Our survey of prehistoric material progress indicated that the elaboration of stone tools preceded the domestication of animals and the saving of seeds for planting. It is fairly a matter of popular knowledge that shepherding, or cattle raising, forms a principal occupation in the nomadic stage of social evolution; and that to this is added agriculture as one of the major occupations when, at a still further stage, men have begun to settle permanently upon the soil. Now, oriental society, at the period of its emergence into the era of written records, had moved up out of the stone age into a period wherein cattle raising and agriculture were the main industries. These two great occupations were organized under the proprietorship of an aristocracy whereof the Old Testament characters already cited can be taken as examples. This aristocracy, conformably to the historical order of material progress just noted, was based originally on slavery; but as society became settled, the upper class naturally appropriated the land- first in common, and then in severalty.

In studying the industrial phase of social growth we must, indeed, bear constantly and prominently in mind the great institution of cleavage, not only as based in its primary form upon slavery, but as based more and more upon landownership. We must be careful not to acquire a merely statical conception of these facts. We must remember that slavery precedes land monopoly; and that the bonds of slavery are not relaxed until the influence of land monopoly is fully established. Of these two forms of cleavage, property right in men is historically the first. Then slavery and property right in the earth are intermingled. Finally, as in western civilization, property right in human beings is abolished; and the lower class obtains personal freedom. But by this time the upper class has largely, or completely, enclosed the soil; and the lower class, although formally and legally free, is not actually free.

We obtain views of the vast working masses through the following passages by orientalists. The first is by Professor Sayce:

"Slavery was part of the foundation upon which Babylonian society rested. Slavery prevented wages from rising by flooding the labor market, and the free artisan had to compete with a vast body of slaves" (11).

The next relates to Egypt, and is by Professor W. M. Muller.

"The best part of the population, undoubtedly, was to be found, not in the haughty scribes and priests but in the peasants. of the king, or of temples, or of landowners" (12).

Most of them were serfs

To these passages we may add the quotations already taken from Erman, Maspero, and Brugsch in connection with our survey of the political phase. They all show that at the basis of oriental society was the lower class engaged mostly in the labor of shepherding and agriculture under the proprietorship of a slaveholding and landowning nobility, the upper class being organized into families, or clans.

In the midst of shepherding and farming communities, towns and cities began to grow up everywhere. It is impossible to show just when these aggregates of population began to be gathered together; but the main facts are clear. There was necessarily a time in early history when towns and cities had no existence; a period at length arrived in which they began to come into prominence; and the causes promoting their development lie all abroad in the economic history of the world.

Towns in general are inseparably connected with the growth of commerce and manufacture. Of course, these occupations take their rise before town life proper has begun; but it is to the further growth of commerce and manufactures, and their subsequent separation in large part from the earlier and more primitive industries of

shepherding and agriculture, that town life in general is

due.

Let us look at commerce first. No locality is likely to furnish everything that its inhabitants want or can use. Differences of soil, climate and mineral deposits result in more products of a given kind in one region than its people need. Another part of the country shows a deficiency in respect of that particular product, and an oversupply of something else. Differences of this kind give rise rise to commerce, or the exchange of labor products. Exchange arose at an early period in the ancient east. A large trade grew up between Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Greece, and outlying barbarian tribes (13). In connection with the exchange of products it becomes convenient and even necessary to establish definite centers where trade can be regularly and peacefully carried on; and this is only another way of saying that towns are involved in the growth of commerce.

The other principal factor of which we have spoken as contributory to town life is manufactures. It is evident that long before the rise of urban groups, manufacturing occupations are, in a small way, necessary on agricultural estates, in the production of tools, clothing, houses, outbuildings, etc. In this fact we see the forces which at length set aside the more clever workers as craftsmen in contrast with the more primitive workers, whose occupations remain those of tilling the soil and caring for livestock. As population multiplies, and increases the amount of manufacturing work to be done, it is more efficient for artisans to be stationed at the points where raw material exchanges. Hence the influence of this branch of industry upon town life.

It is important to emphasize that both commerce and manufacture are at first aristocratic in form, and largely so in substance. Commerce is primarily the exchange of their appropriations among the upper classes of different localities (14). Its aristocratic form, however, is

misleading unless we look below the surface, for while it secures the exchange of products intended for the use of the upper class, it also provides that circulation of raw materials and tools which promotes the subsistence and steady employment of the lower class.

The oriental nobility usually retained personal property rights over commerce, managing its operations through a corps of slave-stewards. The steward was placed in authority over his fellow slaves. The figures of the oriental aristocrat and his steward are familiar in the literature of the Old Testament. The steward of Abraham's house was Eliezer of Damascus (Genesis 15:2. Cf. 1 Chronicles 2:34, 35); and the master and his steward reappear in the New Testament in the parables of Jesus. Being the most important slave in his owner's employment, the steward was favored in proportion. In order to stimulate him to the most efficient service he was permitted to retain a commission on the products whose exchange he superintended. In this way he could accumulate considerable wealth of his own in the form of goods, and of money, and sometimes of slaves. He might even buy his freedom, and set up as an independent manager of commerce. It was only from the ranks of a servile merchant class that a free merchant class could originate in early times. A servile trading class necessarily preceded a free trading class. In spite of the tendency toward the formation of a mercantile body distinct from the ancient nobility, the currents of oriental trade were not great enough to produce a "third estate" of sufficient strength to assert itself collectively against the older nobility. In Greece and Rome, as well as in modern civilization, economic development produced a "third estate" of great extent and influence. In these later historical cases, a powerful social class was brought into existence outside the pale of government, since politics, as we have seen, is always originally in the hands of the free families of descent. In the classic and western civilizations this new section of the upper class

was discriminated against by the older section of the upper class through its control of the taxing power and the courts. Great historic collisions resulted, whose outcome, in both classic and western civilization, was the admission of the newly rich to a voice in the government. In ancient Greece and Rome, and in modern Europe and America, the basis of the state was thus transferred from that of family to that of property regardless of descent. In the oriental civilization, however, nothing of the kind seems to have occurred. Nobilities always possess a limited assimilative capacity. It is probable that the formation of the oriental third estate never greatly outstripped the assimilative capacity of upper-class oriental families. Free merchants who accumulated wealth from commissions on the goods they handled, and who bought land and slaves of their own therewith, were doubtless admitted to the ancient families either by marriage or by the solemn ceremony of adoption. So that mostly, as remarked a moment ago, the clan aristocracy of the ancient East retained the proprietorship of commerce in its own hands. In Babylonia, for instance, the original nobility of birth, based on landholding, was eventually transformed into a class predominantly commercial in character (15).

The aristocratic nature of early manufacture, like that of early commerce, becomes manifest when we reflect upon the outstanding facts of organized society. Since the upper class everywhere appropriated the major part of the labor products of the masses, it was necessarily this class that patronized the artisans of ancient cities. Pertinent suggestions are found in the following passage from Rawlinson:

"Trade flourished under the Pharaohs, and was encouraged not only by the lavish expenditure of the Court, of the great nobles, and of the high ecclesiastics, but also by the vast demand which there was for Egyptian productions in foreign countries" (16).

Each of the great administrative offices in Egypt possessed its own craftsmen and workmen (17).