THOUGHTS ON THE LABOR QUESTION. ARLYLE said, thirty-five years ago, "Labour must become a し seeing rational giant, with a soul in the body of him, and take his place on the throne of things." Labor is already indeed a great giant, but as yet the soul is not in him in such effectual way as to keep him wholly sweet and sound. That problem of getting soul-power into labor, still lies athwart us, and is very urgently demanding consideration. One of the wholesome signs of the age is that it cares, with more sincerity and ability to understand and wisely adjust the industry of the world, than any of its predecessors, and it is the province of a Democratic epoch to explore the life of the working classes, and put it on the best possible foundation. In the labor history of Modern Europe, it may fairly be claimed that the great causes leading from serfdom and slavery, were skilled trades, and enfranchisement by means of municipal and borough charters. Nothing can well be conceived more deplorable than the condition in which the lower classes were left by that disorganization of society, which constituted the fall of the Roman Empire, and by the reconstruction, under the feudal system, of the Teutonic races. The Empire, by turning the trades-unions into agencies for collecting the imperial revenue, had reduced them to a pitiable state, stripping them of all their accumulations and leaving their members destitute of personal freedom, and burdened with heavy taxes. The peasantry were either the personal property of landowners, or serfs attached to the soil and bought and sold with it. Skilled trades were practised by men who could be auctioned off in the market at the will of their masters. But the military system of the uncivilized conquerors of. the western Empire finished the degradation of labor. Coming into possession of from half to two-thirds of the real estate of the subjugated provinces, and maintaining themselves not only against insurrection, but against the violence of each other, by force of arms, these German captains managed to put an end to all but the simplest and most necessary industry. The better grade of industrial arts could not be maintained in the midst of anarchy, when the roads were infested by freebooters from the castles, when cities were broken into and robbed by half savage barons, and when fields of ripening grain were trampled down by bands of plunderers ere their owners could gather their crops. Nor was there much appreciation of the finer products of human skill among the powerful in days when the severity of the camp was the honored mode of life common to the rich and the ruling class. The violence of the times made it desirable, also, that the yeomen or free farmers should connect themselves with feudal chiefs for the sake of personal protection, and this was given upon the condition of a vassalage scarcely better for the poor man than a pure serfdom. Indeed, this vassalage soon grew into serfdom, since laws were passed forbidding a man to change his master, compelling him to pay to his lord the customary tax in labor, produce or service, and outlawing hiin if he became a fugitive. It is not to be wondered at that, under such circumstances, there should have been a time in Europe, when a linen sheet was worth thirty-two days common labor, and a gridiron from four to twelve days; when the halls of baronial castles were strewn with rushes for carpets, and countesses and marchionesses used their gowns for bed covering; when noble revellers sat on rude wooden benches, picking their food with their fingers from the dishes; when cities were crumbling into ruins, and farm laborers lived in mud hovels without window or chimney; when a free peasant could be killed without even a fine, and a serf's murder could be compensated for about the price of a gallon of vinegar, or the fifth of the cost of a fat goose in the markets of Rome under the Emperors. From this depressed condition, labor gradually emerged by the revival of trade which kept pace with the settlement of society. The administration of justice becoming more efficient, merchants could travel from city to city with greater security, the exactions upon the villein were gradually commuted from time service into money, and he was allowed to purchase from his lord the right to enter his son for the church, or as apprentice to some trade. Society saw that, with the increase of industrial art, its comforts were multiplied, and mechanics were allowed to drift towards the cities where the more convenient markets were to be found, both for purchaser and producer. In those days the merchant and the transporter of goods were counted among the tradesmen, and, indeed, it is easy to see that, at the first, a freeman would under take to sell the products of his own toil for himself. The manufacturer was his own factor. The reviving cities became hives of industry, and their wealth and numbers enabled them to take measures for their own protection. It is a fact worth notice, that the charters granted to cities in the 12th and 13th centuries were chiefly concerned with the right to trade, hold fairs, and to govern themselves by means of their own companies or guilds. These guilds were associations of trades, each under its own particular chief or council, and their importance in the civic administration was very great, especially in Italy and France, their representatives appearing in the common councils of the towns. This term common council survives in our modern cities to preserve a reminiscence of this stage of industrial history. The part which skilled labor, thus organized, played by means of municipal action, forcing its way into legal security, into freedom, and into vast influence in the sovereign government, it is not the aim of this paper to trace. This inquiry is forcibly and lucidly pursued by Guizot in his account of the rise of free cities in Europe. But so great was the advantage of this gradual revolution to laborers in England, that there are