5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



suspecting as much. The baron of feudal days never imagined the 

 possibility of social arrangements that would serve him far better than 

 the arrangements he so strenuously upheld ; nor did he see in the ar- 

 rangements he upheld the causes of his* many sufferings and discom- 

 forts. Had he been told that a noble might be much happier without 

 a moated castle, having its keep and secret passages and dungeons for 

 prisoners that he might be more secure without drawbridge and 

 portcullis, men-at-arms and sentinels that he might be in less danger 

 having no vassals or hired mercenaries that he might be wealthier 

 without possessing a single serf; he would have thought the state- 

 ments absurd even to the extent of insanity. It would have been use- 

 less to argue that the regime seeming so advantageous to him entailed 

 hardships of so many kinds perpetual feuds with his neighbors, open 

 attacks, surprises, betrayals, revenges by equals, treacheries by infe- 

 riors ; the continual carrying of arms and wearing of armor ; the per- 

 petual quarrellings of servants and disputes among vassals ; the coarse 

 and unvaried food supplied by an unprosperous agriculture ; a domes- 

 tic discomfort such as no modern servant would tolerate : resulting in 

 a wear and tear that brought life to a comparatively early close, if it 

 was not violently cut short in battle or by murder. Yet what the 

 class-bias of that time made it impossible for him to see, has become to 

 his modern representative conspicuous enough. The peer of our day 

 knows that he is better off without defensive appliances, and retainers, 

 and serfs, than his predecessor was with them. His country-house is 

 more secure than was an embattled tower ; he is safer among his un- 

 armed domestics than a feudal lord was when surrounded by armed 

 guards ; he is in less danger going about weaponless than was the 

 mail-clad knight with lance and sword. Though he has no vassals to 

 fight at his command, there is no suzerain who can call on him to sacri- 

 fice his life in a quarrel not his own ; though he can compel no one to 

 labor, the labors of freemen make him immensely more wealthy than 

 was the ancient holder of bondsmen ; and along with the loss of direct 

 control over workers there has grown up an industrial system which 

 supplies him with multitudinous conveniences and luxuries undreamt 

 of by him who had workers at unchecked command. 



'May we not, then, suspect that, just as the dominant classes of an- 

 cient days were prevented by the feelings and ideas appropriate to 

 the then-existing social state from seeing how much evil is brought on 

 them, and how much better for them might be a social state in which 

 their power was much less ; so the dominant classes of the present day 

 are disabled from seeing how the existing forms of class-subordination 

 redound to their own injury, and how much happier may be their fu- 

 ture representatives having social positions less prominent ? Occa- 

 sionally recognizing, though they do, certain indirect evils attending 

 their supremacy, they do not see that by accumulation these indirect 

 evils constitute a penalty which supremacy brings on them. Though 



