CHAPTEE XVIII. 



COMPOUND FKEE LABOUR. 



816. THUS far we have been concerned, if not wholly 

 yet chiefly, with industrial relations between individuals. 

 Though, in sundry cases referred to, one master has directed 

 several workers and sometimes many, yet he has separately 

 regulated each: each man has done this or that particular 

 thing according to order. In other words the work has been 

 retail in its character, not wholesale. 



Of wholesale labour the earlier forms were of course com 

 pulsory. By men under coercion were built the pyramids of 

 Egypt and the vast buildings of Assyria. Besides bondsmen 

 in their &quot; factories,&quot; the Phoenicians, like others of the 

 ancients, had galley-slaves. Beyond doubt the public works 

 of the Greeks, such as the attempted canal across the isth 

 mus of Corinth, were carried on by slave-labour. And it 

 was thus with the Romans. Mommsen writes: 



&quot; In the construction of the Marcian aqueduct . . . the government 

 concluded contracts for building and materials simultaneously with 

 3,000 master-tradesmen, each of whom then performed the work con 

 tracted for with his band of slaves.&quot; 



If not in such extensive and fully organized ways, yet in 

 ways kindred in character, the large structures bequeathed 

 by mediaeval days must have been executed. Unskilled 

 workmen who helped the masons to build the great cathe 

 drals were probably serfs from the estates of the Church; 

 and the laborious part of castle-building was doubtless 

 chiefly done by the serfs of nobles. In our own country 



may be instanced the case of Windsor Castle. We read that 



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