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Too few groups

Lack of

to settle quarrels, and so they keep up feuds. The tribe is not strong enough to protect its members or to keep order and make the future secure. We have a word, "clannish," which brings out precisely this defect. Clannish people keep too closely together; they do not mix with others and get the stimulus that comes from rubbing shoulders with all sorts of people. Modern business, and modern protection of life and property, extend widely. For many purposes the whole civilized world is one great group.

He belonged to too few groups. His clan was his family, business partnership, church, and political party all in one. It tied him up too tight. The “ cake of custom" is likely to become too hard. A modern man by meeting a different set of people in the different groups is continually stimulated. His habits are more likely to get loosened up. He may be "bossed" in his business by a superior, but in his political party he may be a boss" himself. A woman or man may be under some subjection in the home, but a leader in the church. The greater freedom of today does not come from not being in any group; this leaves any one weak. It comes from belonging to larger and more groups so that one gets help on more sides.

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Third, he followed custom and so did not think for independ himself. The democracy in which we live today requires us to think and judge for ourselves.

ence

Tasks of progress

The great tasks of progress we can already see dimly will be along three lines: First, discovery and use of the forces of nature. This means science and invention. Second, discovery and use of the forces and values of human nature, especially of association,— working together. This also means science and invention, but of a different kind. It means building up

cities and states. Third, the forming of laws and governments which shall maintain liberty, peace, good order, and justice, which shall promote education, intercourse, and communication, and at the same time be the free choice of the people who live under them.

(1) Agriculture

(2) Social classes and the State

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW GROUPS-SOCIAL CLASSES AND
THE GREAT STATE

TH

HE first step above the life of the clan or tribe, which hunted or fished, or fed its flocks, or gathered wild rice or grain wherever it could, was twofold:

(1) Instead of roaming or moving restlessly on where there was game, or where they could escape enemies, clans settled down, and built houses instead of huts or wigwams. They usually settled in villages.

(2) Men began to break over the clan boundaries and form larger groups. They did this in two ways: they conquered other groups and made slaves or serfs; they united in larger groups for fighting. These larger groups were not made up on the basis of kinship; they were bands of warriors from several clans. These warriors had to have a leader or king. And out of such bands of warriors and their king came a new kind of grouping of men which we call the State.

Both slavery and states came largely from fighting. It may seem then that it was war that pushed mankind up this next step. It is true that it was by war that men enlarged the clan and made the nation, at the same time making slaves and serfs of those whom they conquered. But the real gain was not due to war. War was a very wasteful way of doing what men might have done more easily by trade and agreement if they had only been wise enough. The real gain was

that men learned to form larger groups, and to cooperate on a larger scale.

Let us look further, first at the village group or village community, then at the making of slaves and the making of the state.

When we think of a farm in America we usually Village think of the farmhouse with its barn, standing alone community with no neighbors very near, or at most there may be three or four houses at a cross-roads. But this was not the way those of our American Indians lived who had begun to raise Indian corn. It was not the early plan, and in many parts of Europe it still is not the plan. When in early Europe, Teutons, or Slavs, or Celts, and perhaps before the Celts, still earlier dwellers in Britain began to cultivate the soil, it was probably as kin-groups or clans. In Scotland, Wales, and Ireland the clan life survived long, and Walter Scott tells us of the Highland clans each living in its own glen. Sometimes a clan of English seems to have settled in a neighborhood group. If the clan of Buckings or Birmings or Billings settled in a spot or "home," this would be called Buckingham or Birmingham or Billingham. And the tie of kinship would lead them to build their cottages or houses close together. Then instead of dividing off the land into complete farms, entirely separate, with all of a man's land together, they followed a plan which in many ways was better for pioneers. They set apart one kind of land Common for plow land, another for grass, and left the rest, fields "the waste," for pasture. Each man had a share of plow land, a share of grass land, and could pasture his cattle upon the common pasture land. Hence a man's plow land might be in one part of the community's

Moving west

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land, and his grass land some distance away. There
are still some signs of the old "common fields" in
England with the ridges which marked the borders
between the plow lands of the different cottagers.
Early settlers in New England brought over some of
this community plan. They frequently laid out a
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common like Boston Common, and when they settled
a new town, they did not attempt at first to keep their
cattle in private pastures. They had brands by which
to distinguish their cattle, and then turned them into
common pasture or "waste." The village community
is still found in Russia. A man does not own his own
land; the group owns it and allots shares from time to
time to the members to cultivate.

But there would be all sorts of forces at work to bring in neighbors who did not originally belong to the clan. Especially when, as was the case in England, fighting men settled down in a region, there would be more or less mixing of different clans and of the older dwellers in the region. Neighborhood came to be more important than kinship.

If each clan had settled down peacefully in a village by itself, not disturbing its neighbors and not interfered with by other clans, history would have been very different. We can easily see what happened if we look at early settlements in this country. A group of families would settle in a town and stay until their children grew up. If there were two or more sons, either the parents or some of the sons would then push on to a new location farther west. In this country there was plenty of land and this could be done without fighting. Or if the pioneers encountered Indians, the Indians could move back.

In Europe there was no such room. A clan would

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