Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/102

 90 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

cavalry, now merely vegetated as a sort of mounted noble guard, whose perfumed cavaliers and exquisite high-bred horses only played a part in the festivals of the capital ; the so-called burgess infantry was a troop of mercenaries, swept together from the lowest ranks of the burgess population."

Other differentiations are connected with certain ideas which naturally strike root in a society marked by great pecuniary inequality. One is the notion that it is disgraceful to take money for u'ork. The effect of this is to raise a wall of partition between the laborer or artisan and the respectable landlord or manufac- turer, between the private and the officer, between the clerk and the magistrate. Akin to this is the idea that labor is not respect- able. Springing up among the wealthy after they have with- drawn from all public duties and become a leisure class pure and simple, this notion, descending through society, aggravates the discontent and envy of the poor, and causes work to be shunned as much on account of its stigma as on account of its irksomeness. Finally comes the notion that human worth is measured, not by achievements or personal qualities, but by the scale of consump- tion. This exalts pecuniary emulation above all other forms of rivalry, and engenders a host of purely factitious wants which call into being an insensate luxury and, descending through the social strata, prevent the application of goods to real human needs. The joint operation of these principles raises the craving for wealth to an extravagant pitch and depresses the worth of everything else. These effects appear most nakedly in the Rome of the last age of the republic, where the slave economy had com- pletely wiped out the middle class. Says Mommsen: "To be poor was not merely the sorest disgrace and the worst crime, but the only disgrace and the only crime; for money the statesman sold the state and the burgess sold his freedom ; the post of the officer and the vote of the juryman were to be had for money; for money the lady of quality surrendered her person as well as the common courtesan; the falsifying of documents and perjuries had become so common that in a popular poet of this age an oath is called ' the plaster for debts.' Men had forgotten what honesty was; a person who refused a bribe was regarded, not as an