ea trade and
now and then a little convenient piracy enriched them and concentrated
the money into their hands. From this point the gradually arising money
power penetrated like corrugating acid into the traditional modes of
rural existence founded on natural economy. The gentile constitution is
absolutely irreconcilable with money rule. The 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 inconceivable among the Indians. There the ever unchanging mode of
production could at no time generate such conflicts as a distinction
between rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, caused by exter