The New Deal in Old Rome

CHAPTER IV

EARLY NEW DEAL EXPERIMENTS

THE TOUR of orientation of Roman history that we have just made prepares us for a fuller consideration of those instances of government intervention in social and economic affairs which became such a conspicuous development of the New Deal in America. In the first epoch of which I spoke, from the beginning of the Republic through the two and a half centuries required for the unification of Italy under the leadership of Rome, the chief recorded domestic issues have to do with the efforts of the mass of the people to gain a larger share in a government which had been monopolized by the aristocracy. But it is perfectly evident that a desire to right economic injustices was at the bottom of Roman politics throughout this period of comparatively simple country life. This was the beginning of that long conflict, to which I have referred, between the rich and the poor. Writing of the early period of the Republic, Livy speaks of a year when there was a “short interval of peace.” The reader can almost hear the sigh with which he ends: “But as usual it was marred by the struggle between the aristocrats and the common people.”

Driving past the Capitoline we may see a pair of wolves in a den carved in the base of the hill. They are kept there in memory of the legend of the founding of the city in 753 B.C. by the twins Romulus and Remus — or, rather, by Romulus. All Remus had to do with it was to get killed. Most of us have a dim remembrance of the famous story: how the twin babies in line for the Latin throne were exposed beside the Tiber by order of their usurping wicked great-uncle; and how they were suckled by a she-wolf that heard their cries. The early history of Rome abounds in legends, some of them preserved to our advantage by Macaulay in his stirring Lays of Ancient Rome. Livy, who wrote many centuries after the events, is our best source.

His point of view is significant of his age. In his very modern preface he speaks of the importance of recording the annals of “the foremost world power.” Writing at the end of a terrible century of disorder, when Rome seemed to have lost its earlier virtues, he thinks it essential to recall the great days of old. The dawn of Roman history, he admits, can be seen only through a mist. The primitive traditions might seem better fitted for poetry than for historic records. He does not pretend, he says, to distinguish the authentic from the fanciful. That task he frankly leaves to the reader. But the old standards are slipping away. The future seems dark with heavy problems. “We can bear,” he writes, “neither our diseases nor their remedies,” since luxury has brought “avarice and self-indulgence.” Therefore he desires to stress the ancient qualities upon which Rome was built. We, as well as his contemporaries, are indebted to his moralistic industry.

Fascinating as this legendary period is, we must pass it over to begin with the independent farm-market town that threw off the domination of foreign kings in 509 B.C., with an enduring hatred of monarchy and devotion to the self-government of the Republic. Thus originated the great republican tradition that had immense influence upon the history of Europe down to the fanatical republicans of the French Revolution and beyond. Only a few years ago there was an old French teacher at Toulouse who always removed his black skull-cap when he reverentially mentioned “la Republique.” The early Romans would have appreciated his gesture. The sturdy farmers of the city on the Tiber gradually expanded into adjoining communities by conquest. For their time they showed amazing moderation and a real instinct for statesmanship in devising leagues founded finally on voluntary co-operation rather than force. The same instinct for wise moderation was shown in domestic difficulties. Even bitter disputes were settled without violence for a period more than twice that covered by the life of the American Republic. Modern history affords no parallel to this record of nearly four hundred years. In self-discipline, reasonableness, readiness to compromise, the early Romans set an example for all time. These were the qualities, as was suggested earlier, through which Rome survived while the more brilliant Greek civilization, for lack of them, disintegrated. They were finally swamped, as Livy believed, by the growth of luxury and selfishness. This phase of Roman history carries uneasy implications for modern America.

