INTRODUCTORY 



I. EVIDENCE. 



THE inquiry of which the results are set forth in these pages was under- 

 taken in the endeavour to satisfy my own mind on a very important 

 question in the history of the past. Circumstances have compelled me to 

 interest myself in the civilization of the Greco-Roman world. And it has 

 always been a painful disadvantage to students of the ' classical' systems 

 that the available record neither provides adequate labour-statistics nor -\ 

 riticism of exiling labour"Conmtionslr^ 



furnishes a criticism of exiling labour"Conmtionslr^ 

 of thfihandworkecs Accustomed >s we are nowadays to contirruat 

 agitations for increase of wages and reduction of working hours, with 

 centuries of strange experience in the working of Poor-laws, we are in 

 no danger of undervaluing the importance of the wage-earner in our 

 social fabric. We are rather in danger of forgetting other (and perhaps 

 not less vital) considerations, under pressure of the material claims of 

 the labourer and his hire. Power goes by votes; the handworker is 

 now a voter; and the voice of the handworker is loud in the land. No 

 scheme is too wild to find advocates; and those who venture to assert 

 the right of in vention, organization and thrift to superior recognition 

 as public benefits often think it necessary to adopt an apologetic tone. 

 Now it may be that this is a passing phase, and that the so-called 

 'working-class' that is, handworkers for wages will come to see that 

 the civilization whose comforts they enjoy, and whose discomforts they 

 resent, does not wholly depend upon the simple repeated acts of the 

 handworkers themselves. Perhaps there are already signs of some such 

 reaction. But, if so, the reaction must be voluntary ; for no power exists 

 in this country to constrain the handworker to take reasonable views, 

 in short to face facts. In these words I am not implying any denial of 

 the reasonableness of many of his claims. To offer an opinion on 

 questions of more or less is no business of mine. 



But, when we compare modern industries in general with those of 

 the ancient world, we find ourselves in presence of a very different 

 situation. The largest scale of operations attainable in antiquity seems 

 small and crude by the side of recent achievements, for instance the 

 building of the Pyramids compared with the Panama canal. Machinery, 

 transport, and scientific discovery in general, have made it possible to 

 carry out colossal undertakings with comparative ease and without 

 wholesale destruction of human life. The greatest works of the ancients 



H. A. I 



