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Las diagrammas suivants illustrant la mithoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MtCROCOPV RiSOlUTION TfST CHART lANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) L" n2s y. 1^5 12.2 li HUH. IMI 1.8 1.6 A APPLIED IM^GE Inc 161-' East Uoin 'jlrwt Rochester, N«« York ' - ,19 USA (716) 482 - 0300 - PHon, (7)6) 28B - 19B9 - fo. I INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION BY CARL BUCHER Pnftsior of Political Economy, Unitersify of Leipeig TRAmtATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION BY S. MORLEY WICKETT, Ph.D. Uciunr on Political Economy and Statistics. University of Toronto NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 190 r 'J- •' < 1 57539 Copyright, 1901, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. Published Jult 1901. flOaCRT DrtuMMONb, pf^lNT£-', NLW fORfv. PREFATORY NOTE. The writings of Professor Bucher, in their German dress, require no introduction to economists. His ad- mirable work The Population of Frankfurt in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, published in 1886, gave him immediate celebrity with economic historians, and left him without a rival in the field of historical statis- tics. In his treatment of economic theory he stands midway between the "younger historical school" of economists and the psychological Austrians.» A full list of his writings need not be given.2 But I may recall his amplified German edition of Laveleye's Primitive Property, his little volume The Insurrections of the Slave Labourers, 143-129 b.c, his original and suggestive Labour and Rhythm, discussing the relation between the • A few facts and dates regarding Professor BUcher's career may not be uninteresting. Professor BUcher was born in Prussian Rhineland in .tl: . . ""Pleted his undergraduate studies at Bonn and G6ttingen (1866-69). His rapid rise in the German scholastic world is evident frotn his academic appointments : special lecturer at GSttingen (i86<>- 72 . lecturer at Dortmund (1872-73), at Frankfurt Technical School (187,- S^r /p r""?J""^' ''"■"^'""^ °' ^'''''^''" ^' Dorpat. Russia (I3S2). of Political Economy and Finance at Basel (1883-90). at Karls- ruhe (1890-93). and at Leipsic (1893 to present). From 1878 to the close of 1880 he was Industrial and Social Editor of the Frankfurter Ztitung This may be found in the HandwSrterbuch d. Staatswiss IV PREFATORY NOTE. physiology and the psychology of labour, his investiga- tions into trusts, and his co-editorship of Wagner's Hand- book of Political Economy (the section Industry being in his charge) as indicating the general direction and scope of his researches. The present stimulating volume, which in the original bears the title Die Entstchiing der Volkswift- scliaft (The Rise of National Economy), gives the author's conclusions on general industrial development. Some- what similar ground has been worked over, among recent economic ])ul)licatioiis. alone by Professor Schmoller's comprehensive Crnndrisz dcr allgcmcincn Volksti'irtschafts- Ichrc, Pt. I. But the method of treatment and the results of the present work allow ii to maintain its unique position. Chapters I. and II. outline the prominent features of primitive economic life in the tropical zone. These real- istic accounts of the " pre-economic stage of industrial evo- lution," preceding the dawn of civilization, ably em- phasize the kinship of economics and ethnology. In chap- ter III. he presents brilliantly and concisely the suggestive series of economic developmental stages of household, town and national economy, based on the industrial rela- tion of producer to consumer; and Chapter IV. offers a masterly survey of industrial systems — domestic work, wage-work, handicraft, commission work (house indus- try), and the factory. With these chapters may be classed Chapter V. The Decline of the Handicrafts. The re- maining chapters analyze more specifically, from the viewpoints of the individual and society, some of the great processes of industrial evolution: union and division of labour; the intellectual integration of society as effected by the press; the formation of social classes; and the fur- ther adjustment of labour through internal migrations of population. At the same time they enrich economic terminology with many telling expressions. PREFATORY NOTE. v " The worst use of theory is to make men insensible to fact," Lord Acton remarked in the opening number of the English Historical Review. Our author, with his store of minute facts, his keen analysis and his broad and re- freshing generalizations, has known how to avoid the snare. His historical attitude is indicated by his advice that " our young political economists " be sent on jour- neys of investigation to the Russians, the Roumanians and the southern Slavs rather than to England and America. In the following pages, which in their present form I trust do not entirely obliterate the pleasing style of the original, his attention is, of course, devoted primarily to economic rather than to social and other considerations. The volume has had in Germany an unusually influ- ential circulation, and has recently been translated into French, Russian and Bohemian. As the preface notes, it has done extensive service as a general introduction to " economic thinking." Its use for this purpose, through the medium of special transcriptions, has already been re- marked at some American universities. The hope may be indulged that its merits will now receive wider recognition, and in some measure impart to the reader the stimulus felt by the writer during a two years' attendance on the author's lectures in 1895-97. Editorial annotations, it may be added, have been confined to the narrowest limits. In translating it I have had the valuable assistance of my colleague. Dr. G. H. Needier, Lecturer on German, University College, to whom I wish to express my deep obligations. My thanks are also due Professor Biicher for his patient answers to the many queries sent over the water to him, to Professor Mavor for varied aid during the work of revision, and to Mr. H. H. Langton and Mr. D. R. Keys for help in correcting proofs. VI PREFATORY NOTE. For the convenience of the general reader a short sup- plementary bibliography of recent works in English is appended. University of Toronto, April 9, 1901. S. M. W. Haddon, Evolution of Art (,895) ; Lloyd Morgmn. Animal Life andlntel- I'gfnce (1891). Habit and Instinct (1896) ; Kcane, Atan Past and Present (1899); Spencer and Gillen, The Native Triies 0/ Central Australia (ii<)t)) ■ Mackenzie, An Jntroducttm to Social Philosophy (2d ed.. 1895) ; Giddings,' I>imip!cs of Sociology' (1896); Gumplowicz, Outlines of Sociology ^trans! 1899); \.<^x\&. Economic Foundations of Society (ix2Ln^. i^^f))- Ashley Eco- nomic History (2 pts.. 1888-92). Surveys Historic and Economic (1900)- Gomme, The Village Community (1890) ; Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce (2 vols.. 1890-92), IVesterr. Civilization (1898) • ^ocx\,. Life and Labours of the People (9 vols.. 1889-97); Mayo-Smith' Emigration and Immigration (1890); Weber, The Growth of Cities (1899); Hobson, The Evolution of Modem Capitalism (1894). FROM THE PREFACES TO THE FIRST AND SECOND GERMAN EDITIONS. (April 1893 and November 1897.) The lectures in this volume were originally delivered before audiences that were not composed of specialists exclusively. . . . Each lecture is complete in itself; the same trains of thought are indeed occasionally repeated, but in a different setting. Yet it will readily be perceived that the different parts have an inner connection, and supplement each other both in subject and method. The fundamental idea running through them all is expressed in the third. As need scarcely be remarked, the lecture is not printed in the sum- mary form in which it was delivered. I trust that the gain in accuracy and fulness of statement has not been at the expense of clearness. The lectures are dominated by a uniform conception of the orderly nature of economic development, and by a sim- ilarity in the method of treating material. In both respects this accords with the practice which I have consistently followed ever since the inception of my academic activity and which during continued scientific work has become more and more clearly and firmly established. With the present publication I accede to the wish expressed by many of my former auditors in the only form at present possible. a form of whose insufficiency I myself am fully conscious. In preparing a second edition one thing was clear: the vii VIII PREFACE. book must be expanded in the direction in which it had been most effective. At its first appearance I had hoped that the little volume might exert some influence upon the method of treating scientific problems; and indeed there has appeared in recent years quite a series of writings by younger authors (some of whom were seemingly wholly unacquainted with my book), in which the resuUs of the in- vestigations here published are taken into account. Tliis is outwardly evidenced by the use of the concepts and the technical expressions that I introduced into the litera- ture of the subject, as if they were old. familiar, scientific furniture. It is perhaps justifiable to infer from this that the book has exercised some influence upon academic teaching. But it seems to have found its chief circulation in the wider circles of the educated public, particularly among college students, who have used it as a sort of introduc- tion to economics, and as a preparation for economic thinking. That naturally decided me to keep their wants very particularly in view in revising the book. In order to avoid misconceptions, however. I wish to state ex- pressly that the employment of the book for this purpose requires the concurrent use of a good systematic treatise on the principles of jwlitical economy. The better to meet the nee.I of the larger class just men- tionerl, I have given some of the lectures of the first edition a simpler form, expanding them where necessary and eliminating needless detail. Extensive alteration, 'how- ever, has been confmcd to the lecture on the Organization of W ork and the l-..rmation of Social Classes. Here uni- formity of treatment seemed to recommen.l a division into two chapters (YUl and IX). .md such extensive ad.litions as would serve to round off each in-lepen.lently of the other. 1 he lecture on the Social Organization of the Pop- PREFACE. iz ulation of Frankfurt in the Middle Ages has been omitted because it disturbed the greater uniformity aimed at for the complete work, and because, as a purely historical ac- count, it is better suited to a collection of sketches in social and economic history, for which opportunity may perhaps be found later. On the other hand three unpublished lectures have been added (Chaps. I, V, and VII). The fust of these deals with the pre-economic period, and is intended to furnish the substructure for the system of economic stages which is developed in the third chapter. Its main features were sketched as early as 1885, in a lecture I delivered at the University of Basel on the beginnings of social history. . . . The second agrees in the major part of its matter, and also to a large extent in its form, with the report upon handicrafts that I presented at the last general meeting of the Social Science Club in Cologne. It seems advisable to give it a place in order to afford the reader at one point at least an insight into the great changes that are in prog- ress in the held of modern industrial life. The third [en- titled " Union of Labour and Labour in Common "] is an attempt to lay before a wider circle of readers, in the form in which I finally presented it to my university classes, a chapter from the theory of labour to which I have given considerable attention. All the lectures in this volume, both old and new. were originally sections of university lectures. Every lecturer knows what a wonderful contpilation his note-book is. how from semester to semester certain portions must be re- moved and reconstructed, how some parts are never approached without an inward struggle, and how tinally the remaining ditViculties are surmounted and the whole given a form satisfactory alike to teacher and students. To the lecture-room first of all belono- the fruits of i * PREFACE. the scientific labours of the German university professor; but he also naturally wishes to submit what he has labori- ously accomplished to the critical judgment of specialists; and for my part I feel in such cases the further need of test- ing the maturity of my conceptions by seeing whether they can be made intelligibly acceptable to a wider range of readers. So th^t all the lectures that have been taken over from the first edition were actually delivered before a more popular audience, while Chapters I and VII are essays in the same style. In the extent of their subject-matter, how- ever, they all reach far beyond what can be offered directly to students in a university lecture. In conclusion I may allude to two attacks that have been delivered by historians against some parts of the third and fourth lectures. The blame surely does not rest with nie if these gentlemen have failed to perceive that this work treats of economic theor>-. not of economic history. I le who, in the outline of a period of de\'elopment extend- ing over thousands of years, expects a minute and ex- haustive presentation of the actual condition of any par- ticular people and centun-. need blame only himself if he is disappointed. In the first edition I expressed myself clearly enough. I think, regarding the logical character of the economic stages. In the present edition I have taken (H-casion. however, to give the passages in question such a form that in future they cannot with good intentions be misuii.lerstood. . . . Though fdr the central idea of my theory of development it is altogether immaterial whether I have in every particular characterized the economy of the (Ireeks and Romans correctly or not. or whether the guild handicraft of the Midille .\ges was chiefly wage-wx>rk or chiefly independent hand-work {,' price-work *'). PREFACE TO THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION. In the present edition, bearing in mini the way in which this book came into existence and has since expanded, I felt strongly impelled to mark my appreciation of the recognition it has gained, as indicated by several editions and by translations into French, English. Russian, and Bohemian, by preparing additional chapters to remove a number of gaps still noticeable in the last issue. If I have not yielded to the temptation, it is chiefly for the reason that a larger bulk would necessarily prejudice the wider circulation of the volume. The most disturbing want has been met by the insertion of a new chapter on the economic life of primitive peoples (Chapter II). The chapter differs from the more detailed one in volume 3 uf the Yearbook of the Gehe Stiftung in its more summar>- form and in the addition of some not unimportant facts. All the other chapters have been carefully revised and many slight improvements made. More extensive alter- ations are confmed to Chapters I. III. Vll, and VIII. May the book in its present form satisfy its old friends and add new ones to the number! C.\RL Pii'CHER. Lkipzk,. Oct. 15, 190a xi \y CONTENTS rAcs Prefatory Note iii From the Prefaces to First and Second Ge^.man Editions... vii Preface to Third German Edition xi Chapter I. — Primitive Economic Conditions i II. — The Economic Life ok Primitive Peoples 41 N^ III.— The Rise of National Economy 83 IV. — A Historical Survey of Industrial Systems... 150 V. — The Decline of the Handicrafts 185 VI. — The Genesis of Journalism 215 VII.— Union of Labour and Labour in Common 244 jt- VIII.— Division of Labour 282 IX.— Organization of Work and the Formaiion of Social Classes 315 X.— Internal Migrations of Population *ni) the Growth of Towns Considered Historically 345 Index 387 CHAPTER I. PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. All scientific investigation of industry starts with the assumption that man has a peculiar " economic nature " belonging to no other living creature. From this eco- nomic nature a principle is supposed to spring, which con- trols all his actions that are directed to the satisfaction of his wants. This is the economic principle, the fundamen- tal principle of economic activity. This principle reveals itself in man's endeavour always and everywhere to attain the highest possible satisfaction with the least possible sac- rifice (labour)— the " principle of least sacrifice." According to this view all man's economic actions are actions directed toward an end and guided by considera- tions of profit. Whether or not the final impulse to eco- nomic labour is to be sought in the instincts of man (the instinct of self-preservation and of self-interest), the satis- faction of these instincts is always the result of a series of successive mental operations. Man estimates the extent of the discomfort that -ould arise from the non-satisfac- tion of a want felt by him; he measures the discomfort that the labour necessary to meet the want can cause him; he compares tlie discomforts witli each ) has cdntradicted him in one instance. Mundt- LaufT lias also, according to Pesclul in " Natiir " for the year 1879, p. 4-8, denied the ii^e of cooked food hy the Xei;ritos in tlte IMiilippines, but his assertions again liave been refuted by .\. Schadenberg in the Ztschr. f. Ethnologie, XII (1880), pp, 14,^4. [Xo ethnologist would now claim fireless tribes as known in actual existence. — En.] * Der Ursprung dcr Familic, des Privatcigciituws u. dcs Staats. p. 7. * As above, pp. 67 ff. PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 5 among the Gaberi negroes in Central Africa, huts have been found built in between the branches of large trees; » and the same is reported of individual forest tribes of South America.