The New Deal in Old Rome

CHAPTER VI

THE FARM PROBLEM EMERGES

IN America rapid westward expansion and the opening of new lands created an acute farm problem. In the West there was overproduction. In the East farm values sank. With the growth of population and the European demand for farm exports, the problem was eased. Later it was aggravated or assuaged in accordance with the state of world markets. Production would be greatly overexpanded under the stimulus of abnormal European demand. The drying up of this demand would depress the farm industry. At the same time the rapid mechanization of the farm brought new difficulties.

In the Roman Republic we find strikingly similar conditions. Throughout its early history Italy was a land of small farmers. Wheat products were the staple food, as they are in Italy today. The Roman Empire, it has been said, was won by armies on a diet of porridge. With the extensive conquests of foreign wars the wheat farmers of western Italy faced a crisis. They met disastrous competition from new lands, just as the wheat farmers of the Atlantic seaboard in America met disastrous competition from the new farm regions of the West. To complete the parallel, Italian farmers encountered the equivalent to modern farm mechanization in the hordes of war captives who were imported for farm labour. These captives were sold as slaves and treated as machines. The capital required for farming under the new conditions was beyond the reach of the small operators. The little fellow began to be crowded to the wall by the big commercial farmer. The new system was an economic success but a social failure.

The farm problem was one of the chief disturbing factors that threatened to wreck the Roman Republic after its long period of successful wars of expansion. It was an effort to solve this problem that brought to the front the two great liberal statesmen of the latter part of the second century B.C., the brothers Gracchus. Included in their New Deal measures was a back-to-the-land movement. It was their purpose to discourage large-scale commercial farming and to re-establish the small farmer with farming as a way of life rather than as a commercial enterprise. If they had succeeded the history of Rome might have been different. Possibly the Republic might have been preserved. But the obstacles in their way were too great.

The first important new land that brought the Roman farm problem to the front was in the island of Sicily, which lies just off the toe of Italy’s boot. Like the state of Kansas for America today, Sicily was the great surplus-wheat area for mid-republican Rome. When it came into the Roman orbit it rocked the farm structure of central Italy. Wheat could be produced more cheaply in Sicily and the natural economic competition of Sicilian wheat would have been sufficiently severe. But state intervention made the competition ruinous. Rome was collecting taxes from Sicily in the shape of wheat which it used to feed the army. Any surplus was dumped on the market, with disorganizing effect. The taxes were collected by Roman corporations under government contracts. Their profits came from the sale of wheat that they collected in excess of what was due the government. Water transportation was cheap, and they sold their surplus to the Italian coastal cities for what it would bring. It was regarded as the duty of the state to keep down the cost of living in the capital, which was the great centre of population. In time of war, when wheat prices went up, the government would go into foreign markets, buy wheat, and sell it at a loss. Under normal foreign competition prices were low in peace times, while the farmer was prevented from recouping from the natural rise in prices during the emergencies of war. The Italian farm bloc lacked the political power of the farm bloc in Congress.

Land transportation was expensive. There were inland districts that were little affected by competition from abroad, but in the important coastal area the small wheat farmer could not maintain himself.

There were other troubles. The farmer drafted into the army and sent abroad on long campaigns was obliged to leave his farm in the care of his family and perhaps a few slaves. When he came back he found his tools gone to pieces, his farm deteriorated; and he lacked the capital for its rehabilitation.

There is a legend that a farmer-general of a Roman army in Africa wrote home asking to be relieved of his command. The manager whom he had left in charge of his small farm had died, the hired man had run away with the farm tools, and the farm lay desolate. If the owner were not allowed to return, his wife and children would lack the bare necessaries of existence.

Many farmers, of course, did not come back. In the long campaigns against Hannibal, Rome lost perhaps a third of its citizens, and their small farms were available to buyers with ready money.

What happened is recorded in connection with the long struggle with Carthage. The state had had to resort to loans. The final large Liberty Loan was to be repaid in three instalments. When the second instalment came due, the state was short of cash. Livy says the cry of many creditors was: “There are plenty of farms for sale and we want to buy.” These farms were doubtless distressed land that had come on the market as a result of the conditions just described. The state effected a settlement by arranging with its creditors to take their second instalment in land from the public domain. Four years later the third instalment was paid in cash. The capitalists who were buying up distressed farms and acquiring land from the public domain were thus building large estates which supplanted the small holdings of the independent farmers.

