88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



applied with even more rigor than in the country, and strikes and 

 combinations became frequent. 



That is the state of things in free England at a time when labor 

 was not strong enough to protect itself — called upon by the law of 

 the land to work for less than living wages or be branded as cattle! 

 The irrepressible conflict between capital and labor began with the 

 very beginning of the existence of the labor class. 



In such a condition of things as here indicated, is it any wonder 

 that there were labor disturbances in those days — that there was a 

 peasant revolt? Already the doctrine of the equality of man and 

 social inequality was being preached to the lower classes. In 1360 

 John Ball — " a mad priest in Kent," as Froissart calls him — preached 

 such a communistic sermon as this to the sturdy yeomen of that day : 

 " Good people, things will never go well in England so long as goods 

 be not in common, and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. 

 By what right are they whom we call lords greater folk than we? 

 On what grounds have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in 

 serfage? If we all came of the same father and mother, of Adam and 

 Eve, how can they say or prove that they are better than we, if it be 

 not that they make us gain for them by our toil what they spend in 

 their pride? They are clothed in velvet, and warm in their furs and 

 their ermines, while we are covered with rags. They have wine and 

 spices and fair bread; an-d we oatcake and straw, and water to drink. 

 They have leisure and fine houses; we have pain and labor, the rain 

 and wind in the fields. And yet it is of us and of our toil that these 

 men hold their state." That is the same cry against the inequality 

 of property and social condition which we hear to-day. And we 

 may thank him, and men like him and with his inspiration, that the 

 conditions of five hundred years ago have changed, and that the dawn 

 of a better and higher humanity has broken upon us. Filled with 

 socialism and communism as the words are, they still have a truth 

 which appeals to every sympathetic and thoughtful man. 



And it was in those early days that the old rhyme was heard all 

 over the land : 



" When Adam delved and Eve span. 

 Who was then the gentleman ? " 



The sermon was preached against the tyranny of property, the 

 rhyme was full of the democracy of the coming years. 



I do not imagine that the instigators of such laws as the Statute 

 of Laborers were hard men as men go. They could see only their 

 side of the case. The laborer had become a necessity for them, and 

 they rather believed that the Almighty had put him on earth for their 

 advantage. I am afraid that something of that spirit still is left 

 among us. The feeling still exists that the employer and capitalist 



