LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received. &U^ > , i8?-/. 
 
 A c cessions No. i/6/- Shelf No... 
 
THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
THE 
 
 SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM B. WEEDEN. 
 
 1 All are needed by each one ; 
 Nothing is fair or good alone." 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1882. 
 
Copyright, 1882, 
 BY W. B. WEEDEN. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS: 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THERE can be no dispute between Labor and Capital, 
 because they are the same thing, some say. But you can- 
 not convince the man starting with his shovel Monday 
 morning, that the ten milled dollars he hopes to receive 
 on Saturday night are of one substance with the sweat 
 and toil he feels must go witn tne shovel all the coming 
 week. He would like to have the dollars by an easier 
 process. 
 
 The contractor, who expects one thousand of the dol- 
 lars now lying in a bank vault, and who sees, before he 
 can obtain them, a possible outlay of three thousand dur- 
 ing the week, in his struggle with unseen rocks, concrete 
 gravel, treacherous morass, and sluggish workmen, 
 this contractor cannot believe that labor and the dollars 
 embodying capital are precisely the same thing. 
 
 The capitalist who has loaned one hundred thousand 
 dollars the previous week to many contractors, who has 
 spent Sunday in nervous dread reading of strikes and of 
 failures of construction companies, cannot be convinced 
 that his capital and toiling labor are at that moment 
 one substance. In his view the money was his ; it is 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 gone : some portion may return, much never can return. 
 His agony is too deep for words ; it is beyond tears. 
 
 The economists have defined and carried capital or 
 wealth too far away from this social movement, and 
 have moulded it into something too rigid for this living 
 process which throbs with labor. 
 
 Labor is living. Capital is a result of living. Life is 
 always in persons, passions, affections, rather than in a 
 thing which is cast into material form. The writer has 
 looked at modern society from this point of view ; but 
 modern life involves ancient life, and it was necessary 
 to consider the question from the historic side. The 
 social working of Labor and Capital in the life of to-day 
 finds its counterpart in many old institutions. Some of 
 these institutions the writer began to investigate for 
 himself; but latterly exhaustive treatises have appeared 
 in several matters appertaining, which were not to be 
 had when the work began. Parts of the essay within 
 appear somewhat sketchy in consequence. 
 
 W. B. W. 
 
 PROVIDENCE, K. I., January 16, 1882. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTKODUCTION : THE SOCIAL LAW is IN THE CONSTANT 
 
 LINK BETWEEN CAPITAL AND LABOR .... 3 
 
 I. PERSONS AND PROPERTY 51 
 
 II. THE CORPORATION 105 
 
 III. THE GUILD 143 
 
 IV. LABOR ASSOCIATIONS 189 
 
 V. CAPITAL . 239 
 
 VI. SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD .... 271 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
trim SITT] 
 
 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE Labor question, the right relations between 
 Capital and Labor, treated in various ways, oc- 
 cupies a large share of the public attention at this time. 
 These discussions generally assume that the two terms 
 represent opposing interests ; that this opposition is in- 
 evitable ; or that society must be made over and rebuilt, 
 so that a new social order may redress the wrongs of 
 one or the other interest. I propose to consider the 
 matter as it now stands, and to treat it from a point of 
 view which is not in the interest either of Capital or 
 of Labor, or of any new form of society adjusted to the 
 imaginary desires of the persons representing the one or 
 the other of these great social factors. 
 
 In other words, if we had no society, we should have 
 neither capital nor labor in the civilized sense which 
 now belongs to those words. What new society there 
 may be, no one can tell us. It is now, it is here in this 
 society, that all the problems, interests, and desires of 
 both Capital and Labor must be unfolded, reconciled, and 
 settled. In every society existing, in every society pos- 
 sible under, the present conditions of human civilization, 
 a social law prevails, which controls the holders and 
 users of capital as well as the agents and actors of labor, 
 
4 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 and moves them all toward its own ends. The fulcrum 
 of this law, the pivot on which every social movement 
 turns, is in the fact that labor cannot become capital, 
 nor capital come to be any other useful thing, without 
 passing through a necessary change, a social trans- 
 mutation. Let us explain. From Locke and from Adam 
 Smith onward, many of the best men have said, Labor 
 produces all things. Scores of writers agree l that " it 
 is not capital which employs labor, but labor which em- 
 Ground ply s capital." 2 They are all wrong, if they 
 of Dispute. are thinking and acting under the fixed condi- 
 tions of civilized life. Try the proposition out of your 
 own experience ; produce for yourself a single product of 
 civilized life by labor alone. You say, reader, that you 
 will go into the wilderness and bring back from virgin 
 soil a bushel of corn untainted by progress, freed from 
 the conditions of this jangling modern time. 
 
 We will leave out of the question the seed you plant, 
 and only consider the spade you must have, or you would 
 perish before your fingers could subdue the reluctant 
 earth. The spade does not belong to labor, nor to capi- 
 tal qua capital : it belongs to society, though it exists 
 in the form of capital. You say that you will win your 
 product from old Nature in another form. You will go 
 to the untracked forest, hew out a deal plank, take it 
 to market on your own shoulders, and prevail over or- 
 ganized industry and commerce, by the labor of your 
 own hands alone. The axe you use is not yours through 
 the essence of labor, though you may have made it with 
 
 1 "So that which Socialism wishes is not to abolish property, but, 
 on the contrary, to introduce individual property founded on labor." 
 Capital and Labor (Lassalle), p. 256. 
 
 2 George : Poverty and Progress, p. 176. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 your own hands, instead of buying it in the market. The 
 idea of the axe, its potentiality which enables it to pre- 
 vail over nature, does not belong to you. This is the 
 result of long generations of development, running from 
 the time of the rudest stone tool to the elegant steel 
 blade which now rings through the pine woods of Maine. 
 This belongs to society ; neither the laborer nor the capi- 
 talist owns this principle, though either may for the mo- 
 ment hold the thing which represents it. 
 
 You and I, everybody, all acting together, beget a 
 want, a social motive, which, issuing forth, sends the 
 axeman to the tree, the log to the mill, the The Source 
 plank to the joiner, and finally produces this of Produc- 
 table, the complex result of the whole move- t 
 ment. The labor theorists and all the economists can- 
 not arrest this progression at any one point, and say, This 
 is labor alone, that is capital alone, that is land (we in- 
 clude all the forces of Nature in the element land) alone. 
 Therefore we say, neither capital nor labor employs the 
 other. Society employs them both. 1 How it employs 
 
 1 Those who consider this a difference of words or terms should study 
 Lassalle's statement: "In the primitive state of individual detached 
 labor from which we are descended, the instrument of labor the 
 Indian's bow was productive only in the hand of the laborer himself ; 
 consequently, it was only labor which was productive." 
 
 Then he says, at some length, that the person who makes advances 
 to labor, in the modern division of labor, draws all its productivity to 
 himself. "As before, it was only labor, at present it is only the in- 
 strument of labor, separated from the laborer, which is productive." 
 
 "This instrument of labor becomes autonomous, having changed 
 parts with the laborer, reducing the living laborer to an Lassalle's 
 inert instrument of labor, and developing itself, the instru- Autonomous 
 ment of inert labor, into a living generative organ ; that is, Instrument 
 Capital." Capital and Labor, p. 248. On this assumption Lassalle 
 builds a theory which would overturn our present society. 
 
 To establish this argument Lassalle must find the Indian who in- 
 vented the bow. That primeval character would be listened to with 
 
6 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 them is not so apparent as the ordinary socialist imag- 
 ines. Just here is the difficult step in setting forth the 
 principles of social order, the enigma of simple every- 
 day life. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the fine distinctions of the econ- 
 omists, dividing things into capitals fixed and circulat- 
 ing, wealth, commodities, land, etc., the common use of 
 language is gradually throwing all these things into one 
 term, capital. Capital and labor represent to the pop- 
 ular mind substance and property on the one side, in- 
 dividual effort with brain or hand on the other. This 
 popular use of the term capital (for it is quite modern) 
 signifies some positive progress in our comprehension of 
 the facts of our common life. It is often remarked that 
 capital is labor saved, " stored up," is one author's ex- 
 Change of P ress i n - This does not wholly explain the 
 Labor into relation of labor and capital which we have 
 Capital. sketched in our social movement. Some simple 
 principles have been long in reaching our comprehension, 
 and we believe this to be one. To illustrate : grass is a 
 product of Nature ; hay preserved and stored up is a pro- 
 duct of civilization. Grass while being cut and cured is a 
 joint product of capital and labor, and often perishes while 
 passing into hay, which is a definite thing, and which can 
 be handled like any other form of capital. This process 
 of grass-cultivation and hay-making typifies every pos- 
 sible movement of labor and capital while operating in 
 material values. The economists formulate labor, cap- 
 ital, rent, wages of superintendence, as the whole rule of 
 social movement and of the science of wealth and wealth- 
 respect, should he discourse on the origin of society. But if the Indian 
 with the bow is only a hypothetical fellow, we must treat him just as we 
 treat any man who handles a tool to-day, simply as a social agent. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 making. No one of these terms expresses the delicate 
 process of transmutation which capital and labor undergo 
 from the instant they start to produce anything, whether 
 it be a bushel of wheat or a chronometer watch. It has 
 been said that the farmer is the greatest gambler we know. 
 He who plants a seed, a something of value, a neces- 
 sary article of subsistence, and trusts it to all the un- 
 certainties of Nature and of labor, even though the labor 
 be his own, commits his property and possibly himself 
 to a most uncertain fate. But every operation of pro- 
 ducer or exchanger is of exactly the same nature. The 
 tallow and the alkali must be sacrificed, but the soap 
 may not follow the effort. Flour, yeast, and fire are 
 solid forces which are passing away ; but the bread may 
 never appear, or may be only a worthless cinder. This 
 process, which is constantly going forward in our modern 
 life, the present writer terms capitalizing ; that is, the 
 converting of capital and labor into more capital. 
 
 Whatever be, the defining word, the principle must 
 be held steadily in mind, or we shall fail to reach and 
 comprehend some of the main springs in the life of mod- 
 ern society. It is not a force like capital itself, either 
 active or passive : it is a function. This func- Social func . 
 tion must be embodied in a person, just as tion of Cap- 
 teaching the mind is embodied in a teacher, or ltallzer - 
 administering a steam-engine is embodied in an engi- 
 neer. The administrator of capital and labor is not a 
 mere middle-man, he is a capitalizer. He makes capital ; 
 he does that which capital cannot do for itself, and pos- 
 sibly what the holder of capital cannot do for it. He 
 does the like for labor and the laborer ; he is the active 
 efficient agent of society at the moment when neither 
 capital nor labor can act in themselves : but the deed 
 
8 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 must embody the acts of the whole ; in other words it 
 must become a social act. It looks easy, but the lack 
 of this simple definition taken from the common experi- 
 ence of every-day life has caused many blunders in 
 social science. 
 
 We have applied these principles to the conditions of 
 our own time and the life which surrounds each one of us. 
 We must now try them on a broader field, and ascertain 
 whether they can be applied generally ; whether they have 
 Universal a sure f un dation in actual facts ; whether they 
 ity of this reveal that orderly succession of results which 
 alone can justify the name of law. And before 
 going further in our study, we must carefully distin- 
 guish between those institutions and phenomena which 
 are social and those which are partly social and partly 
 religious and political. Religious and political systems 
 vary according to the historic conditions in which they 
 are found, and wherever they are found ; but the nine- 
 teenth century is gradually assimilating purely social 
 life to one standard, or to the essential elements of one 
 standard. This principle is not confined to civilized 
 peoples alone ; it extends also to those half civilized and 
 barbarous communities which are now feeling the in- 
 flowing tides of civilization, and putting on the habits of 
 more cultivated peoples as far as they can, and especially 
 in social affairs. 
 
 Why is it that when a new territory is discovered, 
 and a new race of humankind is brought into contact 
 with our social system, cargoes of goods can be assorted 
 and adapted to unknown wants, directed to unknown 
 shores, and find ready use among unknown persons ? 
 The love of war, the sentiment of worship, the displays 
 of vanity, the greed for wealth, all these are widely dis- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 tributed motives which influence all races of men every- 
 where. But these passions, though universal in their 
 influence, when taken singly or separately will not in- 
 terpret the life of savage races, nor that of civilized com- 
 munities, nor the commingling life which flows between. 
 
 Or we may turn our thought and apply it at the other 
 end of the route. A savage finds an elephant's tusk in 
 the inmost jungles of equatorial Africa; he or Connects 
 his fellow brings it out on his naked shoulders civilization 
 with a weary tramp over desert and morass for and Sav ' 
 thousands of miles. The negro porter transfers 
 it to the trader, who exchanges it for the goods from a 
 Liverpool ship, and at last it reaches Paris, the central 
 workshop of civilization. The Parisian ivory worker, at 
 once artisan and artist, fashions this raw material of Na- 
 ture into a fan which may be wielded by the hand of an 
 imperial lady. This transaction begins on the lower 
 plane of savage life, and ascends by regular steps un- 
 til it reaches the higher wants and tastes of mankind. 
 This article of commerce and manufacture, this resulting 
 product of Nature, savagery, and civilization, represents 
 a combined movement, a social current. 
 
 It is common to represent trade as a mere means of 
 gratifying the love of gain. This love is a powerful pas- 
 sion and certain in its effects, like hunger and thirst, or 
 other animal impulses ; but it is not the most powerful 
 passion among any people savage or civilized, and it is 
 strictly subordinated to other great impulses, just as 
 the animal desires are regulated by principles which are 
 stronger than passion itself. 
 
 The elephant's tusk is more than trade : it represents 
 the social movement. -Nowhere can you arrest this 
 thing in its progress from the wild jungle to the work- 
 
10 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 bench of the Parisian, where his delicate hand and artist 
 brain convert it into a thing of beauty; nowhere can you 
 pause and say, This part alone is capital, and this part 
 alone is labor. Social progress, the life of Nature and 
 of man, have concentrated themselves in this elegant sub- 
 stance, and the result can be awarded to no one person 
 of the many who have contributed or are contributing 
 to this onward movement. The fortunate finder of the 
 tusk, of that utility and value, which was wasted in the 
 desert, does not own the results which shall follow from 
 the new utilization of a decaying product of Nature ; no 
 more does the skilful Parisian own the process, the long 
 evolution, by which the valuable material has come to 
 his waiting hand. 
 
 Supply and demand, abstinence, parsimony, produc- 
 The Social tive and unproductive consumption, none of 
 Need. these terms into which the economists render 
 their principles suffice here, though they touch upon the 
 facts. There is a stronger force at work, a force of forces, 
 which moves the whole economy of Nature and of man. 
 At times it even controls political economy in the high- 
 est sense ; for it makes war or peace, and directs whole 
 nations along the lines which must give it movement 
 and free play. I shall call this principle the social need, 
 not to replace the economic formulas, but to complete 
 their chain, to render the idea we have illustrated, to in- 
 dicate briefly that region where human will and human 
 circumstance combine and issue in a new force. This, 
 expression "social need" demands an immediate explana- 
 tion of the word Society ; and we must go back to the 
 roots of that term, which means so much that the sur- 
 face word often misleads. In trying to assume all that 
 we are, we often forget what we have been. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 Society in the races of Aryan descent or of Aryan 
 language has some leading characteristics com- Origin of 
 mon to them all. Other races also cherish in- Aryan So- 
 stitutions and social customs which in certain Cle y ' 
 features are like the primitive ways of that great Asiatic 
 family which has stamped its controlling influence on 
 the whole world. These points of similarity and of 
 difference have caused much discussion, reaching into 
 all the social sciences. I do not propose to enter 
 upon disputed ground. I shall 'discuss the institutions 
 of the great Teutonic and Celtic nations, using the 
 experience of other peoples, so far as it is known to 
 us, only to illustrate the customs of Western Europe 
 and America. 1 
 
 When we reflect upon the wonderful organism which 
 surrounds each one of us, the great institutions, the 
 State, the Church, the Family, the Individual, state, 
 arise and fill our minds with their large pro- pJJmy' 
 portions and their closely related functions, individual, 
 In ancient society these social entities did not no ^* 
 exist, or existed only in embryonic form. The cient. 
 tribal organization, which comprehended the military 
 and political life of our forefathers, was the rude germ 
 
 1 In this limitation I do not mean to slight the great work of civi- 
 lization already done by the Slavic race. The experience of these peo- 
 ples if fully recorded would probably throw into clear perspective the 
 history of our whole civilization. The Slavic development differs from 
 other Aryan experience in that it mingles a greater variety of forces at 
 the same time. In Slavic experience the early systems of social life 
 were broken into and modified by influences of a later time and a newer 
 growth, which came from peoples in a very different stage of development. 
 In the present state of our knowledge, a stranger can hardly distinguish 
 between the purely Slavic institutions and those which are Neo-Slavic, 
 or produced by the sudden and often arbitrary interposition of ideas 
 drawn from Western Europe. 
 
12 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 of the State; worship was conducted by the tribal 
 medicine-man, or by the householder ; the family in our 
 domestic sense was unknown ; the individual, a self- 
 poised, independent, thinking member of society, did 
 not exist. If we would know the true relations which 
 the parts of our present social organism bear to each 
 other, we must study the genesis of those parts. Though 
 these early germs unfolded and became the basis of our 
 present institutions, yet in the beginning they were 
 something quite different from the structures which we 
 see to-day. 
 
 To begin with the Family. As Dr. Hearn has well 
 shown, 1 this modern word only misleads the student of 
 archaic society ; and the idea is still more deceptive than 
 the word. Our family is based on the union of one 
 with one. These two units each carry within themselves 
 certain highly organized social and religious func- 
 tions, and these enter into the common bond. But it 
 is a purely social institution. In some countries a few 
 decaying political privileges cling to it; but, broadly 
 considered, the family has now no political, legal, or 
 religious functions. In ancient times the facts were 
 directly reversed. The Aryan householder or house- 
 father was the head of an association of individual men 
 and women. They might be of one kin, but not neces- 
 sarily so; and in fact adoption was a tie second only 
 to kindred in bringing together the individuals thus 
 Old House- associated. The basis of this association was 
 hold an as- not in blood, or political duties and privileges : 
 
 sociation. ^ wag in religion 2 ^ ne WQrl( j Q f ^frft wag 
 
 infolded with the world of matter in those days as it is 
 now, though our knowledge of matter and the expression 
 
 1 Aryan Household, p. 63 et seq. 2 La Cite Antique, p. 41. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 of spirit have changed. The human soul when it left 
 the earth did not then cease to be : in the concrete 
 notions of those days a spirit was departed, removed, 
 but not remote. The great overwhelming idea of spirit, 
 so familiar to the later societies and to our time, was 
 far beyond the conceptions of our simple-minded ances- 
 tors ; they were entangled in the many ideas of their 
 many spirits who were ever near them. These spirits 
 were the souls of departed relatives, and especially of 
 the dead householders, the vanished heads of these 
 associated groups which embodied the life of the an- 
 cient world. These spirits 1 were powers for good or evil, 
 according as they were well or ill disposed toward the 
 mortals who were under their daily influence. Numer- 
 ous facts are cited from the experience of many peoples 
 (by Fustel de Coulanges and Dr. Hearn, as well as others) 
 to prove this profound principle which underlay the de- 
 velopment, and which affects the organization, of every 
 community at this day. When a Fabius could leave the 
 Eoman capitol besieged by the Gauls; leave in his sa- 
 cred vestments, and bearing the instruments of sacrifice 
 in his hands; cross the territory held by the enemy, and 
 perform the sacred rites of the great Fabian gens on its 
 own altar, it is evident that a solemn ceremony tran- 
 scending all ordinary duties, and regardless of the power 
 of an enemy, was demanded of him. The life of the 
 living was still affected by the lives of the dead ; the 
 fathers absent were yet present in spirit, and compelled 
 service from the greatest individuals in the greatest 
 State. In later and better attested times, the great 
 Fabius Cunctator, though commanding against Han- 
 nibal, when the day of the annual sacrifice came, left 
 
 1 La Cite Antique, p. 19. 
 
14 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 his post and went to the same Quirinal hill to discharge 
 the duty due to his dead ancestors. 
 
 The Aryan household was a distinct institution based 
 on this worship of deceased ancestors. " The practical 
 object at which it aimed was the regular and proper 
 performance of the sacra, that is, of the worship pe- 
 culiar to the household. The machinery by which the 
 sacra were maintained was the corporate character of the 
 household, and the perpetual succession of the House 
 Father." * 
 
 From our point of view, this is a strange and repulsive 
 system of beliefs and of social life. But what could be 
 more natural to the simple savage or the untutored bar- 
 barian ? Though we habitually treat him as old, we must 
 remember that he was actually very young. Nature, 
 which the fast following generations of his children have 
 harnessed into hard worlds of matter, was to him the 
 unfettered domain of spirit. He was surrounded above 
 and below, in earth and sky, in air and water, by an in- 
 visible world, not of spirit but of spirits. No mere fig- 
 Old spirit- men ts of the imagination were these kobolds 
 world, and fairies, no airy nothings were these unseen 
 )ut ' but not intangible beings. They were potent 
 creatures, sometimes inclining toward the good of man, 
 but oftener ready to wound and annoy the weaker child 
 of earth encumbered by the ills his grosser body carried 
 with it. Among these creatures the spirits of the dead 
 ancestors were always present. In the childish Aryan 
 mind all depended on the disposition of these near rela- 
 tives, near in a sense we can hardly conceive of, and 
 related, not by our methods, through the sympathetic 
 action of our own minds, but through the external action 
 
 1 Hearn : Aryan Household, p. 63. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 of another will, the restless motion of that form which 
 Harnlet saw, always ready to re-enter upon the scenes of 
 his mortal life, and to meddle again in the affairs of this 
 world. If these spirits, the natural friends of the mortal, 
 were well disposed, then all would go well; the son's arm 
 would be strong in the fight, his cows would not labor 
 in vain, and would yield copious streams of milk to his 
 pious hand. Later on in Aryan history this propitiation 
 of spirits became more generalized, and the personal tie 
 was widened into a relationship with all the fairies. The 
 bowl of milk is probably set for Eobin Goodfellow in 
 some parts of England to-day ; certainly the custom was 
 in full practice a generation since. Myriads of facts 
 from the history of all the Aryan races show the univer- 
 sality of these beliefs and the deep influence they have 
 exerted on the manners, the religion, the sentiments, 
 and the imaginations of our kindred peoples. 
 
 The early man wrapped in these beliefs, possessed by 
 the tormenting fear and the bright hope of the unseen 
 world around him, sought to gain the constant aid and 
 sure support of his spirit ancestors. He must first secure 
 a place of abode for the dead as well as for the living. 
 There is some doubt whether the dead were always 
 buried within the walls of the house ; but they were 
 certainly laid there before burial, and the most careful 
 ceremonies associated them with the domestic shrine, 
 the Hearth. For around this hearth the Lares of the 
 household, the familiar spirits who haunted their for- 
 mer abodes, dwelt, and blessed or cursed their descend- 
 ants according to their merit or demerit. 1 No domestic 
 
 1 "While the conduct of the primitive man is in part determined 
 by the feelings with which he regards men around him, it is in part 
 determined by the feelings with which he regards men who have passed 
 
16 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 meal was complete without a sacrifice of food to the 
 Hearth spirits. Tire burned away the physical sub- 
 and stance of the offering, but it also set free the 
 
 finer essence, the immaterial viand on which 
 the ghostly attendant could nourish himself and bless 
 the willing hands which piously fed him. " The hearth 
 was thus, so to speak, the organ through which the 
 living maintained their intercourse with the dead." l 
 
 The Anglo-American home, the Gothic haims, the 
 Scandinavian hiem, are rooted here in these early usages 
 and customs of the household; they were familiar be- 
 fore the idea of family, in our modern sense of the word, 
 was born into the world. 
 
 Around this hearth and dwelling-place they drew a 
 sacred line, and the ground within was consecrated to 
 the Lares of the household. Whether it was a thin 
 space between the walls of city houses, or a furrow-mark 
 ploughed through the wide fields of the country, it was 
 the same enclosure. It shut in the spirits of the house- 
 hold ; it shut out other spirits ; and the most solemn 
 services sanctified the ground to the household, the 
 members in the flesh propitiating those who had passed 
 beyond earthly limits and dwelt all around, in the air 
 above and in the earth beneath the sacred hearth. This 
 community of living, this sympathy between the living 
 and the dead, was symbolized in the common meal, 
 of which as above mentioned both the present living 
 and the absent dead partook, each in his own method. 
 Sacrifices which afterward were hallowed to the worship 
 
 away. From these two sets of feelings result two all-important sets 
 of social factors. While the fear of the living becomes the root of the 
 political control, the fear of the dead becomes the root of the religious 
 control." Sociology (Spencer), i. 456. 
 1 Hearn : Aryan Household, p. 49. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 of the gods alone, generalized as I have termed it, were 
 then made to the Lares, to the familiars of the house- 
 hold, those immediate spirits whose presence so 
 powerfully affected the daily life, the happiness or the 
 suffering, of these simple men and women. 
 
 It is amply proven that all this complicated system 
 of living and of dying, this procession of men walk- 
 ing, thinking, and feeling in this world, but through 
 every act and every desire meshed in the influences of 
 another world, was not based on the ties of affection 
 and kindred. 1 If the housefather had a son, he was his 
 natural successor, and discharged the duties of head of 
 the house. The father often adopted a son 2 who should 
 succeed to his rights. The custom of Tanistry, or an 
 elected successor in the joint family, is supposed to have 
 originated in the same way. It was a del- Mainspring 
 egated power ; or in other words it was based ^^noUn 
 on social custom, instead of descent by blood kindred, 
 and kindred. This was a later custom, when property 
 was a larger element in social life. The strong mo- 
 tive in the early time was the religious one : the father 
 must look to it that a pious hand be ready to offer 
 to his fleeting spirit the same fond duty, the same 
 constant sacrifice, which his ancestors had received from 
 him. 
 
 This system of beliefs and of customs resulted in an 
 organism partly domestic, partly social, which in the 
 early times led men forward into higher forms of life. 
 This system was based on.religion and religious feeling : 
 according to their belief, it was religion of a thoroughly 
 practical kind. Later religions place the springs of love, 
 charity, and good-will in service to our neighbor and our 
 
 1 Hearn : Aryan Household p. 28. 2 La Cite Antique, p. 56. 
 
18 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 brother, to man who is our brother. But when the 
 believer was accompanied in every act by swarms of 
 related spirits, religion naturally impelled him to serve 
 those beings, to propitiate them by every pious offering 
 he could make. This was the mainspring of the sys- 
 tem I have sketched ; other forces contributed and were 
 accessory to this central power of religion. The ties of 
 blood, the care and descent of property, the military 
 spirit, all were included in the usages of the house- 
 hold. But these subordinate institutions, which after- 
 ward developed and became the prominent supports of 
 domestic life, were overshadowed in the early time by 
 the mastering influence of religion, the actual pres- 
 ence in this life of beings acting with the powers of 
 another world. 
 
 " The household was thus an association formed upon re- 
 ligious belief and contemplating religious objects. But it 
 was something more : it was a permanent association. It 
 was not intended to pass away and be re-formed like the 
 generations of men. It was constructed, and was meant to 
 endure forever. It was in our technical language a corpora- 
 tion. It had perpetual succession. It included in its mem- 
 bers both the living and the dead." 1 
 
 The house-father, the head of this association, was a 
 priest, a petty ruler, an administrator of property and 
 business, in the days when there was no religion or 
 state or affairs in the signification we attach to those 
 words. All the children, women, and associated kins- 
 men, all the resident aliens, the slaves, and other de- 
 pendents, were said to be in the hand of the Head of 
 the house. These were not accidental members of the 
 association. The new-born child was included in the 
 
 1 Hearn : Aryan Household, p. 66. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 group by formal ceremonies, a part of the sacra. No 
 illegitimate child could be thus included. All Based on 
 the members were brought into the sympathy J^ 8 8 ' 
 of the common meal and embraced in the pro- Property, 
 tection of the sacra by carefully prescribed rites. The 
 property which the father inherited he did not hold for 
 himself, but in sacred trust for all these inferiors and 
 dependents who were integral parts of the household. 
 Land especially was inalienable : a person might easily 
 be deprived of his liberty, but never could he be stripped 
 of his right in the ancestral land. The tendency of 
 modern society has been in the reverse direction. We 
 make every sacrifice to protect the liberty of the mean- 
 est individual, while property even in land follows the 
 will and the caprice of its individual owner. 
 
 The household is prehistoric ; we can trace its exist- 
 ence through the mists and shadows of the early time, 
 but its origin and orderly development are lost in that 
 dim distance. The details I have stated are clearly 
 made out however, and many institutions in Greek and 
 Roman, in Indian and Germanic life can be compre- 
 hended only through a study of the growth of the Aryan 
 household. The joint family and the village commu- 
 nity following the institution of the household, partake 
 of its characteristics. These organizations exist to-day 
 in India and the southern Slav countries. The impor- 
 tant part they discharged in early civilization has been 
 fully recognized by Maine, Sullivan, Laveleye, Morgan, 
 Hearn, and the many other writers who have studied 
 them. 
 
 The gens, or kin, or clan, was the larger body in 
 archaic society which included the household, and it is 
 held that it was founded upon the household. 
 
20 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 " The clan had a common worship and a common tomb ; 
 it had common property; its members had mutual rever- 
 sionary rights in their separate property ; they took charge 
 of the person and the property of any clansman that was 
 under any incapacity ; they exercised full powers of self-gov- 
 ernment, and maintained for the purpose a suitable organiza- 
 tion ; they acted together in avenging wrong done to any of 
 their members ; they rendered, in case of need, mutual help 
 and support." l 
 
 As we have seen in the household, kinship was a 
 common but not necessary element in the relations of 
 the clan. The founder of a clan was primarily its pro- 
 genitor and natural head. The descendants sprung from 
 his loins and associated with themselves other persons, 
 by adoption and by the various obligations of depen- 
 dence growing out of war and poverty. This was the 
 simple process of evolving a tribe from a hero or strong 
 man of the archaic time. If descent by blood be the 
 natural process, there was a constructive or artificial 
 Gens and process quite as effective as lineage in forming 
 Eponym. the organized body of the tribe or clan. It is 
 supposed that the Eponym was the original House Spirit, 2 
 the Lar familiaris of the Eoman household, whose in- 
 fluence was extended into the wider group of the clan or 
 gens. The traces of this familiar spirit appear to-day in 
 India, Persia, Eussia, in the Scandinavian and German 
 communities, as well as in the recorded institutions of 
 Greece and Koine. 3 It is not necessary to follow in 
 detail this discussion ; it is clear that " wherever there 
 was a clan, there was an eponym, or founder, whether 
 
 1 Hearn : Aryan Household, p. 113. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 143. 
 
 3 Morgan finds the equivalent of the Roman gens in the Iroquois 
 Confederacy of North American Indians. "Ancient Society," p. 85. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 real or legendary, of that clan." l The element of per- 
 sonality, call it human or divine as you will, lies at the 
 foundation and penetrates to the core of every social 
 organism. A powerful man creates a lineage, a house- 
 hold, or a tribe. Per contra, a tribe, any organized group 
 of archaic society, must look back through legendary 
 mists to the enlarged features, the deified proportions, of 
 a hero. 2 The name was the symbolic essence of the man, 
 and it was an essential part of the kin which fondly 
 traced its descent to the heroic founder. Whether the 
 founder were an actual historic personage or not, was of 
 little consequence. The eager demand for a founder, a 
 person, soon passed through tradition into legend, through 
 legend into myth, until the features of the hero were 
 indelibly marked in the consciousness of the tribe. The 
 clan is not a decayed patriarchal family, it is a growth 
 beyond that institution. 
 
 The gentile worship, the sacra peculiar to the clan, 
 have left fewer traces in history than those which can 
 be found marking the existence of the household. The 
 rites of the great Fabian gens, already alluded to, were 
 not singular; they were significant types of the deep 
 respect which gentile tradition brought over from the 
 early Aryan periods to the comparatively recent Eoman 
 civilization. Dr. Hearn supposes that the "tomb was 
 to the kin what the hearth was to the household. It 
 w r as the abode of the gentile Lares." 3 The hearth, the 
 shrine of the household, had aroused the warm current 
 of life which, setting forth through the channels of kin- 
 
 1 Hearn : Aryan Household, p. 145. 
 
 2 "Romulus, Eponym of Rome, is probably one of those etymolog- 
 ical inventions so dear to the ancients." Dictionnaire Universel (La- 
 rousse), Article, Eponyme. 
 
 8 Aryan Household, p. 119. 
 
22 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 dred, extended into the circles of adoption without losing 
 its kinship, while it circulated in the blood of the tribe 
 far beyond the narrow bounds of our modern family 
 sympathies. Cousins in the sixteenth degree are held 
 in the close embrace of Irish and Highland Scottish 
 clans. The common tomb concentrated this sacred re- 
 lationship. The ties of blood were strong, not alone 
 through kinship and actual physical descent, but through 
 the religious and familiar life, the deep social sympathy, 
 which common meals, common worship, common prop- 
 erty, and a common tomb had enkindled among rude 
 archaic men. Our emblem of generosity, of the absence 
 of self, is patriotism. This social life we treat was cre- 
 ated before the basis of the patriot existed. As Kemble 1 
 pointed out, the fatherland was unknown to the Ger- 
 manic tribes in early times. They were peoples, and 
 not organisms rooted into the soil, like modern nations. 
 The early rulers were kings of the French and of the 
 English, not of France and England. 
 
 My purpose has been to suggest, rather than to define 
 or prove this interesting process of . development. That 
 person must be poor in historic insight who cannot 
 discern, in the abundant material furnished by our 
 modern scholars, the orderly progression of the Aryan 
 customs and civilization. Some steps may be broken or 
 lost to our present vision ; but they are not destroyed or 
 wanting, for new evidence of the lost parts is being re- 
 vealed almost daily. 2 
 
 1 The Saxons in England, ii. 23. 
 
 2 We leave by the way problems of the deepest interest, why the 
 North American Indian could reach through the clan to a confederacy, 
 and could not found a nation ; why the Chinese and Japanese could 
 build enduring civilizations, while the Malay crumbled ; and, above all, 
 why the negro could remain in the half-light of barbarism, while culture 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 The savage and later barbarian lived a rude life, not 
 independent but helpless, bound in traditions, wrapped 
 in superstition and abject ignorance. The Helpless 
 Aryan householder and clansman rose out of Barbarian 
 this weak condition, subordinated himself to ^^ y 
 his ancestors, founded the family, and, greatest the Free 
 of all, inspired his posterity with the germs of Citizeu - 
 individual freedom. He marked three continents with 
 his footsteps, and tracked his way among barbarian tribes 
 and Oriental despotisms, their natural lord and ruler. 
 The Greek citizen educated this free, roving spirit into 
 that finer social life, that mutual intercourse of the city, 
 which knew neither lord nor subject. The Germanic 
 nations, according to Mr. Freeman, gave to political de- 
 velopment the one principle which the admirable Greek 
 city lacked, 1 a fatal want, which kept the loftiest citi- 
 zens the world has known from attaining the higher 
 growth of the true State. This was the representative 
 principle, the organization by tens and hundreds, the 
 settled system by which chosen men could act for all, 
 keeping the rights of all while administering their own. 
 Over this political and social movement the Greco- 
 Hebraic system of the Christian Church shed the purer 
 light of a higher and a wider religion. 
 
 Our question, What is society ? has answered itself. 
 It is not an agglomeration of individuals; it is not a 
 bundle of families, though this latter institution com- 
 prehends so much of the dearest life of each one of us ; 
 it is not the domain of the Church, though the Roman 
 
 blazed all around him. These questions will be solved only when the 
 whole nature of man, religious and social as well as physical and politi- 
 cal, is rendered in the full light of future science. It is enough for us 
 to study our own ancestors. 
 
 1 Comparative Politics, p. 192. 
 
24 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 Catholic organization, with historic sagacity, has clutched 
 Modem a * tne contr l f these very social issues I have 
 Society is sketched ; it is not the State, which embodies 
 L0n * justice, and which, administering between indi- 
 viduals and institutions, must leave large realms of so- 
 cial life untouched. It lies deeper than either of these 
 four factors of civilized life, for it is older than any 
 or all of them. Society is not a social compact; 1 it 
 existed in germ before there was any pressure to pack 
 human beings together ; its motive principle comes from 
 within, and not from without. It is the divine afflatus 
 of civilization, the breath of God among men, love made 
 manifest in human institutions, without which even re- 
 ligion as well as politics and material industry would 
 fail in bringing happiness to each human being. 
 
 We have now reached the essential meaning of the 
 word social ; for while Labor is the first individual effort, 
 Capital is the first social factor : and this proposition 
 causes important results, as will appear at a 
 l ater stage of our discussion. We can to-day 
 Social Fac- study savages eating roots pulled by their own 
 fingers, or subsisting on fruits grown ready to 
 their hands ; but if we would comprehend any social life 
 rising above the rudest stages of primitive ignorance, we 
 must begin with Capital in some form. The rudest civi- 
 lization involves a tool and some accumulated substance, 
 if it be only one day's meat. These accumulated sub- 
 
 1 This theory of Rousseau and other French theorists is not dead. 
 See " Revue des Deux Mondes, v vol. 32, p. 765. Fouillee opposes Maine, 
 Bluntschli, and others, who hold the State to be a historic growth. 
 He calls it " a vast contract of association, the most general of all, in 
 which all the others will find their place and guarantee." He also calls 
 it a great circle including all other circles ; and this outer rim is main- 
 tained by universal suffrage. Some practical results of this philosophy 
 will be found worked out in our account of the International. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 stances, whether simple or highly artificial, are known 
 in popular language (and there is no better term) as 
 Capital. For Capital is Labor fruited, saved, and pre- 
 served. 
 
 The first physical condition of all social life is Capital ; 
 or, as above stated, this is the first social factor. We 
 can hardly conceive of a true political organism without 
 land, the basis and solid foundation on which the politi- 
 cal functions rest and maintain themselves. So society 
 would be impossible without Capital in some form, 
 which shall embody aspiration and affection, consolidate 
 ambition and energy, satisfy appetites and desires, con- 
 vey mere individual impulse into organic social life. 
 Labor has place here, but in essentially different func- 
 tions. Labor is of the individual, and no individual can 
 escape the obligation he owes to his swaddling blanket : 
 so much capital he must have. 
 
 The central force of society, which we have called 
 social need, affords the nerve power, the impelling prin- 
 ciple, which moves capital and labor alike. The void 
 in the Parisian market calling for iyory, was the main 
 force in bringing the elephant's tusk out of the African 
 jungle. Labor was an incidental force, just as gravita- 
 tion is contingent to the stroke of the laborer's pick. 
 This social need follows various laws, and moves in 
 many channels ; but it is a universal principle. No phi- 
 losophy or science, be it political or be it economic, 
 is true, unless it grounds itself on this principle, and 
 finds its laws in the wants and desires of men and 
 women, as well as in the physical conditions which 
 limit them. 
 
 Having considered Society as the outgrowth of history, 
 and Capital as the substance and physical embodiment 
 
26 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 of that growth, we will now turn to the individual 
 individual mem ^ ers f that organism. Of these members, 
 Members laborers form the largest constituent ; and no 
 !iety< social system is good, unless it gives to the 
 toiling many the best opportunity possible in the imme- 
 diate conditions of life. Labor, the institution which 
 embodies the functions of the civilized laborer, is no 
 less important than Capital, each is related to the 
 other ; but the correlation is complete, either can be 
 a whole without the part which is in the other. Con- 
 sequently, when theorists claim all for Labor alone, they 
 break the historic chain which I have sketched; they 
 shatter the social foundation on which civilization rests. 
 
 Every member of a civilized community, and espe- 
 cially of an Aryan community, has inherited the his- 
 torical development above stated, and carries it within 
 himself. The lowest civilized being is greater than the 
 highest savage ; not that his individual ability is equal 
 to a superior native man, but that he carries in his own 
 structure all the possibilities of civilization. The mod- 
 ern laborer does not differ from any other member of 
 society in his individual or primary rights and duties. 
 Every member of society has these primary functions, 
 which are two-fold and may be thus stated : 
 
 1. We have his right and duty to exist, and to try 
 
 Their t0 Subsist - 
 
 Primary 2. We have his right in the- common ac- 
 cumulations of society, its political, religious, 
 and social structure , its organic form, so to speak, as 
 distinguished from the matter on which that form rests, 
 and his corresponding duty to maintain and improve 
 this social structure. 
 
 For example, though he cannot primarily possess 
 
INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 another's material property, though he does not own the 
 gold in the capitalist's coffer, yet he owns just as much 
 of the king's head or the republic's eagle on the coins as 
 the capitalist or noble owns. We must keep constantly 
 in mind this distinction between material, solid, actually- 
 to-be-handled things Capital and immaterial, ideal 
 powers, which are social and belong to everybody. The 
 thing gold, iron, coal is a care and a trust; the 
 use of the thing is social, and belongs to everybody. 
 
 At first sight, this right of existence, the primary 
 function of the laborer, appears to be very simple. But 
 in fact it is one of the latest results of civilization and 
 Christian philanthropy. The comparatively recent race 
 of Arabs once buried their daughters alive, because they 
 found them troublesome baggage. The great Napoleon, 
 within a century, roasted the opposing Mamelukes when 
 he found them to be an inconvenience. Crippled, incar 
 pable, and aged persons were sacrificed to social exigency 
 when the world was younger. Modern society not only 
 permits but compels every member to live : it is the 
 primary right of existence, involving duty to God alone. 
 The subsistence of the individual is another matter, 
 and society never undertakes that without incurring 
 the gravest risks. As this right of existence is socially 
 conceded, I shall drop it from the argument, and speak 
 of the right to try to subsist. 
 
 We start with a social group which could not exist 
 without capital, nor without labor and laborers, nor 
 without the social need proceeding from the wants, 
 desires, and energies of these varied persons, Modem 
 which need is generally manifested through Social 
 definite persons and classes of persons whom 
 I have called Capitalizers, making the third term in 
 
28 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 the social problem. One person may and often does dis- 
 charge all three functions in himself. He may be his 
 own capitalist, his own laborer, his own energizer and 
 interpreter of the social needs around him. The name 
 matters not, the principle is the same. Small farmers, 
 and the class of peasant proprietors, now so much cov- 
 eted by all countries, are almost always capitalizers. 
 They administer their own capital, they labor with 
 their own hands, they hire also the effort of laborers 
 who may depend on this immediate labor for the day's 
 subsistence. JSTo society can be healthy and stable 
 without a certain portion of this element in some form, 
 a certain share of these small owners and operators. 
 Neither can any society achieve great results which does 
 not add to these small operations the larger accumula- 
 tions of capital and the social life proceeding from it, 
 the larger enterprises of the master capitalizer proceed- 
 ing from the greater social need of a wider civilization. 
 
 Now, keeping in mind that any person may have 
 either or all of these social functions, let us consider 
 what are the rights and duties of each class as a 
 class, the separate and inevitably separate character 
 of these functions as they must -act in every well or- 
 dered society. 
 
 All have the right to exist ; and every right involves 
 a corresponding duty. The laborer l has (1) the right to 
 try to subsist ; (2) the right in the social (not the materi- 
 Laborers' a ^) accumulations of society : as I have termed 
 Rights. it, the form of social life, as distinct from the 
 matter through which that form articulates. The tradi- 
 
 1 Meliton Martin, in his ingenious little book " Le Travail Humain," 
 has recognized this two-fold relation of the laborer to society. He ex- 
 presses it in his formula of wages : " The pay of every laborer is com- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 tions, the glories, the discoveries, the ordered methods of 
 a nation or a race, belong to each individual alike. The 
 Minerva, the spirit of wisdom, the dignified action of the 
 goddess, the creation embodied in that sublime form, be- 
 longed to every Athenian, as well as to the sculptor who 
 rendered it visible to the natural eye. But the marble 
 in the statue, the matter through which these ideas were 
 conveyed, belonged to the man who bought the statue 
 and paid for it. 
 
 The capitalist, the owner of capital, 1 has the right to 
 the possession of his material substance, the values and 
 the representatives of values he may have acquired 
 under the laws. This right is not given to the holder of 
 capital by reason of any particular affection which society 
 has for him. As a matter of fact, most capitalists have 
 been rather unlovely characters. Dives has never been 
 popular. The instinct of possession and pre- Rights of 
 servation is not a pleasing or a social attri- Ca P ltal - 
 bute. And for this very reason all social systems have 
 been forced to take much care of capital and of the 
 
 posed of burdensome utilities, the amount of which is in proportion to 
 the efforts he brings to production, and of gratuitous utilities, the 
 amount of which is increased prodigiously by the abundance and 
 security of capital." p. 175. 
 
 1 Professor Emile Accolas is one of the latest and certainly one of the 
 most learned writers in the school of Rousseau. He cannot follow his 
 master in the idea that property is a purely social institution. In this 
 connection he gives the term the same meaning which we give to Capi- 
 tal : " As to the general basis of property, it is in the nature of man, 
 in the organization of this being who never feels himself so well bound 
 to the whole that he does not seek to make himself the most personal, 
 the most free that he can, and whose perfection consists in being in 
 effect the most personal, the most free that he can. Or, property is an 
 extension of the personality, proceeding from human liberty ; it is the 
 only means by which man can move at his will ; it is for him the only 
 means of arriving at the possession of himself." Philosophie de la 
 Science Politique, p. 49. 
 
30 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 instinctive creature which had just mental capacity 
 enough to cherish and husband its possession. For, as 
 above said, this capital is the first social factor, the nec- 
 essary element on which society depends ; and for this 
 reason the social system has always preserved it jeal- 
 ously, and has found by experience that its preservation 
 has been most successful when carried on through indi- 
 vidual hands. Hence individual ownership and private 
 property. 
 
 The idea of the Minerva was worth so much that 
 somebody must charge -himself with the especial care of 
 the marble ; and he received his reward through the in- 
 stinct of possession. Gold was so expensive, it was so 
 dear, brought from distant deserts or delved from deep 
 mines, that society must see that the precious treasure 
 was not wasted, ground back into the particles of earth 
 from which it was rescued with such pains. This one 
 function is all that the capitalist can have unto himself, 
 this right of possession, this economy of material sub- 
 stance. He cannot use an atom for himself alone. The 
 moment he would gratify an appetite or a taste by the 
 outlay of a single farthing 1 he becomes a minister unto 
 the social need, a member of society using his substance 
 for the mutual gratification of all the other members. 
 He could once keep his substance in suspense, and bury 
 his talent in the earth. But increase of capital has 
 become so certain through the operation of interest, that 
 
 1 This matter of reasonable expenditure each will construe for him- 
 self. Baudrillart (Histoire du Luxe, i. 98) sensibly says : " First, we can 
 justify morally only that kind of luxury which tends to raise the level 
 of the masses, instead of tending to lower their souls and characters. 
 Second, we can justify economically only that relative and allowable 
 luxury which really stimulates labor, and which tends to create more 
 capital than it destroys." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 31 
 
 even avarice, once the neutral enemy of thrift, now 
 forces the owner of capital to put it to instant use, thus 
 causing it to minister to the daily life of society. 
 
 The simple rights of Labor and of Capital would be 
 of little practical value, if they were not penetrated and 
 energized by a third right, that of the Capital- Capital . 
 izer. No modern civilized society could exist izer's 
 on the simple functions of labor and capital ; Rlghts> 
 that is, to do, to enjoy, and to keep. The use of capital, 
 the fructifying of the social factor into new social factors 
 which all may in turn possess, brings into play a new 
 class of faculties and a new class of persons. The 
 movement of capital may be initiated by its owner, just 
 as the laborer may till his own ground or hammer at his 
 own leather and last, in a simple, half-developed state of 
 society. But in fact this sole use of capital grows less 
 frequent as time goes on. The ownership of modem 
 capital is more widely diffused than is generally sup- 
 posed, and the majority of these owners cannot make a 
 social use of their own material substance. This inor- 
 ganic force which is in gold or land must be interpen- 
 etrated with the organic force which is in the laborer. 
 But the process involves a new set of organs in society 
 to play between the laborer and capital. In simple 
 warfare the chieftain could direct his warriors ; in a 
 civilized army these two functions are wide apart. The 
 general can never say to a line of privates, " Fire ! " So 
 in the modern use of capital and the social activity of 
 labor there is a minute organism partaking of the nature 
 of both, but devoted to neither exclusively. The dy- 
 namic movement 1 of capital and labor requires an ample 
 
 1 This dynamic movement under any social system soon, creates 
 privilege and vested rights, which become capital under certain condi- 
 
32 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 protection from society, just as the possession and care 
 of capital must be secure, or the whole basis of social 
 action tumbles down. Society, as well as the State, looks 
 
 to persons, or to the fiction of persons, for the 
 Movement discharge of its functions. Therefore this dy- 
 of Social naniic movement, this action by which labor 
 
 and capital are brought into social life, is del- 
 egated to individuals, or classes of individuals, whom I 
 have called Capitalizers. These are not simply under- 
 takers, inter-takers, or enterprisers. You do not say to 
 your shoemaker : " Buy me leather, waxed thread ; let to 
 me the use of awls and last ; hire for me two days' labor, 
 for all which enterprise I will pay you a given sum." 
 
 illustration You Sa 7 : " ^ wan t a P a i r of shoes suited to my 
 of shoe- particular feet." He says : " The best combina- 
 tion of material, labor, and skill to be had in 
 the market I shall put together here in an article like 
 this, and you may have it fitted to you for ten dollars." 
 He transmutes the capital of the materials, the labor of 
 the workmen, with your want, into a new form of capi- 
 tal, which is money. There is no part of the process 
 which belongs exclusively to either one of the parties to 
 the transaction. The tanner did not create the leather, 
 nor the workman the shoe ; no more did the shoemaker 
 make the foot which was to wear the finished product. 
 
 tions. This region becomes a debatable land between my three terms, 
 and especially between capital and capitalizing. This territory is con- 
 stantly narrowing, and the social arrangement is always tending toward 
 the divisions I have made. Privilege, where it has a legal sanction, is 
 materialized, but it is through a medium differing from the ordinary 
 matter which forms capital. The social principle is the same, though 
 its form of expression is different. The privilege of baron, count, or 
 duke was not essential in him, but was given him for an equivalent he 
 had rendered, or was supposed to have rendered, to the whole com- 
 munity. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 33 
 
 Possibly you might have preferred to save ten dollars, 
 and travel with bare feet, if it were not for the custom 
 which prescribes decent shoes. It was a social action ; 
 and in the transaction society employed the shoemaker, 
 who must look to it that society suffers no harm. No 
 incompetent tanner, no greed or neglect of the workman, 
 must prevent you from obtaining the worth of your 
 money in the shoes. If the shoemaker charge you too 
 much, another will soon displace him. He must look to 
 it that you do not fail to pay, or in that event society 
 would furnish you the shoes through him : something 
 cannot be had from nothing. At first sight it would 
 appear that there was no loss here; a simple transfer 
 of the shoes makes society neither richer nor poorer. 
 But the profit, the true advantage of the whole of soci- 
 ety, 1 comes from the good administration of every trans- 
 action in detail, every bargain in the market. A bad 
 commercial exchange, or a bad process of manufacture, 
 wherever it may occur, makes you and me poorer. It 
 is here, and not in the dogma of " unproductive con- 
 sumption," that society economically gains or loses. It 
 is this which makes the function of the capitalizer 
 so important. Every exchange and every process of 
 production is transmuted through him; he is the cru- 
 cible, the retort, in which old forces are released and 
 may be destroyed, new forces are created and may be 
 misapplied. 
 
 Our reformers are mistaken when they imagine that 
 it is the possession of capital about which Use is so- 
 society is anxious. It is the movement of it, g^ s ' ion t g S " 
 the transmutation of capital and labor, the individual, 
 dynamic power of society rendered into money, which 
 
 1 See per cmtra Marx's "Theory of Profit," note, p. 245, infra. 
 3 
 
34 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 vexes the mind of man. This constant, restless renewal 
 of material substance through individual effort, the un- 
 certainty, the immense chance of daily life even in the 
 narrowest lives, while it distresses also fascinates man- 
 kind. All capital, all labor, and, greater than all, that 
 fine social organization, the sum of life either for capital- 
 ist or laborer, are staked every day on myriads of sub- 
 tile operations which involve the material substance of 
 capital, the instant effort of labor and the social co-opera- 
 tion of all. The immense majority of these operations 
 are of small amount, and chiefly affect individuals and 
 famijies ; but all these operations, small or great, are 
 linked in the great social movements and impulses 
 which modern trade, commerce, and manufacture em- 
 body. The ownership of capital interests us not so much 
 in essence, as in the manner in which it shall be used 
 and improved. In a large sense, great monopolies can- 
 not forward themselves without advancing the larger 
 interests of society. 
 
 Society cannot deal with these forces ; it works through 
 individual persons. A field of wheat cannot put its in- 
 crease into the whole mass of its crop. It puts the in- 
 crease in kind ; this new and valuable product it puts 
 into individual grains like the seed from which it sprang. 
 Otherwise it may grow tall stalks, but will produce no 
 valuable organism, and thus will lose its vital and repro- 
 ductive character. The fecundating process of capitaliz- 
 ing is the same. Capital is matter, like earth, silex, and 
 potash; it cannot form into the seeds of new capital, 
 which is an organized growth, without the social brain of 
 the capitalizer. The idea of the organism went out from 
 his brain ; the accomplished fruit must return to him, 
 just as the product of the wheat-field returns to the seed- 
 
INTRODUCTION". 35 
 
 
 
 grains which gave it life. The State may own the mass, 
 it cannot penetrate it and infuse it with individual 
 energy. Political organism is not fine enough, cannot 
 reach far enough, to supply the power of individual 
 effort to society. 
 
 The effective social group 1 embodies accumulated 
 substance or capital, the one who would or _, 
 
 Social 
 
 must labor, and the dynamic force of one who Attraction 
 can bring new and increased social life out of involves 
 
 Kepulsion. 
 
 this conjunction. It must be elastic, and the 
 changes it brings about are often startling. The capital- 
 ist of to-day becomes the laborer of to-morrow ; the pres- 
 ent laborer may be the next discoverer or inventor, who 
 shall become the greatest of capitalizers and overturn 
 the habits of whole communities. 
 
 The social group tends to consolidate, to coalesce, and 
 to make a closer and stronger union between its members. 
 The outgrowth of the individual, to which I have allu- 
 ded, the freer movement of the humblest members of 
 modern society, has required a more elastic movement 
 in the group. This has engendered in the group a re- 
 pelling force, an outward current, only second in power 
 to the centralizing attraction which draws the individ- 
 
 1 These social needs, these centripetal impulses, very early precipi- 
 tated individuals into communities and concentrated the forming proc- 
 esses of civilization into groups. The constant effort of man in all 
 time has been to make the happiest groups. An Esquimaux family is 
 at this day an industrial group well organized and well disciplined. 
 Saltaire in Yorkshire, with its thousands of operatives, millions of capi- 
 tal, shops, churches, schools, and parks, is no other. Should you change 
 the form of the organization, and place Sir Titus Salt or his descendants 
 in London, the spinning factory in one town, the weaving factory in 
 another, yet the principle would be the same. Manchester, Liverpool, 
 London, make together one group or hierarchy of groups, whose office is 
 to minister not to England alone, but to the ever increasing wants of 
 the whole world. 
 
36 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOK. 
 
 uals together socially. 1 In order to keep the members 
 whole, as it were, to prevent them from becoming mere 
 parts and factors in a machine, they are always tend- 
 ing outward. The group, therefore, is always disinte- 
 grating, or tending to disintegrate, and form around new 
 centres of healthful activity. This secondary process in 
 grouping has evolved with such force that superficial 
 observers have often thought it to be the mainspring 
 of social life. The necessary repelling force in the 
 individual, becoming for the moment the great motor of 
 civilization, seemed to these philosophers to overcome 
 all the powers which society had been gathering since 
 history began. But these philosophers forget that 
 the final force is a centralizing one ; the indi- 
 visual leaves the group by his own inherent 
 force, but only that he may return to it or to 
 anotner group- The constant desire of the 
 individual in all ages has been to better him- 
 self ; but he has never attained this desire without bet- 
 tering others. His individual right to exist and subsist 
 has not increased or diminished by his raising himself 
 in the social scale. He has, by bettering himself, only 
 gained a larger social opportunity, and incurred a corre- 
 sponding obligation. 
 
 Just here the dogma of equality, so dear to humanity, 
 Social has been distorted and developed toward the 
 Equality, destruction of good social institutions. Equal- 
 ity is not the right of each individual as he is, with 
 his social accretions, to balance any other individual 
 
 1 This principle shows itself clearly in the decay of the Serbian 
 family communities. These were ideal associations according to the 
 socialist's dream, yet they have gone out. See Laveleye, "De la Pro- 
 priete," p. 237. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 37 
 
 as he is. Equality is not the weighing of John Doe 
 against Eichard Eoe ; it is the right of equalizing the 
 social power of each. Now the social power of John 
 may be thrice that of Eichard ; and he has attained it, 
 or ought to have attained it, by rendering more ser- 
 vice to society. It matters not whether he attained 
 it by accident, by labor, or by heredity ; for social law, 
 like political law, deals with what is, and not with what 
 ought to be. The only lawful means by which Eichard 
 can equalize himself with John is by rendering a still 
 larger service socially, and thus equalize him in social 
 power. No man has ever essentially bettered himself 
 without going through this process. It is the social 
 tendency to equalize, which never descends into a mere 
 physical balance ; it is the social momentum which ad- 
 heres to the individual in his movement, and not the 
 mere dead-weight of land, gold, or armies. 
 
 This is the secondary grouping process, and the more 
 highly developed communities display it in greatest 
 power. It is an essential function of any vital group. 
 Society will tolerate no torpid members, no sluggish 
 groups, just as Nature knows no death, no absolute rest. 
 The group is not sooner formed than it must renew 
 itself ; and whichever individual it promotes or equal- 
 izes, it gives him a new social force. It may dispense 
 with either John or Eichard when he has ceased to be 
 useful. It does not take away from John and give to 
 Eichard : it may increase John while equalizing Eich- 
 ard, but always out of its own abounding stores of 
 social vigor, out of which shall come new and richer 
 civilizations. 
 
 Thus the group is not a mere form of aggregation, 
 but a principle of growth reaching into every form of 
 
38 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 society which has established itself on earth. When- 
 ever this principle has lost its concentrating power, when 
 the mutual attraction and repulsion between the par- 
 ticles has changed direction, and the revolving units 
 have spread out into a mass, then social decay has 
 begun. When the group, losing its centre in the social 
 whole, has flattened down into a caste or class, then so- 
 ciety has lost the power which should come from the 
 grouping forces, or the union of individuals with differ- 
 ing natures in a common centre. 
 