® But so far as these products of primitive archi- tecture are not mere temporary protective structures that are supplemented by permanent dwelling-places upon the ground, they are by no means the most unfinished of hab- itations, and the peoples using them prove by many kinds of implements, utensils, and domestic animals, and some of them even by the agriculture they carry on, that they no longer stand at the first dawn of civilization. After what has been said there can be no object in searching out uncivilized peoples and beginning with a description of them, after the example of Klemm who opens his General History of Civilization with the Fo'-est Indians of Brazil, although it is not to be denied that e stand at a very low cultural stajje indeed. In the & ne connection other investigators cite tribes standing at no higher stage: the Bushmen in South Africa, the Batuas in the Congo basin, the Veddahs in Ceylon, the ^lincopies in the Andaman Islands, the Negritos in the Philippines, the Australians of the continent, the now extinct Tas- manians, the Kubus in Sumatra, and the Tierra-del-Fue- gians. To whom to adjudge the palm for savagerv might be difficult to decide. O. Peschel ' finds individual ele- ments of civilization among them all, even among the Botokudos, whom he himself considers still nearest the primitive state. The assumption of such a primitive condition, in which. ' Nachtigal, Sahara u. Sudan, II, pp. 628 flf. Finsch. Samoafahrten. pp. 271 f. Ratzel. \-6lkerkunde. I. pp. loi, 105, 245, 386; li, p. 83. [Its different arrangement precludes citation from the admirable Eng- lish edition: The History of Mankind. 2 vol?., London, 1896-97.— Ed.] Waitz, Anthropologic d. Naturvolker. Ill, p. 393. ' Races of A/oi;, pp. 149 ff. PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. armed witli no other resources than are at the command of the lower animal, man has to join in tlie struggle for exist- ence, is one of the necessary expedients of all sciences that aim at a history of man's development; and this is true of sociology' and especially of political economy. We must, however, abandon the attempt to exemplify the primitive condition by any definite people. On the other hand, there is more prospect of scientific results in an endeavour to collect the common characteristics of the human beings standing lowest in the scale, in order, by starting with them, to arrive at a i)":ture of the beginnings of economic life and the formation of society. But in this it is by no means necessary to confine ourselves to the above-men- tioned representatives of the lowest manner of life; for every delimitation of that kind would challenge objections and contract the field of vision. Moreover the various ele- ments of mental culture and material civilization are by no means so mutually dependent that all must necessarily develop at an equal pace, and thus we find among almost all primitive peoples characteristics that can have sprung only from the most ancient mode of life. The collection of these characteristics, and their combination into a typical picture, must, however, be our first task. Hitherto the process has usually been made too simple by deriving the characteristics of primitive man from civil- ized economic man. The many wants of man in a state of nature, so it has been argued, demanded for their satisfac- tion exertions beyond the capacity of the individual; pro- tection from wild bea:;ts or from the unchained elements could likewise be attained only by the labour of many. Accordingly writers have spoken of a collective carrying- on of the struggle for existence, and thus have had " prim- itive society " and a sort of communistic economy com- plete. PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIJSS. But man has undoubtedly existed through immeasur- able periods of time without labouring. If so disposed, one can find plenty of districts upon the earth where the sago-palm, the plantain-tree, the breadfruit-tree, the cocoa- and date-palm, still allow him to live with a mini- mum of exertion. It is in such districts that tradition is fondest of placing paradise, the original home of mankind; and even modern research cannot dispense with the as- sumption that mankind was at first bound to such regions of natural existence and only by further development be- came capable of bringing the whole earth into subjection. Of unions into organized society we find, moreover, hardly a trace amon- the lowest races accessible to our observation. In little roups * like herds of animals they roam about in search of food, find a resting-place for the night in caves, beneath a tree, behind a screen of brush- wood erected in a few minutes to shelter them from the wind, or often in a mere hollow scooped in the ground, and nourish themselves chiefly with fruits and roots, though all kinds of animal food, even down to snails, mag- gots, irrasshoppers, and ants are eaten also. The men as a rule . t armed simply with bow and arrow or with a throwing-stick; the chief implement of the women is the digging-stick, a pointed piece of wood, which they use in searching for roots. Shy when they come in contact with members of a higher race, often malicious and cruel, they lead a restless life, in which the body, it is true, attains the maximum of agility and dexterity, but in which technical skill advances only with extreme sluggishness and one- sidedness. The majority of peoples of this type know nothing whatever of potter>- and the working of metals. Even of wood. bast, stone, and bone they make but limited 'Comp. en this point E. Grosse. DU Format dcr Familie und die fc ii: iicr ;; irtscn^r:. p. » PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. use, and this use leads in no way to a stock of utensils and tools, which indeed it would I)e impossible to carry about, I)ecause of their nomadic life, bearing as it does the char- acter of one continuous search for food." •In order to puppleniunt this general account by a few details I will here introduce ;i portion oi the description of the NcRritos in the Philippines published in the work by A. Scliadenberg. cited above. I Mive for the most par' his own words:— The women among the Etas bear easily and (piickiy. Until able to walk, the child is carried by the mother, generally on the left thiRh. in which case it assumes a sort of riding posture; or upon the back, as soon as it is able to hold Itself on. The mother nur^e^ it for about two years. .\t about the tenth year puberty comes; the Negrito youth is then tattooed, and from the moment when this decoration of his body is finished he IS iiiuependent. He accordingly hjoks about him for a male, who has in tile majority of cases been selected for h 'ii beforehand and who. if possible, belonRS to the same " family." The members of a " family," which generally numbers twenty to thirty persons, are under the con- trol of an elective chieftain, who decides upon the camping-places and the time for breaking up. The family life is patriarchal in char- acter The father has imlimitid power over the members of his family; he can chasiisi them and even barter away his children; the woman occupies a subordinate position and is treated as a chattel. The Negritos carry on barterni',,' wiih the Tagalas; in this way they get supplies, chiefly of iron, in exchange for honey and wa.\. By means of the iron thus ac(|uircd they i>reparc part of their weapons, whi-'h consist of hunting-knives, .irrows. bows, and -pears The Negritos ,ire also very clever at throwing stones, in which they arc greatly a--i-ted by their keenness of vision. .\ ston.- in the hand of an otherwise unarmed Negrito is thus an otTensive and defensive wenpon not to be despised. Their clothing is very scant, hardly more th.iii a lireich-clou; l)omestn- utensils f.ir periiMiieiU use are scarcely fotiiid at ill ;niio!ii.' the I'.i.is; soiiu'iimes ,i clay vessel got by barter witlt the M,il:i>>. ,in:;i^; 111 t!ie iralicr (.f imul tlir> .ire not i.isiidioii^ ; it is both amm;il ,ind M'.M'iab'e 111 chai.utrr — roots. Iiuiiey, lr..g,, il.er, wild bo.ar. etc. .A Sp.ini-li e;iie-.i:i-iir dcM-rilfes tin ni ,i^ follow,: "Tin pure .\itos or Negrito, l.acl a s,c!u(lr.| life; th.y li.ive ii.. fised dwelling-place and d.. not l.irM ti;'?- Tli,- i.hIkt. tli.' iiiotlnr. and the children ;ire all pr.fvided wi'h arrows, each lining Ins tiwti. .md tiny -et out together PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 9 These peoples liave been designated "lower nomads"; but it can scarcely be proven that actual hunting forms their chief means of sustenance. They all make use of vegetable food as far as it is at all obtainable, and with those who live in a warmer climate this food seems to pre- dominate. Stores of such fruits and roots they do not gather, though a region of plentiful supplies attracts a greater number of members of the tribe, as a rich feeding- ground draws together many lower animals; when it is exhausted they scatter again. And similarly as to the mollusks and insects which they consume; each individ- ual at once swallows what he finds; joint household life is as little known as is a house. It is only when a large animal has been killed or found dead (the fondness for meat in a state of decay is widespread) that the whole group assemlile,"^* and each devours is much as he can; upon the hunt. When they kill ,1 dicr or a hoar, they halt at the spot where the animal has fallen, scoop a hole in the ground, place the animal in it and then build a fire. I'ach one takes the piece of the animal that suits his taste hest and roasts it at the fire. And so they go on eating until they have tilled their bellies, and when thus satiated they sleep on the earth which they have hollowed out, as pigs do when they have gorged themselves. W'heTi they awake they go through the same operation, and so on until ;ill the meat is dev.mrod: then they set out upon the hunt at;ain." They observe no fixed times for sleeping and eatmg, but follow necessity in both cases. They age early; at forty or fifty the mountain Xe^ritos are decrepit, white-haireil. bent old iiifii. — Compare further the de^rriptii>n> of the I?otokiidos by l^hrenreich, Zl^chr f. I-.;hnol , \1\. pii 1 tT; of the Hororo^ by K \. d Steinen. (itUr d Wititnolh. Ci-ntiiil-Hrjsii , PP- .iSS rrv I'd ili.at lo rRlMlTiyE ECCSOMIC CONDITIONS. but tlic method nf hunting these animals strongly resem- bles the proce»lure of the wild beast stealing upon its prey. With their imperfect weapons these peoples are hardly ever in a position to kill an animal instantly; the chief task of the hunter consists in pursuing the wounded game until it sinks down exhau.-.ted." Regarding the constitution of the family among peo- ples of this class, there has been much discussion. Of late the opinion seems to be gaining ground that there exists among them a fellowship between man and wife that ex- onds beyond a mere -exual relationship and is of life-long duration; while upon the other hand it cannot be denied that in case of a scarcity of food those loose groups easily split up. or at least individual members detach themselves from them. Only between mother and child is the rela- tionship particularly close. The mother must always take her little one along with her on the march; and for that purpose she usually fastens it in some way on her back, a custom that is very general among all primitive peoples, even where they have gone over to agriculture. For sev- eral years the child must be nurtured at the breast or from the mother's mouth, but it soon acquires skill in procuring its food independently, and often separates itself from the community in its eighth or tenth year. All the tribes involved in our survey belong to the smaller races of mankind, and in bodily condition give the many animals (for ixaniple, our domestic fowl) have the :ame cus- tom. True, he lays stress upon the fact that no one thinks of collect- ing' stores of provision*. 'Inercfore, we are, lurther. not justified in agreeinff to the proposal that has recently been made from several sides t" designate these peoples is gatherers of stores {Samnilcr). " Ciinip. li. Fritsch. DU- lliitgeboretun Stid-.lfrikas, pp. Jti4. 4^5; Pofivre, Im Krichf d. Muatn Jiinin'o. pp. .128-0; W'issniann. /m Innem .-Jfri'i,?. (!•>. ::'(). -,41; Martins, Zur Lthiwgral'Ue Aiicrikas, cufflal Brasilu'is. pp. <'('5 ff. PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC COSDITIOSS. 1 1 impression of backward:, stunted gro-.vth. We are not on that account, howe'.er, ju^f.ne'i :n re.i'ar iing them as ce- generate race fragrr.en-s. The evylence rather goes to sho'.v that the more a'i anccl races o.ve their higher physical development merely to the reg"u',ar and more plentiful supply of food -Ahich agriculture and cattle- raising for centuries ;'.'a-t have placed within their reach, while the peoples here in question have always remained at the same stage. Subject to all the vicissitudes of the weather and the fortune of the chase, thev revel at times in abundance and devour incredible mas-es of food: :tiil oftener. however, they sufrer bitter wan:, and their only article of clothing, the breech-clout, is for them, really the ■"hunger-strap" ' " Schmachtnemien "i A Germ.an story, which they tighten -d^^ in order to alleviate the pangs of gnawing hunger.' - How from this stage of primitive existence the pa.h leads upward is manifest in countless typical e.\ample5 furnished by ethnology. In addition to the collection of wild fruits and roots, the womian takes over the cultiva- tion o: food-plants. This she carries on at nrst witli the customary digging-stick, later with a short-handled hoe. The man continues hi; hunting ani' ti-hing. which, in rich hunting-grounds and ui'h more ['Crfect v. eap'^n-. he can make so pr luctive that \'rt/ f-.irni-h the greater ---art of his food. .\t times he supplements these by cattle-raiding. In the procuring of :oo vvhioh with advancing technical skill there are added in each ca«e •- .iriou^ industrial arts, which a- .'i rule retain their connecti'.n witii the "riginal produc- tion and occupation .Among advanced primitive peoples "-c- the Bu^hr-.er. ccT.p Fr.!^;h. at i'--.': ;. 405. -jn the .Xus- •ra'i-i-- Pesch*!, PiCff f M:n p \u: r. the Botokud^j. Ehrenreich 12 PRlM/r/yE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. all economic activity may be traced back to combinations of these elements; but in its details such labour is entirely dependent ui^on local natural conditions. We should therefore not be justified in any attempt to construct sta-es of development intended to hold equally good for negroes Papuans, Polynesians, and Indians. But wherever we can observe it, the method in which primitive peoples satisfy their wants reminds us continu- ally in many of its features of the instinctive doings of the lower animals. Everywhere their existence is still far from settled, and even the unsubstantial huts they erect are for the majority only temporary structures which, however much they vary from place to place and from tribe to tribe, always remain true to a type, and remind us of the nests of birds, which are deserted as soon as the brood is fledged. When Lippert finds the fundamental and controlling impulse to cultural development in material foresight, he undoubtedly makes an advance upon earlier investigators; but the phrase itself is not happily chosen. It is utterly impossible to speak of foresight, in the sense of providing for the future, in connection with primitive peoples. Primitive man does not think of the future; he does not think at all; he only wills, that is, he wills to preserve his existence. Tlie instinct of self-preservation and self-grati- fication is the prime agent of development, compared with which even the sexual instinct takes quite a secondary place. Wherever it has been possiI)Ie for Europeans to observe men in primitive conditions for any k-ngth of time they tell us of the incomparable dulncss and mental inertness which strike the neholder; of their indifference tr. the sub- limcst phenomena of nature, their complete lack of interest in evcr\thing that lies outside the individual self. The savage is willing to cat. sleep, and. wh .tc ncccssarv. to pro PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 13 tect himself against the greatest inclemencies of the weather: this is his whole aim in life. It is therefore entirely false and contrary to numer- ous well-accredited observations when Peschel straightway ascribes to savages a peculiar wealth of fanciful imag- inings of a religious nature, and thinks that the closer the approach to the condition of nature the greater the range of belief. He evidently assumes that the course of the sun and the other phenomena of the heavens must be infinitely more impressive and stimulative of active thought to the primitive than to the civilized man. But that is by no means the case. Both among the Indians of Brazil and among the negroes, when travellers have asked about these things, the response has been that people never thought about them; and Herbert Spencer '•' has collected an abundance of examples which show that the lover races do not manifest any interest even in the most novel phe- nomena. The Patagonians, for example, displayed utter indifference when they were made to look into a mirror; and Dampier reports that the .\ustralians whom he had taken on board of his ship paid attention to nothing but what they got to eat. Burton'* calls the East .\fricans " Men who can think, but who, absorbed in providing for their bodily wants, hate the trouble of thinking. His [the East African's] mind, limited to the object seen, heard, and felt, will not, and apparently can not, cscaj^e from the circle of sense, nor will it occupy itself with aught but the present. Thus he is cut off from the pleasures of memory, and the world of fancy is altogether unknown to him." "■' The same force, then, that impels the lower animal, the " Prmciplcs of Sociology, vol. I. 8§ 45-6. I* The Lake Regions of Central Africa ( New York, iWx)), p 480. "Oiinp. tlie siniil.ir opinion of the mission.iry Cr.in?. Ifistorie von Cronlatid (Frankfurt. 