To understand the development of the social and economic problems that led the Romans to their early New Deal experiments we must glance at their form of government. Like the British, they were a practical people, and their Constitution, like the British, was gradually hammered out of hard experience to meet changing conditions. The Romans, Polybius wrote, did not achieve their Constitution by mere thinking, but after many struggles and difficulties they chose what seemed the best course in the light of actual experience with misfortune. The system they evolved was marred by contradictions and absurdities that would have outraged a logical mind. One assembly of the people was set up beside another with overlapping functions. The relation of the upper to the lower house was vague, if we may call a town meeting a lower house. There was nothing tidy about the government. But the early Romans, in the philosopher’s phrase, were “politically minded animals.” The conservatives were not reactionaries, the liberals were not fanatics. So the system worked.

When the Republic emerged five hundred years before Christ, Roman society already was divided into two classes, aristocrats and commons. The old landed families of warriors were the patricians, the aristocrats. With them dwelt the more numerous humble folk, the plebs, the commons. These were largely composed of war captives and aliens who had settled in Rome: traders, manufacturers, workmen. Only gradually were the commons admitted to citizenship.

Certain procedures of the earlier monarchy were carried over into the Republic and strongly influenced the political institutions of the new regime. The Roman kings were not hereditary monarchs like those of the Orient. Tradition represents them as elected by the popular Assembly. Modern research indicates that tradition was wrong. The king was a military chieftain, ruling through his command of the army. He may have designated his successor — as was done by the Roman emperors — in consultation with his council of elder statesmen, the Senate, made up from the aristocracy. The choice probably was ratified by the Assembly, which was identical with the army. The last King, Tarquin the Proud, seized power by murdering his predecessor, and governed as a tyrant. His rule was magnificent, as is often the case with the rule of tyrants. But his oppression led to the revolution of 509 B.C., and left the legacy of bitterness to which I have just referred.

The aristocratic Republic which replaced the monarchy was administered by two consuls of equal authority, chosen annually by the Assembly. Thus one could act as a check on the other and their short term was expected to curb the ambition of either magistrate to build himself into a king. The Senate was retained as a council of state. Final control in enacting laws and electing magistrates rested with the Assembly. The Assembly also was made the court of last resort in criminal cases. No power but the people had the right to pronounce the death sentence on a Roman citizen.

Two assemblies eventually developed, but for practical purposes we need not distinguish between them. Here the big landowning nobles put something over on their fellow citizens. They were outnumbered by the commons ten to one. But it was arranged that the voting in the Assembly be done by groups, a majority of the groups controlling. By an ingenious gerrymander a minority of the groups were heavily packed with commons, while the nobles were scattered sparsely through the majority, and thus usually were able to dominate the decisions of the Assembly. A somewhat similar system exists in the United States Senate today, where a population of 100,000 in Nevada has the same representation as a population of 13,000,000 in New York.

For other very human reasons the senatorial machine became the dominant factor in the government of the Republic. The senators were ex-magistrates, mostly from the landed aristocracy. They had a life term. So the Senate was a body of competent experts and experienced administrators, bound together by a common economic interest. It met often and, with its membership of some three hundred, was a small enough body to permit free debate. The Assembly was summoned infrequently by a magistrate who dominated its proceedings. It used to be complained that “Czar” Reed and later “Uncle Joe” Cannon controlled the House of Representatives. But in their heyday they had nothing like the power of the magistrate who presided over the Assembly. It could consider only what he brought to its attention. This body was simply a mass meeting of citizens to which bills were presented, customarily after they had been approved by the Senate. Then it broke up into groups for voting. A house with many thousand members cannot be a deliberative body. Most of the members of the Roman Assembly could not hear what was under consideration. They were lucky if they knew what they were voting on.

It may be recalled that the Republican national convention of 1920 was controlled by a little group of half a dozen senators who were referred to as “the elder statesmen.” Perhaps a dozen Republican governors were at the convention. They had no influence. A newspaper correspondent spoke of this contrast to a governor. “How can we governors act effectively?” was the reply. “We don’t even know each other by sight. These senators have been working together for years. They call each other by their first names.”