 Social groups of one kind or another have supported 
 every State. The separation of political, religious, and 
 social functions which characterizes modern civilized na- 
 tions, has been slowly and very gradually accomplished. 
 The orderly genius of the Eomans at last built up an 
 Develop- organic State, and every generation owes them 
 divSua f i In ~ a heay y debfc of gratitude. The Greeks de- 
 Citizens, veloped the free city, the mainspring of social 
 life and culture ; but Eome balanced the functions of 
 state, church, and family, and worked out a good govern- 
 ment. The idea of the free individual did not obtain in 
 their institutions ; the head of the family and the full 
 citizen was a part of the State : but the simple man 
 whether enslaved or free was a part of some minor insti- 
 tution through which he enjoyed partial political privi- 
 lege. The Eornan world was one whole, in which the 
 whole did not exist for the many ; the many existed for 
 the whole. Meanwhile the Germanic tribes were de- 
 veloping the individual freeholder out of the clan, and the 
 mark into a constituent part of the State, a necessary 
 unit in every assembly, which should affect the fortunes 
 of the whole community. It was not until the Ameri- 
 can Republic was founded that these two currents met 
 
INTRODUCTION. 39 
 
 and formed one nation, one government. The fathers 
 made that grand generalization, that " all men are born 
 free and equal." They made it, not as untutored savages 
 met to divide the spoils of a new land, or to live out 
 a rude existence; they made it fully informed in the 
 spirit of all government which had gone before, Greek, 
 Roman, German, English ; and they laid these obliga- 
 tions of government on a people born out of the free and 
 bold Germanic stock, educated in the sturdy independ- 
 ence of the Hebrew tribes. Contrariwise, about a cen- 
 tury before, Louis XIV., a Caesar without a senate, an 
 emperor whose empire was in himself, had said, " I am 
 the State." It was inevitable that the State idea, the 
 organic force of the nation working through the structure 
 we call feudalism (a correlated organism of individuals), 
 should develop into a form of government as unnat- 
 ural as this proved to be. It mattered not whether 
 this glittering paradox was wielded by a powerful and 
 ambitious .ruler like its author, or a weak and well-dis- 
 posed one like Louis XVI. : it was still absolute power ; 
 and it exhausted the nation first, then brought disaster 
 and revolution. 
 
 I am not claiming that the Americans have the only 
 form of the true State. I only mean to say that this re- 
 public has wrought out this definite result : it has freely 
 granted its citizenship, not only to all the individuals of 
 the people who formed it, but has extended this right to 
 nationalities and races then considered beyond the pale 
 of political rights. It has demanded in return the union 
 of the many in the whole ; not that the whole should 
 oppress the many, but that a thorough unity should be 
 established. The individual, local self-government 
 State rights have yielded to the majesty of the Union, 
 
40 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 and to this only. The imperial will of the State has 
 united in itself the wishes of the many, through repre- 
 sentation, we may say, of all who are included in its do- 
 main. This is an immense political achievement, and has 
 produced corresponding social results. The scream of the 
 American eagle is often a harsh sound, but nevertheless 
 it is noble ; it is born in numerous throats and voices, the 
 powerful emotion of all the members of a mighty people. 
 All States include within themselves social groups of 
 which individuals are the pivots and fulcrums. What 
 we call freedom is the most social, the most civilized 
 The citizen result of all the living among all the peoples 
 both a so- W j 10 } iave g 0ne before. The savage is the most 
 
 cial and a D . . 
 
 political unfree man in the world, for he is entangled 
 
 an( j completely wrapped in social despotism. 
 The member of the tribe, the henchman of the clan, the 
 subordinate member of the Eoman family or clientage, 
 had not the free activity essential to a modern citizen 
 under any form of. government. The genius of the 
 modern State economizes its powers and limits itself to 
 a few functions. It has been withdrawing gradually 
 from the religious and social life of its citizens, that it 
 might the better administer its purely political duties. 
 Schuyler says that in Turkestan, under the old Oriental 
 khanates, the crops were sometimes ruined when ready 
 for harvest because the cultivator could not get the tax 
 assessment fixed in time to save them. It would not 
 pay to gather them, because the government might exact 
 nearly all. Here an agricultural or, as I would term 
 it, a social function of the people is hopelessly dam- 
 aged by the bad political machinery of the State, if we 
 can by courtesy call a half-civilized government a State. 
 The State now tends constantly to lighten its political 
 
INTRODUCTION. 41 
 
 harness, and make it touch the persons of its subjects at 
 as few points as possible. One of the causes why pro- 
 tective tariffs hold their ground so obstinately is that 
 they tax things, and save many persons from direct obli- 
 gations which might be less costly if applied directly. 
 
 For this reason the State fosters many associations 
 which may work out the social life of the people, while 
 they do not interfere with the imperial political su- 
 premacy of the State. All statesmen have recognized 
 the helpless nature of the individual when left to him- 
 self : still less have they desired that he should be left 
 on their hands. The individual, the independent self- 
 willing citizen, has been evolving gradually from lord 
 and vassal, from municipality and guild, from laborer 
 and serf, even from the slave. Yet the State has not 
 assumed immediate direction of these varied characters, 
 excepting to work out its own political ends. It has 
 kept alive the embers of the old social fires, and assimi- 
 lated the new life of the people to the old institutions 
 in so far as it found this possible. 1 
 
 Castes have probably served a useful purpose at some 
 periods of history. But modern society has Castekills 
 made grievous mistakes when it has crystal- anAristoc- 
 lized an aristocracy into a caste. racy ' 
 
 The modern aristocracies were not formed as castes, 
 though they have become partial castes or distinct classes. 
 They were groups when the feudal principle controlled 
 human affairs. The baron or count did not consider 
 himself a mere fellow of his peers, all together making 
 common cause against the other members or classes of 
 society. He was the centre of a barony or county, hold- 
 
 1 See social structure of City in our last chapter, "Society, New and 
 Old." 
 
42 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 ing all the powers contained in gentlemen, freeholders 
 and serfs beneath him ; and he reluctantly submitted 
 this concentrated power of the group to the sovereign 
 above. It was when the nobles ceased to regard their 
 social privilege as a social duty, and made their class 
 into an independent function of the State, that society 
 began to lose the solidifying power of the feudal groups. 
 I have sketched the analysis of the social group, into 
 which the life of modern societies is cast, or toward 
 which it is tending. Other systems have prevailed, 
 and in part still exist ; good arguments can be made 
 individual f r their continued and permanent exist- 
 strongest ence. Nevertheless, any intelligent observer 
 cepTsocial perceives that the changes of this century, 
 Force. whether they be political, social, or industrial 
 and fiscal, carry us toward the kind of social organ- 
 ization which I have tried to set forth. One institution 
 after another has gone down or decayed, and given place 
 to this superior organizing force. Slavery, patriarchal 
 clientage, vassalage, guild-franchise, each was an impor- 
 tant element in the social structure of its time, and 
 served to link together capital and labor. Civilization 
 has abandoned these rude and imperfect social machines, 
 and has brought the individual man and woman into 
 freer and more independent activity with every forward 
 step it has made. The inert status has given place to 
 the living contract. Both evolution and revolution, 
 have tended to put the individual into his own control, 
 to free him as far as possible from the fetters of custom 
 and necessity, and to make him the master of his own 
 destiny. The individual will has been freely developed, 
 often at the expense of good institutions. It matters 
 not whether we like this essential principle : some of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 43 
 
 us who do like it would limit it, perhaps ; but it moves 
 on with irresistible force, regardless of pope, emperor, 
 aristocracy, or other prescriptive power. 
 
 The fourth institution of modern life, the Church, 
 needs no especial comment in this connection. 
 
 Church 
 
 The separation of Church and State moves for- exists 
 ward so rapidly, even in Catholic countries, 
 that the religious functions of the individual not 
 man can be carried on without necessarily in- above xt< 
 terferirig with his political or economic functions. Of 
 course the Church always has large social functions, but 
 they need not be considered in our discussion. The 
 Church in a scientific social analysis would not as a factor 
 change the relations I have stated. It is true that the 
 Eoman church still claims absolute and exclusive control 
 over the individual in every social relation or tendency ; 
 but it is not essential to our thought to discuss this 
 pretension of that particular branch of the Christian 
 church. 
 
 The social law of labor is not a mere economic force ; 
 it is psychologic, because it is historic. It makes a 
 succession through the three factors I have named, 
 carrying with it the social life which it has Th e Social 
 inherited into a new social life which ascends law is an 
 to the future. I have tried to show by a few 
 glimpses into the life of the past that the individual 
 man never begins, as it were. In the earliest trust- 
 worthy records we have, we find man looking backward 
 as well as forward, bringing the other world into this 
 world, sharing his daily life with those gone before, 
 tiding over this span of existence into the seas of in- 
 finity, hither and beyond, before and after this me, 
 this individual unit, which yearned and still yearns 
 
44 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 for fellowship with the many. This social law has 
 been constantly at work. The units circled into groups 
 of one and another kind, building up each other through 
 social contact. Leaders were always needed ; aristocra- 
 cies of every kind were developed. Whenever the best 
 ceased to rule the many in the interest of the whole, 
 the aristocracy was broken on the wheel of revolution, 
 or it sunk into helpless decay. 
 
 This same social law now takes on new forms grow- 
 ing out of the recent industrial life, which is filling the 
 whole world with new powers. But the law is un- 
 changed, and will work forward toward its own objects, 
 whatever may be the will of the masses or of the in- 
 dividuals through whom it puts forth its powers. My 
 argument is of necessity more or less desultory, for it is 
 like a bridge of pontoons which must be built and rebuilt 
 with every forward movement. Each pontoon is an in- 
 dividual in the beginning ; but it enlarges into society 
 in the centre, and is an individual again in the end. 
 That is the forming principle of modern life, to raise up 
 individuals with larger and larger powers, but fettered by 
 social tendencies, all finally uniting in the bosom of the 
 State. But before stating our whole view of this sub- 
 ject we must consider certain new theories of the State, 
 that possible new order of society which is hovering in 
 the social and civil atmosphere, and which many thinkers 
 believe is about to descend and abide among us. 
 
 Various observations and theories of the actual facts 
 The unso- of life enter into what we call Socialism, or the 
 ciai indi- communistic form of Social philosophy ; they 
 of Commu- &U aini at one end, and the views of life which 
 
 nism. they embody are all seen through this one per- 
 spective. The idea and the aim of these theorists is to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 45 
 
 bring the individual member of society into immediate 
 and close contact with the resultant forces and the accu- 
 mulated results of that society. Not only into contact 
 with social wealth and property, but into its possession, 
 must the individual come in order that every one may 
 have his own. That labor produces all things is not a 
 mere dogma affecting the economic distribution of a 
 day's wages, it is a social and political principle 1 far- 
 reaching in its powers, and it affects every institution 
 we have sketched. 
 
 I do not wish to prejudice the argument, but 'the 
 reader will find in the actual history of the Interna- 
 tional 2 the accomplished facts which this principle has 
 produced. The instituted life of society will not suffice 
 for these sudden and imperative forces, which some well- 
 meaning persons would push into instant and effective 
 action. The society which has grown out of the past, 
 that which we have described as resting on State, Church, 
 Family, Individual, must give place to a State resting 
 on the individual alone. Eeligion, property, heredity, 
 must be abolished, in order that the individual person 
 may articulate immediately with the joints of the body 
 politic, may sympathize instantly with the nerve cur- 
 rents which move the State. 
 
 Nihilism is a dark word, but it is closely allied to 
 Socialism. I do not mean to denounce, but to explain. 
 There is so much that is in the present order, that the 
 socialistic order of the future must begin in that which 
 is not. Equalizing begins in negation. The new "tree of 
 life is not to be propagated from scions of the old stock, 
 * a clear field must first be had ; then the good God, 
 or no God, will lift a new race into higher social life. 
 
 1 See infra, p. 228. 2 See infra, p. 225. 
 
46 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOK. 
 
 Do not imagine, reader, that this is a mere matter of 
 plunder and robbery, a mere lust for the dollar in your 
 pocket or mine. Many pure men and women, pure 
 only in their devotion to this idea, have sacrificed 
 every possible interest to this universality of the indi- 
 vidual. It is a love stronger than religion, a patriotism 
 deeper than the soil and wider than any country. 
 
 We must not despise this soul-compelling idea, this 
 misdirected power. It may not be good or useful in its 
 present manifestation, but it issues from the better part 
 of humanity and cannot be controlled by brute force : it 
 will yield to the greater power of the mind, to reason 
 alone. There is only one way in which this idea can 
 be met, only one force which will subdue it to the 
 good of mankind. Whether the animal came from an 
 egg or the first egg came from an animal, whether 
 man came before or after the beast, is of little moment 
 in any present estimate of man's nature. So, whether 
 society came after the individual, or individual man and 
 woman founded society, can be of little consequence in 
 laying down social principles. This much is certain, 
 they each exist for the other. It is only by drawing out 
 all the powers of society, by putting forth all the finest 
 organic forces of the old institution, that this new and 
 tremendous modern creature, the individual of Social- 
 ism, can be restrained and utilized. It may become a 
 monster, it may develop into a being trained to the best 
 social ends, according as society falls below or rises equal 
 to the occasion which this new creation puts before it. 
 I say creature, not accidentally or without thought. It 
 is an animal full of passion ; it may and if civilization 
 is to continue it must become an organic being sub- 
 ject to law. The same evolution which has borne the in- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 47 
 
 dividual man into political order, into the representa- 
 tive responsibility of the citizen, can bring the modern 
 industrial individual into social dependence as well 
 as into social rights, if society is large enough to put 
 it forth. 
 
 We must look into the past for the promise of the 
 future. Coming principles show forth in the plan of 
 what has been. If we appear to be going far off, be sure 
 we shall come nearer to the truth thereby. We can 
 discover certain social institutions either in germ or 
 developed or half developed in the records of the past, 
 which are constantly being brought to light by scholars 
 in the philosophy of history. 
 
 First, we have the personage, the man of mark, with 
 property of his own, appearing in all rude so- Purpose 
 cieties : he was a pivot on which both Society and , De f lgn 
 
 ' * of the chap- 
 
 and the State rested. ters foiiow- 
 
 The Person, though a social agent and an in s- 
 important link in social succession, was nevertheless 
 fleeting, and even the heredity of aristocratic privilege 
 could not preserve all his functions. The Corporation, 
 a permanent -succession, including individuals while it 
 passed through them, came into being, and becomes one 
 of the most interesting as well as one of the most pow- 
 erful institutions of modern life. 
 
 The Guild took on the religious, social, and industrial 
 features of corporate life, while it generally relinquished 
 the larger political tendencies to the rising municipal- 
 ity, the sphere of the growing citizen. It developed a 
 social life of its own, not large enough to justify its 
 continuance when a broader, freer State put forth mu- 
 nicipal authority based on the representation of indi- 
 vidual freemen. 
 
48 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 Labor Associations or Trade Unions on the one side 
 Employers' Associations on the other, through the 
 powers and the necessities of industrial organization, 
 have developed a formidable negative principle, which 
 plays a large part both in the progress and in the hin- 
 drance of modern society. In short, they are social 
 and still more anti-social institutions. 
 
 Capital, the substance and the accumulated results of 
 civilization, is the property of society deposited in in- 
 dividual hands. This individual ownership is the result 
 of the social law which I have stated. The operation 
 of this law is so minute and peculiar, that its main pro- 
 ceedings must always be through individual minds and 
 hands. Great corporations, whether municipal or in- 
 dustrial, attract the eye by their more dramatic display ; 
 but society must always exist finally for the benefit of 
 its individual members, and they must be the trustees 
 and holders of its material possessions. 
 
 Society, both the old which exists in our structure 
 and the new which breathes a later and larger life 
 through that structure, conform to one and the same 
 law. The organs of the State include all the political, 
 religious, and social tissues consolidated out of the life 
 of past time. These functions of the State may be latent 
 powers, but they always endure. No association, whether 
 it be of laborers or capitalists, of nobles or serfs, of priests 
 or soldiers, ever exists unto itself. Its right of being is 
 in its social ends : if it help society, it will help its own 
 members ; if it fail to be a social agent, it will finally 
 damage or destroy its own individual members. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 
 
I. 
 
 PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 
 
 WEALTH soon involves the idea of property. It is 
 probable that language is here inverted, and that 
 the principle of ownership which we consolidate into 
 property was not at first the exclusive right of one, but 
 the joint possession of many. Sir Henry Maine concludes 
 " that joint-ownership, and not separate ownership, is the 
 really archaic institution." l It is archaic and not natu- 
 ral to speak of common or joint property, for the essence 
 of this institution is ownership, the owning by one. 
 After the principle of property beyond mere personal 
 implements was developed, then the possession and own- 
 ership gradually passed to one party, and finally inheri- 
 tance transmitted it to one or more heirs. This is one 
 of the many illustrations of a conception of the individ- 
 ual growing out of family and tribal relations. 
 
 It is now believed that the great Aryan race, from 
 which we derive the germs of our civilization, in the 
 period which just antedates history was in a state of 
 development nearly corresponding to that of the North 
 American Indians. In that view the institutions of the 
 Iroquois, who were passing from tribes into a nascent 
 nation, are important. The custom of inheritance among 
 these people indicates the joint nature of property, bear- 
 ing in mind that the personal implements, " one's own," 
 were buried with the owner. 
 
 1 Ancient Law, p. 251. 
 
52 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 " Theoretically, the Iroquois were under the first rule (that. 
 Earl form * s ' ^ at P r P er ty should be distributed among the 
 of Prop- gentiles of the deceased owner); but, practically, 
 erty. the effects of a deceased person were appropriated 
 
 by his nearest relations within the gens. In the case of a 
 male, his own brothers and sisters and maternal uncles di- 
 vided his effects among themselves. This practical limita- 
 tion of the inheritance to the nearest gentile kin discloses 
 the germ of agnatic inheritance. In the case of a female, her 
 property was inherited by her children and sisters, to the ex- 
 clusion of her brothers. In every case the property remained 
 in the gens. The children of the deceased males took noth- 
 ing from their father, because they belonged to a different 
 gens. It was for the same reason that the husband took 
 nothing from the wife, or the wife from the husband. These 
 mutual rights of inheritance strengthened the autonomy of 
 the gens." 1 
 
 The gens 2 was a clan, a subdivision of the tribe. It 
 included all who traced descent to a common male 
 ancestor, and finally included others by adoption and by 
 " fiction." The Senecas, one of the Iroquois tribes, had 
 eight gentes, or clans ; and the Oneidas, another tribe, 
 had three. The Iroquois " manufactured nets, twine, 
 and rope from filaments of bark ; wove belts and burden 
 straps with warp and woof from the same materials ; they 
 manufactured earthen vessels and pipes from clay mixed 
 with silicious materials and hardened by fire, some of 
 which were ornamented with rude medallions; they 
 cultivated maize and tobacco in garden beds, and made 
 
 1 Morgan : Ancient Society, p. 76. 
 
 2 Maine differs from Morgan, McLennan, and other authorities, and 
 makes the family precede clan and tribal organization. It is a differ- 
 ence in terms. There must have been some organism equivalent to a 
 clan for long generations before the monogamous family was even con- 
 ceived of. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 53 
 
 unleavened bread from pounded maize; they 'tanned 
 skins into leather, with which they manufactured kilts, 
 leggins, and moccasins ; used flint, stone, and bone im- 
 plements, wore skin garments, and were expert hunters 
 and fishermen; they constructed long joint-tenement 
 houses large enough to accommodate five, ten, and 
 twenty families, and each household practised commu- 
 nism in living." l 
 
 Here we see a rude society with property mixed, 
 partly individual and partly common. The joint-tene- 
 ment and the plots of ground must have been common 
 among the clan ; the semi-personal effects passed by 
 inheritance to those akin by blood. The clan and tribe 
 are the basis of modern political institutions, while kin- 
 ship is the basis of the modern family. 
 
 Kussia and the Slavic regions bring the agricultural 
 communities, or village communities, over from the 
 Middle Ages. India and China and especially Java 
 employ them to-day. They have been in use in former 
 times among the Germans, Saxons, Scandinavians, and 
 in the south of Europe. Peru and Mexico also had 
 them. It has been considered that this joint form of 
 property was universal in the middle stages of civiliza- 
 tion : it is certain that it pertains to a rudimentary form 
 of civilization. 
 
 M. Laveleye, in his work on Property and its primi- 
 tive forms, does not go back to barbaric peoples, but he 
 has made an exhaustive study of the institution among 
 civilized and semi-civilized peoples. In his concluding 
 chapter he enumerates, following the jurists and econo- 
 mists, five theories on the foundation of property : 
 
 1 Morgan : Ancient Society, p. 70. See also Parknian : Jesuits in 
 North America. 
 
54 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 1. Occupation, after the Eoman and other juris- 
 
 Laveleye's Consults. 
 
 statement. 2. Labor, after the economists, and espec- 
 ially Adam Smith. 
 
 3. Contract, " pour expliquer comment les hommes 
 e'taient sortis de la communaute primitive, on a dit que 
 c'etait par suite d'une convention, et ainsi la propriete* 
 serait nee du contrat." 
 
 4 Creation by the law, after Bossuet, Montesquieu, 
 Mirabeau, Bentham, Laboulaye, etc. 
 
 5. Natural right, " un droit nature!." l M. Lave- 
 leye adopts the last theory, and quotes with strong ap- 
 probation an explanation by Prof. Ahrens of Leipsic. 
 
 I cannot perceive that M. Laveleye escapes in this 
 last theory from the objections which he has himself 
 raised against the fourth. " The law creates property, 
 they say ; but what shall be that law, and what shall 
 it decide ? " Who shall administer the natural right 
 which we find, not in a state of Nature, whatever that 
 may be, but surrounded by all the appointments .of 
 civilization ? 
 
 M. Laboulaye says that "the right of property is 
 not natural, but social," which is plainly correct; and 
 if the law is construed to be not only the authority of 
 the State but a historic sequence, the manifestation of 
 the order and source of authority, his ground and theory 
 would be right. But that carries statute law beyond 
 its true bearing : that would be the ideal law, and not 
 the actual under which we live. 
 
 The right of property must vest in all the theories 
 which M. Laveleye cites. They embody the historic 
 sequence wbich we can see emerging from the Iroquois 
 
 1 De la Propriete et de ses Formes Primitives, pp. 381 - 390. 
 
PEESONS AND PROPERTY. 55 
 
 settlement and from like communities existing in other 
 parts of the world to-day. Occupancy, Labor, 
 social Agreement, Possession under the statute 
 
 written or unwritten, all dwelt together in in a11 J 
 the joint-tenements of the Mohawks : they still 
 dwell together in the Hindu village-commu- 
 nity. These rights have passed from the original aggre- 
 gation of people, under whatever form it existed, into the 
 clan, into the household, or a community of like nature ; 
 then they have passed to the family, and lastly to the 
 individual. The individual holder of property, that is, 
 one's own, holds it in trust for all the rights which have 
 gone before, and which created it. This is not a mere so- 
 cial contract, the principle which has confused the minds 
 of so many, including Eousseau and Adam Smith. It 
 is a social genesis. Therefore I say language is inverted, 
 and gives us only the last step in the process of civiliza- 
 tion. The property that I own, I have through the 
 forbearance and assistance of generations of hunters, 
 farmers, laborers, merchants, warriors, and statesmen. 
 
 The Eoman law is a rich crust of fossils solidified 
 from experience; its terms embody the customs by 
 which men developed private property and affixed to 
 individual possession a social sanction. Mancipation 
 was one of its most important processes, the form by 
 which property was first taken in hand. 
 
 " The Res Mancipi of old Eoman law were land (in his- 
 torical times land on Italian soil), slaves, and beasts of bur- 
 den, such as horses and oxen. Such commod- Roman 
 Cities were at first, I imagine, called emphatically Terms. 
 Things or Property, and the mode of conveyance by which 
 they were transferred was called a Mancipium, or Mancipa- 
 tion ; but it was not probably till much later that they re- 
 
56 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 ceived the distinctive appellation of Ees Mancipi, * things 
 which require a Mancipation.' " 1 
 
 Mancipation finally passed into " Delivery," and prop- 
 erty was legally delivered without the solemn ceremo- 
 nies of the early form. Long ages must have passed 
 while men were planting ground for joint families, and 
 weaving bark or even weaving wool into warp 
 and woof, before the civilized institution of mancipa- 
 tion could establish itself. When the labor of slaves 
 had subdued the earth, and beasts of burden had been 
 used to till the fields, then property passed into an 
 organized form which could be taken in hand. It will 
 be observed that land is here classed with the movable 
 power which made it valuable to the proprietor. Slaves 
 and cattle were a part of the organization which enabled 
 the early agriculturists to give a convertible value to 
 land. 
 
 " While, however, the list of Res Mancipi was irrevocably 
 closed, that of the Res Nee Mancipi admitted of indefinite 
 expansion ; and hence every fresh conquest of man over 
 material nature added an item to the latter, or effected an 
 improvement in those already recognized. . . . The history 
 of Eoman Property-law is the history of the assimilation of 
 Res Mancipi to Res Nee Mancipi. The history of Property 
 on the European Continent is the history of the subversion 
 of the feudalized law of land by the Eomanized law of mov- 
 ables ; and though the history of ownership in England is 
 not nearly completed, it is visibly the law of personalty 
 which threatens to absorb and annihilate the law of realty." 2 
 
 Thus we see property becoming gradually more social 
 in character. Things had more value because they be- 
 came more personal, and passed from hand to hand in 
 
 1 Maine : Ancient Law, p. 269. 2 Ibid. p. 265. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 57 
 
 the intercourse of men with each other. This was the 
 process of capitalizing in its infancy. Men Socialevo . 
 began to discover that more vital movement, lution of 
 more life, passed into things, the more valuable pr P ert y- 
 they became as property. The words capital, chattel, 
 cattle, are near allied in their derivation, though their 
 signification has widened out and taken different func- 
 tions in the advance of civilization. Pecunia, the an- 
 cient money, certainly originated in cattle. In order 
 that property should become wealth, it was necessary 
 that it should pass and repass from the owner to his fel- 
 lows : it must enter into the common weal. Things 
 were of little value without use, and this larger use 
 could come only with settled social life. 
 
 Let us glance from the movement of property to the 
 social organization, the grouping force in Eoman society ; 
 for there was no industrial life of the modern sort, and 
 agriculture was not conducted by our methods. The 
 Eoman family was a classified group, beginning with 
 the husband, including first wife and children, then 
 clients and dependents, and finally slaves. The father 
 exercised the patria potestas, one of the most complex 
 social institutions the world has ever known. He had 
 the power of life and death over his sons as well as over 
 his slaves ; he could absorb the property of his son with- 
 out becoming responsible for his debts. Labor in early 
 times was performed by slaves, and it was exercised 
 under this minor social tyranny, which was Roman 
 the main group on which society rested. The family Or- 
 patriarchal authority of the father stood be- ^^ izaiim - 
 tween the laborer and the State. He administered social 
 order, and there grew up a body of rules which gave 
 to persons a certain status, as it was called. When the 
 
58 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOK. 
 
 family governments became too unwieldy for an in- 
 creasing civilization, the status changed, and individuals 
 came to act for themselves. The will of the individual 
 man came to be recognized, and it was expressed in 
 Contract. 
 
 " The power exercised by the ancestor was the same 
 whether it was exercised over the family or the material 
 property, over flocks, herds, slaves, children, or wife. We 
 cannot be absolutely certain of its old Roman name, but 
 there is very strong reason for believing, from the number 
 of expressions indicating shades of the notion of power into 
 which the word manus enters, that the ancient general term 
 was manus. But when Eoman law has advanced a little, 
 both the name and the idea have become specialized. Power 
 is discriminated, both in word and conception, according to 
 the object over which it is exerted. Exercised over material 
 commodities or slaves, it has become dominium ; over chil- 
 dren, it is potestas ; over free persons whose services have 
 been made away to another by their own ancestor, it is 
 mancipium ; over a wife, it is still manus. The old word, 
 it will be perceived, has not altogether fallen into desuetude, 
 but is confined to one very special exercise of the authority 
 it had formerly denoted. This example will enable us to 
 comprehend the nature of the historical alliance between con- 
 tracts and conveyances." l 
 
 Sir Henry Maine, with that sagacious intuition which 
 unfolds custom from the wrappages of law, here indi- 
 cates the development of person and convertible prop- 
 erty together. The first wealth was necessarily personal, 
 game, skins, rude weapons, and such articles as the 
 savage could make his own. Then the instinct of 
 social dependence associated men together, until they 
 dwelt in joint families, as we saw in the Iroquois 
 
 1 Maine : Ancient Law, p. 307. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 59 
 
 confederacy, and as some tribes of Dyaks, and many 
 other barbarous peoples live to-day. 
 
 Here the property could no longer be personal. His 
 implements and ornaments, those articles which were 
 exclusively one's own, were buried in the grave with 
 the owner, who was presumed to have gone on Personal 
 into another social system, where he would and Joint 
 need his personal effects, and even his horse Fro P ert y- 
 and dog, to start anew. The joint property could not 
 partake of the essence of its individual producers; it 
 became wealth, something for the weal of many. This 
 use of property on the one hand, and of political citizen- 
 ship on the other, went on developing, until it worked 
 out the highly civilized institution of the Eoman patria 
 potestas. I do not mean that we know that every civil- 
 ization took this form ; but enough is known to show 
 that this was the general tendency of ancient civiliza- 
 tion, and that it reached its maximum effort in Eoman 
 society. Eoman history is filled with incidents showing 
 the bearing of this power of a little king in social life. 
 The story of Brutus, and above all that of Virginius, 1 
 reveals the pathetic nature of these waning domestic 
 and social powers. 
 
 The family as it was then constituted could no longer 
 contain the individual. 2 Social life, much more produc- 
 tive than the dragon teeth of Cadmus, was ' generating 
 far too many men for the narrow shells into which 
 generations of Aryan life had cast them. The seeds of 
 divinity struggled in the hard shells of patriarchal servi- 
 tude, and finally burst forth in the free winds, as the 
 thistle sends its children over all the land. Even the 
 
 1 Maine : Ancient Law, p. 163. 
 
 2 Ozanan : La Civilisation au Cinquieme Siecle, i. 208. 
 
60 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 slave rose up in the image of God, erect in port and 
 mien, before those hard political powers which in mak- 
 ing civilized polity possible had -sacrificed whole heca- 
 tombs of human lives. Maine terms it the "passage 
 from Status to Contract." 1 This bridge was a costly 
 piece of social architecture, and not altogether com- 
 pleted in the Eoman period. Its stones were wrought 
 out of the tribe and the horde, and cemented by the 
 blood of dependents and conquered peoples. Its piers 
 were laid in custom and shaped by law. Roman power 
 and Eoman integrity gave it the solid arch of civil 
 order, while the Teutonic races kept in the individual 
 grasp of freedom the product of all the builders out of 
 all the times gone before. 
 
 Over this structure, whose stones had been ground 
 The Person un( ^ er tne social friction of the Aryan centuries, 
 stands on moved Persons, bearing their property in their 
 Contract. Qwn h anc ^ j n ftiQ manus won by fierce and 
 
 bloody toil. Contract is the mystic social symbol which 
 embodies the history of this long and wonderful devel- 
 opment. We cannot study the growth of this ark of 
 civilization too carefully, nor guard its integrity too 
 jealously. 
 
 We seldom remember that these mile-stones of civili- 
 zation are written all over with the symbols of human 
 progress. These technical forms of the law and the 
 minute language of legal instruments were never in- 
 vented, they grew out of the life which went before. 
 Nay, the process was not even thus simple. The social 
 adaptation of men, so to speak, their power of living to- 
 gether, their entertainment of each other's wants, pro- 
 duced certain customs. These ways of living were found 
 
 1 Ancient Law, p. 165. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 61 
 
 good according to the knowledge of the time, became 
 customary, in short. Then it was easier to formulate this 
 custom in symbols, and to give that symbolic expression 
 the social sanction of law, than it would have been for 
 each generation to establish a new set of customs. Ac- 
 cordingly the symbols were established, and obtained 
 the authority of traditional reverence. 
 
 " What, then, was involved in the nexum (the strong bond 
 or chain) 1 A definition which has descended to us from one 
 of the Latin antiquarians describes nexum as ' every transaction 
 with the copper and the balance ; ' and these words have occa- 
 sioned a good deal of perplexity. The copper and the balance 
 are the well-known accompaniments of the Mancipation, the 
 ancient solemnity described in a former chapter, by which (by 
 an anomalous personage, the libripens, who brought with him 
 a pair of scales to weigh the uncoined copper money of ancient 
 Rome) the right of ownership in the highest form of Roman 
 property was transferred from one person to another. Man- 
 cipation was a conveyance, and hence has arisen the difficulty ; 
 for the definition just cited appears to confound contracts 
 and conveyances, which in the philosophy of jurisprudence 
 are not simply kept apart, but are actually opposed to each 
 other. . . . 
 
 " There seems to have been one solemn ceremonial at first 
 for all solemn transactions, and its name at Rome appears to 
 have been nexum. Precisely the same forms which were in 
 use when a conveyance of property was effected, seem to have 
 been employed in the making of a contract. But we have 
 not very far to move onward before we come to a period at 
 which the notion of a contract has disengaged itself from the 
 notion of a conveyance. A double change has thus taken 
 place. The transaction ' with the copper and the balance,' 
 when intended to have for its office the transfer of property, 
 is known by the new and special name of Mancipation. The 
 ancient nexum still designates the same ceremony, but only 
 
62 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 when it is employed for the special purpose of solemnizing a 
 contract." 1 
 
 Here we see the very process in which custom is 
 crystallized into law. The nexum, the strong bond or 
 chain, was brought over into Contract through a long 
 course of social and legal crystallization. But to-day 
 hundreds of thousands of dollars pass from man to man 
 at the Stock Exchange with no stronger nexum than the 
 pencil contract in a broker's note-book. 
 
 We forget that this law of social development is the 
 only method history knows by which these things could 
 be as in the order of Providence they are. Those who 
 sigh for the past glories of the Golden Age linger over 
 Adam their first man, the ideal of their pastoral dream. 
 But 'Adam himself, with all the powers ever ascribed to 
 him, could not do much for modern civilization without 
 law and formulated justice. Law comes only through 
 the process described. 
 
 Now appears the meaning of Person ; the mask, the 
 character, which had been worn by the greater actors in 
 the drama was enlarged in its scope and fitted to the 
 The Person common people who thronged through the life 
 is a Social of the State. Each man gained a character, a 
 Character. . e chorus joined those chief 
 
 players on the stage who had heretofore absorbed all the 
 interest of the social spectators. A mere social atom, a 
 member of a family in the Eoman sense, could not be- 
 come the individual, thinking being which Locke de- 
 scribes, until this character of the person had been slowly 
 developed. Property went with the rights and position 
 of the person ; not the aristocrat, the member of the 
 
 1 Maine : Ancient Law, pp. 305-308. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 63 
 
 Equestrian Order, but the common man, the citizen. 
 Not mere tools and weapons, the attributes of the sav- 
 age man, but all movable things, thus became personal 
 property. These things carried the manus, the power 
 of society, with them ; and Person and Property became 
 fixed institutions in the historical civilization which we 
 know. 
 
 This gradual growth of persons out of the rude but 
 strong social network of early times appears more plainly 
 in the institutions of feudalism. There has been much 
 discussion of feudalism, and its exact origin is still a 
 matter of debate ; it is sufficient to say that this institu- 
 tion, like all others, came not suddenly into being, but 
 traces its beginning far back into early human Illustrated 
 experience. Professor Stubbs, following Waitz in Feudai- 
 and the later German writers, rejects the old lsm * 
 notion of Montesquieu and others, that the feudal State 
 was based on " the connection of classes in subordination 
 to one another, not the common and immediate sub- 
 jection to a sovereign government." He carefully de- 
 fines the system to be a social one, but which does not 
 form a complete State according to the Roman or to our 
 modern conception. 
 
 " It may be described as a complete organization of society 
 through the medium of land tenure, in which, from the king 
 down to the lowest landowner, all are bound together by 
 obligation of service and defence, the lord to protect his 
 vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord ; the defence arid 
 service being based on and regulated by the nature and extent 
 of the land held by the one or the other. In those States 
 which have reached the territorial stage of development, the 
 rights of defence and service are supplemented by the right 
 of jurisdiction. The lord judges as well as defends his vassal ; 
 the vassal does suit as well as service to his lord. In States 
 
64 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 in which feudal government has reached its utmost growth, 
 the political, financial, judicial, every branch of public admin- 
 istration is regulated by the same conditions. The central 
 authority is a mere shadow of a name." 1 
 
 The distinction is nice, but strikes deep into the roots 
 of history. If the tenure of land in feud had been a 
 mere holding by the strong hand of the count, aided by 
 the weaker but still able hands of the Comitatus, the 
 companions, modern history would have been different. 
 That system would have built up ranks and castes exist- 
 ing in themselves and in each other. The great States of 
 France, England, and Germany exist because the feudal 
 tenure was at bottom a rude social tenure, and finally 
 worked out a social system, carrying the minute or- 
 ganism of feudality into the solid centripetal power of 
 the Roman State. 
 
 Fortunately we can see parts of the process and pick 
 Irish local U P kits ^ ^he earlier forms of feudal society. 
 Law very Ireland was a little principality far away from 
 suggestive. ft lQ grindiug^ assimilating forces of the Eoman 
 empire. It kept the early Aryan customs in hard shells 
 of local law, which the Roman prsetor did not break 
 up. Maine thinks the Roman influence indirectly 
 touched the laws, but adds that it was very slight. The 
 Brehon laws, the ancient Irish statutes, may be for the 
 moment overrated, as late discoveries always take on 
 too large proportions. But without doubt they contain 
 much of the highest value to us, if we would interpret 
 the very time in which we live, and comprehend the 
 growth of our own families out of the great human race. 
 These laws throw a strong light on the institutions of 
 feudal society, whether they be of Celtic, Gallic, Gothic, 
 
 1 Constitutional History of England, i. 251. 
 
PERSONS AND PttOPEKTY. 65 
 
 or Teutonic origin. 1 These laws and their collateral 
 literature have been handled in a series of lectures 
 by Professor O'Curry, " On the Manners and Customs 
 of the Ancient Irish," and amply discussed in a care- 
 ful and learned Introduction to the same work by Dr. 
 Sullivan. 
 
 The upper class of ancient Irish consisted of "Flaths," 2 
 or lords, and it was recruited from the ranks of the 
 "Aires." Any free man might become first a " B6-Aire," 
 or cow-lord ; then after possessing land for three genera- 
 tions his descendants might aspire to become Flaths, or 
 hereditary lords. 
 
 The freeman who placed himself under the protection 
 of a lord was called a " Ceile," a word which Sketch 
 Dr. Sullivan considers equivalent in meaning of Irish 
 to the Eoman " client." There were two kinds Societ y- 
 of Chiles, one the less dependent Saer, or free Ceiles ; 
 the other having in the language of the laws "the second 
 bond of servitude on them," the Daer, or base Ceiles. 3 
 
 There was an inferior class of "Daer, or base Fuid- 
 irs," or wanderers, who had no territorial rights. The 
 " Saer, or free Fuidir," was a free man who could con- 
 tract outside his own home or beyond his tribal rela- 
 tions. The base Fuidirs comprised the lower tier of 
 
 1 Waitz holds that " Commendation " may be traced up to early Cel- 
 tic usage. 
 
 2 Sullivan : O'Curry's Irish, i., cix. 
 
 3 " The act of becoming a Ceile consisted in the man commending 
 himself to the Flath, who thereupon presented him with a gift called a 
 Taurcrech, the amount of which depended upon the rank of the Flath 
 who bestowed the gift, the recipient of it, and the extent of the services 
 to be rendered. The gift or wages, for it was also called Rath (wages), 
 generally if not always implied a benefice in land. The Ceile in return 
 was bound to make certain payments in kind, called in the case of the 
 free Ceiles Bes Tigi, or house tribute, and in the case of the base Ceiles, 
 Biatad" (that is, subsistence). Sullivan's O'Curry's Irish, i., ex. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOK. 
 
 society, the great mass of " unfree," corresponding to the 
 Gallic and Teutonic " serfs." 
 
 We can see here the origin of the strong antipathy 
 which will not allow right-minded people to accept gifts. 
 This is a definite result of civilization. The most ludi- 
 crous instances are constantly reported from Africa, where 
 savage potentates ruling powerful peoples beg with un- 
 blushing persistence for any object of their desire. This 
 is in the childish period. But the Aryan races have found 
 through bitter experience 1 that he who accepts a gift 
 without corresponding return pays dearly for the prop- 
 erty. Sir Henry Maine 2 considers that the Irish custom 
 of " giving stock " was the same process by which the 
 Athenian, Eoman, and Gaulish peoples were bonded to 
 the wealthy Equites, or chiefs. Land was in these early 
 times abundant ; capital was scarce and of great value. 
 Horned cattle were the chief instruments of exchange, 
 the means by which the rude "capitalizing" of their 
 simple life could be carried on. The great difficulty in 
 the life of the simple freeman was to keep any movable 
 property in hand. Hence the ox and the cow, which 
 could draw out of the earth on the one hand and minis- 
 ter to the needs or to the migration of men on the other, 
 became the chief articles of value, money possibly, 
 capital certainly, in the strictest economical sense. 
 
 All the machinery of fines and taxes under the Brehon 
 laws was chiefly moved in cattle. " Sed " 3 was a cer- 
 tain quantity of live stock ; how much it consisted of is 
 
 1 "Even as late as the Norman conquest [of the Saxons] we find 
 Geatflaed, a lady, directing by her will the manumission of all those 
 who had bent their heads in the evil days for food." Kemble's Sax- 
 ons in England, i. 196. 
 
 2 Early Institutions, p. 167. 
 8 Ibid. p. 149. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 67 
 
 not exactly known. This term has descended to us in 
 the frequent commercial expression, "Asset." Cattle> 
 Every merchant knows how much the value of Assets. 
 an " asset " is now enhanced by its better con- Ca P ltaL 
 vertibility. If it is movable it is said to be " quick," 
 and in event of change or disaster its corresponding value 
 increases. We see from the word " B6-Aire " how cattle 
 helped the chief in his onward movement. He was 
 raised into a noble and finally into a lord through this 
 first wealth of cattle, which was afterward consolidated 
 in land. Cattle-lifting was a favorite mode of acqui- 
 sition from Homeric days to recent Scottish highland 
 times, and it is not without its counterpart in some 
 methods of the bourse and stock exchange to-day. 
 
 The Irish " Taurcrech," or gift, was the cement which 
 bound the new group together. The tribal organization 
 was giving way under the political pressure of 
 the State and the economical pressure of land C rech,"or 
 and cattle. Kinship or clanship was also rap- social Ce " 
 idly modifying through the growth of the in- 
 dividual home, or the family as we understand it. The 
 Irish " Fine," 1 or clan, corresponded nearly to the Anglo- 
 Saxon "Maegth," and the relationship was recognized 
 to the seventeenth degree. Adoption extended this 
 relationship, and still further complicated it. This po- 
 litical group of the tribe and the blood-group of the 
 clan were moving through all this social development 
 which I am trying to sketch. There is much trivial 
 dispute over terms ; it is not clear just where the clan 
 left off and the tribe began, nor where the power of 
 property was purely economical, and where it became 
 social. The whole analysis of political, social, and 
 
 1 Sullivan : O'Curry's Irish, i., clxiii. 
 
68 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 moneyed power, which is so easy to us, is barely trace- 
 able in ancient society. We can hardly understand the 
 slow and halting steps by which organization advanced 
 through the power of the chief, ownership in land, ben- 
 eficiary grants of laud, movable wealth in cattle, and 
 homestead rights of grazing, until the yeoman's home 
 and the serf's enforced labor on the land were reached. 
 
 The principle is the same in all these institutions 
 which history brings over to us : the " Taurcrech," gift, 
 underran all these modifications of social order. The 
 c&le, or ceorl, needed not only movable property, cattle 
 to till his soil, he must also have " protection." When 
 he accepted the "gift," he "commended" himself "to the 
 lord, who must become responsible to the State not only 
 for his military service, his personal dues to the State, 
 but for his property dues, his fines, " honor-price," and 
 liatad, or subsistence tribute. The lord must be not only 
 strong in war-force but in peace-force, wealth, a person 
 who could sue and be sued. Only a property holder could 
 be a compurgator, a surety, a witness (according to Pal- 
 grave, the equivalent of a modern juryman), or exercise 
 any of the functions of a freeman. The complete person 
 as I have described him, emerging from the Eoman law, 
 was not yet born into society. A personage must have 
 property. The next equivalent to the protection of a 
 lord was the support of a mutual partnership or guild. 1 
 
 1 " I have not been able to determine what amount of land a freeman 
 below the rank of an Aire was entitled to the usufruct of. The Oc- 
 Aire being entitled to the grazing of two cumals, or six cows, exclusive 
 of the grass of the seventh cow left as tribute, the simple freeman was 
 perhaps entitled to the grazing of one cumal, or three cows. In Wales 
 it was five acres, which would be in the then state of agriculture about 
 as much as in Ireland. A person holding this amount of land did not 
 enjoy the full rights of citizenship ; he could not be bail or witness ; 
 and unless he had among his own Fine or family an Aire who could 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 69 
 
 Mr. Freeman regards the act of representation where- 
 by the people " will not exercise those rights in their 
 own persons, but through persons commissioned to act 
 in their behalf," as the great modern institution which 
 distinguishes our States from the ancient governments. 
 " It is the great political invention of Teutonic Europe, 
 the one form of political life to which neither Thucy- 
 dides, Aristotle, nor Polybius ever saw more than the 
 faintest approach." 1 
 
 legally represent him, he was obliged to seek the protection of some 
 Flath, or form a guild or partnership with others in a similar ^ ^^ 
 position with himself. Such a guild or partnership consisted p artnership . 
 of from four to eight or perhaps more freemen, who with the 
 consent of the Rig (i. e. chief of Tuath or tribe) and his council ap- 
 pear to have been permitted to appropriate arid fence off a portion of 
 the common land equivalent to the sum of their individual rights. A 
 partnership of this kind was regarded as a solemn act, and was entered 
 into in the presence of three Aires, one of whom was generally a func- 
 tionary called the Aire Cosraing (i. e. equivalent of modern sheriff), 
 and with solemn formalities, pledges being given for the fulfilment of 
 mutual engagements. The final establishment of the fences by which 
 the enclosure of the common land was completed, was fully effected 
 in the tenth year. Partnerships of this kind were, as I shall show in a 
 subsequent section, the origin of the mediseval guilds ; and the solemn 
 formalities above alluded to may have been accompanied by religious 
 ceremonies in Pagan times. 
 
 . "The chief advantage of such a partnership was that the joint pos- 
 session qualified one of them to be an Aire, and consequently to be 
 eligible to act as pledge, witness, and representative generally on all 
 legal and public occasions. As Dire or Wergeld, honor-price, etc., 
 were in proportion to the rank of the person killed, wounded, or other- 
 wise injured in person or property, such a partner-ship enabled the 
 poorer freemen to maintain their privileges. In a subsequent section 
 I shall endeavor to show the connection between this custom and frank- 
 pledge and the representation of the commons. Free Feuidirs (i. e. 
 wanderers) could also enter into such partnerships for the purpose of 
 obtaining some of the privileges of Ceiles." Sullivan's 0' Curry, i., 
 clvii. 
 
 Similar partnerships existed in "Wales, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, 
 Friesland, and Lombardy. 
 
 i Freeman : Federal Government, p. 67. 
 
70 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 He might have added that this faculty of representa- 
 tion was the greatest social as well as political invention ; 
 for modern life, which subordinated military to political 
 development, is beginning to pass from the political pe- 
 riod into the social. The late rebellion and' reconstruc- 
 tion of our Southern States illustrate this. A magnifi- 
 cent warlike struggle produced a meagre political result ; 
 and it amazed the honest Eepublican politicians that 
 these political advantages given them by the war yield- 
 ed such wretched social failures. 
 
 Whether Dr. Sullivan's ingenious hypothesis that we 
 here find the very beginning of Teutonic political repre- 
 sentation be true or not, we cannot overestimate the 
 Its great historic importance of these early partnerships 
 impor- to appropriate the common land. It is the first 
 authentic instance in which individuals unit- 
 ing together for peaceful ends obtained political, social, 
 and economical power, without sacrificing that essential 
 individuality which has been the mainspring of modern 
 civilization. The village community and clan commu- 
 nity were quite different from these simple guilds. The 
 power dwelling in the first went out from the commu- 
 nity to the members. In these early Aryan partnerships 
 the power went from the members, and, joining, pro- 
 duced an associated power which was to be a gain in 
 developing civilization. We hardly comprehend the 
 difficulties under which rude societies carried forward 
 social privilege and associated or representative power. 
 Maine 1 shows that the individual sense of freedom and 
 legal right which we so properly esteem, is the great- 
 est obstacle in the orderly and just administration of 
 affairs in India to-day. The first effect of a better 
 
 1 Village Communities, p. 73. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 71 
 
 civilization has been to fill the common man with an 
 eager desire for his own rights, while his appreciation 
 of his corresponding social duties is of slow growth. 
 This is the first effect; it is the inverse development 
 by which peoples acquire personal and social educa- 
 tion externally, without earning it by their own proper 
 exertions. 
 
 To comprehend the full force of the Aire partnership, 
 we must consider the institution of the honor- price, 
 wergeld, etc. Our conception of crime, a something 
 wounding the State, that great ordered move- Ori . of 
 ment of society which I have termed a divine Honor- 
 institution, is one of the most complicated p 
 modern ideas. There were always conceptions of crimes 
 against God, sins; 1 and there were conceptions of crimes 
 against one's neighbor, torts, or wrongs. But the grand 
 conception that he who wrongs his neighbor wrongs 
 everybody, and through his offence against humanity 
 wrongs God himself, has grown out of all the experience 
 of the human race. The Church very reluctantly gave 
 up the physical control of sins, and turned its ecclesias- 
 tical punishments away from delicts and crimes to the 
 regulation of the individual conscience. In the matter 
 of early private wrongs, murder, adultery, seduction, and 
 robbery, the Church was helpless; it could modify their 
 course, but could not prevent their occurrence, or the 
 retaliatory punishment. What we term revenge was 
 originally the strict sense of honor and justice growing 
 out of kinship, the ties of blood, actual and assumed, 
 existing long before such institutions as the guild-part- 
 nership could be conceived of. The blood of the mur- 
 dered man, the wrongs of the orphan, cried aloud for 
 
 1 Maine : Ancient Law, p. 360. 
 
72 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 retribution. There was no policeman to arrest the 
 wrong-doer ; there was no court to hear the tale and to 
 punish the wrong, in the interest of society and of God. 
 The best man among the kindred must stand forth to 
 punish this personal wrong ; and he was a skulking cur 
 who would not respond with all his force, and secure the 
 only justice which the barbarians knew. The Hebrew 
 Scripture reports many incidents showing the gradual 
 outgrowth from this social system. But before history 
 was written, mercy had begun to season justice. The 
 curious institution, " sitting dharna," of the Hindus, is 
 considered by Maine 1 as almost identical with the cus- 
 tom of the Brehon law " to fast upon him," when one 
 had a claim against a man and would compel him to 
 discharge it. The Hindu sits at his debtor's door and 
 starves himself until he is paid! The Brehon law says, 
 " He who does not give a pledge to fasting is an evader 
 of all ; he who disregards all things shall not be paid by 
 God or man." The distinctive power of Christianity is 
 foreshadowed in these heathen institutions. The great 
 force of suffering, the cumulative justice which endur- 
 ance brings upon wrong-doing, is foreshown by the 
 patient Hindu sitting in old Asia, and the Irish Celt 
 mildly fasting in the further corner of Europe at the 
 same time. 
 
 All this has little to do with the wergeld of the Teu- 
 An out tons, the eric fine, and honor-price of the Celts, 
 growth Before ethical mercy was, before social justice 
 from Per- prevailed, the prevention and the redress of 
 
 sonahty. r . 
 
 crime was a matter of persons strictly, and 
 issued forth in the right of private war and the blood- 
 feud. The Teutonic and Celtic races, and without doubt 
 
 1 Early Institutions, p. 39. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 73 
 
 the Italians and Greeks in corresponding periods of de- 
 velopment, had an elaborate system of fines and com- 
 pensations which was gradually taking the place of 
 private war and blood-revenge. 1 
 
 This is perhaps the highest office ever performed by 
 wealth and property in the promotion of human happi- 
 ness. All the mechanical inventions by which man 
 has multiplied his comforts, are merely applications of 
 wealth to his wants, generally to his material wants. 
 No one of them, and hardly any number of them to- 
 gether, is equal to this single institution of civiliza- 
 tion by which the person, through property, discharged 
 social obligation without losing that sense of personal 
 honor which is the spinal marrow of the civilized 
 man. 
 
 The wergeld marks the division between the free 
 and unfree orders of men. Slavery existed 2 in the 
 Germanic as well as other races, from very early times. 
 
 1 "The right of private warfare, technically called feud, was one 
 which every Teutonic freeman considered inalienable, and which, 
 coupled with the obligation of family, was directly derived from his 
 original position as a freeman ; it was the privilege which he possessed 
 before he consented to enter into any political bond, the common term 
 upon which all the freemen could meet in an equal form of polity. . . . 
 The wergeld then, or life-price, was the basis upon which all peaceful 
 settlement of feud was established. A sum paid either in kind or in 
 money, where money existed, was placed upon the life of every free 
 man, according to his rank in the State, his birth, or his office. A cor- 
 responding sum was settled for every wound that could be inflicted 
 upon his person ; for nearly every injury that could be done to his 
 civil rights, his honor, or his domestic peace ; and further fines were 
 appointed according to the peculiar, adventitious circumstances that 
 might appear to aggravate or extenuate the offence. From the opera- 
 tion of this principle no one was exempt, and the king as well as the 
 peasant was protected by a wergeld, payable to his kinsmen and his 
 people." Saxons in England (Kemble), i. 276. 
 
 2 Stubbs : Constitutional History, i. 78. 
 
74 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 The simple theow, the chattel, must be accounted for 
 in the wergeld due his master, just as the cattle were 
 reckoned in an injury. But the slave himself had hardly 
 any personal rights, and his condition was harder than 
 it was under the Eoman law, where he was recognized 
 The free- and entitled to a certain status. The ceorl and 
 man keeps villain of early German and Frankish times 
 throigh * y was verv like the Irish c&le. The ceorl was a 
 property. f re e man, but his condition tended constantly 
 toward the serf or theow, unless he could secure some 
 property in land. 1 
 
 The landless or homeless or kinless man must have 
 a lord ; the stranger must put himself under the protec- 
 tion of a householder. He who harbored a traveller 
 became responsible for his acts after the third night ; * 
 the stranger was then legally a member of his family. 
 In all these institutions we see a minute social respon- 
 sibility carefully parcelled out and laid upon responsi- 
 ble men, in order that the whole body of society might 
 suffer the least harm from the acts of individuals. Tith- 
 ing and frank-pledge, from which our present bail-bond 
 descends, embodied this social idea. "Ten men are 
 
 1 ' ' The fully qualified freeman who has an estate of land may be of 
 various degrees of wealth and dignity, from the ceorl with a single 
 hide to the thegn with five hides, a place in the king's hall, a bell-house 
 and burh-geat seat; to the still more powerful man who has thriven to 
 eorl-right, or who has his forty hides (the eorls were ancient nobility; 
 the thegns were the later or king's nobles) ; to the ealdorman and the 
 etheling. . . . But there is no impassable barrier between the clas- 
 ses ; the ceorl may become thegn-worthy, and the thegn eorl-worthy. 
 And there are gradations in every class, four ranks of the eorlcund 
 and three of the laets ; three even of the household slaves. The great 
 distinction however is that of wealth ; the landless ceorl is little better 
 off than the slave, except that he may choose his own master." Con- 
 stitutional History, i. 80. 
 
 2 Palgrave : Commonwealth, i. 20. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 75 
 
 standing sureties for one another ; if one break the law, 
 the other nine shall hold him to the right." l They 
 were not bail after the fact, as our compurgation requires, 
 they were a mutual association to hold each other 
 up ; and if one should commit a crime, the others must 
 make good the injury, or produce the criminal for pun- 
 ishment. Tithing, the ten-group, has been supposed to 
 be the basis of the hundred-group, the original town- 
 ship of Saxon history. But this connection is not 
 clearly proven. It was a mutual police association, and 
 is considered by Professor Stubbs as a step in the pro- 
 cess by which the personal organization passed into 
 the territorial system. 
 
 The State had not that collective power and majesty 
 which all these institutions, combined, now give to it. 
 The State was not ever present to each citizen, who 
 should thus become an integral part of this greater organ- 
 ism. The life-blood of society did not course out directly 
 from the heart to the least member of the body politic. 
 The fluid was transmuted into eorl's blood of four kinds, 
 serfs blood of three kinds, and circulated through these 
 subordinated members, carrying minute social organ- 
 isms varying through every shade of color. It was not 
 mere rank and caste : those distinctions define no better 
 than if we should say a thigh bone is long and a skull 
 is round. It was a social articulation in which every 
 man, free, unfree, ,and half free, brought over some 
 function of social experience from the men just gone 
 before. 
 
 Mr. Palgrave, 2 whose sagacity divines the life our 
 forefathers led, considers this mutual dependence to 
 
 1 Stubbs : Constitutional History, i. 88. 
 
 2 English Commonwealth, i. 193. 
 
76 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 be the main root of Anglo-Saxon law. Lords and vas- 
 sals were bound each to each, and the vavas- 
 Mutuai de- g ^ vassa i O f t ] ie vassal, was interlocked 
 
 the basis of in the chain which carried social and political 
 Anglo- movement through the feudalized bodv. Land, 
 
 Saxon law. J 
 
 always the chief vehicle of property, was the 
 basis on which this social evolution was poised ; and it 
 partook of its character in the varied rights and duties 
 involved in the tenure. We cannot follow them into 
 detail, but there were two main features which we must 
 study in the institution of folk-land and book-land. 1 
 
 1 "The original gift (that is, of land) comes from the Germanic com- 
 munity of which the receiver is a member ; the gift is of itself mainly 
 of the character of usufruct, the hold is ideal rather than actual ; ex- 
 cept in his own homestead the freeman can but set his foot on the soil 
 and say, ' This is mine this year, next year it will be another's, and 
 that which is another's now will be mine then.' It is only by way of 
 inference that we discover that there must have been larger and smaller 
 properties, the larger held by those who had to support a larger house- 
 hold, the magistrate with his comitatus, or the noble with his train of 
 kinsmen. Without conjecturing how the change took place, we may 
 safely assume that, although traces still remain of common land-tenure 
 at the opening of Anglo-Saxon history, absolute ownership of land in 
 severalty was established and becoming the rule. "We may then regard 
 the land as referable to two great divisions, that which was held by in- 
 dividuals in full ownership, and that of which the ownership was in the 
 State ; the intermediate case of lands held by local communities in com- 
 mon, and used in common by the owners of land as appurtenances to 
 their several estates, may be for the moment put out of sight. The land 
 held in full ownership might be either an ' ethel,' an inherited or other- 
 wise acquired portion of original allotment, or an estate created by 
 legal process out of the public land. Both these are included in the 
 more common term ' alod ; ' but the former looks for its evidence in 
 the pedigree of its owner or in the witness of the community, while the 
 latter can produce the charter or book by which it is created, and is 
 called ' bocland.' All the land that is not so accounted for \sfolcland, 
 or public land ; it comprised the whole area that was not at the original 
 allotment assigned to individuals or communities, and that was not 
 subsequently divided into estates of book-land. The folk -land was the 
 standing treasury of the country : no alienation of any part of it could 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 77 
 
 There is an interesting custom shown in the Irish 
 laws which defines this homestead of the ceile. There 
 was an instrument, supposed to be like an i r i s h free- 
 iron sledge-hammer. 1 The freeman sat on his man m eas- 
 
 threshold and threw this sledge as far as he 
 could : the strength of his arm thus limited strength of 
 the boundary of his homestead ; the land with- hls arm> 
 in the sweep of the missile was his own. The wealth 
 of the community was the source whence the freeman 
 drew his own property, and his own personal power 
 exactly measured the amount which he could retain 
 for himself out of this public store of wealth in land. 
 The Irish sledge has gone out from our present uses, 
 but the principle is in no wise different. The com- 
 munity, whether it be feudal or the highly mobile one 
 of an industrial time, still acquires the wealth which is 
 crystallized into many values besides land ; it still metes 
 out to the citizen for his own possession just what his 
 personal force can seize and maintain. The folk-land 
 may be appropriated to the last acre ; but in the process 
 new and larger social opportunity will be developed, 
 other values created, until the hand of the free and 
 brave man will reach as far as ever, though it may con- 
 tain other property than the turf included by the flying 
 sledge. 
 
