Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/140

134 ruin of the Attic farmers coincided with the loosening of the old gentile bonds that protected them. The debtor's receipt and the pawning of the property—for the mortgage was also invented by the Athenians—cared neither for the gens nor for the phratry. But the old gentile constitution knew nothing of money, advance and debt. Hence the ever more virulently spreading money rule of the nobility developed a new legal custom, securing the creditor against the debtor and sanctioning the exploitation of the small farmer by the wealthy. All the rural districts of Attica were crowded with mortgage columns bearing the legend that the lot on which they stood was mortgaged to such and such for so much. The fields that were not so designated had for the most part been sold on account of overdue mortgages or interest and transferred to the aristocratic usurers. The farmer could thank his stars, if he was granted permission to live as a tenant on one-sixth of the product of his labor and to pay five-sixths to his new master in the form of rent. Worse still, if the sale of the lot did not bring sufficient returns to cover the debt, or if such a debt had been contracted without a lien, then the debtor had to sell his children into slavery abroad in order to satisfy the claim of the creditor. The sale of the children by the father—that was the first fruit of paternal law and monogamy! And if that did not satisfy the bloodsuckers, they could sell the debtor himself into slavery. Such was the pleasant dawn of civilization among the people of Attica.

Formerly, while the condition of the people was in keeping with gentile traditions, a similar downfall would have been impossible. But here it had come about, nobody knew how. Let us return for a moment to the Iroquois. The state of things that had imposed itself on the Athenians almost without their doing, so to say, and assuredly against their will, was