The same sort of advantage rested with the Roman Senate. It was a continuing body, while the magistrates held office only for a year. The Senate chose the generals, conducted wars, made peace treaties, decided on alliances, and thus became the arbiter of foreign policy. Most of the time for several centuries it did an excellent job. Naturally, however, the senators looked upon public questions from the standpoint of their own class and its social and economic interests. This attitude led to the clashes that were frequent in the history of the Republic. The voting was done in Rome. It was possible for an energetic popular leader to line up the Assembly against the Senate, especially if he could stir up the farmers to go to the city to vote. At such times the senators were often able to play for delay by inducing one of the state officials with veto power to annul the Assembly’s action. But if the people were really aroused they could finally have their way and the Senate would yield, sometimes to return later to the attack.

Social and political rights were of slow growth. In the early days intermarriage between aristocrats and the commons was forbidden. The snobbery was carried into the field of religion. It was the aristocratic theory that the gods would deal only with aristocrats in matters affecting the state. When the common people finally won their fight to be admitted to the official church board of augurs, as they won their right to marry outside their class, Livy reports great indignation among the nobles. Not that they minded, he says, but they feared the gods would mind, and they only hoped and prayed no disaster would befall the Republic. Roman high society was taking itself pretty seriously.

Economic difficulties, however, were more important than the social and religious disputes that resulted from class distinctions. In this period the difficulties centred on debts, interest, and the Roman equivalent to the growth of big business — the absorption of small farms into large estates. In all these matters it was possible for government to intervene, and the common people believed, with reason, that they would not get a square deal until they had representation in the high offices of state. The question of debt had been especially pressing from the early years of the Republic. Small farmers in a year of crop failure might have to borrow from their richer neighbours. Wars were frequent, and when a farmer was called to military service he often had to get a loan to maintain his family in his absence. When he returned he had to have help to put his farm in shape after it had grown up to weeds, to replenish his stock, and to buy new farm implements. There were so many interruptions by military campaigns and production at best was so small that a farmer once in debt had little chance of getting out. The creditors who controlled the government saw to it that the laws concerning debts were extremely harsh. A debtor might be imprisoned, enslaved to his creditor, or sold “beyond the Tiber” into slavery.

A vivid illustration of what was happening is given in a story of the period told by Livy. A dishevelled old man suddenly appeared in the Forum. He was recognized as a former military officer, distinguished for valour. To a crowd that gathered he explained that while serving in war not only had he lost the produce of his land through depredations of the enemy, but his farmhouse had been burned, his property plundered, his cattle driven away. On this ruined soldier-farmer a war tax had then been imposed and he had gone heavily into debt. The debt had been vastly increased through extortionate interest charges and he had lost his father’s and grandfather’s farms and had been enslaved by his creditor.

To dramatize the struggle that developed between rich and poor we may introduce the original Roman standpatter and economic royalist, Gaius Marcius, later given the additional name of Coriolanus, which furnished the title of Shakespeare’s play. Here we follow the story told by Plutarch to show Roman feeling in a period of class conflict early in the fifth century B.C. The common people, Plutarch says, were complaining of inhuman treatment by money-lenders. An invasion was just then threatened by one of Rome’s enemies. The commons refused to join the army and began to hold pacifist meetings. Alarmed over the prospects, some of the moderate aristocrats urged the Senate to make concessions and “mitigate the extreme rigour of the law” against debtors. Such weakness was denounced by Gaius Marcius. Money, he said, had nothing to do with the case. It was a matter of principle; of law and order. If there were any yielding the common people would be encouraged to open revolt against the law. How familiar it all sounds!

At this the people staged a general strike. They marched out of town to emphasize their refusal to do military service. There was no violence, but Plutarch reports they were heard to say that anywhere in Italy they could find air and water and a place of burial, which was all they could expect in Rome, “unless it were, perhaps, the privilege of being wounded and killed in war for the defence of their creditors.” This attitude would never do. So the aristocrats overrode their die-hard leader and compromised by allowing the people to elect tribunes, magistrates who had the right to intervene in any proceeding against a commoner. Later the tribunes so developed their power that they became possible instruments of revolutionary movements.

