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cattle is slaughtered and not shared with one's neighbor, or if one is eating and neglects to invite a passer-by. Any one can enter a hut at will and demand food; and he is never refused." And if it was a tool that was wanted, it could be borrowed if there was one in the tribe. The only exceptions in which presents would be needed would be "when purchasing a wife and making presents to the medicine-man, the singer, the dancer, and the minstrel, who are the only persons carrying on a species of separate occupations." Between two different tribes hospitality even now is a common occasion for presents: "The stranger on arriving receives a present, which after a certain interval he reciprocates; and at his departure still another present is handed him." And of course the exchange of wares through presents is not limited to savage tribes, nor to hospitality. We read in the Old Testament of gifts to a conqueror, or to a fellow ruler. The Moabites and the Syrians brought gifts to David. Many princes brought gifts to Solomon, and notably the Queen of Sheba, who brought gold and spices and precious stones. Indeed the spices were long remembered, for the author of the book of Kings says, "there came no more such abundance of spices as those which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon." And we have an interesting example of how presents did not always correspond to expectations. For Hiram, King of Tyre, furnished Solomon with cedar trees and fir wood and gold, with which Solomon built a temple and a palace. At the end of twenty years when these were finished Solomon gave Hiram in return twenty cities. "And Hiram came out from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him; and they pleased him

* Bücher, Industrial Evolution, pp. 60 ff.

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not." It need not be pointed out how awkward a way this is of really getting just the thing that is wanted and at a fair exchange. Nowadays we do not like to receive really valuable presents except from members of the family or from very close friends.

The

earliest

group

CHAPTER III

FIRST COOPERATION-THE CLAN AND ITS

H

CUSTOMS

OW much had early peoples learned about living together? How far had they learned to coöperate? Today we belong to a family group, to a city or township, to a state, and finally to the nation. In this country it is the city or town that has most to do with our health and education. It is the state which makes the laws that make our lives and

property secure. It is the nation which protects from any foreign enemy, which safeguards many of our liberties, and which is more and more coming to regulate our railroads and larger activities of business. These groups-family, city or township, state or nation are ways of uniting and coöperating which men have gradually worked out. How much of this had the savage discovered?

The great group in early life was not the nation or state or city for there were no such organizations— but the clan or tribe or kinship group. It decided where a man should live, whom he should marry, who his friends and foes would be, and by its customs regulated his education, his religion, and in fact nearly all that he did. It is then very important to understand this early clan which we may think of as the first plan of coöperation for union and government. What is a clan? Perhaps the simplest way to get

at this is to think of it as a group of relatives living together or near one another, mother, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins. It is not just the same as a large The family, for the belief early grew up that a man should clan not marry a woman of his own clan. A family would have in it members of two different clans, that is, a husband and wife; the clan, on the other hand, would have in it blood relatives only, except as it included adopted members. Sometimes when a man took a wife she would be adopted into his clan. In this case she had to give up her own clan and would not be regarded by it as any longer a fellow kinswoman. But sometimes the woman stayed at home among her own kin. In this case the husband was not adopted into the wife's family, but was received as a visitor and kept his kinship with his own clan. Then if a quarrel arose between his clan and his wife's clan he would have to side with his clan and she with hers. Early society was built on the idea that blood was the strongest tie.

We do not mean to imply that all savage peoples have clan groups such as we have described. What we wish to say is that the clan was the typical group of early life. It came before there was anything like a nation, or a city, or a business group, or a labor union, or any other kind of union. The ancestors of all European peoples and of the Jews once lived in such clans or tribes. Walter Scott in the "Lady of the Lake" tells how a clan was roused by the signal of a fiery cross carried and passed on by swift runners:—

"When flits this Cross from man to man,
Vich-Alpine's summons to his clan,
Burst be the ear that fails to heed!
Palsied the foot that shuns to speed!"

Origin and purpose of

the clan

And in response to this message Clan Alpine gathered:

"Each trained to arms since life began,
Owning no tie but to his clan,

No oath, but by his Chieftain's hand,
No law, but Roderick Dhu's command."

Many of Scott's novels also suggest the strong ties of the clan which brought all the members to the help of any one member who was in trouble. A Scotch Macgregor or Macpherson is still proud of his clan even if he does not show it by fighting against other clans. Cæsar says that among the Germans of his day, "No one possesses privately a definite extent of land; no one has limited fields of his own; but every year the magistrates and chiefs distribute the land to the clans and the kindred groups and to those (other groups) who live together."

The song of Deborah in the book of Judges praises the tribes of Israel that came to help their fellow tribesmen in battle and blames those that were timid or selfish. In early Rome and Greece there were great clans such as the Julian "gens." It may safely be said that the ancestors of all of us once lived in this kind of group. Every one who as a boy has belonged to a gang or club or team has had something of the same feeling about standing by the group, keeping its secrets, or being loyal to the team.

Early men formed these clans because it was the natural thing for children as they grew up to stay together, and when there were no other groups such as we have now-churches, political parties, nations, business firms-the clan naturally was stronger than a family is with us. It served two great purposes.

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