 The homestead of the freeman was first detached from 
 the joint tenement and arable ground of peoples like the 
 Iroquois barbarians. Then the folk-land was improved in 
 common, and every freeman had an interest there not ex- 
 
 be made without the consent of the national council ; but it might be 
 allowed to individuals to hold portions of it subject to rents and other 
 services to the State." Constitutional History, i. 75. 
 1 Sullivan : O'Curry's Irish, i., clvi. 
 
78 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 actly defined as Professor Stubbs indicates. This " ideal 
 hold" of the freeholder became gradually firmer, and 
 consolidated into the severalty, private property in 
 land. 
 
 The Aire 1 partnership is one of the most interesting 
 institutions in history, for it reveals an important step 
 in the process by which person and property took form. 
 The wild independence of the barbarian was enlarged 
 into the social dependence of the person ; the mass of 
 land dominated by the patriarchal chief of a horde was 
 crystallized into property. This property was not of the 
 kind which could be carried in a convertible jewel, or 
 worn in a gold chain, a value ready for immediate use. 
 It was a social institution with two legs, as it were ; one 
 resting on the homestead and book-land, the other rest- 
 ing on the common and folk-land, which was constantly 
 tending from the ideal toward the actual hold of the 
 freeman. This institution was a social organism care- 
 fully worked out in its smallest features. Eights of 
 grazing and pasturage, rotation of land between families, 
 temporary, then permanent, right of fencing, and scores 
 of agricultural and craft obligations still more minute 
 were interlocked with the rights of the community and 
 the powers of the feudal lord. 
 
 I have called the Taurcrech (gift) the cement which 
 "Proteo- held the social structure together: I might 
 tion"the rather say, the "protection" 2 of the lord and 
 current ^ e corresponding obligation of his vassal 
 of feudal were a political nerve-current playing through 
 society. fa Q soc j a i organism. The Aire partnership 
 involved not mere wealth, property, or capital : all these 
 
 1 See ante, p. 69. 2 Young : Anglo-Saxon Law, p. 142. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 79 
 
 were embodied in the land. The partnership took four 
 or more individual rights out of the folk-right, and 
 twisted them into one separate and finally permanent 
 possession : this was property firmly fixed by social 
 tenure. Then the four freemen banded their powers 
 together into one power, which obtained the force due 
 to the Aire rank above them, through its representative 
 character. The social prestige and power of a noble 
 went with the mutual support of the partnership, which 
 thus could resist oppression and enforce its privileges. 
 The mask, the character of the Eoman person, was fitted 
 to the Aire representative. 
 
 At a later period we shall see growing out of the 
 embers of the old Aryan hearth-fire, and out of the dis- 
 joined members of the old clans or gentes, the Koman 
 collegium} or corporation. This will become the civil 
 instrument by which the polished citizens will Old arfc _ 
 bind a social organism together, just as in ear- 
 lier times the Aires and the Flaths maintained 
 a definite government by the tenure of land poration 
 and of the privileges growing out of agricul- c 
 ture. But midway in this process there is a very in- 
 teresting period, when the systems cross, partly coalesce, 
 and partly destroy each other. We must remember that 
 .this order is not regulated by time, but by process of de- 
 velopment. The highly complex Eoman State had 
 grafted its civilization upon the Celtic tribes of Gaul. 
 These tribes had worked out the system we have been 
 studying among the Irish Celts, to its highest matu- 
 rity. This system then met the centralized force of 
 the Eoman State, and passed under a higher form of 
 government. 
 
 1 See p. 105. 
 
80 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 According to Fustel de Coulanges, 1 the right of private 
 property had been well established and defined in Gaul 
 by the Romans of the empire. We must accept this 
 statement as a true description of society at that time. 
 But it is certain that after the central power of the 
 Roman State was withdrawn, another social system in- 
 tervened, and modified this tenure of property. From 
 the seventh 2 to the twelfth century, the Droits F^odauz, 
 le cens, la taille, les corv^es, les banalites, and all the 
 minutely classified burdens of the feudal regime, op- 
 pressed the French people until they were forced into 
 different kinds of servitude. Allod, alleu, freehold, alike 
 yielded to this powerful organizing force, which first 
 broke the Roman empire and then built up the frag- 
 ments into the European States of to-day, each greater 
 than the original whole. 
 
 It would be dangerous to assert that the Teuton was 
 a higher kind of barbarian than the Celt, but the facts 
 remain. The German prevailed over the Romanized 
 Gaul, and interfused his blood together with a part of 
 his social system into the France of the Middle Ages. 
 
 1 "Ce droit de propriete que 1'empire remain leguait a 1' Europe du 
 moyen age avait deux caracteristiques. En premier lieu, la terre posse- 
 dee en propre etait hereditaire de plein droit ; elle etait transmissible 
 par vente, par legs, par donation. En second lieu, elle n'etait soumise 
 a aucun domaine eminent ; elle payait 1'impot public, mais elle'n'etait 
 sujette h aucune redevance d'un caractere prive ; elle ne devait ni foi 
 ni service a personne." Institutions Politiques de I'ancienne France, 
 p. 518. 
 
 2 After the year 005 there were no public taxes collected. The king 
 received returns from the land and from serfs, like an individual pro- 
 prietor. This system lasted into the fifteenth century. "Each lord, 
 sovereign in his own domain, acted like a king ; he gave the law, 
 rendered justice, raised taxes and armies." Tourmagne's Histoire du 
 Sewage, p. 31. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 81 
 
 The German baron evidently carried with him a feudal 
 power, which was the strongest organizing force in the 
 world at that time. It is the glory of France, that while 
 she received and. even submitted to this harsh exterior 
 force, she still kept the germs of the Italian civilization 
 through this dark period, and gave to Europe the first 
 example of a well-ordered, balanced, modern State. The 
 interplay of the Celtic, Teutonic, and Eoman civiliza- 
 tions will, we believe, yield fascinating results to future 
 historical studies. 
 
 Under the great changes which the Franks carried 
 into Gaul, the country was reorganized. In 
 
 Social 
 organ! 
 
 new institutions, partaking of the German and tion in 
 
 Mediae- 
 France. 
 
 the eighth century we can see springing up 
 
 tion in 
 
 the Gallo-Eornan characteristics. The Abbey Mediseval 
 
 of Saint-Germain-des-Pres was a typical organ- 
 ization of this period, and its records throw much light 
 on the whole time. 
 
 " The register of Saint-Germain-des-Pre's includes twenty- 
 four seigniorial households (manses), where dwelt the intendants 
 for 1,646 tributary households. These intendants were serfs, 
 like those whom they supervised. When it was intended to 
 occupy a region, or to organize husbandry there, the lord in- 
 trusted to a mayor or intendant often- with a hereditary 
 title. the care of organizing the villages, of cultivating the 
 lands, and of rendering justice. In proportion as the villages 
 were organized, they would build clmrches served by priests, 
 and each village would become a parish, to which they would 
 appropriate the revenue of a farm or ecclesiastical household, 
 which would comprise at least twelve bonniers 1 of land 
 (twelve days' work of an ox), four serfs, without counting the 
 revenue of the tithes." 2 
 
 1 This measure was from 1 to 3| acres, according to locality. 
 
 2 Tourmagne : Histoire du Servage, p. 73. 
 
 6 
 
82 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 The relation of person and property was not simple 
 in ancient times. In the Middle Ages it was even more 
 shifting and uncertain. Certain classes had been es- 
 tablished and each lived on a social tenure, 
 classifica- which it maintained as it was able, and sought 
 tion of to extend into further prescriptive right. But 
 and Serfs between these classes were great masses who 
 were hardly grouped at all : they were some- 
 times persons, sometimes property ; and sometimes they 
 partook of the nature of both. For example, Beaumanoir 
 v says that in the thirteenth century there were three 
 classes of men, nobles, freemen, and serfs. 1 These 
 latter interest us most, and they comprise two different 
 classes. One class, the serfs of the land, 2 is at the mercy 
 of the noble, their lord, who has absolute power over 
 them, the power of Roman potestas ; and they are 
 sold with the land. The other class better illustrates 
 our statement : they were more numerous, and they 
 were bound to their lord by a fixed tax or rent ; when 
 
 1 "Far above all the classes of enfranchised were elevated the true 
 freemen, ingenui. They alone were members of the nation ; they alone 
 were called Franks. To them only belonged civil rights and the few 
 political rights there were in that time. We would like to know their 
 number relative to the inferior classes. They had not been very 
 numerous under the empire ; they were fewer yet under the Frankish 
 kings. Several documents lead us to think that from the end of the 
 sixth century they formed a kind of aristocracy in society. We see 
 also in the chronicles, and even in the laws, that they were not enough 
 to constitute the armies, and that it was necessary to fill up the ranks 
 by the aid of the different classes of the enfranchised." Coulanges' 
 Institutions Politiques de I'ancienne France, p. 572. 
 
 2 These colons were often the captives, and descendants of captives, 
 who were distributed by the imperial government to proprietors of the 
 soil in various provinces, and attached, not to their masters, but to the 
 land. They became, not personal, but real property. Some were not 
 prisoners but barbarians, who freely bound themselves to obtain a foot- 
 hold in the imperial provinces. Coulauges : Ins. Pol. p. 385. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 83 
 
 these dues were discharged, they had more personal 
 privileges. 
 
 The name of these half-free people was very sugges- 
 tive ; they were called in France mammortalles. Says 
 Ferriere : 
 
 " Mainmorte signifies men of servile condition, whose 
 bodies are subject to their lord, who inherits them according 
 to custom. They are called gens de mainmorte, because the 
 Romans held them to be dead in respect of public and civil 
 functions ; or perhaps being unable to testify, they are reputed 
 dead in this respect. They live free, and die slaves. There 
 are two kinds of mainmortables, those made so only by 
 contact with the inheritance, who make no part of the 
 estate, but become free or untaxed by renouncing the inheri- 
 tance ; and the other kind, body serfs, who were enumerated 
 as a part of the land. 1 Consequently they could become free 
 and untaxed only through an enfranchisement made with the 
 consent of the lord." 
 
 There was a distinction more or less uncertain be- 
 tween the villain and the serf. Pierre de Fontaine 
 says, in 1260 : " If they say that everything of the vil- 
 lain's belongs to his lord, it must be so ((test a y re- 
 garder). If the villain's effects did belong to his lord, 
 there would be no difference between the serf and the 
 villain. But, by virtue of our usages, there is no other 
 judge than God between us and the villain." A feudal 
 legist of the time of Saint Louis lays down the rule, and 
 then states that it is violated and abused in actual 
 practice. " According to him, the villain ought to have 
 
 1 " Serfs called by the Roman law and by our old French law mor~ 
 taillables, mainmortables, and people of mortemain, made part of the 
 landed estate. Therefore they could not free a serf without diminish- 
 ing the fief and injuring the baron." Isambert's Anciennes Lois 
 Frangaises, ii. 631. 
 
84 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 more liberty than the serf; but, by an. abuse, the one 
 and the other submit to the same rule, to the same 
 punishment." 1 
 
 The barons and bishops controlled the marriage .of 
 the French serfs absolutely, as late as the thirteenth 
 century. In 1242 the Bishop of Paris consents to the 
 union of one of his serfs with one belonging to the Ab- 
 bey of Saint-Germain, only on condition that any chil- 
 dren born of the marriage should be shared between 
 him and the Abbey. Without this formal permission, 
 the marriage would have had no legal sanction. 
 
 The lords also held the right of pursuit, by which 
 they could follow a mainmortable who had abandoned 
 the land to which he was bound. They could follow 
 him, bring him back to their own jurisdiction, and 
 punish him. 2 In the twelfth century the royal courts 
 intervened to protect all those who were not body-serfs 
 or personally mainmortable. All others were permitted 
 to abandon the domain of the seigniory, on relinquishing 
 the property they had received from it. 
 
 The melancholy fact shows through all history that 
 the little freeholds, which had been obtained by free 
 persons slowly and painfully, as we have seen in the 
 Aire partnership in one instance, were absorbed again, 3 
 not into the common land from whence they came, but 
 
 1 Tourmagne : Histoire du Servage, p. 258. 
 
 2 The statute of Louis IX., in 1270, says : "He who will reclaim a 
 serf shall make his demand, shall pursue it in an accustomed mariner, 
 even to the moment of battle ; and to the proof by combat. They shall 
 substantiate that by witnesses, or by charters, or by other good and 
 valid proofs which have been in usage even to this day. Thus he who 
 pursues a man as his serf shall obtain him if his reclamation be estab- 
 lished ; but if his demand be unjust, the seigneur shall impose on him 
 such fine as he wills." Isambert's Anciennes Lois Franqaises, ii. 372. 
 
 3 Lodge : Anglo-Saxon Land Law, p. 89. 
 
PEESONS AND PEOPERTY. 85 
 
 into the domains of the great proprietors and the re- 
 ligious corporations. From the seventh to the 
 
 Freeholds 
 
 tenth centuries these freemen were driven to taken by 
 the "protection" of the lords and bishops, and 
 "commended" themselves for safety at the 
 price of their liberty. Even the mayors or intendants 
 of villages were often serfs appointed by the lords, in the 
 eighth and ninth centuries, in France. Charlemagne 
 struggled to save these suffering persons from the pres- 
 sure of these hard circumstances induced by constant 
 wars and social disorder. 1 
 
 This process continued. Europe grew sadder and 
 darker, and its peoples groaned under this bad distribu- 
 tion of property, 2 this unjust deprivation of personal 
 rights, this wretched system of social order. 
 
 Nevertheless, industry and thrift asserted their power, 
 which cannot be wholly neutralized by the worst gov- 
 ernment. The serfs and villains gradually began to gain 
 enfranchisement for themselves. Eights, especial privi- 
 leges, and finally freedom itself were bought by these 
 fallen descendants of the free Aryans, who brought the 
 simple and hardy tribal relations into Europe. Not 
 many emancipations occur in the tenth and eleventh 
 centuries, in the twelfth they were very numerous. 
 
 1 " The free proprietors say that whenever they refuse to give up 
 their inheritance to the bishop, to the abbey, or to the count, these seek 
 to ruin them. He makes them go into the army until they are ruined, 
 and may be brought to deliver up by free-will or by force their free- 
 holds." Tourmagne (citing capitulary of Charlemagne, Hi., anno 
 811), p. 75. 
 
 2 Frederic Barbarossa caused his jurisconsults to decide at Roncaglia 
 that as heir of Trajan he is the absolute master of the property of his 
 subjects. This doctrine will be found in that of Louis XIV., when he 
 says : " Royal goods, some of which are in our domain, and others which 
 we will leave in the hands of our subjects." Ozanam : La Civilisa- 
 tion, Cinquieme Siecle, i. 208. 
 
86 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 The Crusades had stopped the petty fighting of nobles, 
 and had turned the wars of nations against one great 
 foe, who threatened all the classes, all the rights and 
 privileges of Europe together. A great and generous 
 passion moved the hearts of men, and the shock, directly 
 or indirectly, affected all the institutions of society. 
 Many nobles were ruined in their estates, but the en- 
 serfed freeholders bought their freedom again out of the 
 wreck of the proprietary lords. Whole communities 
 likewise obtained their freedom ; social changes seemed 
 at this time to work toward enfranchisement, just as five 
 centuries before every change had been toward one or 
 another form of slavery. In 1174 the king sells a char- 
 ter of commune and of federation to sixteen villages, on 
 the occasion of the death of their bishop. 1 Kings, nobles, 
 and ecclesiastics freed their serfs for various reasons, 
 until in 1315 Louis X. published his famous ordonnance, 
 giving liberty with the power of redemption to every 
 serf on the royal domain. 
 
 The mediaeval person was bound to the group into 
 which he was born, by some tie of duty or privilege. 
 The personage in our time is another sort of character. 
 Political and social recognition has no necessary connec- 
 tion with property and land. A general or author, an 
 artist or laborer, may .not have a foothold of land nor a 
 dollar of property ; but if he render any meed of social 
 service, his personal right is as good as that of the great- 
 est land-owner. 
 
 It was not always so. We cannot enough admire 
 that beautiful social evolution by which the simplest 
 person, whether man or woman, genius or fool, can play 
 all the part in life which the nature of each will allow. 
 
 1 Tourmagne : Histoire du Servage, p. 129. 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 87 
 
 We talk of government and law, the press and public 
 opinion; but these institutions existed before p ers on 
 representative government was imagined, be- finally rises 
 fore law was ever written, while language even property, 
 babbled in infancy. 
 
 M. Laveleye, in his fine and elaborate research into 
 the origin of property, already quoted, tries to establish 
 that there is a natural basis of property on which every 
 human being rests by his own right, and that society 
 must secure this to the individual. 
 
 "En j'ai demontre", je crois, que tous les peuples ont eu 
 primitivement line organisation qui assurait a tout horn me une 
 part du fonds product!!'. L'analyse fait voir aussi que la 
 propriete est la condition indispensable de 1'existence, de la 
 liberte, et du developpement de 1'homme. Le sentiment inne 
 du juste, le droit primitif, et le droit rationnel s'accordent 
 done pour imposer a toute society 1'obligation de s'organiser 
 de fa<jon a garantir a chacun la propriete legitime qui doit lui 
 revenir." 1 
 
 With all his learning, M. Laveleye has read history 
 backward. This sort of reasoning puts Nature above 
 man, and property above the person. The one thing which 
 society has refused to do in all times is to guarantee 
 that property shall be the natural possession of every 
 man. 2 Banks and castes have in every way endeavored 
 to extend and perpetuate their privilege, and thus gain 
 liens upon property. The whole drift of modern time 
 
 1 De la Propriete, p. 395. 
 
 2 Certainly the United States homestead law makes a liberal recog- 
 nition of natural rights. This broad statute gives land only on condi- 
 tion that the owner shall live on it and improve it. Mahomet, in the 
 Koran, says : "Whoever gives life to dead land becomes proprietor of 
 it." The settler capitalizes it, and thus converts a social right into an 
 individual right. 
 
88 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 has been to develop the person away from castes, and to 
 cause him to rely upon himself for his property. The 
 strong argument for slavery grew out of this supposed 
 natural requirement for property. The unprotected hu- 
 man being could not care for himself, it was said ; there- 
 fore property -holders, men who could sue and be sued, 
 must care for him, that is, take possession of him. 
 Yet in the American rebellion and the Eussian eman- 
 cipation, the two greatest cataclysms of personal prop- 
 erty the world has ever known, society did not dare to 
 grant property outright to the person. The Northern 
 members of the United States were exasperated enough, 
 yet the freedman did not get his " forty acres and a 
 mule." According to Mr. Wallace, the Eussian serfs had 
 the same deep-rooted instinct, saying to their masters, 
 in good-humored sincerity, " We belong to you, but the 
 land belongs to us." No one could prove out of the 
 wanderings of Tartar hordes that it was not so ; and yet 
 the fact remains that society did not and could not set 
 over property to each individual. 
 
 M. Laveleye finds in Java the preservation of the 
 individual's natural rights in the property of the 
 State; the native's right in the soil cannot be alien- 
 ated. He shows that Java has latterly multiplied its 
 population as fast as any country in the world. He 
 thinks this a proof of the superiority of that sort of 
 land-tenure. He forgets in the argument that the 
 Lavele e's J avanese ^ iave been exploited for some three 
 theory re- hundred years by the Dutch, one of the strong- 
 est peoples in personal force. Had the Jav- 
 anese been left to themselves, they would have gone down 
 before a stronger civilization. We may breed a number 
 of semi-barbarians in that manner, and keep them in 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 89 
 
 order with a European strong hand. Persons cannot 
 be developed by that mode ; for the essence of person- 
 ality and property go together : the person must be able 
 to lose his own, or he cannot have his own. 
 
 If it were possible to mass property in this manner 
 into the body of the State, the citizens under such a 
 government would be, not freemen, but clients. There 
 would be an immense State clientage crowned by the 
 State holding the place of the old Roman patricians. 
 Then add to the- intelligence of an Athenian democracy 
 the power of a modern 'political assembly, impelled by 
 the unscrupulous activity of a cliental press ; crown the 
 representative ruler with the red cap of Eobespierre, and 
 robe him in Napoleonic plebiscites, the result would 
 be liberty, equality, fraternity, with property thrown in. 
 We may have soldiers and citizens, knights and slaves, 
 splendid civilizations with base peoples ; we cannot 
 have an orderly modern society without these two in- 
 stitutions of Persons and Property, which must exist 
 together. They may not be coterminous. A particular 
 person may have a better fortress for his individual 
 rights than property can give him. In that event he 
 has an equivalent in his own character; which must be 
 based on some form of social obligation. The commu- 
 nity may sustain a pauper ; but it will do nothing for a 
 person unless he does something in his turn. Duty is 
 the sister of right. 
 
 We have seen that the early institution of property 
 was a joint affair. Germinating in forms similar to the 
 Iroquois joint-living, it passes into the more distinct and 
 definite values of land, vested rights, and privileges in 
 the early Aryan days. It could not be as Laveleye holds 
 it to be, an innate personal equipment ; for the per- 
 
90 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 son, except in the collective form of the house-father, 
 
 Summar was not ^en developed fr m tne tribal masses, 
 of the Ar- which had not organized themselves sufficiently 
 gument. ^ Q fo^g f ortn the person. Property, beyond 
 the rudest tools and weapons, required social roots to 
 nourish and expand it. Under the Eoman ]aw this 
 social culture went forward in well-ordered and meth- 
 odized steps. The manus of the Eomans, the mund 
 of the Teutons, was the social and legal rite by which 
 the hand of the individual possessed itself of its own, 
 while it was strictly subordinated to the social right 
 of the whole people. This double attribute of power, 
 this modulated strength by which the individual be- 
 comes stronger in his primary right in the exact pro- 
 portion in which he regards his secondary or social 
 duties, is the basis of personality. Now, he is not a 
 chieftain or warrior, not a citizen or slave, not a noble 
 or freeman, he is a person. Out of the patria potestas 
 and the status, the individual passes to the condition of 
 the person ; and he carries his property, one's own, with 
 him. Contract is the sacrament and symbol of this 
 beneficent development. The nexum binds man to man 
 with solemn force, and ordered custom consolidated into 
 law replaces the fierce battles by which individuals 
 fought for their rights. 
 
 The primary group of the tribe or the rudimentary 
 State gradually drops its social attributes, and confines 
 itself to its military and political functions. These 
 social attributes are not lost, but furnish activity to 
 other groups. The kindred groups, the family and the 
 clan, shrink into closer individual relations, and their 
 social attributes pass into the community at large. 
 "Protection," which once bound lord and vassal to- 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 91 
 
 gether, becomes in these latest days the duty of every 
 member of society. Each one of us must protect, in so 
 far as he is able, any one whose need justly calls for 
 help. Each of us is protected by a stout network of 
 customary law, and still better by that pervading social 
 atmosphere which we call public opinion. 
 
 This grouping process, this power of the individual 
 and of society to form centres of activity within the 
 social mass, shows its fruits in the Koman law. The 
 seeds and the process of germination are better studied 
 in the land-tenure and social attributes of feudalism. 
 The minute Irish customs formulated in laws carry us 
 back to the full development of the tribe, to the infancy 
 of the State. The taurcrech, gift, the rath, wage-gift, was 
 the symbol of the growth of peaceful obligation out of 
 force and slavery. "Giving stock" was a hard contract, 
 but it was better than mere robbery, cattle-raiding, and 
 the division of spoils, which followed the warlike ex- 
 peditions of still earlier times. The wergeld is the 
 symbol by which revenge was commuted into justice, 
 and private feud was raised into social obligation. The 
 ranks of the feudal system never degenerated into mere 
 castes, but kept their tides of social movement. Land 
 was then the only sure basis of property, and its tenure 
 aided the development we are describing. The folk-land 
 outside the homesteads was gradually absorbed into 
 book-land, and the individual owners were thus enabled 
 to support larger groups of people. Above all, the Aire 
 partnership reveals to us an ingenious method by which 
 property could be safely parcelled away from the com- 
 mon domain, and at the same time the personal power 
 of a noble could be attained through association and 
 representation. M. Laveleye's generalization of the in- 
 
92 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 nate rights of man into settled rights of property falls 
 to the ground. That indispensable condition of the 
 liberty and development of every man, which Laveleye 
 finds in property, would reverse the plain facts of his- 
 tory. Every man must be tried anew before society 
 intrusts him with property. The more easily it is ac- 
 quired the more easily it departs in unthrift. The mind 
 of man has not been able to devise a certain perpetuity 
 for both person and property. Great estates are en- 
 tailed in old civilizations, but where are the persons 
 who shall inherit them ? The property rolls on, but 
 the records of families show few long lines of descent 
 through these increasing estates. The Nemesis of civil- 
 ization smothers those votaries who would absorb all its 
 benefits into themselves. 
 
 Thus we see that person and property are orderly de- 
 velopments, both in historic growth and in their essential 
 Persons philosophy. The basis of property is not born 
 and Prop- in the individual person, nor is the personage 
 erty ' a function of property. Both are based on 
 
 necessary f ,. . 
 
 social fac- social obligation, and any man can acquire them 
 tors. lootli in any country where civilization prevails. 
 
 In a country where social functions are highly developed, 
 as they are in America, the acquisition is easier and the 
 possession more uncertain. The person must control 
 circumstance. Thrift and intelligence, will and judgment 
 are essential attributes, if the individual would in his 
 own manus hold both person and property. 
 
 Many who accept the institution of property in all 
 other things would put land under another tenure, hold- 
 ing it for' the common source of wealth. The source of 
 wealth is not in land, but in society, as we first illus- 
 trated by the axe, the lumber, and the table. The land 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 93 
 
 is no more the source of the civilized crop growing on it, 
 than the water is the source of the steamship which it 
 bears upon its bosom. Let us give a fanciful, but none 
 the less true, illustration. Suppose the great Atlantic 
 water-way should become so crowded that the civilized 
 governments would find it necessary to track it from 
 Europe to America, to divide it into courses for swift and 
 slow vessels, as they do for wagons on London Bridge, 
 and finally to employ a great corporation to police this 
 arrangement, and collect tolls for the service. We should 
 then, have all the difficulties on water which Socialists 
 make on the land. But society would say : " Civilization 
 needs this water for the better movement of its daily life. 
 If you wish to sail your vessel 'free,' go where there is 
 less civilization." This is in principle what old com- 
 munities have done with land, and what new communi- 
 ties have so far been obliged to do when they have 
 fenced in the common domain. 
 
 Universal suffrage is one modern political institution 
 which springs directly from persons. Theories and many 
 sound maxims of government can be and are maintained 
 against this principle ; yet it extends constantly under 
 different polities and the most varied forms of society. 
 We must not forget that land is the final basis of pro- 
 perty and the indestructible form of wealth. Any 
 country which has closed the issues of its folk-land 
 must look carefully to the issues of civilization. The 
 homestead was the matrix of the Aryan civilization, and 
 the source whence persons came forth into the larger 
 community of society. When land ceases to be a 
 constant social factor, moving with the current of civ- 
 ilization and changing with its course, then the per- 
 son can no longer, Antaeus-like, reach his mother earth, 
 
94 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 and the harmony between persons and property is en- 
 dangered. 
 
 This evolution of person and property was achieved 
 through capitalizing, as I term the same process to-day, 
 and under the new social conditions of this day. The 
 count who received a tract of land undertook for himself 
 and his companions to return certain social equivalents, 
 in good order, protection, and in the taxes of various 
 sorts which his fief enjoined. The Aire partners re- 
 ceived the common land in order that they might im- 
 prove it better through the co-operative right they 
 acquired. It was by capitalizing this land with the 
 labor of themselves and others that they obtained new 
 social force of their own, and for the whole community. 
 Ca itai ^e ^ ea f ca pital was not developed until 
 and Capi- chattel and cattle played a large part in the 
 taiizmg. soc i a i movement. The present idea of capi- 
 tal which the economists are prone to overlook, and 
 which the popular consciousness holds fast, is kindred to 
 its first signification. The feverish discussion of the 
 terms shows that there are ideas beneath, which are not 
 fully unfolded. It is time that capital should be ana- 
 lyzed again, and made to fit the present time. Capital is 
 told wealth, just as it once meant cattle told by the head. 
 Is this all ? The moment capital, or wealth, affiliates with 
 labor, another function begins, which is the heading of 
 the enterprise. The header, captain, intertaker, entre- 
 preneur, must conduct the operation. He must not only 
 lead it, he must commute it into capital. He must be a 
 strong man, who can sue and be sued, to make good to 
 labor and to society the task he undertakes. Both the 
 labor and the capital must be headed constantly, brained, 
 as it were, with thought, until it returns into capital 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 95 
 
 again. This is a process of transmutation and correla- 
 tion, and not merely the function of an individual. 
 
 Labor waits, capital rusts : the heading of the capitali- 
 zer must lead them forth and turn them into new pro- 
 ducts, into new reserves of social energy. 
 
 We cannot close a discussion upon property without 
 referring to the views of M. Proudhon, which have influ- 
 enced a certain class of minds materially. His works 
 are still read, and furnish the weapons for many agita- 
 tions of this social question. His central statement, that 
 " Property is robbery," does not convey his whole idea, or 
 it would have been forgotten long ago. That expression 
 merely shows his form of attack. To say that property 
 is an institution about which men have differed and 
 probably always will differ, would be a common- place 
 affair. But boldly to affirm that it is mere robbery, 
 that arrests attention, and accordingly the world listens. 
 Those who have no property hear with joy ; those who 
 have it hear with a faint terror, which adds to the solid 
 sense of possession the delicious levity of sin. Alto- 
 gether, it is a more demoralizing statement than would 
 at first appear. 
 
 We cannot, however, dismiss the statements of Proud- 
 hon simply because they are put forth in the Proudllon , s 
 form of a paradox. He inverts terms, not nee- statement, 
 essarily to abandon his logic, but to give it an " pr P ert y 
 
 is robbery." 
 
 indirect and more penetrating force. The 
 early efforts of the economists to find the laws of ex- 
 change, carried them into many regions of social science 
 where their methods had no proper place ; they took up 
 untenable positions, and Proudhon has attacked them 
 with great force. 
 
 He founds his own notion of property on equality : 
 
96 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 " From whatever point we view this question of property, 
 provided we go to the bottom of it, we reach equality. I 
 will not insist further on the distinction between things which 
 can and things which cannot be appropriated. On this point, 
 economists and legists talk worse than nonsense. . . . Once 
 the possessions of the church, the estates of the crown, the fiefs 
 of the nobility, were inalienable and imprescriptible. If, in- 
 stead of abolishing this privilege, the Constituent (of 1789) 
 had extended it to every individual ; if it had declared that 
 the right of labor, like liberty, can never be forfeited, at 
 that moment the revolution would have been consummated, 
 and we could now devote ourselves to improvement in other 
 directions." * 
 
 He does not mean by equality an exact assimilation of 
 all individuals, as we shall see in another connection : 
 
 " Labor leads us to equality. Every step that we take 
 brings us nearer to it ; and if laborers had equal strength, dili- 
 gence, and industry, clearly their fortunes would be equal also. 
 Indeed, if, as is pretended, and as we have admitted, the 
 laborer is proprietor of the value he creates, it follows 
 
 " 1. That the laborer acquires at the expense of the idle 
 proprietor. 
 
 " 2. That all production being necessarily collective, the la- 
 borer is entitled to a share of the products and profits com- 
 mensurate with his labor. 
 
 " 3. That all accumulated capital being social property, no 
 one can be its exclusive proprietor." 2 
 
 He does not adopt the Socialist system of St. Simon 
 and Fourier. His mode of reaching Socialism is different. 
 In order to establish his social principle of equality, he 
 maintains that all wages would equalize themselves un- 
 der his system of labor and recreated property, because 
 
 1 Proudhon : What is Property ? ch. iii. 1. (Tucker's Tr. p. 92.) 
 * Ibid. ch. iii. 5. (Tucker's Tr. p. 120.) 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 97 
 
 each laborer would be paid in the products of others, and 
 thus receive them at what he terms their cost price : 
 
 " Every industry needs they will add leaders, in- 
 structors, superintendents, etc. Will these be engaged in the 
 general task 1 No ; since their task is to lead, instruct, and 
 superintend. But they must be chosen from the laborers by 
 the laborers themselves, and must fulfil the conditions of eli- 
 gibility. It is the same with all public functions, whether of 
 administration or instruction. 
 
 " Then, article first of the universal constitution will be : 
 ' The limited quantity of available material proves the neces- 
 sity of dividing the labor among the whole number of labor- 
 ers. The capacity given to all of accomplishing a social task, 
 that is, an equal task, and the impossibility of paying one 
 laborer save in the products of another, justify the equality 
 of wages.' " l 
 
 " The principle, To each according to his labor, interpreted 
 to mean, Who works most shall receive most, is based, therefore, 
 on two palpable errors : one, an error in economy, that in the 
 labor of society tasks must necessarily be unequal ; the other, 
 an error in physics, that there is no limit to the amount of 
 producible things." 2 
 
 " The whole nation, and the nation only, pays its authors, its 
 savants, its artists, its officials, whatever be the hands through 
 which their salaries pass. On what basis should it pay them ? 
 On the basis of equality. I have proved it by estimating the 
 value of talent. I shall confirm it in the following chapter, by 
 proving the impossibility of all social inequality. 
 
 "What have we shown so far 1 ? Things so simple that 
 really they seem silly : 
 
 " That as the traveller does not appropriate the route which 
 he traverses, so the farmer does not appropriate the field which 
 he sows ; 
 
 " That if, nevertheless, by reason of his industry, a laborer 
 
 1 What is Property ? ch. iii. 6. (Tucker's Tr. p. 128. ) 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 127. 
 
 7 
 
98 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 may appropriate the material which he employs, every em- 
 ployer of material becomes by the same title a proprietor ; 
 
 " That all capital, whether material or mental, being the re- 
 sult of collective labor, is in consequence collective property ; 
 
 " That the strong have no right to encroach upon the labor 
 of the weak, nor the shrewd to take advantage of the credulity 
 of the simple ; 
 
 " Finally, that no one can be forced to buy that which he 
 does not want, still less to pay for that which he has not 
 bought ; and consequently that the exchangeable value of a 
 product, being measured neither by the opinion of the buyer 
 nor that of the seller, but by the amount of time and outlay 
 which it has cost, 1 the property of each always remains the 
 
 Passages may be detached from other portions of his 
 works which would contradict some of these positions. 
 We cannot follow him from one premise to all others, 
 for he is unscrupulous in argument. His grand sum- 
 
 1 Cost is used here in the same sense adopted by Josiah Warren 
 Socialist ( see p. 198). It is a mere metaphysical figment. Warren 
 theory of actually put into use in a Western community dials to meas- 
 cost. ure time-cost, time-notes for cost-exchange, and such para- 
 
 phernalia. The only discovery of the cost of any article which man 
 has ever made has been through the competition of two individuals, or 
 groups, in producing it. States or despots have never been able to in- 
 vent a test which would work as well as this competition. Compare the 
 work done in Government yards and arsenals with the same quality 
 done by individuals, and this principle reveals itself. The theory of 
 Russian absolutism is based on the same communal idea. The czar 
 stands for all ; all is for the czar. Ideally this is a perfect system. 
 How the system works when applied to affairs, the invariable'corruption 
 in every movement of the Russo-Turkish war well shows. The only 
 means of arriving at a true cost in economics is to put two men at work 
 against each other : by working against each other they work for the 
 whole society. Put either at work alone for society, the result would 
 be different. This is all we know about cost. The remainder is all 
 theory. 
 
 a What is Property ? ch. iii. 7. (Tucker's Tr. p. 147.) 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 
 
 ming up of the "impossibility" of property, argued 
 through another long chapter, is in these words : 
 
 " Finally, property is not self-existent. An extraneous 
 cause either force or fraud is necessary to its life and 
 action. In other words, property is not equal to property : it 
 is a negation a delusion NOTHING ! " 1 
 
 These citations show his meaning in the propositions 
 and arguments from which they are taken. I have 
 culled them so freely and brought them together for 
 two reasons. First, to show the danger which lurks 
 in the doctrine that the source of all wealth and capital 
 is in labor alone. This has been steadily maintained 
 by grave economists, as well as by those fiery exponents 
 of the platform who can so readily destroy the world 
 and construct it again, in less than the six days of the 
 ancient Hebrew chronology. To these nimble inven- 
 tors of institutions and forces, the works of Proudhon 
 offer an inexhaustible mine of explosive maxims and 
 paradoxes. And, secondly, I would show inversely 
 from these positions of Proudhon how the Group affects 
 men socially, and how it keeps property, as well 
 as the other results of civilization, from waste and 
 destruction. 
 
 Proudhon constantly talks of the association of labor- 
 ers ; but he ignores the primary germs of that 
 associative power by which individuals are a i one 
 first drawn together, and a structure of any cannot 
 
 i j r, i -i T associate. 
 
 kind of social system is begun. Large asso- 
 ciations, nations, or states, grow out of small associa- 
 tions. 2 Social structure grows out of the innumerable 
 
 1 What is Property ? ch. iv. 10. (Tucker's Tr. p. 223.) 
 
 2 See infra, p. 281. 
 
100 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 groups of capital, labor, capitalizes, and capitalizing, 
 just as the human body grows from a cell to an embryo, 
 and from an embryo to an organism. 
 
 The instinct of Communism has been vaunted as if it 
 were a step forward in development, and a higher as 
 well as a later form of social life. Natural history is 
 coming to assist philosophy in this direction, and proves 
 that the communal instinct is a lower form of sociality, 
 which has been used and thrown off in the ascending 
 processes of life. 
 
 The higher orders of ants cultivate the ground, sow 
 seed, weed the crop, harvest it and preserve it in the 
 most careful manner from damp and fermentation. They 
 lay out roads and tunnels, maintain a police, and make 
 war by systematic methods. 
 
 " It has been remarked in the ' Quarterly Journal of Sci- 
 The com- ence,' that ants, unlike men, have solved the prob- 
 munal ant. lem of the practical organization of communism : 
 this is literally true. In a formicary we can detect no trace 
 of private property ; the territory, the buildings, the stores, 
 the booty, exist equally for the benefit of all. Every ant has 
 its wants supplied, and each in turn is prepared to work 
 or to fight for the community as zealously as if the benefit 
 of such toil and "peril were to accrue to itself alone." 
 
 It is a common remark of the biologists that man 
 contains in himself all which the Creator has made in 
 the lower forms of animal life. The communal ant 
 is not lost in man, but its functions are superseded by 
 individual and social functions. In order to develop 
 the individual from a mass of units, it was absolutely 
 necessary to give him power to absorb a portion of the 
 life of other units, whether human or animal. This 
 raised the individual man into being. With the power 
 
PERSONS AND PROPERTY. 101 
 
 to rise came the liability to fall ; and the individual 
 gained the still more dangerous privilege of dragging 
 others with him : he could not only raise but ruin all 
 within his sphere of influence. With this individual 
 power there was a duty imposed, a duty as strong as 
 necessity itself, that the individual must raise in his 
 own elevation others with him. His power could not 
 take from other units, making them less ; but through 
 their action all must be raised together. This is soci- 
 ety ; and the immediate force which propels it is the 
 group working with and through the individual, as I 
 have described it. Whenever individuals and socie- 
 ties lost these vital characteristics, they languished and 
 died. 
 
 This process seemed hard at first : it always will seem 
 so. The single glory of Charlemagne shines always, 
 while the beneficent light which his orderly institutions 
 carried through so many homes fades in the confusion of 
 history. That one nian should have the social prestige 
 of the person and the immediate force of property, 
 while another has only the ground his feet can cover, 
 seems an anomaly in a world of plenty. Lassalle and 
 Proudhon voice this dreadful instinct. "Property is 
 robbery, interest and rent are extortion," is a mere shriek 
 which echoes the communal instinct : it is man's inher- 
 itance from the ant. It is related of Proudhon that late 
 in life, when about to be married, he was very sharp in 
 securing a certain disposition of the lady's property. 
 Her attorney met him with, " La propriete, c'est le vol ;" 
 but he coolly answered : " Be pleased, my dear sir, on 
 such an occasion as the present, to be, if possible, a little 
 serious." Whether the story be true or not ; whether 
 Proudhon was sincere or not, is not of the least conse- 
 
102 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOK. 
 
 quence. It shows what the hard common-sense of man- 
 kind everywhere recognizes, that the communal in- 
 stinct is never proof against the immediate power which 
 the personal possession of property exerts. The records 
 of communistic and semi-socialist experiments often 
 show, that men who begin communism with the gen- 
 erous desire to create more for everybody, end by appro- 
 priating the already created property of somebody. The 
 ants are equal to the communal effort ; men are riot. 
 
 We therefore hold that while civilization lasts, Person 
 and Property will be fixed institutions ; and that the so- 
 cial group will be the chain which binds them into that 
 whole which is society. 
 
THE COEPOKATION. 
 
II. 
 
 THE CORPORATION. . 
 
 I TRUST that the institution of the Person now 
 stands upon our canvas in its historic perspective. 
 It will readily occur to the reader that an institution so 
 essentially civilized must produce others akin to itself. 
 The Eomans, with that wonderful genius of organization 
 which gave them possession of the ancient world, early 
 perceived the force which a development of the concep- 
 tion and the powers of Person would carry with it. The 
 Corporation sprang from this idea. This body p ers0 naiity 
 has always been known by its common seal or of the Cor- 
 signet. Sigillum, the private signet which por 
 played so great a part in Roman intercourse, bore a little 
 image upon its face. The Corporation, having adopted 
 this mode of transmitting personality, carried the mark, 
 the power, the character, of Person into its artificial and 
 collective personage. 
 
 Collegium was the first form of the Corporation ; and 
 according to Savigny this was a collection of persons. 
 The members were colleger, or sodales : this latter is one 
 of the oldest collateral words, and is directly allied to 
 socius. The college was also called corpus ; it The Ro _ 
 had a common chest, and could hold property, man Col- 
 sue or be sued through its syndicus, or actor. ege> 
 These collegia varied in their functions ; some were 
 religious bodies, some were made up of artisans, while 
 some were devoted to government, and to the adminis- 
 
106 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 tration of its affairs. Municipal corporations, as legal 
 fictions or personalities, undoubtedly sprang from this 
 latter form of the early collegium. 
 
 If the person took its persona, its character, from an 
 elevated individual, one greater than and distinguished 
 from the common mass of mankind, we may suppose 
 that the corporation took its body, its collective form of 
 life by which it could act and perpetuate itself, from the 
 already developed institution of the person. 
 
 But the terms corpus and collegium could not construe 
 and render all the vital force which grew with the in- 
 creasing civilization of Eome. The jurists divided things 
 into two great classes, those corporeal, or the objects of 
 sense ; and those incorporeal, the objects of the intellect 
 only, or abstractions as we should say in modern language. 
 In a thing corporeal there are parts in reference to which 
 the whole is a universitas, or a unit. But there are parts 
 of things corporeal which are essential to the constitu- 
 
 Anai sis of ^ on ^ ^ e wn l e > so that ^ e wn le cannot 
 Universi- be divided into parts, as a living animal 
 for instance. Beside the corporeal parts into 
 which a thing is divisible, we may suppose incorporeal 
 or ideal parts of a corporeal thing. These parts are as- 
 sumed fractions of a whole, not corporeal parts. Thus 
 several persons may be joint-owners of a piece of undi- 
 vided land, but no one can say that any particular part 
 belongs to him. On the other hand, the whole may be 
 ideal, and the parts corporeal : thus a flock of sheep is 
 an ideal whole, and the several sheep are the indepen- 
 dent corporeal things. As a number of sheep must have 
 a name, a flock, in order to be designated as one 
 notion, so a juristical person must have a name, as the 
 universitas of Fdbri, or the city of Rome. " The term 
 
THE CORPORATION. 107 
 
 universitas, then, may have various senses : ( 1 ) Both 
 the universitas and the parts may be corporeal ; ( 2 ) The 
 universitas may be corporeal, and the parts incorporeal, 
 as when we imagine fractional parts of a thing; (3) 
 The universitas may be incorporeal, and the parts cor- 
 poreal, as a flock of sheep ; and ( 4 ) The universitas and 
 the parts may both be incorporeal." This is in substance 
 Mr. Long's analysis founded on the studies of Savigny. 
 The term was adopted in the Middle Ages to denote 
 certain great schools; but it was not the scholastic 
 function, it was the corporate function, which conferred 
 the name. 
 
 A single person only can be properly viewed as the 
 subject of rights and duties ; but the notion of legal 
 capacity may by a fiction be extended to an imaginary 
 person. But the fictitious person, the universitas, is not 
 a unit composed of the real persons; it is a name in 
 which the several persons, or a majority, may act for cer- 
 tain permanent purposes. The purpose itself is some- 
 times the fictitious person. The body thus created 
 could hold property, including slaves, and could act 
 through an agent : it became a juridical person. Among 
 the leading bodies formed under the collegium and uni- 
 versitas were religious associations, like the priests and 
 the vestal virgins, associations of officials and admin- 
 istrators, like the Scribce ; associations for trade and 
 commerce, like the Fabri and Navicularii, where the 
 profession was a unit, but each man worked on his own 
 account ; associations called Sodalitates, friendly or po- 
 litical, which resembled modern clubs. There were also 
 under the empire collegia tenuiorum, associations of 
 poor people, more restricted in their privileges. A man 
 could belong to only one, and a slave could be a member 
 
108 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 with the consent of his master. No collegium, or juridi- 
 cal person, could be formed without the permission of a 
 senatus consultum, or the Caesar ; and persons who asso- 
 ciated unlawfully were guilty of an extraordinary crime. 
 No union of persons could form a juridical person with- 
 out the consent of the proper authority ; and this is 
 quite distinct from the provision contained in the same 
 rule of law which punished associations of persons who 
 acted as corporations, for this part of the rule relates 
 only to such associations as were dangerous or undefined. 
 The term " university," in its large social and legal sense, 
 has been disused, and the modern corporation has nearly 
 all the above described powers. The collegium, cimtas, 
 municipium, each a form of the Universitas, were car- 
 ried over into the Gallic and French, the German, Eng- 
 lish, and other civilizations during the decline of the 
 empire. 
 
 We can trace the later or post-Eoman development of 
 the collegium in the Gallic provinces. It was the social 
 substitute, the artificial equivalent, for the early Aryan 
 household. Society passed from these early stages to the 
 great Roman gentes, and then adopted the college and the 
 corporation as a ready means by which every man could 
 in Gaul the be bound to the State by a social tie. It was 
 Corpora- through this carefully defined obligation that 
 
 tion binds . J .. 
 
 Society he should requite the State for its protection 
 together. an( j j^g privileges. Individual liberty there 
 was none. In the first centuries of our era, Gaul l re- 
 
 1 ' ' Two centuries after the Conquest, Gaul was the most flourishing 
 of the provinces of the empire. They built in Koman style, and 
 adopted, not only the political institutions, but the manners and tastes 
 of the mother country. Like Rome, they had artisan slaves, whose 
 masters exploited or let their labor ; and as the slaves were not numer- 
 ous, there were very many more free workmen, who were, as at Rome, 
 
THE CORPORATION. 109 
 
 fleeted this social system and organization completely. 
 This complex civilization, which made Gaul one of the 
 richest and most flourishing districts of the Koman 
 world, and the effects of which remain in the France of 
 to-day, was rudely broken down during the fifth century. 
 It was not restored until the time of Saint Louis, in the 
 thirteenth century. The capitularies of Dagobert and of 
 Charlemagne 1 teem with evidence on the struggles of all 
 these social factors colleges, corporate workshops, free 
 artisans, chartered guilds, imperfect communes with 
 the barbaric lords who had seized the sovereign powers 
 of the Eoman empire. The feudal system,' naturally 
 belonging to an earlier period of development, came in 
 with its ruder methods and simpler social tenure to 
 interrupt the orderly course of civilization on the fair 
 lands of Gaul. 
 
 An interesting institution of this period was the 
 manse, or household organization, by which the feudal 
 proprietors, whether barons or ecclesiastics, The Frank- 
 held and managed their lands. It had attained ish Manse ' 
 its full development in the Caiiovingian epoch, and we 
 can trace in its structure the minute divisions and close 
 inter-relations of property and personal rights. The 
 word properly belonged to the habitation, but it was also 
 
 organized in colleges or corporations. These colleges were regulated by 
 severe laws. As their rebellious spirit or their intrigues were feared, it 
 was required that they should be regularly qualified ; and the qualifica- 
 tion was pretty rare. All the trades, all the professions, were governed 
 by this regime. Once admitted to a corporation, it was forbidden to 
 leave it. Liberty did not exist in any part of the society of the Roman 
 empire. Each one had his chain. The colon was enslaved to the soil ; 
 the curial to the city ; the tradesman to his shop ; the workman to 
 his corporation. No one had the right to quit his duties, and to 
 deprive the State of his services." Tourmagne's Histoire du Servage, 
 p. 108. 
 
 1 Tourmagne, p. 111. 
 
110 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 applied to the land attached to it, and this in the trib- 
 utary kinds never exceeded forty-five acres ; it was gen- 
 erally less. The seigniorial household, or chef-manse, was 
 held by the proprietor, or by one to whom he had dele- 
 gated a portion of his powers. These intermediate ru- 
 lers were often serfs (persons of mixed condition), as we 
 see in Saint-Germain-des-Pres. This central estate had 
 a greater or less number of tributary manses attached to 
 it which paid rents, and also furnished without charge 
 most of the labor necessary to improve the seigniorial 
 domain. About the year 841, one of these chef-manses, 
 belonging 'to the Abbey of Nideralteich, had a family of 
 twenty-two serfs, including their wives, living on one hun- 
 dred and thirty journaux of arable land. Usually there 
 were a manor-house, a kitchen, bakery, buildings for 
 serfs, workshops, barns, stables, and all the apparatus for 
 rural good living. Of course, these seigniorial households 
 contributed in turn to the abbey, bishop, or baron. 
 
 The tributary households which were grouped around 
 the seigniorial manse were curiously subdivided into three 
 kinds, the free (ingenuiles), the lidiles, and the servile. 
 The free manse remained so, even when it passed into 
 the hands of a serf; and the servile manse did not change 
 the nature of its tenure when it became the possession 
 of a freeman. The condition of the lands did not de- 
 pend on that of the persons. The title, after the time 
 of Charlemagne, whether free or servile, was attached to 
 the land and not to the possessor. The free manses con- 
 tained more land than the lidiles, and these more than 
 the servile ; the relative scale of rents and tribute was 
 the same. The free manses owed the tribute of war arid 
 the rent called ligna silvia, which implied the right of 
 usage in the forests ; while the servile manses were nearly 
 
THE CORPORATION. Ill 
 
 always exempt from these " prestations." The servile 
 manses paid in torch- wood, iron, mustard, and hops, 
 which were not exacted from the free grade ; they were 
 compelled to cultivate the vine, and this was rarely im- 
 posed on the free manse. 
 
 The lide, or lite, was a man whose condition was inter- 
 mediate between the freeman and the slave. In the old 
 Salian and Eiparian laws, his wergeld was half R e i a ti ve 
 that of a freeman, and three times that of a values of 
 slave. When Charlemagne revised these laws, 
 he made the honor-price of a Frank six hundred sous, 
 that of a lide one hundred, and that of a slave fifty. 
 This would indicate that the lide gradually fell in con- 
 dition. On the other hand he differed from the colon, 
 another intermediate, who was bound to the soil. The 
 lide owed personal service, and must accompany his 
 master to war, beside cultivating the land in time of 
 peace. 
 
 There are many other distinctions and minor differ- 
 ences which further classify and complicate this inter- 
 esting form of medieval society. I have described these 
 households to indicate the careful system by which 
 person and property were allotted to these classified 
 members of society. The old Aire partnership among 
 the Irish Celts shows how the freehold was The 
 gradually possessed by the freeman, under a Aire an in- 
 fixed obligation to the society in which he ci P ientCor - 
 
 poration. 
 
 lived. These later forms of personal half free- 
 dom and of land tenure, modified by the ingenuile and 
 lidile distinctions, show us how both liberty and prop- 
 erty tended to slip backward into the control of the 
 feudal lord. Personal liberty and independent property 
 worked slow,ly out from the common control of the tribe 
 
112 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 embodied in the chief; then it constantly struggled 
 against reabsorption by the feudal lord. The centralized 
 force of the Eoman system apparently gave a new im- 
 pulse to this supremacy of the lord. The unfree man 
 sank lower and lower in France, until the Crusades and 
 the Reformation lifted society to a higher appreciation of 
 the rights of the individual man. 
 
 In the transfer from Roman life, these institutions 
 were much modified by the differing social life of the 
 barbarians who adopted them. There is a vague region 
 of mediaeval history lighted by the great sun of the Ro- 
 man law from the one side, and by the dimmer but not 
 inferior star of the early Aryan and Teutonic civilization 
 from the other. Questions regarding the origin of insti- 
 tutions, not otherwise accounted for, have been referred 
 to Feudalism. This is an obscure historic term; and, as 
 I have indicated in another connection, it covers an im- 
 mense growth of social as well as military and political 
 Beginning custom and law. It is clear, however, that the 
 of the MU- old Germanic institution, 1 which foreshadowed 
 ncipa ity. t k e m odern Corporation among those peoples, 
 adopted and modified the social and political universi- 
 tas, which they derived from the Romans. Monastic 
 life born out of the collegium carried the corporate 2 spirit 
 wherever it planted itself. England has preserved the 
 evidences of this transition in more archaic form than 
 any other country can show at this day. The frith-guilds, 
 town-guilds, and merchant-guilds played a great part in 
 both the social and political development of England 
 after the Conquest. I say, after the Conquest, for the 
 oldest guild-statutes considered trustworthy by Dr. Bren- 
 
 1 Otto Gierke : History of German Corporation Law. p. 151. 
 
 2 Stubbs : Constitutional History of England, i. 223. 
 
THE CORPORATION. 113 
 
 tano 1 date from the beginning of the eleventh century. 
 But the customs on which these statutes were founded 
 extend far back into Saxon times. Toulmin- Smith, ac- 
 cording to his daughter's account, considers the guild 
 older than any king of England. 2 It is probable that 
 the Norman lawyers, with that organizing skill which 
 they had drawn from Rome, reduced the custom and 
 traditional law of the guilds and other municipal insti- 
 tutions to chartered form. 3 There was not that clear 
 division between the municipality, the guild, or other 
 social body, and the central power of the State, which 
 modern society has effected. The Roman imperium, or 
 sovereignty, found no immediate or constant resting-place 
 among Germanic institutions. Sovereignty, which dwelt 
 in the folk-moot, the principal Germanic assem-bly, was 
 parcelled out and struggled for by municipality and 
 commonalty, by lords and burgesses, until the great cen- 
 tral power of the modern State was forged into being. 
 In this fateful struggle the Corporation was a constant 
 agent, and underwent important changes. 4 In the early 
 
 1 On Guilds, p. 1. 
 
 2 Early English Guilds, p. xv. 
 
 3 Brentano cites Madox : FirmaBurgi, p. 27. " Peradventure from 
 these Secular Guilds, or in imitation of them, sprang the method or prac- 
 tice of gildating and embodying whole towns." 
 
 4 There were nice and curious distinctions made while this outgrowth 
 went on. Kyd cites a decision of the court : "Though the city of 
 London cannot make a corporation, as that can only be created by the 
 crown, yet they may make a fraternity or fellowship ; and the court 
 thus distinguishes, ' that a corporation is properly an investing of the 
 people of the place with the local government thereof, and therefore 
 their laws shall bind strangers ; but that a fraternity is some people of 
 a place united together, in respect of a mystery or business, into a com- 
 pany, and their laws and ordinances cannot bind strangers, because they 
 "have not a local power or government.' " 
 
 Kyd holds this to be inaccurate, and defines thus : "The true distinc- 
 tion seems to be, that a company incorporated by king's charter can act 
 as a corporation by its own intrinsic powers, without assistance or pro- 
 
 8 
 
114 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 English guild, which was partly a collegium and partly a 
 municipium, the functions were both political and social. 
 Mr. Toulmin- Smith 1 sagaciously says that a corporation 
 in the political, not the modern commercial sense 
 is not created by the recorded charter or act of incorpo- 
 ration. 2 The town corporation began in the old " frith- 
 borh," or " peace-pledge." This was " tithing," 3 by 
 which ten men bound themselves for the wer- 
 
 Town based . 
 
 on pledging ffeld an d other responsibilities of each other, 
 together of an d the affairs of the whole were managed by 
 one who was the head-man or " capital-pledge." 
 This is doubtless an extension in principle of the Irish 
 Aire partnership. But "tithing" also meant "town;" 4 
 the organization by tens extended into the "hundred." 5 
 Every man at a certain age was enrolled in these asso- 
 ciations, and thus became a member of the communitas, 
 whether this was located in a city or a country parish. 
 "Parish" 6 is another form of corporation existing in 
 England to-day, and its functions show how the religious, 
 
 tection of the corporation of a town ; but a company established by the 
 mayor and commonalty of London, though allowed to be a legal institu- 
 tion, cannot act of itself as a corporation, but its members must assert 
 their claim of privilege under the prescriptive right of the mayor and 
 commonalty to establish such a company." Kyd, On Corporations, i. 
 
 47, 48. 
 
 We must mark the distinction between the corporate powers flowing 
 directly from the sovereignty of the crown and those transmitted through 
 the medium of the municipality. 
 
 1 Early English Guilds, pp. xxii,xxiii. 
 
 2 The courts have been obliged to adopt this principle. "A Corpo- 
 ration by prescription " is said to have existed from time immemorial, 
 the charter having been lost. (Kyd : On Corporations, i. 14.) This 
 is a legal fiction. 
 
 3 Stubbs : Constitutional History of England, i. 86. 
 
 * Ibid. i. 85. 
 
 6 Adams : Anglo-Saxon Law, p. 20. 
 
 Stubbs : Constitutional History of England, i. 85. 
 
THE CORPORATION. 115 
 
 social, and political life of the English was commingled 
 and blended in the early time. The communitas, thus 
 acting, usually but not always had a representative coun- 
 cil. This body came in common usage to be the Corpo- 
 ration; it was headed by the " provost," the "constable," 
 the " bailiff," or the " reeve." 1 The names reveal their 
 Norman and Saxon origins, and they varied until the 
 Corporation- Eeform Act of William IV. In the ancient 
 sense, the whole body was the Corporation ; it consisted 
 of the commonalty and "the four-and-twenty sworn 
 men," or other number of burgesses who acted with the 
 head-man. The principle seemed to be, that, as fast as 
 any new force in civilization appeared, there was a local 
 form of organization germinating to receive it. The lord 
 was ready both as military protector and as judge, and 
 generally was trying to exact more power from the free- 
 men and burgesses than they would willingly grant. 
 The " court-baron," or manorial court, had a civil juris- 
 diction. The " court-leet," the older and more popular 
 institution, had both civil and criminal jurisdiction ; it 
 especially controlled the " view of frank-pledge," the 
 mainspring of personal rights and obligations Frank- 
 in Teutonic society. By the frank-pledge all pledge 
 substantial members of the community were m s *! er 
 
 sons into 
 
 bound together, and each became responsible the Corpo- 
 for the other. Liberty, which tended toward ration - 
 license in other civilizations, was weighted by this im- 
 portant institution, and its power was consolidated while 
 its motion was regulated by this friction of responsibility. 
 The frank-pledge was one of the main foundations of the 
 person in the Teutonic communities ; and " the view," 
 as it was called (the regulation of it), became an impor- 
 
 1 Toulmin-Smith : Early English Guilds, p. xxiii. 
 
116 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 tant prerogative in the court-leet and other powers 
 which obtained it. 
 