New conditions promoted this process. By a law enacted near the close of the third century B.C. the rich senatorial class was forbidden to take part in foreign trade. As the Senate was in charge of foreign policy it was perhaps felt that its members should be clear of foreign business entanglements. But as wealth was coming into Rome in the second century from its conquests abroad, the effect was to concentrate senatorial investments in large estates in Italy. These investments were facilitated by the recent general use of money, which made absentee landlordism practicable, and by the advent of hundreds of thousands of the war captives just mentioned, who could be used like farm machinery to operate big plantations and ranches. The long-run results of slave labour were bad, but in the earlier years it produced large and quick returns. Another factor favourable to the growth of big estates was the remission of all direct taxes in Italy early in the second century, including the land tax. The government had come to be supported by levies from the provinces and by income from the public domain. The absence of a land tax encouraged speculation in land by large operators. Finally, as wheat farming in extensive regions became unprofitable because of the competition of wheat from the new lands, the raising of livestock and the growing of vineyards and olive trees took its place. These were all branches of agriculture that required more capital than the small Roman farmer could afford, and he was impelled to sell to speculators or to operators with cash reserves.

In his little book on Moral Duties, addressed to his wild son, Marcus, away in college at Athens, Cicero quotes that stern old farmer-magistrate Cato on farming. “When he was asked what was the most profitable feature of an estate, he replied: ‘Raising cattle successfully.’ What next to that? ‘Raising cattle with fair success.’ And next? ‘Raising cattle with but slight success.’ And fourth? ‘Raising crops.’ And when his questioner asked: ‘How about money-lending?’ Cato replied: ‘How about murder?’” It may be added that Cato was another conspicuous man who failed to live up to his precepts. He evaded the law against senators’ engaging in foreign trade by organizing a company in which he held stock in the name of a freedman, and thus, his biographer says, made large profits with little risk.

The acute farm problem now developing cannot be understood without some consideration of the importance of slavery in the economic and social structure of Rome and Italy. In the ancient world slavery was taken for granted. That war captives should be sold as slaves seemed as natural as that conquered cities should be looted. In his treatise on farm management Cato advises that the owner should order the sale of “worn-out bulls, blemished cattle, blemished sheep, wool, hides, any plough that is old, old tools, old slaves, slaves who are diseased, or anything else which is useless.” The casual classification of old slaves with old tools gives a vivid idea of the brutal outlook of the age.

In the earlier years of Rome, in the days of small farms and simple households, the slaves were Italian captives or debtors who became virtually members of their owners’ families. But in the conquests following the war with Hannibal conditions changed. One hundred and fifty thousand captives were taken in a day by a series of raids back from the Adriatic coast across from Italy. A single victory by Cæsar in Gaul yielded 53,000 slaves, and it is estimated, probably with exaggeration, that in nine years he sent back 400,000 slaves to Rome. The island of Delos became the great slave mart for the East; there is a record of the sale of 10,000 slaves there in one day.

At a time when the population of Rome was under a million, the slave population was estimated at 200,000. Prices ranged from fifty dollars up. Many well-educated slaves were acquired in the East. One trouble with Roman education was that wealthy men thought they could buy it in the slave marts. Mr. Fisher, who as warden of New College, Oxford, should be informed on educational practice, writes: “The Eton master of the eighteenth century flogged his boys. The Roman youth of the second and third centuries flogged his masters,” for the masters were slaves.

The institution of slavery had a brutalizing effect upon the owners. It also had a far-reaching effect upon farm life and later on factory development. In the Southern states of America slave labour could not be used effectively in the cultivation of small farms. It could be used on the big cotton plantations. So in Italy the abundance of slaves tended to promote the establishment of large cattle ranches, with which the small farmer could not compete.

One important difficulty was that the free farmer was liable to conscription for military service from which slaves were exempt. Wars followed one another in rapid succession and it is estimated that for many years one-tenth of the population always was in the army. Even when a farmer had sold his land to a rich neighbour, his liability to military service handicapped him in getting a job as a farm hand. So he went back to the legions or became a wanderer.

