and serfdom appear to differ in little beyond the higher capacity which the child in blood possesses of becoming one day the head of a family himself." The industrial organisa

The

tion is necessarily the counterpart of the political. flocks and herds of the children are the flocks and herds of the father," who directs all industrial operations, and claims their fruits as his. Primitive society "laboured under an incapacity" to imagine any bond, or principle of subordination, other than the family principle. When the reality of this failed, it was even found easier to " feign a relationship" than to substitute another form of union. Under this system labour and its results were the property not of the labourer, nor of the family or tribe, but of the head of the tribe. Individualism was wholly merged in the governing unit. There was no contract nor competition. The nature of the rule was that of a voluntary despotism under a despot exacting his utmost rights.

MUNITIES.

Such a constitution of society is connected historically with the circumstance of a migratory life, VILLAGE COM- the stage of development in which history first reveals man to us. In point of fact the organisation just described would seem to be one best suited to a nomad community. But as tribes and families settle upon the soil new motives of conduct are evolved, when either of two alternative courses, we are told is likely to be pursued. The bond of union being then fixed less in kinship than in occupation of land, the head of the family group will either cease to be a patriarch and become a sovereign, or will be dispensed with altogether. In the first case kingship supplants kinship as the supreme power; in the second case communism supplants both. It was long supposed that the former course was the natural, or

1 Village Communities in the East and West, by Sir Henry Maine, passim. See also, by the same author, The Early History of Institutions, p. 72 et seq.

even inevitable one; the analogy of those nations of whose affairs we have written records being exclusively, and not always very intelligently, followed; but more recent and very careful researches into the sociology both of historic and prehistoric peoples have established directly contrary conclusions. The collective ownership of the land at one time or another by groups of cultivators, either united in fact by blood relationship, or believing or pretending to believe themselves so united, is now entitled to take rank as "an ascertained phenomenon of primitive society" in every quarter of the globe.1 In all primitive society," says M. Emile de Laveleye," "whether in Europe, Asia, and Africa, alike among Indians, Sclavs, and Germans, as even in modern Russia and Java, the soil was the joint property of the tribe, and was subject to periodical distribution among all the families, so that all might live by their labour as nature has ordained." The community that settled upon the land might be variously organised and variously named; but the characteristic feature that of communal possession was general. The importance of these deductions to the present subject will be fully perceived only when it is considered how intimately the land tenure of any country is related to its other productive artifices and arrangements.3 The soil being the ultimate source of wealth, the manner in which it is dealt with is in the long run, and next to labour, the most important of all economical factors. It cannot for long be disassociated from the industrial system that exists beside it; the one is the

1 Early History of Institutions, by Sir Henry Maine, Lect. I. (Murray, 1880). 2 Primitive Property, by Emile de Laveleye. Preface to Original Edition (Macmillan, 1878).

3 "It is certain," says Mr. Thorold Rogers, "that the agriculturist must earn more than is necessary for his own support before any other person can contrive to exist.”—Six Centuries of Work and Wages, by James E. Thorold Rogers, M. P., p. 159 (Swan, Sonnenschein and Co., 1884).

complement of the other. We must perforce suppose then that the industrial system in communal times was in all essential principles the same as the agricultural, for it could not have substantially differed from it. It was thus a labour system in which the very mainspring of our present system, what we call in fact the "law" that regulates it, i.e. competition, was wholly absent. The remuneration of labour was not, when thus organised, determined by supply and demand. It is doubtful indeed if any values were, or ever could be, so assessed under archaic labour systems. "What in a primitive society," asks Sir Henry Maine,1 "is the measure of Price? It can only be called Custom. Men united in those groups out of which modern society has grown, do not trade together on, what I may call for shortness, commercial principles. The general proposition which is the basis of political economy made its first approach to truth under the only circumstances which admitted of men meeting at arms' length, not as members of the same group, but as strangers. Gradually the assumption of the right to get the best price has penetrated into the interior of these groups, but it is never completely received so long as the bond of connection between man and man is assumed to be that of family or clan connection. The rule only triumphs when the primitive community is in ruins." The immense significance of these facts cannot be overrated, nor can it be dwelt on here. It is sufficient that the facts themselves should be thoroughly recognised and laid to heart. That much, however, is absolutely necessary in any, even the most meagre, survey of the history of labour. Nor are we without the opportunity of witnessing the spectacle of the typical village community at the present day even within the dominions of Great Britain. In India both agricultural and manufacturing industry have

1 Village Communities, pp. 190, 196.

been pursued along communal lines from time immemorial, and although the introduction and progress of other ideas are gradually uprooting this system there, they have not yet quite done so. There, custom, not competition, has for ages been the regulator of price; and tradition, not the ratio between demand and supply, has been the ruler of labour. The same was the case all over ancient Germany, as we learn from Cæsar and Tacitus, and as all modern researches confirm. The village community under the name of the Mark was the universal type of society, and this Mark was a definite area of land farmed by, and redistributed among, all the members of the Mark community according to certain invariable conditions. We shall hereafter see into what later economic forms this germ developed under the influence of novel circumstances; and shall have occasion often to note its incompatibility with the present order of things. In the meanwhile the following vivid and eloquent description of the beauty of the old ideal will scarcely be out of place here, affording, as it does, a contrast, melancholy or inspiriting as we view it, to that widely different system of production with which we are definitely concerned. It is taken from Sir George Birdwood's excellent work on The Industrial Arts of India.1 "Outside the entrance of the single village street, on an exposed rise of ground, the hereditary potter sits by his wheel moulding the swift revolving clay by the natural curves of his hands. At the back of the houses which form the low irregular street, there are two or three looms at work in blue and scarlet and gold, the frames hanging between the acacia trees, the yellow flowers of which drop fast on the webs as they are being woven. In the street the brass and copper smiths are hammering away at their pots and pans; and farther

1 The Industrial Arts of India, by Sir George C. M. Birdwood, C.S.I., pp. 135, 136, and 312 (Chapman and Hall, 1880).

down, in the verandah of the rich man's house, is the jeweller working rupees and gold mohrs into fair jewelry, gold and silver earrings, and round tires like the moon, bracelets and tablets and nose rings, and tinkling ornaments for the feet, taking his designs from the fruits and flowers around him, or from the traditional forms represented in the paintings and carvings of the great temple, which rises over the grove of mangoes and palms at the end of the street above the lotus-covered village tank. At half-past three or four in the afternoon the whole street is lighted up by the moving robes of the women going down to draw water from the tank, each with two or three water jars on her head: and so, while they are going and returning in single file, the scene glows like Titian's canvas, and moves like the stately procession of the Panathenaic frieze. Later the men drive in the mild gray kine from the moaning plain, the looms are folded up, the coppersmiths are silent, the elders gather in the gate, the lights begin to glimmer in the fast falling darkness, the feasting and the music are heard on every side, and late into the night the songs are sung from the Ramayana or Mahabharata. The next morning with sunrise, after the simple ablutions and adorations performed in the open air before the houses, the same day begins again. We cannot overlook the serenity and dignity of his life if we would rightly understand the Indian handicraftsman's work. He knows nothing of the desperate struggle for existence which oppresses the life and crushes the very soul out of the English working-man. He has his assured place, inherited from father to son for a hundred generations, in the national church and state organisation; while nature provides him with everything to his hand, but the little food and less clothing he needs, and the simple tools of the trade. The English working-man must provide for houserent, coals, furniture, warm clothing, animal food, and spirits,

. . .