and specifications of an ancient tradition, and a tribe giving full obedience to a chief who has complete discretionary powers; and in between there are all sorts of combinations of the two ideas. In these governments the members of the tribe are not equal, nor does the government derive any power from the consent of the governed. Man is not free. He is either a slave to a chief or a slave to a ritual.

It must have been from tribal organizations like these that the great and powerful governments of early history developed. The first five books of the Old Testament contain a set of rules designed to tell the early Hebrews how to meet most of the problems of daily life, such as what to eat, what to wear, how to behave, and how to settle legal disputes. These books contained The Law, and Hebrews had to obey. Even the Kings and Prophets were no exception. Imagine what it would mean in America today if there were a similar book of rules to memorize and obey to the slightest detail. Should we not be slaves to a tradition?

The Egyptians also had a set of laws to be obeyed by all; as did the Chinese. So have most peoples whose governments have endured over any long period of time. The leaders of the people had to learn these laws. The older people then forced the younger ones to obey to the letter. No one thought for himself.