Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/790

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powell] SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS 719

even the chief of a tribe or confederacy. There are circumstances under which the captive is refused promotion — as for example captives taken from hereditary enemies who are believed to be sorcerers, or who are popularly believed to be cannibals, that is, to eat human bodies for food instead of in a ceremony of magic which is the universal practice. The captive is thus doomed to perpetual youngership, if the term may be permitted ; that is, to perpetual servitude, because all other members of the tribe may consider him as last born and never to be advanced in age. In savagery there seems to be but little evidence of this state ; but when in barbarism agricultural and zoocultural industries are organized, and other industries are carried on for exchange, then the labor of captives becomes an important factor in the indus- trial life of the people, so that captives are taken, not simply to reduce the numerical power of enemies and to increase the numer- ical power of the captors, but they are also taken as laborers ; then labor slavery is first developed. Before this stage family slavery only exists. In the brief account which we are giving, what seems to be a radical change must always be considered not as an instantaneous change but a change which requires centuries of history with its vicissitudes of many different examples, occurring at different times, which furnish instances of evolution only in part representing the final change, but changes on changes in the treatment of captives resulting at last in changing family slavery into labor slavery. We will hereafter see how labor slavery is changed into chattel slavery.

Walled cities become cities of wealth because they are centers of esthetic and industrial art. The aggregation of wealth in these cities makes them rich prizes and stimulates war, so that wars are instigated not only by current disagreements, as in savagery and barbarism, but by greed for wealth which consists in the stores accumulated in cities and in the labor of the inhabitants when captured. Vengeance is a powerful motive for war, but greed has greater might.

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