 Much has been said of the sovereignty of the people, 
 
 and of sovereignty as not residing in the peo- 
 ment of" pl e > but ^ n crown, parliament, or other institu- 
 Sover- tion, which is again derived from some source 
 
 farther back. People will view this question 
 as their sympathies incline them to force direct or force 
 indirect in human government, for no government can 
 exist without force. The point I would bring forward 
 is this : that we have not enough regarded the growth 
 of the small organisms by which the free spirit, the 
 kingly power, of each person developed by the Ger- 
 manic races was moulded into the orderly and balanced 
 functions of the modern citizen. The Roman collegium 
 was a social branch of the great tree of state, a mere 
 off-shoot from the trunk, bearing no political flowers or 
 fruit of sovereignty ; the Germanic guild and corpora- 
 tion, likewise born in the parent trunk, branched forth 
 in the social soil which gave life to the whole, and, run- 
 ning through it, became a " sucker " that could repro- 
 duce the parent tree, if circumstances should favor it. 
 These minor institutions, entangled one with another, 
 fettered and choked the life of the State. England and 
 America first reduced them to order, and developed them 
 all into political harmony ; Germany labored until 1870, 
 and France has struggled and still struggles in a swamp 
 of imperio-personal powers, emeutes, parliamentary rev- 
 olutions, plebiscites, and strangled communes. The Teu- 
 tonic imperium is not a despotism of one or many, a 
 machine to be bought in the market and run at the will 
 of the owners. Imperial sovereignty is a human organ- 
 ism, inspired by the divine will, bred and nourished 
 
THE CORPORATION. 117 
 
 from the warm life of a free people, which puts forth its 
 power through those trained organs of person, munici- 
 pality, and parliamentary assembly inherited from all 
 the periods of Aryan life. 
 
 The guild-corporation was not the only method by 
 which municipal independence was worked 
 out in England. In some cases the local ad- 
 ministration rested on a borough or commune, Guild into 
 which was political in origin; in others it stood 
 on a merchant-guild, which was socio-political 
 in origin. The State apparently had no fixed principle 
 by which it could regulate them. The king watched 
 jealously to see whether these guilds would take away 
 any of his prerogatives. At other times he used them 
 to extort more prerogative from the barons, granting to 
 the burgesses desiderated privilege in return. The po- 
 litical sucker, as we have termed it, was taking up the 
 sap of sovereignty from English soil. According to 
 Professor Stubbs, 1 in the time of Henry II. the merchant- 
 guild of York was recognized, but the communa of 
 London was kept under surveillance, and discouraged. 
 London always troubled the absolute rulers. In the 
 Norman time, London 2 was made up of every kind of 
 local government, parish, manor, guild, etc., even the 
 aldermen were sometimes barons ; but its unifying prin- 
 ciple was founded, not on the municipality, but on the 
 wider unit of the shire. In the reign of Henry II. 
 eighteen " adulterine," or illegal and unauthorized, guilds 
 were fined in London. In the time of Edward II. every 
 person, whether a resident and householder of the city or 
 not, must be a member of the " Trades," or " Mysteries," 
 or be admitted by a full vote of the whole communa, 
 
 i Constitutional History of England i. 418. 2 Ibid. i. 407. 
 
118 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 in order to enjoy the complete rights of a citizen of 
 London. 1 The privileges won by these local corporations 
 were not unmixed blessings to the commonalty. The 
 rights of " protection," administered by the lord, were 
 complemented by the privileges which the burgesses 
 and craftsmen extracted from the sovereign power, and 
 then administered chiefly for their own class. But, gen- 
 erally speaking, the corporations were popular institu- 
 tions, and the guild and municipality moved together in 
 harmony. 2 
 
 On the Continent the development of the guild into 
 local self-government was not so effective as we have 
 seen it in England, and the whole of central Europe 
 has been modified in consequence. Charlemagne, one 
 of those rare men whose genius it is to govern rather 
 than to rule, tried to preserve 3 that balanced order of 
 individual liberty, self-government, and subordination 
 to the common law which was germinating in the Cor- 
 poration. The local sovereignty, which bore so rich 
 fruit in England, was cropping out in the Frankish local 
 institutions, and was cherished by the mighty emperor. 
 His successors sought to magnify their own rule by 
 absorbing these " suckers " of sovereignty ; the final re- 
 sult was that the German imperium swallowed the Cor- 
 poration without gaining any essential life of 
 Corpora- its own. The Corporation, in its struggling ex- 
 tion im- istence after Charlemagne, was a power, but not 
 sufficient for the demands which the mediaeval 
 civilization made upon it. The principle of sovereignty 
 in the Eoman universitas, the Corporation of corpora- 
 
 1 Norton : History of London, p. 120. 
 
 2 Toulmin-Smith : Early English Guilds, p. 348. 
 8 Gierke : German Corporation Law, p. 151. 
 
THE CORPORATION. 119 
 
 tions, could not manifest itself, for the person was not 
 sufficiently developed through which this larger institu- 
 tion could extend itself into political and social life. 
 The Corporation existed only for the class of freemen, 
 which class the villain and serf could not reach on the 
 Continent, as they could in the more localized commu- 
 nities and municipalities in England. The corporators 
 developed a spirit of liberty and of manly independence, 
 but there was a narrow caste feeling, an aboriginal in- 
 heritance, which animated their action. The tribal and 
 clan spirit had not yet widened into the nature of the 
 civitas. This arrested development of the Corporation 
 left its traces in the constitution of the German free 
 city. The origin of this city is not altogether clear, but 
 it was founded on the Corporation, 1 and was only in 
 part a civitas. 
 
 Probably the " Charters of Community," which ap- 
 pear in France toward the beginning of the eleventh 
 century, 2 were steps between the mark, or village 
 community, and the municipality, 3 or free city, among 
 both the French and the German peoples. 
 
 rrn '-r, , , , , Municipal 
 
 The French charters were earlier in date, but deveiop- 
 the German extended communal rights farther. ment in 
 These charters indicate the beginnings of reg- 
 ular government and of law made by the governed, 
 taking the place of the law which was administered by 
 the barons in the spirit of " protection," or feudal law. 
 
 1 Gierke : German Corporation Law, p. 250. 
 
 2 Prescott : Robertson's Charles V., i. 250, note. 
 
 3 "For, after all, what is the Commune of the Middle Ages, if not 
 the association of all associations in the bosom of the same city ? " 
 De La Farelle's Progres Social, i. 309. "Without, they were fortresses ; 
 within, they were fraternities. They were, in the language of the time, 
 places of friendship, of independence, and of peace." Thierry, iii. 
 493. 
 
120 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 The fundamental principle in every charter was, that 
 every member on oath should defend and assist all other 
 members against all aggressors. 1 The frank-pledge of 
 the feudal societies, which became civic in the tithing 
 of the early English municipalities, took this form in 
 the charters of France, which also extended to Italy, 
 Spain, Germany, in fact to Europe. 2 
 
 The French corporations, as distinguished from the 
 communes, differed from the English guild, and from 
 the German companies. The idea sprang from the 
 Eoman collegium, and the institutions themselves date 
 from the time of Charlemagne, 3 according to some au- 
 thorities, certainly they are of ancient date. Saint 
 Louis investigated them, and reformed their administra- 
 tion about the year 1258. There were six of the. Corps 
 Marchands at Paris, and one of them (the Company of 
 Goldsmiths), from the year 1260, had the important priv- 
 ilege of keeping an especial seal in the corporate house. 
 It would seem from the mention of this one instance 
 (I find no other) that the corporate function embodied 
 in the seal was more jealously guarded in France than 
 it was in England. 
 
 After Louis XIV., all the Associations were divided 
 into two classes, the first consisting of the six com- 
 panies of Paris merchants ; and the second, of the Com- 
 munautes des Arts et Metiers* These latter numbered 
 one hundred and twenty at Paris in 1691. According 
 to De Haillan, the municipalities of Paris and of Lyons 
 supervised these bodies after the year 1190. 
 
 1 Prescott : Robertson's Charles V., i. 251; following D'Achery: 
 Spicilegium. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 38. 
 
 8 Introduction a Historique des Arts et Metiers. 
 * De La Farelle: Progres Social, ii. 218. 
 
THE CORPORATION. 121 
 
 These bodies were divided into three classes, or very 
 distinct orders : 1. The Masters, who in the six com- 
 panies take the usual qualification of merchants ; 2. 
 The Companions ; 3. The Apprentices. The Masters 
 in the communautes of Paris were the artisans, work- 
 men, or merchants, who had first served an appren- 
 ticeship ; second, had served as companions the time 
 prescribed by statute ; third, had made a chef d'ceuvre, or 
 only an " experience." This latter was a species of in- 
 ferior masterpiece. Apprentices were lodged in the 
 houses of the masters, and treated like children. The 
 whole system was minutely arranged, and there were 
 many distinct classifications which separated masters 
 and companions. The system of administration was 
 by elective officers, and corresponded to that of the 
 guilds. 
 
 The Communes of Lombardy attained such import- 
 ance that Frederic Barbarossa was obliged to bring the 
 imperial power against them, in order to establish the 
 unity of his government. The original status Interestin 
 of these interesting communities appears to Lombard 
 have been a compromise of feudal and mu- Communes - 
 nicipal relations. It was not until after 1173, when they 
 made an oath of confederation against Frederic, that 
 they omitted the customary clause, " saving our alle- 
 giance to the emperor." Previous to this, when an em- 
 peror was in Italy, they were obliged to give him 
 quarters, called mansionaticium, and food, called fode- 
 reum. They repaired roads and bridges, and ranged 
 themselves under the imperial banner as vassals. 1 
 
 The Lombards did not make land a condition of 
 citizenship, and it was never a qualification for office. 
 
 1 Testa : Communes of Lombardy, p. 98. 
 
122 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 The privilege of the citizen was a boon granted by the 
 commune to its aristocracy. Every citizen of eighteen 
 was admitted to the General Council, but handicrafts 
 and low trades took no part in the public business. 
 Every city was divided into sestieri, or tribes, and the 
 government consisted of three councils, the General, 
 the Special, the Secret. They had classified magistrates, 
 consuls, praetors, or syndics. All were liable to bear 
 arms from the age of eighteen to seventy. But we see 
 the spirit of aristocratic privilege symbolized in the 
 horse. A common person was not allowed to rear or 
 train a war-horse ; this office was held to be honorable, 
 and was assigned to men of noble birth. The belt of 
 knighthood was conferred on these idealized grooms 
 by the consul, or some distinguished personage, as an 
 especial reward for military valor. These facts are 
 cited by Testa, and are interesting, for they reveal the 
 Teutonic spirit of local independence in its far South- 
 ern confines. The municipality under these conditions 
 was finally crushed by imperialism, or it was strangled 
 by the domestic struggles of aristocratic parties. The 
 healthy inflow of common life, which the English town 
 and frith-guilds admitted, was lacking in these Latin 
 countries. 
 
 On the Continent there was not the same intimate re- 
 lation between the institutions of Person and 
 COTpOTa ntal Property that England always maintained, 
 tions differ The German and French aristocracies were 
 iLT Eng not soc i a l i* 1 the same degree that obtained in 
 England ; consequently all classes consolidated 
 their privileges into a more strictly personal right and 
 power. Practically, a noble could not long exist in 
 England without property and the social foundation it 
 
THE CORPORATION. 123 
 
 I 
 
 maintained under him. This principle afforded con- 
 stant opportunity for the interchange of classes and for 
 elastic relations between them. The English Corporation 
 in its municipal form was a sure field for this social de- 
 velopment. There was not an absolute difference be- 
 tween the English and the German institutions, but the 
 tendency varied, and the historic results were modified 
 accordingly. 
 
 After the free city was developed in Germany there 
 came a development of corporations, chiefly from the 
 artisan class. The oldest of these guilds l dates German 
 from 1149: 2 toward the end of the twelfth ^ rtisan 
 
 Corpora- 
 
 century they were rapidly formed, and played tion. 
 a great part in the life of the centuries immediately 
 following. Like the English guilds, they had manifold 
 functions, 3 religious, social, military, and economic ; 
 but, as before remarked, their tendency differed according 
 to the character of the people. They were not necessa- 
 rily non-political, but the genius of sovereignty, 4 so con- 
 spicuous in all the English mediaeval associations, did 
 not run in their blood. Some acquired much political 
 power; the weavers of Cologne were especially strong in 
 this direction, and the story runs that they said, "We 
 
 1 Stieda, a late writer on guilds ("Annals of National Economy 
 and Political Science," p. 3), holds that the German were not derived 
 from the Roman colleges. "The German were strictly commercial, the 
 Roman ones were not." 
 
 2 Gierke : History of Corporation Law, p. 388. 
 
 3 Although Stieda holds the guilds to be strictly commercial, he 
 says (p. 11) : " The guilds during the thirteenth century received par- 
 tial judicial authority, though in all cases of importance, even the 
 choice of masters, they were obliged to defer to the town authorities ; 
 and whenever they conflicted, the guilds had to yield." 
 
 * "The investment of the income of the working-men by the judge 
 was not uncommon at this time." Stieda' s Annals, p. 41. 
 
124 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 care more for our corporation than for ourselves." l The 
 relation of these guilds, or artisan corporations, to the 
 municipality 2 was much like the English, and was two- 
 fold. They were independent bodies, and they were also 
 members or functionaries of the city government. 3 But 
 there is no Whittington and his cat associated with the 
 German mayoralty ; their artists would hardly, like Ho- 
 garth, depict the way of the good apprentice with regu- 
 lar steps to the Lord Mayor's curule seat. 
 
 The religious functions of the Corporation were first 
 set aside and developed into institutions, which 
 of Corpb- were confined to that sphere of life. The politi- 
 rate Func- ca } anf j soc j a i or commercial functions were 
 more closely allied, and the term of develop- 
 ment was much longer. At this day the municipality, 
 or body of municipalities, called London is not fully 
 separated from private corporations, and some of its 
 
 1 " It is not strange that the weavers' guild took an important po- 
 sition, and that they first gained independence ; for besides being of large 
 numbers their profession earliest threw off the fetters of feudal bondage. 
 Then they were usually married, and thus resembled our modern work- 
 ing class. These facts explain why more documents relating to the 
 weavers' trade come to us from the 14th century." Schanz's History 
 of German Trade Guilds in the Middle Ages, p. 45. 
 
 2 "The choice of the masters belonged certainly to the magistrates, 
 but, nevertheless, the wonderful permission which allowed the choice 
 to the workmen themselves existed. The masters of the guild in Re- 
 gensburg, in 1 244, chose a master from their midst. The same occurred 
 in Cologne." Stieda's Annals of National Economy and Political Sci- 
 ence, p. 126. 
 
 8 "There appears to have been an irregular but positive influence 
 exercised by the artisan associations upon the municipality. As late 
 as 1693, the Senate of Hamburg passed a decree ; but the ampters, 
 who are the head of the several companies as smiths, tailors, barbers, 
 shoemakers, being stirred up by the Meyer, remonstrated. The Senate 
 at first refused to hear them, but the ampters burst into the Senate 
 while in session, and it finally repealed the decree." KemUe's State 
 Papers, p. 137. 
 
THE CORPORATION. 125 
 
 affairs are treated in Parliament like the business of 
 any private company. The East India Company began 
 as a corporation, but in the course of its history wielded 
 all the powers of a government. London began as a 
 government with socio-political functions, and will prob- 
 ably end as a simple municipality, one of the manifold 
 parts of a modern State. 
 
 The idea of the Corporation as one of the organs of 
 sovereignty, and again as an association of individuals 
 embodied for distinct purposes, with no sover- The ultra 
 eign functions, but harmonizing fully with the vires Limit. 
 sovereign powers of the State, is a twofold development 
 most characteristic of modern civilization. It would at 
 first sight appear to be self-evident that a railway-car- 
 riage company should confine themselves to that business 
 and no other ; yet, in a notable case, three judges and Mr. 
 Justice Blackburn were on one side, while three judges 
 and the House of Lords took the view exactly opposed. 
 One held that " the common-law incidents of a corpora- 
 tion adhere, unless expressly removed by the legislature ;" 
 and the other held that " the contract could not have 
 been ratified by the unanimous assent of the whole cor- 
 poration." This is in substance the modern doctrine of 
 ultra vires, a wise invention of the jurists to limit the 
 powers of an incorporated body. In all associated bodies 
 there is latent sovereignty, and governments in every 
 age have watched carefully lest this slumbering force 
 should manifest itself to interfere with their political 
 prerogatives. The early corporation constantly tended to 
 shoot out "suckers" of sovereignty, and they were 
 pruned away only by long ages of social and political 
 development. The delicate application of the limiting 
 doctrine of ultra vires instanced above, shows that the his- 
 
126 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 toric evolution of the corporation is a mysterious process. 
 An individual can make a contract at will if he violate 
 no law. But a corporation, while it has received powers 
 from the State, also surrenders to its progenitor some 
 powers which the individual naturally holds. 1 Even the 
 unanimous consent of the shareholders to a misappli- 
 cation of capital under a charter, would not make that 
 act legal. The present Livery Companies of London 
 are the survivors of the old guilds. The powers which 
 in America are given to the Corporation for commercial 
 purposes, in England are assigned to the Joint-Stock 
 Company. The Corporation had gained a distinct per- 
 sonality, which absorbed the individuality of its mem- 
 bers. One body stood before the State with important 
 privileges derived from its powers of association. The 
 joint-stock company grew out of partnerships, and in 
 1855 it gained the privilege of releasing its members 
 from personal responsibility. The liability of persons 
 under these associations was limited to the amount of 
 their shares ; and the word " limited " after the name of 
 the company marked the privilege. 
 
 I have indicated some of the features which the Corpo- 
 ration derived from the social institution of the Person. 
 Corpora- ^ ne P erson was an individual constituting a 
 tionshave social centre, a fulcrum on which the State 
 uls ' could rest the lever of its sovereignty and move 
 the masses of people below these larger individuals. 
 Without doubt the person was the descendant of the 
 Aryan house-father, 2 the head of the clan or other group 
 which the increasing force of civilization had gathered 
 under his influence. But he was a social and not a 
 
 1 Brice : Ultra Vires (Green's Am. ed.) pp. 31, 32. 
 
 2 Coulanges : La Cite Antique, p. 40. 
 
THE CORPORATION. 127 
 
 lineal descendant ; his functions were humane and not 
 kindred. The comparison also shows important differ- 
 ences. The house-father and the head of the gentile group 
 had certain important religious functions. The sacra 
 and their administration shed a certain mystic fragrance 
 about the head of the gentile group, which the modern 
 head of the family, who is, so to speak, only a stepson of 
 the Aryan father, could not fully inherit. Yet this mys- 
 tic force inherent in a community, a group inspired by 
 a common religion and nourished by a common meal, 1 
 long tended toward all social organizations, and endowed 
 them with powers which have much perplexed lawyers 
 and statesmen. The old English Chief-Baron Mauwood 
 builded wiser than he knew, when he demonstrated that 
 corporations have no soul. As he laid down, none can 
 create souls but God ; corporations are created by the 
 king; therefore a corporation can have no soul. The 
 instinct of the jurist was wiser than his logic. In our 
 view, the ruler can register and formulate ; he cannot 
 create. The creative powers of the king have gone with 
 the old dogma of the divine right into the night of the 
 past. The powers which civilization has engendered are 
 reduced to order and legitimated by the sovereign power 
 of the State ; their vitality and spring of life come from 
 the power which is anterior to and above the head of the 
 State. Nevertheless, the old lawyer was right in his 
 analysis of the essential nature of a corporation. The 
 religious element, which the gentile development had 
 carried along into all its various organizations and social 
 customs, had been claimed and absorbed by the greater 
 power of the Christian Church. The Eoman Church 
 took constant care of its divine power, just as the Eoman 
 
 1 Hearn : Aryan Household, p. 329. 
 
128 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 State had jealously guarded its sovereign power. That 
 spirit of life, that essence of religion and fellowship, 
 which all the old organizations affected more or less, 
 was gradually excluded from the Corporation, whether 
 municipal or commercial, and left it just as the com- 
 mon phrase now runs " without a soul." 
 
 I have referred to the English joint-stock company, 
 which has developed so fully since 1855. In the United 
 Early de- States of America, we had availed ourselves of 
 veiopment the latent social and industrial powers of the 
 in America. Q or p 0ra ti on much earlier. Tocqueville was 
 much impressed by the great results which the Ameri- 
 cans achieved through their ready and easy modes of as- 
 sociating together for any desired enterprise. This social 
 confidence, proceeding from a people bred to trust in 
 themselves and in each other, is doubtless the latest and 
 most elastic result of civilization. It has enabled a new 
 country, sparse in population and poor in capital, to ag- 
 gregate its forces, and to acquire the advantages enjoyed 
 by old and rich communities. The American lawyers 
 were very early obliged to work out the principles of 
 the English common law, and apply them to private as 
 distinguished from municipal or political corporations 
 in this country. Beside corporations " aggregate " and 
 " sole," they freely used the quasi corporation, defined 
 by Chief-Justice Parker as a thing of limited powers, 
 " but restrained from a general use of the authority 
 which belongs to these metaphysical persons by the 
 common law." l 
 
 This mystic personage embodied in the common seal, 
 the corpus of the Romans, underlies all the forms of this 
 institution. As Marshall, in the famous Dartmouth 
 
 1 Angell and Ames : On Corporations, p. 16. 
 
THE CORPORATION. 129 
 
 College case, defines it : " The great object of an incor- 
 poration is to bestow the character and prop- Legal View 
 erties of individuality on a collective and of the 
 changing body of men." The right of "suc- 
 cession " which this body derives from the State is its 
 most valuable function, and in that respect places it 
 above the Person, whose functions cease with the life of 
 the individual who bears them. The old Aryan succes- 
 sion by kin has been assumed by the State. The gentile 
 head entered at once into possession of the property of 
 the household. Now, the State administers on the effects 
 of every individual citizen. The Corporation is an im- 
 mortal head, and continues its rights of property though 
 every individual member may die, or be changed at 
 will. 
 
 The Corporation also has powers and capabilities which 
 we shall touch upon when we treat of communities. 
 In this sketch I have attempted to trace it historically ; 
 and have tried in some measure, for the task is not easy 
 in the present state of our knowledge, to sepa- Social office 
 rate its social, its municipal, and its sovereign of the Cor- 
 faculties. The king or the sovereign, the p 
 greatest of corporations, has his functions now pretty 
 well defined and limited in the more advanced nations 
 and more civilized communities. The municipality also, 
 though its social, commercial, and industrial functions 
 still cling to it in its greatest and most shining example, 
 the city of London, has generally become a definite and 
 well-ordered political mechanism in the easy working of 
 the modern State. The political office of the municipal- 
 ity in the development of freedom and the due privilege 
 of the citizen has been most important, and deserves 
 especial notice from the philosophical observer of his- 
 
 9 
 
130 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 tory. It is the social offices of the Corporation which 
 must chiefly engage our attention in treating this fruit- 
 ful and interesting province of the history of mankind. 
 The principle of aristocracy among men, the selection 
 by blood and kin, or by native force and manifest excel- 
 lence, through which leaders were differentiated and 
 given the control of gentile destiny, was a tremendous 
 power evolved for the good of the human race. This 
 principle of chieftainship and leadership, birth-right and 
 man-right, became in the more advanced Greek and Eo- 
 man societies a social force which could be transmitted 
 into the various organs of the rising city and State. It 
 was not perfected in those antique States, but was ready 
 to the free and more powerful individual hands of the 
 Germanic races. This free social process contained more 
 than would appear superficially; and the term "citizen" 
 did not fully embody it, inasmuch as the process is even 
 more social than political : therefore I have called it the 
 development of the Person, the somebody of modern 
 times as distinguished from the everybody and nobody 
 of all times. This process is not peculiar to any nation, 
 or to any kind of government; it goes forward with 
 the main current of civilization, and in so far as possible 
 assimilates the lower races to itself, or they drop out 
 and leave their ground to the unifying power of this 
 modern civilization. 
 
 After the evolution of the Person, as distinguished 
 from the aristocrat on one side and the polycrat on the 
 other, another and more highly developed social organ 
 became necessary. The Person was a social ganglion, 
 into which society could concentrate its vital forces and 
 through which it could put forth its energies. But it 
 was limited by the short life, by the weak and defective 
 
THE CORPORATION. 131 
 
 faculties, of the individual man. The power of associa- 
 tion which had grown up in the Aryan households, nour- 
 ished not only by kinship and property, but also by 
 adoption, the inclusion of new members bringing new 
 life and forces, was incorporated into the collegium, 
 the corpus, the guild, the fraternity. 
 
 Here was an aristocracy made easy. Neither kinship 
 nor wealth, neither blood nor inheritance, could Sociallythe 
 make and preserve a family as a social institu- equivalent 
 tion. The Aryan household, the clan, had sur- of an Aris - 
 rendered some of its most powerful functions 
 to the State and the Church. What there was left of the 
 institution, the aristocracy of family, could not wholly 
 embody and perpetuate the social faculties needed to 
 carry forward the multiplying businesses of life. The 
 collegce, the saddles, the guild brethren, desired to aggre- 
 gate and enlarge their privilege ; they would gain the 
 advantages which aristocracies possessed over common 
 men, both for themselves and their children. The count 
 and his companions produced similar social results, 
 through the very different process of conquest, benefice, 
 and commendation. The one developed a warlike equiva- 
 lent of the Corporation into the feudal land-tenure, espe- 
 cially as we see it in England ; * the other developed the 
 peace corporation into municipal security, into the privi- 
 leges of trade and craft, into religious association and 
 the industrial life of monasteries. This incorporation of 
 social privilege was not for humanity at large, any more 
 than the good of mankind was the issue when the Ger- 
 
 1 " The most elementary conceptions of real property carry us back 
 to the relations of lord and vassal, and cannot be understood without 
 reference to them. Ownership of land in the full sense of the phrase is 
 unknown to the law of England." Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art. 
 "Feudalism." 
 
132 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 man counts rode over the Alps on their expeditions of 
 conquest and plunder. This idea of social good was too 
 high and attenuated for the heavy atmosphere of that 
 time. Not even the Christian Church, the greatest con- 
 solidated corporation for social purposes the world has 
 ever seen, had then risen to the height of a free and un- 
 selfish endeavor for society as a whole. The Christian 
 principle was at work, and slowly manifesting itself in a 
 feeble way ; but the great features of the Christian civi- 
 lization were as yet hardly formed. They are not fully 
 developed after all these centuries; most branches of 
 the Christian Church still work for their own members, 
 and administer their essential advantages through a 
 close corporation. 
 
 I would not belittle the prerogative of war, nor join 
 A chief the silly cry which would make it a mere terror 
 Agent of destructive to humanity and civilization. War 
 has its own office, has played magnificent parts 
 in the drama of history, and will continue its own devel- 
 opment for generations to come. Yet it is manifest to 
 its most enthusiastic votary that it has the losing hand in 
 the game of civilization, and diminishes in relative im- 
 portance with every turn in industrial and social develop- 
 ment. Higher industrialism makes war less possible, 
 both by reason of the enormous interests endangered, 
 and by reason of the immense armor to be carried by 
 war in the least campaign, a weight which industrial 
 development has imposed upon it. Therefore the main 
 improvement and the- higher life of mankind in the 
 future must come through peace and the arts of peace. 
 
 In this evolution, in the steady growth and diffusion 
 of peaceful arts and peaceful aspirations among men, 
 the Corporation has been a mighty instrument. It will 
 
THE CORPORATION. 133 
 
 continue the same functions, so long as the present ten- 
 dencies of civilization may continue to direct the desti- 
 nies of man. The Corporation is the best example of the 
 principle laid down as the basis of our discussion. In 
 marshalling the social categories, as I have termed them, 
 capital, labor, and capitalizing, the Corporation 
 must inevitably play a very important part. It is not 
 usually as would appear at first sight, and as many 
 people think a capitalist. Its shareholders is not a 
 are capitalists, and the institution itself becomes Ca P ltallst - 
 powerful through the aggregation of these atoms of capi- 
 tal. But the chief office of the Corporation is, through 
 its directors and executive agents, in the manipulation 
 of this capital on the one hand and the employment 
 of labor on the other. Neither the corpus nor the agents 
 are mere sieves through which labor and capital are 
 sifted, and the better grains selfishly retained. I trust 
 that I shall make it clear in another connection, that 
 labor in the civilized sense cannot move without capital, 
 cannot put forth effort without the mediate office of capi- 
 talizing, any more than the lungs can move without air. 
 The Corporation is to the body social as the stomach is 
 to our natural body; there is food and vital force on 
 the one side of the organ/there is blood and renewed vi- 
 tal force on the other. The office of the Corporation, its 
 capitalizing function, is not mechanical ; it is vital. It 
 does not simply hire laborers, and sell their finished 
 products ; it transmutes the raw labor and the raw capi- 
 tal into a new social product, which again becomes cap- 
 ital, and passes on into further social evolution. 
 
 In this process the Corporation becomes not a mere 
 machine operated by the owners, like a steam-engine 
 which I buy and operate at pleasure ; it is a; social agent 
 
 /^ OF THE 
 
 ear 
 
134 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 of the most complex nature, and its action in capitaliz- 
 The Ser- ing puts it into sympathy with every throb of 
 vantand society about it. It is true that it has no 
 Master of soul, as the old jurist clearly divined : that is 
 Society. its weakness as an individual power, and its 
 strength as an organ in the social system. Corporations 
 endowed with the material powers of this century, and 
 animated by the souls of Napoleons, would be fearful 
 creatures. The soul, or moving spirit, of the Corpora- 
 tion must be social, using the individual motives of self- 
 interest and ambition, just as the human system uses 
 appetites, to forward its higher energies. Thus the insti- 
 tution has a mission in our life as large as the monastic 
 corporation had in the Middle Ages ; it is invested with 
 a divine life, though its end may not be worship, and its 
 business may not be religious. 
 
 We must consider more closely the social relations of 
 corporations to their shareholders and to capital. In 
 no feature is modern society so little understood as in 
 this matter of the distribution of capital. 
 
 ting Even in the most wealthy communities the 
 
 Agents, not . . , . 
 
 Monopo- ncn are f ew > an d the relative sum of their cap- 
 lies - ital is small when compared with the aggregate 
 
 amounts owned by the middle classes, as they are termed, 
 the petty capitalists. These capitals of the rich are fre- 
 quently moved in the commercial operations of the day ; 
 they attract the notice of everybody, especially of the 
 advocates of separate labor interests, and thus their rela- 
 tive importance is much overrated. It is not the weight 
 of these sums which creates this artificial impression : 
 it is the momentum and velocity with which they fly 
 through the channels of trade and manufacture that im- 
 presses the imagination. These sums of corporate capital, 
 
THE CORPORATION. 135 
 
 so easy of access, are very important instruments in com- 
 merce and manufactures, in the operations of labor, and, 
 in short, in the movement of capitalizing. In their 
 movement they vitalize the whole body, commercial and 
 social ; but in importance relative to the mass of capital 
 which belongs to society as a whole, they are as the air 
 breathed by the animal kingdom to the whole atmosphere 
 which envelopes the earth. The richest corporations in 
 the United States, after the railway corporations, are the 
 savings banks, the capital of which is divided in small 
 sums, and very widely distributed. The depositors in 
 these institutions are generally persons of narrow means, 
 together with artisans and laborers. 
 
 The greatest financial engine in the United States, the 
 greatest capitalizer in its relation to other capitals and 
 systems of capital, is the association of banks in the city 
 of New York. These banks are partly National and 
 partly State, and correspond in their individual character 
 to the joint-stock banks of London. But their millions 
 of capital are broken into paltry sums, and owned by 
 multitudes of people scattered over the whole United 
 States. For example, the aggregate capital of the State 
 and National Banks of New York city $67,000,000 
 is distributed in shares averaging seventy-five dollars, 
 among 22,804 shareholders. The average number of 
 shares owned by each person is 47.07, equal in value 
 to SS^SO. 1 Often a shareholder representing $10,000 
 is the largest owner in one bank ; and it will be seen 
 from the low average that the stock must be generally 
 broken into small sums. The same principle applies to 
 
 1 These figures are used by the Manager of the New York Clearing 
 House in his report, and are believed to be correct. See also J. J. 
 Knox's late Reports. 
 
136 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 other countries, though it is more highly developed in 
 our active American life. It is also a growing principle, 
 tending to economize capital more and more, while it 
 affords better opportunities to the petty capitalist to 
 gain the advantages of the quicker movement and greater 
 volume of trade and manufactures attainable through 
 incorporated effort. 
 
 We shall be met here by the assertion that corpora- 
 tions are becoming monopolies, and are absorbing the 
 The practi- wealth of the community, while they concen- 
 cai effects trate their powers in a few individual hands. 
 ConsoMa- This is as near the truth as most hasty social 
 tion. generalizations are, and no nearer. Those who 
 
 make this statement could hardly have a better illus- 
 tration of their dogma than the rapid consolidation of 
 railways in the United States, which has occurred in 
 the last twenty-five years, would appear to be, if we 
 regarded it only on the surface. Indeed, this movement 
 of wealth has been almost universally characterized by 
 these social pessimists as wholly corrupt, and fraught 
 with every ill to society. 
 
 But what are the facts ? (1) The owners of the rail- 
 ways, the individual shareholders, were benefited by the 
 higher evolution and better improvement of their prop- 
 erty. One of the chief complaints in the outburst of 
 "granger" frenzy which prevailed in this country not 
 long ago, was that the owners of railway lines had 
 gained too much by " watered " stocks, that is, the in- 
 crease of shares made in combining the separate lines. 
 (2) The community has benefited by the quicker and 
 cheaper service it has obtained ; which in turn has im- 
 proved the values of all property and the opportunities 
 of all individual members of society, poor as well as rich. 
 
* THE CORPORATION. 137 
 
 The annual food for the consumption of a laboring man, 
 a whole year's subsistence, is now transported by these 
 great incorporated railway systems about fifteen hun- 
 dred miles for the price of one or two days' rough labor 
 by an able-bodied man in the Eastern States. The ratio 
 will vary somewhat with the fluctuating rates of labor 
 and freight, but the statement in substance holds good 
 in any of these years. 
 
 Before the invention of railways, where there was no 
 water communication, a bushel of wheat consumed its 
 total value in a land-carriage of two hundred miles. 
 When we consider the tremendous social changes which 
 these simple facts involve, 1 the enormous social force 
 evolved by this .capitalizing of labor and capital into rail- 
 ways, then the further capitalizing of one railway into 
 another, the mind falters before these creations of men 
 working together in orderly social development. It is in 
 essence a movement of labor quite as much as of capital. 
 A man standing in a New England State, by one or two 
 days' work with his shovel, brings to his own door a 
 year's subsistence grown half a continent away. 2 Throw- 
 ing out of the estimate the labor employed in the trans- 
 portation, there is in the final goal of the transportation, 
 in the end which it reaches, one of the greatest benefits 
 to labor that it has ever secured unto itself since the days 
 when " Adam delved and Eve span." 
 
 1 The transportation of freight in the United States, costing 2.153 
 cents per ton per mile in 1866, was reduced to .866 cent in 1880, a 
 reduction of 60 per cent. 
 
 2 "Five hundred pounds of meat and flour a quarter of a ton 
 constitutes a fair allowance of the product of the Western prairie for a 
 year's subsistence of a workman of Massachusetts ; and this quantity 
 he (C. Vanderbilt) moved a thousand miles for a dollar and a quar- 
 ter, and sometimes for less." Atkinson's Labor and Capital Allies, 
 p. 32. 
 
138 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. * 
 
 Intelligent people have ceased to prate of the curse of 
 labor qua labor. The peculiar hardship of the laborer 
 under all circumstances doubtless is a certain fixedness 
 and immovability as compared with capital, which in its 
 quick form is ever fluid and portable. But what better 
 instrument can he have against this necessary 
 tions give disadvantage than the free communication I 
 mobility to k ave described ? The privilege of travel and 
 
 Labor. 
 
 emigration for himself has long been acknowl- 
 edged; but that has been regarded by some as a doubt- 
 ful boon, in that it tends to concentrate laborers anew 
 wherever capital may draw them, to create a competition 
 among themselves. No such partial defect can be urged 
 against this later improvement which I have cited, 
 the free and cheap movement of freight. By this instru- 
 ment the laborer brings the solid products of capital to 
 himself, wherever he may be, at a cost which cannot hin- 
 der any thrifty man from acquiring capital while con- 
 suming them. 
 
 The person who manipulates the land, the farmer, 
 the serni-capitalist and semi-laborer, the most frequent of 
 all capitalizes, is equally benefited by this evolution 
 of transportation. His bushel of wheat, representing all 
 the economic forces, natural product of soil, air, and sky, 
 capital product in commodities consumed, labor product 
 in toil of cultivation, mind product in the capitalizing 
 process, this child of Nature and civilized labor, which 
 languished and died in two hundred miles journey, can 
 now travel around the world without special diminution 
 of bulk and value. 
 
 The first movement in bringing out new agencies of 
 civilization is generally toward monopoly; we cannot 
 see any other possible means of development. This 
 
THE CORPORATION. 139 
 
 principle is universally recognized in the patent-laws of 
 civilized countries. The secondary movement Economic 
 of the same agencies is toward diffusion, and Monopoly 
 
 . ends in 
 
 the comprehension of a wide circle of persons better dis- 
 in the enjoyment of the new results produced trfbution. 
 by these agencies. Banking was a narrow monopoly 
 when first 'invented, but it now extends its blessings to 
 every class, and brings the lowest members of society 
 into the partial enjoyment of capital. Five cents is a 
 small sum of money in itself, but it enfolds all the 
 potentiality of capital : the germ of Eothschild's power 
 abides with the person who husbands it in bank. 
 
 It is inevitable that, in a social change of such magni- 
 tude, the persons who effect it should be paid too much 
 for their services. The railway magnates " kings " as 
 they are grotesquely named have possibly been over- 
 paid for the very important service which they render 
 society at this moment. So have successful patentees 
 profited very much in some few instances. That social 
 irregularity will soon correct itself, and the morbid accre- 
 tions therefrom will be distributed anew by the natural 
 working of the social system. It is a part of the neces- 
 sary price which we must pay for a coveted improvement. 
 The same principle has prevailed under all social sys- 
 tems. Eudolf of Habsburg profited largely for himself 
 and his descendants when he brought a tolerable Aus- 
 trian order out of the mediseval chaos. 
 
 Society will change its forms more or less in the great 
 peaceful development upon which it has fairly entered. 
 The new forms to be established must strictly Future of 
 accord with the principles which we have cited tne Corpo- 
 in this chapter. There can be no orderly so- 
 ciety without some kind of nobility, and I have shown 
 
140 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 the most elastic and easily changed aristocracy to be the 
 leadership of persons. This nobility must be continued, 
 for the principle of hereditary descent was long ago dis- 
 carded in some communities, and found insufficient in all 
 worthy of the name of civilization ; hence our aristocracy 
 of persons must be supplemented by another institution 
 having within itself that potential perpetuity, " succes- 
 sion." The Corporation thus takes into itself the powers 
 engendered by solid and continuous capital on the one 
 hand, and the vital strength derived from the free entry 
 of new and warm-blooded persons on the other. I now 
 speak of the latest form of the Corporation, after it be 
 freed from the sovereign, the religious, the municipal 
 functions, and in this form becomes the simple agent of 
 industrial, commercial, and social life. 
 
 The casual observer must see in this an institution 
 of enormous powers, capable of the greatest good or 
 harm to society according as it is wisely or foolishly 
 administered. The doctrine of ultra vires, which the 
 jurists have applied to the legal bearings of the Corpo- 
 ration, will have to be rendered into social form, and 
 brought to the admin istration of these noble, almost 
 kingly, functions. The powers beyond, the extra func- 
 tions which the master of a corporation may and in some 
 cases will assume to himself, become matter of grave 
 social concern. If the railway or other great magnates 
 transcend their natural powers, already sufficiently large, 
 they will be held to strict account at the bar of social 
 justice. But this consideration of the Corporation be- 
 longs rather to another section of our discussion, and I 
 shall refer to it again. 
 
THE GUILD. 
 
III. 
 
 THE GUILD. 
 
 HHE Corporation, as we have described it, manifested 
 itself in two forms, or rather tendencies, of the 
 civilization of its time. One of these contained sov- 
 ereignty, and sooner or later became a municipality, an 
 organ of the State, a necessary political function in all 
 well ordered communities. 
 
 In the other, the corpus gradually dropped the politi- 
 cal tendency and put on the body of a larger person. It 
 first bound individuals together, and then in the course 
 of its history created a consolidated agency able to prose- 
 cute the larger industrial and commercial business of 
 our time. The associations which gradually gave them- 
 selves more and more to the offices of religion lie out- 
 side our province, and I do not propose to consider them 
 except in cases where they show industrial, or large and 
 purely social, characteristics. 
 
 The Guild partook of all the characteristics I have 
 named, but in different degrees. It played a most im- 
 portant part in the life of Europe, especially in the period 
 from the eighth to the thirteenth century. The sepa- 
 ration between these several corporate functions the 
 political, the religious, the social, the industrial elements 
 - was not sharply defined. We are compelled to state 
 it in this manner to make the inherent distinction clear. 
 Especially in England, as I have stated, all the societies 
 had a political tendency, and they affiliated with the 
 
144 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 municipality much" more readily than they did upon the 
 Continent. 
 
 In this class of societies the basis was in fellowship, in 
 Guild based mu tual protection. They did not necessarily 
 on Fellow- assume either political or religious functions, 
 though these often appeared as accessories to 
 the social life of the body. This fellowship was em- 
 bodied in the word " guild," or " gild," which means 
 according to some authorities a payment, a condition of 
 membership. " Guild " is occasionally used in some 
 of the Sagas to signify a feast ; but this is a secondary 
 meaning. 1 Brentano 2 classifies these societies into reli- 
 gious (or social) guilds, town-guilds, or guild-merchants, 
 and lastly craft-guilds. It is the social features of all the 
 guilds, including the craft-guilds, which I propose to treat 
 in this chapter. He does not define the Guild, as I have 
 done, following the deeper analysis of Dr. Sullivan. The 
 German doctor says it originated in the Germanic and 
 Scandinavian guild, "which meant originally the sac- 
 rificial meal made up of the common contributions ; 
 then a sacrificial banquet in general ; and lastly a soci- 
 ety." 3 The significance of this difference will appear 
 farther on. 
 
 Brentano 4 endeavors to found the origin of the Guild 
 in the family, though this brings him into conflict with 
 Wilda and Hartwig, 5 his chief authorities. I think he 
 would have made his task more simple if he had re- 
 garded the institution from an archaic stand-point, in- 
 
 1 Sullivan : O'Curry's Irish, i., ccxv. 
 
 2 " It is doubtful if the guild-laws existed everywhere in the thir- 
 teenth century. It is not positively asserted in all the documents, and 
 I doubt if Brentano is right when he asserts this in his review of 
 Stahl." StiedcCs Annals, p. 85. 
 
 8 Brentano : On Guilds, p. 4. 4 Ibid. p. 16. 6 Ibid. p. 4. 
 
THE GUILD. 145 
 
 stead of the modern view which he takes. There was 
 no such thing as a family, in our conception of it, exist- 
 ing in those very remote times when the Guild took its 
 form from customs and usages of long standing. The 
 household gave a basis for the Guild undoubtedly ; but 
 it was the organization of the household which the guild- 
 brethren adopted, and not the affections of kindred. 
 These latter were a minor function in the half-political 
 and military, half-domestic and social, organism of the 
 Aryan household ; and finally these relations of kinship 
 grew into that higher and finer organism, the family of 
 the Christian civilization. The primary object of the 
 Associates was not to put forth love and kindly feel- 
 ing, but to obtain mutual support and protection from 
 oppressors. The privileges vested in the aristocracy 
 bore heavily on the classes beneath, and they combined 
 both to resist the oppressor and to gain points of vantage 
 in their turn. 
 
 Undoubtedly the collegia and sodales Roman or 
 Romanized institutions founded themselves ItsRela . 
 on the common meal, which was so sacred and tion to the 
 significant a symbol in all the relations of the Household - 
 Aryan household. 1 The functions of worship which the 
 house-father (the Roman gentile head) could alone admin- 
 ister, the sacra, had passed into the keeping of priest 
 and church. When the sodales were instituted, they 
 took to themselves the social power, perhaps we should 
 say the socio-religious sympathy, of the common meal. 
 This is an indestructible force, and exists to-day in the 
 sacred domestic meal of the family, even though the 
 
 1 " These old customs give us an idea of the strict bond which united 
 the members of a city. Human association was a religion ; its symbol 
 was a common repast." Coulanges' La Citi Antique, p. 186. 
 
 10 
 
146 THE SOQIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 strictly formal religious rites of the occasion have gradu- 
 ally become infrequent. The feeling which prompted 
 these rites has mingled in the wider religious feeling 
 which animates modern life in all its forms ; these forms, 
 if secular, are still charged by the spirit of religion, by 
 the spirit of dependence upon God. 
 
 This sympathetic bond of association was a later 
 development, after the Aryan institution had been long 
 modified by Roman custom and civic life ; the roots 
 of the institution went back much farther into a sim- 
 pler form of life. As Dr. Sullivan shows, the Guild as 
 we know it is a civic affair, growing out of the assem- 
 bling of artisans and traders in communities ; but it is 
 equally clear that there was a long antecedent process 
 of development, before the customs could be established 
 on which the guild sentiment could plant itself and 
 flourish. In this view of the origin of this sort of 
 association, the meaning of the word itself becomes im- 
 portant. It was a payment which was symbolized in 
 " guild," as the learned exponent of the Brehons clearly 
 shows. And he makes it clear 1 that the link of ety- 
 mology, which the Saxon and Teutonic words drop in 
 their passage, is supplied by the Irish words gial (" a 
 pledge or security "), gialda (" to be a pledge or secur- 
 ity"), which bring over the earlier customs that pre- 
 The 4ire va ^ e( ^ W^ OT t tne Guild as we know it : I mean 
 an early the passage of the early Aire partnership, 2 by 
 which the freemen 3 first raised themselves 
 into a position where they could get some of the advan- 
 
 1 Sullivan : O'Curry's Irish, i., ccxvi. 
 
 2 Ante, p. 68. 
 
 3 "The guilds take their origin between bondage and freedom." 
 Stieda's Annals, p. 6. 
 
THE GUILD. 147 
 
 tages of chiefs or lords, into the later association of the 
 Guild. Four freemen, some of whom might be free 
 " foreigners " with no tribal home, united closely for 
 mutual support, and became each responsible for the 
 dues of the other to society and the tribal State. 
 Through this union one became an Aire, or had the 
 privileges of a lord. They assumed these responsi- 
 bilities solemnly in the presence of an Aire, and some- 
 times it is supposed with religious ceremonies. If one 
 of the partners was remiss in keeping his fences, for 
 these practices obtained in agricultural or semi-pastoral 
 times, then his co-partners levied " distress " on him 
 through the authority of an Aire, until he either fully 
 met his duties or gave up land in compensation. Here 
 the Irish language supplies the etymological link which 
 connects the primitive institution (a partnership) with 
 the mediaeval institution, an association, a guild. The 
 word congilda, one of the names of these partnerships, 
 preserves not merely the collective pledge given, as 
 we have it in the Saxon guild, a payment, but it also 
 preserves the mode in which the collateral security was 
 offered and taken in this matter of co-grazing, one 
 of the chief offices of the primitive partnership. It is 
 obvious that a custom of this character would take a 
 strong hold upon society, and leave permanent marks of 
 its working. These marks are in the social dues (guild- 
 payments) as distinguished from political dues (State 
 taxes). This bond between the Aire members was not 
 like the frank-pledge (a police obligation), nor like any 
 of the numerous fines which correspond to Guild obl . 
 our modern taxes ; it was not an obligation gation not 
 between the members of the State, rude as hkeatax - 
 it might be ; it was not the responsibility of citizens at 
 
148 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 all ; it was the obligation of communicants, of dwellers 
 together, to each other. 1 The household, not the fam- 
 ily in our domestic sense, but the organization which was 
 natural by kindred or artificial by adoption, had begun to 
 disintegrate and scatter its germs among the members 
 of the clan, the growing tribe, the rude nation. Men 
 found that beside the military dependence and connec- 
 tion, beside the lord's power and the irregular conditions 
 of vassalage, they could promote a mutual dependence 
 on each other for definite purposes and ends. 
 
 These rights of co-grazing, and their corresponding 
 duties, must have been a very early form of 
 
 Helps to J J 
 
 make the social development. For, as previously shown, 
 modern cattle, next to human chattels (which I throw 
 
 Citizen. 
 
 out of the discussion), was the early form of 
 desirable property, the means by which a man could lift 
 himself above the soil, could give that soil a new value, 
 and could furnish himself with those movables which 
 might make life easy and enjoyable. Of course there was 
 the larger current of social progress through fief and feo- 
 dum, through count and county, through burghers, crafts- 
 men, and civic municipalities, which has chiefly filled the 
 pages of history. But I speak now of the earlier phases 
 of life, when the customs were formed in simple com- 
 munities, which afterward gave direction to civic insti- 
 tutions and fixed laws. It was in that early life of the 
 Germanic, the Scandinavian races, and that portion of 
 
 1 " In the ninth century, by a happy combination of the Christian 
 love-feast (agape) with the guild of the ancient Germans, the rustics, 
 being grouped by a tie of mutual assurance to resist by force the pill- 
 ages of the under-vassals, had formed associations powerful enough to 
 encounter the proscription of Charlemagne and his successors, usefully 
 seconded by the ecclesiastical censures. " Bonnembre, Histoire des 
 Paysans, i. 85. 
 
THE GUILD. 149 
 
 the Celtic race which has not been thoroughly Latinized, 
 that a great body of freemen was produced who have 
 made the civilization of Northern and Central Europe, 
 and who dominate the destinies of the Western world 
 to-day. They were led by aristocracies, but often their 
 members sooner or later became the aristocracy. Some- 
 times ennobled, but oftener mere burghers ; sometimes 
 merchants, and again artisans leaving their tools to seize 
 the sword, these sturdy yeomen made the essential life 
 of modern times. Before this type of character was 
 formed, it was necessary that men should learn to co- 
 operate in peace as well as in war. 1 They had to learn 
 mutual dependence, with that sense of obligation and 
 duty which comes from doing as well as receiving. 
 
 In the Aire partnership and similar modes of mutual 
 assistance, for there must have been many before the 
 orderly Teutonic cities were formed, the free- Develo 
 men stood together and rendered unto each mentofthe 
 other some of the offices which the modern Fre <; ma n 
 
 gradual. 
 
 complex State exacts from all alike. That this 
 kind of association developed in the early times a strong 
 spirit of independence, a virile spirit in the common 
 man, appears from the positive condemnation which 
 Aristotle visits upon them. He carefully enjoins upon 
 rulers that they " suffer neither common banquets, nor 
 education in common, nor anything else of the same 
 kind." The outcome of this power of association he 
 declared must be to create in the people " self-conscious- 
 ness and mutual confidence." 2 
 
 1 "In 997 the guild champetre reappeared, but this time for attack 
 and not defence only, with a character of unity which will not be 
 found again later in the numerous revolts of the peasants against their 
 oppressors." Bonnembre, Histoire des Paysans, i. 85. 
 
 2 Aristotle : Politics, lib. v. ch. 2. 
 
150 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 It is significant that the bond of this association was 
 symbolized in a payment, a contribution free in essence, 
 yet enforced by a strong obligation. For here we have 
 the faint beginning of that honorable use of money which 
 is one of the finest features of a civilization easily ma- 
 terialized, and tending toward a low and purely commer- 
 Eariy rise cial view of money and capital. We say of a 
 of Honor. m an who uses his goods in a grand and noble 
 way, that he is chivalrous, partaking of the older feudal 
 spirit, and not altogether hardened and crystallized by 
 economic law. A man may be' honest by the scales, just 
 in his dealings and accounts, yet he may properly be 
 held to be mean and sordid, a mere purveyor of society's 
 taxes and not a user of society's goods. It is not enough 
 to say of the generous exponent of economic forces, the 
 person with large capacity for creating social vitality 
 through the use of money, that he is chivalrous. Chiv- 
 alry did not concern itself with the distribution of money 
 or goods ; its essential action was in personal service ; as 
 a government it dealt much in fines and compensations. 
 But that was not the feature of feudal civilization which 
 we characterize when we speak of chivalry ; we mean 
 the high sense of personal obligation bred out of a lofty 
 individualism, just as when we say "justice," we mean 
 a settled sober obligation to law and adjudicated right, 
 born out of the calm patriotism of the Roman citizen 
 always subordinate to the State. 
 
 This attribute of the dignified person dates from 
 beyond the time of chivalry ; and it takes effect in the 
 The Honor use of money, or of economic force, as well as 
 of Money. j n O ther social forces. But the tendency of 
 modern life is to use money more and more as the ex- 
 ponent and convertible medium of other forces ; hence 
 
THE GUILD. 151 
 
 the sense of personal dignity is constantly brought into 
 contact with money, the quick emblem of social power, 
 and must express itself in the terms of money. Now 
 this calls up two distinct and definite principles, or im- 
 pelling causes, in the conduct and use of money. The 
 first is easily comprehended by civilized persons, though 
 quite beyond the reach of savages and barbarians, even 
 though they inhabit civilized soil. It consists simply in 
 paying one's debts. It has become, not the essence, but 
 the equivalent of a physical law. The solid forms of the 
 Eoman praetor and the customary rights of the Germanic 
 races, not to speak of other less prominent races, have 
 made it easy for an honest and intelligent person to pay 
 his taxes and discharge his debts. It is an inevitable 
 law, almost physical in its working, which compels him. 
 He no more thinks of it, or puts forth a moral purpose 
 in the act, than when he lifts and plants his foot on the 
 earth ; he does not will to walk, except unconsciously ; 
 and gravitation, physical compulsion, does the rest. 
 
 The other principle which personal worth and power 
 enforce is less easy in statement, and harder still in 
 practice. It is the honorable use of money or worldly 
 goods. The same man who can pay a debt cheerfully 
 may be puzzled by the fee demanded by a waiter, or by 
 any money-demand not made imperative by absolute 
 custom and social prescriptive right. The debt of honor 
 is beyond the reach of logic, and almost defies philoso- 
 phy ; yet it is none the less powerful in its working, or 
 less positive in its claims. The most cruel outgrowth of 
 this principle (a morbid growth, reason holds it to be) 
 is the social enforcement of gambling dues. Many 
 families have been ruined by this distrainment, harder 
 than "distress." Affectionate fathers have resolutely 
 
152 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 sacrificed their homes ; crimes without number have 
 been committed to avoid this social default, and yet 
 probably a larger percentage of gambling debts, actually 
 incurred, is collected and collectable to-day, than can 
 be realized in the ordinary sum of commercial debts. 
 
 This sense of honorable obligation, as distinguished 
 from the dues which the State might collect, must have 
 been early developed, and rendered into an equivalent in 
 capital or worldly goods. I therefore believe Dr. Sulli- 
 van to be correct in his analysis, when he lays the foun- 
 dation of the Guild in a payment. 1 He differs from 
 Mr. Furnivall, who follows Wedgwood, and makes the 
 primary meaning of " guild " to be a feast and not a pay- 
 ment. 2 If Dr. Sullivan is wrong in his etymology, then 
 we must hold the etymological evidence to be not de- 
 cisive until light comes from some other historic source. 
 There is no doubt that the feast began in common con- 
 tributions, which were in one sense payments. 3 The 
 common meal underlay the guild, and a common obli- 
 gation underlay the meal. 
 
 It is this sort of association, outside the natural family 
 and clan, outside the artificial family or household, 
 which is the true progenitor of the social corporation of 
 modern times. All clubs for social purposes have been 
 very careful of their dues and payments, careful to 
 it elevates render the mutual obligation so far as possible 
 social dues. | nto an exac t equivalent in money. And this 
 not from mere commercial instinct, not to answer the 
 debit and credit rule, but to comprehend the larger prin- 
 ciple I have stated ; to keep the person pure and uncon- 
 taminated by any taint of forfeited social obligation. 
 
 1 Sullivan : O'Curry's Irish, i., ccxvi. 
 
 2 Bi'entano: On Guilds, xiii. 8 Ibid. p. 4. 
 
THE GUILD. 153 
 
 It is clear in all the authorities that the Guild was an 
 association, and the progenitor of voluntary associations. 
 Every interest was at times represented in this institu- 
 tion. All classes of society were sooner or later con- 
 nected with these fraternities for mutual aid and support. 
 There were guilds of serfs and peasants, of small pro- 
 prietors, of artisans and craftsmen, of traders and master 
 workmen, of burghers and patrician merchants. The 
 early steps in their formation, or rather the links between 
 the first associated partnerships which I have described, 
 and the larger guild sodalities of the Teutonic nations 
 are not at present visible. As Dr. Sullivan suggests, 
 the rural beginnings would not make a place in history. 1 
 The rural artisans were mere retainers of the lords, and 
 could not form a solid guild until after they had collected 
 into towns. These towns were either under Eoman 
 government, or had felt the Eoman influence in their 
 social organization, and thus the civic institution of the 
 Guild would form itself in the feudal time. For we must 
 remember that though the Guild flourished Itwasnot 
 most in the feudal days, its essential nature essentially 
 was not feudal ; it did not accord with the re- anti ' feudaL 
 lation of lord and vassal. We have seen that Charle- 
 magne or his successors found the guilds, especially 
 the serf-guilds, which interfered most with seignorial 
 rights, to be disturbing elements in the government 
 of the empire, and they suppressed them. 2 In this 
 movement against the peasant guilds, the State received 
 powerful aid from the ecclesiastics. 
 
 The history of these associations in Northern France 
 is very interesting, for the imperfect links between the 
 
 1 Sullivan: O'Curry's Irish, i., ccxx. 
 
 2 Bonnem&re : Histoire des Paysans, p. 85. 
 
154 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 rural and civic associations dimly appear in the strug- 
 gles preceding the famous insurrection of the Jacquerie. 
 The Norman blood mingled the Scandinavian with the 
 Gallo-Roman stream, and the guild current worked 
 itself out accordingly. In the ninth century we see 
 these true guilds among the peasants, based on a com- 
 mon meal and bound by ceremonial oaths to mutual 
 support. Later, about the year 997, the guild cham- 
 petre reappears in sufficient strength to oppose its 
 suzerains. The peasants formed a general combination, 
 and called on those living in the cities to aid their 
 revolt against the barons, and in some cases the bishops. 
 But the civic associations had become strong enough to 
 laugh at the encroachments of the nobility, and they 
 refused l to join their efforts to the endeavors of their 
 rural brethren. Thus a true popular revolution was pre- 
 vented. The same result often, though not always, oc- 
 curred in England, 2 when the burghers and craftsmen 
 would hold to their own class privileges, and turn a 
 deaf ear to the cry wailing up from the more numerous 
 classes beneath. 
 