While Plutarch’s story is not authentic history, it provides a human setting for certain events of the period, especially for the peaceful general strike by which the commons won their right to be represented among the magistrates. On other occasions the people forced concessions by a resort to the same bloodless weapon of the general strike.

Now that the commons had obtained protection through the tribunes against arbitrary action by officials from the upper class, they began agitating for further reform. The lives and activities of Roman citizens were subject to what might be called the common law, an unwritten mass of customs, as well as judicial decisions. The commons believed they often were victims of injustice because of the uncertainty of the unpublished law and their ignorance of it. Within a few years they had forced the codification and publication of the law in the famous Twelve Tables, 451 B.C. While the law of the Twelve Tables chiefly embodied existing practices, it recognized important safeguards for personal liberty and forbade the death penalty except by sentence of a competent court. On this foundation Roman law was developed so that by the middle period of the Republic a citizen was not subject to arrest in his home, there was no arbitrary action in criminal cases, and the writ of habeas corpus “ran hard and fast.”

Useful as the law of the Twelve Tables proved to be, it contributed little to alleviate distress due to bad economic conditions. The insolvent debtor still could be sold into slavery, although he could obtain a short stay of execution to give him the chance to raise money to meet his obligations. Agitation for economic relief went forward.

We have just considered the most conspicuous of the early Roman standpatters. We now turn to the first of the New Dealers of the Roman world. Licinius Stolo, a tribune, first elected in 376 B.C., was the product of a depression — a depression considerably more prolonged than the one that ushered in the New Dealers in the United States. For more than a century Rome had been suffering an economic decline because of the dislocation of trade by wars. As a climax the city was captured and burned by the Gauls. Layers of ashes from that ancient fire have been discovered in modern excavations. The conquerors finally were induced to depart by the payment of a heavy ransom. This transaction gave rise to a phrase that has had a malignant influence on history.

As the gold was being weighed out, a tribune protested that the Gauls were using a false weight in the balance. Whereupon the Gallic leader threw his sword into the scale, exclaiming: “Væ victis!” “Woe to the vanquished!” — “a phrase,” says H. G. Wells, “that has haunted the discussions of all subsequent ransoms and indemnities down to the present time.”

Crops and houses had been destroyed and the expense of rehabilitation was heavy. People were burdened with debt, and again protests rose against the severe punishment of helpless debtors. Roman farms were small and there was a strong land hunger among the farmers. Much public domain had been acquired by conquest. But the more energetic and prosperous farmers had taken over a good share of this for a nominal rental from the state. The little fellows were crowded out. Here was another farm grievance.

Fourteen years after the Gallic invasion Licinius and a colleague came forward with a New Deal program that included several proposals. The most important was a moratorium on debts. Interest already paid could be deducted from the principal and the balance made payable over a period of three years. There was a Small Holdings Act under which thereafter no single individual could hold more than three hundred acres of the public domain. Help was offered the unemployed by a provision requiring landlords to employ a certain proportion of free labourers on farms with their slaves. It was proposed also that at least one of the two consuls, the highest magistrates of the state, be a commoner. There is a touch of human nature in the gossip related by Livy that Licinius was spurred on by his wife, daughter of a nobleman. Her sister was married to a man of her own rank, and it burned up the wife of the tribune, who was a commoner, to think that because of her marriage she was socially inferior to her sister.

These proposals evoked bitter protests from the old aristocracy. Anyone familiar with current procedure in Congress cannot fail to be impressed with the similarity of technique in ancient Rome. In the long struggle the aristocratic leaders recognized they were in a losing fight. But they thought that if they could get the various measures separated and introduced as independent bills, there would be a chance to do some trading. They would agree to let certain measures through without longer delay if their opponents would ditch the other reforms. But Licinius and his colleague were clever enough to insist on an omnibus bill; take it or leave it. On this platform they ran year after year and were elected. As tribunes they were able to block routine legislation desired by their opponents. Finally after a ten-year struggle Licinius won. Another great political victory had been carried through without bloodshed.

