PRESENT CONDITION AND FUTURE PROSPECTS, ETC. 19

an economical expedient. When the monarchy was restored, his employers, who fixed his wages by their own authority, relieved their own estates of their ancient dues at the expense of his poor luxuries, by the excise; tied him to the soil by the law of settlement, and starved him by a prohibitive corn law. The freedom of the few was bought by the servitude of the many. Fletcher, of Saltoun, an ardent republican for a narrow class, suggested hopeless slavery as the proper doom of the laborers, argued that the people existed only to work, and that philosophical politicians have the power to limit their existence by labor. Throughout the eighteenth century the most enlightened men gave the poor their pity, occasionally their patronage, and would sometimes assist them at the cost of other workers; but beyond a bare existence never imagined that they had rights or remembered that they had suffered wrongs. The weight of taxation fell on them in every direction and with searching severity. It was necessary to find funds at all risks and from every source; and it is obvious that the most fruitful source of taxation is that of necessary consumption and cheap luxuries. It was, of course, impossible to tax the absolute necessaries of the individual workman, else he would starve and perish. But the process left him nothing but a bare subsistence. To crown the whole, the penalties of felony and conspiracy were denounced against all laborers who associated together to better their lot by endeavoring to sell their labor in concert, while the desperation which poverty and misery induce, and the crime they suggest, were met by a code more sanguinary and brutal than any which a civilized nation had ever heretofore devised or a high-spirited one submitted to.

Such was the education which the English workmen received from those days when the government employed and developed those means for oppressing and degrading him. It is no marvel that he identifies the policy of landowner, farmer and capitalist employer with the machinery by which his lot has been shaped and his fortunes in the distribution of national wealth have been controlled. He may have no knowledge, or a very vague knowledge, as to the process by

which so strange, so woeful an alteration has been made in his condition. But there exists, and always has existed, a tradition, obscure and uncertain, but deep seated, that there was a time when his lot was happier, his means more ample, his prospects more cheerful than they have been in more modern experience. From one point of view the annalist of the good old times may be able to show that life was shorter, disease more rife, the market of food more unsteady, the conveniences of life fewer and more precarious than they are now. From another point of view, and that by far the most accurate and exact, the relative position of the workman was one of far more hope and far more plenty in the days of the Plantagenets than it has been in those of Hanover. Wages were, relative to their purchasing power, far higher, and the margin of enjoyable income over necessary expenditure was, in consequence, far wider.

CHAPTER II.

HISTORY OF MECHANICAL LABOR.

THE MECHANIC IN GREECE IN ROME - AMONG THE ANCIENT GERMANS ON THE MEDIEVAL ESTATES - DIFFERENTIATION OF EMPLOYMENTS AND RISE OF CITIES - OFFICIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE MECHANICS RISE OF THE GUILDS - CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GUILD SYSTEM-DIVISION INTO MASTERS, APPRENTICES AND JOURNEYMEN - PRIVILEGES OF THE GUILDS - DUTIES OF THE GUILDS (a) TO THEIR OWN MEMBERS; (b) TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC-POLICE AND JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE GUILDS GRADUAL RISE OF DISTINCT SOCIAL CLASSES WITHIN THE GUILD-THE DIFFERENTIATION OF A LABORING CLASS AND THE CONSEQUENT APPEARANCE OF THE "LABOR QUESTION"-DegeneraTION OF THE GUILDS - SELFISH POLICY OF THE MASTERS (a) TOWARD THEIR WORKMEN; (b) TOWARD THE PUBLIC DEMAND FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE GUILDS IN THE INTEREST (a) OF GENERAL LIBERTY; (b) OF THE LABORER HIMSELF; (c) OF THE LARGE CAPITALIST — FALL OF THE GUILDS AND RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM OF INDUSTRY.

HE preceding chapter was chiefly devoted to a history

THE

of agricultural labor in England. It may serve also as a general description of the course of development of agricultural labor in modern times in all the countries of Western Europe. The same general forces have been at work in these nations for more than one thousand years, bringing about the same general result in all, each case being, however, somewhat varied owing to local circumstances and influences.

Many of the laws mentioned in the preceding chapter applied equally to laborers in the mechanical callings and, of course, the forces and influences which determined the condition of the agricultural laborer could not but affect in the most intimate way the condition and welfare of the mechanic. It is impossible to discuss one of these topics without touching upon the other at various points. But there are certain features in the history of mechanical labor which make it desirable to discuss the subject somewhat more in detail. Indeed, in order to understand at all the labor legislation and