1780). p. i6.i, at.d Lubbock. Oriem -f Civili:atioH (4th ed.). pp. 51^ 7, .^i0 M PRIMITiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. instinct for preserving its existence, is also the dominant instinctive impulse of primitive man. This instinct is lim- ited in scope to the single individual; in respect of time, to the moment at which the want is felt. In other words: the savage thinks only of himself, and thinks only of the present. What lies beyond that is as gootl as closed to his mental \ ision. When, therefore, many observers reproach him with a boundless egoism, hardness of heart towards his fellows, greed, thievishness, inertness, carelessness with re- gard to the future, and forgetfulness. it means that sym- pathy, memory, and reasoning power are still entirely un- developed. Nevertheless it will be wise for us to make these ver}' characteristics our starting-point, in order to comprehend the relation of primitive man to the external world. In the first place, as concerns the egoism of the savage and his harducs. of heart towards his nearest relations, this is a natural consequence of the restless nomadic life in which each individual cares only for himself. It shows itself most prominently in the extraordinarily widespread custom of infanticide, which extremely few primitive peo- ples are entirely free from.'* The children impede 'he horde on the march and in the search for food. Therein lies the chief reason for their removal. Once become a custom, infanticide lives on in later stages of civilization; indisputable traces of it have been found not merely among the primitive peoples of Asia, Africa, America, Australia, and Polynesia, but even among the Arabs, the Romans, and the Greeks. To infanticide is universally ascribed the exceptionally slow increase of the uncivilized races. But this is also de- pendent upon their short lives, and long lactation pe- "' Comp. Lippert, II, pp. 201 flf. ; R.itzcl, lolkcrkunde, I, pp. 108, J54, 252, 277, 306, 338, 425. PRlMITiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 15 riods, during which, as is well known, conception rarely occurs, and this it is which forms the chief cause of their protracted tarrying at the same stage of civilization. That the natural bond between parents and children is nowhere very firm is seen also in the extremely common custom of adoption.'^ It is even said, for example, that in the " fam- ilies " of the Mincopies the children of other parents are in the majority. It is significant that between thtir own and their adopted chililren they make, as a rule, not the slight- est difference. Adoption may have arisen from the substi- tution of child-exposure for infanticide. If the natural mother was not in a position to take the new-born child along with her. perhaps another woman who was childless could, and thus the life of the child was saved. Recent ethnographers have been at great pains to prove that the strength of maternal love is a feature common to all stages of civilization. It is, indeed, a matter of regret to us that we find wanting in our own si>ecie5 a feeling that exhibits itself in such a pleasing way among many families of lower animals. Rut there have l>een too many observations s!''owing that among the lower races the mere care for one's own existence outweighs all other mental emotions, in fact that be>i'!e it nothing e'^e is of the least importance. .Ml observers are amazed and even in- dignant at the ir.ditlerence with which children, when (;nce they can shift for themselves, separate from their blo^jd- relations.''* Vet we have here onlv the reverse side of that " Comp. Luhhook, Origin of Ci7i!i:atirii, pp. o;-6, "Co;iip. the strikintj example -n R.itzel. l',4kerkuttde, I, p. 677. of a tiny of Tierr.i iJel Fucro who, when taken on board a European ship, did nut show the slighte'-t grief over the separation, while his paretits were delighted to get a few necklace* and some bi-cuits in return fijr him. The seHing "f children and women into slaver>- doe.s not occur in .Vfrica alone. Martius. as above, p uj Cump. Pjit, Afr. Juris- frudeti:, I, p. 94. i6 PRIMlTiyE FCONOMIC CONDITIONS. hardness of lieart which " enables husbands to refuse food to tlieir wives, and fathers, to deny it to their hungering children, wlien they tliemselves would but feast upon it." This same trait of unbounded selfishness is manifest in the regardlessness with which many primitive peoples leave behind them on the march, or exjKise in solitary places, the sick and the aged who might be an impediment to the vigorous.'" This trait has often been interpreted as a sign of superstition, as due to the fear of evil powers to whom the illnesses are ascribed. And in fact in the case of tribes that have become settled and whose means of sub- sistence would admit of the care of the sick, appearances favour such an explanation. But at the same time it is forgotten that customs, once firmly rooted, perpetuate themselves with great persistence, even when the causes that gave rise to them have long since passed away. I'rom exposure to intentional killing is only a short step. Indeed we find even among peoples on a higher plane of civilization that old age is deplored as a state of extreme joylessness. Barbarism had no affection between relatives to alleviate this condition, but it had it in its power to shorten it; and so. along with exposure, we find the bury- ing, or the killing, or even the devouring of the aged and sick, as numberless examples from Herodotus down to modern times attest. Indeed primitive man was able to look upon the solenm performance of this horrible act as a behest of piety.-" When we see how this unbroken nomadic life forced man to devote his whole activity to the securing of food, '"Lippert. as above, pp, J20ff., has treated the subject so exhaus- tively thai I may nfrain ironi citiriK examples. Cotnp. also Fritsch, PP- ll6, ,^.i4, ,?5i; Wait/, :i> al)uve, II, p. 401. ■■■"Comp the examples cited by Lippert, p. ijj, and Martins, as above, p. I2(). Also l-:hrenreich, lieitrdge s. V'olkcrkundi' Brasil, pp. (y-i-yo.- W'.-iit;'. .Ts :ibi!Vf, I. ;i i.«4) .'r-'r.;.; '.-. )■,.'.':!•/-.,' {\t-\----~ \. '■. 161. PRJMlTiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. n and forbade the concurrent development of those feelings which we regard as the most natural, and how it even .suc- ceeded in giving the appearance of religious duty to what we consider the most abominable crime, we begin to con- ceive how loose must have been the personal bond that held together those little roving groups of human beings. Sexual intercourse could not grow to be such a bond; for what we call love was entirely wanting in it.^' Domestic life, the conception of property and labour in common were as good as non-existent. These could originate only when the circle of wants advanced beyond .he mere food requirement. But this took a much longer time than the majority are wi:!ing to admit. The needs of primitive peo- ples with regard to clothing and house-she'ter are most markedly of an altogether >eci.'ndary na:i;re. Turning now to the no less common characteristic of improzidcnce. we must cenainly at fir^t glance be struck with astonishment. One wr.iiid think that hunger, which often brings such great torture to the savage. wuuM of itself have been sufficient to induce him to store up tur future use the food that at time- he ix)~-e-se- in super- abundance. But the observation- tliat ha.c lieen made all indicate that he never thinks of that. " They are not accustomed." says Heckewelder -- of the North American Indians. " to laying in -tire- of provision- exce[)t -unie Indian corn, dry beans, and a few other articles. Hence they are -nmetimes reduced to great -trai:-. and are not seldom in absolute want of the necessaries of life, e-peciallv ^ The many wnttr- whu write Ti'^Aadays about the family pay j wn-cn prr,:n;ncrice lias altogether too httie attention to th;« p'.int. t' juniy been jfiven by Lubboek. a? ab..',e. pp. ;.; tT. In the -ame way they overlooked the connection between the tarnily and ;i;e econ..my of the honti 'Comp p. lo above. — F'^r>,' "Heckewelder. Induui XaiLf.s. t;c, .\ew edition (Phi;. i88n. pp. io8. 212 (Memoirs rA Hi-r .Soc >_ ' Penn . vn] 121. i8 PRlMlTiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. in the time of war." And of the South American tribes another observer reports:^' " It is contrary to their na- ture to be in possession of food-suppHes for longer than one day at most." With many negro tribes it is looked upon as improper to store up food for future need, which belief, it is true, they base upon the superstition that the fragments left over may attract spirits.^* Where these peoples, through the short-sighted greed of gain of Europeans, are placed in possession of modern weapons, they usually work incredible havoc with the game in their hunting-grounds. The extermination of tiie boundless buffalo herds of North America is well known. *' The greatest quantities of meat were left lying unused in the thickets," only for the natives in winter-time, when deep snow prevented hunting, to fall a prey to awful hunger, in which even the bark of trees and the roots of grass were not despised. And to-day the natives of Africa, in districts where they carry on a profitable trade with Europeans, are ruthlessly destroying ihe sources of their incomes, the elephant and the caoutchouc-tree. Even among the more advanced tribes and individuals this characteristic tloes not fail. " When the carriers re- ceived fresh rations." relates P. Pogge.-*"' " I am certain that they lived l>etter for the first few days than I did. The best goats and fowl were devoured. If I gave them rations for a fortnight, the rule was to consume them in riotous living (luring the first three or four days, only afterwards either to steal from the supply-trains, to beg from me, or to go hungry." In Wadai everything that remains over from the snhan's tabic is burie' village chieftain de- sires to be presented with everything he sees.'' Here, again, is that naive egoism in its complete regardlessness of self and others, that unbounded covetousness which has nothing in common with the love of gain of economic man. The impression of the moment is ever the sole con- trolling force: what is further removed is not thought of. Primitive man is incapable, it would seem, of entertaining " Reference may also be made to the not infrequent examples of savages who had been brought up under civilized conditions volun- tarily returning to their tribes and to the complete savagery of their people. Comp. Peschel. as above, pp. 152-3: Fritsch, as above, p. +2.3; K. E. Jung in Petermanns Mitth.. XXIV (1878), p. 67. "Comp. Fritsch. as above, pp. ,?05-C. "Says Burton, as above, p. 490: "In trading with [the African] ... all display of wealth must be avoided. A man who would pur- chase the smallest article avoids showing anything beyond its equiva- lent." 22 PRIMITII^E ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. two thoughts at the same time and of weighing the one against the other; he is always possessed by one alone and follows it with startling consistency. The collection of exi)eriences, the transmission of knowl- edge, is therefore exceedingly difficult, and therein lies the chief reason why such peoples can remain at the same stage for thousands of years without showing any appre- ciable advance. The acquisition of the first elements of civilization is often conceived as an easy matter; it is im- agined that every invention, every advance in house-con- struction, in the art of clothing, in the use of tools, that an individual makes, must pass over as an imperishable treas- ure into the conunon possession of the tribe and there continue to. fructify. Tlie invention of pottery, the taming of domestic animals, the smelting of iron ore have even been made the beginnings of entirely new epochs of civil- ization. Yet how imperfectly does such a conception appreciate the conditions under which primitive man lives! We may indeed assume tliat he possesses a peculiar fondness for the stone T\t uliicli with endless exertion he has formed in the course perhaps of a whole year, and that it seems to him like ri fK.rt of his own being;""* but it is a mistake to think that the preoinis jK)ssession will now pass to chiMreti nnd children's children, and thus constitute the basis for f'jrther advance. However certain it is that in connection with such thinL;s the iirst notions of "mine and thine" are develoi.ed, yet many are the observations itidicating that these conceptions do not go beyc»nori{j:;nes of California, who are among the lo«\.it ;>et-j,le o^ iH'.ir rafe, place along with the dead all the weapons and utensils \vhich he had made use of in life. " It is a curious paraphernalia," says an ob- server, "that follows the Wintum into the grave: knives, forks, vinegar-jars, empty whiskey-bottles, preserve-jars, bows, arrows, etc.; and if the dead has been an industrious housewife, a few baskets of acorns arc scattered over as well." " At the grave of the Tehuelche " (Patagonia), runs another account, " ail his horses, dogs, and other ani- mals are killed. ..id his poncho, his ornaments, his bolas and implements of every kind arc brought together into a heap and burned." And of a third and still lower tribe, the I'.ororo in Brazil, a recent very reliable observer says: ^'^ " -^ great loss befalls a fanuly when one of its menibe s dies. For everything that the dead man used is burned, thrown into the river, or packed in with the corpse in order that the departed spirit may have no occasion whatever to return. The cabin is dien completely gutted. I'.nt the surviving members of the family receive fresh i)rcsents; bows and arrows are made for them, and when a jaguar is killed, the skin is given to the brother of the last deceased woman or to the uncle of the last deceased man." Among the Ragobos in southern Mindanao (one of the "Comp. in general, .Andrcc, lithnogr. I\j,aiklcn u. I'crgkiche (Siutt- Kart, i8;«), pp. A)-:\ Scluirl/, Urundru: rtih-r linlstch. Gcsch. d. iicldcs (Weimar, i8<)S). pp. sfi IT ; i'aii.knw. Ztsclir. d. Gts. f. Erdkunde 7U Ucrlin. XXXI. jni. i-.'-< " K. vdii ilcn .'^tciiitti. i iiirr din Witunolkcni Knisilints ( .'d id.), r- .^>^). Ci'inp. .-ilio i:hrenrui!'.. /'.^.'njcf :ur i .HkcrLun.U' Hrjsilinif, \'V ,U), (•(,; lltckcwtldtr. a- above, pp. .711-1, .',-4-5. r 24 PRIMITIVE ECOS'OMIC CONDiTlONS. Philippines) the dead man is buried in iiis best clothes, and with a slave, who h killed for the purpose. " The cooking- utensiLs that the deceased used during his lifetime are filled with rice and placed, along with his betel-sacks, upon the grave; his other things are left in the house untouched. On penalty of death no one may henceforth enter either the house or the burial-place; and it is equally forbidden to cut from the trees surrounding the house. The house itself is allowed to go to ruin." ** In Australia and .\frica the custom is very common for all the stores of the deceased to be eaten up by the assem- bly of the mourners; in other parts the utensils are de- stroyed, while the food is thrown away. Many negro tribes bury the dead in the hut in which he lived, and leave the dwelling, now deserted by the survivors, to decay; others destroy the hut.^'- If a chieftain dies, the whole vil- lage migrates: and this is true even of the principal towns of the more inipp 12-1.1. Tlie same thiriK is found in Ilalam.ihora, p. 8.i; and anmng tlie lull tribes of India. JellinKhaus in llic same review, III, pp. 372, 374. " Fxaniples may be found in M. Buchrver, Kainerun, p 28; Frilseh, as above, p. 5.^5; Bastian, I.oangokiiste, I. j) 1(14; I-iviiiKstoiu', as above, p. 158 From /\ustraiia: Parkinson, Im lUsmarck-Archif>el, pp. 102-.1: Ztscbr. f. I'"tlinol.. XXI, p, 23; Kiibary. filhiwgr. Hcitrdnc sur Kfntltnij d KiirJiii. Inseigruppc u. Nachbarschaft ( Reriiii, 1885). pp. 70-71, iiiiti,'. '* I'liUKe. ,■!■. above, jip. 2-'8, 2,54, LivinKstone in I'etermanns Mittli., XXT (187s), p 104. PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 25 .3 as well, the conception prevailed that with each new Inca the world, so to speak, began anew. The palaces of the dead Inca, with all tlieir stores of wealth, were closed for ever; the ruler for the time l)eing never made use of the treasures that his ancestors had amassed. Though we see from this that the origin and preserva- tion of the first elements of civilization among primitive peoples were attended with the greatest difficulties, and that the possibility of rising to better conditions of exist- ence and higher modes of life could not even be conceived by them, yet it must not be forgotten that the observations that have been sifted and presented here have been taken from peoples of very varied character and different cultural stages. To raise himself of his own strengtli to the plane of the Tongan or Tahitian. the Australian of the continent would probably have required many thousands of years; and a similar gulf separates the Bushman from the Congo nesrro and Wanvamweza. But this verv fact, it seem . .-^ me. speaks for the persistence of the presumptive psycn.v: conditions under which the satisfaction of the wants of un- civilized man is accomplished: and we are undoubf^dly justified in tracing back the whole circle of this cla.s of conceptions to a condition that must have prevailed among mankind ior a-oiis before tribes and peoples could have originated. From all that we know of it. this condition means ex- actly the opposite of " economy." For economy implies always a community of men rendered possil)le by the pos- session of property; it i^ a taking counsel, a caring not only for the moment but also for the future, a careful divi- sion and suitable bestowal of time; economy means work, valuation of things, regulation of their use. accumulation of wealth, transmission of the achievements of civilization from generation to generation. And even among the i I: s6 PRIMITiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. higher primitive peoples we have found all this widely wanting; among the lower races we have hardly met ■with its faint beginnings. Let us strike out of the life of the Bushman or of the Veddah the use of fire, and bow and arrow, and nothing remains but a life made up of the individual search for food. Each indi- vidual has to rely entirely upon himself for his sustenance. Naked and unarmed he roams with his fellows, like cer- tain species of wild animals, through a limited stretch of territory-, and uses his feet for holding and climbing as dexterously as he uses his hands.'