 As before said, the strength of the guild tie was also 
 its weakness. The brethren stood together, but they 
 itwasne- stoo( l f r eac ^ other against the whole, and 
 cessariiy sometimes they oppressed classes weaker than 
 
 ' row ' themselves. It could not have been other- 
 wise in the rude society, in the inchoate social relations 
 which existed in those times. I do not condemn the 
 guild spirit, it was a helpful and necessary process in 
 a loose social and a feeble Christian system ; but it is 
 
 1 Bonnemere, p. 87 (citing from Dumoulin's Histoire des Normans, 
 iv. 93). 
 
 2 Stubbs : Constitutional History, iii. 590. 
 
THE GUILD. 155 
 
 useless to claim for it virtues which society could not 
 conceive of in those days. The Athenian coolly de- 
 spised the barbarian and the barbarian's gods, includ- 
 ing thereby all dwellers outside the charmed limits of 
 Greece. We admire the Athenian, and gladly copy 
 his finer qualities ; but none the less do we hate his 
 narrow exclusiveness. I trust that we shall show that 
 the guilds succeeded, and left permanent monuments of 
 their success, just in proportion as they incorporated a 
 larger spirit into their caste system, and failed when 
 they administered this system for the benefit of their own 
 brethren, or for one class of society. The institution 
 failed, just as clan life and the joint family failed ; they 
 were not large enough to admit society on the one side, 
 and they were too large for the individual, the person, 
 the citizen, on the other. All such half-civilized insti- 
 tutions have an attractive side. The Serbian commun- 
 ity, 1 or joint family, would at first sight appear to be 
 more humanlike than our individual system ; yet it is 
 passing away by contact with this latter. It cannot 
 hold the young people. 
 
 I cannot agree with Brentano in his general estimate 
 of the Guild and its relations to modern life. The Guild 
 as an essential force, a compelling power over men and 
 their families, has passed away. The State, the Protes- 
 tant Church, that larger social force which Christianity 
 has engendered, and which we call humanity and hu- 
 manness, all have taken such fractions out of every 
 man's life, whether he be rich or poor, busy or idle, that 
 there is no room for a guild of the mediaeval type. The 
 ample learning and patient investigation which Dr. Bren- 
 tano brings to the subject, claim the gratitude of all in- 
 1 Laveleye : De La Propriete, p. 218. 
 
156 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 terested in it ; and I shall freely use his essay, together 
 with the researches of Toulmin Smith. 
 
 In the eleventh century 1 the process I have indi- 
 cated had assumed definite form, both in England and 
 upon the Continent. The barons had laid firm hold 
 on the dwellers in the fields. The peasants, who had 
 proved too stubborn for enfiefment, had either been sub- 
 jected, as in the Jacquerie of Normandy and other revolts 
 too insignificant for historic record, or they had escaped 
 into the growing towns, 2 and there maintained the per- 
 sonal rights 3 which their forefathers imbibed from the 
 old Aire partnership. 
 
 In this period the earliest charters of the religious or 
 social guilds appear in England. The customs and 
 in England " usa o es " na ^ existed long before, but now the 
 founded in institution has defined itself and shows a trust- 
 entiTcTn- worthy record. At Abbotsbury and Exeter 
 tury on old were two of the earliest of these chartered 
 institutions, binding the brothers together in 
 bonds of charitable sympathy, to sustain each other in 
 sickness, to bury the dead, and to say masses for those 
 who had left the Guild, but had passed into that larger 
 company of brethren who could still be helped by the 
 prayers of those remaining on earth. There was a 
 yearly feast at Abbotsbury in honor of St. Peter their 
 patron, and a common meal was served every day. The 
 charitable spirit of the brethren toward the poor was 
 manifested at this meal, for alms in the form of bread 
 
 1 Stubbs: Constitutional History, i. 413. Stieda : Annals, p. 5. 
 
 2 "I believe we should consider the movement from the country 
 into the town at this time of great importance. We may discover a 
 second lever of the growing trade in the right of emigration guaranteed 
 in the statutes of the thirteenth century." Stieda 's Annals, p. 63. 
 
 3 Stubbs : Constitutional History, iii. 597. 
 
THE GUILD. 157 
 
 were then distributed. These were true religious or 
 social guilds; and it is evident that they had many 
 features in common with the monastic corporations, 
 among which they exercised their lay functions. At 
 Cambridge, another old charter preserves a guild similar 
 to the above in these friendly offices, but which added 
 to them another set of obligations. The brethren bound 
 themselves not only to these religious and charitable 
 duties, but to protect each other against criminal vio- 
 lence of every kind, and also against the evil acts of the 
 brothers themselves. "If one misdo, let all bear it; 
 let all share the same lot." The officers seemed to pass 
 a preliminary judgment upon their offending brother, 
 and if they approved his course, made it "justifiable;" 
 then the association made common cause with him, and 
 assumed all the consequences of his act. Otherwise, he 
 was expelled from the society. This was the substan- 
 tial basis of a frith-guild ; for it embodied the frank- 
 pledge, the virtual tie which bound all society together 
 in the periods just antecedent to these charters. This 
 was a political or a municipal tendency ; and where it 
 prevailed sufficiently, it carried the association into a 
 town-guild, and finally grafted it into the municipal- 
 ity. The secular distinction was not fully established 
 until after the Eeformation. This is the reason why 
 Toulmin Smith gives the broader name of " social " to 
 these associations, which were partly religious. It is 
 not possible to run a logical separation through all the 
 social, merchant, town, and frith guilds. They probably 
 began with the simple purpose of association, and devel- 
 oped into one or the other, as the local circumstances 
 varied. 
 
 The burning of candles to the patron saint was an 
 
158 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 important duty assumed by all guilds of this social char- 
 acter. On the Continent, toward the close of the four- 
 teenth century, a large society owed its commencement 
 to one of these votive offerings. Some merchants and 
 traders were drinking together at Flensburg ; when con- 
 tribution was made for the score, six shillings remained 
 after discharging the reckoning. They ordered a candle 
 with this remainder sum, and placed it to be burned 
 before the image of the Virgin Mary. The association 
 increased ; a large income accrued ; more candles were 
 bought ; and finally a whole guild with officers, statutes, 
 etc., centred about the feeble light which the drinking 
 score reverently placed on the altar. The duties of 
 these Continental associations were not unlike those of 
 Abbotsbury and Exeter. They are described by Hinc- 
 mar, Archbishop of Eheims, in his capitularies, as early 
 as the year 858, though not in the full detail or with the 
 settled methods of administration which we see in the 
 English examples. Judging by the comparative num- 
 bers given by Wilda, 1 these associations were more 
 numerous on the Continent than in England. There 
 were twelve in Norwich ; as many in Lynn ; in Bishop's 
 Lynn, nine ; while in Continental Cologne we find eighty, 
 about seventy in Liibeck, and at Hamburg the number 
 reaches one hundred. The lay-guild of Hincmar is 
 called geldonia, and this name distinguishes it from the 
 associations which belonged exclusively to the clergy. 
 The bond 2 which united these worthy brethren was 
 
 1 Brentano : On Guilds, p. 19. 
 
 2 Schanz accounts for the "aim and formation of the Church 
 Brotherhood " in Germany. " The two principal reasons for this were, 
 first, the necessity of a representation of the corporation system in the 
 church ; and, second, to care for the members of the guild who were poor 
 and ill." History of German Trade-Guilds, p. 4. 
 
THE GUILD. 159 
 
 graceful and beautiful, and is hard of comprehension in our 
 more prosaic age. Life has divided itself now into more 
 businesses and specified duties. Ceremonial The Grace 
 religion, which in early Catholic and mediaeval of their 
 times played around all the secular provinces 
 of life, has been relegated to a very narrow sphere. Re- 
 ligiously minded people in Protestant countries, and 
 these are now the great industrial provinces, use very 
 little ceremonial whether they be at work or at play. It 
 was not always so. The alms which are now served out 
 perfunctorily by a crusty official, or shuffled off by a paid 
 agent, were then gently administered by a hand familiar 
 with the cross, and the accompanying word came from a 
 brother who prayed for the sufferer whom he helped. 
 
 We can see the Guild of St. Mary of Beverley, 1 as it 
 moved out in procession on the festal day, which was 
 the central point around which the affections of its little 
 community clustered. There comes a youth dressed up 
 like St. Elene ; an old man bearing a cross, another bear- 
 ing a shovel, go before him. Then-come the " sisteren;" 
 then the " brethren," followed by the stewards and alder- 
 men of the guild : and all go to mass. Then they all go 
 to the common meal, the inheritance of the Aryan gen- 
 erations, sanctified by the forefathers, enriched by the 
 prayerful usage of so many households. The poor were 
 not forgotten while the community feasted. Bread 
 " well bolted and thoroughly baked," the gift of the 
 brethren and probably the labor of the sisteren, was 
 distributed to those who could claim assistance from this 
 mild and peaceful community. 
 
 And again, in the fraternity of the " Blessed Virgin 
 Mary at Hull," 2 we see how carefully they regulated 
 
 1 Toulmin Smith : Early English Guilds, p. 148. 2 Ibid. p. 158. 
 
160 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 their intercourse with each other. " If any of the breth- 
 ren or sisteren quarrel with any other (which God for- 
 bid !), the alderman steward and two helpmen shall deal 
 with the matter." There were guilds especially devo- 
 ted to the performance of the miracle-plays, a custom 
 which still survives at Ober-Ammergau. 
 
 Brentano says that people of all ranks l and conditions 
 of life were generally admitted to the membership of 
 these bodies. This is in substance true ; but the insti- 
 tution belonged to the middle class proper, and when it 
 rose above or fell below this class, it ceased to work its 
 true mission of a guild, as we shall see. The funds 
 necessary to maintain its objects were obtained by en- 
 trance fees, gifts, and the legacies of members. Almost 
 all club associations have tended toward too much eating 
 and drinking ; the guilds, whether named social or relig- 
 ious, have not been an exception. Great feasts and hard 
 drinking have troubled the more serious and thoughtful 
 members since the days of Hincmar. According to Wilda, 
 they sometimes incorporated in the statutes that "not 
 eating and drinking, but mutual assistance and justice, 
 were the principal objects of the guild." A parson at 
 Ewerduop entertained one of these companies in the year 
 1598. Among other things, they consumed in this mon- 
 ster feast one head of cattle, six lambs, two fat swine, 
 seven geese, ten pairs of fowls, three tuns of Rostock beer, 
 and two tuns of home-brewed beer. The whole meal cost 
 one hundred and fifty-six marks, one shilling. 2 
 
 The guild-merchant, or town-guild, partook more of 
 the nature of the civitas than these social guilds we 
 have been studying, and which were mere associations. 
 The possession of town-land was the distinguishing 
 
 1 Brentano : On Guilds, p. 23. 2 Ibid. p. 27. 
 
THE GUILD. 161 
 
 mark of most early burghers and substantial citizens. 
 They were generally traders or merchants, and Town-guild 
 often conducted handicrafts with bodies of differs from 
 workmen under them. A merchant had also 
 large opportunities for social advancement. Early in the 
 Saxon times, a merchant who had made three voyages 
 beyond the seas could rise out of his ceorl class and 
 obtain thegn right. These guilds embodied more munic- 
 ipal force than the true guild, and carried with them 
 the tendency to rule, to partake in the sovereignty, as I 
 have stated in another connection. Oftentimes the 
 whole body of effective citizens had become members of 
 one guild ; old " usage " had become guild-law, and that 
 law became the law of the town, 1 or the municipality. 2 
 This was not always the case ; there were some marked 
 exceptions. 
 
 The origin of these associations of mixed character, 
 partly social guilds and partly town governments in the 
 form of a guild, cannot be fixed in date, but is clear in 
 its historic workings. In Anglo-Saxon times, under 
 King Athelstan, the statutes of the London guilds were 
 reduced to writing. The frith-guilds were thus appar- 
 ently united into one guild, for the better maintenance 
 of social order and the administration of justice through 
 especial statutes made by the king. This became the 
 
 1 There were instances on the Continent where the guild interworked 
 with the town government. "In Freiburg the guild has far more sig- 
 nificance. They despatched their four delegates to the session of the 
 committee which had to consider the assessment of new taxes. No 
 city property could be sold without the consent of the master of the 
 guild." Stiedas Annals, p. 80. 
 
 2 "... relations of old guilds and the self-governing local com- 
 monalties as municipal bodies. As a general rule, there was harmony 
 and not antagonism between the municipal bodies and guilds." Tout- 
 min Smith's Early English Guilds, p. 348. 
 
 11 
 
162 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 foundation of a true municipality, and the twelve Livery 
 Companies, which though important were subordinate 
 parts of the organization of the city, date from a later 
 period. 
 
 At Dover there was an early guild-hall, and it was 
 supposed that a frith-guild accompanied it. A little 
 later came the guild-merchant of York, the large and 
 important one at Beverley, and many others which are 
 recorded. " The Guild of St. John of Beverley of the 
 Hanshouse " was regularly constituted as a local and 
 municipal authority by Archbishop Thurstan of York, 1 
 about the year 1132. We must always keep in mind 
 that the charters are subsequent by a long term of years to 
 the local customs on which they were previously founded. 
 We see in this charter some striking and interesting 
 features of the relations between the feudal suzerain and 
 the burgesses who governed the rising community of 
 Beverley. The right of toll is granted forever for eigh- 
 teen marks a year, excepting on three feasts. The lord 
 of the manor, the ecclesiastical baron 2 and fief-holder, 
 grants the " free right of coming to said burgesses and 
 going out ; within the town and beyond the town, in 
 plain and wood and marsh, in ways and paths and other 
 easements, save in meadows and cornfields." The 
 small sum of money paid indicates that this was the 
 vestiture and legalization of a prescriptive right, long 
 used and enjoyed, rather than a new privilege. 
 
 In the guild founded on the " old usages of Winches- 
 ter " we can see the beginning of that minute adjust- 
 
 1 Smith : Early English Guilds, p. 150. 
 
 2 Similar customs prevailed on the Continent. "When the bishop 
 went into the field, he received from the town prefect a hat and pair of 
 gloves." Stieda's Annals, p. 38. 
 
THE GUILD. 163 
 
 ment of power between different parts of the organism, 
 to which Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-American Outgrowth 
 political civilization owes much. " The mayor of a Town - 
 shall be chosen every year by the four-and-twenty sworn 
 men (a council), and by the commonalty. Six good men 
 shall be chosen, three by the commonalty and three by 
 the twenty-four, to gather in all king's dues and town 
 rates." : The seal which as we have seen was an im- 
 portant symbol of sovereignty, the embodied personality 
 conveyed by an association, which could then in its turn 
 convey the definite act of one, though this act sprang 
 from the many was cared for in minutest detail. 
 Three copies were made; two were in the custody of 
 two of the twenty-four chosen men, and the third copy 
 was in the hands of the commonalty. All were kept in 
 a coffer, set in a larger coffer having two locks, the key 
 of one lock being kept by one of the twenty-four, and the 
 key of the other was safely grasped by one of the com- 
 monalty. In the ordinances of Worcester, which were 
 generally similar, there were six keys managed in like 
 manner, and given up annually. In both the Minute 
 towns there were careful provisions for con- Trade-regu- 
 ducting trade 2 and the operations of the great latlons - 
 guild-sale. The taxes, fines, nuisances, rent of guild-hall, 
 were all defined most rigidly. At Winchester 3 there 
 
 1 Smith : Early English Guilds, p. 357. 
 
 2 " In Munich the law forbids any one to buy or sell in front of his 
 own door, or by the roadside ; all trade must be conducted at the mar-r 
 ket." Stieda's Annals, p. 102. 
 
 3 And in Germany the government was quite patriarchal. " The 
 wages were regularly established, not on account of any difficulty among 
 the journeymen, but in the interest of the guilds, after which no master 
 could have any advantage over the others. To the masters still belonged 
 the oversight of a travelling journeyman, whose pouch it was his duty to 
 examine, even if he had stolen nothing. The journeyman must go into 
 
164 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 were regulations 1 as to the size and quality of quilts and 
 blankets, details for the sale of fish and wool, the baking 
 of bread, brewing, etc. At Worcester, strangers 2 could 
 sell and shoemakers could buy leather only in the 
 guild-hall. " Work-people outside of the town are not 
 to be employed to the hurt of the commonalty in the 
 town, upon pain of forty shillings." 3 
 
 Security for their persons and property, and the orderly 
 administration of their towns were the objects the burgh- 
 ers and burgesses first sought when they formed these 
 guilds. Their trade-interests began to be affected almost 
 immediately by the same means which they used to se- 
 cure municipal order, and were hardly second in impor- 
 tance. Indeed, it must occur from the nature of the cac.j 
 that government once established would administer its 
 civic functions and care for itself. The privileges con- 
 tingent to the guild, advantages of trade and opportu- 
 nities for power over the craftsmen, could then absorb 
 the attention and interest of the enriched order of bur- 
 gesses, whom a stronger and better regulated town gov- 
 ernment had created. . And this corresponds to the 
 historic fact; for the later guilds formed in England 
 about the tinle of the fourteenth century were mercan- 
 tile associations, and were called gildce mercatorice.* 
 
 The social and charitable duties of these town and 
 
 the bath with the master, who could send no substitute, since to pre- 
 serve the cleanliness of the workman was still master's duty. 1361 
 A. D." Schanz 's History of German Trade-Guilds, p. 33. 
 
 1 The laws relating to cloth-making were very severe at Strasburg. 
 See Stieda's "Annals," p. 95. 
 
 2 The restrictions were even more severe in some places on the Con- 
 tinent. "In Hanover, no stranger was allowed to sell either without 
 or within the market wall. A.D. 1272-80." Stieda's Annals, p. 68. 
 
 3 Toulmin Smith : Early English Guilds, p. 383. 
 
 4 Breutano : On Guilds, p. 41. 
 
THE GUILD. 165 
 
 merchant guilds were similar to those I have described 
 as characteristic of the religious guilds. In addition, 
 they regulated trade and handicraft work, insured each 
 other's losses in case of extraordinary accident, and 
 made loans gratuitously to assist the weaker brethren 
 in their operations. This guild in its early development 
 embodied also the frith-guild as before stated, and it was 
 in Denmark J that this institution was least in- How a 
 terfered with. There it had a full career and Frith-guild 
 development, not being swallowed by the en- g verns - 
 grossing municipality of the town on the one hand, nor 
 changed in character by the rise of a rich class of burgh- 
 ers on the other. The Danish guild assumed the wer- 
 gdd for either side when the issue was with a stranger. 
 They assisted the relatives of a slain brother to collect 
 it, or they helped an offending member to discharge it 
 when they deemed his cause just. These Scandinavians 2 
 developed the principle of mutual association and pro- 
 tection to its farthest extent. In Sleswick, in the twelfth 
 century, a guild-brother, a duke and holding office as 
 alderman of the guild, was slain by the son of the King 
 of Denmark. When Nicholas the king came to the 
 town, he was warned that his life would not be safe. 
 " Why should I fear these tanners and shoemakers ? " 
 said the haughty ruler of a feudal kingdom. As soon 
 as he was fairly within the town, they closed the gates, 
 rang the great bell of alarm, assembled all the brethren, 
 and killed the king and all who resisted or who tried to 
 defend him. Such was the power of an association which 
 knew no government higher than the pledge of man to 
 
 1 Brentano : On Guilds, p. 38. 
 
 2 Palnatoki established a military guild in the island of TJsedom, near 
 Pomerania, in the latter half of the tenth century. 
 
166 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 man ! Wrong done must be requited, expiated in the 
 blood of the criminal or of his nearest relative. There 
 could be no organized justice, none of that subordination 
 of part to part, which characterized the Eoman society, 
 and which has since developed the modern State. Man 
 was bound to man, brother to brother, to obtain an in- 
 stant satisfaction. 
 
 The Danish community was poor, the land not fertile, 
 and containing few towns, and they did not develop 
 trade and manufactures like the more favored portions 
 of Europe. The town-guild, which naturally widened 
 and gave a larger growth to the frith-guild, did not pre- 
 vail in Denmark as it did in England, or even attain such 
 imperfect proportions as we find in the commune of 
 Erance or in the early germ of the free city of Germany. 
 The guild of the Danes worked out its natural life as an 
 association of middle-class people with homogeneous 
 wants and tastes. 
 
 In the period from the eighth to the fourteenth cen- 
 tury the Guild had its natural sphere of activity, and 
 was an admirable instrument of the civilization adapted 
 to that time. The feudal system was for the time a 
 natural government of men in subordinated ranks, based 
 on land. The land was a permanent reservoir of the 
 fruits of Nature, a ready means of life that could afford 
 a support to the various ranks of men, to the obligations 
 of fealty, homage, and allegiance 1 which the feudal 
 organization required and must maintain. The early 
 seignorial barons knew or cared little for artisans or 
 commerce, except such arts and such simple trade as the 
 common wants of a military life compelled. The rural 
 lord kept awnor-makers and other artisans on his own 
 
 1 Stubbs: Constitutional History, iii. 514. 
 
THE GUILD. 167 
 
 estate ; he also kept his own merchant, his own priest 
 and poet. When life broadened, and became gocial con _ 
 more secure; when the higher chivalry had ditionsthen 
 occasioned great meetings of lords, ladies, P revailm s- 
 and retainers, and freer intercourse had softened the 
 manners and elevated the tastes of these heroic but 
 simple-minded peoples, then this ampler, finer, more 
 splendid existence created new wants. New. orders of 
 men and women came forward to supply the cloth of 
 gold, the tissues of silk, the panoply of steel and leather 
 which the tourney and the more accomplished court 
 must have for its exercises and its pleasures. Artisans 
 could no longer 1 work in rude and isolated castles; they 
 must be gathered in groups, where the friction of mind 
 with mind would stimulate the worker, and add beauty 
 to the work of the single pair of hands. Merchants 
 must be encouraged, larger men and bolder, with 
 ample means and sufficient skill to furnish these needed 
 luxuries, and to link the want of the noble to the grow- 
 ing capacity of the artisan. The same process then 
 went on which now prevails, wherever life rises above 
 the half-civilized condition. The capital was latent, and 
 needed a new agent to force it into activity. The want 
 of the baron and his lady furnished the motive ; the hand 
 of the artisan was the ready instrument, and the brain 
 and commercial instinct of the capitalizer fused them 
 together in a new process, and welded them into a higher 
 
 1 " The end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thir- 
 teenth we consider a marked period of reform. Perhaps there was never 
 so much change as at that time. The personal feudal bondage was en- 
 tirely removed. More and more the country life was influenced by the 
 various callings that began to rise in the towns. We find always in the 
 frequent founding of markets the desire for altering the old customs." 
 StiedcCs Annals, p. 56. 
 
168 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 activity for the social good of all the classes together. 
 There was not the orderly development of capital and 
 labor united in capitalizing, which our more advanced 
 system gives us, but the process was in essence the 
 same ; a like principle permeated the heaving masses of 
 mediaeval time, and brought our modern regulated order 
 out of that ancient chaos, that seething mixture of Teu- 
 tonic vigor, old classic culture, and Latinized splendor. 
 
 All this created the town. While the land was attain- 
 able in fief, either by annexation or conquest, by lenefi- 
 cium and commendation, lord and vassal could live in rude 
 and easy plenty, eat huge rounds of beef and drink deep 
 draughts of beer. The growing life, the higher wants, 
 the more educated desires of the rising community were 
 creating the town and the city. Burghers and craftsmen 
 could not be satisfied with land ; that is, only the mod- 
 erate wants of their early and simple life could be sup- 
 plied. They had their homesteads and their grazings in 
 the early days, but as the towns grew, they must confine 
 their activities to civic life. Then came the guild-hall, 
 mi" ^ -1.3 which was only a castellated market. The 
 
 The Guild- J 
 
 hall a cas- burghers were warders, and the commonalty and 
 teiiated craftsmen were men-at-arms and trusty senti- 
 
 Market. 
 
 nels holding the fiefs of trade and privileges of 
 handiwork The stranger was an alien, just as the land- 
 less man without a lord was an outlaw. The idea that 
 a human want was a natural and necessary agent, and 
 should supply itself by trade or manufacture in a free 
 and unrestrained way, was too transcendental for those 
 days. Everything must be regulated and controlled by 
 its superior, or society would fall in pieces. The shoe- 
 maker could not buy the stranger's leather outside the 
 
THE GUILD. . 169 
 
 guild-hall, nor could the alien sell it. The privileges were 
 all enfiefed, securely bound by prescriptive use and cus- 
 tom. Work-people from abroad could not come in and 
 compete for the opportunity of labor ; that belonged to 
 the commonalty. One of the commonalty must keep 
 some of the keys of the coffer where the seals were 
 lodged, and sometimes those of the treasure-box also. 
 The sworn men must collect the king's dues, and only 
 these trusty agents of the town-guild could discharge the 
 office. All was securely fettered and chained, in link by 
 link of custom and fixed usage. The feudal suzerain was 
 propitiated, and his powerful protection kept a certain 
 peace and order in the larger provinces of government. 
 The neighboring baron was conciliated by money and by 
 grants of troops and supplies from the rich and wealthy 
 towns. We see Archbishop Thurstan giving peaceful 
 and orderly communication between York and his sur- 
 rounding domain by ways, paths, and easements. But 
 the larger and older arm of feudalism, the arm resting 
 on land and military service, could not dwell long in 
 harmony with the industrial arm, the civic community, 
 which was constantly gaining and growing stronger. The 
 system was warring within its own members ; and the 
 rise of the towns, their struggles with baron and bishop, 
 with king and emperor, have furnished the most fruitful 
 as well as significant periods of constitutional and 
 social history. 
 
 The guild grew into the town, and the town favored 
 the guild in all the early periods of this development. 1 
 
 1 These customs changed slowly. The Mayor of Winchester sued 
 to prevent a man, " not a freeman of the merchant-guild of that city," 
 to exercise a trade, claiming prescriptive right in the guild by usage. 
 The court decided against the mayor, and ruled that " the franchise 
 was laid in the gilda mercatoria, which though incorporated by the 
 
170 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 But this harmonious interchange of social and munici- 
 Separation P al functions was in the early time, when the 
 of Guild whole community was weak, and must stand 
 Gotera^ together to sustain any ordered life of its own. 
 merit. When the burgesses had grown wealthy; 
 when the municipalities had become strong communities, 
 able to muster troops against the suzerain ; or, when con- 
 federated, they were able to oppose the whole military 
 power of the. landed aristocracy, then the conditions of 
 life were changed. The simple guild-bond, the tie which 
 had held the weak brethren in close contact, loosened 
 when the issues of municipal life had strengthened, and 
 larger social tendencies began^ to carry the members in 
 varying directions. But before we pursue this thought, 
 we must consider the latest form of our institution, which 
 arose among the artisans and workmen. 
 
 When the frith-guild and its close ally the town asso- 
 ciation were in their first periods, the class distinctions 
 Later of the craft-guild, which we now treat, were not 
 forms cow- marked into divisions in the guild. The early 
 
 tain more 
 
 and more merchants were craftsmen as well, and doubt- 
 Caste. j ess muc h O f the hard labor was committed to 
 serfs, or to those whose condition l in life rose just above . 
 that of the man attached to the soil, those who were in- 
 cluded in the great mass of the- unfree, as Mr. Kemble 
 terms them, among the Saxons. But commerce brought 
 prosperity, and the masters of the craftsmen accumulated 
 wealth, until their more luxurious tastes separated them 
 more and more from those whose ancestors had been 
 
 grant from the king, yet the court could not presume that the gilda 
 mercatoria and the corporation of the city were the same, though they 
 might be so." Kyd on Corporations, p. 64. 
 
 1 " It is plainly shown that those carrying on trades were the first to 
 raise themselves from the state of bondage." Stiedas Annals, p. 105. 
 
THE GUILD. 171 
 
 admitted to work their craft in company with, and as 
 almost the equals of, the master himself. 
 
 As early as the thirteenth century we find a statute 
 declaring that no man " with blue nails " should be ad- 
 mitted to the privileges of the guild. Those who hawked 
 wares of their own making about the streets, the trading 
 craftsmen, were also excluded from the society of the 
 now aristocratic members of the merchant-guild, until 
 they had forsworn their trade for a year and a day. In 
 Cologne, 1 the descendants of these old guild-brothers had 
 crystallized into a patrician order, cramped by the stiffest 
 prejudice and arrogance. They had oppressed generation 
 after generation of the workmen, until their condition 
 was hardly better than that of the villain bound to the 
 soil in the earlier centuries. Associated power created 
 firm bonds of prescriptive privilege 2 in this institution, 
 as in the others of the time ; and these privileges fettered 
 the classes just beneath the favored ones. Naturally 
 the craftsmen used the same instrument by which the 
 masters had prevailed over the nobles above and the 
 serfs beneath, and resorted to the power of association. 
 In the eleventh century, craftsmen partly bond and 
 partly free were expelled from the membership of the 
 guild-merchant. 
 
 The weavers were among the first to bring their as- 
 sociations into notice, and they had powerful organ- 
 izations in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It is 
 
 1 Turgot, who abolished the prescriptive privileges of the commu- 
 no,uts in France, condemned them for the same reason. " Cupidity 
 and selfishness of the members led to monopoly and restriction." De 
 La Farelle's Progres Social, ii., 237. 
 
 2 The permission to sell in certain places became in time an in- 
 herited right ; -and the attempt to keep the number of these prerogatives 
 small to prevent competition, became the object of the establishment of 
 the guilds." Stieda's Annals, p. 3. 
 
172 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 remarked that regular associations of craftsmen appear 
 everywhere in the settled communities of Europe, just 
 as the last traces of serfdom disappear. The constitu- 
 tion of the craft-guild was like the elder bodies in its 
 general features. The same benevolent care of the 
 brethren was enjoined and practised; the members met 
 weekly or quarterly, with ceremonies suited to the oc- 
 casion. The box, with its several locks, with its keys 
 distributed, appears and holds the treasure securely; 
 the officers are chosen by the brethren, and are fined 
 for non-acceptance of their honorable and enforced du- 
 ties. Among other ordinances of a wholesome nature, 
 we find some which carefully control the quality of tools 
 which a member shall use. 1 Good workmen with good 
 tools made good wares ; and this process was governed 
 by excellent methods and stringent administration. 
 This system of manufacture was not established with- 
 out considerable difficulty, for it was met by opposition 
 from the town magnates and merchants on the one 
 hand, and by the irresponsible or vagrant workmen on 
 the other. It was not until the fourteenth or fifteenth 
 century that the struggle was fairly over, and the control 
 of each handicraft given to the guild which represented 
 it. In return for this right, they allowed every crafts- 
 man 2 in each town to join his respective guild. The 
 frith element did not come into the earlier associations, 
 and in some places the craft-guilds never obtained much 
 political power, nor became political factors in the 
 
 1 "In Berlin was an old distinction, in 1284, between shoemakers and 
 cobblers, to whom it was distinctly laid down what they were allowed - 
 to do ; namely, to put new soles under old shoes, and to new vamp." 
 StiedcCs Annals, p. 120. 
 
 2 "The furriers at Berlin in 1280 were forbidden constant work, be- 
 cause they had not yet formed a guild." Ibid. p. 87. 
 
THE GUILD. 173 
 
 municipal development ; but they controlled their own 
 trades and handicraft work. In some cases the guilds 
 were not laborers, nor capitalists, but homogeneous bod- 
 ies of small workmen ; and then they contended stren- 
 uously with the capitalists ruling the town, for due 
 recognition of their craft privileges. 
 
 The same process of evolution which had worked a 
 political and municipal change in the guild-merchant 
 now began to show itself among the craftsmen; and 
 here it worked a change more social in its results. The 
 settled order 1 of the handicraft community 
 had insured production and enlarged the pow- craftsmen 
 ers of the craftsmen. 2 Wealth had, in turn, 5f com t 
 
 Capitalists. 
 
 accumulated in their hands, and capital became 
 necessary to enter the association, which in its weak 
 state had freely opened its doors to those who could not 
 control their own bodies, who had not even personal 
 rights, the best capital of all the commodities. Curiously 
 enough, the statutes before the fourteenth century do not 
 mention workmen as such. The class distinction had 
 not divided the brethren within the Guild. After this, 
 or as early as 1350, disputes are noted between masters 
 and workmen, which are settled by the unifying power 
 of the Guild. A particular class of punishments for 
 reviling was inflicted both upon the masters and upon 
 the journeymen workers ; the offences were not caused 
 by disputed wages, but by infringements of privilege on 
 one side or the other. 
 
 1 "In the earlier time wages by the day alone predominated ; but 
 later, since the end of the fourteenth century, wages by the job pre- 
 vailed at the same time." Schanz's History of German Trade-Guilds, 
 p. 109. 
 
 2 "In Berlin, in 1288, whoever would be a tailor must be a citizen. 
 It followed naturally that whoever acquired the right of citizenship 
 determined to belong to the Guild." Stieda's Annals, p. 84. 
 
174 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 In the fifteenth century capital became almost essen- 
 Brethren ^1 * t^e admission of a craftsman into the 
 become guild fraternity. The rules of apprenticeship 
 
 exclusive. i j j . 
 
 grew more severe and vexatious, rendering it 
 very difficult for a poor person to gain the privileges 
 of the craft. The societies entailed the benefits of the 
 association as far as they were able, and confined them 
 to their own children and descendants. They excluded 
 yeomen from the membership, and the transformation 
 of the simple association of brother craftsmen and of 
 the early bondmen into a firm union of capitalists and 
 craft-aristocrats became complete. The patrician order 
 had established itself among the tools and workshops. 
 
 Then associations of journeymen began to form them- 
 selves outside the guilds. These latter associations were 
 more like the modern Trades-Union than the early Guild, 
 as we shall see. The evolutions of the craft-guild into 
 a privileged union of capitalists seems to have been irre- 
 sistible and not to be prevented. An act of Philip and 
 Mary attempts to restore the equilibrium, and to favor 
 the small masters in their struggle against the capital 
 of their richer brethren ; but it failed. Such legislation 
 has always come to nought. 
 
 Dr. Brentano in his enthusiasm for mediaeval institu- 
 tions seems to overlook the necessary change which free- 
 Guild ^ om anc ^ ^ ie P ersona l development of each indi- 
 priviiege vidual man have wrought in our social system. 
 bie^th 11 ' He commends the mediaeval regulation of the 
 modern market by means of these craft-privileges and 
 Freedom, guild-statutes as something beautiful, which 
 has been lost and which ought to be regained. He says 
 those societies regarded a working-man as a creature 
 to be watched over and protected, and not to be aban- 
 
THE GUILD. 175 
 
 doned to the oppression of stronger capitalists. I think 
 the foregoing statement of the rise of different forms 
 of the Guild, and their necessary change into capitalists 
 and privileged orders, mainly drawn from Brentano's 
 own account, sufficiently refutes this idea. It is not 
 possible to endow a man with free attributes, with all 
 the poVers of an independent constituent part of the 
 State, and to surround him at the same time with the 
 props due to an infant, or the social protection fitted for 
 the rising serf and the half-emerged bondman. The 
 power to rise must carry with it the tendency to fall. 
 The social privilege which carries a poor man into any 
 opportunity to which his talent may be equal will also 
 leave that poor man and lend itself to a still poorer 
 brother, when he does not use it wisely. 
 
 The regulation of the market 1 in the time and largely 
 through the influence of the guilds, which the Doctor 
 commends so highly and regrets as a lost art, was hardly 
 inspired by the motives he supposes. This minute 
 regulation of trade and handicraft did not come from a 
 larger appreciation of the duties of society to any indi- 
 vidual workman or capitalist, but was simply an exten- 
 sion of the old " custom " price, thus making it into a 
 social obligation. A market in the early time, as Sir 
 Henry Maine 2 divines, was the neutral ground where 
 the traders who came from the villages and village com- 
 munities met, and exchanged supplies and satisfied 
 mutual wants. These traders and caravan dealers were 
 a new element, a cosmopolitan link which could con- 
 nect these narrow circles, these village interests, with 
 each other. The trade which had grown up in the 
 village or clan circle was something quite different 
 
 1 Brentano : On Guilds, p. 78. 2 Village Communities, p. 190. 
 
176 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 from this outer exchange, this international communica- 
 Contrast tion on the neutral grounds where no one corn- 
 between munity controlled, no one custom prevailed. 
 
 modern and . . 
 
 medieval The trade in the village, in the home circle, 
 markets. wag a privilege, a prescriptive right, something 
 growing out of the prerogatives of the artificial family. 
 The exchange in the market at the cross-roads, where 
 all the families met and made the composite com- 
 mercial intercourse of a nation, was something alien, 
 foreign to the prescriptive custom on which the village 
 and clan intercourse had always based itself. The idea 
 of both an exchange and an interchange, a barometrical 
 control of the wants of communities and nations through 
 the exchanges of this wider market where all wants met 
 and satisfied themselves, was entirely beyond the com- 
 prehension either of tribal or of mediaeval times. The 
 caravan dealer, the alien trader, was a necessary evil, to 
 be admitted only because they coveted the fascinating 
 treasures in his sack. The chief, or the feudal suzerain, 
 would protect and blackmail him, while the feudal re- 
 tainer would grudgingly yield to the half-extortionary 
 exchange which his own growing wants compelled him 
 to make with the alien trader. At last this travelling 
 trade concentrated in the fair ; and Novgorod to-day is 
 only a gigantic relic of the commerce of the earlier 
 Aryan times. The fair, the neutral exchange, gradually 
 established new customs, and wove new exchanges into 
 the warp and woof of price, that mystic modern crea- 
 tion which wraps itself about the wants of every man, 
 king or toiling laborer, and nets great nations in its 
 toils. 
 
 Price, the market rule, as I have called it, the baro- 
 meter, in which every want is registered, weighed, and 
 
THE GUILD. 177 
 
 counterweighed, until the result indicates the control- 
 ling principle, subjecting nations as well as Princi leg 
 individuals to its sway, is the necessary con- underlying 
 sequence in the combination of custom and p 
 exchange. Every man gets all he can ; but custom limits 
 the maximum of his getting, and also limits the mini- 
 mum he will consent to receive. But there are no 
 fixed relations in human intercourse; a change call 
 it progress or what you will comes in, and deranges 
 these absolute limits of custom, which individuals and 
 communities fondly cherish, and sometimes believe to 
 be the necessary foundations of civilization. This social 
 change is in commercial form, and in technical expres- 
 sion it is the element of exchange. It always deranges 
 any "custom" in the mediaeval sense, any regulated 
 system of trade, values, and prices, by the inevitable 
 interposition of another set of wants from other indi- 
 viduals, other communities, from the whole world in 
 fact. 
 
 All individuals, all communities, when they have 
 once established a price, have tried to fortify it by cus- 
 tom, to maintain it by fixed usage. The control of the 
 guilds over trade and price was an effort put forth in 
 this direction, and inspired by this motive ; and it was 
 nothing more. The guild association made certain sacri- 
 fices, obtained certain privileges ; it meant to hold them 
 for the benefit, first, of its own associates, then of their 
 descendants, 1 and finally of those who would pay roundly 
 for the privilege. The feudal barons, retainers, and fief- 
 holders did the same ; they obtained land or other social 
 advantage, pledged certain service in return, and en- 
 listed the whole power of the State to maintain those 
 
 1 Brentano: On Guilds, p. 85. 
 12 
 
178 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 privileges, to guard those borders. Privilege was the 
 mainspring of intercourse, the organic principle of social 
 life. Did wool grow in England? then it must be 
 kept there for the exclusive benefit of English-born men 
 
 and women. Did gold and silver come into Spain ? 
 
 then it became a sacred emblem consecrated to Spanish 
 want, and not to be possessed or even coveted by any 
 alien creature. 
 
 It is useless to speculate whether this is the method 
 
 of paradise, or whether it would be the best method of 
 
 modern societies. It is not and cannot be the 
 
 Privilege 
 
 can no method of their development ; for they have 
 longer con- selected other paths, and must follow them in 
 the future, guided and controlled by inevitable 
 laws. Civilizations err in their steps ; they grow old and 
 decay, but they never go backwards, never retrace 
 the steps they have once taken or mistaken. Society 
 may institute whatever life it chooses, but it must con- 
 form that life to steam, electricity, and their attendant 
 institutions. Communication nowhere lessens; it con- 
 stantly increases, and thereby mingles human needs and 
 creates corresponding desires. Custom may resist either 
 through individuals, or through the might of associations ; 
 but in the long account it must yield to exchange, that 
 overwhelming force which larger communities and the 
 demand of the whole world exert upon the established 
 customs of narrow circles and close communities. Ex- 
 change society must have, whether it be in the open 
 form called free-trade, or in the moderated form limited 
 by tariffs. That is a question of methods. We may have 
 toll roads or open roads, just as we may prefer to tax 
 ourselves ; but a road must be opened and kept open 
 through whatever soil social beings inhabit. So with 
 
THE GUILD. 179 
 
 exchange, it is impossible to prohibit it. The smugglers 
 settled that question, and established the fact of neces- 
 sary exchange, long before the principle was recognized 
 either in the law of the State or in the generalizations 
 of philosophy. 
 
 The market-price is the inevitable consequence of 
 this long social evolution, the interplay of custom with 
 exchange. It becomes the index-finger by which we 
 perceive the ebb and flood of human wants ; 
 the warning monitor, by which we can foresee control^ & 
 
 the imminent pressure of the tide'and possibly 
 counteract its effects. It applies to associa- 
 tions of men, artisans or sovereigns, as the case may be, 
 just as it applies to all other movements. To suppose 
 that the price of labor or any other service will again 
 be controlled by the custom prescribed by associations, 
 however powerful, is as reasonable as to suppose that 
 the future Euphrates railway will be regulated in its 
 tariffs by competing camel trains, or that the Peninsu- 
 lar and Oriental steamships will be held in check by 
 fleets of Indian canoes and Phoenician galleys. 
 
 This principle, one of the most powerful factors in 
 modern civilization, was inherent in the Guild, and man- 
 ifested itself in two ways, in different direc- Political 
 tions. In one wav, when the early Guild car- differentia- 
 
 . , i i . tion nar- 
 
 ried some political powers in its bosom, these rowed the 
 larger forces from their essential nature ex- Guild - 
 panded it with its neighbors into a town or a municipal- 
 ity. In the other way, when the Guild was left to its 
 own native powers of association ; when the growing 
 humanity which political life always engenders in insti- 
 tutions was excluded, then the social privilege created 
 by it crystallized into a narrow and ever narrowing 
 
180 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 circle. 1 It was not the fault of the Guild, whether in its 
 social, merchant, or craft form ; it was the innate char- 
 acter of the institution working out into common life. 
 The brethren loved each other, it is true; but the affec- 
 tion must be exercised at the expense of somebody else. 
 The other somebody has always come in finally, and 
 taken possession of the fruits of the privilege. That is 
 the lesson of history : the stone rejected by the builders 
 becomes the head of the corner, or at least grinds away 
 the privileged stones, and leaves a razed table on which 
 new classes build themselves. In the oldest guild-stat- 
 utes 2 the lowest ranks were especially favored, but in 
 1720 3 it cost an apprentice from 500 to 800 to be- 
 come a member of a London guild The privileges 
 invented for the especial benefit of the poor and the 
 weak had become high-priced luxuries, available only 
 for rich and favored individuals. 
 
 The Guild associated people as brothers, and this 
 nucleus of power obtained certain privileges, sometimes 
 political, sometimes social, as I have explained. It was 
 an orderly creation, a growth native to the time. But 
 the essence of the institution was in the privilege which 
 the good relations of the members to each other enabled 
 it to obtain from society or the State. Now, the condi- 
 tions are changed. In old societies privileges are main- 
 tained with difficulty ; in new they are not granted as 
 such, only as a ready means by which the whole com- 
 munity may attain advantages not otherwise to be had. 
 Persons may now associate together to obtain any end 
 which does not transcend the political obligations of the 
 
 1 Brentano On Guilds, pp. 46, 84, et seq. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 45. s Ibid. p. 85. 
 
THE GUILD. 181 
 
 associates. They cannot form a guild which shall ob- 
 tain a political or social privilege from the State, and 
 use that privilege against the social rights of other citi- 
 zens. We incorporate railways, not that the share- 
 holders may obtain better interest for their capital, nor 
 that the laborers may get better wages thereby ; but in 
 order that society may be better served in transporta- 
 tion. The privileges or profits created are incidental, 
 and for an especial end ; they are not the object of the 
 incorporation. 
 
 In other words, all creatures of the modern State are 
 special agents to work out definite social ends ; they are 
 not endowed with privileges of their own, pe- 
 culiar to themselves. The individual still has privilege 
 great powers, which he can reserve and use in seeks larger 
 his own way, at his own will ; but in order to 
 use these powers he must continue to live, think, and 
 act as an individual, and not constitute himself a part, 
 a mere part, of any machine, however fascinating its 
 temporary advantages may appear to be. The especial 
 friends of the working-man, as they call him, are always 
 contending against this established principle of the nine- 
 teenth century ; they are constantly putting him for- 
 ward as an exceptional creature, endowed with peculiar 
 faculties, impelled by exceptional wants, and claiming 
 an exceptional social field on which he can exercise 
 these faculties and obtain these desires. 
 
 This is absurd in essence. Society now has many 
 rewards and punishments; it has but one individuals 
 method of distributing them. Forms of govern- " mst serve 
 
 Society, not 
 
 merit vary, and social organisms exhibit every Associa- 
 variety, from the new noble of Eussia and the tlons - 
 new magnate of Nevada to the old dukes of England and 
 
182 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 the older princes of Italy. Whatever these social prizes 
 may be, whether a chancellorship or a dukedom, a 
 marshalate or a railway presidency, an estate in millions 
 or a little suburban cottage, society has but one 
 method in awarding them : it gives them to the indi- 
 vidual who best serves society. 
 
 Guilds and Unions cannot change this deep-laid prin- 
 ciple of civilization. All the attempts to make the 
 laborer into a distinct being, a something to be classified 
 apart from the individual members of society, will end 
 in degrading him from his true rank of manhood into 
 the lower functions of a caste. Let it be remembered 
 that modern civilization works directly, and by one 
 means to one end. It takes the individual, wherever he 
 is to be found, and promotes him, not through a class of 
 his own, but through a larger life of its own. 
 
 If we could build a State on theories, and develop a 
 society out of our own consciousness, we might use this 
 experience of the town-guild. It would appear to be 
 wise in any modern State to carry all ignorant and par- 
 tially developed persons through a process of political 
 and social education analogous to the life of the old 
 guilds, before granting them the full powers of citizen- 
 Gradual ship. But no such intermediate relationship 
 Citizenship j^g f oun( j favor in modern times. One of the 
 but not ' dangerous tendencies of our present civilization 
 possible. i s the readiness with which it takes up sudden 
 change. The American emancipation, the Russian 
 emancipation, Italian unity, the lost temporal power 
 of the popes, the German empire, the French republic, 
 each illustrates in different directions the sudden and 
 precipitate character of modern social and political 
 change. A movement, whether political or social, once 
 
THE GUILD. 183 
 
 truly initiated and naturally started, moves with tre- 
 mendous speed, overturning any institution which im- 
 pedes it. The method of the railway, the impulse of the 
 electric current, have inoculated the minds of men. No 
 feature of modern society better illustrates this than 
 universal suffrage in its inevitable progress. Wise men 
 in all nations, in every class of society, would gladly 
 limit the development of suffrage by stringent restraints ; 
 but no such result has been established except in Eng- 
 land, and there only by th# incidental working of 
 historic institutions. In France the empire uses the 
 peasantry ; gradually these peasants become citizens and 
 turn the government into a republic. Prince Bismarck 
 coquets with the lower classes, and suddenly finds him- 
 self confronted by a powerful socialism, which the rising- 
 voters have arrayed against the older privileged classes. 
 In the United States, the untutored peasant from Europe 
 votes against a Webster or an Adams, and in turn the 
 negro votes evenly with the son of a Clay or a Calhoun. 
 It is not that this is the best system; the marvel is that 
 society can exist under such shocks. That governments 
 are on the whole stronger, that people are generally more 
 prosperous in these latter days, is sufficient evidence 
 that the method of history is the method of Providence. 
 This uplifting of the lower and even the lowest orders 
 of men is a principle so good in essence, so potent in 
 working, that it can bear the consequences of haste, and 
 even repair the damages of political folly. 
 
 The ballot is the great educator ; if not the best, cer- 
 tainly it is the most powerful influence in B ^ t th 
 education. The State is not content in these rapid 
 days to await the slow evolution of the citizen educator - 
 through grades of rank and caste, through the moral 
 
184 THE SOCIAL LAAV OF LABOR. 
 
 restraints of the church, or the orderly associations of 
 guild and fraternity ; the State confers its favors at 
 once, and lays its obligations immediately upon the 
 individual man. A slower process some period of 
 probation between the ignorant, passionate man and 
 the enlightened, sober citizen would seem to be bet- 
 ter from every point of view ; but it is not to be had, 
 and it is a fruitless task to mourn over this necessary 
 tendency of our present life. 
 
 One cause of the great results achieved by the Eng- 
 Engiish lish Trades-Unions is to be found in this 
 Unions principle. The privilege and prescription of 
 
 partly live t, .. . , f , . , , , 
 
 on political English society, though beneficial as a whole, 
 repression. p ress hard on the individuals, or the class just 
 rising into a higher social condition. The political 
 changes of 1830 gave no sufficient opportunity to the 
 rising class of artisans which the new life of the century 
 was putting forth. The struggles of these neglected 
 ones made Chartism. The political capacity which Char- 
 tism had educated found a more ready mode of exercise 
 in the opportunity which Unionism gave to the rising 
 artisan and laborer to make his will felt. If fair politi- 
 cal opportunity had been afforded to the classes ready 
 for English citizenship, probably much of the loss occa- 
 sioned society by the blundering massive strikes of the 
 past quarter of a century might have been saved ; but 
 we treat this matter fully in another connection. 
 
 My object in this chapter has been to show that 
 the Guild was an excellent socio-political organization 
 The Guild adapted to a rude system of social life. It 
 is outworn, discharged its functions in its proper time 
 very well, as the traces it left in some of our best in- 
 stitutions show to-day. If we were to organize a county 
 
THE GUILD. 185 
 
 in any civilized country now, we should hardly create 
 a count as a necessary part of the social machinery. No 
 more can an association whose manifold functions have 
 passed into the municipality, into the army or militia, 
 into the free exchange of open markets, be revived at 
 this late hour, or be reinstituted to confound the issues 
 of a larger social life. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
IV. 
 
 LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 " TN their essence, Trades-Unions are voluntary associations 
 JL of workmen for mutual assistance in securing generally 
 the most favorable conditions of labor. This is their primary 
 and fundamental object, and includes all efforts to raise wages 
 or resist a reduction in wages ; to diminish the hours of la- 
 bor or resist attempts to increase the working hours ; and to 
 regulate all matters relating to methods of employment or dis- 
 charge, and mode of working. They have other aims also, 
 some of them not less important than those embraced in the 
 foregoing definition ; and the sphere of their action extends to 
 almost every detail connected with the labor of the workman, 
 and the well-being of his every-day life." 1 
 
 We have here the basis of the Trades-Union stated 
 by one of the latest and best instructed of its Claims of 
 advocates, in a volume compiled with much the Trades- 
 industry out of the historic facts and the apol- 
 ogetic arguments in favor of the system. Mr. Howell 
 has set forth the general condition and working of these 
 great bodies at this day. He is himself, if not an actual 
 working-man, thoroughly familiar with their daily life, 
 and from his point of view he is fair-minded and candid. 
 The important matter often lies in a postscript ; and we 
 must note in this statement that the power of the Asso- 
 ciation extends into " every detail of the well-being of 
 the laborer's every-day life." The bearing of this princi- 
 
 1 Howell : Conflicts of Labor and Capital, p. 147. 
 
190 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 pie we shall see more fully if we trace back a few steps 
 in historic development, and look at the social founda- 
 tions on which Trades-Unions and all modern institu- 
 tions rest. 
 
 I stated in the beginning that there is an immense in- 
 heritance that each and all of us receive out of the past, 
 and especially the Aryan past. This common organism 
 slowly formed out of the history of one race, is Society. 
 On this great substructure, which belongs neither to 
 you nor to me, neither to the English duke nor to the 
 English laborer, rest the four great institutions, State, 
 Church, Family, Individual. There is no religious issue 
 involved here, and we will not consider the Church. 
 
 The Trades-Union begins with the plausible statement 
 that every one has a right to his own wages ; then, as he 
 A Social cannot practically obtain that right alone, he 
 Usurpa- can combine with others to attain the same end ; 
 then this common effort gives them a social 
 right to carry this consolidated force into every detail 
 of their own well-being. It might be expected that an 
 imperium in imperio of this kind would unsettle the 
 foundations of the society on which both the laborers 
 and the capital of these unions rest; and in fact it 
 has done so. Murder, violence, false witness against 
 one's brother, and every kind of petty malice against 
 individual man and woman, have been used to forward 
 the ends of this power directed toward the well-being 
 of the daily life \)f laborers. 1 The wonder is not so 
 much that these great Associations have grown to their 
 present proportions, but that society has been strong 
 enough to withstand the process by which they have 
 carried on their opposition to the settled order of civi- 
 
 1 Thornton : On Labor, pp. 207, 226, 236-239. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 191 
 
 lized life. It is the fashion to say that all this is neces- 
 sary and proper, because the rich arid well-to-do classes 
 have had the advantage in all time, and the laborer 
 must ha've an offset that he may right himself now. I 
 shall not attempt to clear up that entangled issue. I do 
 affirm, that no possible historic wrong can change the 
 nature of a false social principle. To remove one disease 
 by introducing another does not create health at best. 
 
 We perceive in the following citation the attitude 
 which Mr. Ho well and his coadjutors assume toward 
 society as a whole, the great source from whence the 
 well-being of. their daily life is derived : 
 
 " But if the workmen who are thus seeking employment 
 have mutually agreed not to accept work below a stated price, 
 or only upon stated conditions, and they have with others pro- 
 vided a fund which will enable them to withhold their labor 
 until a better price is offered, they are justified in so doing; 
 and they have by this arrangement placed themselves upon 
 something like an equality with the employer, because they 
 have the means of waiting and bidding for better terms. So 
 also the masters have a perfect right to combine in the same 
 way and with similar objects, and to assure each other against 
 heavy losses in case of the refusal to accept employment being 
 the result of previous concert and of organization. It there- 
 fore comes to this, that both parties have the right of accept- 
 ing or refusing the terms offered; and this right they can 
 exercise either singly or in combination." 1 
 
 Who pays for this contest while it goes on? The 
 capital accumulated in the workmen's fund, ^ ? 
 as well as that in the hands of the combined 
 employers, is entrusted to either or both of them in order 
 that society may be better served, or in other words im- 
 proved thereby. Is this struggle a social gain ? It is 
 1 Howell : Conflict of Labor and Capital, p. 150. 
 
192 ( THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 as if the owners of the boats and seines should dispute 
 shares with the fishermen who are to catch the fish, 
 while the tide which bore the game to the shore is 
 ebbing and carrying the prize afar off into unknown 
 depths. Fish may come again, but that tide never re- 
 turns. Food is dearer for that struggle ; and you and I 
 suffer while this combined disjoined effort after well- 
 being is working out upon the shore. 
 
 The English jurists, with that sagacious good sense 
 The old nat i ye to the Anglo-Saxon courts, long refused 
 jurists saw to recognize this unnatural right of man against 
 ^is Bother man. This dangerous power of as- 
 sociation traversed or destroyed some of the 
 fundamental rights of both State and individual. The 
 State, the municipality, the family, the individual citi- 
 zen, were not parties to this disjoining contract, this 
 separative force, whether it originated among masters or 
 men. It is true that the statutes of Elizabeth had 
 interfered with the orderly development of the laboring 
 class, had broken the natural succession of the wage- 
 earners in their passage from the " unfree " to the free, 
 and had broken it mainly in the interest of capitalists. 
 The true way to correct this evil would have been 
 through the enfranchisement of the laborer. If he 
 had been raised into a possible householder, and had 
 the boon of citizenship and full political rights been set 
 before him, it would have afforded a better end to his 
 ambition than he has found in this share of a combi- 
 nation of savings, a fund to be used in oppressing the 
 society which gave him the opportunity to earn his 
 wages. The common law, if let alone, will usually work 
 out its own cure of social evils. Not always, it is true ; 
 but the legalizing of these Associations is only one of 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 193 
 
 the forms of artificial legislation which vex this time. 
 It is a step backward in the development of law and 
 custom, as it likewise moves in the direction opposed 
 to sound political economy. This is the socio-politi- 
 cal view of the question, and only interests distant ob- 
 servers insomuch as it reveals the necessary and inevi- 
 table relations between political, social, and economical 
 development. 
 
 If it be asked, What shall be the remedy against too 
 low wages ? we reply, The sure remedy which controls 
 all low prices is in the law of the market ; and it is as 
 certain as gravitation, if let alone. We have seen in the 
 foregoing pages that all sorts of combinations have been 
 tried from time to time to limit or direct this simple so- 
 cial regulator, the law of the market. They have failed 
 without an exception, and they have been instituted in 
 the interest of every class of society. The reason of 
 their failure was in this fact, that their motive sprang 
 from the interest or desire of one class or classes, and did 
 not inhere in all classes, in the whole of society. The 
 law of the market is founded in the social need ; and it 
 plays from the social centre to each individual member 
 of the great circling mass. All political changes, all 
 social changes, all economical changes, have steadily 
 tended to bring these factors into closer relation Market 
 and into a simple adaptation of their mutual Law pro- 
 wants. Society has needed the individual man ^ t s h of 
 and woman. It has dropped one institution theindi- 
 after another which fettered this free inter- viduah 
 course of man with man, in order to bring its individual 
 units, its constituent causes, if we may be allowed this 
 expression, into a closer harmony with itself. The 
 State, the church, the family, alone stand between society 
 
 13 
 
194 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 and its individual members. Each of these great historic 
 institutions has sacrificed a very large portion of its 
 prerogatives in order that the social tie between society 
 and the individual might be developed ; and these last 
 hundred years have been the most fruitful of all in this 
 progress. 
 
 We cannot institute one false principle without de- 
 ranging other principles and institutions on which the 
 State rests. As we have said, the English jurists saw the 
 unnatural tendencies of the trades-union, and resisted its 
 habilitation in the law for a long time. The Unionists are 
 not to be blamed for the outgrowth of this institution. 
 False do^ ^ Q ^ ea wn * cn underlies the two positions 
 mas, not & which Mr. Howell states for them, was not 
 Laborers, created by laborers or employers: it came 
 
 at fault. . 
 
 directly from the dangerous dogma that labor 
 creates all things. This theory could only end in "an 
 organization reaching farther than any lodge or union, 
 and claiming larger and larger prerogatives as its power 
 extended. 
 
 About the year 1851, a closer organization of the 
 English Unions began to be effected, and the great 
 " Amalgamated Societies " were gradually formed, with 
 the results shown in the following figures reported 
 for 1877. 1 Sixteen great amalgamations of engineers, 
 masons, carpenters, tailors, etc., included 2723 
 
 Statistics. 
 
 branches, with a membership of 208,318 per- 
 sons; their income was 377,722, and expenditures 
 333,142, and they had a balance in hand of 603,064. 
 These figures are more eloquent than words, and show 
 great achievements. If these efforts were founded on 
 correct social principles, we should all award them every 
 
 i Howell : Conflict of Labor and Capital, p. 172. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 195 
 
 praise. As it is, the English Unions are mixed institu- 
 tions, producing both evil and good. 
 