An unpleasant incident growing out of the Licin-ian laws should not shock a generation in America that grew accustomed to politicians in the prohibition era who drank wet but voted dry. A few years after the adoption of the Small Holdings Act its sponsor, Licinius, was fined $125 for violating his own law. It was found that he was carrying an extra three hundred acres of land in his son’s name.

While the aristocracy had sourly bowed to the inevitable and permitted the highest office in the state to be opened to a commoner, some of the grandes dames refused to be reconciled to this deplorable triumph of the lower classes. Shortly thereafter they tore society in the capital wide open by barring from the fashionable charity ball the nobly born wife of a high plebeian official. Her shocking mésalliance, while now legal, made her socially impossible. If we wish to be meticulous we will call it the Festival of the Goddess of Chastity, although it was the ancient equivalent of such a social event as a modern charity ball. There was a dreadful commotion in the best circles. The outraged lady refused to swallow the insult. She had enough influence to start a rival organization. Henceforth separate aristocratic and plebeian Goddesses of Chastity were worshipped in Rome.

But the nobles had sense. After this breach in their ranks they saw the necessity of making further concessions. In the next century the Senate no longer was an exclusive club. If an energetic commoner came stamping up in hobnailed boots and kicked on the door, he was admitted. He might not be welcome, but he was not barred out. In modern times the British nobility adopted the same wise procedure and so avoided building up a powerful opposition with a social and political grievance. The Roman commoner thus admitted to the ruling class soon adopted its point of view. Livy quotes a popular leader of the second century before Christ as complaining that “the plebeian nobles have all been taken into camp by the old aristocrats. When they no longer are looked down on by the old nobles, they begin to look down on the plebeians.”

But to get back to the economic features of the Licinian legislation. In the year 367 B.C. we have three typical New Dealish measures for the relief of the underprivileged — a debt moratorium, a Small Holdings Act, and a Farm-Labour Act. The results did not come up to the campaign promises. The debt moratorium was useful as far as it went, but it failed to meet the needs of many hard-pressed debtors. As for the other measures, we hear the familiar and not surprising complaint that they lacked teeth and were not enforced.

There were enough debtors who could not make the grade to constitute a formidable pressure group, with a cause that appealed to the public as just. In 352 B.C. the government set up a Federal Land Bank working in conjunction with a Farm Debt Conciliation Committee. In this attempt to deal with the farm debt problem Rome used precisely the method that was adopted twenty-three hundred years later in the period of the New Deal at Washington. In the long depression many American farmers had become hopelessly involved in debt. Under “an Act to Establish a Uniform System of Bankruptcy,” machinery was provided for establishing a Farm Debt Conciliation Committee in every rural county. Five men of standing in each county were drafted for service. To this committee distressed farmers would bring their mortgages and all their other evidences of indebtedness, except of taxes. In each case the committee would decide how much the farmer might reasonably be expected to pay, and it would then allocate the total amount among the various creditors. Almost invariably they would accept its judgment and scale down their claims in accordance with the allocation. A Federal Land Bank would then take a new and reasonable first mortgage on the property and in addition make what was virtually a second mortgage loan. This cash from the Land Bank would be distributed among the creditors and the farmer would make a fresh start, with his indebtedness reduced to manageable proportions.

This procedure was followed in Rome, even to the number of members of the Debt Conciliation Committee. Livy says the newly elected consuls in 352 “made the discharge of debts a concern of the state.” They appointed five commissioners of high standing, two nobles and three commoners, who opened offices in the Forum. Debts long in default were brought before them, which they dealt with “in one of the following ways: either they paid them out of the treasury, taking security for the people first” (that is, the Federal Land Bank made a new loan to the debtor, taking a mortgage on his property as security); or they settled them upon a valuation at fair prices of the debtor’s effects (inducing the creditors to scale down their claims). “And so, not only without injustice, but even without complaint from either side, a vast amount of indebtedness was cleared off.” Precisely. The plan proved as conspicuous a success in helping American farmers as it proved in helping the farmers of Rome.

