Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/123

117 whenever sufficient material is at hand, as in Greek and Roman history, there we shall not only find such an organization, but we may also be assured that the comparison with the American sex organizations will assist us in solving the most perplexing doubts and riddles in places where the material forsakes us. How wonderful this gentile constitution is in all its natural simplicity! No soldiers, gensdarmes and policemen, no nobility, kings, regents, prefects or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits, and still affairs run smoothly. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the entire community involved in them, either the gens or the tribe or the various gentes among them- selves. Only in very rare cases the blood revenge is threatened as an extreme measure. Our capital punishment is simply a civilized form of it, afflicted with all the advantages and drawbacks of civilization. Not a vestige of our cumbersome and intricate system of administration is needed, although there are more public affairs to be settled than nowadays: the communistic household is shared by a number of families, the land belongs to the tribe, only the gardens are temporarily assigned to the households. The parties involved in a question settle it and in most cases the hundred-year-old traditions have settled everything beforehand. There cannot be any poor and destitute—the communistic households and the gentes know their duties toward the aged, sick and disabled. All are free and equal—the women included. There is no room yet for slaves, nor for the subjugation of foreign tribes. When about 1651 the Iroquois had vanquished the Eries and the "Neutral Nation," they offered to adopt them into the league on equal terms. Only when the vanquished declined this offer they were driven out of their territory.

What splendid men and women were produced by such a society! All the white men who came into