 The general impression which the Unions have made 
 upon intelligent and disinterested observers is fairly ex- 
 pressed in the following statement. It will be observed 
 that this weighty committee found the results produced 
 to be social and political, rather than economic. 
 
 In 1860, a special report upon Unions and Strikes 
 was made by a committee for the Social Science Associa- 
 tion, in England. Economists, statesmen, large employ- 
 ers, such as Mr. Acland, Mr. Charles Buxton, M.P., Mr. 
 W. E. Forster, M.P., Professor Fawcett, and many others 
 were on this committee. Mr. Frederic Harrison cites 
 their report in a discourse on the " Good and Evil of 
 Trades-Unionism." 
 
 " The character, ability, and wisdom of the leaders of trades- 
 societies also vary much in different trades. So far as this 
 committee have been brought into personal connection with 
 societies' officers, their experience is that the leaders are for 
 the most part quite superior to the majority of their fellow- 
 workmen in intelligence and moderation. The effect of trades- 
 societies as an education in the art of self-government is 
 important. Many of the societies have organizations of an 
 elaborate character, and have a machinery for taking votes of 
 the trade at once simple and effectual ; and in many trades no 
 strike can be authorized until the question has been discussed 
 by several committees. This gives a habit of deliberation before 
 action, which cannot but have a good effect. The leaders of 
 trades-societies are known and responsible men : they have the 
 confidence of their own class. However wrong-headed in par- 
 ticular cases the leaders of Unions may be, they are the duly 
 elected representatives of their trade, and ought to be treated 
 with courtesy. The fiction that they are self- elected is one 
 which it would not be worth alluding to, if it had not been 
 seriously repeated in the 'Edinburgh Eeview.' So far as 
 
196 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 the committee have been able to learn, the officers of trades- 
 societies are genuinely the representatives of their constitu- 
 encies." * 
 
 The whole principle of trades-unionism has been set 
 Thornton's ^ ort ^ carefully and candidly by Mr. Thornton 
 theory of in his work " On Labor." Mr. Thornton is nei- 
 ther a communist nor a socialist, but an acute 
 and thoughtful Englishman, with large sympathies, 
 who, whenever his sense of justice will allow, leans to 
 the side of labor in its struggles with capital. He sees 
 in labor and capital, not theories, but immense and 
 awful facts, which must bruise and grind each other 
 until they are worn into some finer social relations. 
 The idea that some wrong principles in the first constitu- 
 tion of the facts might be changed, and the whole result 
 be ameliorated, never occurs to him. The whole affair 
 must be fought out representatively and fairly; and 
 when the strongest force has manifested itself, right will 
 prevail. He admits the many evils of trades-unionism, 
 stating them with candor and force; but he believes 
 the institution to be absolutely necessary. He says : 
 
 " Laborers may, by combining, acquire an influence which, 
 if exercised with moderation and discretion, employers will in 
 general be willing rather to propitiate than to oppose. Among 
 the concessions which may in consequence be obtained by 
 Unionists, the most material are those which affect the remu- 
 neration of labor, and these, it is commonly supposed, cannot, 
 when due solely to Unionist action, be of permanent opera- 
 tion. We have learned, however, in the course of the present 
 chapter, that the fact of an increase in the rate of remunera- 
 tion having been artificially caused, furnishes no reason why, 
 in the great majority of cases, that increase should not be 
 
 1 Fortnightly Review, vol. iii. p. 37. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 197 
 
 lasting. . . . Such being the efficacy of Unionism, there is 
 no difficulty in accounting for its popularity without resort- 
 ing, in explanation of Unionist loyalty, to any of those ter- 
 rorist theories, the exaggerations of which have already been 
 exposed, and on which no additional words need here be 
 expended." l 
 
 Mr. Thornton supports the extraordinary theory that 
 an artificial rise of wages may be made into a permanent 
 value by reconstructing the whole formula of supply and 
 demand, as it is enunciated by economists and men of 
 affairs. He says : 
 
 "The , price of labor is determined, not by supply and 
 demand, which never determined the price of anything ; nor 
 yet by competition, which generally determines the price of 
 everything else, but by combination among the masters. 
 Competition in a small minority of cases, combination in a 
 great majority, have appeared to be normally the determining 
 causes of the rate of wages or price of labor." 2 
 
 It is not necessary to refute this theory in its relation 
 to price and value, it refutes itself; common facts, 
 occurring since he wrote, have nullified it. I am only 
 stating the basis of trades-unionism in the words of its 
 most intelligent advocate. It is interesting to compare 
 these doctrines of Mr. Thornton with those of Josiah 
 Warren, an American socialist, who approaches the 
 question from the opposite direction. Mr. Warren 
 works his theory of value, price, and supply and de- 
 mand, out of the sovereignty of the individual, as he 
 terms it ; while Mr. Thornton's comes out of the historic 
 organization of society, political and social, as well as 
 economical. Mr. Warren was an earnest man, who has 
 
 1 Thornton : On Labor, p. 320. a Ibid. p. 108. 
 
198 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 had and now has a great influence in forming the opin- 
 ions of laborers and labor-agitators in this country. He 
 says : 
 
 "It is now evident to all eyes that labor does not obtain its 
 Warren's legitimate reward, but, on the contrary, that those 
 theory. w ho work the hardest fare the worst. ... At this 
 point society must attend to the rights of labor, and settle once 
 for all the great problem of its just reward. This appears to 
 demand a discrimination, a disconnection, a disunion, between 
 cost and value. . . . Making value, or 'what a thing will 
 bring/ the limit of its price, stagnates exchange and prevents 
 our wants from being supplied. Now, if it were not a part 
 of our present system to get a price according to the degree 
 of want or suffering of the community, there would long 
 since have been some arrangement made to adapt the 
 supply to the demand. . . . Cost being made the limit of 
 price, would give to the washer-woman a greater income than 
 the importer of foreign goods ; would entirely upset the 
 present system of national trade, stop all wars arising out 
 of the scramble for the profits of trade, and demolish all 
 tariffs, duties, and all systems of policy that give rise to them ; 
 would abolish all distinctions of rich and poor ; would enable 
 every one to consume as much as he produced, and, conse- 
 quently, prevent any one from living at the cost of another 
 without his or her consent." * 
 
 The difficulty underlying these two economical theo- 
 ries is the same, as I understand it. Mr. Thornton, and 
 in a certain degree the political economists also, converts 
 supply and demand into two entities. Take his illustra- 
 tion : 
 
 " Suppose at each of two horse-fairs a horse to be sold, 
 valued by its owner at 50 ; and suppose there be in the one 
 case two and in the other three persons, of whom each is 
 
 i Warren : True Civilization, pp. 41, 64, 100. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 199 
 
 ready to pay ,50 for the horse, though no one of them can 
 afford to pay more. In both cases supply is the same, viz., 
 one horse at 50, but demand is different, being in the one 
 case two and in the other three horses at 50. Yet the price 
 at which the horse will be sold will be the same in both cases, 
 viz., 50." J 
 
 Here he assigns a metaphysical limit to supply, and 
 yet admits only a portion of the mental process by 
 which that limit is reached. The fact that the buyers 
 can afford to pay only 50 has little to do with the price 
 paid. The cause which influences their mental action 
 is, that they know there are plenty of other horses they 
 can buy at- 50, though there is only one at hand. Eco- 
 nomically, the absent horses enter into the supply nearly 
 as effectively as the one present. This supply, present 
 and absent, affects the minds of both buyer and seller, 
 and limits the price; the limit is not a metaphysical 
 one imposed by the competition of sellers alone, as Mr. 
 Thornton would have us believe, and as he directly says 
 elsewhere. We must bear in mind that Mr. Thornton 
 has been partially approved by Mill and Professor Cairnes, 
 in considering the weight of his theories. In the relations 
 of capital and labor, be assumes that capitalists have the 
 same control of the market-price of labor which lie con- 
 ceives sellers to have in ordinary trade; hence the 
 necessity of trades -unionism to resist this control, which 
 could not be governed by the economical forces of the 
 market ; and hence the above formula of supply and de- 
 mand. Mr. Warren's error is essentially the same. In 
 bis view, the price of labor is regulated by a metaphysical 
 entity, which is not the relation of the labor-supply to 
 the general market and demand, but is a result of " the 
 
 1 Thornton: On Labor, p. 59. 
 
200 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 want or suffering of the community." To overcome 
 this entity he would revolutionize trade and production, 
 abolish profit, and base every transaction on its cost in 
 labor, without regard to the results of that labor. 
 
 Now, as I understand supply and demand in the mar- 
 Supply and ket, they are not dead- weights of matter, like 
 Demand, a roc k crus hing my finger ; they are forces like 
 the gravitation controlling the rock, and which I must 
 recognize if I would keep my finger whole and escape 
 mental distress. These forces affect laborers and capital- 
 ists, producers and consumers alike, and they are the 
 strongest influence in fixing market-prices. In fact, we 
 may consider them the only forces present and active 
 when the selling price is fixed; all other forces must 
 have been transmuted before price can be fixed. It is 
 not easy to comprehend these forces, for Professor Cairnes, 
 while saying 1 " demand and supply are essentially the 
 same phenomena regarded from different points of view ; 
 consequently general demand cannot increase or dimin- 
 ish except in constant relation with general supply," 
 yet says also that they are " not independent economic 
 forces." Mr. Mill says : 
 
 " Demand and supply the quantity demanded and the 
 quantity supplied will be made equal. If unequal at any 
 moment, competition equalizes them ; and the manner in which 
 this is done is by an adjustment of the value." 2 
 
 Yet every merchant knows that competition is only 
 one of many elements which enter into an " equation " 
 of supply and demand. I dwell on this, not to show the 
 differences of professional economists, but to illustrate 
 
 1 Leading Principles of Political Economy, p. 42. 
 
 2 Political Economy, book iii. chap. ii. 4. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 201 
 
 the subtilty of these controlling influences of the mar- 
 ket-price of labor and commodities. These influences 
 are quite beyond the comprehension of a trades-union 
 as such. We may say that a powerful Union would em- 
 ploy a leader of great capacity, who would construe these 
 influences properly ; but the very process which made 
 him a Union-leader would unfit him to be a judge of the 
 markets. A general can lead an army to victory ; but 
 generals, as a class, have been poor judges of national 
 policy, in war or peace. The Union-leader may extort 
 an advance of wages through the force of his followers ; 
 but this advance in price must be converted into per- 
 manent exchange- value in order to be of benefit to the 
 laborer. One possible element of this value is the very 
 labor of the Unionists themselves while they were 
 striking for the advance; or the advance may have 
 carried the products out of relation to all other values. 
 The only solvents of these delicate problems are the prin- 
 ciples of supply and demand I have stated. They must 
 be interpreted by social agents with the highest faculties 
 and the best power of discrimination. If Society prove 
 one of these men and find him trustworthy, it must 
 keep him and allow him full play. Like tea and wine 
 tasters, they must not be argued with, nor forced into 
 unnatural decisions by the power of numbers. If it be 
 said that a Unionist can perform this delicate social duty, 
 let us hear what Mr. Thornton l says in this regard : 
 
 " They [trades-unions] tell us plainly what they aspire 
 to is ' control over the destinies of labor ; ' that they want 
 not merely to be freed from dictation, but to dictate, to be 
 able to arrange the conditions of employment at their own 
 discretion." 
 
 1 On Labor, pp. 193, 194. 
 
202 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 Mr. Applegarth, one of the most accomplished Union- 
 ists, says : 
 
 " The business of the employed is to look after their own 
 interests ; leaving employers, customers, and the rest of society 
 to look after theirs and to shift for themselves as they best 
 may." 
 
 Let us turn from the economical bearing of the Union 
 system to consider its social tendencies. 
 
 "In theory, too, the constitution is unalloyed democracy; 
 all functionaries are appointed and all laws enacted by uni- 
 versal suffrage, and the same breath which has made, un- 
 makes both. ... In every trades-union, the actual occupants 
 of office, provided only they be tolerably firmly seated, are 
 almost certainly in possession of quasi dictatorial authority." 1 
 
 This pure democracy of the Union combination ends 
 in despotism, as unlimited democracy has always ended. 
 As is well known, Broadhead carried the Saw Grinders' 
 Union through one and another form of oppression, 
 until several murders were committed. I do not allude 
 Union to this to charge the Trades-Unions with murder, 
 practices, i^ to indicate the drift of their organized life. 
 Every Union murders some social principle in its efforts 
 to give its strength an unnatural momentum to increase 
 its weight. From the nature of things it must be so. 
 "Intimidation," "picketing," 2 "rattening," 3 "making 
 
 1 Thornton : On Labor, pp. 205, 222. 
 
 2 "Picketing consists in posting members of the Union at all the 
 approaches to the works struck against, for the purpose of observing and 
 reporting the workmen going to or coming from the works, and of using 
 such influence as may be in their power to prevent the workmen from 
 accepting work there." Report of Royal Commission, 1869, clause 68. 
 
 8 Rattening denned by the Royal Commission is "the abstraction of 
 the workman's tools, so as to prevent him from earning his livelihood 
 until he has obeyed the arbitrary orders of the Union." It is said to 
 be lessening, and to be discountenanced by the best Unions. 
 
LABOK ASSOCIATIONS. 203 
 
 work," are all forms of social despotism which would 
 be practised by hardly one of these Unionists for his 
 own advantage. " Making work " requires some special 
 consideration, for it is a most important motive in the 
 Union methods and regulations : 
 
 " A bricklayer's assistant, who by looking on has learned 
 how to lay bricks as well as his principal, is gen- < t Making 
 erally doomed nevertheless to continue a laborer for Work " 
 life. [Bricks beyond Lancashire are excluded.] explained. 
 . . . To enforce the exclusion, paid agents are employed; 
 every cart of bricks coming toward Manchester is watched, 
 and if the contents be found to have come from without the 
 prescribed boundary, the bricklayers at once refuse to work. 
 ... A master-mason at 'Ashton obtained some stone ready 
 polished from a quarry near Macclesfield. His men, how- 
 ever, in obedience to club rules, refused to fix it until the 
 polished part had been defaced, and they had polished it 
 again by hand, though not so well as at first ! . . . On the 
 importation of worked stone into Barrow, the lodge demanded 
 first that the bases should be worked over again j secondly, 
 when this was refused as an impossible interference with the 
 architects' design, that as much time as would have been re- 
 quired to rework them should be occupied by the Barrow 
 masons in standing over them. . . . 
 
 " * Not besting one's mates ' has by several Unions been 
 made the subject of special enactment. 'You are strictly 
 cautioned,' says a by-law of the Bradford Bricklayers' La- 
 borers, 'not to overstep good rules by doing double work, 
 and causing others to do the same, in order to gain a smile 
 from the master. Such foolhardy and deceitful actions 
 leave a great portion of good members out of employment. 
 Certain individuals have been guilty who will be expelled if 
 they do not refrain.' The Manchester Bricklayers' Associa- 
 tion have a rule providing that ' any man found running or 
 working beyond a regular speed, shall be fined 2s. 6c?. for the 
 first offence, 5s. for the second, 10s. for the third, and if still 
 
204 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 persisting shall be dealt with as the committee think proper ; ' 
 as also shall be 'any man working short-handed, without 
 man for man.' ... At Liverpool, a bricklayer's laborer may 
 legally carry as many as twelve bricks at a time ; elsewhere 
 ten is the greatest number allowed. . . . During the build- 
 ing of the Manchester Law Courts, the bricklayers' laborers 
 struck because they were desired to wheel bricks instead of 
 carrying them on their shoulders." 1 
 
 Mr. Thornton says these regulations are not peculiar 
 to one trade, but are the same in spirit in all the trades. 
 Professor Cairnes,who treats Trades-Unionism with strict 
 justice, condemns this whole business in the strongest 
 terms. He not only anathematizes Unions, but strikes 
 at the principle wherever it appears : 
 
 " The purpose and general tendency of these regulations 
 Cairnesde- cannot be mistaken. Their object is, by enforc- 
 nounces all ing uneconomical methods and proscribing recourse 
 suchnon- to the facilities offered by Nature and circum- 
 stances, to create a necessity for work which other- 
 wise would not have existed. The code is from first to last 
 an example of that view of political economy of which the 
 culminating triumph would be the exclusion of the light of 
 the sun. . . . 
 
 " The very meaning of industrial progress is the increase 
 of the productive result in proportion to the labor undergone ; 
 while the direct tendency of the rules in question is to increase 
 the labor undergone in proportion to the productive result. 
 . . . The view which has suggested them, far from being con- 
 fined to the working classes, has, as we have seen, found for 
 its champion so able and dispassionate a writer as Mr. Thorn- 
 ton, who, while denouncing in language which certainly leaves 
 nothing to be desired in point of vigor and heartiness those 
 elaborate contrivances for rendering man's position in the 
 world worse than it might be, has himself furnished the 
 
 1 Thornton : On Labor, pp. 344-46. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 205 
 
 theoretical premises which would be quite sufficient, if only 
 they were well founded, to justify the most extravagant of 
 the acts which he reprobates. It must also be frankly con- 
 fessed, with reference to this as with reference to other parts 
 of the Unionist policy, that the better-off classes of society 
 are by no means entitled to plume themselves at the expense 
 of the workmen. In the practice of the legal profession, 
 e. g., there would, I fancy, be no difficulty in finding usages, 
 not yet perhaps quite obsolete, conceived in this same spirit 
 of aggrandizing a calling by ' making work ' for its members. 
 One has only to watch the progress of an ordinary chancery 
 suit, or to read through an ordinary deed, to find examples 
 which would scarcely lose in lustre by being placed beside 
 some of the brightest of those furnished by the Manchester 
 Bricklayers' Association. What, indeed, is the opposition 
 given to law reform by too large a section of the legal pro- 
 fession but a flagrant example of this very spirit, a readi- 
 ness to sacrifice the interests of society at large to those of 
 the legal profession ; to arrest the progress of social improve- 
 ment in order that work may be found for a few lawyers the 
 more? The notion of aggrandizing one's order by 'making 
 work' for it may assume in Trades-Unions codes a some- 
 what more extravagant and grotesque form than elsewhere ; 
 but the principle itself is deeply embedded in the practical 
 modes of thinking and acting of nearly all classes, and it 
 therefore needs all the more to have its true character and 
 tendencies laid bare without reserve, and to be duly stigma- 
 tized as the most flagrantly anti-social of all the plans of 
 conduct by which, at various times, different classes of so- 
 ciety have attempted, in disregard of the general social weal, 
 to advance their several interests." l 
 
 Political economy and social philosophy join to echo 
 these noble words which strike to the root of this 
 abounding social evil. Class-selfishness, whether in em- 
 ployer or employed, here puts on a physical form, and 
 
 1 Cairnes : Leading Principles of Political Economy, pp. 309-12. 
 
206 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 in every movement wounds the body politic which 
 gave the class with its members life and support. Note 
 how the rules against " besting one's mates " degrade 
 the individual workman. If there is one incentive 
 more than another which the laborer needs and must 
 need so long as humanity toils, it is a lifting power 
 within himself, the force which shall take him out of 
 the necessary repetition and iteration of his 
 work. At best he is too prone to imitate, to 
 artistic follow carelessly, and to lose the artistic im- 
 pulse which can be given to the stroke of a 
 spade as well as to the thrust of a chisel. But these 
 abominable rules take away the last hope from a servile 
 monotonous copyist. Take emulation out of the world's 
 life, and duty would be left to carry forward humanity ; 
 but it would be over a dry and dusty road, through a 
 dead level which would admit no individual men and 
 women. Or rather let us turn to the figure which has 
 so often been clothed with the experience of humanity : 
 the river of individual souls, the stream of life, bright 
 in action, bounding forward, sometimes eddying but 
 always moving, would droop into a sluggish canal which 
 would indeed bear the mass onward, but on through the 
 dead, still ruts of necessity. 
 
 The object of society, governments, institutions, groups, 
 and classes is to make better men and women ; to give 
 them, each in his own nature, a freer life and higher 
 aspirations. The vice of Unionism and every such 
 They don't stratification is that the pressure of the whole 
 create, they mass is inevitably exerted on each member to 
 )ut ' squeeze him into a mere unit of pressure, a 
 pressure to be exerted upon another class of persons. 
 Their method of getting more is not to create more, 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 207 
 
 but to grind more out of some other class. This is 
 the direct result of all class aggregation. It is not the 
 fault of these unenlightened workmen that they take 
 up these primitive methods which belong to the strati- 
 fying age of development, that age which prevailed 
 before society had learned that if it would raise any it 
 must raise all ; but men who have studied the philoso- 
 phy of history ought to know better than to look for 
 a higher social or individual development through any 
 such system of antiquated social methods. 
 
 Mr. Thornton's labored and studied argument is not 
 animated by any narrow spirit ; it is always generous. 
 The melancholy reflection remains after reading it, that 
 here is a man educated under the best English influ- 
 ence, capable of handling his theme, who has no appa- 
 rent conception of the differentiation of social forces. 
 All force is one, or may be one, we are told ; but the 
 modes of its manifestation are very different. There 
 are some modes in which it draws, in others it pushes ; 
 and social and economical forces are put forth in the 
 same manner. If any of the philosophers who dream 
 that social life can be maintained and elevated by mass- 
 ing classes to struggle one against another, will draw a 
 silk handkerchief through a tailor's thimble, and then 
 try to push it through, they will see what I mean by 
 differentiation of social force. Apply this mass-force, 
 instead of a grouping, individual force, to the illustra- 
 tion of the cloth dressers. 1 We should have had a 
 union of dresser tenders, who would have prescribed 150 
 cuts or 125 cuts, if they fancied, as the maximum, and 
 would have ordered a strike to enforce it. Then, if the 
 point were important enough, the mill owners would 
 
 1 Infra, p. 255, where relation of Labor to Product is stated. 
 
208 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR 
 
 have " locked out " all the operatives until the dispute 
 should be settled. Then, the process of capitalizing be- 
 ing thus suspended, after a sufficient waste of labor and 
 capital (for opportunity never returns, even through 
 "making work"), the handkerchief would have been 
 in some way driven through the thimble, arid orderly 
 work would resume. 
 
 The power to strike must involve the power to resist. 
 
 - " During nearly half a century all signal triumphs have 
 been on one side, all substantial success on the other. In 
 History all those extensive and prolonged strikes whose 
 of Strikes, duration proves that though strenuously main- 
 tained they were likewise firmly resisted, the men have inva- 
 riably put forth their utmost strength merely to find that 
 strength miserably inadequate. . . . The Manchester Build- 
 ers' strike in 1833, when 72,000 of wages were foregone; 
 the ' terrible' strikes of the Preston spinners, first in 1836, 
 when thirteen weeks of voluntary idleness cost the men .57, 
 200, and secondly in 1854, when 17,000 persons underwent all 
 the misery implied in their remaining out for thirty-six weeks 
 and giving up 420,000 of wages ; the engineers' strike in 
 1853 of fifteen weeks duration, in which 43,000 of wages 
 were sacrificed ; the still more memorable strikes of the iron 
 workers of Staffordshire and the North in 1865, and of the 
 London tailors in the summer of 1867 ; these are but a few 
 of the more salient among the many instances in which terri- 
 ble suffering and heroic endurance on the part of the men 
 have terminated in their eventually capitulating at discretion, 
 and returning to work on terms little if at all better, and not 
 seldom worse, than those against which they had revolted. 
 . . . On all great occasions the masters have been the victors, 
 yet every concession made has been made to the vanquished. 
 In all trades under the influence of Unionism, wages, though 
 subject to occasional fluctuation, have, ever since that influ- 
 ence began to make itself felt, been on the whole continually 
 rising. In some they are twenty-five or thirty, and in one 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 209 
 
 fifty per cent higher than they were forty years ago [written 
 in 1868], and in all the average rate is probably at least fif- 
 teen per cent higher than it was then. 
 
 "Much as they [i. e. employers] might prefer standing alone, 
 they are beginning to understand that they may not be able 
 to stand at all unless together. They are becoming aware 
 that the continually growing force of their men's unionism is 
 not to be resisted by them without a corresponding unionism 
 of their own. . . . Among employers there was not until the 
 other day, if indeed there be really even yet, any society of 
 masters of a permanent character which, either in its compo- 
 sition or its objects, bears more than a faint resemblance to 
 what workmen understand by the term Trades-Union. . . . 
 Resolution on both sides being equal, victory would infallibly 
 be with the superiority of wealth ; and however great might 
 be the pecuniary resources of the men, those of the masters 
 would be many times greater, and better able to bear the 
 drain upon them. ... In all their disputes employers may 
 always have the employed at their mercy, by adopting the 
 same tactics and persisting in them as doggedly." x 
 
 In this country the history is not different, as the 
 Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, in their thor- 
 ough report, show in 159 strikes. 2 
 
 Mr. Thornton gives the victory to the Trades-Union 
 principle because wages have advanced during the forty 
 
 1 Thornton : On Labor, pp. 252-54, 267-69. 
 
 2 Causes of strikes : to secure better wages, 118 ; to secure shorter 
 days, 24 ; to enforce Trades-Union rules, 9 ; resistance to employers' 
 rules, 5 ; against introduction of machinery, 3. Results of the same : 
 unsuccessful, 109 ; successful, 18 ; compromised, 16 ; partly success- 
 ful, 6 ; result unknown, 9 ; contest still pending, 1. 
 
 " In the various Fall River strikes, to which we again refer as the 
 most important movement of this kind in the State, the enormous sum 
 of $1,400,000 in wages was voluntarily forfeited by the idleness of 
 the operatives. ... In more than sixty-eight per cent of them, loss 
 in wages, varying with the extent and duration of the strike, has been 
 submitted to without any material benefit accruing to offset it." 
 Report, 1880, pp. 65-68. 
 
 14 
 
210 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 years ending with 1868. He assumes that this advance, 
 
 ranging from fifteen to fifty per cent, has been wholly 
 
 obtained by Unionism. This is easily dis- 
 
 Prosperity, , ^ TT , 
 
 not strikes, proved. Wages were advancing in the whole 
 raised civilized world during that period, especially 
 under the impulse of the gold discoveries after 
 1848. Mr. Brassey's formula that "the cost of labor 
 was the same, at different wages in different countries ; " 
 that " for the same sum of money the same amount of 
 work was everywhere performed," has been severely 
 criticised, and was no doubt pushed too far. There is a 
 close relationship between his two terms, but not such 
 an arithmetical proportion. Arithmetical restraints are 
 too rigid for problems which are both economic and 
 social, and contain some indefinite factors. The Malthus 
 theory of population illustrates this. The senior Mr. 
 Brassey probably obtained his results by using skilled 
 laborers of England as against those of other countries 
 unskilled in his particular employment of railway build- 
 ing. The measure of " cost " is not exactly the same. 
 But Mr. Brassey gives much evidence showing the rise 
 of wages where no Unionism has prevailed. Enterprise 
 and social activity advance wages, with or without 
 unions of employers or employed. 
 
 " ' The progressive state is, in reality, the cheerful and the 
 hearty state, in all the different orders of society. The 
 stationary is dull, the declining melancholy.' These axioms 
 of Adam Smith are abundantly verified by the practical ex- 
 perience of railway contractors. The advance of wages which 
 has occurred in such cases, from the natural operation of the 
 laws of supply and demand, would satisfy the most golden 
 conceptions of the working-man." l 
 
 1 Brassey : Work and Wages, p. 34. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 211 
 
 Quoting Phipps's report on the Industrial Classes 
 in Wurtemberg, he gives the following "natural" 
 advance : 
 
 " As a general average, sixty-nine per cent may be taken as 
 the increase in the daily wages for the out-door laborers. . . . 
 Exports from the United Kingdom last year. reached the value 
 of three hundred and nineteen millions sterling, and the great- 
 est increase took place in those trades In which the wages had 
 advanced most. ... A considerable portion of the sum sub- 
 scribed to India railways has been paid to native laborers, 
 and the result has been that in the districts traversed by these 
 railways wages have advanced within a short time no less 
 than one hundred per cent. . . . At M. M. Schneider's, with- 
 out the assistance of a Trades-Union, the working people have 
 obtained during the last seventeen years an augmentation of 
 wage of thirty-eight per cent. In England, in the correspond- 
 ing period, the most powerful of all the Trades-Societies, with 
 an accumulated fund of ,149,000, has found it impossible to 
 secure any increase in the earnings of its members." l 
 
 The assumption of Mr. Thornton and others that all or 
 nearly all advance of wages is obtained directly through 
 the efforts of Unions is without foundation. I think it 
 could be proved that the possible advance in the pros- 
 perous years from 1850 to 1872 would have been greater 
 under the natural laws of the market than that actually 
 obtained. But that is not within our present purpose. 
 The examples given by Mr. Brassey, which are the eco- 
 nomical results under the natural grouping power of 
 society in various countries, can be paralleled by plenty 
 of experience among employers of labor. 
 
 The remark is common among theorists and the super- 
 ficial observers of these questions, that the employers 
 do combine, and that laborers must therefore combine. 
 
 i Work and Wages, pp. 44, 50, 57, 161. 
 
212 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 This statement reveals absolute ignorance of the tre- 
 mendous forces which underlie the market, and which 
 Employers manifest themselves in the true economic laws 
 would nat- controlling social development in the direction 
 pete rather f production and trade. Men like Brassey in 
 than com- England and Vanderbilt in America did not 
 work out their great commercial enterprises by 
 combining capitalists or by oppressing laborers, whether 
 these latter were in or out of the combination. These 
 capitalizes represented a great social need, and they 
 moved capital and labor in harmony together to accom- 
 plish the works which that need demanded. 
 
 " There remains of course to be noticed, the competition of 
 the employers. This is the sole reply of the other side to all 
 the reasons just mentioned. No doubt the influence of this 
 competition is very great ; without it the workmen would 
 be (what they only occasionally are) at the mercy of the cap- 
 italists. But the question is, whether its influence is so great 
 as to counterbalance all else on the other side, and establish 
 an equality. Now this competition of the employers for the 
 workmen is subject to two very important qualifications. 
 The first is, that there is a universal and irresistible tendency 
 in all employers, which (as Adam Smith shows) is much more 
 powerful and efficient in the smaller class, capitalists and 
 sellers as against the workmen and the public, not to raise 
 wages or lower prices. This is the ' silent combination ' 
 which needs no formal expression, and generally becomes a 
 point of honor. . . . There is a second very important quali- 
 fication, also, which neutralizes this competition of the capital- 
 ists with each other ; this is the competition of the workmen 
 with each other. Just as, if left quite to itself, there may 
 be a tendency among employers to raise wages by bidding 
 against each other for ' hands ; ' so there is a strong, or a 
 stronger, tendency among the employed to bid against each 
 other for employment. Sometimes, if markets are very brisk, 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 213 
 
 capital seeks labor; but more often in this country labor 
 seeks capital." 1 
 
 Mr. Harrison differs from Mr. Thornton in his esti- 
 mate of the " silent combination " of employers, and of 
 their tendency to compete with each other. 
 
 "The great ambition of every employer is to cease to be an 
 employer. He busies himself unceasingly for nothing so 
 much as to be able the sooner to leave off business. By what 
 course he grows rich enough to retire, or at least how much 
 that course may interfere with the progress of his fellow- 
 employers, he cares very little. If anything, he rather plumes 
 himself than not on cutting out his rivals." 2 
 
 They are both right in their statements, but not very 
 sagacious in penetrating to the controlling principle be- 
 neath. There is a silent tendency in employers as well 
 as all buyers to keep down prices. " Nought, competi- 
 saith the buyer: but he goeth his way and *; on ?! ld 
 
 } J Combina- 
 
 boasteth." But how can this tendency be tion corn- 
 most surely and economically overruled ? Is it P ared - 
 by limiting and hampering the production out of which 
 wages must be made, or by " making work" to be robbed 
 out of society ? Any steam pilot will say there are two 
 methods of carrying a number of craft through a crowded 
 channel. With one, they timidly reduce speed; their 
 courses assimilate more and more, entangle more and 
 more, and finally they helplessly drift out of the confu- 
 sion : this is combination. With the other, they cau- 
 tiously apply more steam, use the increasing speed to 
 guide the swifter craft past the slower, and thus sail out 
 of the complication by exerting the best force of each 
 individual vessel : this is competition. 
 
 1 F. Harrison in Fortnightly Eeview, iii. 48. 
 
 2 Thornton : On Labor, p. 265. 
 
214 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 Classes exert themselves to obtain privilege and 
 prestige from society; they never try to elevate their 
 individual members one above the other. The very self- 
 ishness which exerts itself against the whole society is 
 doubly selfish when it is turned against their individual 
 fellows. This principle is human ; it is not peculiar to 
 labor or capital. As both Mr. Harrison and Mr. Thorn- 
 ton have demonstrated elsewhere, capital has the most 
 power in a struggle ; then the true resource of the la- 
 borer as well as the natural right of society is to stim- 
 ulate the different groups of capital and capitalizers to 
 put forth all their powers against each other in friendly 
 emulation, and thus to forward all the craft by higher 
 speed and more production. This simple method would 
 attract every one, were it not for those obsolete dogmas 
 of "rights of capital," "wages-fund," "making work," 
 " besting one's mates," all making one agglomeration 
 of social tissues to be fought for by laborer and capital- 
 ist as the offal-meat is torn by hungry dogs. 
 
 The only combination which can better the laborer is 
 the best ^interplay of his own active brain with his own 
 skilled hand and his own ready tool, combined with good 
 thrift in using the fruits thereof. His class may help 
 him to attain these results, just as a guild of authors, 
 railway managers, or ship captains, may help each other 
 to improve the work of each member. But neither the 
 class of laborer nor that of employer can help him in the 
 long run to get more out of society than the actual speed 
 of his craft will register in the log-book. The share of 
 each individual is in proportion to the sum of all the 
 speeds accomplished by all together. That share is not 
 increased by doing less under any form of combination, 
 whether with one tool or by anti " besting one's mates " 
 with a million fellows. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 215 
 
 I should not thus dwell on this " besting," but it re- 
 veals a deep principle of error in the trades-union mind. 
 In the depths of their consciousness they feel True origin 
 as well as think that labor does for society of laborers' 
 more than society does in return, and that by 
 a powerful combination labor can get back a much larger 
 share. I have written to little purpose, if I have not 
 shown that the opportunity to labor is a social privilege, 
 wherever any capital even a tool which the laborer 
 did not invent is involved. Society, in giving the 
 laborer the opportunity to labor, or the employer the 
 opportunity to capitalize, gives as much as it gets in 
 return. Neither labor nor capital can get more out of it, 
 except by obeying the social need more faithfully, and 
 thereby creating more for all concerned. 
 
 Mr. Harrison is, on the whole, the strongest advocate 
 of the Union system. He criticises it in detail, D O they 
 but he regards it as a strong social and politi- improve by 
 cal influence to be encouraged and developed, things 
 It is remarkable that he does not see that its worse ? 
 foundation is based on principles which would ulti- 
 mately destroy that free development of the individual 
 which is the essential pride of the Teutonic .race. 
 
 "Excessive labor, irregular labor, spasmodic over-work, spas- 
 modic locking-out, over-time, short-time, double-time, night- 
 work, Sunday work, truck in every form, overlooker's extor- 
 tion, payment in kind, wages reduced by drawbacks, long pays, 
 or wages held back, fines, confiscations, rent and implements 
 irregularly stopped out of wages, evictions from tenements, 
 1 black lists ' of men, short weights, false reckoning, forfeits, 
 children's labor, women's labor, unhealthy labor, deadly fac- 
 tories and processes, unguarded machinery, defective ma- 
 chinery, preventable accidents, recklessness from desire to 
 save, in countless ways we find a waste of human life, 
 
216 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 health, well-being, and power which are not represented in 
 the ledgers, or allowed for in bargains. . . . Against this 
 state of things, as yet, the only organized protection is 
 Unionism. It is a system at bottom truly conservative, 
 mainly protective, and essentially legal. It is a system still 
 quite undeveloped, and most defective, and often deeply 
 corrupted. . . . 
 
 " This is not the place to discuss at length their [the Un- 
 ions'] great deficiencies ; but no man is more aware how far 
 they fall short of what is wanted than the present writer. 
 In the first place, they are simply a political, practical, tem- 
 porary remedy for a social and moral evil. The real cause 
 of all industrial evils is the want of a higher moral spirit in 
 all engaged in industry alike. Social and moral remedies 
 alone, in the long run, can change the state of things to 
 health, and the working-men on their side have as much to 
 learn in social and moral duty as their employers. All this 
 (and without it nothing permanent can be gained) Unionism 
 totally ignores, and even tends to conceal and choke. Hence, 
 a keen spirit of Unionism often blunts the members of a 
 strong association to their own duties and to the higher 
 wants of their class. . . . 
 
 " To save the people from the immediate injuries of bad 
 government is sometimes the very condition of all other 
 effort towards improvement. If working-men, holding by 
 their Union for simply protective purposes, would turn tow- 
 ards other measures to improve themselves, to learn greater 
 self-control, higher education, and purer domestic life, their 
 ends would be gained." l 
 
 This was written twelve years ago. The opinion 
 lately expressed in the Times shows that Mr. Harrison's 
 hopes have not been appreciated by the Unions, and 
 that they are still social oppressors. 2 
 
 1 Fortnightly Eeview, iii. 52-54. 
 
 2 Yet hitherto these bodies have claimed the right to determine to 
 how many persons a man skilled in a particular trade shall impart his 
 knowledge. They have thus put obstacles in the way of the young man 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 217 
 
 The reason that the Unions have not developed a 
 higher spirit and a better social direction is easily 
 found. They cannot develop it. Arbitrary power, the 
 basis of which is in the greed of each man to get more, 
 cannot develop into high moral and social ends. We 
 might as well ask the Emperor of China to rule through 
 a parliamentary ministry and opposition. If he were 
 the most enlightened and benevolent ruler on earth, he 
 could not do it. 
 
 The long list of grievances which Mr. Harrison brings 
 against capital and employers is a sad tale. Even if 
 these occurrences are exceptional, they are bad enough ; 
 but if constant, they are social evils, and should be 
 cured socially, and not merely serve to aggravate an 
 economical war between classes on the rate of wages. 
 The economical discussion of wages is a matter of con- 
 tract ; and such grievances as " children's labor, over- 
 looker's extortion, confiscation," are matters of social 
 injustice, for which the whole body of society is respon- 
 sible. Good fathers used to kill their sons when they 
 displeased paternal authority. That was a poor kind 
 of discipline ; it was not cured by a revolt among the 
 sons of all families. Society altogether corrected it, as 
 it has done other kinds of injustice. 
 
 who wishes to learn a particular trade, and have interfered with general 
 liberty as well as assailed the general principle that the public are en- 
 titled to have work done by all who are competent and willing to do it. 
 The tendency of the Trades-Unions organizations to encroach on indi- 
 vidual liberty is, in truth, the great danger of their development in this 
 country. With all their folly, there is so much of sober sense and busi- 
 ness capacity about their proceedings, that we do not believe they will 
 continue permanently indifferent to economic principles. The diffi- 
 culties between them and capital may he adjusted on some common 
 ground ; hut if they would assure the public that their power and in- 
 fluence will be really salutary, they should be careful to show a respect 
 for individual liberty which the history of Trades-Unionism has not 
 hitherto evinced. Weekly Times, Sept. 21, 1877. 
 
218 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 I would not deny the right to " strike " abiding in 
 every laborer ; this is his last right of resistance against 
 oppression. But socialists and philosophers should re- 
 member this is not in essence a mode of defence ; it is 
 offence. It cannot be justly put forth at will, 
 right to but only to right a wrong. In the nature of 
 strike de- things, a combined cessation from labor is an 
 organized attack on society at large. It may 
 be none the less necessary or justifiable, but it is a rev- 
 olutionary right. None of us would resign our individ- 
 ual right of revolution in civil affairs ; but it must be 
 remembered that this right can be exercised only in the 
 gravest emergency. So socially and economically the 
 right to strike is an offensive defensive, to be put forth 
 only when other methods of obtaining just reward have 
 failed. When that time comes, it will need only that 
 organization which is always ready in the hearts of the 
 people. When revolution is truly necessary, it trembles 
 in every breeze, and finds its own opportunities to whirl 
 into a tornado. 
 
 Modern civilization has gradually abandoned the 
 methods of force by which the world worked out its life 
 when it knew no better. It is not by aggregating the 
 force of class against class that we may live a larger 
 life, but by stimulating the whole individual force of 
 each man, laborer or capitalizer, and regulating the whole 
 movement by justice. 
 
 The word plunder would be an unjustifiable epithet, 
 
 Self inter ^ ^ not re P resent ^ ne avowed principle un- 
 est becomes derlying the motive of the ordinary strike. 
 
 "^ -Appl e g art h ( one f tne m OSt judicious 
 
 and enlightened of his class) says : " The busi- 
 ness of the employed is to look after their own inter- 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 219 
 
 I 
 
 ests, leaving employers, customers, and the rest of society 
 to look after theirs, and to shift for themselves as they 
 best may." Society allows each member to act for his 
 own interest, for it cannot look into the motives of each 
 individual breast. But an organized effort to establish 
 the multiplied self-interest of a class is a tyranny 
 which cannot long exist in the present light of the 
 world. This is not a social right ; it is the use of class- 
 strength to promote social oppression. 
 
 For who suffers, while this unnatural contest goes 
 forward ? Modern society is so delicately organized, 
 that it requires every effort in kind which all its mem- 
 bers can make to forward its orderly movement. A 
 strike not only stops wages and wastes capital, it kills 
 the life of the whole body while it lasts. The laborer 
 smokes his pipe in idleness, or tramps about in sullen 
 listlessness, while the war between labor and capital 
 wrestles itself out. What right did his self-interest 
 acquire for him in the tobacco that he smokes, or in the 
 sewing-machine which sewed the boots in which he 
 tramps ? This limitation does not cut off the final right 
 to strike, for that must remain in all society, like the 
 right of revolution under any and all governments ; but 
 it essentially limits its just exercise. Labor is social ; 
 when it from due necessity becomes unsocial, it becomes 
 barbaric. Labor, capital, capitalizing, must unite in 
 orderly movement, or the harmony of modern and civil- 
 ized life jangles into barbarous war. 
 
 When Associations have grown up to control the 
 action of laborers on the one hand and of capitalists and 
 employers on the other, there would naturally be some 
 mode developed, some tribunal formed, by which the 
 contests between these bodies could be governed, or at 
 
220 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 least modified and directed. Boards of arbitration have 
 Arbitration ex i ste( l in France and Belgium for a long time, 
 is only Con- In England they have been in vigorous opera- 
 nhation. ^ Qn ^ gome twenty years; in this country 
 arbitration as such has been a failure. 
 
 " Industrial arbitration is both the name of a principle 
 and the specific application of that principle. As a principle, 
 arbitration is a method of settling disputes or differences be- 
 tween employers and employed, by a reference of the matters 
 at issue to a Board composed of representatives of each of the 
 two parties to the question, the representatives of each being 
 elected or appointed by the parties themselves ; the Board to 
 have power to hear testimony and decide the question, or, in 
 the event of a failure of the Board to decide, with power to 
 call in one or more parties, whose decision in the case shall 
 be final and binding on both parties represented." l 
 
 The above definition by Mr. Weeks, who had ample 
 experience in the matter, shows what the ideal arbi- 
 tration would be if it could be reached. We cite him 
 
 " Industrial conciliation differs widely from industrial arbi- 
 tration, though the object of both is the same, the pre- 
 vention and settlement of disputes and differences between 
 employers and employed. Conciliation is not formal. It 
 does not sit in judgment. It does not necessarily imply a 
 board or court, although the best results follow when the 
 conciliation is systematic, under the influence, direction, and 
 authority of a board." 
 
 Mr. Weeks is here defining a course which has often 
 been followed. A committee of operatives, or their 
 friends, is appointed, and called a " board of arbitration ; " 
 
 1 Report of Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1881, p. 6. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 221 
 
 it investigates, hears, and advises, and its results are 
 called arbitration. I should go farther in the analysis, 
 and reach a conclusion somewhat different. There is a 
 distinction, but not a wide difference, between the actual, 
 accomplished results of all these boards and committees. 
 All arbitration in this country and in England has been 
 in substance conciliation or a failure to conciliate. The 
 final and binding decision has not enforced itself in any 
 sense which prevails in the arbitration between ordinary 
 disputants. 1 The laborers and sometimes the employers 
 would not submit in good faith to the decreed judgment, 
 the legitimated will, of arbitration. The failure was not 
 the fault of these particular individuals ; it was inherent 
 in the system which produced the circumstances. The 
 dispute was founded in force, and must finally be settled 
 by force either latent or manifest. Nevertheless, it was 
 a mode of living in decency if not in harmony; and 
 many strikes have been prevented, much strife and bit- 
 terness allayed, by these boards of arbitration, which 
 should rather be called " Conferences for Conciliation." 
 
 Since the substance of this treatise was written, there 
 has been established a successful conciliatory 
 
 . J Straiten & 
 
 arbitration in the city of .New York, which storm's 
 singularly works out in accomplished fact the * e p on ' 
 principles it lays down. Straiton & Storm, 
 extensive cigar-manufacturers, after bitter experience 
 in labor struggles (in one strike the firm lost $40,000), 
 formed with their own operatives a Board, under the 
 following preamble : 
 
 1 " In labor questions, so far as my own experience goes, arbitration 
 is never a wholly satisfactory process. I have sat more than once as 
 umpire, and never without a feeling that I was asked to pronounce a 
 judicial decision in a matter in which really there is no law to appeal 
 to. There is usually not much doubt as to the facts." Lord Derby. 
 
222 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 " Reviewing the past four years, one cannot help but notice 
 the injurious effects produced by strikes, both to the employer 
 and employe, and particularly to the latter class ; and taking 
 into consideration that these strikes invariably ended in fail- 
 ure, resulting in a gradual reduction instead of an advance in 
 wages, and that by reason of these strikes an abundant quan- 
 tity of unemployed labor of all other kinds had been drawn 
 into one branch of industry, thus considerably increasing the 
 productive force from year to year, one should naturally 
 come to the conclusion that plain common-sense should dictate 
 to every one having at heart their own interest and welfare, 
 that the proper time has come for the devisement of practical 
 measures to protect the interest of both parties concerned, 
 thus effectually and permanently closing the chasm now ex- 
 isting between employer and employe. 
 
 " Cigar-Makers' Board of Arbitration. There shall be a 
 board composed of four cigar-makers, one packer '(to be elected 
 etc. ; each department elects delegates annually, and delegates 
 elect from their number to the board), three foremen appointed 
 by the firm, and one member of the firm, ... to whom shall 
 be submitted all questions of wages, and such other things as 
 may be in dispute. 
 
 " Packers' Board. There shall be a Packers' Board, com- 
 posed of two packers, one cigar-maker (elected as above), the 
 packer'foreman, and one member of the firm. 
 
 " One of -every fifty employes shall have the privilege to 
 appear before the board to represent their case, but in no 
 case shall such representation be less than three ; . . . may 
 present their views in writing or otherwise. If verbal, they 
 shall confine themselves to the subject, and not occupy more 
 than fifteen minutes. Such representatives shall not be mem- 
 bers of the board or delegates." 1 
 
 It will be observed that each of these boards consists 
 of nine members, to which the laborers appointee and 
 the capitalizers appoint four. The laborer holding the 
 
 1 Report of Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, p. 64. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 223 
 
 casting vote is taken from the other department whose 
 interests are not in dispute at the moment. The em- 
 ployes, without any dictation from Straiton & Storm, 
 made the following report of proceedings : 
 
 " The hoard, which has heen in existence since January, 
 1879, has been used four times to date (Nov. 29, 1880), with 
 the following results : 
 
 " 1. On April 26, 1879, when six different kinds of hand- 
 made cigars were changed in their shape, the men making 
 them claiming to be entitled to an advance of $2, $1.50, 
 and $1 per thousand respectively. Result : An advance of 
 one dollar was granted on four kinds ; two kinds remaining 
 at the old standard. 
 
 " 2. On July 12, 1879, when the cigar-rollers asked for an 
 advance of fifty cents per thousand, which was granted. 
 
 "3. On Oct. 11, 1879, when the bunch-makers asked for an 
 increase of twenty-five cents per thousand, which was re- 
 jected ; but an advance of ten cents was granted on some, 
 while the others remained at the old price, which failed to 
 give entire satisfaction to all of that branch. 
 
 "4. On April 20, 1880, when the hand cigar-makers asked 
 for an advance of one dollar per thousand, the rollers fifty 
 cents, and the bunch-makers twenty-five cents, fiesult : The 
 hand-made cigars received an advance of fifty cents per thou- 
 sand, with the exception of one kind, which remained at the 
 old price ; the rollers received an advance of forty cents, and 
 the bunch-makers ten cents, per thousand. 
 
 "The Packers' Board has been used on July 12, 1880, 
 when an increase of seven and a half cents per thousand 
 was asked for to establish former price. The demand was 
 granted. 
 
 " We, the employe's of Messrs Straiton & Storm, are con- 
 vinced that the Board of Arbitration has been a success, and 
 that the objects which it had in view, and which led to its 
 formation, have been fully realized, and that it has worked 
 to our entire satisfaction." 
 
224 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 These facts should be studied carefully by every one 
 interested in these matters. Here is a distinct recogni- 
 tion and enforcement of the principles underlying every 
 contract between capital and labor. The capitalizes or 
 employers first admit that there is a market value to 
 the labor wanted for their industry; they are willing 
 to pay that sum. How shall it be ascertained ? The 
 laborers those interested in that enterprise, not a mass 
 of men segregated from society and wound into a Union 
 knot, but those workers on that spot form a small 
 representative body, which shall comprehend the desires 
 of the men, with the possibilities and limitations of 
 that enterprise. This smaller body appoints delegates, 
 who meet the delegates of the firm ; and this joint tri- 
 bunal hears the direct representatives coming fresh from 
 the workmen whenever there is cause for dispute. Here 
 are all the advantages of local knowledge, of representa- 
 tion, of deliberation through delegated responsibility. 
 
 Mark, that it is a mode of conciliation, a method of 
 bringing reason to bear on a difficult problem, and not 
 a mere court of control The power which all sound 
 thinkers admit finally abides in capital is applied very 
 gently, if at all. I cannot make this any more clear 
 than by citing the words of the employers l themselves : 
 
 " The demand is refused in toto ; labor strikes, and assumes 
 a false position ; capital follows by a lock-out, which is also 
 a false position. In both cases reason has lost its sway, and 
 passion has taken its place. . . . The employer by his up- 
 right dealings with his employes is sure to gain the respect 
 of his workmen. He insists at all times to deal with facts, 
 and not with visionary theories ; and in a board composed 01 
 both interests, in order to work at all, either one or the other 
 
 1 Report of Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, p. 71. 
 
r 
 
 LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 225 
 
 must have the majority. Now, the workmen would look 
 with much suspicion upon the board of arbitration in which 
 the employer had the majority. Say again, that the work- 
 man is naturally suspicious of his employer. He has nothing 
 but his labor, and guards the interest surrounding it jeal- 
 ously. You will perceive that we have yielded the deciding 
 voice to the workmen, and at first sight this would seem to 
 be a weakness ; but we think not. The deciding member, 
 however, is taken from a different branch of the business, 
 and is supposed to be impartial. . . . Our experience has 
 been that at no time during the operation of our board have 
 the lines been sharply drawn ; or, in other words, the vote 
 has at no time been four to five. True, it has not been as 
 yet so severely tested as it may be at some future time, be- 
 cause during its existence there has been a general advance 
 of labor." 
 
 This particular experiment may fail; but none the 
 less will it be a step forward, a movement in the right 
 direction. It attempts to work out each difficulty in 
 its natural group, under the conditions which caused the 
 difficulty. It is a social mode of working out a differ- 
 ence; while the ordinary trades-union and employers' 
 union methods first create a wide difference between two 
 orders of society, then use force on either hand to bring 
 the two sides together again. The one is the natural 
 outgrowth of an ascending society ; the other applies 
 the methods of barbarism to the new forces brought in 
 by civilization. 
 
 We must look beyond American experience and be- 
 yond the English Amalgamated Societies, wide-reaching 
 and powerful as they are, for the final outcome of the 
 theory that labor creates all things. We find The inter- 
 in the International the great association in- national 
 to which all laborers tended to be amalgamated, and 
 
 15 
 
226 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 which should finally redress all their wrongs. It is 
 true that the co-operation between the hard-headed 
 sensible working-men of England and the more specu- 
 lative theorists of the Continent was never very close 
 or effective. Nor would I hold Mr. Howell, Mr. Ho- 
 lyoake, Mr. Harrison, or the constituent working-men 
 they so well represent, responsible for the vagaries 
 into which the International has plunged society wher- 
 ever it has had full play ; but a bad social dogma is 
 finally responsible for its inevitable results, notwith- 
 standing the worthy motives and the disinterested in- 
 tentions of those who invented it. American slavery 
 did not seem to be an overmastering political force in 
 1789 or in 1820 ; but in 1861 it became a force which 
 shook every institution in the United States to its 
 foundations. 
 
 The organization 1 of the International was begun at 
 the London Exposition in 1862, and fairly completed 
 at Paris in 1864. Societies were affiliated rapidly, and 
 the first congress convened at Geneva in 1866. Dele- 
 gates assembled from France, England, Germany, Swit- 
 zerland, and other countries. A powerful strike was 
 organized at Paris in 1867 ; and the employers yielded, 
 believing that the whole force of all the affiliated soci- 
 eties had been brought to bear upon one point, and that 
 in fact as well as in name this great Association could 
 bring the working resources of all nations against the 
 employers of one district. The effect of " several bills 
 of one thousand francs each, coming from London " at 
 an opportune moment, was very great. The imagination 
 
 1 The facts relating to the International are taken from Larousse's 
 Dictionnaire Universel articles, "Association Internationale des Tra- 
 vailleurs" and "Commune," unless it is stated otherwise. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 227 
 
 of the employers was much impressed. It is needless 
 to say that these anticipated economic results were 
 never accomplished. The International never Was not 
 seriously attempted those great economic efforts practical 
 which the English Unions honestly worked }|^^ g ' 
 out into pounds, shillings, and pence. It never ions, but 
 saved or spent, as the income and the funds P lltlcal - 
 of the Unions show that the practical Anglo-Saxon did. 
 It was as a political or a socio-political force that the 
 International showed its power. It is in abeyance 
 now ; but we do not know when it will manifest itself 
 again. A false social principle may at any time show 
 itself, and result in either economic or political disaster, 
 as the case may be. 
 
 In 1868 and 1869, the society in France was invaded 
 and virtually taken possession of by Blanqui and his 
 followers of the socialist or communistic school, " the 
 Commune," in short. They proposed to overturn not 
 only the empire, but all governments based on the pres- 
 ent social order. They would substitute for this a new 
 regime, recognizing individuals and individual rights 
 only. The Emperor Napoleon, whose political digestion 
 was very catholic, sometimes oppressed and sometimes 
 coquetted with these associations. It is stated as proved 
 definitely, that about this time " the International in- 
 cluded some Bonapartist agents, apostles openly or in 
 secret, but very zealous for that grotesque thing they 
 call imperial socialism." 
 
 The aims of the reformers extended and their sphere 
 widened ; for at the Bale congress in 1868 there were 
 assembled Eussians, Austrian s, North Germans, English, 
 Spanish, Italians, and French. We will now examine 
 these aims as stated in their own language, carefully 
 
228 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 collected by Mr. Testut. 1 In the preamble to the con- 
 stitution they say : 
 
 " The subjection of the laborer to capital is the source of 
 all servitude, political, moral,and material ; for this reason 
 the economical emancipation of laborers is the great end to 
 which every political movement should be subordinated." 
 
 In the Bale congress they abolished the presidency 
 as a monarchical principle : 
 
 " We demand direct legislation by the people for the peo- 
 Its plat- pie ; the institution of collective property in land ; 
 form. the abolition of the right of individual inheritance 
 
 for capital and tools ; the establishment of co-operative work- 
 shops ; the organization of instruction, scientific, industrial, 
 etc., to be given to all without distinction ; taxes to be laid 
 solely on wealth, etc." 2 
 
 " Inheritance is the chain of the slavery of the peoples, 
 the source of quarrels, chicanery, etc. It has produced the 
 monster we call selfishness (1 'egoism e)." 8 
 
 In writing of inheritance it is said : 
 
 " Either solidarity is a right and a necessity, or it is a 
 chimera. If the first, we must embrace it with confidence ; 
 if the second, we must go back to what they call individual 
 liberty, that is, to egoism, to exclusiveness, to division of 
 interests, to the narrow and exclusive interests of family and 
 of patriotism." 4 
 
 " Everywhere the International at its foundation finds only 
 the political organization of the church, the monarchy, the 
 aristocracy, or the bourgeois ; the last, especially the radical 
 bourgeois, was the most human ; but all equally rest on the 
 exploitation of the working masses, and only dispute the mo- 
 nopoly of that exploitation." 6 
 
 1 Oscar Testut : L' Internationale, Paris. 
 
 2 Organe officiel des sections Beiges, 1869. 
 
 3 L 'Egalite, Jan 23, 1869. * Progres du Locle, 1870. 
 6 L Internationale, Sept. 5, 1869. 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 229 
 
 In crying out for revolution they claim that they do 
 not mean barricades and the slaughter of men, but that 
 they will convince the workmen morally, unite them 
 politically, and then by the " irresistible pressure of col- 
 lective force" they will overcome the bourgeois, as it 
 overcame the nobility in 1789. This was said in 1869 ; 
 we shall see at Paris, in 1870 and 1871, how these 
 pacific intentions were worked out in the remodelling 
 of a community. 
 
 In the congress at Bale it was maintained in the dis- 
 cussion that individual property paralyzes the develop- 
 ment of society and consecrates injustice and inequality. 
 They did not finally decide at this meeting in favor of 
 the complete abolition of the rights of testation and 
 inheritance, but they characterized this institution as 
 " against equality, and anti-fraternal." 
 
 The extreme tendencies of the bolder theorists of 
 this school were embodied more fully in a subordinate 
 society, the "Alliance of Geneva," presided over by the 
 Eussian Bakounine, also known under the nickname 
 of " the king of Saxony." This association was affilia- 
 ted to the International by the General Council at Lon- 
 don, in 1869. This branch society declared for Geneva 
 atheism, the abrogation of worship, the substi- Branch 
 tution of science for faith, and of human justice 
 for the divine. It proposed the abolition of and Sec- 
 marriage, whether it be a " political, religious, ularization - 
 juridical, or civil institution." Bakounine declares : 
 " I demand the destruction of all States, national and 
 territorial, and the foundation on their ruins of the 
 International State of laborers." 
 
 The complete union, which was to be the universal 
 exponent of the rights of man, was divided in 1872. 
 
230 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. % 
 
 The division was further widened at Geneva, in 1873. 
 The rivalry between Karl Marx and Bakounine and 
 others aggravated the schism. 
 