Up to the time of the foreign wars in the first half of the second century B.C. life in Rome had been comparatively simple. But with the newly acquired wealth the whole tone of society changed. Official life was affected. Many of the magistrates sent out to govern the conquered provinces were demoralized by the lack of supervision. Repeated laws against extortion show the existence of a growing group of Romans who were becoming rich at the expense of the subject peoples. Speculators, too, did not overlook the opportunities in the new lands. Luxuries were lavishly imported, but only the lucky few could afford them. The landless farmers drifted to the big city. Unfortunately no industries had developed there in which they might have found employment. For various reasons banking, foreign trade, and the management of large Italian estates had proved more attractive to enterprising Romans than manufacturing. Few jobs were to be had in a city where slaves were doing a large share of the work. Social snobbishness was an important obstacle to progress. This was due partly to the natural contempt that a landed aristocracy always feels for men “in trade,” partly to the effects of slavery. The feeling dominated society. Cicero, a typical representative of the middle class, wrote to his son in his Moral Duties about occupations in which a gentleman might engage. Tax-collectors and money-lenders, he says, are exposed to public contempt. Manual labour is vulgar. So, too, is retail selling and the work of mechanics. It isn’t respectable to engage in occupations having to do with food, such as those of butchers, cooks, and poulterers. Dancers and actors are out. Medicine, architecture, and teaching are dignified professions. “Trade, if it is on a small scale, is vulgar, but if wholesale and on a large scale is not to be greatly disparaged.” Agriculture, however, is considered the most proper of all gainful occupations.

With little chance to find work, the immigrant farmers lived in poverty in the slums on the low ground and looked with envy upon the mansions that were being built on the heights. The men who were able to stay on the farms, barely keeping their heads above water, also were embittered. In Sicily the brutal treatment of slaves on the big plantations led to uprisings that reached the stage of civil wars. It is significant of the growing bitterness that in these revolts the small farmers joined with the slaves in burning the villas of the owners of the big estates. The rich landlords were hated by all the less fortunate, by free men as well as by slaves.

Thus by the beginning of the last century of the Republic Rome and Italy were divided into two bitterly hostile camps, a governing oligarchy of wealthy men, and an impoverished mass of poor people and slaves. At this time Tiberius Gracchus was elected a tribune. He came of a family distinguished for public service. His father was an honest old aristocrat who had made a reputation as a military commander as well as a civil magistrate. His mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of one of the most celebrated of Roman generals, Scipio Africanus. A great lady she was, cultured, high-minded, public-spirited. Her salon, frequented by all the clever people, was a centre of intelligent and witty conversation. It probably was as distinguished as any of the famous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century salons of Paris. Here Tiberius and his younger and more brilliant brother, Gaius, undoubtedly heard serious public questions discussed.

With his family connections and his own fine qualities, the young Tiberius was regarded as the catch of the town. At a dinner party the head of one of the first families, by discreet inquiry, found the young man was interested in his daughter. Then and there the engagement was arranged. When the old gentleman returned home he greeted his wife with the news. “Antistia,” he exclaimed, “I’ve found a husband for Claudia!” Before he could tell her the lucky man’s name she exploded. Why hadn’t she been consulted? There was only one boy in their set that she would stand for. That was Tiberius Gracchus.

The incident indicates a social standing that would open a political career to any ambitious youngster in Rome. Tiberius was elected to the tribunate with general approval when he was only thirty. But like many another generous-spirited young man he was moved by the evils that he saw around him to desert his class. In the end his friends turned on him with all the savageness that often is visited on a man who is regarded by his former associates as a traitor to their common interests. In his travels on official duties Tiberius had been shocked by the depopulation of the countryside and the growth of big estates operated by slaves. In Rome he saw a great mass of unemployed, many of them dispossessed farmers, constantly on the verge of starvation. His indignation flamed high. One of his speeches has been preserved.

“The savage beasts in Italy,” he exclaimed, “have their dens, their places of rest and refuge. But the men who fight their country’s battles have nothing but air and sunlight. They wander homeless with their wives and children. Their generals appeal to them to fight in defence of their homes, but they have none. They fight and are killed to maintain the luxury of others. They are called the masters of the world. But they haven’t a foot of ground to call their own.”

This sort of language horrified the best circles. His old associates had looked on him as a harmless parlour pink. They were not prepared for such an outburst as this. Really, he was going too far. But Tiberius proceeded with his program. The remedy seemed obvious. It was to set up a Resettlement Administration, an R.A. He proposed to move the city unemployed out to farms in the country. The government still owned a large public domain, much of which had been pre-empted by wealthy landlords at a small rental, which they had long since ceased to pay. Gracchus undertook to revive the old Licinian Small Holdings Act, which had become a dead letter, and once more restrict the amount of public land held by one person to three hundred acres. Public land thus taken back by the government was to be allotted to landless citizens in small holdings. The government was to retain title so that the land could not be immediately bought up by speculators.