*^ All, male and female, devour raw what they catch with their hands or dig out of the ground with their nails: smaller animals, roots, and fruits. Mow they unite in little bands or larger herds; now they separate again, according to the richness of the pasturage or hunting-ground. But these unions do not develop into communities, nor do they lighten the exist- ence of the individual. This picture may not have many charms for him who shares the civilization of the present; hut we are simply forced by the material empirically gathered together so to construct it. Nor are any of its lines imaginative. We have eliminated from the life of the lowest tribes only what admittedly belongs to civilization — the use of weapons and of fire. Though we were obliged to admit that even among the higher primitive peoples there is exceeding much that is non-economic, that at all events the con- scious application of the economic principle forms with them rather the exception than the rule, we .shall not be able in the case of the so-called " lower nomads " and their predecessors just sketched to make use of the notion of economy at all. With them we have to fix a pre-econoniic •* R. Andrte, Iter Fuss als Greiforgan, in his lithnugr. Parallclftt u. Vcrgl. (New Series), pp. 228 flf. PRIMlTiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 27 Stage of development, that is not yet economy. As every child must have his name, we will call this the stage of in- dividual search for food. How economic activity was evolved from the individual search for food can to-day hardly be imagined. The thought may suggest itself that the tUiTiing-point must be where production with a more distant end in view takes the place of the mere seizing of the gifts of nature for im- mediate enjoyment, and where work, as the intelligent application of physical power, replaces the instinctive activity of the bodily organs. Ver\- little would be gained, however, by this purely theoretical distinction. Labour among primitive peoples is something very ill-defined. The further we follow it back, the more closely it ap- proaches in form and substance to play. In all probability there are instincts similar to those that are found among the more intelligent of the lower animals, that impel man to extend his activities beyond the mere search for food, especially the instinct for imitating and for experimenting.^" The taming of domestic animals, for example, begins not with the useful animals, but with such species as man keeps merely for amusement or the worship of gods. Industrial activity seems cvc-ywhere to start with the painting of the body, tattooing, piercing or other- wise disfiguring sei)arate parts of the body, and grad- ually to advance to the production of ornaments, masks, drawing on bark, petrograms, and similar play-products. In these things there is everywhere displayed a peculiar tendency to imitate the animals whicli the savage iiu-ets with in his immediate surroundings, and which he looks upon as his equals. The partly prehistoric rock dmwings and carvings of the Bushmen, the Indians, and the Australians Ton-.p K. Groof., Die Spide d. Ticre (Jena. 1896"). 23 PRlMITiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. represent chiefly animals and men;*® pottery, wood-carv- ing, and even wicker-work begin with the production of animal fornis.^" Even when the advance is made to the construction of objects of daily use (pots, stools, etc.), the animal figure is retained with remarkable regularity;''* and lastly, in the dances of primitive peoples, the imita- tion of the motions and the cries of animals plays the prin- cipal part.''" All regularly sustained activity finally takes on a rhythmir form and becomes fused with music and song in an indivisible whole.^'^ It is accordingly in play that technical skill is developed, and it turns to the useful only very gradually.^* The or- der of progression hitherto accepted must therefore be just reversed; play is older than work, art older than pro- "Andree. Elhnogr. Parallelen u. I'ergleiche, pp. 258-299. Ehrenreich, as above, pp. 46-7. " Comp. the interesting accounts by K. v. d. Steinen, as above, pp. 2JI ff., and particularly pp. 241 ff. " Abundant examples are afforded by every ethnographic pictur«*- collection. The incredulous are invited to take a glance at the fol- lowing works: J. Boas, The Central Eskimo (Washington, 1888); Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-5; Ethnogr. Beschrijving fan de West- •! Xonrdkust ran Ncderlandsch Xiew Guinea, by F. S. A. de Clercq and J. D. E. ScIinieltT: (Leiden, iSg^l; Joest, Ethnogr. atis Guyana (Suppl. to vol. 5 of the Intern, .\rchiv fiir Ethnogr.); and again Von den Steinen, as above, pp. 26r ff. Conip. also 7ritsch, as above, p. 7,3; Schweinfurth. The Heart of .Urica (.vl ed., London. 1878). I, pp. 129- 130; and Grosi^o, Pie Anfange d. Kunst. Chaps. \'I and VII. " Grosse. as abovi-, pp. 2o8-(), " Reference must here agniti be niaiio to my work on Arbeit u. Rhythmus. '* " On exaniinatioti of the primitive tools [of ihe Papuans] . . . we see that there is not a single one which does not hear testimony by S(inu' little design or ornament to the good taste of its maker, not an article which does not show some trifling accessories surpassing mere utility and present in it solely for beauty's sake." — Semon, In the Austral. Bush. p. 400. PRlMlTll^E ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 29 I duction for use.'^'' Even when among the higher primi- tive peoples the two elements begin to separate from each other, the dance still precedes or follows every more im- portant work (war-, hunting-, harvest-dance), and song ic- companies work. Just as economy, the further we have traced it back- wards in the development of peoples, has during our in- quiry assumed more and more the form of non-economy, so work also has finally resolved itself into its opposite (Nicht- arbeit). And we should probably have the same experi- ence with all the more important phenomena of economy, if we were to continue our inquiries regarding <^hem. One thing alone appears permanent — consumption. Wants man always had, and wants must be satisfied. But even our wants, considered from an economic point of view, exist only in very small part naturally; it is only in the matter of bodily nourishment that our consumption is a necessity of nature; all else is the product of civilization, the result of the free creative activity of the human mind. Without this activity man would always have remained a root-digging, fiuit-eating animal. Under these circumstances we must forego the attempt to fix upon some definite point at which simple search for food ceases and economy begins, in the history of human civilization there are no turning-points; here everything grows and decays as with the plant; the fixed or station- ary is only an abstraction which we need in order to make visible to our dim eye the wonders of nature and humanity. Indeed economy itself, like all else, is subject to constant changes. When it first presents itself in history, it appears as a form of communal life based upon material posses- m " [The general ctlmograpliic aspect nf art is. of course, another and wider problem than the one involved in this conclusion with regard ;0 "first things. " — Ed.] ! * 30 PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. sions. guided by definite rules of conduct, and closely con- nected with the personal and moral community of life of the family.'*^ It was under this form that it was seen by the people who first fixed its characteristics in language. Landlord is still in Middle High German synonymous with husband (Wirt, Ehemann), landlady is wife (Wirtin, Ehefrau), and the word economy, derived from the Greek, is formed in a similar way. We may therefore assume the existence of economy as certain where we find co-dwelling communities that pro- cure and utilize things adapted to their needs according to the dictates of the economic principle. Such a condition is certainly fulfilled by the higher primitive peoples, even though their carrying out of the economic principle always remains incomplete. But there is nevertheless much that still recalls the pre-economic period of individual search for food; economy has still, so to speak, gaps in- various places. Among all peoples of a lower cultural stage the dis- tribution of labour between the two sexes is firmly fixed bv custom, although difiference of natural aptitude seems by no means to have been the sole determining factor. At least it cannot be maintained that in all cases the lighter share of the work fell to the weaker sex. While in the normal domestic economy of civilized nations we have a cross-section, so to speak, which assigns to the man the productive work and to the woman the superintendence of consumption, the economy of these peoples seems to be divided in longitudinal section. Both sexes take part in " K. Grosse has in his recent book entitled Die Formal d. Familie u. die Fflrmen d. Wirtschafi (Leipzig, i8g6) investigated the connection of family with economic forms. In doing so he has, for the economic side of the \vori<. adhered to the altogetlicr external classification into nomadic, pastor.il, and agricultural, but has scarcely devoted due at- tention to the inner cc^nnnii:- life, particularly to that "f the household. PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 31 production, and frequently each has a particular depart- ment of the consumption for itself. It is particularly signif- icant in this connection that upon the woman de solves, as a rule, the jirocuring and preparing of the vegetable foods and for the most part also the building of the hut, while hunting and the working up of the products of the chase fall to the man. If cattle are kept, the tending of the ani- mals, the erection of inclosures for them, the milking, etc., are the business of the men. This division is often so sharply defined that we might almost speak of a cleavage of the family economy into a purely male and a purely female economy. In an interesting account of the useful plants of the Brazilian Shingu tribes, K. von den Stcincn ''* describes the outcome of the earlier development of these tribes in the following words: "Man followed the chase, and in the mean time woman invented agriculture. Here, as throughout Brazil, the women have exclusive charge not otily of the preparation of manioc in the house but also of its cultivation. Thty clear the ground of weeds with pointed sticks, place in position the stakes with which the manioc is planted, and fetch each day what they need, carrying it home in heavily laden wicker baskets. . . . The man is more courageous and skilful; to him belong the chase and the use of weapons. Where, then, hunt- ing and fishing ^. play an important part, the woman must attend, as far as a division of labour takes place at all, to the procuring, trans- porting, and preparing of the food. This division has a result that is not sufticiently appreciated, namely, that the woman in her field of labour ac(iuires special knowledge just as the man does in his. This must necessarily hold true for each lower or higher stage. The counterpart of the Indian woman cultivating her manioc with skill and intelligence is already found in the purely nomadic state. The wife of the Bororo vent into the forest armed with a pointed stick to search for roots and tubers: during wanderings through the camp- ing-ground, or whenever a cot.ipany of Indians changed its locality, sucli hunting fell to the wor .n, while the man tracked the game: she clinib''d the tree for cocoanuis. and carried heavy loads of them '^Unier d. Naturi'olk. Central-Brasil., pp. 206 ff. h i 32 PRIMlTiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. laboriously home. And though the Indian woman was the slave of her husband, this relation was certainly not to her advantage in re- gard to the division of the fish and meat; she still had to depend upon the supply of vegetables that she could gather for herself. On the Shingu the men made ready the roast and broiled fish and meat; the women baked the beijus (manioc cakes), prepared the warm drinks, cooked the fruits, and roasted tht cocoanuts. What other meaning could this division into animal cooking for the men and vegetable cooking for the women have than that each of the sexes had still kept to its original sphere?" If we add that the men also made the weapons for the chase, and that hunting and fishing were the source whence they drew all their iinplements for cutting, scraping, polish- ing, piercing, tracing, and carving, while the women pro- duced the pottery for cooking,-'*'' we have for each sex a naturally defined sphere of production upon which all their activity is independently expended. But this is not all. The consumption h also in one chief particular distinct: there are no common meals in the family. Each individual eats apart from the rest, and it is looked upon as improper to partake of food in the presence of others.*** Similar characteristics of an individual economy are also found among the North American Indians, who had al- ready arrived at a fully developed domestic economy. While they know nothing whatever of a special ownership " As above, pp. I97 ff-. 217 ff- 3i8. "Von den Steinen, as above, p. 69, and Ehrcnreich, Bcitriige s. V'61- kerkunde Brasil., p. 17: "Etiquette among the Karaya demands that each one shall eat by himself apart from the others." l.ating alone is almost suggestive of the animal. The savage acts like the dog, which grows cross when his meal is disturbed. Among the natives of Borneo " the men usually feed alone, attended on by the women, and always wash their mouths out when they have finished eating. They are very particular about being called away from their meals, and it takes . great deal to make a man set about doing anything before he has concluded his repast: to such an extent is this practice observed, that it is considered wrong to attack even an enemy whilst he is eat- ing, but the moment he has finished it is legitimate and proper to fall upon him." Hose, in Juurii. oi Amhiop^l. Inst., p. i6o. PRlMITiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 33 of the soil, " there is nothing in an Indian's house or family without its particular owner. Every individual knows what belongs to him, from the horse or cow down to the dog, cat, kitten, and little chicken. Parents make presents to their children, and they in return to their parents. A fatl r will sometimes ask his wife or one of his children for the loan of a horse to go a-hunting. For a litter of kittens or brood of chickens there are often as many dif- ferent owners as there are individual animals. In purchas- ing a hen with her brood one frequently has to deal for it with several children." ^^ " In cases where the Indians permitted polygamy, it was customar)' for a special hut to be erected for each wife; among tribes dwelling in common-houses each wife had at least her special fire."*® '' The same characteristics are presented by the economy of the Polynesians and Micronesians, except that here fish- ing and the raising of smaller live stock take the place of hunting. In New Pomerania the various duties are strictly divided between the men and boys on the one hand, and the women and girls on the other.^^ To the male portion of the population falls the labour of making and keep- ing in repair the weapons and the fishing-gear, especially the fishing-nets and the ropes necessary for them, of cast- ing the nets in the sea and caring for them daily, of build- ing canoes, erecting huts, and. in the wooded districts, of felling trees and clearing away the roots for the laying out of new plantations, as well as of protecting them by en- closures against wild boars." *" " Heckewelder, as above, p. 158. "VVaitz, Anthropologic, III, p. 109. "Parkinson, as above, pp. 113, 122. "These labours preparatory to the cultivation of the land are still often performed by the women. Parkinson, p. 118. 34 PRlMmVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. \ I Besides haviriig to care for their little children it de- volves upon the women to prepare the food, to dig and cultivate the ground, to raise and garner the produce of the field, and to carry the heavily laden baskets to market- places miles away. " In certain kinds of work both men and women take part. To these belong the twisting of the strong basten cordage of which the fishing-nets are woven, the plaiting of baskets with finely cut strips of rattan and padanus- leaves, the weaving of a very rough and coarse stuff called mal, made from the bark of the broussonetia-tree, in which the women wrap their infants to protect them from the cold." This latter is very significant: we have here to do with arrangements for the transformation of materials, such as could not have existed in the period of individual search for food. Separate preparation of food for men and women, and separate meals are also met with in the South Sea regions. In Fiji the men prepare such kinds of food as can be cooked out of doors by means of heated stones. " This is confined to-day to the roasting of swine's flesh; formerly the preparation of human flesh was also reserved for the men." ^- In the Palau Islands the cooking of the taro and the preparing of the sweetened foods fell to the lot of the women, the preparation of the meats to the men.