FROM SERFDOM TO FREEDOM. 89 



can take care of and provide for the employees better than they can 

 themselves; that they should be very thankful when out of his abun- 

 dance the employer builds them a library or permits them to live in 

 some finely ordered village as he directs. But somehow the feeling is 

 growing now that if the wage-earner had a larger and fairer share in the 

 profits he could take care of himself better in the end and grow faster, 

 because he would be more his own master; and that the good things 

 now and then given him with more or less ostentation as gifts are 

 bought with the money he really ought to have and in the future 

 hopes to have himself. 



Well, the result of such laws and the general social discontent and 

 the levy of new taxes upon even the lower classes brought about the 

 Peasant Revolt in 1381. Of course, the power of the upper classes, 

 aided by the courage of Richard II, then only a boy, put down the 

 revolt, but not until the king had promised amnesty and emancipa- 

 tion to the serfs. Death on the scaffold and in the field soon showed 

 the participants how little such promises were worth. The serfs were 

 subdued, but strife between the laborers and employers was not ended. 

 The legislation still reflects the terror and greed of the landowners, 

 for, in spite of all, labor was in demand and had the market at its feet. 

 Legislation forbade " the child of any tiller of the soil to be appren- 

 ticed in a town," and the landowners " prayed Richard to ordain ' that 

 no bondman or bondwoman shall place their children at school, as has 

 been done, so as to advance their children in the world by their 

 going into the church.' " But villeinage continued to disaj^pear, and 

 within the next hundred and fifty years it had become " an antiquated 

 thing." The failure of the landowners to again fasten labor to the 

 soil and to fix low wages drove their energies in a new direction. 

 " Sheep farming required fewer hands than tillage, and the scarcity 

 and high price of labor tended to throw more and more land into 

 sheep farms." As personal service died away it became the interest 

 of the lord to unite the small holdings on his estate into larger ones. 

 The evictions consequent upon this course threw many laborers upon 

 the market, and the sheep farms diminished the number required, 

 while the smaller amount of holdings devoted f o agriculture increased 

 the price of food. And so it is not surprising that within the course 

 of a comparatively few years, instead of a scarcity there was a glut 

 of labor; that pauperism increased, and social discontent continued; 

 that vagabondage with its dangers to society at large became a difficult 

 problem. Indeed, the poor have always been with us, but those of 

 us who find so much to depress us in these modern days can get new 

 courage by looking back to those old days and can see the real progTcss 

 which has been made. The whole lower class in England down to 

 the time of Elizabeth stood looking into the face of want. Henry 



