HISTORY OF MORALS 115 



they, at all events, thought injustice, oppression, 

 and wrong. 



It is not our object to examine here on which 

 side really lay the injustice and the wrong, but 

 to point out that we seem to see here a hard 

 division into two distinct classes, just as there 

 was at the beginning, when men first handled 

 men. Once on a time there were the all-powerful 

 Roman and his slaves ; then came the, if possible, 

 still more powerful baron and his thralls ; then, 

 after many discoveries and inventions had helped 

 to modify institutions and soften manners, the 

 strong employer and the workmen, free in name, 

 free in many ways, yet hemmed in and circum- 

 scribed in other ways — a division still, though a 

 changed and softened division, between two sets 

 of men, and the child by descent of the old 

 division. No one would pretend that the work- 

 men of to-day are hemmed in and circumscribed 

 as they were a hundred years ago ; but the old 

 tradition has been handed on from generation to 

 generation, and is still a sufficiently living power 

 to keep going a sense of difference, almost of war- 

 fare, between the one set of men and the other. 



We come now to the second phase of an 

 historic struggle. Not warfare this against the 

 employer, but against work itself. 



Long ago, when man was a hunter, and had to 

 kill and cook his own game, it was a part of his 

 business to fashion and sharpen his own weapons, 

 and to attend to the wants of his horse, if he had 

 one. He divided labour chiefly in one way, and 

 that with his squaw, to whom fell the duties 