*'^ In most parts of Oceania " it is neither permissible for women and men to eat in common, nor for the men to eat what the women have prepared. Eating with another from the same dish seems to be avoided with almost equal scrupu- lousness." "■* *• Biissler, Siidsce-Bildcr, pp. 226-7. " Kubary, as above, p. 17J. " Ratzel, V'olkerkundc, I. p. 240. "Separate; meals for men and women; Conip. Stanley, Ho-i; t ioitnd PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 35 The economy of many negro tribes shows a Hke arrange- ment ; a sharp division of the production and of many parts of the consumption according to sex, indeed even the ex- it nsion of this distinction to the sphere of barter. As P. Pogge,®' one of our most reliable observers, says concisely of the Congo negroes: " The woman has her own circle of duties independent of that of her husband." And in the description of the Bashilangas he observes:^" '" No mem- ber of the family troubles himself about another at meal- times: while some eat the others come and go just as it suits them; but the women and the smaller children gen- erally eat together." And finally he reports further re- garding the Lundas: " Under ordinary conditions, when a caravan has pitched its camp in a village, the wome:' of the place are accustomed to bring vegetables and fowl into the camp for sale, while goats, pigs, and sheep are usually sold only by the men."' It is similarly related by L. Wolf* that in the market at Tbaushi all the agricultural products .■;Tid 1 laterials. mats, and pottery are sold by the women, and only iL^oats and wine by the men. F.ach sex is thus possessor of its special proiluct of labour, and disposes of i: indejKjndentlN. ''■'•* The di\ ision of the labour of production between the two ^exe> in Africa varies in detail from tribe to tribe; as a rule, [f7Tt::fa>u (N w York, 1887). p. 550; Naclitigal, Sahara u. Sudan, I, " tm i's-iche :. Mnata Jamuo. p. 40. ' ^\»>«r:ar ' ntcr dcutsch. Flaggc qui-r durch Afrika, \t. ,^87. Im- Isnemt ^ Ifmua amzcu. pp. I"8, 2t,i. '' tm Hsjcnc J Muatd Jamu'O. p. 29. ""AST— sjair; etc.. Im Inticrn Afrikas. p. J4Q Conip. Livingstone, l.vrrn^ - -*f . jmhesi. pp. 122, 577; Paulitschkf, Ethnographie Nordost- **■ »•' — r family md the domestic establishment of the Wanyamwezis, w+r ji-sureti y ni longer stand upon a low plane, Burton gives the ■olkfmras picture: "Children are suckled till the end of the second Arter the fourth summer the boy begins to learn archery. ; j I' 36 PRIMlTjyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. however, agriculture ami the preparation of all the vegeta- ble foods are also assigned here to the woman, and hunting, cattle-raising, tanning, and weaving to the man.'^" This arrangement is often supporteil by superstitious usages. In Uganda the milking of the cows falls exclusively to the men; a woman is never permitted to touch the udder of a cow.'' In the Lunda territory, again, no man is allowed to take part in the extraction of oil from the ground-nut, as his presence is thought to frustrate the success of the operation."- As a rule the carriers whom Europeans en- ... As poon .IS [lu-l can walk he tends the flocks; after the age of ten he drives the cattle to pasture, and. considering himself independ- ent of his father, he plants a tobacco-plot and aspires to build a hut for himself. Unmarried (jirls live in the f.ithcr's house until puberty; after that period the spinsters of the village, who usually number from seven to a do/en. assemble toKether and build for themselves at a distance from their homes a hut where they can receive their friends withriut parental interference. . . . Marriage takes place when the youth can afford to pay the price for a wife. [The price] varies, ac- cording t'> circumstances, from one to ten cows. The wife is so far the property of the husband that he can claim damages from the adul- terer, but may not sell her except when in dilticulties. . . . Polygamy is the rule with the wealthy. There is little community of interest?, and apparently a lack of family affection in these tribes. The hus- band, when returning from the coast laden with cloth, will refuse a single sluikkah to his wife; .md the wife, sticceeding to an inheritance, will abandon her husband to starvation. The man takes charge of the cattle, goats, sluep. atul poultrj : the woman has power over the grain and the \egetatple'-; and each must grow tob.icco, liaving little hope of borrowing from the other. . . . The sexes do not eat to- gether: e\eii the boys would disdain to be seen sitting at meat with their motliirv The men feed either in their cottages or. more gen- erally, in the iw.m/a fpublic house, one being set apart for each sex]." (As above, pp. -•'»5>^: ii>mp pp, 41M-4 > '"Comp, e-pecially hVitseh. as above, pp. ;'» '^f ■ 'K?. •2-'0- ,U'.S; Living- ston*, as above, pp. 77, iif. .Iii-i-'. .\n cMended treatment now in H. Schurt/. Dat nfr. Ccwnh' (l.eip/ig, Kirxil. pp. 7 tT. " I'.min lUy. in IVienii.iniis Mitth, X N \' (1X70), p. .V)2. " Wi-SMiiann, V.O i, etc., hn Iniurii Afrikas. p. (>.\. PRIMlTiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 37 gage refuse to do women's work; Livingstone" even reports a case of famine among the men in a certain dis- trict because no women were there to grind the corn they had on hand. The separation of the two sexes in the prep- aration and consumption of food is often made still more rigid by regulations ''* of a semi-religious character, for- bidding the women the use of certain kinds of meat, which are thus reserved for the men alone. ''■''' Everywhere among primitive peoples the children become independent very early in youth and desert the society of their parents. They often live then for some years in special common-houses, of which there are others for married men. These common-hou.ses for the men-folk grouped ac- cording to age. and frequently also for the unmarried women grouped in the same way, are found very wiilely distributed in Africa and America, and especially in Oceania. They serve as common places of meeting, work, and amusement, and as sleeping-places for the younger people, and are used also for lodging strangers. They naturally form a further obstacle to the development of a common household economy based upon the family, for each family is generally subdivided into different parts "As above, pp. !88. 565. .Siniil.-irly amotiK the Tiuli.ins; comp. Wait/, as ahovp. III, p. 100. "More frequent still in Tolynesia. Comp. Andnc. nthiogr. Parol- Uk» u. I'crglciche. \^\^. ii4ff. "For a peculiar further development of this economy comp. Schweinfurth, Sahara u. Sudan. III. pp. i6j, .'44, 2^^). In some places the separation of the spheres of activity f)f the two sexes extends cv 1 to their intellectual life. AmonK' several Cariljic tribes the women and tlie men h;;'- ditTcrent names fur many things, wlience it was inferred that there existid distinct hmnuaKes for men and for women. More recently this phenomenon is suppoM'd to have its foundation in the didercnce in social portion of the sexes and in the sharp division between their two spheres of tniph'vmcnt Comp. Sapper, Intirn. f. Htl tinoKr. PI' si> !. 38 PRlMlTiyE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. vv-ith separate dwellings. In Yap. one of the Caroline Islands, for instance, we find besides the fcbays, or sleep- ing-houses of the unmarried, a principal house for each family which the father of the family uses, and also a dwell- ing-house for each wife; finally, " the preparation of food in the dwelling-house is forbidden and is transferred to a separate hut for each member of the family, which serves as a fire-cabin or cooking-house." ^« A similar arrangement prevails in Malekula in the New Hebrides." Further than this, economic individualism can hardly be carried. It may be asserted as a general rule for primitive peo- ples practising polvgamy that each wife has her own hut." Among the Zulus thev go so far as to build a separate hut for almost ever)- adult member of the household,— one for the husband, one for his mother, one for each of his wives and other adult members of his family. These huts all stand in a semicircle about the enclosed cattle- kraal in such a way that the man's dwelling is m the centre. Of course it is to be remembered that a hut of this kmd can be constructed in a few hours. Thus we see that everywhere, even among the more developed primitive peoples, there is still wanting much of that unified exclusiveness of domestic life with which the civilized peoples of Europe, from all we know of them, first appeared in history. Everywhere wide clefts still gape, and the individual preserver an economic independ- ence that strikes us with its strangeness. However much '• Kubary E.'hnogr. Btitriige z. Kennt. d. Karnl.-Archif. (Leiden), p. 39- "Journal o( the Anthropol. Inst, of Gr. Br.. X.XIII (i8«m). P- J8t- "This is tlic ca.se. to mention only a few instancts, in the Antilles: St.ircko' Tht Primilive Family (New York. 1SH9). p. 40: in Min- danao; Sch.-,dcnbcrK, Ztschr. f. Ethnol.. XVII. p. u; among the Bakuba: Wissmann, Im Innern Afrikas, p. J0.>: among the Monbuttoos: .Schweinfiirth, Ztschr. f. Ethnol.. V. p. 12; Tht Heart of Africa. II. pp. 17-18: Ca»a!i». La BMiuiot, p. ii2. PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 39 it behooves us, in our consideration of this minute eco- nomic separation, to guard against overlooking the unify- ing forces of working and caring for each other, and carefully as we must refrain from exaggerating the cen- trifugal forces here at work, it Is nevertheless not to be denied that they are all traceable to one common origin — to titc individual search for food practised through thousands of years by all these pcof^lcs. In this lies the justification of the method followed in this investigation, in which we have taken together peo- ples of very different stock and cultural stages, and con- sidered the economic phenomena separately. This procedure is, in political economy as in all social sciences, entirely justified; provided that, from the prodig- ious mass of disconnected facts that fill ethnolog}- like a great lumber-room, we succeed in bringing a considerable number under a common denominator and rescuing them from the mystic interpretations of curiosity-hunters and r.'.ythologizing visionaries. For political economy in par- ticular this method offers the further and not inconsider- able advantage, that the toy mannikin in the form of a savage freely invented by the imagination of civilized man vanishes from the scene, and gives place to forms that are taken from life, although the observations from which they are drawn mav leave much to be desired in point of ac- curacy. Our travellers have hitherto devoted little special atten- tion to the economy oi primitive peoples. In the midst of their attention to dress, forms of worship, morals, religious beliefs, marriage customs, art. and technical skill, they have often overlooked what lay closest at hand, and in the gossipy records of ethnographic compilations the word " economy " has no mf>re fotmd a place than has the word " household " in the chronicles of the numerous investi- 40 PRIMITIVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. f >: » .' gators into the constitution of the family. But just be- cause the observations we have utiHzed have been made for the most part only incidentally and not by trained economists, they possess a high measure of credibility. For they have on that account generally escaped the fate of being forced into some scheme categorically arranged in accordance with the conditions of our own civilization, and for that verj' reason unable to do justice to the differ- ently conditioned life of primitive peoples. m^ CHAPTER II. THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. The designation natural people seems a particularly- apt characterization of the lower races of men on their eco- nomic side. They stand in more immediate touch with nature than do we; they are more dependent upon her, are more directly susceptible to her powers, and succumb to tiiem more easily. Civilized man lays by stores for the future; for the preservation and embellishment of his ex- istence he possesses a wealth of implements; in the event of failure of his crops the harvests of half a world stand at his disposal through our highly perfected means of trans- portation; he subdues the powers of nature and impresses them into his service. Our commerce places the labour of a thousand men at the command of every individual amongst us, and in every household watchful eyes guard the careful and economical consumption of the goods destined for our bodily subsistence. Primitive man, as a rule, gath- ers no stores; a bad harvest or other failure of the natural sources of his sustenance strikes him with its full weight; he knows no labour-saving implements, no system in dis- posing of his time, no ordered consumption; limited to his meagre natural powers, threatened on all sides by hos- tile forces, each day he has to struggle anew for his exist- ence, and often knows not whether the morrow will vouch- safe him the means to still his hunger. Vet he does not regard the future with anxiety, he is a child of the moment; no cares torment him; his mind is fillcl with a boundless naive egoism. With thoughts extending 'o further, he 41 u I! Hi (I l 42 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITiyE PEOPLE. instinctively follows his impulses, and in this regard also stands closer to nature than ourselves.^ The former ♦■ 'le was to classify primitive peoples accord- ing to the manner in which they procured their sustenance into hunters, fishers, pastorals, and agriculturalists. In this it was believed that each people must traverse these four stages of economic development in its progress towards civilization. The starting-point was the tacit as- sumption that primitive man began with animal food and only gradually passed over, under the stress of necessity, to a vegetable diet. The procuring of vegetable food moreover was considered the more difficult inasmuch as the picture of our European system of agriculture was ever in mind with its draught-animals and artificial apparatus of implements and tools. But this conception is erroneous, just as is the assump- tion from which it proceeds. Certainly all economic activ- ity begins with the procuring of food, which is wholly de- pendent upon the local distribution of the gifts of nature. From the beginning man was primarily dependent upon vegetable nourishment, and wherever tree-fruits, berries, and roots were to be gained, he first made use of these. In case of need he turned to petty animals which could be consumed raw: shell-fish, worms, beetles, grasshoppers, ants, etc. Like the lower animal in continuous quest of food, he devoured at the moment what he found without providing for the future. If from this stage we seek the transition to the next, a little reflection tells us that it could not have been difficult ' Comp, in general R. Vierkandt, Nalurvolker u. KuUunvlker (Leip- zig. \M>). pp 2(0 ff. On the conception of natural peoples see further Panckow. Ztschr. d. Gcs. f. Erdkunde zu Berlin, XXXI (i8<)6>. pp. 158, ISO. Anyone inclined to find fault with the indefinitencss of the definition should not overlook the fact that no single case has pre- sented itscii fair-itiK tlie point whether a certain people was to be re- garded as primitive or not. THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIi^F PEOPLE. 43 to gain the practical knowledge that a buried bulb or nut furnishes a new plant, — certainly not more difficult than taming animals or inventing fish-hooks and bow and ar- row, which transition to the hunting stage required.- As regards technical skill many hunting and nomadic peoples stand far above so-called agricultural peoples. Of late men have come to believe that nomads should rather be considered savage agriculturalists; and as a matter of fact it is highly improbable that a tribe of hunters should first have hit upon the taming of animals before they could pro- cure milk, eggs, and meat. Moreover, except in the ex- treme north, there is probably no fishing, hunting, or pas- toral people that does not draw a more or less consider- able portion of its sustenance from the vegetable kingdom. For this supply many of them have long been dependent upon trade with more highly developed neighboring peo- ples. They thus lack that economic independence which our study requires if it is to arrive at conclusions univer- sally applicable. Now since the instances of hunting, fishing, and no- madic tribes, which are accepted as typical, are only to be found under special geographical and climatic conditions that hardly permit of a different manner of obtaining sustenance (hunters and fishers in the farthest north, nomads in the steppes and desert places of the Old World), it may be advisable in our further consideration to leave them wholly aside and limit the field of our investigation to the intertropical districts of America, Africa, Australia, the Malay Archipelago, Melanesia, and Polynesia. This is still an enormous circuit, within which the diversity of natural conditions surrounding primitive man pro- • Comp. in general E. Hahn, Die Hausthiere u. ihrc Besiehungen s. Wirthschaft d. Menschen (Leipzig, 1896); P. R. Bos, Jagd, Vicksucht u. Ackerbau ah Kulturstufen in Intern. Archiv f. Ethnographic, X (1897), pp. iHTfi. ill i s . j . i.. 3- a. 44 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. ru duces many j>eculiarities in his material existence. The differences between the individual tribes in this regard are, however, not so great as, for instance, between the Esqui- maux and the Polynesian. At any rate, notwithstanding the great differences of the races in conditions of life and •ways of living, they have still sufficient in common to oc- cupy our attention. In addition to this we have here the oldest ree:ions inhabited by man, which, however, in spite, or periiaps on account, of the bounties of tropical nature, also appear to be those in which their development has been most slow. At all stages of his development the primitive man of these regions manifestly finds in vegetable diet the l)asis of his sustenance. This is evident from the simple fact that he has always found animal food much more dif- ficult to obtain. This is not contradicted by the circum- stance that at times we notice an eagerness for flesh break forth among many savage races which appalls us, since it does not shrink even from its own kind. The explanation in all probability is that the definite quantity of salt requi- site for the normal maintenance of the human body can- not be conveyed to it through purely vegetable diet, while it is quite possible with occasional raw-flesh food to live without salt. The same desire for salt is manifested even by the purely herbivorous among our domestic animals. The need of nourishment [we have seen] is the most urgent, and originally the sole, force impelling man to activ- ity, and causing him to wander about incessantly until it is satisfied. The species of Jirision of labour between the two sexes, which this primitive search for food gives rise to, reaches its highest form when the wife procures the vegetable, the man the animal, portion of the food. And since, as a rule, the food gained is immediately devoured, and no one takes thought for the other as long as he him- THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. 