Slavery as an industrial system

by H. J. Nieboer

Among the Apaches the father holds unlimited sway over his children up to the age of puberty[34].

Tlinkit boys must render unbounded obedience to their parents and especially to their maternal uncle, to whom, according to the law of inheritance, they are almost more nearly related than to their own father. They have to perform the labour imposed upon them, without any claim to compensation[35].

Of the Botocudos we are told, that the father, being stronger than his children, compels them to work for him[36].

Among the Aeneze Bedouins the young girls work hard; they drive the cattle to the pasture-ground; if one out of the herd is lost, they are severely beaten by their father[37].

Among the Assja Samoyedes the father has a patriarchal power, and punishes at his discretion and according to custom[38].

In these few cases only is it clearly stated that the head of the family has an arbitrary power. The value of Zu Wied’s statement about the Botocudos is much lessened by the same ethnographer telling us that the children enjoy much freedom[39].

Considering now the state of the children in the cases referred to here, are we justified in calling it slavery?

The head of the family has power over the children; and so far as it appears from the particulars given by the ethnographers, this is a legally unlimited power, that may be called right of property, and is likely to lead to compulsory labour, as among the Tlinkits and Aeneze Bedouins it certainly does. The condition of these children may therefore be expressed by the word “possession”, our criterion of slavery.

We may even go farther. The condition of slaves is not always very bad; but however kindly treated, they are slaves, are the property of their masters. So with children too. They may not be, as in the cases mentioned above, under strict discipline; yet the father’s, or in a few cases the maternal [[28]]uncle’s, power, however moderate a use he makes of it, may be legally unbounded, not restricted by social rules, not interfered with by the community. In such a case the head of the family may be called owner of the child, and is really called so in Roman law, so clearly distinct from Roman practice. “The patria potestas of ancient civil law means the full power of the father over the persons subjected to him (the child, the grand-child by the son, the wife in manu), the right of death and life (ius vitae ac necis) and the right to sell into slavery”[40]. “This potestas originally was equal to that over the slaves”[41].

We see that the term “possession” may well be used here. Yet there is a reason that induces us not to call these children slaves, a reason resembling that for which we have excluded the subjected wives. These children may be called the property of their fathers; but this is not the whole, nor even the main part of their condition. The relation between father and child, if it includes subjection, includes much more. There is mutual sympathy and in many respects a coincidence of interests; there is respect on the side of the child; there is on the side of the father a desire to promote the welfare of the child, however much bound up with egotistical motives. There is also physical and mental superiority on the side of the father and inferiority on the side of the child[42]; and this in some cases may bring about a somewhat slave-like condition of the latter; but this condition is not an essential part of the relation between father and child; a fortiori it is not coextensive with the relation, as in the case of the slave. Biologically expressed: the child is quite another organ, with quite another function, but in some cases performing in some degree [[29]]the function of a slave; therefore it is not a slave. We may add, that the child is only temporarily subjected; one day he will be a master himself[43]. This also bears upon the treatment of the child: the slave is brought up to servility, the child to authority. Children can never form a subjected class.