REGULATION OF LABOUR. 417 



&quot;Rest from labour, in the strict sense, took place only on the several 

 festival days, and especially in the holiday-month after the comple 

 tion of the winter sowing (ferice sementivce) : during these set times 

 the plough rested by command of the gods, and not the farmer only, 

 but also his slave and his ox, reposed in holiday -idleness.&quot; 

 A more direct regulation was exercised. Says Mommsen : 



&quot; In Rome the vintage did not begin until the supreme priest of the 

 community, the Flamen Dialis, had granted permission for it, and had 

 himself made a beginning by breaking off a cluster of grapes.&quot; 

 Like in spirit was the order against selling new wine until 

 the priest had proclaimed the opening of the casks. 



Among the Jews the driving out of the money-changers 

 from the temple, presupposes an extreme instance of this 

 influence of ecclesiastical usages over industrial usages : the 

 original sacred use of the place having been obscured by the 

 secular use it had initiated ; for doubtless this secular use had 

 arisen from the desire to get sacred witness to commercial 

 transactions. 



771. That in later European societies industrial regula 

 tion was at first, and long continued to be, a part of political 

 regulation, is a truth so familiar that it scarcely needs illus 

 tration. It may be well, however, to show how complete has 

 been in past times their union. 



In those mediaeval days when the local head, and after 

 wards the feudal lord, ruled over a territory from which 

 supplies of all kinds had to be furnished, he controlled the 

 processes of production for his own convenience, just as he 

 controlled other things. . Down to the serfs and slaves all 

 were governed in their industrial activities as in their lives 

 at large. Under the feudal regime in France, when, in addi 

 tion to the rural labours pursued within each domain there 

 grew up trades in towns, the governmental authority exer 

 cised in the one extended itself to the other. Whether the 

 feudal superior was lay seigneur, archbishop, king, chapter, 

 or monastery, power was exercised by him or it over industry 

 as over other things ; so that the right to exercise a trade, or 