45 self is hungry, a difference in the nourishment of the two sexes arises that has perhaps contributed in an important degree to the differentiation of their bodily development. The division of labour of these primitive roaming hordes is continued at higher stages of development, and receives there such sharp expression that the rigidly limited spheres of activity of the man and the woman form almost a spe- cies of secondary sex-characteristics whose understanding gives us the key to the economic life of primitive peoples. In particular almost all their production of goods is dom- inated by it. Turning now to the latter, we should note by way of preface that by far the greater part of our primitive peo- ples, when they came under the view of Europeans, were acquainted with, and practised, agriculture. This is true, for instance, of all the negro races of Africa with but few exceptions, of the Malays, the Polynesians, and Mela- nesians, and of the primitive races of America, save those living at the extreme north and south of that hemisphere. It is a widely prevalent error, for which our youthful read- ing is responsible, that makes pure hunting races out of the North American Indians. All the tribes east of the Mississippi and south of the St. Lawrence were familiar with the cultivation of food-plants before the coming of Europeans; and, in the regions lying beyond, they at least gathered the grain of the water-rice (cicania aquatica) and ground meal from the berries of the manzanita shrub.'' The agriculture of primitive peoples is, however, pecu- liar.'* In the first p'ace it knows nothing of an implement that we think indispensable, namely, the plough. Wheel and wagon and draught-animals are likewise unknown. Furthermore, cattle-raising forms no integral part of their ' Waitz, .Utthrofvlogu' d. Xatunvlkcr. III. *Conip. E. Hahn. as above, pp. j88 ft. pp. 1 46 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRlMlTiyE PEOPLE. ll il - I I? I i ' I : t I agriculture. Fertilizing of the soil occurs at times, but it is extremely rare. More frequent are irrigation arrange- ments, especially for rice and taro plantations. As a rule, however, the cultivated land must be changed when its nutritive elements are exhausted; and the change is facili- tated by the absence of individual property in the soil, which belongs to the tribe or the village community as a vvhole. Lastly, [we may recall,] the preparing of the soil is almost exclusively woman's work. Only in the first clearing of a piece of lar.d do the men assist. Of late years this system of culture has been designated the hack or hoc system, a short-handled hoe being its chief implement. With .some tribes the primitive digging-stick still retains its place. At the basis of its plant production lie the tropical tuberous growths: manioc, yam, taro, sweet potato, pignut, and in addition bananas, various species of gourds (cucurbitacccc) , beans, and of the grains, rice, durra, and maize. Rice has its oldest home in South China probably, the durra in Africa, and maize, as is well known, in America. There belong, finally, to this system of agri- culture the tropical fruit-trees— sago , date-, and cocoa- palms, the breadfruit-tree, and the like. On account cf the imperfect nature and limited pro- ductivity of the implements, only small stretches of land can ever be taken into cultivation under the hack system. It is closely related externally, and also in the manner in which it is carried on. to our garden culture. The fields are generally divided into beds, which are often hilled in an exemplary fashion and kept perfectly free of weeds. The whole is surrounded with a hedge to keep out wild animals; against the grain-eating birds, which are particu- larly dangerous to the har\'ests of the tropics, the Malays set up ver\' ingeniously constructed scarecrows; in most places in Africa special waich-towcrs arc erected in the 'Si THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRJMITiyE PEOPLE. 47 fields from which the young girls make noises to frighten away the animals. As a rule a definite crop rotation is ob- served. In the Congo basin, for instance, when the land is newly broken up it is first planted with beans, and when these are harvested, millet is sown; interspersed with the latter the sprouts of the manioc are often set out. The manioc does not yield full returns for from one and a half to two years, and occupies the land until the roots com- mence to become ligneous, and virgin soil must be taken tip. In New Pomerania the rotation is yam roots first, then taro. and finally bananas, sugar-cane, and the like.® Travellers have often described the deep impression made upon them when, on coming out of the dreary primeval forest, they happened suddenly upon the well- tended fields of the natives. In the more thickly popu- latea parts of Africa these fields often stretch for many a mile, and the assiduous care of tlie negro women shines in all the brighter light when we consider the insecurity of life, the constant feuds and pillagings, in which no one knows whether he will in the end be able to harvest what he has sown. Livingstone gives somewhere a graphic description of the devastations wrought by the slave-hunts; the people were lying about slain, the dwellings were de- molished; in the fields, however, the grain was ripening, and there v.as none to harvest it. But as yet the life of these people is by no means firmly attached to the soil; seldom do their settlements remain for several generations on the same spot;^ their houses are fugitive structures of 'Descriptions of hack agriculture in Angola, Congo district: Pogge. pp. 8. 9; Wissmann, Unter deutsch. Flagge, pp. 34i ff-: among the Mon- buttos: Schweinfurth, In the Heart of Africa, II, pp. 37-39; in Mindanao: Ztschr f. Ethnol., XVII, pp. 19 ff-; in New Guinea: Finsch, Samoafahrten, pp. 56 ff.; in New Pomerania: Parkinson, Im Bismarck- Archipel, pp. 118 ff.; in South America: Martiub, Zur Ethnogr. Atner- ikas, pp. 84. 85. 489. 490. ' Ratzel, I, p. 85 ; Panckow, pp. 167 ff. 48 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. I I H IP 111 \\\ SB i J. li** poles and grass; their other possessions may easily be carried away on their backs or quickly replaced, and on another spot a new village in a few days can be erected in which nothing from the old is lacking save the vermin. Hack agriculture is exactly suited to just such a life. It requires no fixed capital beyond the small hoe and, where corn is cultivated, perhaps a knife to cut the ears. The keeping of supplies is scarcely necessary, since in many quarters the climate permits several harvests in the year. Where grain is grown, however, it is customary to store ' in small granaries built on posts, or in pits in the earth, or in great earthen vessels. But even where thus stored it must soon be used if it is not to be destroy».d through dampness, weevils, and termites. Livingstone thinks this explains why the negroes in case of abundant harvest brew so much beer.^ Hack agriculture is still one of the most widely prevalent systems of husbandry. It is to be found throughout all Ceni-al Africa (i8° N. lat. to 22° S. lat.). in South and Central America, in the whole of the Australian islands, in great sections of Further India and the East Indian Archipelago, Everywhere, [as already noted], it appears to have been originally woman's work; and as such it is a great factor in advancing civilization. Obviously through hunting for roots, which she had practised from the earliest times, woman was led on to agriculture. Farinaceous bulbs and root-crops form accordingly the chief part of her plan- tations. In this manner she gained technical experiences which the man did not enjoy. Her labour soon yielded the most important part of the requirements of life; and therewith was laid the foundation of a permanent family organization, in which the man undertook the offices of protection and the procuring of animal food. Only where * Expedit. to Zambesi, p. 253. THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PfUMUlvE PEOPLE. 49 there are no large quantities of game toes the man take part in the cultivation of th? soil, as, foi instance, among the Malays. Let us now turn to the second source of sustenance, hunting and fishing. Through the imperfect nature oi their weapons hunting has ever had among primiti'-'j peo- ples a strong resemblance to the method of the beast of prey stealing upon its victim. A larger animal can only be wounded by an arrow-shot or spear-thrust, not killed; and then it is the hunter's task to pursue the Vast until it sinks down exhausted. As this species of hunt may, however, under certain circumstances, become very dangerous, the most varied ways of trapping have been invented — pits, barricades, and falling trees; or in attacking the animal directly the hunt is carried on by whole tribes or village communities.^ Under such circumstances communal own- ership of the hunting-grounds and the establishment of very detailed rules for the distribution of the booty among the participants and the owners of the ground have been early developed; but on such matters we cannot enter here.**^ The essential thing for us to note is that the part of the duties pertaining to the providing of footl necessitates a certain organization of work conformable to the princi- ple of labour in common — a circumstance that has cer- tainly been of the greatest importance for the birth of primitive political communities. The same is to be said of fisliing,^^ especially where the industry is followed along the seashore with boats and large nets, which can be produced and handled only with the help of many. The Ne' / Zealanders, for instance, wove 'On the hunting methods of the Kaffirs cunip. Fritsch, pp. 81 ff. ; of the South Americans, Martins, pp. 8j, 101. '"Some particulars in Post, Afr. Juiistr.. II, pp. i6z. 163; Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, p. 435. ■•' As to fishing comp. in general Katzel, 1, pp. ij4, 396, 506, 531. li so THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. ! ill in i I ^i < r « I i nets one thousand yards in length and it took hundreds of hands to use them. Innumerable are the modes of catch- ing fish which primitive peoples have invented; besides hook and net, arrows, spears, bow-nets, and methods of stunning the fish are resorted to. All our information on this subject indicates that fishing acquired a much more regular character among primitive peoples than hunting. On many islands of the South Sea, indeed, definite days of the week have once for all been set apart for the communal fishing; and the leatlers of the fishing expeditions are also the leaders in war. Stream-fishing has been especially de- veloped by the primitive inhabitants of South America, among whom there are tribes that have been called fish- ing nomads because they wander from stream to stream. The same also occurs here and there in Africa. The actual labour of fishing seems always to fall to the men; it is only in some districts of Polynesia that the women take a lim- ited part in it. Because of the very perishable nature of meat, hunt- ing and fishing in tropical regions can, in the majority cf cases, supplement the vegetable diet only occasionally. True, the drying and even the smoking of the fish and meat cut into strips was early learned and practised. This i.s the usage with the Polynesians as well as among the Malays and Americans, and even among the negroes and Australians. Yet the pan ci the food requirement which can be regularly met in this manner is so small that it is a rule among many tribes that only the more prominent persons may enjoy certain kinds of game. It is ([uite com- mon also for the use of certain kinds of meat to be for- bidden to the v.'omen. It is only small forest and coast tribes, who are able with their dried meat to carry on trade with agricultural neighbours, that find their support in hunting and fishing. THE ECONOM.'C LIFE OF PRIMlTIf^E PEOPLE. 51 It would accordingly be quite natural to assume that primitive peoples must early have hit upon the taming and raising of animals as a source of a regular food-supply. But we can speak of cattle-raising as a practice among the peoples of the tropical regions only in a very restricted sense. The hen alone, of our domestic animals, is to be found everywhere; besides it there is in Africa the goat, among the Malays and Polynesians the pig, and among the Americans the turkey, the musk-duck and the guinea- pig. Cattle are found only among one section of the Malays and in one strip, more or less broad, of East Africa, which runs through almost the whole continent, from the Dukas and Baris on the Upper Nile to the Hottentots ?nd Namaquas in the south. But most of these people o not use them as draught-animals; many of them do not even use their milk; many East African cattle-raisers never slaughter a beast except when they have captured it from another tribe.*' Here and there in Equatorial Africa the ox serves as a riding and pack animal; but, generally speaking, the possession of cattle is for the negro peoples merely " a representation of wealth and the object of an almost extravagant venera- tion," — merely a matter of fancy. Ami this in general is the character of cattle-keeping among primitive peoples. An Indian village in the inte- rior of Brazil, [as we have remarked in our last chapter], resembles a great menagerie; even the art of dyeing the plumage of birds is known; but none of the many animals are raised because of the meat or for other economic pur- pose; the very eggs of the hens, which are kept in large numbers, are not eiten.'-^ To the Indian the lower animals " Schweinfurth, I, pp. 59, 60; LivinRstonr, p. ssj; Pogge, p. 23; Wissmann, Im Inntrn Afrikas, pp. 25, 127. "Ehrenreich, pp. i.i, 14, 54; Martius, pp. 6;j ff.; K. v. d. Steinen, PP •Jio, 379. bimilariy amung the Oceanians: Ratzei, I, p. 2j6. 1 1? if >d 52 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. are beings closely related to man, and in which he delights; but, as is evident, this keeping of animals is much more closely allied to the hunt than to agriculture. Here we have to do with tamed, not with domestic, animals. With such a state of affairs the place of the pig in the domestic economy of the Oceanians has many cognate features; it is petted by the whole family; its young are not infrequently suckled by the women; and its flesh is eaten only on feast days and then by the more prominent people alone. The sole animal, [other than the hen], which is found among all primitive peoples is the dog; but it also is a pure luxury and is almost nowhere employed in the hunt; only a few tribes eat its flesh, and it has been claimed from ob- servation that these are always such as are devoted to cannibalism. On the whole, then, no importance can attach to cattle- raising in the production of the food-supplies of primitive peoples; in their husbandry it forms little more than an element of consumption. But the needs of these peoples are not confined to sus- tenance. Even the lowest among them paint, or in other ways decorate, their bodies, and make bow^ and arrows; the more advanced erect more or less substantial houses, plait and weave all kinds of stufTs. carve implements, make burnt earthen vessels; all prepare their food with fire, and with few exceptions know how to concoct intoxicatmg beverages. For all this labour of ditTcrcnt kinds is neces- sary which we can cluiracterize in a simple manner as the transformation or tt-or/, m/^' »/' of material, and which in the main embraces what we oonlike pieces of wood with short handles represent- ing little more than a broadening out of the hand. The ai I of joining together pieces of wood or other hard mate- rial by pegs, nails, dovetailing, or glue they are ignorant of; for this purpose they use tough fibres or cords or even mere tendrils of climbing plants. Metal-working was un- known to the Australians, Melanesians, Polynesians, and the native inhabitants of .America before the coming of the Europeans. On the other hand the negro peoples are uni- versally familiar with the procuring and working up of iron, and here and there of copper as well. A more ad- vanced techni(|ue as regards metals is found only among the Malays. But even in the iron-forging of the negroes all the technical awkwardness of these peoples can be per- ceived. Their smiths did not even hit upon the idea of making their own tools out of iron. Hammers and anvils are stones, and very often the tnngs are only the rib of a palm-leaf. "On what foli'iw* romp. Arbeit u Nhythnius. pp. lo ff ■ jpWJiuiWPfWHW" 3> 1 11 1 "' . 