Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/296

284 the carpenter, the miller, the tanner, the cobbler are enabled to live without procuring their own food supply directly from the soil, by becoming agents of the farmers in doing needed work of which the farmers are thus relieved. On the other hand the farmers fall into line with the necessity of industriously extracting from the soil a supply of food sufficient for the whole community, as the condition cf getting the use of other men's skill.

We look in vain for a time in ancient history when an uncivilized community suddenly saw a great economic light, held a convention, drew up a contract containing these provisions, and passed a resolution to make these terms a sovereign law. None the less men become parties to such a contract by adjusting themselves to the method of cooperation which division of labor involves. If carpenter, or smith, or tanner, or cobbler wants food, he must do some useful work which is wanted by the farmer or by another man who has a claim on the farmer. In the same way if the farmer wants a cart, or an axe, or harness, or shoes, he must produce food for the worker in wood, or iron, or leather. The alternatives are abstinence, self-supply, beggary or theft. In either case the proper processes of civilization are adjourned so far as the non-cooperating individual is concerned, and he becomes a negative or a positive enemy of society.

Whenever it becomes evident that an individual or a class is plainly evading the obligation of social service, society always claims a right to redress the injury. Let us suppose that all the farmers in the United States should resolve to become consistent political and industrial anarchists; i. e., that each should determine to live from his farm and to raise only what his family would consume. Politics never made stranger bedfellows than would straightway consort together in compelling these anarchists to resume allegiance to society. In the face of a common peril, proletarians would forget their jealousy of capital, and employer and employed, railroad manager and railroad operative, banker, merchant, walking-delegate and contractor would join forces against a species of monopoly menacing to all alike. The view which nations take of refusal by a people to continue trade