Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/96

 84 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The expansion of population compels a resort to inferior soils, which, by enhancing the value of good land and increasing the landowner's share of the produce, engenders an agricultural aristocracy, which, as it withdraws itself entirely from labor and concentrates its attention on war and politics, becomes master of the community.

Again, the enlargement of demand in consequence of the increase of numbers enables an exchange economy to take the place of domestic husbandry, perhaps causes a foreign trade to spring up. The growth of potential exchange, in consequence of the greater local surpluses to be disposed of and the greater local deficits to be supplied from outside sources, makes it worth while to create avenues of communication, and these, in turn, promote the territorial division of labor. The growth of num- bers in a region cannot but strain its natural resources in certain respects and compel the local population to supply their lack of certain commodities from the larger resources of some other locality, sending out in return those products of their own region which are to be had in the greatest abundance. Besides calling into being merchants, markets, and movements of goods, the expansion of population causes local groups of craftsmen to spring up for the supplying of articles formerly demanded in quantities too small to set up currents of trade. In place of the transitory assemblages at fairs, there now appear town popula- tions regularly exchanging their wares with the country.

The growing prominence of exchange brings men into unwonted relations, which presently call forth an expansion of law on the commercial side. The appearance of routes travers- ing many jurisdictions, and the need of a more perfect security to goods en route or in a market, create a demand for royal protection and cement that alliance of the nascent merchant- artisan groups with the king which is so potent in humbling the feudal lords. The monarch, finding his surest support in his struggle with the barons in the burgher population, picks from them his agents and servants, and the choicest of these, ennobled by royal patent, take their places alongside the old territorial aristocracy.