The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-11-19

the gold of Ophir and the silks of India.
Immense caravans of inland commerce
connected the Mediterranean with the
Euphrates and Tigris, and these with the
Indus and with China. All along the
| route between China and northern Per-
| STA and westward south of the Caspian
! and Black seas, even far into Europe,
| have been found antique specimens of
! jadeStone, which must have come in pre-
| historic times from China, or Burmah,
| where are the only mines of this stone
| in the world. The old Persians were
| the first to use the postal system. They
| also telegraphed by signs, and had topo-
T graphical maps and splendid roads with
sign posts and wayside inns. The oldest
| bridge of which We have any knowledge
spanned the Euphrates at Babylon.
From the Emperor Diocletian's edict of
A. D. 301 setting the maximum prices to
be accepted for wine oil, salt. honey,
butchers meat, clothing, fish, vegetables,
fruit, wages. schoolmasters' and advo-
Gates fees boots and shoes, harnesses,
timber, and nearly every other article of
service trafficked in that age of the
world, one learns with very satisfactory
fullness what human industry meant at
the opening of the fourth century of our
era. We have no history of the mound
builders, whose massive and curious
works confront us in so many parts of
the United States. But that mysterious
people must have had history. The
wealth and public order which the
mounds preSuppOSe could not nave orig
mated in decade, nor yet in a century.
BY the aid of historical notices like the
above scholars are enabled to make out
with a good degree of accuracy the
course which mankind's matchmaking
life has followed. The face and to 4
greater or less extent the heart of every
peoples economic life have been chang
ing from decade to decade and from year
to year. Only the isolated changes
named are almost insignificant compared
with many which history presents. These
silent economic revolutions, greater or
smaller, have always been going on. The
eCoEomic state of affairs around us to-
day bears very little resemblance to
that of remote time. 1t is the growta
of ages. the product of indefinitely
long historical evolution, now direct and
rapid, again curvilinear and slow, some
times for years even retrograde.
About the economic circumstances of
primeyal man or his condition In any
respect we know and can know but
little, What information we do gather
goes to indicate that he was low down.
with habits of life not unlike those of
the brutes. He was the slave of nature,
living literally from hand to mouth.
Ritter beautifully names animals mans
Oldest brothers. Their life was at first
also his. Mining and incipient manu-.
featuring, village life and rude govern
ment may have antedated mans moral
life, SO belonging to mans natural his
tory, not to history as usually and
present on earth that have not by any
means hidden farewell to that half-brute
estate, while others, once equally rude,
have achieved enormous advance.
AS rule, which has few if any excep-
tons, this progress comprises terraces,
so to speak, which we may specify as the
hunting. and fishing stage, the pastoral
or nomadic stage, the agricultural stage,
the manufacturing and commercial stage,
the credit and Industrial liberty stage
and the stage of massed industries and
central control.
These steps in the upward march are
not always clearly defined, nor can we
at every turn point out stringent laws
determining their order. While the fish
ing and hunting industry seems every
where to have characterized primitive
economics, some tribes like the American
Indians apparently passed from these oc-
equations directly to agriculture, without
having borne the pastoral character We
also find men of the old stone age, who
were hunters and fishers, graduating into
the culture of the new stone age, which
was agricultural, with no nomadic inter-
i'm. Again, hunters in transition out of
that manner of life not infrequently do
meSticate animals, or till the land a lit
tie, or both. These just enumerated are,
however. the great economic types and
they may be witnessed today in different
portions of the earth, in spite of the fact
that contact with civilization has nearly
everywhere modified each of these more
or less.
Copyright, 1909