LABOUR
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LABOUR
bourer then and now. This much, however, may be
asserted with confidence: the poorest one-tenth of
the labouring population were probably better fed
and better clothed, if not better housed, than is the
poorest one-tenth to-day; for " the grinding and
hopeless poverty, just above the verge of actual star-
vation, so often prevalent in the present time, did
not belong to medieval life" (Gibbins, " Industry in
England ", 177) ; the labouring class (meaning all per-
sons who got their living as wage-earners or through
self-employment, and not by employing others) re-
ceived a larger share per capita of the wealth then
created than our wage-earners obtain from the wealth
produced in our time; and, finally, the guild system
which governed town industry "did for a time, and in
large measure, succeed in reconciling the interests of
consumers and producers" (Ashley, "English Eco-
nomic History", II, 168).
Legislation pertaining to labour during the three centuries immediately preceding the Reformation was mostly enacted by the towns, the feudal lords, and the guilds. Its main results were the emancipation of the serfs and the privileges by which the guilds were enabled to become the real, if not the nominal, lawmakers in all things affecting the economic wel- fare of their members. The towns frequently, and the national governments occasionally, regulated the prices of bread and other articles of food. For the industrial principle of the time was regulation, not competition. In 1349 the English Parliament en- acted the first of the many statutes of labourers that have been passed in that country. It prohibited higher wages than those that had prevailed in 1.347, the year before the Black Death. A similar law was en- acted at the same time in France. Both ordinances aimed at keeping down the remuneration of the la- bourer, but neither was very successful.
From the Reformation until the industrial revolu- tion at the end of the eighteenth centm-y, the history of labour for the most part records a dechne from the conditions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The confiscation of the monastic and guild lands in England under Henry VIII and Edward VI, the evic- tion of large numbers of the tenants from their hold- ings, the enclosures of these lands and a large part of the common lands into great estates, and the substi- tution of competitive for customary rents, caused im- mense hardships to the agricultural population. In Germany much the same process of spoliation and impoverishment occurred, although it had begun in that country before the time of Luther. Owing to the Hundred Years' War and other causes, the rural popu- lation of France underwent many vicissitudes of for- tune, the net result of which seems to have been unfavourable. As a result of the great increase of capital, and the immense expansion of commerce and industry during this period, the labouring population in the towns and cities increased greatly in numbers and importance. Their condition was as a whole less happy than in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This is particularly true of England, where, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the guild lands were confiscated, and the guilds themselves all but disap- peared. Although they continued in France until the Revolution, and in Germany somewhat later, their control over industry in these countries was not as thorough as it had been before the Reformation. It must be remembered, however, that the power of the guilds would have been checked even if there had been no Reformation; for they were becoming too exclu- sive and too indifferent to the welfare of the consumer. In fact, these tendencies had already caused a great decline in the English guilds before the end of the fif- teenth century. Nevertheless, it remains true that both in England and Germany the Reformation in- flicted great injury on the guilds, and through them upon the whole labouring class. There was no legis-
lation during this period that was of any marked bene-
fit to the labourer. In France and Germany laws
were passed restricting the activities of the guilds. In
England the Statute of Labourers, which had been re-
enacted and amended at least ten times in the course
of two centuries, was supplanted in 1563 by the fa-
mous statute of Elizabeth. It embraced all the most
stringent provisions of the preceding laws, with some
clauses that were intended for the protection of the
worker. But its principal fault lay in the stipulation
that wages should be fixed and the law administered
by the justices of the peace. The latter generally
were keenly interested in keeping wages down, and in
exploiting the labourer. So thoroughly did they en-
force the law for their own benefit that by the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century they had "made low
wages, famine wages, traditional, and these wages, in-
sufficient by themselves, were supplemented from the
poor rate " (Rogers, "The Economic Interpretation of
History ", 43) . This reference to the poor rate calls to
mind the Elizabethan Poor Law, which had lieen ren-
dered necessary through the confiscation of the guild
and monastic lands, and the destruction of the monas-
tic system of poor relief.
The modern industrial era, the factory system, the age of machine production, began, properly speaking, with the industrial revolution. The latter phrase describes that series of changes which was eflfected by several notable inventions, chiefly the steam-engine, spinning machinery, and the power-loom, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Among their most important immediate results were: the grouping of workingmen into factories where they tended machines instead of working in their homes with the old and simple tools; the ownership of the factories and machinery by capitalist employers, instead of by the labourers themselves; a great increase in the de- pendence of the labourer upon the employer; and con- gestion of the working population in the cities which grew up close to the factories and commercial estab- lishments. Hereafter, labour in this article is to be understood of wage-earners only. Simultaneously with the revolution in industrial processes and rela- tions, there occurred a revolution, as thorough if not as sudden, in economic theory and legislation. The teaching of the physiocrats and the eighteenth-cen- tury political writers in France, the economico-polit- ical theories of Smith and Ricardo in England, and the self-interest of the English capitalists, all combined to inaugurate a regime of complete freedom of contract, complete freedom of competition, and almost com- plete non-intervention of Government in industry. The old legislation fixing wages, and requiring a seven- years' period of apprenticeship, was abolishetl in 1813 and 1814, and nothing was substituted for the pro- tection of the labourer. While every law that in any way restricted the freedom of the employer or reg- ulated the conditions of employment was abolished, the old Combination Acts, which made labour organ- izations criminal, were re-enacted in 1799. This act prohibited even the contribution of money in further- ance of a strike. In fact, the prevailing theory of in- dustrial liberty seemed to require that the individual employer should always deal with the individual worker, and to assume that this would be for the best interests of all. Undoubtedly, many of the old regula- tions, such as the law of apprenticeship, had outlived their usefulness and ought to have been repealed, but some of them were still valuable or could have been made so by amendment. What was needed was new and appropriate regulation, not the absence of all regulation. As a result of the policy of non-inter- vention, the working classes of England experienced during the first half of the nineteenth century a depth of misery and degradation which has obtained the name of "English wage slavery".
Long before these conditions had reached their lowest