54 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. In Spite of this technical backwardness many primitive peoples with their wretched tools produce wares of such quality and art^.stic taste as to arouse our highest admira- tion. This is possible only when the particular technical processes are applied in le simplest, and at the same time most comprehensive, manner. Preeminent are weavmg, pottery, and wcod-carving. What indeed do the tropical peoples not make out of the bast and fibrous material of their forests, of the tough grasses and rushes— from mats and clothing-stuflEs of bark to water-tight baskets, dishes, and bottles? What is not made by the East Indians and Eastern Asiatics fror.^ bamboo— from the timbers of the house to water-vesseis, blowing-tubes, and musical instru- ments? How highly developed is woodwork among the Papuans; ami what patience and perseverance it demands! To weave a pijce of stuff of raffia fibre in Madagascar often takes several months; and in South America the same time is required to finish a hammock. The polishing and pierc- ing of the milk-white pieces of quartz that the Uaupes of Brazil wear about their necks is frequently the work of two generations. This leads us directly to the industrial organisation in the working tit of material For such labour there are, with few exceptions, no distinctly professional craftsmen. Each household has to meet all economic requirements of its members with its o'-m labour; and this is accomplished by means of that peculiar division of dulies l)etween the two sexes, which we have come to know [in the preceding chapter]. Not only is it that a definite part of the provid- ing of food is assigned to either sex, but each looks after the preparing of such as is gained along with all at- tendant tasks. To the woman falls all that is connected with the procuring and preparing of the vegetable foods: to the man the makinp of wca])<.ii-,. .ui.l of implements for hunting, fishing, and cattle-raising, the working-up of ani- if THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRlMlTiyE PEOPLE. 55 mal bones and skins, and the building of canoes. As a rule the man also looks after the roasting of the meats and the drying of fish, while the woman must attend to the labor- ious grinding of the com, which she has grown, the brew- ing of beer, the shaping and burning of earthen pots for cooking, and in many instances the building of the huts as well. Besides these there are many species of the trans- forming of material, which are allotted now to one sex, now to the other. We may mention spinning, weaving, plaiting, the preparing of palm-wine and of bark stuffs. But, on the whole, this division of duties between the male and the female members of families is sharply drawn. In- deed it is continued even in consumption, for men and women never eat together; and, where polygamy exists, a separate hut must be provided for each wife.'* We cannot enter upon a more detailed discussion of this peculiarly evolved dualism in liouselwld economy among primitive peoples. It devolves upon us, however, to establish that the labour of the members of the house- hold, which is of such an individualistic character, cannot suffice for all tasks of their economic life. For under- takings that surpass the strength of the single household, assistance must therefore be obtained: either the help of the neighbours is solicited or all such labours are performed at one time by the whole village community. The latter is the rule in Africa, for instance, with the breaking of stretches of forest land for cultivation, the laying of barri- cades and pits for trapping wild animals, and elephant- hunting; in F'olynesia. with the weaving of large fishing- nets, the building of large houses, the baking of bread- fruit in a common oven, and the like. Where clanship or slavery or polygamy exists, there is offered a means for multiplying the domestic working strcncrth, and thus for ' Com p. •ve. rr 56 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. fe I ) r ,i' accomplishing services of a higher order for which the individual's strength does not suffice. Within the separate tribes, accordingly, the working and refining of the raw products does not lead to the de- velopment of distinct trades, in that such work is carried on with uniform independence in each separate household From the reports of travellers, who judged from appear- ances, the existence of artisans among various primitive peoples has indeed been asserted. Thus on certain islands of the South Sea there are said to be professional carpen- ters, shoemakers, net-knitters, stone-borers, and wood- car\'ers. On closer examination of the particular cases these observations are open to doubt; to me the case of the native metal-worker seems alone to be proved. Among the negroes of Africa, as far as I can judge, only among the semi-civilized peoples of the Soudan are there the be- ginnings of a special industrial class. Beyond this any traces of a specialized industry supposed to have been dis- covered among primitive peoples are to be thus ex- plained: either individuals manifesting special aptitude for some manufacture came under the observation of travellers, or entire tribes excelled in a particular kind of household occupation, as we shall see directly. Trades formed only under European influence must naturally be disregarded here. But from tribe to tribe we find great differences in this industrial working-up of materials. It may even be safely claimed that almost every tribe displays some favourite form of industrial activity, in which its members surpass the other tribes. This is due to the varied distribution of natural products. If good potter's clay is to be found in the district or village of a particular tribe, the women of this tribe or village readily acquire special skill in pottery; where native iron ore is discovered, smiths will appear; r \ t THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. 57 while along well-wooded seacoasts boat-building will flour- ish. Other tribes or localities excel in the preparation of salt from vegetable ashes, in the making of palm-wine or leather or skin garments; others again in the making of calabashes, baskets, mats, and woven materials. All these forms of skill, however, are aptitudes such as every man or every woman of the particular tribe or locality knows and also practises on occasion. When these individuals are designated by travellers as smiths, salt-makers, basket- makers, weavers, etc., that is to be taken in the same sense as when we speak of ploughmen, reapers, mowers, thresh- ers among our peasants, according to the work in which they are for the time engaged. We have here to do not with special trades claiming the individual's whole activity, but with arrangements forming essential parts of the econ- omy of each separate family. This naturally does not preclude single individuals from surpassing in skilfulness the other members of the tribe, just as there are among our peasant women particularly adept spinners, and among the farmers horse-breeders and bee-keepers who win in prize competitions. Travellers have often observed this tribal or local de- vclopmait of industrial technique. " The native villages," relates a Belgian observer of the Lower Congo, " are often situated in groups. Their activities are based upon recip- rocality, and they are to a certain extent the complements of one another. Each group has its more or less strongly defined specialty. One carries on fishing, another pro- duces palm-wine; a third devotes itself to trade and is broker for the others, supplying the community with all products from outside; another has reserved to itself work in iron and copper, making weapons for war and hunting, various utensils, etc. None may, however, pass beyond the sphere of its own specialty without exposing itself to ■r I fill 1 - , ^ . ill ft, f ft-- 58 THE ECONOMIC UFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. the risk of being universally proscribed." From the Loango coast Bastian tells of a great number of similar centres for special products of domestic industry. Loango excels in mats and fishing-baskets, while the carving of elephants' tusks is specially followed in Chilungo. The so- called " Mafooka " hats with raised patterns are drawn chiefly from the bordering country of Kakongo and May- yumbe. In Bakunya are made potter's wares which are in great demand, in Basanza excellent swords, in Basundi especially beautiful ornamented copper rings, on the Zaire clever wood and tablet carvings, in Loango orna- mented cloths and intricately designed mats, in Mayumbe clothing of finely woven mat-work, in Kakongo embroid- ered hats and also burnt-clay pitchers, and among the Ba- yakas and Mantetjes stuffs of woven grass. Other similar accounts might be cited, not merely from Africa," but also from the South Sea Islands and even from Central and South America." We shall thus hardly err in assuming that in these tribal industries the controlling principle in the industrial development of prim- itive peoples has been discovered; that by them was furnished the means whereby the satisfaction of the needs of the individual and of whole groups was extended beyond their own immediate powers of production. For it may be taken for granted that an industrial product found only among those manufacturing it, especially if it attained to some importance in the simple life oi these uncivilized peo- ples, would soon be coveted by the surrounding tribes. '* H. Schurtz has made a collection of them in his Afr. Gewerbc, pp. 29-65. He has pursued further, though unfortunately not far enough, the subject of tribal industry. He has found such industry so exten- sively in evidence i.nat we may assume the conditions of industrial production here portrayed to exist wherever travellers do not ex- pressly report to the contrary. " Comp. K. Sapper. Das Hordl. Mittel-Amerika (1897'). pp. 200 flF.. and the further examples given by us. THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. 59 But the way from the coveting of an article to its enjoy- ment is a longer one in an economical organization, based upon acquisition directly by the individual himself, than we are inclined to assume in our own social life, which rests upon trade. In fact decidedly unclear conceptions are widely preva- lent as to the system of exchange of primit've peoples. We know that throughout Central Africa, from the Portuguese possessions in the west to the German in the east, there is a market-place every few miles at which the neighbouring tribes meet every fourth to sixth day to make mutual ex- changes. Of the Malays in Borneo we are told that each larger village possesses its weekly market. The first dis- coverers of the South Sea Islands give us reports of distant " trading trips " which the natives undertake from island to island in order to make mutual exchanges of their wares. In America certain products, the raw material for which is to be found only in a single locality — for example, arrow- points and stone hatchets made of certain kinds of stone — have been met with scattered throughout a great part of the continent." Even among the aborigines of Australia there are instances of certain natural products, such as pitcher-plant leaves and ochre colour, which are found in but one place, and yet circulate through a g^eat part of the country. In such phenomena we have a new and interesting proof of the civilizing power of trade; and in the primeval history of Europe itself this power has everywhere been assumed as operative when industrial products have been brought to light through excavations or otherwise far from their original place of production. Our prehistoric studies have woven together a whole spider's web of suppositions and have even brought us to " Waitz. Ill, p 75; on markets in South America. Ill, p. 380: on others in Mexico, IV, pp. 99 ff. II m''i m ii- I I ^ i i ritfi I Hi! i: i ^1 tf I ^Sl 60 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMHWE PEOPLE. speak of prehistoric '* industrial districts." Our ethno- graphic literature speaks similarly of industrial localities for the manufacture of arms and the plaiting of mats in Borneo, for pottery at several points in New Guinea, for boat-building in several coast districts of the Duke of York Archipelago, for iron-working in negro countries, etc. In opposition to this it must be asserted positively that trade in the sense in which it is regarded by national econ- omy — that is, in the sense of the systematic purchase of wares with the object of a profitable re-sale as an organized vocation— can nowhere be discovered among primitive peoples. Where we meet native traders in Africa, it is a question either of intermediary activity prompted by Eu- ropean and Arabian merchants, or of occurrences peculiar to the semi-civilization of the Soudan. Otherwise the only exchange known to the natives everywhere is exchange from tribe to tribe. This is due to the unequal dis- tribution of the gifts of nature and to the varying develop- ment of industrial technique among the different tribes. As between the members of the same tribe, however, no regular exchange from one household establishment to another takes place. Nor can it arise, since that voca- tional division of the population is lacking which alone could give rise to an enduring interdependence of house- holds. One fancies the gemns of exchange to have been very easy because civilized man is accusiomed to find all that he needs ready made at the market or store and to be able to obtain it for money. With primitive man, however, before he became acquainted with more highly devel- oped peoples, value and price were by no means current conceptions. The first discoverers of Australia found in- variably, both on the continent and on the neighbouring islands that th« aborigines had no conception of ex- i f THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITiyE PEOPLE. 6i change." The ornaments offered them had no power whatever to arouse their interest; gifts pressed upon them were found later on strewn about in the woods where they had been cast in neglect. Ehrenreich ^^ and K. V. der Steinen 2" had as late as 1887 the same experi- ence among the Indian tribes of Brazil, Yet there was from tribe to tribe a brisk trade in pots, stone hatchets, hammocks, cotton threads, necklaces of mussel-shells, and many other products. How was this possible in the ab- sence of barter and trade? The solution oi this riddle is simple enough, and has now been confirmed by direct observation on the spot, while previously it could only be assumed. The transfer ensues by way of presevts, and also, according to circum- stances, by way of robbery, spoils of war, tribute, line, com- pensation, and winnings in gaming. As to sustenance, al- most a community of goods prevails between members ot the same tribes. It is looked upon as theft if a herd of cat- tle is slaughtered and not shared with one's neighbour, or if one is eating and neglects to invite a passer-by. Anyone can enter a hut at will and demand food; and he is never refused. Whole communities, if u poor harvest befall, visit their neighbours and look to them for temporary support. For articles of use and implements there exists the uni- versal custom of loaning which really assumes the character of a duty; and there is no private ownership of the soil. Thus within the tribe where all households produce similar commodities and, in case of need, assist each other, and •where surplus stores can only be utilized for consumption, there is no occasion for direct barter from establishment to establishment. Exceptions occur when purchasing a "Documentary proof in Ztschr. f. Sozial- u. Wirtschaftsgesch.. IV, pp. S flF. (Sartorius v. Waltershausen). " Beitrdge :. I'olkerkunde Rrasihens, p. 53, " Unler d. Natun>olkern Central- Brasiliens (2d ed.), pp. 287 ff. m ■11 ■ , I :■.;! 62 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. wife and making presents to tne medicine-man, the singer, the dancer, and the minstrel, who are the only persons carrying on a species of separate occupations. From tribe to tribe there prevail rules of hospitality,^^ which recur with tolerable imilarity among all primitive peoples. The stranger on arriving receives a present, which after a certain interval he reciprocates; and at his departure still another present is handed him.^' On both sides wishes may be expressed with regard to these gifts. In this way it is possible to obtain things required or de- sired; and success is the more assured inasmuch as neither party is absolved from the obligations of hospitality until the other declares himself satisfied with the presents. That this custom of reciprocal gifts of hospitality per- mits rare products of a land or artistic creations of a tribe to circulate from people to people, and to cover just as long distances from their place of origin as to-day does trade, will perhaps become more apparent to us when we consider how legends and myths have in the same way been enabled to spread over half the A^orld. It is almost inconceivable that this could have been so long overlooked when even in Homer the custom of gifts of hospitality is attested by so many examples. Telemachos brings home from Sparta as present from Menelaos a bowl of silver which the latter had himself received in Sidon as a gift of hospitality from King Phaidimos, and his father Odys- seus receives from the Phaiakes garments and linen and articles of gold as well as a whole collection of tripods and basins. All this he conceals on his arrival, as is well known, in the sacred grove of the nymphs in his native rocky island of Ithaca. Think of the poet's narration as " On this oo-.it cotnp. K. Haberland, Die Gastfrcundschaft auf nied. KuUurstufen: Ausland (1878), pp. 282 flF. "Gift-making without recompense Lciutigs un'iy fo a higher stage of civilization: A. M. Meyer, Ztschr. f. deutsch, Kuhurgesch., V, pp. 18 fT. .■*! THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. 