The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1927-12-07

- Athens had already rebuilt its
homes and renewed the uneven ten
or Of its busy life.
Unburdened with an army, and
equipped with a fleet of 800 YES
sells, she was now the unchallenged
mistress of the Aegean, and her
streets and markets throbbed with
the exchange of commodities and
ideas. Commerce led to industry.
industry to wealth, wealth to leisure,
and leisure to art.
AS the laws Of Athens interfered
very moderately with the economic
life, there was nothing to prevent
the development of a rich class at
one end of the social scale and a
class Of impoverished workers at the
other.
Where liberty is greatest, equality
is soon least; the natural differences
Of men in ability and strength null
tiply with every year and every OPP
portunity into artificial inequalities
Of possession and power.
It is a development always asso-
ciated in the past with complex and
progressive civilizations.
The highest class was still the
landowning ariStocarcy; below them
the great merchants, who zealously
bought land to raise their status in
society; next to the shopkeepers, the
tradeSmen and the lesser manufac-
turerS; then the skilled workers.
masons, carpenters, potters, weavers,
jewellers; and then the peasants pa
tiently tilling the arid soil or tend
ing the vine, and finally the I'M
skilled laborers, slave or free.
Out Of population of 10000 in
the city and its environs 10000
were free citizens, $4,000 were vote
less foreigners, 100000 were slaves.
Some manufacturers, like Nicias
and Mnason, had more than thou
sand industrial serfs, and lent them
out at 3 cents a day.
But the slaves and workers were
well organized in unions or guilds.
and hourished the red flag as their
emblem; they hardly differed, ex-
cept in honest disfranchisement
from modern European proletaries,
and in dress they were not distin-
guishable from freeemen and men
of the master class.
The rich, as in the days of the
sans-culottes, did their best to quiet
envy by assmilating their visible
way Of life to that Of the people.
AS a wise man suggested, it might
not be good policy to let the slaves
realize their overwhelming majority.
Il y
TINE merchants took great risks,
Il and suffered great losses or
reaped great rewards. The sea was
peopled with pirates, and winter
storms made navigation perilous.
But if the cargo reached it's port
the profits of the owner might reach
100 per cent. Borrowing was costly,
interest rising from 10 to IL per
cent; but even SO the returns were
proportionate, and many manufac-
lures doubled their original invest
ment every three'yearS.
AS the silver mines of Laurium
poured their metal into Athens,
money increased in quantity and lost
in value; prices were several times
higher than in Solon's days, and a
hundred times lower than in ours.
The rich mans family spent IL
cents q day on food, and possessed,
at most, 5000 worth of furniture.
A fortune Of $4,000 was consid-
cred sllamefully large. The day
laborer received from 6 to 10 cents,
brain workers from 20 to 80 cents a
day.
The homes of all classes would
have seemed simple to us, for from
the street they presented nothing
but solid wall of masonry or bricks,
and they were seldom more than
story high.
Windows were infrequent; for the
purpose of house in Athens was
not to permit but to exclude( the
sun; only in the GOODNESS of dark
interiors could the summer be borne
The door was merely a passage
way opening into an inner court
where the life of the family, when