The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the field, always tends to lessen production for the purpose of keeping up prices. The lessening of production is carried further also by the action of the workmen, who likewise, on their side, combine, refuse to work as hard as before, and de- teriorate. Slave-labourers, being habitually overworked, al- ways tend to give out, and their numbers were renewed during the early period of warfare by the subjugation of weaker peo- ples. But this source is now exhausted, and the supply is barely renewed for a time by slave-raids on inferior outside races, until such races grow too strong, or sentiment at home no longer tolerates such conduct. Or cheap free labour is sought from the civilisations which have already decayed or from peoples still barbarous, and lower races are imported to do the hard and dirty work and to keep down wages. In the ascending period, when the time came for taxation, it was first laid upon the sources of wealth, especially upon the land; but in the succeeding periods, the most prominent objects for taxing are the great accumulations of wealth, and so we have the income tax and the legacy tax, of which the latter tends to dissipate capital, and the former permits sources to be held unproductive for speculation, especially land, which, while un- developed, escapes almost scot-free. Everything thus makes for decreasing production, while nothing restrains consump- tion. This course receives still further encouragement. In the ascending period, at least in the beginning, it was by his own strength and influence that the individual possessor, the head of a family, aided by his sons and dependents, had to defend - his property. Therefore, too, a man’s property, at least, his landed estate, could not safely be divided, and so, where the people were wise, either it went to only one of his children, preferably his eldest son, as the one of greatest development and experience, or—a much less wise expedient — he kept down the number of his legitimate offspring.® But already to- ward the end of the period it becomes the government which, by enforcing all the contractual rights of individuals, protects 5 There have, of course, been peoples among whom even power itself, in the chieftainship or kingship, was divided among all the sons; but that practice always kept those peoples small and backward (unless one of the sons murdered all the others, which obstructed moral progress), and no great economic progress was ever made until that practice was abandoned.