FROM SERFDOM TO FREEDOM. 87 



Here we have the labor problem at once and at the beginning. And 

 from that time to this that problem has been with lis. With the 

 capitalist one person and the laborer another there has been always 

 more or less discord. As Richard T. Ely has somewhere said, 

 although in theory capital and labor should be allies and not enemies, 

 the interests of those furnishing capital or labor are not precisely 

 identical. But five hundred years ago the labor class of to-day had 

 just come into existence. It had no organization then, and its mem- 

 bers few political rights. The landowners and craftsmen could ap- 

 peal effectively to the crown and Parliament through their wealth, 

 their political power, and the craftsmen, especially, through their 

 organizations. The laborer had only himself and brute force. As a 

 result, the legislation of that day reflects the demands of the upper 

 and middle classes only. The laboring class was considered only as 

 it affected the landowners and craftsmen. So the labor troubles of 

 that day were met with the Statute of Laborers. " Every man or 

 woman," runs this famous provision, " of whatsoever condition, free 

 or bond, able in body, and within the age of threescore years, . . . 

 and not having of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy 

 himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve the em- 

 ployer who shall require him to do so, and shall take only the wages 

 which were accustomed to be taken in the neighborhood where he is 

 bound to serve " two years before the plague began. A refusal to 

 obey was punished by imprisonment. Here was an attempt to fix 

 the rate of wages by statute, and to fij?: them very much lower than 

 a fair market rate; and, further, to force the unemployed laborer 

 to serve any man who first demanded it. The statute failed in its 

 object, naturally, and so sterner measures were adopted. " ISTot only 

 was the price of labor fixed by Parliament in the next statute of 

 1351, but the labor class was once more tied to the soil." It was 

 made the servant not of one master but of a class — ^the employers. 

 " The laborer was forbidden to quit the parish where he lived in search 

 of better-paid employment; if he disobeyed, he became a ' fugitive,' 

 and subject to imprisonment at the hands of the justices of the peace." 

 Provisions had risen so that a day's work at the legal wages would 

 not purchase enough for a man's support, and therefore no such law 

 could be enforced literally. Still, the landowners persisted in trying, 

 and at last the runaway laborer, the man looking for better wages, was 

 branded on the forehead with a hot iron, while the harboring of serfs 

 in towns was rigorously put down. As the landowners wanted all 

 the labor they could get, the commutation of labor service for money 

 payments ceased, and every effort was made and every quibble taken 

 advantage of to annul manumissions previously made. In the towns, 

 under the pressure of the craftsmen, the system of forced labor was 



