Social Freedom; A Study of the Conflicts Between Social Classifications and Personality

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915. Excerpt: ... PLACE-FELLOWSHIP C CONOMIC exchange is a disintegrating factor, not only with castes, but with the groups we may call place-fellowships--migratory hordes or fixed hamlets, tribes, or cities, or nations. In very early cultures a feeble instrument for inter-group assimilation--the Veddas once put down their articles of barter on the edge of their tribal land and never laid eyes on the Cingalese they traded with--exchange is becoming one of the most effective means for world unity. The preservation of world-wide trade and credit begins to rival as a collectivist objective the preservation of national integrity, and it is the persistence of national checks on freedom cf commerce, together with the theory that trade follows the flag, that more than any other condition renders still possible that extreme self-assertion of nationalism, international war. The tariff system is a conspicuous example of the way the horde or neighbourhood category will spread, like the other categories, over fields not its own. Given the modern industrial system, protective tariffs are obviously the outcome of overweening group ambition, ambition the free trade movement of the past century has been for the most part an attempt to check. The theory of free trade is directed against the theory that neighbourhood1 groups should go out of their way to express group spirit. The theory of free trade is a revolt also against neighbourhood exclusiveness. The truly primitive, unmitigated protectionist objects to the importation of foreign goods on any terms. A Juarez Pueblo Indian watching me one morning drinking a cup of coffee remarked that his people were said to have thrown away the coffee beans the Spaniards had given them. Among the Akikuyu the introduction of breakfast foods would ha...