63 a''.;d toi 3U1 ()urt i. ■'"nr.i.ei; ir liOl. le . uy •■an. s have ion from 7.;ntral Aus- kes for a gift an object V. or of per- aaei an historical occurrence, and imagine what would have happened had Odysseus been recognised by the wooers at the right moment and slain; the presents of the Phaiakes would have rested well concealed in the gfrotio of the nymphs down to our own times, and would have been brought to light again by a moden; .archaeologist. Would he not have explained the wholf treasu -e as the storehouse of a travelling merchant of ' .e I- nif 15;^' ^.l 'Tellas, es- pecially as he could have app a' .;d tor 3ui purt w • le actual barter which occurs quite c Among many primitive ^, been preserved which cU r,^ ..!■ .1; ^'•: presents to exchange, ^ii.ory^ 'u 1 . tralia, for instance, a man < : > ■ "i present the task of procuring ?s recinrocii that another desires, or of buiu. ' loi Iii formi..^ some other service. The one thus bound is called yutschin, and until the fulfilment of the obligation wears a cord about his neck. As a rule the desired object is to be procured from a distance.^'" In New Zealand the natives on the Wanganui river make use of parrots, which they catch in great numbers, roast, and preserve in fat, in order to obtain dried fish from their fe!lo"'-countrymen in other parts of the island."^ Among the Indian tribes of Cen- tral Brazil trade is still an mterchange of gifts of hospi- tality; and the Bakairis translate the Portuguese cotr'>rcr, to btiy, by a word signifying ' to sit down,' becaub ■ the guest must be seated before he receives his present. In the countries of the Soudan the co.";stant giving of pres- ents frequently becomes burdensoine to the traveller " since it is often only a concealed begging." " The gifts of hospitality that are received in the camp," remarks "A \V. TTowitt in Journal of Anthrop. Inst, XX (1891), pp. 76 ff. ** Shortland, Tfaditions and Sttl'erst-.tijtt.i of Ike Nctv Zealanders (Lon- don, 1856), pp. 214, 215. : - i 1 ■ ' -* > 1 64 THE ECONOMIC UFE OF PRIMITiyE PEOPLE. Staudinger,^'' " are in accord with good custom and are often very welcome. But with every stop in a larger town things are frequently obtained from high and low which are ostensibly given as a mark of respect to the white man; in reality they arrive only because the donors expect a three- or four-fold response from the liberality of the Euro- pean. Indeed I am convinced that many a poor woman has herself first purchased the hen or duck that is to be presented in order to do a profitable piece of gift business with it." The Indians of British Guiana appear to stand at the in- termediate stage between gift-making and trading. Im Thurm reports of them: " •• There exists among the tribes of this, as oi probably every other similar district, a rough system of distribution of labour; and this serves not only its immediate purpose of supplying all the tribes with better-made articles than each could make for itself, but also brings the different tribes together and spreads among them ideas and news of general interest. . . . Each tribe has some manufacture peculiar to itself; and its members constantly visit the other tribes, often hostile, for the purpose of exchanging the products of their own labour for such as arc produced only by the other tribes. These trading Indians are allowed to pass unmolested through the enemy's country. . . Of the tribes on the coast, the Warraus make far the best canoes, and supply these to the neighbouring tribes. They also make hammocks of a peculiar kind, which are not, however, much in rctjuest e.xcept among tlicnisclvcs. In the same way, far in the interior, the Wapiaiias build boats for all the tribos in that district. The Macusis have two special products which are in great demand amongst all the tribes. One is the ourali. used for poisoning arrows and the darts of blowpipes, the other is an abundance of cotton ham- mocks; for, though these are now often made by the Wapianas .md True Caribs, the Macusis are the chief makers. The Arecunas grow, spin, and distribute most of the cotton which is used by the Macusis .ind others for hamnocks and other articles. The Arecunas also sup- ply all blowpipes; f(,r these are made of the stems of a palm which, "/m Hcrstn d. Ilaussaliindcr (2d cd). pp. 216. 217 Comp. Sachau, Retsen in Syricn u. Mesofotamien, p. loi; v. Hiigel, Kaschmir, pp. 406, 40;. " /trnong the Indians of Guiana (London, 188.O, pp. 270-273- THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITiyE PEOPLE. 65 growing only in and beyond the Venezuelan boundary of their terri- tory, are procured by the Arecunas, doubtless by exchange, from the Indians of the native district of that palm. The Tarumas and the Woyowais have a complete monopoly of the manufacture of the graters on which Indians of all the tribes grate their cassava. These two remote tribes are also the great breeders and trainers of hunting- dogs. . . . The True Caribs, again, are the most skilful potters; and though the Arawaks frequently, and the other Indians occasionally, make vessels for their own use, yet these are by no means as good as those which, whenever possible, they obtain from the Caribs. The Arawaks make fibre hammocks of a kind peculiar to them. . . . The Ackawoi alone, so far as I know, have no special product interchange- able for those of their neighbours. These Indians are especially dreaded and disliked by all the others; and it is possible that the want of intercourse thus occasioned between this tribe and the others forced the Ackawoi to produce for themselves all that they required. It is further possible that to this enforced self-dependence is due the miser- able condition of most of the Ackawoi. " To interchange their manufactures the Indians make long jour- neys. The Wapianas visit the countries of the Tarumas and the Woyowais, carrying with them canoes, cotton hamnn-cks, and now very frequently knives, beads, and other European goods; and, leav- ing their canoes and other merchandise, they walk back, carrying with them a supply of cassava-graters, and leading hunting-t'ogs, all which things they have received in i hange for the things which they took. The Macusis visit the Wapiana settlements to obtain graters i. \ dogs, for which they give ourali-poison and cotton hammocks; and they again carry such of these graters and dogs as they do not them- selves require, together with more of their own ouralt and of their cotton hammocks, to other Indians — to the Arecunas. wlio j;ivc in return balls of cotton or blowpipes; or to the True Caribs. who pay in pottery." Once originated exchange lonj? retains the marks of its descent in the rules that are attached to it and which are taken directly from the customs connected with gifts. This is manifested, in the fir.st place, in the custom of payment in advance which dominates trade nmonjT primitive pej- pies." The medicine-man does not stir his hand to .lelp " Even Europc.in merchants trading in .^fri^M must accommodate themselves to this custom 'by advancing to the black interniediarics whose services they call into re<|uisition the price of the commodities that arc .0 be supplied. Conip. Pogge. pp. 11, 140, 141; M. Buchner, 66 THE ECONOMIC UFE OF PRIMITIl^E PEOPLE. \ H ■ f the sick until he has received from the sick man's relatives his fee, which in this case closely resembles the present, and has openly announced his satisfaction. No purchase is complete until buyer and seller have before witnesses declared themselves satisfied with the objects received. Among many peoples a gift precedes or follows a deal; *• the " good measures " of our village storekeepers, and "treating" are survivals of this custom. To decline without grounds an exchange that has been offered passes among the negroes as an insult, just as the refusal of a gift among ourselves. The idea that services interchanged must be of equal value can hardly be made intelligible to primitive man. The boy who performs a bit of work ex- pects the same pay as the man, and the one who has assisted for one hour just as much as the one who has laboured a whole day; and as the greed on both sides knows no bounds, every trading transaction is preceded by long negotiations. Sii; lar negotiations, however, are also the rule in the discharge of gifts of hospitality if the recipient does not find the donation in keeping with his dignity. As time passes exchange creates from tribe to tribe its own contrivances for facilitating matters. The most im- portant of these are markets and money. Markets are uniformly held among negroes. East Indi- ans, and Polynesians in open places, often in the midst of the primeval forests, on the tribal borders. They form neu- tral districts within which all tribal hostilities must cease; whoever violates the market-peace exposes himself to the severest punishments. Each tribe brings to the market KamfTHH. pp. 98, 99. Even the sacrifice to the deity seems to the peo- ples of '.hi-s staKc only payment in advance for an expected service: Heckewtlder. Indian Xations. pp. 2ti fT. ; and comp. pp. j^i. j.^fi " Schurt/. F.ntslfh Gesch. d Geldes. pp. 67, 6a Landor, In the For- bidden Land (Tibe<), I, p. ,115: II. p. 7& THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRlMITiyE PEOPLE. 67 whatever is peculiar to it: one honey, another palm-wine, a third dried meat, still another earthenware or mats or woven stuffs." The object of the interchange is to ob- tain products that cannot be procured in one's own tribe at all, or at least -cannot be produced so well and so artis- tically as in neighbouring tribes. This must- agam lead each tribe to produce in greater quantities than it requires those products which are valued among the tribes, not pro- ducing them, because in exchange for these it is easiest to obtam that which one does not possess one's self, but which others manufacture in surplus quantities. In each tribe, however, every household produces the current market commodity of exchange that enjoys this prefer- ence. Hence it follows, when it is a question of a product of house industry, such as earthenware or wares made of bark, that whole villages and tribal areas appear to travel- lers to be great industrial districts, although there are no specialized artisans, and although each household pro- duces everything that it requires with tlie exception of the few articles made only among other tribes which they have grown accustomed to and which exchange procures for them merely as supplements to houshold production. Such is the simple mechmism of the market among primitive peoples. Now with regard to monfy. How much has been written and imagined about the many species of money among primitive peoples."" and yet how "AlthnuKh many primitive iH-.^.k-s ran l.c to.m.l roadv to jjive every tli.n^ for ICiiropcan wares that tlu-y have co,„e t,. kruw and value, yet their rev;„lar exchange remains alto^iether u„e -ulcd and cnnfmed to •, iVw artu-le.. Man> ohj^ct. of .l.nlv „-,. are nm t„ be had from them at any price, especially ol.ieets of a.lorn.nent Comp I'.nseh, Samoafahrtcn. pp. ,08. ,10, .«)(,, .-S,, f,, ,,,^: Martmx ctcd above, pp, K.). 5()(,; Zt-.lir f FlhnoKr.. WIl. pp _> , (,j. '-"!< .■\tMlrre, t-.thn,^^r. r,:n,llcl,„ ./. / VrcA ;,/).•, pp ...., (T O I.en/. I chcr i.dd hi-i d. \\UufVi.',k,-rn ( HamhnrK. 1S-J5). R Ilwof. Tausch- kiindd u Celdsurrogatc m alter u. neucr /.at (Gra/, 1882). II. Schurz, 68 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE, ' I i simple the explanation of their origin ! The money of each tribe is that trading commodity ivhich it does not itself produce, but which it regularly acquires from other tribes by way of exchange. For such article naturally becomes for it the universal medium of exchange for which it sur- renders its wares. It is its measure of value according to which it values its property, which could in no other way be made exchangeable. It is its wealth, for it cannot in- crease it at will. F°llow tribesmen soon come to employ it also in transferring values, for because of its scarcity it is equally welcome to all. Thus is explained what our trav- ellers have frequently observed, that in each tribe, often indeed from village to village, a different money is current, and that a species of mussel-shells or pearls or cotton stuf? for which everything can be purchased to-day, is in the locality of the following evening's camp no longer ac- cepted by anyone. The consetinence is that they must first purchase the current commodities of exchange before they can supply their own needs in the market. In this way, also, is to be explained the further fact, which has come under observation, that exchangeable commodities nat- urally scarce, such as salt, cauri shells, and bars of cop- per, or products of rare skill, such as brass wire, iron spades, and earthen cups, are taken as money by many tribes not possessing them; and above all is to be men- tioned the well-known circumstance of objects of foreign trade, such as European calicoes, guns, ponder, knives, becoming general mediums of exchange. Certain varieties of money thus secure a more extensive area of circulation. They can even make their way into the internal trade of the tribal members through employ- ment as mediums of payment \u the juirchase of a bride, for Balntge r. r.ntsli'huv-Rcsch d. („ldi\i: Deutsche Ucogr. Dldltcr (Bre- men). .\X (iSfj;), ip. 1-'/'. Itiicrn. Archiv f, Ethtiogr., VI, p. 57. ,: ft :•* THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMITiyE PEOPLE. 69 compensations, taxes, and the like; certain kinds of con- tracts are concluded in them. But there is no instance of a primitive people, in the absence of European influence, attaining to a currency or legal medium of payment for obligations of every kind and extent. It is rather the rule that various species of money remain in concurrent circu- lation; and very often certain obligations can be paid only in certain kinds. Changes in the variety of money are not infrequent; but on the other hand we sometimes find that a species will long survive the trade of the tribes from which it has gone forth, and will continue to serve in the inner transactions of a tribe, playing a singular, almost demoniacal, role, although, as regards their means of sus- tenance, the members of the tribe have nothing to buy and sell to one another. From an old interrupted tribal trade of this nature is to be explained the employment as money of old Chinese porcelain vessels among the Bagobos in Mindanao and the Dyaks in Borneo, the shells (dewarra) of the Melanesians. and the peculiar kinds of money of the Caroline Archipelago, for which special laws and ad- ministrative contrivances are necessary in order to keep this dead possession in circulation at all.^* Otherwise the State does not interfere as a rule in these matters; and in the large territorial formations of Africa, such as the king- dom of Muata Yamwo. for instance, there are therefore different currencies from tribe to tribe. But even where one kind of money gains a greater area of circulation, its value fluctuates widely at the various market-places: generally, however, it advances in proportion to the dis- tance from its source.^*' " WV cannot rntir luri- more in dct.iil info these matters, and would refer to the interesting descriptions of Kubary, Etknog. Beitrdge s. Kcnntms d C:irfltmfn-Archi( va hictuatcs between fifteen and twenty for the thaler. In .^n- coIkt. ciahty miles from Uorailu, the value sinks back to nine and nine ;ind a half, and in Gera, two hundred and thirty miles beyond Ancobcr, one receives, according to circumstances, only six. five. four, or three salt bars per thaler." "Perhaps Karl Marx rishtly expresses it when he tersely remarks: " The money-form attaches itself either to the most important articles of exchange from outside, and these in fact arc primuivc and natural forms in which the exchange-value of h' and their iron manufacture, undertake commercial expeditions to the south as far as the Lunda country." The Kiocos dwell "My Second Journey through Equal. Africa (London, 1891), p. 105. 3 THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PRIMlTiyE PEOPLE. 75 in the kingdom of Lund itself, dispersed among the Ka- lundas, but have their own chiefs who are tributary to the Muata Yamwo. The Kiocos are partial to placing their villages in the woodland, for they are preeminently excel- lent hunters, gather gum from their forests, and to obtain wax carry on a species of wild-bee keeping. They are also clever smiths, and not only make good hatchets, but can also repair old flmtlocks and even fit them with new mounts and stocks. They clothe themselves in animal skins; the art of making vegetable cloths is little known to them. Their women plant chiefly manioc, maize, millet, ground- nuts, and beans. The products that the Kiocos obtain from the exploitation of their forests they exchange on the west coast for wares, chiefly powder, with which they then betake themselves into the far interior in order to buy ivory and slaves. The ivory obtained through trade they dispose of, while the slaves they procure they incorporate with their household. The Kiocos esteem slaves above all as property. They treat the slave women as they do their wives, and the men as members of the household, and part from them so very unwillingly that in the Kioco country it is quite exceptional for travellers to be offered slaves for sale. On their hunting voyages they have penetrated farthest towards the east; and there, before entering upon their journey homewards, they usually barter a part of their weapons for slaves. Then for the time being they arm themselves again with bow and arrow. They rightly enjoy the reputation of being as good hunters as they are crafty and unscrupulous traders; and in a masterful man- ner they understand how to overreach and dispossess the better-natured and more indolent Kalundas.^® This picture is often repeated in the negro countries. " Pogge, pp. 45, 46, 47, and Wissmann, Im Innern Afrikas, pp. 59, 62. Comp. also Schurtz, Afr. Cew., p. 50. MICROCOPY RiSOlUTION TiST CHAR) (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) A /APPLIED IIVMGE Inc '653 foil Mom S