Civilization and Decay 361 



earners. A rise in prices generally injures them. 

 Moreover, in the century of which Mr. Adams 

 speaks, the real non-producers were the great terri- 

 torial feudal lords and the kings and clergymen; 

 and these were then supreme. It was the period of 

 the ferocious Albigensian crusades. It is true that 

 it ushered in a rather worse period, that of the 

 struggle between England and France, with its at- 

 tendant peasant wars and Jacqueries, and huge bands 

 of marauding free-companies. But the alteration 

 for the worse was due to a fresh outbreak of "imag- 

 inative" spirit; and the first period was full of re- 

 curring plagues and famines, besides the ordinary 

 unrest, murder, oppression, pillage, and general cor- 

 ruption. Mr. Adams says that the different classes 

 of the population during that happy time "preyed 

 upon each other less savagely" than at other times. 

 All that need be said in answer is that there is not 

 now a civilized community, under no matter what 

 stress of capitalistic competition, in which the differ- 

 ent classes prey upon one another with one-tenth the 

 savagery they then showed ; or in which famine and 

 disease, even leaving war out of account, come any- 

 where near causing so much misery to poor people, 

 and above all to the wage-earners, or workingmen, 

 the under strata and base of the producing classes. 



From many of the statements in Mr. Adams's 

 very interesting concluding chapter I should equally 

 differ ; and yet this chapter is one which is not merely 

 interesting but soul-stirring, and it contains much 

 with which most of us would heartily agree. 

 16 VOL. I. 