 We must now consider the history of the Paris Com- 
 mune in 1870 and 1871, and bring out the part which 
 the International performed in that monstrous 
 mune how tra g e( ty. And first we must separate care- 
 related to fully, and always keep in mind, the distinction 
 tionaP between the commune proper, the munici- 
 pal entity of Paris, and the communistic, so- 
 cialistic fungus which grew out of that old idea of 
 municipal independence. There was an intense desire 
 among many of the citizens of Paris to free it from its 
 close and centralized relation with the government of 
 France. This local and historic feeling was quite irre- 
 spective of the larger question as to what that govern- 
 ment should be, monarchical, republican, or imperial. 
 In one of their first manifestoes, published in March, 
 1871, the Central Committee say: 
 
 " The first work of those whom we elect should be the 
 Old Paris discussion and the drawing up (redaction) of their 
 municipal- charter, of that act which our ancestors of the mid- 
 % die ages called their commune. This done, we must 
 
 take measures to compel the central power, whatever it may 
 be, to recognize and guarantee that statute of the municipal 
 autonomy." 
 
 This strong passion for municipal self-government, 
 this historic sequence, that bound the Paris of the 
 boulevards and the faubourgs to the old municipality 
 which had been gradually overlaid by the centripetal 
 pressure of France, was the foundation on which the 
 Commune of 1871 was built. It is impossible to com- 
 prehend how so great a city could be administered by 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 231 
 
 so small a mob, if we do not consider the extent and 
 power of this underlying idea. " The Central Com- 
 mittee of the National Guard, or of the Eepublican 
 Federation of the National Guard," was appointed in 
 December, 1870, and succeeded to an earlier organization 
 which dated from September 4. In January, 
 
 i nt-r-i -L i .L i i - A How Inter- 
 
 1871, its organization was completed, and it nat i on ai 
 began to give general orders to control the controlled 
 battalions and even to assume the functions a i Guard U 
 of the mayors of the districts, the true basis 
 of the Commune, such as it was, and to substitute 
 its authority for that of the municipalities. The com- 
 munication with the different battalions of the Guard 
 was " most frequently through a delegate of the Inter- 
 national." The mould into which this new authority 
 was cast was the old municipal institution of the Com- 
 mune ; but the force which impelled it was altogether 
 modern and came from the working-men enrolled in the 
 ranks of the Guard. The idea which inspired these men 
 was the same which we have seen uttered in many 
 forms through the International ; namely, that the soci- 
 ety which is, is wrong ; it must be reorganized entirely 
 in the interest of the laborers who produce all that so- 
 ciety possesses, and who should therefore own the new 
 regime. 
 
 The Commune was virtually established March 18, 
 1871 ; the elections confirming it occurred on the 26th, 
 the day when the proclamation, already cited for its 
 statement of the municipal idea, was issued. Another 
 document also appeared which demanded " the organi- 
 zation of credit, of exchange, of association, to assure to 
 the laborer the whole value of his labor." The men who 
 issued these declarations were the ruling spirits who 
 
232 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 became more powerful as affairs progressed, and gave 
 Working direction to the Commune. They wished " to 
 Class is to p OSSess themselves of the progressive move- 
 other ment exclusively, to direct it, and to found the 
 classes. supremacy of the working classes, on the total 
 abolition of the other classes." Foreigners were ad- 
 mitted to the Commune under the pretext that the new 
 harmony had called into being a universal republic, of 
 which the observers say : " It was, in the existing condi- 
 tion of affairs, a folly and a fraud. We cu.i see in this 
 fact the superior influence of the International, dominat- 
 ing the Central Committee, which in its turn dominates 
 the Commune." 
 
 The elections referred to were held on March 26, with 
 the partial concurrence of the General Government, 
 which could not prevent them. " With the consent of 
 M. Thiers, who sought above all to gain time for the 
 reorganization of the army, a kind of agreement was 
 established between the mayors and the deputies present 
 in Paris." The Central Committee was an efficient 
 force, though often working secretly during the whole 
 existence of the Commune. This anomalous and form- 
 less government soon drew the power of Paris into its 
 hands, and freely administered the splendid Parisian 
 civilization according to its own capricious will. Mis- 
 guided men, starting with a blind zeal for new social and 
 political order, dragged the sober citizens after them into 
 the final disorder and ruin of the 26th of May. These 
 men were many of them sincere in the belief that a new 
 and better order could be formed through the absolute 
 destruction of the old. Men like Delescluze, that 
 lofty and austere Puritan of the Jacobins, threw some 
 rays of bright light over the dark social abyss of the 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 233 
 
 Commune. It is not within our limits to criticise the 
 government of France, whether republican or imperial ; 
 but we may express the wish that it could French 
 have better understood the condition of Paris Govern- 
 in the early days of 1871. There was an im- %*. 
 mense power in the popular zeal and devotion tend the 
 of the Parisians. Had the genius of the French C 
 government whatever its form been capable of or- 
 ganizing these independent forces, of giving them play 
 in legitimate political functions, the result might have 
 been different. Local expression would then have ren- 
 dered needless the central compression of a government 
 which could rule and reign, but could not feel or embody 
 the aspirations and desires of its own people. Had the 
 central power been wiser, and had it trusted the better 
 part of the people of Paris more boldly, it would seem 
 that the horrors of the Commune might not have dis- 
 tressed the whole civilized world. 
 
 We have no interest in the Commune except for the 
 illustration it gives of the International, and the direct 
 result it shows of the principles on which all intema- 
 such associations are founded. Take any one * ional raust 
 social right, and mass all the individuals hold- destroy all 
 ing that right into one power, the result is order - 
 the disintegration and total ruin of society. " The In- 
 ternational, it cannot be denied, has played a great part, 
 a preponderating part, in all these events [of the Com- 
 mune]. Already at the time of the first siege, toward 
 the end especially, it had a delegate in each company of 
 the battalions of the National Guard ; and when after 
 the eighteenth of March they elected new chiefs, these 
 delegates presided over the elections." 
 
 The dogma that labor creates all things, necessarily 
 
234 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 leads to the claim that all things belong to the laborers. 
 In the name of equity, the members of the International 
 asked for power. When in the course of events at Paris 
 they obtained it, like Samson they pulled down the 
 fabric of society over their own heads, as well as over 
 the social classes they would have deposed. 
 
 Mazzini is a witness certainly not prejudiced against 
 the rights of the individual man. He says of this insur- 
 Mazzini's rection : " It could only end in an explosion of 
 idea of in- materialism, and finish by accepting a principle 
 sovereign- of action which, if it had had the force of law, 
 *y- would have thrown France back into the 
 
 darkness of the Middle Ages. This principle is the 
 sovereignty of the individual, which can bring only an 
 unlimited personal license, the destruction of all author- 
 ity, the absolute negation of national existence." 
 
 In the life of every individual man and woman the 
 
 present is actual ; the past and the future are potential, 
 
 in that they enter into and modify every phase of the 
 
 present. The International philosophers pro- 
 
 In destroy- r r 
 
 ing Society posed to reverse this plain truth, and turn the 
 the abso- p ast an( j f u t ure of society into an actual pos- 
 
 lute indi- 
 vidual de- session which should be shared among the 
 
 stroys present holders of power, the individual 
 laborers and toilers of this day. All their 
 theories, common property in land, abrogation of in- 
 heritance, direct application of the machinery of exchange 
 to the reward of labor, severance of the ties of religion 
 and of marriage, tended in one direction. This aim 
 and end was the absolute freedom of the individual. He 
 must be independent of his own past, and of the past of 
 every other person ; he must be freed from all the ties 
 which might bind him to the future. The Socialistic 
 
LABOR ASSOCIATIONS. 235 
 
 idea unmakes itself in its very inception. In order to 
 return the individual to the savage ideal of Eousseau, 
 all the social factors, all the accumulated results of civ- 
 ilization, must be stripped off. That means waste and 
 destruction ; for society can work only through indi- 
 viduals, and while they are putting off the wrappages 
 of civilized life, society and civilization perish. There 
 is no intermediate ground. No possible individual we 
 can conceive of, if he should combine all the powers of 
 all the geniuses gone before, could step over from an 
 old civilization to an absolutely new social system. 
 
 The International tried the experiment, which ended in 
 the results so tersely and clearly stated by Mazzini. It 
 is true that it was only partially tried, but from Experi- 
 the nature of the case it must always be a ment par- 
 partial experiment. The disruption of an em- always 
 pire affords a great field for new social forces, must be - 
 however misguided they may be. Perhaps as much 
 force as can be concentrated at one point was brought 
 into the hands of the Socialists at Paris. It acted 
 suddenly, and almost paralyzed the society which had 
 blindly let this force escape. But France rallied to save 
 its centre. The sons of the soil, rooted in their country, 
 held fast by the ties of family and religion, led by offi- 
 cers skilled in all the old science of war, supported by a 
 government including the best and wisest of the land, 
 crushed the new-made society as if it were an egg- 
 shell. The result must always be essentially the same, 
 however and wherever the trial is made. Eussia may 
 try it some day on a grander scale ; who can foretell ? 
 But the result will be the same ; for no society is possi- 
 ble in these modern times which does not bring into 
 harmony the four great institutions, State, Church, 
 Family, and Individual. 
 
CAPITAL. 
 
V. 
 
 CAPITAL. 
 
 is not a treatise on Political Economy, but it is 
 necessary to consider some of these topics in the 
 light which that science throws upon them. I shall cite 
 from some of its masters, that we may see the meanings 
 they have assigned to the term Capital. 
 Adam Smith says : 
 
 " In the following hook I have endeavored to explain the 
 nature of stock, the effects of its accumulation into capitals of 
 different kinds, and the effects of the different employments 
 of those capitals. . . . His whole stock, therefore, is distin- 
 guished into two parts. That part which, he ex- Adam 
 pects, is to afford him this revenue, is called his Smith's 
 capital. The other is that which supplies his im- defini tion. 
 mediate consumption ; and which consists either, first, in that 
 portion of his whole stock which was originally reserved 
 for this purpose ; or, secondly, in his revenue, from what- 
 ever source derived, as it gradually comes in ; or, thirdly, in 
 such things as had heen purchased by either of these in for- 
 mer years, and which are not yet entirely consumed, such 
 as a stock of clothes, household furniture, and the like. In 
 one or other, or all these three articles, consists the stock 
 which men commonly reserve for their own immediate 
 consumption." * 
 
 He then divides Capital into two classes, called 
 " fixed " and " circulating." 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations (ed. by Thorold Rogers), vol. i. p. 275. 
 
240 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 " The general stock of any country or society is the same 
 with that of all its inhabitants or members, and therefore 
 naturally divides itself into the same three portions, each of 
 which has a different function or office." l 
 
 " Every fixed capital is both originally derived from, and 
 requires to be continually supported by, a circulating capital. 
 All useful machines and instruments of trade are originally 
 derived from a circulating capital, which furnishes the mate- 
 rials of which they are made and the maintenance of the 
 workmen who make them. They require, too, a capital of the 
 same kind to keep them in constant repair." 2 
 
 Bicardo says : 
 
 " Capital is that part of the wealth of a country which is 
 Other employed in production ; and consists of food, 
 economists clothing, tools, raw materials, machinery, etc., neces- 
 attempt to sarv to g i ve e ff ect to labor." 8 
 define it. 
 
 Eicardo does not consider the distinction between 
 " fixed " and " circulating " capital as essential. 4 
 
 J. S. Mill defines as follows : 
 
 " Whatever things are destined for this use, destined to 
 supply productive labor with these various prerequisites, are 
 Capital. . . . The distinction, then, between Capital and Not- 
 Capital does not lie in, the kind of commodities, but in the 
 mind of the capitalist, in his will to employ them for 
 one purpose rather than another ; and all property, however 
 ill adapted in itself for the use of laborers, is a part of Capital 
 so soon as it, or the value to be received from it, is set apart 
 for productive re-investment. " 6 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations (Rogers ed.), i. 277. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 280. 
 
 8 Principles of Political Economy (1821 ed.), p. 89. 
 
 4 Ibid. p. 26. 
 
 6 Principles of Political Economy, book i. chap. iv. 1. 
 
CAPITAL. 241 
 
 Mr. Mill emphasizes strongly the difference between 
 productive and unproductive investment, and produc- 
 tive arid unproductive labor ; and I shall refer to this in 
 another connection. 
 
 " Of the Capital engaged iu the production of any com- 
 modity, there is a part which, after being once used, exists no 
 longer as capital ; is no longer capable of rendering service to 
 production, or at least not the same service, nor to the same 
 sort of production. Such, for example, is the portion of 
 capital which consists of materials. . . . 
 
 " In the same division must be placed the portion of capital 
 which is paid as the wages, or consumed as the subsistence 
 of laborers. Such portion of it as the workmen consume 
 no longer exists as capital at all : even if they save any part, 
 it may now be more properly regarded as a fresh capital, the 
 result of a second act of accumulation. Capital which in this 
 manner fulfils the whole of its office in the production in 
 which it is engaged by a single use, is called Circulating 
 Capital. . . . 
 
 " Capital which exists in any of these durable shapes (i. e., 
 buildings, machinery, roads, etc.), and the return to which is 
 spread over a period of corresponding duration, is called Fixed 
 Capital." * 
 
 Professor Cairnes says : 
 
 " Those other elements [i. e. than wages] may be summed 
 up under the heads of * Fixed Capital ' and * Raw Material.' 
 Fixed Capital, Eaw Material, and Wages-Fund therefore form 
 the three constituents of Capital ; and the problem to be 
 solved is, What are the causes which, in a given field of in- 
 dustry, determine the proportion in which these three con- 
 stituents combine ? " 2 
 
 Jevons says clearly : 
 
 1 Principles of Political Economy, book i. chap. vi. 1. 
 
 2 Leading Principles of Political Economy, p. 199. 
 
 16 
 
242 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 " Capital, as I shall treat it, consists merely in the aggre- 
 gate of those commodities which are required for sustaining 
 laborers of any kind or -class engaged in work." 
 
 "With good sagacity Senior says : 
 
 " We have already defined Capital to be an article of wealth, 
 the result l of human exertion employed in the production or 
 distribution of wealth ; and we have observed that each indi- 
 vidual article of Capital is in general the result of a combina- 
 tion of all the three great instruments of production, labor, 
 abstinence, and the agency of Nature." 2 
 
 " Capital, we know, is the sum total of all the things which 
 are necessary for the production of wealth." 3 
 
 It would seem that there ought to be, as Professor 
 Cairnes says in a larger sense while discussing the whole 
 science of Political Economy, a better agreement among 
 economists in denning this important part of their subject, 
 Capital. Mr. Mill, with his customary acuteiiess, pushes 
 the definition farthest ; and in his statement the accu- 
 mulations of society are finally divided metaphysically. 
 The mind of the capitalist determines at each instant 
 what commodity shall be turned into Capital and what 
 into " Not-Capital." As if the mind of the capitalist and 
 every other agent of society were not controlled eco- 
 nomically by the law of the development of that society, 
 whatever the same may be. 
 
 Although the economists have been laboring, with 
 such success as these citations show, to classify wealth 
 into " capitals of different kinds," as wise Adam Smith 
 
 1 Theory of Political Economy, p. 214. 
 
 2 Political Economy (London, 1850), p. 60. 
 
 8 Bonamy Price, in the Contemporary Review, May, 1879. Roscher 
 defines : " Capital we call every product laid by for purposes of further 
 production." American translation, i. 150. 
 
CAPITAL. 243 
 
 puts it, yet the common mind, the great public conscious- 
 ness which expresses itself simply and in common 
 language, has used " capital " in a different sense. The 
 common meaning of " capital " includes a larger use and 
 more social quality in its functions than the 
 definitions cited would allow. Mr. Somers, in 
 his article in the " Britannica," says Capital is makes the 
 regarded as " the antithesis of Labor," but denies jjj|j^ 
 this proposition, and proceeds to define it in ac- 
 cordance with these standard authorities as " the accumu- 
 lated savings of labor and the accruing profits," etc. But 
 if this classification of capital into commodities exhausts 
 its functions, why does this " antithesis " exist and take 
 so strong a hold on all discussions of the subject ? 
 
 It will be understood that I am not contending for a 
 name, or attempting to refine a verbal difference ; I am 
 trying to discover the ideas behind the words. No 
 writer has been more careful than Mr. Mill to seek the 
 basis of his definitions, and to scrape his words clear of 
 any residuum of untruth which might adhere to them. 
 In truth, the idea of the social development of Capital 
 was never present to the mind of these writers. That 
 social power which issues through the process of capital- 
 izing uses the accumulated forces of Capital, with the 
 active effort of Labor, and welds them both into a new 
 product. The three categories of social action, as I have 
 called them, have never been apprehended in the laws 
 of political economy. The economists them- 
 selves, . by their divorce of stock, capital, capital in- 
 wealth, property, accumulated profits, or what- voives dead 
 
 T ,, ,, . Labor. 
 
 ever name we please to give these things, 
 
 from the constant movement of civilization, have given 
 
 too much ground for the assertion, by Marx and his co- 
 
244 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 workers, that capital is not a thing of life, but is " dead 
 labor." Karl Marx, although calling his great work 
 " Das Kapital," and calling it in a sub-title a " Critique of 
 Marx's Political Economy," does not define Capital; 
 theory. neither does he undertake to show the defini- 
 tions of other writers to be false. He constructs his 
 idea of Capital in a genetic manner, He says : 
 
 " The point at which Capital begins is the circulation of 
 merchandise. The historical conditions which give it ex- 
 istence are the production and the developed circulation of 
 merchandise. Modern capital may be said to date from the 
 sixteenth century when international markets were estab- 
 lished. . . . The ultimate product of this process [trade] is 
 money, and this result of the circulation of merchandise is 
 the first visible form of capital. Historically, capital is first 
 different from real property or land ; it appears as money 
 property, trade capital, and the capital of the usurer. New 
 capital always enters upon the stage the market as 
 money, which by a particular process is to be changed into 
 capital. Money as such differs from money as capital only 
 by its mode of circulation (p. 128). 
 
 " Merchandise or commodities circulate thus : C M C 
 = commodities changed into money, and then into commod- 
 ities. Specifically different from this is the process M 
 C M = money changed into goods, and then again into 
 money. Money thus circulating is changed into capital, it 
 becomes capital, and it is capital in its mission (p. 129). 
 
 " The complete formula of the latter process is M C 
 M', and M' M + A G, or equal to the original amount 
 plus an increment. This increment I call surplus value. 
 The original amount is not only preserved while circulating, 
 but is increased, it pays. This movement changed it into 
 capital (p. 133). 
 
 " The circulation of money as capital is self-centred, as the 
 utilization of its value takes place only in this recurring move- 
 ment. The movement of capital has no limitation (p. 135). 
 
CAPITAL. 245 
 
 "It is not proper to treat the value of commodities for 
 consumption or use as the real purpose of the capitalist ; nor 
 is a specific gain his purpose, but the never-resting movement 
 of making gains (p. 136). 
 
 " Money changed into or used as capital has received the 
 occult quality of producing value. It produces offspring ; it 
 lays golden eggs (p. 137). 
 
 "Capital is money which begets money. 1 This opposes 
 the true nature of merchandise, value, money, and circulation. 
 This opposition benefits but one of the three men who trans- 
 act business (p. 139). 
 
 " Commercial capital is impossible as soon as equivalents 
 are exchanged ; 2 it is possible only through the double cheat- 
 ing of the buying and the selling producer on the part of the 
 merchant who steps between them as a parasite (p. 148). 
 
 " It [capital] originates only where the owner of food and 
 commodities finds the free laborer ready to sell his labor in 
 the market ; and this one condition covers a world's history. 
 Hence, capital marks a new epoch in the social process of 
 production (p. 155)." 8 
 
 Professor Jevons, in the spirit of Kicardo, has made an 
 admirable economical definition of Capital as the " ag- 
 gregation of commodities required for sustaining labor." 
 Yet would he consider the New York Produce Ex- 
 change and the Erie Canal, through which a large por- 
 
 1 Marx fails to point out the work of the man who makes money 
 breed ; for money as such is sterile. 
 
 2 This only puts into an epigram Marx's idea of exchange, trade, 
 capital. He ignores the social nature of any common transaction in 
 labor, capital, property, money. His notion is, Labor pro- 
 duces ; it exchanges, it should exchange for an equivalent. 
 
 No increment or profit can intervene. The gain or profit 
 should go into the State. The State equalizes all things and all per- 
 sons. The only "equivalent" possible for the laborer must come 
 through the State. The practical as well as logical outcome of this 
 doctrine is in Nihilism. 
 
 8 I am indebted to C. W. Ernst for this abstract of the opinions of 
 Marx. 
 
246 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 tion of the food of English laborers passes, as commod- 
 ities ? Probably he would, in their relation to the sup- 
 port of the laborer. Then would he define the 
 gacious, but United States government to be a commod- 
 not broad ity ? But the good order of one community 
 has the closest relation to the sustenance of 
 laborers in another, as the people of Lancashire found 
 to their sorrow when the South rebelled against the 
 United States. 
 
 Mr. Mill's system is so filled with the relations of men 
 and things, it is so penetrated by his own large spirit of 
 humanity, that we might expect to find this personal 
 element in capital and capitalizing explained according 
 to his own peculiar views. But the principle in its 
 essential force does not appear in his statement. He 
 says, when viewing the production of wealth : 
 
 " We have concluded our general survey of the requisites 
 of production. We have found that they may be reduced 
 to three, labor, capital, and the"materials and motive forces 
 afforded by Nature. Of these, labor and the raw materials of 
 the globe are indispensable." 1 
 
 The producing force itself, the moving power of " pro- 
 duction " in its relation to the other elements, does not 
 show itself in his reasoning. If we should examine the 
 production of steam-power, and reduce it to these three 
 elements, the engine, water, and coal, we should have 
 a similar analysis. But where is the force 
 
 The humane 
 
 Mill not which moves either of the elements, and pre- 
 human cipitates the latent force which is to result in 
 
 enough. 
 
 the driving power of steam ? Unless there is 
 combustion, unless a great moving force from without 
 
 1 Principles of Political Economy, book i. chap. vii. 1. 
 
CAPITAL. 247 
 
 rushes in and transmutes the coal, we get no power, 
 though the constituent parts are all ready for action. 
 
 Bicardo was right when he brushed away the distinc- 
 tion between "fixed" and "circulating" capital. All 
 capital is fixed, in the same sense that heat is fixed in 
 coal. But the fixedness of the coal and that 
 of the engine and machinery differ only in ties are con- 
 degree. The element of time enters in and veniences 
 modifies the law which holds the capital, the 
 preserved force of labor, in suspense ; but time does not 
 change the essential nature of the two forms of preserva- 
 tion. The dinner the laborer carries in his tin-pail, the 
 shovel in his hand, and the road over which he travels 
 are all elements which enter into the toil of that day ; 
 each is as much a part of the labor of that day as if it 
 were a commodity of sustenance. These elements lie in 
 the social environment of capital, through which the 
 laborer moves toward his end, toward his individual 
 want. That want is meshed in the social need ; and 
 though the shoveller may be unconscious of his mission, 
 every act of his correlates him to the society which has 
 gone before. The road, whether it be the old highway 
 or the latest street railway, carries his individual feet 
 along a path which generations have worked upon and 
 smoothed into easy courses. It is the course which 
 society has marked "out for him, if he would gratify his 
 individual want, or even if he would earn his right of 
 subsistence. 
 
 Mr. Thorold Eogers came near the principle of capi- 
 talizing in his note on Adam Smith. " The fact is, the 
 capitalist employer is nothing but a representative of 
 the division of labor; or, as Mr. Wakefield corrects the 
 phrase, of employments." l 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p. 362. 
 
248 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 Professor Walker, in his excellent discussion of the 
 question of wages, also says : 
 
 " We have now to note a further source of error in the 
 almost universal neglect by the text-book writers to make ac- 
 count of an industrial function which, while the world over 
 and history through it characterizes a class no more than 
 labor or capital, does yet in the most highly organized forms 
 of industry, especially in these modern times, characterize a 
 Middleman distinct and a most important class. . . . 
 is also part This function, then, of the man of business, 
 of both middleman, undertaker, adventurer, entrepre- 
 neur, employer, requires to be carefully dis- 
 criminated." l 
 
 These three writers have recognized the function of 
 the capitalist or capitalizer as a function of industry, 
 but have failed to reach the other side of the function, 
 its relation to the product of that industry. It is easy 
 to see that their dim perception of the principle was due 
 to their defective insight into the sources of wealth 
 itself. They did not reach the spring which gave the 
 impulse to labor in its primary effort. The social need, 
 which calls out labor and releases capital, by the same 
 act funds itself through the entrepreneur into a new pro- 
 duct, a " new capital," as Mr. Mill calls it. 
 
 It might have been better if society had not concen- 
 trated so much meaning into the single term " capital. " 
 Undoubtedly Adam Smith meant that " wealth " should 
 economically cover the meaning, or nearly the meaning, 
 which I am giving to " capital." But as soon as he began 
 to move either wealth or stock, he commuted it into 
 " capitals of different kinds ; " and the usage of society 
 has gone on widening out the sphere of Capital, until it 
 virtually includes all forms of wealth as above stated. 
 
 1 The Wages Question, pp. 243, 244. 
 
CAPITAL. 249 
 
 This historical use of the word cannot be reversed now. 
 Nothing more clearly indicates the departure of Political 
 Economy from the social bearing and social nature which 
 it had in the beginning. The tendency to analyze and 
 classify has too often dried the warm blood out of eco- 
 nomic science, and has often turned its dogmas into the 
 dead fossils of a museum, when it should have breathed 
 into them the life of new organisms. 
 
 For what did men labor ; for what did they practise 
 " abstinence " ? For bread, for wealth, for the " effective 
 desire of accumulation," answers the economist, which 
 is a true answer, but does not exhaust the whole ques- 
 tion. Beside the need of labor, beside the greed of 
 wealth, there is the great social need, the moving power 
 of the whole which includes the whole. A number and 
 variety of individual wants does not equal the social 
 want of the whole, any more than several meals of 
 several kinds of food make up the whole liv- Capital 
 ing and the vital functions of the human body, vibrates 
 This social desire, this moving power of civili- Wlth hfe * 
 zation, enters into the nature of capital itself. For civi- 
 lization has to be renewed every day in all its parts, just 
 as the human body is renewed. It matters not where or 
 what the particular functions of civilization may be ; the 
 planting of land, the manufacture of fabrics, the hunt- 
 ing for furs, the ventures on distant seas, all respond to 
 the need near or remote of the civilized society of this 
 day, the environment of the reader and of me. They 
 respond through Capital, as I have described it ; through 
 the embodied social force of the time. The response is 
 through a definite process adapted to the particular de- 
 partment of human activity where the transformation 
 takes place. But one process runs through all the 
 
250 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 trades and all the manufactures ; it is the new forma- 
 tion, the capitalizing, of the old forces and old functions 
 into a new capital. The bushel of wheat growing in 
 Illinois, the silk weaving in Lyons, the sable skin bar-" 
 gained for in the hands of the greasy Jew at Novgorod, 
 all, or things like them, enter into the life which the 
 sewing girl must live, and the duchess chooses to live, 
 in London. 
 
 Thus Capital is informed with these vital forces, and 
 through the constant function and process of capitalizing 
 partakes of the moods and passions of men. The move- 
 ment of wealth is not controlled by purely physical laws. 
 The powers These are operative and take effect in due pro- 
 of will and portion ; but the human will enters with all its 
 power into the movement, and the result is 
 modified accordingly. This is no new discovery, but it is 
 overlooked in the deductions of economists. That is, the 
 constancy of this factor is not perceived. They do not 
 remember that living, wilful, restless human beings are at 
 work in every operation which economic laws are trying 
 to stratify into wealth. Contrariwise, habit, the simple 
 inertia of the will, has a force difficult to estimate in 
 any of the movements of practical life. In formulating 
 their principles into laws, the economists have generally 
 neglected this important fact, or have not given it suffi- 
 cient consideration. We project a change, which under 
 the law of supply and demand seems inevitable ; but 
 often the expected, the apparently natural, result does not 
 follow, and the most experienced and sagacious observers 
 find themselves mistaken in the effect of their plans 
 based on a good knowledge of economic conditions. 
 The minds of men impelled in a certain direction by 
 economic laws will not move thitherward and adopt a 
 
CAPITAL. 251 
 
 new habit of life, simply because old custom holds them 
 where they are. A new economic condition asserts itself, 
 one which no human foresight could have anticipated. 
 *A mixed condition consisting partly of the new force 
 or social want seeking to establish itself, and partly of 
 the old habit resisting the incoming force for the 
 time overrules the simple economic laws which prevail 
 again after the new desires have replaced the old habits 
 by habits of their own. The power which agitates and 
 conducts our every-day life is not a machine using pre- 
 scribed forces working through ' certain laws ; it is a 
 great animal, only half trained to its work. 
 
 The instinct of labor and its organizations looks 
 straight toward the objects of its own desires. They 
 will hear nothing of employer, capitalist, laws of supply 
 and demand, abstinence ; they see only labor on the one 
 side and capital on the other. In their view, capital is a 
 voracious animal born out of tyranny and nourished in 
 oppression. It pulsates with a life which forces them 
 to toil ; and they combine to resist. 
 
 In the writer's view the functions of wealth and capital 
 as enunciated by the leading English economists lead 
 directly to this social result. That is, the fossilization 
 of wealth and capital into something apart from the 
 
 daily laboring life and social movement of 
 
 J Wages- 
 
 capital, creates a desire in a certain class of Fund 
 
 men to try to get hold of that accumulation, misleads 
 
 J all parties. 
 
 As said previously, the constant generalization 
 has divorced capital from its kindred functions in social 
 life ; it has been a standing menace to the laborer who 
 would try to combine to get more of it. This tendency 
 of the economists shows itself plainly in the dogma of the 
 Wages-Fund. Professor Cairnes, following Mill, says : 
 
252 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOK. 
 
 " We are justified in laying down the following proposi- 
 tion : that the amount of -wealth in a country being given, 
 the proportion of this wealth which shall be invested in 
 industrial operations with a view to profit will depend, first, 
 upon the strength of those qualities in the average character 
 of its inhabitants which lead to productive investment, 
 what Mr. Mill calls ' the effective desire of accumulation ; ' and, 
 secondly, on the opportunities of investment open to the 
 community offering a rate of profit sufficient to call this prin- 
 ciple into activity, in a word, on ' the extent of the field for 
 investment.' . . . 
 
 "It therefore still remains for us to determine the circum- 
 stances on which depends the distribution of capital between 
 wages and the other elements of which capital consists. 
 Those other elements may be summed up under the heads 
 of ' Fixed Capital ' and ' Eaw Material.' Fixed Capital, Raw 
 Material, and Wages-Fund, therefore, form the three constit- 
 uents of Capital. 1 
 
 " The Wages-fund is stated [by Mr. Mill] to consist of two 
 distinct parts, one, the largest and by much the more im- 
 portant, constituting a portion of the general capital of the 
 country ; while the other is derived from that part of the 
 nation's wealth which goes to support unproductive labor, of 
 which Mr. Mill gives as an example the wages of soldiers 
 and domestic servants. 2 
 
 "In effect, what we find is a constant growth of 'the 
 national capital accompanied with a nearly equally constant 
 decline in the proportion of this capital which goes to support 
 productive labor. This is the inevitable consequence of the 
 progress of the industrial arts, the effect of which is to cause 
 a steady substitution of the agencies of inanimate nature for 
 the labor of man.' In making this remark it is perhaps 
 superfluous to add that it is not to be inferred from the 
 circumstance stated, that the progress of those arts is un- 
 favorable to the interests of labor." 8 
 
 1 Leading Principles of Political Economy, pp. 198, 199. 
 8 Ibid. p. 196. Ibid. p. 206. 
 
CAPITAL. 253 
 
 We cannot follow Professor Cairnes through all his 
 ingenious reasonings upon this phantasm of a wages- 
 fund, a phantasm which the economists have created, 
 not out of economic laws, but out of the false appli- 
 cation of those laws to the action of living men and 
 women. This illusion is not shared by economists 
 alone, as will be seen in the following arguments of Mr. 
 Harrison : 
 
 " Again, the sums which are absurdly calculated as ' lost ' 
 in a strike, are usually not lost at all, but only retained. No 
 doubt in every prolonged strike a great deal is lost, but it is 
 chiefly in interest upon fixed capital. To calculate all the 
 sums which might have been spent in wages as 'lost' or 
 * wasted' is simply puerile. The wages-fund, in the language 
 of economists, is the sum which the capitalist devotes to the 
 payment of wages ; and since in a general strike or lock-out 
 the owners of vast and costly factories cannot employ the 
 fund, except temporarily, in any other way, and their cus- 
 tomers have to wait for their goods, sooner or later the 
 wages-fund, or most of it, is paid to the workmen in the 
 trade. Whether it comes to them regularly or spasmodically, 
 signifies a great deal to the well-being of the recipients ; but 
 in the long run they get the gross sum, though somewhat 
 discounted." l 
 
 If Mr. Harrison had been one of the survivors from 
 the starvation at the siege of Lucknow, to be told that 
 the food-fund of the world was a fixed quantity, and 
 had accumulated by as much during the siege as the 
 sufferers had been deprived of, so that in the long run 
 he would get his equal share and be as fat as ever, he 
 would hardly have relished his own argument. The 
 whole gist of his reasoning is that laborers are not mere 
 quantities, but men. He says : " The ' human machine ' 
 
 1 Fortnightly Review, iii. 40. 
 
254 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 is a very surprising engine. It has a multitude of 
 wants, a vari'ety of feelings, and is capable of numerous 
 human impulses, which are commonly called human na- 
 ture." Again : " Nothing is more fallacious than to call 
 labor questions simply a matter of wages or money." 
 Yet when he comes to the "wages-fund" he is even 
 worse dazed by quantities than the economists whom he 
 is in the habit of rating so low. The dogma has been 
 sufficiently refuted by Professor Francis A. Walker : 
 
 " That English writers should have been misled by what 
 they saw going on around them, into converting a general- 
 ization of insular experiences into a universal law of wages, 
 is not greatly to be wondered at ; but that American 
 writers should have adopted this doctrine, in simple con- 
 tempt of what they saw going on around them, is indeed 
 surprising." x 
 
 He holds, as it seems to the writer, the true theory of 
 wages : 
 
 "A popular theory of wages is based upon the assump- 
 tion that wages are paid out of capital, the saved results of 
 the industry of the past. Hence, it is argued, capital must 
 furnish the measure of wages. On the contrary, I hold that 
 wages are, in a philosophical view of the subject, paid out of 
 the product of present industry ; and hence that production 
 furnishes the true measure of wages. The difference may be 
 found to be an important one." 2 
 
 To comprehend the bearing of this on political econ- 
 omy, we must go back to Mr. Mill : 
 
 " What supports and employs productive labor is the cap- 
 ital expended in setting it to work, and not the demand of 
 purchasers for the produce of the laborer when completed. 
 Demand for commodities is not demand for labor. The de- 
 
 1 Wages Question, p. 143. 2 Ibid. p. 128. 
 
CAPITAL. 255 
 
 mand for commodities determines in what particular branch 
 the production of labor and capital shall be employed ; it de- 
 termines the direction of the labor ; but not the more or less 
 of the labor itself, or of the maintenance or payment of the 
 laborer. That depends on the amount of the capital or other 
 funds directly devoted to the sustenance and remuneration of 
 labor." 1 
 
 The difference between the two views is important, 
 and reaches even farther than Professor Walker indi- 
 cates. Labor is paid out of its own product, 
 that is, out of " capitalizing ; " and the demand ^ es a * e 
 for commodities is the best single measure paid out of 
 of that force. I can illustrate this out of 
 actual experience. In my vocation I have 
 had the immediate direction of woollen manufactories. 
 In textile factories the dressing department is the 
 throat through which the prepared yarn must pass to 
 the weaving department, and it largely affects the whole 
 product. That is, the warp yarn is there " dressed," or 
 laid upon beams ready for the looms ; the process is the 
 adumbration of future cloth. A small number of oper- 
 atives conduct this department, say less than two per 
 cent of the number in the mill. In this case there 
 were three dressing frames and one overseer at work. 
 The superintendent said to me : " We cannot do the 
 work without another machine. The utmost these four 
 men can dress is 150 cuts per week [the cuts are lengths 
 of yarn or cloth of about 40 yards] ; last week we 
 dressed 147 and wove 158 cuts. Some looms will stop 
 lacking warps ; that will stop other machinery, and we 
 shall lose in the product of cloth while we have plenty 
 of yarn." The dressing-room was full, and to provide 
 
 1 Principles of Political Economy, book i. chap. v. 9. 
 
256 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 another machine would have been very inconvenient. 
 The operatives were paid by the day. I therefore said : 
 "As you put it, only 150 cuts can be dressed ; but try 
 this experiment : for every cut obtained over 150 offer 
 a premium of one dollar, to be divided among the four 
 men. If this does not help us, we will get another ma- 
 chine." The first week they dressed 158 cuts, and the 
 second week 164 cuts ; there was no more difficulty, and 
 the looms were supplied with warps. The superintendent 
 was a competent expert, and the process was accurately 
 gauged at 150 cuts: it was not possible to get more 
 without a change of system. This is not an exceptional 
 illustration : every man of affairs has virtually the same 
 experience. Here there was an absolute increase both 
 of commodities and labor without any change in capital 
 or wages-fund, except the slight increase of the capital 
 through a quicker movement of the raw material. If 
 demand for commodities is not demand for labor, why 
 should the writer have striven to increase the product ? 
 There was no accumulation of quick capital which im- 
 pelled the dressing department forward and resulted 
 in more wages to the weavers and all concerned. The 
 demand for the commodity of cloth drove the whole 
 mill forward, and the immediate lever was the additional 
 premium in the dressing-room, which virtually enlarged 
 the throat of the whole establishment. 
 
 The quantity of the different elements of production 
 was not changed. Their relative movement was read- 
 justed, and the whole economical momentum 
 
 HowQuan- J 
 
 titles be- was quickened. The economists often lose 
 
 come new g^ht O f this principle, which is* one of the best 
 quantities. . 
 
 assured economic laws, and it influences all 
 the quantitative laws of matter and trade. The human 
 
CAPITAL. 257 
 
 will comes in under new conditions, and transmutes one 
 hundred and fifty into one hundred and sixty or more. 1 
 This would have been regarded as impossible under the 
 previous laws. And it was impossible, until a new fac- 
 tor should come in and produce a new law through a 
 combination with old laws. Society is always ready to 
 offer the one dollar premium when it has a want to be 
 gratified; then all things affected by that want move 
 forward with a velocity which can be measured only by 
 the actual results attained. No previous experience can 
 define what the unknown power of a new social demand 
 is equal to. The whole modern industrial development 
 is largely due to the freer application of this principle. 
 More individuals have been brought forward to be free 
 actors, and not mere atoms, in old groups, classes, etc. 
 The slave, the serf, the grubbing laborer, the dependent 
 client, the ante-chambered tradesman, each and all 
 have been released from clogging fetters, and developed 
 into free men. Their individual wants have not only 
 increased the social want ; they have inflamed it, driven 
 it forward into new forms of expression. 
 
 This great force has been the mainspring of labor and 
 of the price of wages. The notion that there is a quan- 
 tity, certain or uncertain, of capital in the form Quantity of 
 of wages-fund which waits to be divided Wa s es 
 
 turns on its 
 
 among laborers, even in theory, is as absurd as relation to 
 to suppose that there was a certain quantity of Societv - 
 cloth, potential in the mill, which the amount of wages- 
 fund would limit and fix. On the other hand, when the 
 
 1 It is often claimed that this principle is wrong, and overstrains the 
 laborer in the effort of competition. Grant this, and yon take away 
 the strongest spring of progress. No one of us ever knows what he can 
 do, until he tries. Each individual must in the last resort be the judge 
 of his own capacity. 
 
 17 
 
258 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 orderly movement of this modern society is interrupted, 
 then the results from the diminishing momentum are 
 greater than the apparent cause would economically 
 indicate. These interruptions must come from vary- 
 ing causes : prosperity itself will sometimes overrun 
 the absorbing power of society, and disaster will then 
 come from too much circulation. 1 
 
 The normal movement of capital is toward larger pro- 
 duction and freer exchange, more earth products, more 
 manufactures, more trade. This larger product and 
 quicker momentum lowers prices and increases consump- 
 tion; this in its turn engenders other and varied con- 
 sumption, as I have shown, and thus the accelerating 
 movement of society goes on, with occasional drawbacks 
 not sufficient to hinder the ultimate progress. The 
 Larger laborer gets his best return, not necessarily in 
 Wage not a high er wage, but in the increased comforts 
 higher which come to him from the above movement. 
 Wage. if h e W ould increase his substance, he must 
 save a portion of his earnings, and add the power of 
 capital to his previous power of labor. This is the 
 movement which actually goes on, though there are some 
 hindrances which are not essential to the process itself. 
 The desire for profit is so keen that capitalizes and men 
 of affairs would devote capital to new production quite 
 as fast as the social need would warrant, if this natural 
 economic law were not interfered with. 
 
 When any part of the productive energy and the 
 social accumulation is taken out from this close inter- 
 relation of labor, capitalizing, and capital, and set apart 
 as a thing of life in itself, under whatever name of 
 
 1 This has been indicated by Mr. Bonamy Price in his article, " One 
 Per Cent," in the Contemporary Eeview. 
 
CAPITAL. 259 
 
 wages-fund, circulating capital, or employer's share, it 
 may be classified, it becomes a temptation to the spec- 
 ulative greed of man. The oft-quoted sailor said : " Men 
 should have equal rights, and share alike in property 
 and money." "But," said the capitalist, "you would 
 spend your share within a week." " Then," said Jack, 
 " we would divide again." Men are social beings,, not 
 generally dishonest ; and the average man will not seek 
 after his own advantage through injustice to others. 
 But men do for a class what each individual will not do 
 for himself. This is a distorted social attraction. The 
 social attraction is central, and draws the individual to 
 the grouping centre, which is the good of the whole. 
 Class attraction is tangential ; it is the self-principle 
 flattened out into a stratum of selfishness, without the 
 compensating regulation which social attraction and 
 influence begets. Class associations of laborers have 
 sought to get by force the largest possible share of this 
 " wages-fund," this ready-made money which glittered 
 in their eyes as the wealth of the Indies shone before 
 those old rovers who plundered on principle. In the 
 Homeric days heroes told mighty tales at the camp-fires, 
 and the lads listened around. The only romance was in 
 deeds of arms, or in stealing the property which some 
 one else had acquired. But yesterday I saw a boy of 
 fifteen swing himself into the tail of a huckster's cart as 
 he ran. He pulled a story newspaper from his pocket 
 before he was fairly in his seat, and began _ 
 
 J . Capitahz- 
 
 to read. There, nestling among the cabbages, m g makes 
 his legs dangling in the air, his mind went 
 into another sphere, and his imagination con- 
 quered another world. It is an every-day occurrence. 
 Commodities, trade, manufactures, move in intimate 
 
260 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 relation with the mind of man. It is not merely the 
 great thoughts of great men which affect us, but the com- 
 mon thinking of every-day people is a constant factor 
 in our daily life. The principle of capitalizing will alone 
 account for the conditions of wealth in these days. It 
 affords that ready interplay of Capital and Labor which 
 is the strongest characteristic of this age. 1 
 
 The partition of wealth into a something separate 
 from other social functions naturally led the economists 
 to idolize it, and treat it with a deference which should 
 be inhuman, so to speak. Adam Smith began : 
 
 " Parsimony, and not industry, is the immediate cause of 
 the increase of capital. Industry, indeed, provides the sub- 
 ject which parsimony accumulates. But whatever industry 
 might acquire, if parsimony did not save and store up, the 
 capital would never be the greater. Parsimony, by increasing 
 the fund which is destined for the maintenance of productive 
 hands, tends to increase the number of those hands whose 
 labor adds to the value of the subject upon which it is be- 
 stowed. It tends therefore to increase the exchangeable value 
 
 1 This statement from the " Nation," of May 13, 1880, incidentally 
 illustrates the social and political power of capital : ' ' And then capital, 
 which is now seeking new fields with a fierce greed, by which nearly 
 every government in Europe is consciously or unconsciously influenced, 
 has fixed its eye on the magnificent region known as Asia Minor, and 
 found it full to overflowing of materials for handsome returns, and which 
 nothing prevents it from getting at except insecurity and arbitrary and 
 oppressive taxation. In fact, very much the same kind of pressure is 
 beginning to bear on the Turks which our Western adventurers bring 
 to bear on the Indians in their reservations. The money markets in 
 London and Paris, now that they will not lend the Sultan any more 
 money, are beginning to insist with the subtle, silent, but always in 
 the end overwhelming, persistence which the owners of unemployed 
 capital know so well how to exert, that he must, at least, give them a 
 chance at his mines and minerals, and wheat-fields and olive-yards and 
 vineyards, and must let them carry their own police with them and fix 
 their own taxation." 
 
CAPITAL. 261 
 
 of the annual produce of the land and labor of the country. 
 It puts into motion an additional quantity of industry, which 
 gives an additional value to the annual produce." * 
 
 Mr. Mill treated it as " abstinence," and the principle 
 has been generally adopted by recognized economists, or < 
 the " orthodox " school, as they are termed. I wish to 
 consider here his doctrine of "unproductive labor and 
 consumption " : 
 
 " It is essential to the idea of wealth to be susceptible of 
 accumulation. Things which cannot, after being produced, be 
 kept for some time before being used, are never, I think, re- 
 garded as wealth ; since however much of them may be pro- 
 duced and enjoyed, the person benefited by them is no richer, 
 is nowise improved in circumstances." 2 
 
 " By unproductive labor, on the contrary, will be under- 
 stood labor which does not terminate in the creation of ma- 
 terial wealth ; which, however largely or success- Unproduc- 
 fully practised, does not render the community and tive Con- 
 the world at large richer in material products, but sum P tion - 
 poorer by all that is consumed by the laborers while so 
 employed." 8 
 
 "The distinction of Productive and Unproductive is ap- 
 plicable to Consumption as well as to Labor. All the mem- 
 bers of the community are not laborers, but all are consumers, 
 and consume either unproductively or productively. Who- 
 ever contributes nothing directly or indirectly to production, 
 is an unproductive consumer. The only productive consum- 
 ers are productive laborers, the labor of direction being of 
 course included, as well as that of execution. But the con- 
 sumption even of productive laborers is not all of it produc- 
 tive consumption. . . . There are numerous products which 
 may be said not to admit of being consumed otherwise than 
 unproductively. The annual consumption of gold-lace, pine- 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations (Kogers's ed.), i. 341. 
 
 2 Principles of Political Economy, book i. chap. iii. 3. 
 8 Ibid. 4. 
 
262 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 apples, or champagne, must be reckoned unproductive, since 
 these things give no assistance to production, or any support 
 to life or strength, but what would equally be given by things 
 much less costly." l 
 
 It is not in a narrow and parsimonious spirit that he 
 writes, as we see from the following, which is the con- 
 cluding paragraph in the chapter : 
 
 " It would be a great error to regret the large proportion of 
 the annual produce which, in an opulent country, goes to 
 supply unproductive consumption. It would be to lament 
 that the community has so much to spare from its necessities 
 for its pleasures and for all higher uses." 2 
 
 Many of the social deductions of Mill are singularly 
 opposed to his economic theories, but I do not cite him 
 to discuss this point. The fact I would insist on is, that 
 his whole theory of productive labor and consumption 
 is wrong ; and that it errs because that part of his eco- 
 nomic system is not based on sound social principles, or 
 knowledge of human nature. 
 
 Let us work out the theory that " the only productive 
 consumers are productive laborers," and that " numer- 
 ous products " (i. e. " gold-lace, pineapples, or cham- 
 pagne " ) give no assistance to production. In 1849 
 and the following years gold was discovered in Cali- 
 fornia ; miners grew suddenly rich, acquired waste but 
 fertile lands, raised flocks and herds and immense crops 
 of wheat. Now suppose that these modern economic 
 aids to production had been applied to develop the new 
 civilization of that country. We will not suppose that 
 economic disaster should come in through sudden appli- 
 
 1 Principles of Political Economy, "book i. chap. iii. 5. 
 
 2 Ibid. 6. 
 
CAPITAL. 263 
 
 cation of the theories in old countries, but only that all 
 new civilization and production should be adapted to 
 the new theory. The new farmer and ranchero could 
 buy no broadcloth or silks, because he must confine 
 himself to poncho blankets and his wife to printed cali- 
 coes, for they are more " productive " products in the 
 economic sense. He could only take from the older 
 communities an occasional saddle and bridle and the 
 commodities used by the few artisans who should sup- 
 ply the narrow " productive " wants of the rising com- 
 munity. What could be done with the surplus produce 
 of the fields, flocks, and herds which would constantly 
 increase with this "productive" parsimony? People 
 could not .immigrate and consume them, because there 
 would be no new wants in California to absorb their 
 " unproductive " energies. Older countries could not 
 take them, because they could not exchange Folly 
 their own products for them. This law of ex- of theory 
 
 , . , T -i i n J.T_ illustrated. 
 
 change is always relied on by all the econo- 
 mists. The surplus produce must Tot ; or, which is the 
 same thing economically, it would not be produced, 
 because there would be no '' effective " motive. Thus 
 purely "productive" labor and consumption would have 
 completed its social circuit, and would have ended in 
 " unproductive " abstinence from production. 
 
 Now consider what the California miner and agricul- 
 turist did in fact. As soon as he exported any produce, 
 or we will say any agricultural produce, because the 
 economists differ as to the economic effect of gold, he 
 began to import " gold-lace, pineapples, and champagne," 
 or similar articles. He not only drank the champagne, 
 but employed a man to uncork the bottle, and trimmed 
 his coat with gold-lace, if he had that sort of fancy ; 
 
264 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 or, more probably, he would give the militia company, 
 which was the stay of good order in the next village, 
 a uniform, and put the gold-lace on their coats. He 
 would consume silks and champagne, which would allow 
 France to take a portion of his surplus, and other arti- 
 cles from England, from the Eastern States, from every- 
 where ; and this his " unproductive consumption " would 
 feed productive consumption all the world over. 1 
 
 This may not be the method by which the economists 
 would move the world forward in the production, con- 
 sumption, and reproduction of wealth. It is the only 
 method humanity has ever adopted : and it is based, not 
 on the " productive " division of labor as Mill and econ- 
 omists generally define it, but on the social need of a 
 whole community : one part is no more productive than 
 another part in the immediate consumption and repro- 
 duction. 2 Undoubtedly some capital or wealth must be 
 accumulated or parsimoniously saved as the process of 
 consumption goes on. But that accumulation accords 
 with the law of social proportion, a most intricate 
 combination of laws growing out of all the economic 
 laws working into certain social laws. 
 
 1 Bandrillart (Histoire du Luxe i. 52) holds that there is a natural 
 order of social development, beginning with the useful and neces- 
 sary, and passing on to the luxurious and beautiful. Nay, more, that 
 often the development of the superfluous is anterior to that of the nec- 
 essary. " To bring in progress it is not enough that a want exist, it 
 is imperative that it be felt. Only on this condition can it become a 
 principle of activity " (p. 56). 
 
 2 " Agriculture produces grain, which is indispensable, and tobacco, 
 which is not ; industry, cloth as well as lace ; commerce draws from 
 the same part of the world rhubarb and edible birds' nests ; and so, to 
 services belong the indispensable ones of the educator and judge, as 
 well as those of the rope-dancer and bear-leader, which can be dispensed 
 with. Indeed, the dividing line between material and intellectual pro- 
 duction cannot, by any means, be closely drawn." Hoscher's Political 
 Economy (Amer. Trans.), i. 176. 
 
CAPITAL. 265 
 
 It is astonishing how theories like these mislead men 
 of sense, and the absurdities they develop are among 
 the most curious of mental phenomena. Mr. Senior 
 is certainly a learned, an able, a scientific economist, and 
 this is his notion of " unproductive expenditure " : 
 
 " So far as the husbandman takes just enough of the least 
 expensive food, is just sufficiently clad with the Grimhu- 
 simplest raiment, and inhabits a dwelling just morofthe 
 sufficiently weather-tight and spacious to protect economist - 
 him from the seasons, he is a productive consumer. But his 
 pipe and gin, and generally speaking his beer, and the hum- 
 ble ornaments of his person and his dwelling, form his unpro- 
 ductive consumption. ... If a judge, or an ambassador, 
 required by his station to support an establishment costing 
 .2,000 a year, should spend 4,000, half of his production 
 would be productive, and the other half unproductive. It 
 would be a great mistake, however, to consider the third foot- 
 man behind his coach, though a mere useless weight to the 
 horses, an unproductive consumer." 1 
 
 These statements are not jokes, but scientific argu- 
 ments. But what court fool in cap and bells ever made 
 more ghastly jokes? The "just sufficiently weather- 
 tight" is exquisite in its kind. One shingle more, or 
 one straw more, in the thatch, would have disordered the 
 universe of political economy. But a third footman 
 might possibly be jolted through, and social order be 
 saved thereby ! Is it strange that Proudhon gave the 
 economists some ugly twists with his unscrupulous 
 logic ? 
 
 The parsimonious accumulators of capital are like the 
 swamps which soak up abundant rains and give out 
 reserved supplies when the river falls, and thus sets the 
 latent gravitation of the water free. But suppose the 
 
 1 Political Economy (London, 1850), p. 56. 
 
266 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 country were all swamp, where would be the power in 
 the water, or the capital which it symbolizes ? The power 
 of the water is not in the swamp, in the reservoir, but in 
 the flow of the river. The lowering force in the stream 
 is as essential as the accumulated force in the swamp ; 
 the potentiality of the reservoir would be as nought, if 
 there were no movement in the great body of water to 
 which it is tributary. 
 
 We can see the outcome of these principles more 
 readily in a new community, and particularly in such 
 dramatic spectacles of civilization as California and 
 Australia afford us. But the same controlling force is 
 at work in every community of every civilized land. 
 An immense industry is concentrated in the Mediter- 
 ranean trade, as it is called. The chief basis of this 
 trade is oranges and other things equivalent to Mr. 
 Mill's pineapples. It ramifies over all the countries 
 which do not grow semi-tropical fruits. It is as solid 
 and productive in its character as any industry in the 
 world. People, well or ill, like oranges ; and the desire 
 stimulates them to effort, and in some way they earn 
 money to gratify it. Champagne may not be the highest 
 aesthetic agent, but put a case of it with a ,box containing 
 the volumes of Mr. Mill's excellent works into ninety- 
 nine one hundredths of the homes of the civilized world, 
 and see which would be the " productive " agent for use 
 and consumption. Gold-lace played a great part in the 
 industry of the Middle Ages, and at about the same time 
 the finest energies of this land were employed 
 finally sub- in producing wampum. Neither one of these 
 ject to the ar ticles is much appreciated by sensible peo- 
 ple now, but in their day they gave a form to 
 the social want of the time. We must not inquire too 
 
CAPITAL. 267 
 
 curiously, nor attempt too closely to gauge the nature of 
 man with our economic compasses and calipers. The 
 individual man, the laborer, in this generation has, and 
 for many generations to come will have, some desires of 
 his own. 
 
 " A poor thing, sir ! but mine own," says Touchstone. 
 These minute individual desires fashion the wondrous 
 social want which moves the world of civilized man. 
 Capitalizing gives this mighty force an expression modu- 
 lated like the action of Nature herself. The flavor and 
 color of these human desires must be embodied in Capi- 
 tal, the final resource of society. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 
 
VI. 
 
 SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 
 
 TT is obvious that this social development which we 
 -* have tried to sketch has stamped its characteristic 
 features not only upon every institution, but upon every 
 individual of the higher races. Somewhere in the 
 remote past, the great races speaking the Aryan lan- 
 guage were moved by a profound impulse that became 
 an organic force, and finally carried them out of the 
 tribe into nations and states. This profound social prin- 
 ciple, this divine political instinct, took different forms ; 
 it branched into the States of Greece and Eome in 
 Southern Europe, and it grew into the minute social 
 structure of feudalism in Northern Europe. 
 
 With our limited powers we are obliged to consider 
 mankind, if not in bulk, at least in masses; and we are 
 forced to treat individual men and women as parts of 
 races, nations, and periods. Nevertheless, mankind is 
 man. Every man and woman who sailed with Colum- 
 bus, or landed with Smith in Virginia, or from the 
 " Mayflower " in New England, bore with them, in their 
 own blood and bone, all the development, all the civi- 
 lized and civilizing structure brought over from the 
 Aryan centuries, not to speak of the wide-reaching in- 
 fluences derived from other races. These individuals 
 came to this new world, bringing the old institutions ; 
 but they planted these institutions freed from the en- 
 tangling undergrowth which fettered them in the older 
 
272 ^ THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 soil, where they sprung into life. These men and women 
 planted a society which should be both old and new. It 
 brought over from ancient life that two-fold 
 of Social organism which I have sketched, and which 
 represen- rests on both persons and property. This prin- 
 
 tation. . , ., 4.- i -U r 
 
 ciple of social representation, which is far 
 deeper and more powerful than our modern political rep- 
 resentation, one of its offshoots, brought society through 
 the ancient and mediaeval times. It manifested itself 
 not only in the aristocracies of birth and privilege, but 
 in the corporation and the guild, as I have attempted to 
 show. The European emigrants and pilgrims brought 
 the results of all this life and culture, each according to 
 his experience. 
 
 These people were true to the old forms of settled 
 living, making their community, as Tocqueville saga- 
 ciously observed, one of the oldest societies on earth. 
 They also carried deep in their bosom another 
 ^ ea Destined to work the greatest changes in 
 human history. This idea, this principle, took 
 ^ orra * n ^ e Renaissance, i n the new time ; and 
 though it worked through all the European na- 
 tions, it produced the greatest effects in the New World 
 where the ground was open for the outgrowth of new 
 institutions and social experiments. This principle con- 
 sisted in the elevation of the person, not as a mere ele- 
 ment or factor in society, but in himself. Society should 
 improve itself, not through the elevation of a few repre- 
 sentative individuls, whether nobles, artisan corporators, 
 or guild brethren, but through the enfranchisement and 
 elevation of every person in its ranks. I do not say 
 that the movement was complete or perfect, that it 
 always accomplished its ends ; but it constantly tended 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 273 
 
 in this direction. It was not a local spasm, affecting 
 one race or community, but a wide movement, reaching 
 from Italy to Norway and Scotland, to New England 
 and Georgia. 
 
 The old organism, I have said, was two-fold, resting on 
 person and property. It was almost impossible, as Sir 
 Henry Maine insists, for a noble in the olden time to raise 
 or to sustain himself without property. In the mediaeval 
 days, scholars and thinkers were generally proud bish- 
 ops and gentlemen, or poor clerks and priests dragged 
 at the heels of a nobleman's retinue. Person and prop- 
 erty moved together. The new time changed all that. 
 The great idea slowly germinated that God is in man, 
 that each man and woman has a single and direct rela- 
 tion with the Creator, and that this relationship is the 
 most important factor in human society. This thought, 
 though it appears so simple in our day, was a renovating 
 force of enormous power when it began to work in the 
 forms of society, when it was first put into the daily 
 life of individuals and communities. 
 
 It changed the relations and functions of person and 
 property, though it could not change their essential 
 nature. The social institution of the person was not 
 divorced from property, but became partially indepen- 
 dent of the great social forces embodied and consolidated 
 in property. The individual had become so important 
 in himself, he was needed for so many opportunities, 
 that society began to look to the individual person as 
 an essential part of itself, as it had looked on a noble 
 or a priest. A scholar, an inventor, a brave but poor 
 man, became a constituent representative of social force 
 and privilege in himself, and not because he was in the 
 train of a noble or a servant of the Church. This was 
 
 18 
 
274 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 not a mere birthright conferred on every human an- 
 imal born with two legs. Each man had to win for 
 himself a new recognition, or drop into the atomic sea 
 of living units who make the mass of mankind. This 
 is the essential character of the institution of the person 
 in modern society, which I have tried to set forth. It was 
 and is the privilege of a man to be and to do ; not only 
 this, but to be better and to do better each year of the 
 world's life. This principle lives and works in spite of 
 the dark shadows of pessimism, and it enlarges human 
 happiness with every revolution of the sun's light. 
 