But in Rome imprisonment for debt still was legal. When this was abolished a quarter of a century later there was “a new beginning,” the historian says, “of the liberty of the common people.”

Meanwhile the government found it necessary to intervene by setting maximum interest rates. Shortly before the Farm Debt Conciliation Committee started work the rate was limited to a trifle above eight per cent. There was still complaint, and ten years later, under pressure of the debtors, the government adopted what seemed the obvious remedy and cut the rate in half. Then a politician, who doubtless considered himself a monetary expert, got through a law abolishing interest altogether. Also, doubtless to his surprise and the surprise of his supporters, the measure failed to work. People who needed money found nobody would lend. The law became a dead letter, and the old eight-per-cent rate was restored; restored but not observed.

A half-century later came the final triumph of democracy in Rome. There had been various irritations, including more trouble over debts. One of these irritations is so modern that it deserves a word. In one of the wars for the unification of Italy a hard-bitten, bullying old aristocrat, Postumius, who happened to be consul at the time, took command of the army. Thereupon he detailed two thousand soldiers to work on his own estate cutting brushwood. These soldiers were small farmers who had left their own farms to fight for their country. They were outraged at being set to work for their general without wages. It is a satisfaction to know that he was prosecuted and fined at the end of his term. Unhappily abuse of power is never outmoded. As I write this paragraph I read of the fining of a Missouri mayor for using the labour of men on work relief in his private business.

As a result of accumulating resentment there was another and final general strike of the commons of Rome. This enabled them to force the adoption of a law formally recognizing the Assembly as the fundamental authority. Its resolutions were made binding on the whole community. In Latin the commons were the “plebs.” The resolution of the Roman House of Commons was a “plebiscitum.” From this comes the English word “plebiscite.” This law, called from its author the “Hortensian law,” adopted in 287 B.C., was regarded as the culminating victory of the commons. It made Rome safe for democracy until the stream of wealth from conquered lands to the east upset the economic balance of Italy.

Throughout all the two hundred and fifty years, while the Roman people were struggling over domestic questions of popular sovereignty, they were proceeding systematically with the unification of Italy. For many years the city on the Tiber was assailed by the highlanders and other adjoining neighbours who coveted the richer land of the plains. Its existence repeatedly was threatened. But after one hundred and fifty years of almost incessant warfare Rome had beaten back all the invaders and in the next hundred years had established her rule over the entire peninsula. There is reason to believe that land hunger was responsible for some of these conflicts. But only defensive wars were constitutional. Rome’s insistence that she had brought all Italy under her control without an offensive war was only in accordance with what has become the best modern practice.

The unification was finally sealed early in the third century by the failure of an ambitious Greek king, a second cousin of Alexander the Great, to defend the last hold-out city. Tarentum, in the heel of Italy’s boot, invited Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, to come to its rescue.

This episode has a current interest because it involves a conspicuous early pacifist. Plutarch relates the incident. Cineas, he says, a man of “very good sense,” was a valued court counsellor. When Cineas learned Pyrrhus was preparing for an Italian campaign, he found an occasion for tactful remonstrance. After Pyrrhus had made himself master of the world, what would he do then, Cineas inquired.

“We will live at our ease, my dear fellow, and drink all day and divert ourselves with pleasant conversation.”

“And what hinders us now, sir,” Cineas asked, “to be merry and enjoy this conversation without going through blood, labour, and infinite hazards?”

It was a reasonable argument and it “rather troubled Pyrrhus,” who was really a very decent chap. But of course he ignored it and started on a series of campaigns, in which he finally was killed. The supply of good advice is always so in excess of the demand!