LABOUR
721
LABOUR
free tenants or serfs. The latter were soon reduced to
their former condition, and all the legislation and cus-
toms which, under the influence of Christianity, had
been introduced for the protection of the slave were
ruthlessly set aside by the new masters of the Roman
Empire. With the exception of the Visigoths and the
Burgundians, the barbarian tribes generally restored
to the landlord the power of removing the serf from the
land, and to the master the power of life and death
over his slave. Speaking generally, this continued to
be the situation down to the time of Charlemagne.
From the beginning of his reign the lot of the slaves
rapidly improved and their numliers rapidly decreased,
so that by the middle of the tenth century they had
almost all been transformed into serfs throughout
the Holy Roman Empire. One hundred j-ears later,
about seven per cent of the inhabitants of England
were slaves, but the institution had practically dis-
appeared in that country by the middle of the twelfth
century. In the year 1170 the last remnant of it in
Ireland was abolished by St. LawTence O'Toole.
At the end of Charlemagne's reign practically all the land w^thin his dominions was held by the great war- riors, the clergy, and the monasteries. The majority of the workers on these great estates were serfs, while the proprietors were feudal lords. PoUtically, the latter were not only the military defenders of their territory, but to a great extent legislators, adminis- trators, and j udges ; economically, they had the right to receive from the cultivators of the soil a rent, either in services, produce, or money. Serfdom differed very much in its degrees at different times and in different places, but it always assumed that the serf, while not owned like a slave, belonged in a general sense to the lord, was obliged to expend a certain portion of his laljour for the benefit of the latter, and was bound to the soil. Very often he was compelled to make other contributions to the lord, such as a fine on the occa- sion of his own or his son's marriage. In the course of time the serf was relieved of these less regular bur- dens, his labour services were definitely fixed by cus- tom, and his tenure of the land that he cultivated on his own account was made secure by custom, if not by law. Between the eighth and the twelfth century serfdom was the condition of the majority of the la- bouring class, not only throughout the Holy Roman Empire, but, with the exception of Ireland, all over Europe. Ireland had the clan system. During the period now under discussion town life was generally less important than it had been before the downfall of the old empire. Most of the towns were merely in- tegral elements of the feudal estates. Since there was very little commerce between one country and an- other or between different portions of the same coun- try, the town handicrafts supplied as a rule only those comparatively few local needs that could not be met by labour within each household. The condition of the labouring class seems to have been on the whole better than at any previous time. The fact that the great majority of the workers were no longer slaves, and that they were enabled to till on their own ac- count land of which their possession was fairly secure, represented a large measure of progress. With the exception of ordinances mitigating and abolishing slavery, there was no important labour legislation during this period.
Between the twelfth and the end of the fifteenth cen- tury, the great majority of the serfs of England be- came free tenants, that is, they were gradually re- lieved from the fines and petty exactions imposed upon them by the lord, and from other disabilities, economic and civil; they were permitted to pay their rent in money instead of in labour or produce; they were no longer bound to the soil, and their possession of their holdings was secured by law, or by custom which had the force of law. In France emancipation was not quite so rapid, nor was it so thorough in the VIII.— 46
individual case; still it had been extended to the great
majority of the serfs by the time of the Reformation.
It was effected much more slowly in Germany. At
the beginning of the Reformation the condition of the
majority of the tenants there was that of serfdom, and
a particularly oppressive form of serfdom in the case of
a considerable number. As a consequence of their
revolt and its bloody suppression, their emancipation
was set back for at least a century. The majority of
the German peasants were still serfs at the end of the
eighteenth century. Serfdom lasted in Russia until
1S61.
The emancipation of the serfs during the later Mid- dle Ages was due in great measure to the growth of towns and town industries. Attention has already been called to the fact that many of the towns owed their origin to the settlements made and the industries built up by the monks. The latter not only exercised handicrafts themselves, but taught their neighbours to do likewise. In the cour.se of time groups consisting of se\'eral hundred, and sometimes of several thousand, persons were centered about the monastery, many of whom were artisans more or less independent of any lord, and having a fairly good reahzation of their freedom and their importance. Not all, indeed, but very many of the medieval towns arose in this man- ner. In the twelfth century the towns in England be- gan to purchase charters from the king, the lord, or the monastery, according as each happened to control the land upon which the town was situated. In this way they obtained a considerable measure of self-gov- ernment. About the same time the merchants and the artisans began to combine in associations called, respectively, merchant guilds and craft guilds (see Guilds). The latter, which were much the more im- portant, comprised master- workmen, journeymen, and apprentices. They had, generally speaking, a monop- oly of their respective trades or crafts, and regulated not only the general conditions in which work was per- formed, but even the wages of the journeymen and the prices of the product. Their ordinances had for a long time a semi-legal character and all the practical force of a civil law. Thus the towns became the abode of populations that were not subject to the lord, and that were a standing check upon his power, not only because they were free themselves, but owng to the contagion of their example. Moreover, the serf who escaped frcSm the lord and maintained a residence in the town for a year and a day, was thereby made a freeman. The development of the towns and guilds in England was typical, with some differences of time and detail, of Europe generally. In most places the guilds reached their highest degree of efficiency in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The condition of the labouring classes both in town and country during these two centuries was much bet- ter than it had ever been before. In the first place, the worker enjoyed considerable security of position, either on the land that he tilled or in the craft that he pursued. According to the theories of the time, the members of every class performed a social function which gave them a social claim to a livehhood in con- formity with tlieir needs and customs. Hence the feudal lord and the monastery were charged with the care of all the inhabitants of their estates, while the guilds were required to find work or relief for their members. Although the workers enjoyed as a whole less individual freedom than they do to-day, their eco- nomic position was more secure, and their future less uncertain. There was no proletariat in the modern sense, that is, no considerable number of persons for whose welfare no person or agency was held socially responsible. As to the content of the livelihood ob- tained by the average labourer of that period, any at- tempt at a precise statement would be misleading. Nor is it possible to institute any general comparison that would be of value between the welfare of the la-