“What Gracchus had in mind in proposing the measure,” the historian Appian wrote, “was not money but men.” But the arguments he presented to the hard-headed Roman landed aristocracy were not based on sentiment. His appeal was on more practical grounds. Rome had won its empire by armies made up of small farmers. If these were destroyed how was the Empire to be defended? But the big landowners were obdurate. The evils set forth by Tiberius were obvious and the governing crowd in the Senate had long agreed that something should be done. But it always had found objections to every proposal offered. The Gracchan program shocked the landlords because it threatened to deprive them of part of their profitable holdings of the public domain. It antagonized the bankers because it attacked the security of their mortgages. The question was how to prevent the popular tribune from putting his measure through the Assembly, which was the lawmaking body. His senatorial opponents found a constitutional method.

In order to prevent hasty legislation by a one-chamber house, it had been provided that any one of the ten tribunes could exercise the veto power. Then the whole matter would go over until the next election so that it could be given further consideration and be passed upon by the people. A tribune was found to veto the consideration of Tiberius’s bill. At that time the anti-second-term tradition as to the tribunate was so strong as to be regarded as part of the law of the land. A tribune could not run for re-election. Tiberius believed he must get his measure through within his year of office or it would die, as other somewhat similar measures had died in the past. So he introduced the principle of the “recall.” At his request the Assembly deposed the objecting official and elected a Gracchus man in his place. The law went through and a commission was appointed to supervise its operation.

Here we come upon another phenomenon familiar to modern politics. Appropriations had to come from the Senate. It hampered the work of the commission by refusing to appropriate money for its necessary expenses. This same method of putting brakes on embarrassing activities of committees has repeatedly been resorted to in Washington.

Just at this time came what Gracchus must have regarded as a providential windfall. The monarch of the Asiatic kingdom of Pergamum died and bequeathed his kingdom, including accumulated treasures, to the Roman people. Tiberius at once proposed a bill appropriating the funds derived from the Pergamum treasury to the use of the land commission. The money was to be distributed among the new settlers to finance them in erecting houses and buying necessary farm equipment. This was a blow at the Senate’s provincial authority and its control of the purse. The tribune’s action increased the bitterness of the conservatives.

As his year of office expired Tiberius determined to run again in violation of precedent. There was much still to be done that he felt could not be entrusted to others. But he had assailed the dominant crowd in a vital spot. The brilliance of Roman society was supported primarily by income from the big estates upon which he had laid his hands. Vested interests were threatened. They would not surrender without bloodshed. Besides, Gracchus had attacked the Senate’s authority both at home and in the provinces. The senatorial machine did not propose to take another chance with this brash young reformer. A bitter campaign followed. Stories were circulated that Tiberius intended to make himself dictator and that he proposed a general redistribution of wealth. The tenant farmers and farm hands with Roman citizenship had flocked to town to vote when his land measure was before the Assembly. But when election time came it was summer, the farmers were busy in their fields, and the old families had great influence with the city voters. Nevertheless, when the voting began, it was going in favour of the popular young tribune. A die-hard leader of the Senate proposed that martial law be decreed. The presiding officer refused to put the question, whereupon the die-hards organized a riot. Tiberius and more than three hundred of his followers were killed. For the first time in its long history Rome had seen an issue settled by violence instead of by peaceful compromise.

The work of the land-distribution commission was too popular to be destroyed with the death of its originator. It went forward for several years and perhaps seventy-five thousand families were settled on small farms. Later, when Gaius Gracchus was elected tribune, a further impetus was given to the project. Nevertheless its permanent results were small. The fundamental causes of the farm problem had not been reached. The independent small farmer could not have been restored to his old position without abolishing slavery. On a commercial basis many of the new farmers could not compete with the owners of the big slave-operated estates and ranches. The brothers doubtless hoped that there were still many dispossessed farmers who would be glad to be reestablished to practise farming as a way of life with no expectation of making money. The number of these proved disappointingly small. As soon as a modification in the law made it possible, many of the settlers sold their holdings and moved back to the city. Still, in the next century the Resettlement Administration project in modified form was revived to take care of ex-service men, as was done in the Western American states after the Civil War. Some five hundred thousand allotments were made. The results were fairly satisfactory and the farm problem did not again become acute until the end of the first century after Christ.

The methods to which Tiberius resorted to carry through his program left lasting impressions upon the Roman political structure. Heretofore the Assembly had been theoretically the supreme legislative body. Practically, it had been controlled by the old families, just as the House of Commons was long dominated by the British aristocracy. Tiberius had demonstrated that under an energetic leader the Assembly could run the government. Within a few years the tribunes were legally declared eligible for re-election and in the next century the recall of elective officials was occasionally employed. Unwittingly the first of the Gracchi had prepared the way for Big Business to enter politics.