those who claim that their condition from the time of Elizabeth to the present century, was better than it has been before or since, except in the years of scarcity from bad crops. The ambassadors of Philip II. of Spain, in visiting England, were impressed with the abundance of food enjoyed by the common people, though not overpleased with their habits, for they wrote of them, "these peasants live like hogs, though they fare as well as the King. Prof. J. E. Thorold Rogers, in his History of Agriculture, says that the wages of labor in the 13th and 14th century were "virtually higher than they have been from 1825 up to within the last five years, if, indeed, they were not higher than even they are now.” Tables are accessible of the fare provided in some of the English workhouses in the first half of the 18th century, and it was richer in variety and quality than the ordinary fare of the peasantry of France and Germany now is, and many a farm laborer in England now would be glad to have as ample a diet. From the investigations of * See Dr. Young's "Labor in Europe and America." Professor Fawcett of Cambridge University, it appears that now the provision made by the poor rates of England for the support of the children cast upon them is greater than the agricultural laborer can possibly make for his own family. Daniel Defoe, writing in the time of Queen Anne, complains that men refused to work for him at twice the wages paid in Yorkshire, saying they could do better by begging, and points out that a Dutchman laid up money on wages which hardly sufficed an Englishman to keep his family off the parish. In these estimates of the comfortable circumstances of laborers from a hundred to four hundred years ago, agree such authorities as John Stuart Mill, W. J. Thornton and Henry Hallam, who have doubted whether a workman can now as adequately maintain his family as his ancestors of four hundred years ago. These facts go to prove two things; first, that the rise and progress of skilled labor brought about an age of independence for the craftsman, and that we have been recently receding from that position. What are the reasons for this retrograde movement, and how is it to be turned in the opposite direction? The most potent agency at work in modern industry, and one to which our social adjustment is imperfectly made, is that of machinery. I am not disposed, in any respect, to deplore the richness of modern invention, nor do I imagine that it is practicable to restrict it. There is frequent suffering attendant upon the changes that new mechanisms cause, but these are, incidental, and the solution of our difficulties is not to tilt with the windmill, but find out its function and turn it to best account. The more accurately we perceive what conditions and impulses invention has given to industry, the clearer will become the line of development to be wrought out. Machinery has made muscular labor more arduous and unprofitable. That can be seen at a glance. Commerce is not likely to work its way forward on any other theory than that of buying cheap. Its relation to sentiment is not that of bad business economy. Now, labor is a commodity on sale, and its price is determined by competition. If a man can only sell his brute force, then, as that force in human muscles is only one-fifth of what is in the thews of a horse, he will only be worth the fifth of a horse. Both man and horse must suffer in competition with the machine, for however much coal is used for power, it is cheaper than food; whatever the cost of it, the mightiest engine that forges the ship through the seas is more economical than rearing to mature strength either the men or the horses which are represented by its power. However much repair the machine requires, or however soon it becomes obsolete because of improvements, still, if its steel sinews and fierce energy were not more profitable than living bone and muscle, it would not be constructed. Mr. Erastus B. Bigelow, in the October number of the Atlantic Monthly, 1878, estimates that only about one-tenth of the manual workers in the United States are engaged in pursuits to which machinery is applied. If the efficiency of machinery be put at thirty times that of human hands, which is a large allowance, it follows that the productive power of industry is increased threefold by existing inventions. At first sight, the natural expectation would be that man had lost in this competition two-thirds of his value, and wages should sink correspondingly. They have not shrunk in any such proportion, and for reasons which will be obvious when stated further on. Yet it cannot be doubted that the tendency of machinery is to depreciate the worth of mere unskilled labor. In whatever way man is made a competitor with an engine, in whatsoever his act and its function are the same, he is sure to be the sufferer. The chief economy of machinery is in the multiplication of power, and if the laborer is but mechanical power, his stomach is in contest with a furnace, his arms with steel rods, his back with insensible dovetailed and welded frames that never shiver. If this be true, then, the future of human labor demands that a different function be found for it than that of the machine. That in the man which makes him more than a curiously complicated muscular machine, of one-fifth of a horse-power, must be developed and utilized as thoroughly as possible. A second effect of modern invention has been the breaking up of old trades. A hundred years ago the houses of our working ancestors had their spinning wheels and looms, and the same persons carded wool, spun it, dyed it, wove it, and dressed it. Now there are at least eight different sets of hands through which the manufacture of woolen cloth ordinarily passes, and in large, well-organized mills the different operations are distributed among still more numerous sets. A hundred years ago, a carpenter could frame a house, get out its sash and doors, fit them in place, build its stairs, and |