FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE. 73 i 



one who, as czar or emperor, surrounded with pomp and cere- 

 mony, has despotic power over scores of millions, exercised 

 through hundreds of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thou- 

 sands of officials. When the early Christian missionaries, having 

 humble externals and passing self-denying lives, spread over 

 pagan Europe, preaching forgiveness of injuries and the re- 

 turning of good for evil, no one dreamt that in course of time 

 their representatives would form a vast hierarchy, possessing 

 everywhere a large part of the land, distinguished by the haughti- 

 ness of its members grade above grade, ruled by military bishops 

 who led their retainers to battle, and headed by a pope exercising 

 supreme power over kings. So, too, has it been with that very 

 industrial system which many are now so eager to replace. In its 

 original form there was no prophecy of the factory system or 

 kindred organizations of workers. Differing from them only 

 as being the head of his house, the master worked along with 

 his apprentices and a journeyman or two, sharing with them 

 his table and accommodation, and himself selling their joint 

 produce. Only with industrial growth did there come employ- 

 ment of a larger number of assistants and a relinquishment, 

 on the part of the master, of all other business than that of super- 

 intendence. And only in the course of recent times did there 

 evolve the organizations under which the labors of hundreds and 

 thousands of men receiving wages, are regulated by various 

 orders of paid officials under a single or multiple head. These 

 originally small, semi-socialistic, groups of producers, like the 

 compound families or house-communities of early ages, slowly 

 dissolved because they could not hold their ground: the larger 

 establishments, with better subdivision of labor, succeeded be- 

 cause .they ministered to the wants of society more effectually. 

 But we need not go back through the centuries to trace transfor- 

 mations sufficiently great and unexpected. On the day when 

 30,000 a year in aid of education was voted as an experiment, 

 the name of idiot would have been given to an opponent who 

 prophesied that in fifty years the sum spent through imperial 

 taxes and local rates would amount to 10,000,000, or who said 

 that the aid to education would be followed by aids to feeding 

 and clothing, or who said that parents and children, alike de- 

 prived of all option, would, even if starving, be compelled by fine 

 or imprisonment to conform, and receive that which, with papal 

 assumption, the State calls education. No one, I say, would have - 

 dreamt that out of so innocent-looking a germ would have so 

 quickly evolved this tyrannical system, tamely submitted to by 

 people who fancy themselves free. 



Thus in social arrangements, as in all other things, change is 

 inevitable. It is foolish to suppose that new institutions set up, 



