4:78 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



present hour, when millions of soldiers threaten, yielding 

 proof. Here the fact of significance is that along with per 

 petual w r ars, and the implied unmitigated triumphs of force, 

 there went an unmitigated triumph of force in the treatment 

 of slaves; and that with the decline of coerciveness in the 

 one case went its decline in the other. 



Considered as a form of industrial regulation, slavery has 

 been natural to early stages of conflicts and consolidations. 

 While all the native males in each society were devoted to 

 \var, there was great need for the labour of prisoners to sup 

 plement that of women. The institution became, under such 

 conditions, a necessity ; for manifestly, other things equal, a 

 people whose men were all warriors and who used their cap 

 tives as producers, would have an advantage over a people 

 who either killed their captives or did not use them as pro 

 ducers. A society which had a slave-commissariat would, 

 ether things equal, survive in conflicts with a society which 

 had no such commissariat. 



Conversely, where decrease of Avars leads to smaller mor 

 tality of native men to be fed, while the slave-class is no 

 longer recruited by fresh captives, some labour on the part of 

 the free population becomes necessary. To meet the need 

 for social sustcntation there tends to arise a class of non-slave 

 labourers. So that in another way slavery is normally asso 

 ciated with war and declines along with it. 



One more co-operative cause, especially relevant to slavery 

 as an industrial institution, has to be named. When slave- 

 labour and free labour come into competition, slave-labour, 

 other things equal, decreases as being less economical. The 

 relative lack of energy, the entire lack of interest, the unin 

 telligent performance of work, and the greater cost of super 

 vision, make the slave an unprofitable productive agent. 

 Hence with an adequate multiplication of free labourers it 

 tends gradually to disappear. 



