Co-operative production as thus understood, and based on the theory that dead capital is not entitled to profits, has the support of no less an authority than J. S. Mill. Looking forward into the distant future, he is of opinion that the time will come when "owners of capital will gradually find it to their advantage, instead of maintaining the struggle of the old system with workpeople of only the worst description, to lend their capital to the associations-to do this at a diminishing rate of interest, and at last, perhaps, even to exchange their capital for terminable annuities. In this or some such mode the existing accumulations of capital might honestly, and by a kind of spontaneous process, become in the end the joint property of all who participate in their productive employment; a transformation which, thus effected, would be the nearest approach to social justice, and the most beneficial ordering of industrial affairs for the universal good which it is possible at present to foresee." 1 This remarkable passage shows that Mill himself did not recognise the moral right of the owner of wealth to the fruits of that wealth. Hence his denunciations of the "unearned increment" were at least consistent.

1 Principles of Political Economy, by J. S. Mill.

CHAPTER VII

LABOUR CAPITALISATION

FINALLY, let us examine the system which may be called the Capitalisation of Labour.

In order to understand the foundations on which the system is based, it may be as well to examine the whole labour question from three distinct points of view: from the historical standpoint, the juridical standpoint, and the economic standpoint.

We may trace the history of industrialism briefly through its successive changes along with the progress of civilisation, and then, by discovering the general tendency, predict with tolerable certainty the direction which further changes are likely to take. In the earliest times of which we have any record we find the whole of the working population—that is, of those who toil with their hands, the agricultural labourers and artisans in a state of abject slavery. Long before they emerged from that state their lot as slaves considerably improved, but still they remained slaves. We hear much of the liberty and democracy of the Greeks, but we know that at the time when Athenians were enjoying a high degree of civilisation the great majority of the people of Attica were slaves. For every freeman in Athens there must have been four or five others who were written off as mere chattels. While every citizen of full age had a voice in the affairs of the State, these poor toilers had none. So that universal suffrage in those days meant what it would mean now if the working classes were disfranchised. The slaves were of course bought and sold. Aristotle himself defines them as

animated

machines." The Malthusian restraints were rigidly applied, not by them but to them, because their masters found it cheaper to buy than to rear them. They were of two classes, the bondsmen in the fields, who more nearly resembled the serfs of Norman England, inasmuch as they could not be exported or separated from their families, and the town slaves, who were chiefly barbarians, that is, foreigners and captives in war; these more nearly resembled the slaves of the American plantations of last generation. They stood on a stone in the circle, and were knocked down by auction to the highest bidder at sums ranging from half a mina to twenty or thirty minas. But these high prices were paid chiefly for courtesans and cithara players. This class of slave could not acquire property like the serfs. The miners worked in chains, and frequently died from the effects of the bad air in the ill-ventilated mines. They were sometimes kept in gangs and let out for hire, when their owners seem to have realised something like a profit of 15 per cent. Slaves were not believed on oath, but when their evidence was required they were tortured. Still, even this was an advance upon the slavery of still earlier times, for we find that it was unlawful to hurt a slave without just cause, nor could a master kill his own slave without obtaining a legal sentence against him. Moreover, slaves had certain privileges of sanctuary, and sometimes, though rarely, they were manumitted, when they were compelled to respect their former master as a patron under penalty of being again sold into slavery.

Coming down to later times we find the position of the Roman slave still further ameliorated. One law makes it penal for a master to kill his own slave: later still such an act is made murder. Again, it was enacted that when slaves were sold, the family should not be broken up. Young children could no longer be separated from their parents, nor a husband from his wife. Manumission was of far more frequent occasion than among the Greeks. From being mere domestics, mechanics, and artisans, they rose to the position of commercial agents, and were allowed to acquire property, called peculium, and to enforce their claims in the Courts of Law. We find also doctors, literary men, actors, and courtesans fetching high

prices. Although Christianity did not condemn the institution of slavery, it is said by some to have mitigated the harshness of owners; but the observed change may, with greater probability, be referred to the advance in morality accompanying a growing civilisation. The incursions of the northern barbarians upset the existing relations between masters and slaves, and when the clouds are again lifted we find the "Adscripti Glebæ in the place of all the heterogeneous classes and sub-classes of Roman slaves. These "Adscripti Gleba" were the "serfs" of the Middle Ages.

Serfdom or villeinage was at first a state in which the serf belonged to the lord of the soil like his stock or cattle. They were removable from the folk-land at the lord's pleasure. A tendency towards something like liberty is seen in the distinction between "pure villeinage" and "privileged villeinage." The first was when a villein held land on terms of doing whatsoever was commanded of him, nor knew in the evening what was to be done in the morning." His services were undefined. Privileged villeins, on the other hand, could not be removed from their holdings so long as they performed certain definite services. Base and compulsory as these services were, it is worthy of remark that these villein-socmen were commonly described as "free." How these services came to be commuted one by one into a fixed rent in kind or in money, and finally in money only, is a long story.1

When the lot of the workman of to-day is unfavourably compared (as it frequently is by socialists) with the lot of the workers of four or five centuries ago, we must remember that the comparison is usually made between two different strata of society. The happy yeomen of those days (if they were so happy) are the farmers of to-day, not the wage-earning labourers. No doubt the small landholders of the period following upon the Black Death were in tolerably comfortable circumstances; but when we come to examine the position of those who had no strips to plough, the case is very different. But to proceed with our short historical survey. Trade, commerce, and town life bring many changes. The rise of the great middle class in

1 See Seebohm's English Village Communities: also Six Centuries of Work and Wages, by J. E. Thorold Rogers, M. P.

Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; its conflicts with the ancient feudal aristocracy and eventual triumph, consummated (in this country) in the great Reform Act of 1832; the gradual development of two new parties, employers and employed, or so-called capitalists and manual labourers, are grand historical facts which bring us down to the present day.

The battle is now between employer and employed. Year by year the strife waxes hotter. We are now in the midst of it. Louder and louder roar the discontented hosts of wage earners. Inch by inch the baffled capitalists retire before the onward pressure of numbers. Masters quail; they offer terms; they buy off the enemy for a while; and then again the billows swell and roll forward as before. Whither does all this tend? See, the millions are organising: no longer a mob, they are an army. The battle cannot rage for ever with equal fortune. And which side shall win? That is the question which some answer with hope, others with despair. It is for us to project the converging rays of the past into the future, and with that light to predict the outcome.

The workman is free at last. After centuries of struggles, of successes, and of failures, serfdom in this country is dead. The last vestige of the system perished within the memory of living men, though it was practically extinct long before. The sale of a human being in England, even though he himself be the vendor, is void. A slave landed for one moment on English

soil is by law free. Even a long lease of a man (if I may use the expression) is discountenanced, and apprentices are getting rarer year by year. The question whether a contract of service intended to last during the servant's lifetime was legal, was raised for the last time, I believe, just half a century ago.1

The binding of even young persons for so long a period as seven years is regarded as savouring of serfdom; and so, with all respect to the recommendations of Royal Commissioners, it is. I admit that the change brings evils in its train. Periods of transition from one régime to another invariably bristle with dangers and difficulties; but let us beware lest, in our efforts to escape from them, we magnify the good of the old order which is passing

1 Wallis v. Day, 2 M. and W. 1837.