Evolution of the Wages System. 223 



since the famous statute of laborers in 1350. The first 

 hundred years of the distinctively wage period was one of 

 marked improvement in the condition of the laborers. 

 Wages, which in the middle of the fourteenth century were 

 but three pence or less a day, were doubled by the middle of 

 the following century. Although, through causes which I 

 cannot now stop to explain, this rise of wages was arrested* 

 for several centuries, they were never forced back to the 

 previous state. With the rise of the factory system, how- 

 ever, the same influences which produced the progress of 

 the fourteenth century, again began to operate, and the 

 wages system received a new impetus. And with all the 

 disadvantages, and they are many, it must be admitted 

 that the industrial and social progress of the laboring 

 classes, and indeed everything that makes for civilization, 

 has been greater than ever before. 



With this evolution of industrial and municipal power 

 came also political representation. As early as 1188, we 

 find, the cities of Spain acquired the right of representa- 

 tion in the Cortes. In England, the burgesses received a 

 general confirmation of their charters, which, with many 

 new privileges, were declared inviolable by Magna Charta 

 in 1214. This was publicly confirmed thirty-two times be- 

 fore the middle of the next century, and in 1265 the bvir- 

 gesses obtained representation in parliament. With the 

 growth of industrial freedom and general advancement 

 toward wage conditions their power over the monarchy 

 gradually increased, till, in the reign of Edward III., 

 parliament demanded the right to appoint the king's coun- 

 sellors, and finally to make and unmake kings. There is 

 another fact worthy of note in this connection; namely, 

 that in the same way that, with the development of the 

 laborers from villeinage to wage receivers, and with the 

 rise of wages and improved social conditions, their political 

 power increased, so with the arrest of the rise of wages 

 and social improvement, in the middle of the fifteenth 

 century, their political power decayed. And it was not 

 until the subsequent rise of wages under the factory sys- 

 tem that any real revival of the political power of the 

 masses took place. 



It will thus be observed that, historically, the evolution 

 of the wages system is an integral part of the evolution of 



* Wealth and rrogress, Part II., ch. v. 



