Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/214

 202 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

rid Europe of many turbulent nobles that made order and indus- try well-nigh impossible. "The continued absence of the petty baronage in the East and its perpetual decimation under the pres- sure of debt and travel, battle and disease, helped to concentrate authority in the hands of the royal officers." The establishment of order under a strong central authority made for commerce and the rise of towns. Taking advantage of the Crusader's need of cash, the towns bought immunities of him, and the ecclesiastical corporations took a mortgage on his estate.

So far the reactions of conflict have been considered without reference to military success or failure. But it is now in order to point out that prosperous warfare yields economic results in the way of booty, captives, land, and tribute, and that the dis- posal of these is fateful for the victorious society. Maine notes "how uniformly, when our knowledge of the ancient world com- mences, we find plebeian classes deeply indebted to aristocratic orders." He suggests that the capital which Greek eupatrids, Roman patricians, and Gaulish equites lent to commoners at such usurious rates of interest as to degrade the borrowers and lead to violent movements for release, may have originated in the absorption by the noble classes of the lion's share of the spoils of war. It is certain that the wealth in cattle which made the Irish chief richer than all his tribesmen originated in the perquisites of his position as military leader of the tribe. The disposition of the land won by the sword has important social results. The welfare of early Roman society depended greatly on whether the agcr publicus was let in large parcels at a nominal rent to the aristocrats, or was allotted as homesteads to the commoners. The former policy fortified the patricians, the latter the plebeians, in their two centuries of conflict. More decisive for Roman society than even the state lands was the glutting of the labor market with captives swept together by the incessant conquests of the state. Says Mommsen of the second century B. C. :

Capital waged war on labor no longer in the unseemly fashion which converted the free man on account of debt into a slave, but, on the contrary,

with slaves, regularly bought and paid The ultimate result was in both

cases the same the depreciation of the Italian farms; the supplanting of