NOTHING NEW

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 81, 17 March 1933, Page 6

NOTHING NEW

FINANCIAL CRISIS IN EARLY GREECE. (By F. A. A. Russell in “Sydney Horning Herald.’’) Long before Karl Marx had invented u class war and capitalistic systems M the Frankenstein which crushes the working man, long before the earliest high protection which we know to day, there was a financial crisis, a moratortmu, and an interest reduction law. It was ages before the gold standard became the plaything of high finance, or, if you prefer so to think of it, ages ; before Mars had broken the machinery or finance and left its operators groping. Not even the great economists know much about it; only a few poor classical students know. Solon, the great lawyer of Athens, prescribed it, and the story- for English readers is told in Plutarch’s “Lives.’’ It was six centuries before the Christian era, when the Athenians were quarelling among themselves about government. The “Hill” it is reported (as at Sydney Cricket Ground to-day; favoured democracy; the “Plain” favoured oligarchy; and others who lived by the seaside formed an All for Athens party, which hindered the extremists on either side from prevailing. Not much is known about the economic causes of the trouble, but it is clear that the disparity of fortune between the rich and the poor just at that time reached its height. All the people were indebted. Plutarch says, to the rich, and either they tilled their lands for their creditors, paying them one-sixth part of the increase, or they engaged their body for the debt, and might be seized and either »ent into slavery at home (there were then numbers of slaves besides these bright citizens), or sold to strangers. Some (no law forbidding) were foiced to sell their children and fly from their eountry to avoid the cruelty of creditors; but those who had most grit began to encourage one another to stand to it and choose a leader to liberate the condemned debtors, divide the land, and change the government. It was perceived that Solon was not implicate in the existing trouble; he had not joined in the exactions of the rich, and was not involved in the necessities of the poor. He became popuand perhaps could have been king er tyrant of Athens. He said, however, tyranny was a very fair spot, but one which had no good way down from it, and declined to be a starter or to speak for that prize. He was made Archon and empowered to be an arbitrator and lawgiver. Though he would not be tyrant, he was not too mild in the affair; he did not show himself mean and submissive to the powerful, or make laws to please those that ehose him. Where it was well before he applied no remedy for fear of disordering the State.

He arranged, it seems, for a forgiveness of debt to the extent that men should be released from prison, and no man thereafter could engage the body of his debtor for security. Apart from this, not all debts were cancelled, but the interest only lessened, which sufficiently pleased the people, so that they named the benefit Soisacthea, and he enlarged their measures and raised the value of their money. He did this by what we should call to-day de-valuing the monetary unit (which our banks ■nd economists have to some extent done to-day in relation to the £ sterling). Plutarch describes the effect as such that, though the number of pieces ia payment was equal, the value was less. As to the extent of the improvement which he made in the value (! purchasing power of money), the ratio itself is interesting to-day; he made a pound, which before passed for io drachmas, go for a hundred. EPIGRAMS OF ACHIEVEMENT. Like great men of to-day, Solon wrote something in the nature of an autobiography. Only, like great men of olc( he did it in verse. 1‘ rom that verse Plutarch culled these quotations: Of his country:— The mortgage stones—that covered her, by me Removed—the land that was a slave is free. Of the exiles: — .... so far their lot to roam. They had forgot the language of their home. And of those set free: — Who here in shameful servitude were held. Other marks of Solon's adminstration give it a setting in the midst of rumour, scandal and calumny of just such a kind as we should expect to find in like case today in almost any of our capital cities. For example, one writer affirmed that Solon, to save his country, put a trick upon both parties, and privatelypromised the poor a division of the lands and the rich security for their debts. He himself declared that he was afraid of the pride of one party and the greed of the other. At all events, he seems to have made some use df engima—declaring that when things are even there never can bij war. which pleased both parties; the wealthy conceiving him to be mean, where all have their fair proportion but the poor. wbe n ail are absolutely equal. And he was certainly guilty of one great indiscretion, from which a public man would hardly clear himself ttvday. When he was considering the equivalent of his Moratorium and Interest Reduction Act. , “be told some of his friends, Conon, Clinias, and Hipponicus, in whom he had a great deal of confidence, that, he would not meddle with the lane's, but only free the people from their debts; upon which they, using their advantage, made haste and borrowed some consid erablc sums of money and purchased some large farms: and when the law was enacted, they kept the possessions and would not return the money; which brought Solon into great suspicion and dislike” —and would, indeed, to-day in Australia have caused him to run the gauntlet of a Royal Commission. Plutarch presents the view that he was ;i ot concerned in, but his confidence was abused by, the contrivance. Solon, however, presently stopped this suspicion by releasing his debtors of five talents, or simc say fifteen according to