 In America, where society is comparatively elastic, 
 this social power of the personality is not transmitted 
 by birth as a rule. Property and privilege may prop 
 and sustain a weak individual for a time, but 
 of Ameri- life moves so rapidly that he soon falls unless 
 can Soci- j^ can crea te new strength. A certain stand- 
 ard of ability must be rendered, or society will 
 not trust its responsibilities to the person. The laws 
 of inheritance reflect this social instinct. The early 
 Americans guarded the elective social right very jeal- 
 ously, and took care lest property should fix itself and 
 continue without regard to persons. It mattered not 
 whether fortunes were large or small, they have rarely 
 lasted through three generations in this country. In 
 the rare instances, where they have endured so long, 
 they have been maintained by persons of exceptional 
 strength and wisdom. 
 
 In the old time, social leaders must be strong men, or 
 women with the habits of men. They must be brave, 
 resolute, rich, able to sue and be sued, strong in retainers 
 to attack or to defend themselves and those under them. 
 These were the leaders, the persons; the rest were cli- 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 275 
 
 ents, vassals, serfs, slaves, or outcasts, men of no tribe, 
 " broken men." 
 
 In the new time the tribal household and feudal 
 organizations had gone out, though they had in- 
 grained themselves in the structure of every nation 
 and every individual. The State had been a polit- 
 ical or at best a religio-political organism. " The 
 Senate and the Eoman People" meant the patricians 
 and the few organized groups making the citizens of 
 Eome ; there was no popular representation in the mod- 
 ern sense. The State then rested on heads of families, 
 households, and corporations. 1 "It ignored the social 
 functions, and made the strong persons the heads of 
 organisms, responsible for their proper administration. 
 And the French Louis said : " The State, it is I." In 
 the new time the State gathered into itself not only 
 the patricians and landholders, but the clients, 2 serfs, 
 homeless and broken men. JSTot that it gave them im- 
 mediate representation, the movement is not completed 
 
 1 The Koman Empire took barbarians from Central and Southeastern 
 Europe, and rooted them to the soil in Gaul as colons. These serfs be- 
 came real estate, and were sold with the soil. American negro slavery 
 fastened the slave to the person of the master. Now, skilful laborers 
 start with the early wheat crop in Texas and drive the reaping ma- 
 chines through it. Then they pass with the ripening crop through 
 Missouri, Kansas, and Minnesota, going from machine to machine, to 
 which they bring the finest skill at the least cost. The agricultural 
 laborer, from a mere root in the Gallic soil, has become a person, em- 
 bodying social force, and carrying with him all the rights property can 
 give a citizen. 
 
 2 I am indebted to Dr. Hearn for this suggestion of points hinted at 
 rather than treated in the "Aryan Household": " 1. The distinction 
 between the Populus in the strict sense, whether in the true clan or the 
 artificial clan, and the dependents, rustics, clients, or whatever else 
 they may be called. 2. The influence upon the latter class of the State, 
 and the growth of a free wage-earning population as a development of 
 later political history." 
 
276 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 to-day. The constant problem for modern statesmen 
 has been to elevate these new classes of citizens fast 
 enough, and not too fast It was the new recognition 
 of man as man. And the successful governors have been 
 those who could graft these new citizen scions upon the 
 old institutions of property and social organization. 
 
 The pilgrims and cavaliers brought into America the 
 Town and spirit f organization l which is born into all 
 County Or- English-speaking peoples. In the New Eng- 
 ganization. land ^^ planted the town, the best exponent 
 of popular government the world has ever known. In 
 Virginia and other colonies they used the county for the 
 basis of organization. This only carried over the town, 
 in a somewhat enlarged and expanded form, into the new 
 conditions of colonial life. It is now admitted that the 
 English county did not proceed from the king or king- 
 dom, but that the kingdom, the larger sovereignty, came 
 from the union of the smaller districts. The parishes, 
 manors, hundreds, and tithings aggregated into counties; 
 the shire grew out of the land, and the sheriff grew out 
 of the older governments of the people. 
 
 Virginia affords interesting illustrations of the out- 
 growth of private property on the one hand, and on the 
 other the development of representative government out 
 of corporate sovereignty. It was not until the third 
 charter was granted from the crown that the "incipient 
 establishment of private property" 2 began, and a few 
 acres of ground in severalty were assigned to each citizen 
 
 1 " In the early history of the United States, nothing is more re- 
 markable than the uniform attachment of each colony to its franchises ; 
 and popular assemblies burst everywhere into life with a consciousness 
 of their importance and an immediate capacity for efficient legislation." 
 Bancroft's History of the United States, i. 250. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 144. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 277 
 
 for his own orchard and garden. This seems to have 
 been a personal right conferred on all the citizens to- 
 gether, for there had been a mixed condition of property 
 in land from the first settlement. Those who emigrated 
 at the expense of the corporation worked on the corpo- 
 rate lands ; those who came or sent emigrants at their 
 own expense received one hundred acres of land for 
 each emigrant. 1 
 
 But the political change instituted by this charter 
 was still more pregnant. The governing power trans- 
 mitted from the crown had heretofore rested in the coun- 
 cil of the company. Through this charter it passed into 
 the people, and in the next century the crown found 
 that it carried sovereignty with it. Only eight years 
 after, the people had learned to use their privileges, and 
 the first colonial assembly in Virginia was assembled. 2 
 The unit of representation in this interesting body was 
 the borough. 
 
 For reasons lying beyond our discussion this looser 
 form of organization suited the American colo- g over . 
 nies where there were large landed estates, and eignty 
 where agriculture was the chief pursuit of the crops 
 people. The families occupied farms and kept some of 
 the characteristics of the old Aryan and Eoman house- 
 hold. The freemen the representatives of these fami- 
 lies, or of property, or of some social right met in a 
 district assembly, which sent delegates to the general 
 assembly, court, or legislature ; and this union of the 
 smaller bodies governed the colony. The county differed 
 
 1 Bancroft : History of the United States, i. 149. 
 
 2 " The governor, the newly appointed council, and two representa- 
 tives from each of the boroughs (hence called burgesses) constituted the 
 first popular representative body (1619) of the Western Hemisphere." 
 Ibid. i. 153. 
 
278 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 in form, but not in essence, from the town. Here was a 
 municipality in the egg, a corporation in embryo, which 
 held sovereignty in its blood, and which would finally 
 become the sufficient foundation of a State. The town 
 of Paxton 1 in Massachusetts, with its five hundred inhabi- 
 tants, declared war against George the Third and the Eng- 
 lish parliament on its own account. It gravely ordered 
 its officers to buy powder to fight the king. King, lords, 
 and commons did not know that there was a sovereign 
 power in this little company of free men and women. 
 But the town of Paxton, as well as others, knew it; and 
 the result proved that the whole organism of a State 
 was enfolded in these little republics, which have talked 
 much of democracy, but have been democratic only in 
 name. The clergy, lawyers, and physicians, the larger 
 proprietors where there were any, took the social 
 responsibility of the lords, the farmers stood for the 
 commons and gentry, thus making an order of nobility 
 though without the titles of nobles, such as I have 
 described under the symbol of the person; and this order 
 has been constantly widening since. 
 
 The famous Plymouth compact is well known. When 
 the settlements began to extend, " two sufficient men, 2 
 one of Yarmouth and another of Barnstable," were annu- 
 ally empowered " to hear and determine suits and con- 
 troversies betwixt party and party within the township, 
 not exceeding three pounds." The same organizing 
 
 1 At a meeting in 1774, the town voted unanimously that the act of 
 Parliament for regulating the Government of Massachusetts Bay should 
 not "take place." At a subsequent meeting they appointed Moore, 
 "Witt, Earle, Moore, and Brown a committee, and afterwards ordered 
 them " to buy two half barrels of gunpowder in addition to the present 
 stock." 
 
 2 Palfrey : History of New England, ii. 15. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 279 
 
 spirit which had appeared in Virginia achieved still 
 greater results in the New England. The Maturit of 
 town, 1 not the borough, but a matured munici- the Muni- 
 pality, sprang from the common brain of these cl P allt y- 
 hardy yeomen and enlightened gentlemen. As early 
 as 1644, the people of Dedham, Masssachusetts, set 
 off lands for a free school. The whole polity of an 
 incipient State was carried in the simple organizations 
 of these early republics. Political, civil, ecclesiastical, 
 and social functions all worked together in the life of 
 these stalwart citizens. 
 
 They worked not always in harmony. The men of 
 Boston and Salem determined to have a homogeneous 
 community in all its ecclesiastical and political tenden- 
 cies. Eoger Williams differed from them both as to 
 land tenure and as to liberty of conscience. The Quak- 
 ers admitted no ecclesiastical supremacy on earth. 
 
 The settlement of Williams and his associates in 
 Rhode Island is important from our point of view, 
 because it was a branch of an offshoot, or rather a 
 branch detached, which finally formed and attached it- 
 self to the parent trunk. Plymouth and Virginia took 
 their sap of sovereignty from the parent trunk. The 
 written compact 2 under which Providence was settled 
 
 1 Land was set off by the General Court, and the church and meet- 
 ing-house were first arranged. " Almost from the beginning each town 
 had the following civil officers, chosen by its own freemen ; namely, a 
 clerk, a treasurer, a sealer of weights and measures, one or more sur- 
 veyors of highways, a constable, and one or more tithing-men. Mean- 
 while the persons exercising ecclesiastical functions were officers of the 
 same community, elected by the same constituents." Palfrey's New 
 England, ii. 14. 
 
 2 " We, whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the town 
 of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active or passive obedi- 
 ence to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for public good 
 
280 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 dates from 1637. The Parliamentary Charter for New- 
 port and Khode Island was not received in the colonies 
 state of until 1644. 1 For seven or eight years these 
 Siaud a g vernm ents lived suspended in mid air, as it 
 "lively ex- were. Like orchids, they left the political soil 
 periment." O f Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, and prop- 
 agated themselves in the atmosphere of popular sover- 
 eignty and orderly government, which is breathed by 
 the Anglo-Saxon people. These settlements maintained 
 themselves in the midst of the Indians, and disputed 
 vigorously with their more powerful neighbors, Massa- 
 chusetts and Connecticut, which pressed for their terri- 
 tory on either side. 
 
 This " lively experiment " well illustrates the innate 
 capacity of the early Americans for self-government. 
 When the charter arrived from England, then the liber- 
 ties of the people had an assured foundation, as well as 
 a local habitation. Ehode Island has exercised the sov- 
 ereign powers of a State ever since. 
 
 We remark that they made the family the unit and 
 basis of the community. They had no authority from 
 
 of the body, in an orderly way, by the major assent of the present in- 
 habitants, masters of families, incorporated together into a town fellow- 
 ship, and such others whom they shall admit unto them, only in civil 
 things." Arnold's History of Rhode Island, i. 103. 
 
 They seem to have gained some knowledge of State-making ; for 
 two years later, in 1639, when they founded Pocasset and Newport, 
 they not only pledged themselves to each other, but also to the absent 
 king: "We whose names are underwritten do acknowledge ourselves 
 the legal subjects of King Charles, and in his name do hereby bind our- 
 selves into a civil body politicke, and do submit unto his lawes accord- 
 ing to matters of justice. . . . According to the true intent of the 
 foregoing, wee whose names are above particularly recorded do agree, 
 jointly or by the major voice, to govern ourselves by the Ruler or 
 Judge amongst us in all transactions for the space of one year, he be- 
 having himself according to the tenor of the same." Ibid. i. 134. 
 
 1 Ibid. i. 114. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 281 
 
 the crown ; that was to come later, as we have described. 
 The Puritans had made the town a joint ecclesiastical 
 and political corporation ; 1 but after their experiences in 
 Massachusetts, Williams and the Quakers gave the body 
 politic authority " only in civil things." The control of 
 the conscience, which the crown or sovereign power 
 of the State had gradually relinquished, was here taken 
 away from the municipality also. Government was 
 instituted to maintain order ; the individual conscience 
 was left to itself and to God. 
 
 Thus we see Society organizing itself under different 
 conditions, by laws as certain as those con- 
 
 J . State grows 
 
 trolling the crystallization of water. A spicula O ut of 
 appears among the liquid particles ; it attaches sma11 as ~ 
 
 sociations. 
 
 itself to others, and stretches into a needle, 
 shoots across to other little solid bars, and a film spreads 
 over all the moving liquid ; gradually the water is formed 
 into one whole mass of crystals, and a new organism has 
 been created out of air and water. 
 
 Association, the tendency to fellowship, the desire of 
 mortals to give and get strength, this furnishes the 
 great moving power which binds communities together. 
 This power is severely conditioned, and moves under 
 social laws which have developed according to the cir- 
 cumstances of the various races. All these organisms, 
 tribe, family, corporation, town, and city, are diff- 
 erent means of working the body politic, organs which 
 finally articulate in the larger life of the State. 
 
 The town is only a more simple form of the municipal 
 corporation which culminates in the city. It has been 
 claimed that the town is a government coming imme- 
 diately from the people, while the city governs through 
 
 i See Note, p. 279. 
 
282 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 representatives of the people. But this is a distinction 
 of form rather than substance, of degree rather than 
 kind. Democracy, the immediate action of the people, is 
 often treated as if it were a means of direct inspiration. 
 Heedless people sometimes treat it as if each individual 
 were filled by a divine afflatus, which in some way 
 instantly lifts the whole community into a higher sort 
 of political action. History shows the fact to be pre- 
 cisely opposite. The people act magnificently wher- 
 ever occasion requires ; but they act through the fixed 
 organs of social responsibility, the trained functions of 
 their past life. The demos, the deme itself, is or was 
 an organization, not a mere liquefaction of individual 
 units. 
 
 The village is a lesser city, a closer aggregation of 
 people than the town can give to its scattered members. 
 This kindred of neighborhood develops the latent soci- 
 ality of the town, and civic intercourse and courtesies 
 begin. It is a city in the germ. 
 
 The modern State, as we remarked, did not destroy 
 the old social institutions, in raising persons and indi- 
 viduals into higher social activity ; it united the two 
 streams into one current of life. This union 
 1 y ' is "developed most completely in the modern 
 city. Here persons, property, and social order are work- 
 ing together in the new harmony, which we now call 
 civilization. It will be interesting to study the life of 
 a city in America, to note how complex it is, and what 
 a complete social organism it has established for work- 
 ing out the wants of the people of this time. It is very 
 like mediaeval towns, and still more unlike them. It 
 gives the citizen of worth and social power great op- 
 portunities for activity ; yet it holds him hard and fast 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 283 
 
 as one unit, one integral part of the State. He has no 
 privilege of caste or guild or church ; yet as a man he is 
 stronger in his modern right than those institutions 
 were in their older privilege. 
 
 It would be difficult to trace these principles in the 
 large cosmopolitan cities, though they certainly exist 
 there. But I have taken the facts of the present life 
 of a city of one hundred thousand people, and they are 
 significant in their social bearing. Hardly any member 
 of this community is so poor that he is not associated 
 somewhere, bound into some organism outside himself 
 or his own family. These various associations fall into 
 three great groups, political, religious, and social : 
 
 1. The Municipality, which includes all the organs 
 of the political life of these 100,675 individ- Itg Q ^ 
 uals. This includes 35 associations, 25 of zation 
 which belong to the municipality proper, and throll g h 
 
 , ,. . T association. 
 
 10 comprise the organizations of the political 
 parties. 
 
 2. The Church, which embodies the religious life, 
 and is supplemented by another group which carries 
 the religio-social life. These groups number 286 asso- 
 ciations and 83,619 members, many persons being in- 
 cluded in both. 
 
 *3. Social Institutions, divided into: (a). Social; 
 which comprise the social activities of individuals put 
 forth beyond their own families (this comprises 486 as- 
 sociations, with 84,758 members). (&) Industrie-Social ; 
 which give play to the efforts of individuals in labor 
 and the creation of the means of subsistence (this divi- 
 sion embraces 444 associations). 
 
 This record is necessarily incomplete, for social statis- 
 tics are a new field for inquiry. But the parts omitted 
 
284 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 would add to the complexity of the social structure if we 
 had them all present in our sketch. Here are 1,251 
 associations of which I have a positive record, though I 
 have not been able to obtain the membership of a few 
 of them ; if obtained, these members -would increase 
 the totals of the persons enumerated. The most in- 
 teresting group in this connection is Social (3 a). Four 
 hundred and eighty-six organizations divided as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 Athletic Organizations 20 
 
 Benevolent 47 
 
 Educational 126 
 
 Industrial (not producing organizations) . . 9 
 
 Masonic 27 
 
 Medical 10 
 
 Military 23 
 
 Miscellaneous 15 
 
 Mutual Benefit 27 
 
 Musical 67 
 
 Odd Fellows 39 
 
 Social 44 
 
 Temperance . : 32 
 
 486 
 The Industrio-Social group (3 5) is divided as follows : 
 
 Banking Associations 38 
 
 Business " 341 
 
 Savings Banks * 11 
 
 Speculative Organizations 54 
 
 444 
 
 The classification is not absolute. The military or- 
 ganizations, for example, are partly municipal and partly 
 social. 
 
 1 These include 50,827 depositors. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 285 
 
 Here are 1,251 organizations beyond families and 
 partnerships. Generally they are legally incorporated, 
 and all have the substance of the corporation. Some 
 persons belong to as many as twenty different organiza- , 
 tions ; these individuals are thoroughly incorporated into 
 the body politic. The numerals given are nought, except 
 as they indicate the structural organs behind them. 
 These figures reveal the significant fact that there is a 
 minute social organism which the State, as we usually 
 consider it, does not show at all in its enumeration of its 
 resources. It is true that there are only 16,631 registered 
 voters, but these represent all classes. There are 44,217 
 individuals recorded as employed in productive industry 
 (including the professions). Probably the large majority 
 of the other portion of the population are children, or 
 engaged in domestic service. 
 
 This social organism embraces in substance the whole 
 community. The number of persons not in- 
 cluded in any of these societies is insignificant, 
 and would not affect any social or political reaches 
 issue. It is only when the order of a society cJ^f 1 &U 
 based on persons and property is broken, that 
 the disorganization of a mob, or the disaster of a riot, 
 prevails. It is not the substratum, the "dangerous 
 classes," which makes the conflagration of a mob. These 
 classes furnish the fuel only, the fire originates else- 
 where. 1 This organism embodies the life of a people ; 
 
 1 This was proven in the famous riot at Pittsburg. This arose be- 
 cause the local community was out of sympathy with the great Cor- 
 poration of the Pennsylvania Railway. This community, not foreseeing 
 the consequences of social disorganization, allowed a mob to overpower 
 the police and soldiery, and to murder, rob, and burn at will. "When 
 these same citizens found that the destruction of the railway property 
 was being followed by the ruin of all property, they rallied to the cause 
 
286 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 it embodies labor as well as capital, and capital as well 
 as labor. You cannot run a line through' these associa- 
 tions, dividing one from another, and say this belongs to 
 capital, that belongs to labor. The results of both forces 
 are contained in this great body of Society, in which all 
 are interested, in which all live, and for which all must 
 die if the sacrifice be demanded. This organism is an 
 orderly development reaching backward into the past, 
 and filled with germs of promise for the future. The 
 old Koman household was quite as essential to domestic 
 order and comfort as the Eoman municipality. The 
 German spirit of individual independence was also ac- 
 companied by a tendency to association. Altogether 
 and in common they worked out representation, and 
 gave the powers of combination which could form the 
 English and American communities. All these inheri- 
 ted tendencies work together in American society, and 
 give the detailed results we have set forth. 
 
 We must pause in this development of the town, 
 county, village, city, the whole American State, in 
 short, to consider two forms of institutions which lie 
 just outside these common and historically developed 
 organs of the State. One of these is built upon trade 
 exchange, and the employment of labor, working through 
 corporations, or co-operative associations, chiefly in 
 England. The other form is the social, or religio-social, 
 community in America, which has separated itself from 
 the ordinary municipality as far as possible, and has 
 
 of order and good government. The riot was quelled by very simple 
 means (patrols of citizens armed with base-ball bats made one ele- 
 ment) as soon as the substantial persons of the community showed 
 that they would rebuke disorder. The verdict of damages laid upon 
 this cowardly municipality was and is an excellent lesson for all cities 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 287 
 
 formed a corporation of its own, administered for the 
 benefit of its own members. 
 
 In Co-operation a new social order is conceived of, 
 and it has been partially worked out in these associa- 
 tioDS which have gained new life within a gen- 
 eration. The moving impulse here is in the 
 
 same idea. We have already discussed the principles 
 proposition that labor produces all the values of lotion?' 
 society, and should possess them through a new 
 and better process of distribution. Walker, in his treatise 
 on wages, has shown that the main motive of the co- 
 operators is "to be rid of the entrepreneur." We can leave 
 out the capitalizer, that is, replace him by a laborer 
 who is an inferior operator, but whether society will 
 gain thereby remains to be proved. If Society does 
 not gain, the laborer will not finally gain. 
 
 " But industrial co-operation, in the sense in which the 
 word is now used, means not a union for increasing mechani- 
 cal force, but for the purpose of obtaining the profit of the 
 transaction, and having it equitably distributed among those 
 who do the work. ... In competition, capital buys labor ; 
 in co-operation, labor buys capital, the whole distinction of 
 principle lies there. Capital is used in co-operation and 
 honestly paid for, but the, capitalist is excluded. Capital is 
 a commodity, not a person. The worker is the sole person 
 concerned in co-operation." ] 
 
 These are the words of Holyoake, the most rational ad- 
 vocate of Co-operation. They split on the same rock 
 which shatters the capitalist when he claims that capital 
 is his, without regard to the social laws which created 
 it. I have shown 2 that there is no such antithesis as 
 
 1 Holyoake : History of Co-operation, pp. 68, 88. 
 
 2 Introduction, p. 4 et seq. 
 
288 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 Mr. Holyoake states ; that capital cannot buy labor, nor 
 can labor buy capital. We will not beat over the chaff 
 of capital definitions ; but think for a moment what 
 takes place in our illustration of the shoemaker. Here 
 we have the street well laid, ordered, and governed ; the 
 shop built out of long experience; the last and tools 
 shaped by the labor of generations ; the leather a product 
 of combined civilization ; the laborer who sews upon the 
 material. Somewhere there is an employer who watches 
 this current, and cuts and shapes the material on which 
 the sewer works. Then there is the citizen, or traveller, 
 who, because his shoes are worn or pinch him, or because 
 the toes are round while others wear square ones, desires 
 a new pair fitted to his particular fancy. To say that 
 the laborer alone or in association, i. e., because he is 
 a laborer as distinguished from a capitalist, master-shoe- 
 maker or anybody else, hires all or any part of this, is 
 absurd. This pushes the power of labor or money far 
 beyond any possible limits of civilization. As well say 
 the laborer pays for his right to hurrah for the Stars and 
 Stripes, or the Union Jack. How does he pay for it, 
 and when ? 
 
 It is folly to write the words competition and co-oper- 
 ation, and say that either changes the essential nature of 
 How re- this social transaction, when these shoes are 
 ma( ie and sold. If you transfer dozens of little 
 
 tion. shops, and mass them into one factory employ- 
 
 ing a hundred laborers and modern machinery in turning 
 out shoes by the gross, the principle is the same. We 
 generalize the aching or fickle feet of the wearers, give 
 the laborer more wages at the machine than he formerly 
 earned with the awl ; but nevertheless the same process 
 of capital, labor, and capitalizing into new capital goes 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 289 
 
 on which occurs in every shoemaker's shop in the civil- 
 ized world. A new product comes out. The shoes are 
 not capital and labor, leather and sewing, any more than 
 water is oxygen and hydrogen ; water is a new substance 
 resulting from the union of the simple elements. 
 
 Co-operative stores have succeeded and attained to 
 large proportions in England. The parliamentary re- 
 turns in 1877 showed 12,000 societies in operation, and 
 their purchases are rated at 10,609.15. Mr. Holyoake 
 states that in the same year the wholesale associations 
 sold 2,791,477 value in goods, using 414,462 of capi- 
 tal, their own and borrowed. He estimates that if the 
 distributing stores should confine their purchases to 
 "the wholesale" in which they are interested, that 
 the business could be carried up to ten million pounds. 
 These operations include capital and capitalizing. There 
 is hardly any labor, as we usually understand that term. 
 Where a number of people with homogeneous wants 
 associate properly, there is little difficulty in supplying 
 them through co-operation. Without doubt, the work- 
 ing people who have engaged in these enterprises have 
 gained a valuable education, as well as the habit of econ- 
 omy, from their conduct. Probably such a trade as A. 
 T. Stewart organized thirty to forty years ago could not 
 be made by the co-operative plan. That was a step for- 
 ward in social economy, and needed the mastering effort 
 of a born capitalizer to bring it about. 
 . Attempts have been made, but few have succeeded, in 
 applying the Holyoake theory of co-operation to produc- 
 tive enterprises in England. 
 
 " Farms, mines, mills, manufactories, ships, hanks, building 
 associations, are what are meant by productive societies. 
 These have not made much way hitherto in co-operative 
 
 19 
 
290 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 hands. . . . Joint-stock companies are being successfully con- 
 ducted by working-men. They do not yet, to any creditable 
 extent, take the workmen into partnership ; but they do sur- 
 mount the difficulties of manufacturing management. . . . 
 No one dreamt that when these obstacles had been removed 
 the effect would be that large bodies of these working-men 
 would combine to use the savings on their own consumption, 
 not to employ themselves, but to employ other working-men 
 to work for them, that they might put the profits in their 
 own pockets. This is done in Oldhani with an absurd 
 fervor." l 
 
 The Oldham district contains numbers of these joint- 
 stock associations, usually called co-operative enterprises, 
 it dislikes I cite Mr. Holyoake's opinion merely to show 
 Capital!- ^ a t tnere ^ s no practicable means of bringing 
 zers. about what he terms an "equitable distribu- 
 
 tion " 2 of the profits of production through co-operation, 
 any more than by competition. As soon as a body of the 
 workmen, through their saving of capital and their skill 
 in producing, achieve a profit, they become their own 
 capitalizes, and take the reward for this new service 
 they render to society. It is not only unwise, it is 
 wrong, to rebuke this tendency; as Holyoake and others 
 of his school do. We must insist again and again that 
 the common instinct of humanity is wiser than the crude 
 notions of theorists, however philanthropic they may be. 
 A better or more " equitable " division will not come by 
 simply thrusting one of the elements out of the prob- 
 lem. Labor cannot convert itself into capital through 
 itself, and alone; it must co-ordinate other elements 
 with itself. 
 
 We can illustrate this out of political history. A 
 
 1 Holyoake : History of Co-operation, pp. 132, 135. 
 
 2 See ante, p. 287. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 291 
 
 pure democracy has never succeeded in managing affairs 
 for any long period. When, in the changes of time, the 
 mass of individuals have attained control of the State, 
 they have soon made a representative in the person of 
 a despot or a dictator. Stable civilized government 
 parcels out power and co-ordinates it carefully in ranks, 
 districts, or institutions. Through this co-ordination, 
 the machinery of State works regularly, and the order of 
 society is secured. In the economy of labor, and in the 
 social order which rests on economic conditions, the 
 principle is the same. A body of laborers cannot vote 
 their effort into capital, or vote capital into their coffers, 
 any more than a body of chemists can vote oxygen and 
 the other gases into a new substance. Some one, or 
 several together, must invent a new mode of transmut- 
 ing the old substances into new, and then the result is 
 accomplished using all the forces at hand. We cannot 
 create power in a mass of individuals, power of any 
 sort, economic or political, and pass that power back 
 again into the same mass ; it must go through The man 
 some medium, just as crude petroleum is re- who d p es . 
 fined before it can be rendered into a useful the Social 
 social agent. The common-sense of mankind Deputy. 
 has always found that the safest repository of economic 
 power of capital was in the person nearest the scene 
 of economic development. The man on the spot, who 
 combines labor with the forces of Nature off-hand, he is 
 the deputy of society ; and he receives the gains which 
 the combination has produced. 
 
 This is an essential principle, and cannot be controlled 
 by legislatures or philosophers. We cannot wholly 
 modify it by any change in the laws of inheritance. 
 The only individual right any one of us possesses is the 
 
29'2 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 right to exist and to try to subsist. Where the State 
 has attempted to make each individual a proprietor in 
 the common property, it has either fallen or taken 
 refuge in the support of a stronger State, as we proved 
 in the case of the Javanese. 
 
 But let us leave political analogies, and return to 
 social and economic order. ^ The reason why small far- 
 mers and peasant proprietors have been so valuable in 
 all communities is that they have best manifested this 
 principle. The land originally belonged to the State, 
 but it was found much better to parcel it Out to cultiva- 
 tors. This was done in a clumsy manner through the 
 count and baron. Yet, on the whole, the result was 
 better than could have been attained by any other mode 
 then known. If, at this moment, through changes in 
 the social current, we are obliged to cultivate .land in 
 Land larger tracts with machinery and more capital, 
 finally fol- ft j s use l e ss to quarrel with the fact. A new 
 
 lows the ... ,, . 
 
 Social social genesis begins. The common agricul- 
 need. tural hand becomes a skilled laborer earning 
 better pay. The laborer and artisan get their wheat 
 cheaper, and eat beef instead of beans and lentils. The 
 peasant becomes an artisan, for the capital generated on 
 the prairie centres in the city and stimulates more social 
 activity. But a new class of agriculturists comes for- 
 ward to replace those expelled by the machinery farms 
 of the prairie. The new wants in the cities must be 
 met by numerous products of the soil, which can only 
 be obtained on the spot. Vegetables, eggs, chickens, 
 milk, butter, are and always will be produced on the 
 borders of cities. ' 
 
 Small holdings of land, either in fee or by lease, are 
 worked near the cities ; and a new class of thrifty agri- 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 293 
 
 culturists is coming forward. It will be said that this 
 is the life of a new country : then older countries must 
 imitate its prosperous features, or they will decay. j 
 
 This is the larger co-operation which society brings 
 about. I am not opposing Mr. Holyoake's, and would 
 desire every success possible for it. Whatever can be 
 accomplished by these means is a social gain. The 
 joint-stock companies of Oldham are chiefly employed 
 in making cotton yarns and fabrics. The cotton manu- 
 facture in England, though a complex mechanical pro- 
 cess, has become quite simple in an economic sense. 
 The machinery is all developed, and for sale in the mar- 
 ket ; the business is closely classified, and the processes 
 are well understood. It is quite possible for a group of 
 skilled laborers and "overlookers" to join as partners 
 and work successfully, or " surmount the difficulties of 
 manufacturing management," as Mr. Holyoake puts it. 
 With a little capital they produce more, hire labor, and 
 build up a larger producing force. But this result does 
 not satisfy him ; for it does not give to the laborer the 
 whole distribution of the profit which labor, or labor and 
 capital together, earns. It is true ; and it is true because 
 the converse is impossible. Labor cannot get all things 
 because it cannot produce them, as I have said in so 
 many different forms of expression. 
 
 Let us examine the social working of a manufacture 
 carried on by an individual. A Western man- 
 ufacturer in the year 1879 made 20,000 carri- 
 ages of the style called the light covered buggy, of indi- 
 They were all retailed, or sold singly, and in 
 this manner. Agents would go into each district two or 
 three weeks before a sale, and find out the probable 
 wants of the community ; they would advertise the 
 
294 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 coming auction with all the skill needed to attract at- 
 tention, just as the circus or show advertises ; then 
 they would obtain from some banker or capitalist the 
 name of every man whose note he would discount with- 
 out recourse for $100. At the appointed time the 
 wagons would arrive by railway. Although varying 
 in pattern somewhat for different tastes, they were all 
 of about one value, or about $85. When the auctions 
 were spiritless, and the wagons would not average about 
 $85, the agents would stop selling, and forward the 
 surplus to another district. When the sale was over, 
 they would carry the notes to the local capitalist, con- 
 vert them into solid cash, and close accounts with that 
 district. This business amounted to $1,700,000, and 
 the profit was about six per cent, or say $100,000. 
 The manufacturer employed 500 men, more or less. 
 What a nice social combination was effected here ! 
 Every legitimate means was used with the highest econ- 
 omy to bring producer and consumer, buyer, seller, and 
 laborer, together. All that local credit and social stim- 
 ulus among buyers, joined to the ready adaptation of 
 products to wants, could accomplish, was rendered by 
 this one individual firm, or partnership, conducted in 
 the usual way. It is hard to conceive how carriages 
 could be made more cheaply or distributed more skil- 
 fully, if we had all the power of a despot over both pro- 
 ducer and consumer. The laborer was certainly well 
 off in an establishment so thoroughly organized, and the 
 consumer received a good value for his $85. The 
 $100,000 was not a large price to pay to him who 
 could invent and master this splendid work of civili- 
 zation. Mr. Holyoake would say that these laborers 
 should " hire " the capital, and divide this profit of 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 295 
 
 $100,000 among themselves. Impossible ! You might 
 as well claim that a directory chosen from the pri- 
 vates of the Austrian armies could have beaten the 
 great Napoleon. 
 
 For these reasons, thorough socialists and communists 
 have maintained that all profit was wrong in 
 
 Thorough 
 
 essence, and that affairs should be conducted socialism 
 without that element of gain on each transac- confiscates 
 tion which comes through the operation of 
 capitalizing. Nature grants nothing unless we first 
 overcome a resistance, an inertia, which is the basis of 
 order. So society gives rewards ; but only yields them 
 when the 'seeker has overcome the resistance of the 
 previous condition, the established order of labor and 
 exchange. The force of this resistance is measured 
 in the profit. 
 
 Co-operation will serve society better and better as 
 time moves on ; it can never master the social order out 
 of which it grows. It is only one method of society, 
 and can never become the basis of society, the social 
 principle in itself. Capital as well as labor will adopt 
 the s method in all the processes of production which 
 will admit it. The system of job-work, paid by the 
 piece, has already changed the course and enlarged 
 the progress of many industries. It is a minor form of 
 co-operation, readily applied to the ever- vary ing wants 
 of civilization. The Trades-Unions have opposed this 
 principle, and this alone reveals the unsocial character 
 of their organization. The very division of labor which 
 makes their associations possible, requires the co-opera- 
 tive power of piece-work to accomplish its ends. So- 
 ciety seeks more and better production through the 
 stimulus which pay by the piece gives each individual 
 
296 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 workman. The Union autocracy says the piece-worker 
 has no right to better earnings, because thereby the con- 
 trol of labor may pass from the hands of the Union. 
 
 It is probable that these minor forms of co-operation 
 will be much extended, and modify the operations of 
 our present industries. Great corporations will bind 
 their best laborers and skilled servants more closely to 
 their interests by long tenure, retiring pensions, and 
 rewards for faithful service. The French have gone 
 farthest in this direction. Smaller associations may 
 and probably will admit the better classes of laborers 
 to a share in their profits. One of the most useful 
 forms of co-operation is to be found in the Building and 
 Loan Associations of Philadelphia, which are being grad- 
 ually introduced into other parts of the United States. 
 These associations have created a respectable portion of 
 the houses of a great city. - They show the great results 
 attainable through the harmony of co-operation and 
 competition working together. 
 
 Turning to the social and religio-social community, 
 
 we find that Socialists have not lacked the courage 
 
 necessary to enforce their convictions. Owen, 
 
 The outside . , . . 
 
 or eccentric a s is well known, tried his ideas in the New 
 World and failed. Utopia has both illumined 
 and oppressed the dreams of thoughtful philan- 
 thropists for centuries. In the Old World it seemed 
 that the machinery of the State, hard and harsh, firmly 
 fixed in the habits of men, prevented the outgrowth of 
 any new forms of social living. America, with its simple 
 political organization, gave a better opportunity to work 
 out exceptional and eccentric communities. Beginning 
 with the Shakers in 1794, numbers of experiments have 
 been tried under almost all conditions. Property in 
 
 commu- 
 nity. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 297 
 
 common was generally the controlling feature in these 
 organizations. Every kind of common family, with and 
 without marriage, was tried. Theological dogmas with- 
 out number were represented. Noyes, in his " History 
 of American Socialism," enumerates forty-seven failures 
 of one kind and another. The successes he attributes 
 to " the one feature which distinguishes these Communi- 
 ties from the transitory sort is their religion ; which in 
 every case is of the earnest kind." l He does not claim 
 that religion always brought success. Many of those 
 which failed were conducted by pure and devout souls. 
 They failed from different causes. Warren's experi- 
 ment, which was one of the most interesting from an 
 economic point of view, failed for " the want of common 
 honesty." 
 
 The Yellow Springs (Ohio) Community, though com- 
 posed of " a very superior class," found in the short space 
 of three months that " self-love was a spirit that would 
 not be exorcised. Individual happiness was the law of 
 Nature, and it could not be obliterated." 
 
 Horace Greeley brought to an earnest effort for Social- 
 ism a powerful mind practically trained in a long ex- 
 perience of affairs. His opinion is worthy of notice, for 
 it was formed by clear common-sense after close obser- 
 vation. He says : 
 
 " Along with many noble and lofty souls, whose impulses 
 are purely philanthropic, and who are willing to labor and 
 suffer reproach for any cause that promises to benefit man- 
 kind, there throng scores of whom the world is 
 quite worthy, the conceited, the crotchety, the 
 selfish, the headstrong, the pugnacious, the un- 
 appreciated, the played-out, the idle, and the good-for-nothing 
 
 1 Noyes : History of American Socialism, p. 655. 
 
298 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 generally ; who, finding themselves utterly out of place and at 
 a discount in the world as it is, rashly conclude that they are 
 exactly fitted for the world as it ought to be." l 
 
 The world has never found and it has tried many 
 ways but one means of ridding itself of such leaders 
 as Mr. Greeley describes, and that is through the neces- 
 sity of the dollar. It is a mistake to imagine that social 
 principles or worthy ideas fail for lack of money. In 
 all prosperous communities men are eager to open their 
 purses to any opportunity which will elevate mankind, 
 and improve one individual or many. Many a devoted 
 enthusiast has been set up over and again, sustained at 
 every cost by willing friends, because they hoped, even 
 felt, that such generous energy must be good. It is only 
 in the last resort that society says to the lazy idler, or 
 to the impracticable dreamer, " Work, or starve ! " 
 
 "The societies which illustrate successful communism in 
 this country are the Shakers, established 1794 ; the Eappists, 
 1805; the Zoarites, 1817; the Eben-Ezers, Arnana, 1844; 
 the Bethel, 1844 ; the Oneida Perfectionists, 1848 ; the Icari- 
 ans, 1849; the Aurora, 1852." 2 
 
 These societies represent seventy-two communes, and 
 number about five thousand persons including children. 
 Mr. Noyes and Mr. Nordhoff both agree that these are 
 successful examples. 3 
 
 1 Noyes : History of American Socialism, p. 653. 
 
 2 Nordhoff : Communistic Societies of the United States, p. 386. 
 
 8 "They own over one hundred and fifty thousand acres of land. 
 As they have sometimes been accused of being land monopolists, it is 
 curious to see that even at the highest amount I have given (180,000), 
 they would own only about thirty-six acres per head, which is for this 
 country a comparatively small holding of land." Nordhoff, p. 386. 
 It is a low estimate of the wealth of the seventy-two communes to place 
 it at $12,000,000. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 299 
 
 Nordhoff does not fully assent to the opinion that 
 religion is a necessary basis of an American commune : 
 
 " It is true that a commune, to exist harmoniously, must be 
 composed of persons who are of one mind upon some question 
 which to them shall appear so important as to take the place 
 of a religion, if it is not essentially religious ; though it need 
 not be fanatically held." x 
 
 He claims that the Oneida example was not a strict 
 commune, but only an association skilfully exploiting 
 the labor of other persons. Since be wrote, this com- 
 munity shows signs of disintegration. 
 
 The Oneida and Shaker associations are largely of 
 American descent ; the Icarians are chiefly French ; the 
 others are German. 
 
 The German temperament does best in this form of 
 living. Americans, unless dominated by some power- 
 ful conviction, are too restless for the communal life, 
 which requires so much sacrifice of individual tastes 
 and desires. 
 
 According to Nordhoff's and Noyes's reports, as well 
 as several observations the writer has made for himself, 
 these successful examples are not prosperous to-day; 
 that is, they are not vigorous, and putting forth new 
 life. They generally live upon capital which was accu- 
 mulated under a profound social impulse which is dying 
 out in the persons of the present representatives and 
 rulers. Good and well disposed men are found here, 
 there are hardly any others in the successful communi- 
 ties, but the ability of the founders has gone out. All 
 I the successful associations have had sagacious and ener- 
 getic leaders, who had ample powers to bring out all the 
 
 1 Nordhoff : Communistic Societies of the United States, p. 387. 
 
300 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 resources of the community. The only exception is in 
 the Icarian pure democracy, which Nordhoff 
 powerful thinks confirms the rule. A large part of their 
 capital- success, economically considered, is due to 
 their earlier use of the better trade distribu- 
 tion which is now becoming common. They bought at 
 wholesale, and they sold their own products substantially 
 at retail. They capitalized well the labor and capital 
 which the above powers of association put into their 
 hands. Before establishments like Stewart's prevailed, 
 before labor was organized into large factories, they had 
 an advantage in well-managed trade, in skilfully directed 
 labor. Elder Frederic Evans told the writer that the 
 Shakers could not now compete with the outside world, 
 even in articles where they had attained a just celebrity. 
 Garden seeds, once monopolized by them, now afford but 
 little profit. The passion of this age for much in vari- 
 ety that is cheap, rather than for little and simple that 
 shall be of excellent quality, has driven the trade into 
 larger establishments where the division of labor is 
 more strict. 
 
 The drift of social life is against them, too. When all 
 villages and most cities were dull, a community admin- 
 istered by strong leaders was an agreeable resort. Now 
 that the steam-whistle soon sounds through any indus- 
 trious district, wherever situated and however governed, 
 social life rapidly assimilates to the ideas generally pre- 
 vailing. The Press carries the controlling ideas of civili- 
 zation everywhere. It is true that the various associa- 
 tions try to mould their young people through literatures 
 of their own, but these literatures are feeble. The results 
 are, no culture, or that of a feeble sort, or the universal 
 culture which soon takes the lively spirits into the larger 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 301 
 
 world outside. I dwell upon these characteristics of 
 these successful communes, because they throw light on 
 all social living. They have been tried under favorable 
 conditions ; they have had the advantages of new lands, 
 with the rising tide of American life to give 
 value to their properties ; they have suffered Their com - 
 little or no interference from the State, and in failure^ 
 general have worked out all that was in them 
 of power for good or evil. If there be any exceptional 
 powers of civilization inhering in the commune which 
 society as a whole has not, it would seem that these 
 varying experiments, honestly tried as they have been, 
 should have brought them out. In other words, the 
 commune should not only have existed, it should have 
 grown and have put forth larger flowers of civilization, 
 if it be a necessary force in that civilization. 
 
 Nordhoff sketches an enterprise at Anaheim in Cali- 
 fornia, not communistic, which Mr. Holyoake and other 
 co-operators would do well to study. A company of fifty 
 German mechanics in San Francisco, with not one farmer, 
 led by a lawyer, bought land " to be subdivided and im- 
 proved by monthly contributions from the members, 
 who were meantime to go on working in San Francisco. 
 It was agreed to divide the 1,165 acres into fifty twenty- 
 acre tracts and fifty village lots, the village to stand in 
 the centre of the purchase. Fourteen lots were also set 
 aside for schoolhouses and other public buildings." 1 
 They had no money or credit to begin with ; the mem- 
 bers worked on at their vocations ; the superintendent 
 hired laborers, and irrigated, fenced, and planted the 
 ground with vines. 
 
 1 Nordhoff : Communistic Societies of the United States, p. 362. 
 
302 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 " At the end of three years the whole of this labor had been 
 Interestin performed and paid for; the vines were ready to 
 Enterprise bear a crop, and the division of lots (each was as- 
 at Ana- sessed at its relative value, then assigned by lottery) 
 took place. Each shareholder had at this time paid 
 in all twelve hundred dollars ; a few I have been told fell 
 behind somewhat, but were helped by some of their associates 
 who were in better circumstances. If we suppose that most 
 of the members had no money laid by at the beginning, it 
 would appear that during three years they saved, over and 
 above their living, somewhat less than eight dollars a week, 
 a considerable sum, but easily possible at that time in Califor- 
 nia to a good and steady mechanic." 1 
 
 Then the co-operative features disappeared; each owner 
 took his farm, and borrowed money by mortgaging it to 
 build his house. 
 
 " And they gradually got out of debt. JSTot one failed. 
 The sheriff has never sold out any one in Anaheim ; and only 
 one of the original settlers had left the place when I saw it 
 in 1872 (15 years from the start). They have no destitute 
 people. Their vineyards give them an annual clear income 
 of from two hundred and fifty to one thousand dollars over 
 and above their living expenses ; their children have enjoyed 
 the advantages of a social life and a fairly good school. And, 
 finally, the property which originally cost them an average of 
 one thousand and eighty dollars for each is now worth from 
 five to ten thousand dollars." 2 
 
 This enterprise was successfully worked out through 
 the ordinary life of working people. They acquired 
 property and family homes, learned a new vocation, and 
 achieved the best social independence, by using the 
 common means which society affords to all people in 
 
 1 Nordhoff : Communistic Societies of the United States, p. 363. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 365. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 303 
 
 growing communities. The co-operative force which the 
 commune gives was used to acquire the property and 
 credit; then this was dropped, and the elevating and 
 developing power of individual ownership came in to 
 complete the work of founding families. We have seen, 
 in studying the communistic societies, that they have 
 all deteriorated in individual force and capacity since 
 their founders passed away. The successful ones have 
 acquired property, but have not developed larger men 
 and women. 
 
 We sketched a wonderfully fine organism in these 
 twelve hundred and fifty-one associations of the i n( j e8truct _ 
 city of this time. Beyond these larger associa- ibie Organ- 
 tions are the partnerships and families which 1! 
 finally include nearly all the individuals dwelling within 
 the municipal limits. One hundred thousand people 
 are thus associated and bound together by every kind 
 of tie which all human experience has invented or pre- 
 served. The tribe and horde, the barbarian and the in- 
 cipient family were the rude beginnings, the primeval 
 raw material out of which this wondrous structure has 
 been built. It is needless to say that this organism is 
 indestructible. 
 
 History gives us in the Aire partnership l the germ of 
 that civilizing force, that mastering principle, which shall 
 finally bring all the people into definite order. The ori- 
 gin of the family is wrapped in the darkness of the re- 
 mote past, but in the partnership we can see how man 
 first associated himself with man to prosecute the arts 
 of peace. The associating, grouping force, which for 
 Untold centuries had worked for the noble classes almost 
 exclusively, was brought down through the Aire into 
 
 1 See ante, p. 68. 
 
304 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 the grasp of freemen. The common house and land- 
 holder by association made himself a part of that ordered 
 structure which should finally culminate in the State. 
 The freeman never wholly lost this franchise, though he 
 was often deprived of it for the time. 
 
 It is true that when Eome was forming the State out 
 of the tribes and tribal cities of Europe, she disordered 
 the primitive civilization which her own imperial order 
 replaced. The Middle Ages inherited from this period 
 varied classes of humanity, mainmortables, serfs, co- 
 lons, villains, free and unfree waifs and strays from other 
 times and other social systems. The author of the "Holy 
 Eoman Empire " has shown how men in those days 
 yearned for a strong power, a centre of force, which 
 should compel all men and things, and restore peace and 
 stability to the. troubled world. These ardent dreamers 
 looked for some external authority which should ren- 
 der all things unto itself ; they little thought that the 
 force would ultimately come from within, that the men 
 and women to be governed would at last govern them- 
 selves. 
 
 These serfs and villains, mainmortable or adscripted, 
 have developed into the persons of modern life. They 
 have become equal participants with the descendants of 
 the nobles and the gentry, the barons and the captains, 
 on whom society rested in the crude mediaeval time. 
 They have reached these rights, they have come into 
 these social privileges, only by passing through the social 
 structure we have sketched in these pages. Property, 
 the social tissue of the body politic, held in the hand of 
 the persons, the social representatives of organic civili- 
 zation, rested on land, the universal substance of Nature 
 herself. 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 305 
 
 These persons, these socially developed individuals, 
 have been born into the Family, into the Substance 
 Church, now into the Guild or Corporation, of Societ y- 
 now into the Municipality, or have been born with such 
 tendencies that they seek these institutions naturally, 
 and are included in their organic folds. They move 
 freely within these limits, and pass from country to 
 country, from nation to nation, almost at will. Yet they 
 move, too, with a certain fatalistic direction; they can- 
 not escape heredity, and they can live only under the 
 social laws we have stated. This principle holds good 
 even through apparent failure and disaster. The city 
 develops too much power of the person, too much con- 
 trol of the individual over things and institutions. Then, 
 as we saw in the revolution of the Paris Commune, the 
 country rallies to maintain instituted order, and subdues 
 the civic persons, who, losing their individuality, have 
 fallen back into the masses of anarchy. The landed 
 persons, always the holders of the older, more common 
 hence more valuable sources of civilization, restore the 
 instituted liberties which no city in the world's history 
 has been able to maintain for itself alone. 
 
 Property, land, prescriptive right, corporate privilege, 
 are now convertible into that subtile and mighty essence, 
 Capital. The philosopher's stone is no longer a fabled 
 fancy ; gold follows transmutation, but not through the 
 smoke of the retort. Exchange and inter- Capital the 
 course have fused and liquefied all material Social 
 things, together with the immaterial values ei 
 these things have imbibed from civilization. These 
 values are social, and can be preserved only by the 
 thorough administration of the social laws we have 
 sketched. This potential essence capital is as vola- 
 
 20 
 
306 THE SOCIAL LAW OF LABOR. 
 
 tile as it is powerful. It escapes the clumsy clasp of the 
 State, not into other hands, for the strange creature then 
 transmutes again, and becomes a thing of nought. This 
 is the crucial point in the enchantment; here the 
 vision fades, the riches crumble, the elements resume 
 sway, and the common man stands portionless upon the 
 common earth. When the social order is broken, im- 
 material values flee the material things, and we stand 
 like the wight who has displeased the fairy, stripped of 
 the gorgeous tissues of wealth and civilized splendor. 
 Land, rivers, rocks, and mines remain, but smiling crops, 
 gold and jewels, the immaterial values springing from 
 the order of prosperity, have disappeared. 
 
 Where rests the enchanter's wand ? Is it in the vote 
 of a majority ? Where is the power outside the indi- 
 vidual, which shall give him a sphere beyond himself, 
 and independent of his passions, superior to his own 
 moral essence and condition ? Men worshipped Her- 
 cules and then Jehovah ; they besought pope and poten- 
 tate ; they sued at the bar of the State ; and now they 
 would win the favor of the Majority in that State. 
 
 " There are no more political questions ; there are only 
 social questions." METTERNICH. 
 
 "Social philosophy is in essence Science and Peace." 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 " Political questions are solved by blows of the sword ; 
 but the sword is powerless against Social Questions." 
 
 GlRARDIN. 
 
 Statesmen and closet thinkers agree upon the lines 
 which divide politics from social government. How 
 that social principle, that new regulative power now 
 moving thousands where government once involved 
 only tens, how this mighty spirit is to be controlled 
 
SOCIETY, NEW AND OLD. 307 
 
 and directed is not so clear. The third Napoleon, 
 Cavour, Bismarck, all practical men, directed their 
 governments by the ordinary political machinery ; but 
 at the same time they played with an undercurrent 
 of social enthusiasm, which sometimes bore the ship of 
 state on its true course, but might at any time have 
 dashed it in pieces. Garibaldi, a fantastic dreamer, a 
 knight-errant stumbling through the nineteenth century, 
 waved a red shirt, and the Austrian empire, the home 
 of Metternich, trembled to its foundations. 
 
 The State qua State, the central force embodied in 
 government, whether wielding the mystic sword of the 
 spirit or the material sword of the flesh, no 
 longer controls the social feelings, the social rep resenta- 
 interests of men. For the State, as well as the tive i not 
 
 -i t 'i j- n i -i i> n autocratic. 
 
 Church, is an institution ; and back of all in- 
 stituted things is the new social force, the new creative 
 power, whose creatures Metternich and the absolutists 
 justly feared. Political absolutism is ended, or can rule 
 only by negation, as it does 1 in Eussia. Social absolut- 
 ism begins. We need not fear the majority : a majority 
 involves a minority, and while the parties are form- 
 ing, order begins and will never end. It is the mass, 
 without greater or less, the whole with no parts, which 
 thoughtful men must consider, and if it be necessary 
 must master. Down with the family, the church, 
 property, heredity ! says the International. Nihilism is 
 . a new social life, its dreamers say ; a new State which, 
 through the death of all institutions, shall be born into 
 a purer, larger life. 
 
 Capital and Labor are not different in kind from 
 other institutions. Neither exists without the other; 
 both exist through the constant change, the capitalizing 
 
308 THE SOCIAL LAW, OF LABOR. 
 
 of the one into the other. Lassalle's "instrument of 
 Labor become autonomous," Marx's 1 " Capital the 
 equivalent of dead Labor," mean the absolutism of the 
 " Social Question," as Metternich put it. This sort of 
 absolutism is Nihilism. 
 
 I do not state the whole question ; but there are 
 Divine some limits which I claim to have reached 
 order of in this discussion. The power of Labor in 
 
 nety ' association, the power of Capital in its own 
 essence, are subject to the power of Society. Society 
 is social order, the order of all the elements, all 
 the principles and established results, of all past life. 
 In the bosom of this divine order rest the four in- 
 stitutions, the Family, the Individual, the Church, the 
 State ! 
 
 1 See Note, p. 245. 
 
INDEX. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ACCOLAS, Prof, femile, quoted, 29 n. 
 
 Aire Partnership, the, of the Irish, 
 68 n. ; importance of, 70 ; its ef- 
 fect on Person and Property, 78 ; 
 it crosses the mediaeval corpora- 
 tion, 79 ; points of similarity be- 
 tween it and the Guild, 146, 147. 
 
 American Republic, the, what it 
 has done for the Individual, 38, 
 39, 40. 
 
 Arbitration, defined, 219, 220 ; 
 Boards of, and their work, 220, 
 221, et seq. ; contrasted with 
 Unionism, 225. 
 
 Aristocracy, caste fatal to, 41. 
 
 Aryan household, the, an Associa- 
 tion of Individuals, 12, 13, 14 ; 
 right of succession in, 17 ; its 
 basis in religious belief, 18 ; 
 relative importance of Persons 
 and Property in, 19 ; prehis- 
 toric in its origin, 19. 
 
 Aryan races, their belief in an in- 
 visible world of spirits, 14-16. 
 
 Assets, origin of term, 67. 
 
 BALLOT, the, as an educator of the 
 
 citizen, 183, 184. 
 Baudrillart, quoted, 30 n. 
 Brassey, quoted, 210, 211. 
 
 CAIRNES, Prof., quoted, 204, 205, 
 241, 252. 
 
 Capital, consideration of what it 
 is, 6 ; the first social factor, 24 ; 
 social rights of, 29 ; the use and 
 possession of, 33 ; cattle the an- 
 cient form of, 66, 67 ; and cap- 
 
 italizing discussed, 94, 95 ; de- 
 fined, 239, 240, et seq.; regarded 
 as the antithesis of labor, 243 ; 
 not "dead labor," 243; Marx's 
 theory of, 244, 245 ; Nihilism the 
 outcome of Marx's doctrine of, 
 245, n. ; Jevons's theory of, 245, 
 246 ; Mill's theory of, not satis- 
 factory, 246 ; the element of time 
 in, 247 ; the middleman and his 
 function as regards, 248 ; its in- 
 timate relation with all life, 249, 
 250 ; the movement of, modified 
 by will and habit of life, 250, 
 251 ; "Wages-Fund a constituent 
 of, 251, 252; made social by 
 Capitalizing, 259, 260 ; influences 
 politics through social pressure, 
 260, n.-, Parsimony, or "Absti- 
 nence," A. Smith's view of, 260, 
 261 ; it is subject to the Will, 
 266, 267. 
 
 Capitalizer, social function of, 7, 
 27, 28 ; social rights of, 31 ; the 
 Social Deputy, 291, 292. 
 
 Capitalizing, definition of, 7 ; its 
 embodiment in a person called a 
 capitalizer, 7 ; universal applica- 
 tion of the principle of, 8 ; a con- 
 necting link between civilization 
 and savagery, 9 ; illustration of, 
 from shoemaking, 32 ; the fecun- 
 dating process of, 34. 
 
 Church, the, exists through, not 
 above, Society, 43. 
 
 Citizen, development of the indi- 
 vidual, 38 ; both a social and a 
 political being, 40 ; evolution of 
 
312 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 the, too rapid, 182, 183 ; effect of 
 the ballot on the, 183, 184. 
 
 City, the, as a social organism, 282, 
 283 ; the three groups of associa- 
 tions in, 283, 284, et seq. ; inde- 
 structible organism of, 303. 
 
 Commune, the, in Lombardy, 121, 
 122 ; Paris, how related to Inter- 
 national Association, 230, 231 j 
 in Paris, working-class pre-emi- 
 nent in, 232 ; effect of, in Paris, 
 232, 233 ; outside or eccentric, 
 296, 297, et seq.; Nordhoffs idea 
 of, 299 ; a powerful capitalizer, 
 300 ; the comparative failure of, 
 300, 301 ; enterprise at Anaheim, 
 Cal., contrasted with, 301, 302. 
 
 Communism, the unsocial individ- 
 ualism of, 44, 45 ; as illustrated 
 by the ant, 100 ; superseded by 
 individual and social functions, 
 100, 101. 
 
 Competition, of Employers, 212, 
 213 ; compared with combina- 
 tion, 213, 214. 
 
 Consumption, Mill's theory of pro- 
 ductive and unproductive, 261, 
 262 ; folly of Mill's theory of, 
 illustrated, 262, 263, etseq.; Se- 
 nior's theory of unproductive, 
 265. 
 
 Contract, origin of, 58. 
 
 Co-operation, social and economic 
 principles of, 287, 288 ; how re- 
 lated to competition, 288, 289 ; 
 as applied to productive enter- 
 prises, 289, 290 ; dislikes Joint- 
 stock capitalizers, 290 ; contrast- 
 ed with competition, 294; minor 
 forms of, 295, 296. 
 
 Corporation, the, personality of, 
 105 ; Eoman collegium the first 
 form of, 105, 106 ; binds society 
 together in Gaul, 108, 109 ; the 
 Celtic Aire an incipient form of, 
 111, 112 ; tithing the basis of the 
 town, 114, 115 ; persons bound 
 into, by the frank-pledge, 115 ; 
 in Germany is imperfect, 118, 
 119 ; of the Continent different 
 from that of England, 122, 123 ; 
 of German artisans, how related 
 
 to municipality, 123, 124 ; sepa- 
 ration of its functions, 124, 125 ; 
 limitation of its powers by ultra 
 vires, 125, 126 ; it is "without 
 a soul," 126, 127 ; early devel- 
 opment of, in America, 128 ; 
 rights of, as an individual/ 129 ; 
 social offices of, 129, 130, et seq.; 
 compared with Aristocracy, 131, 
 132 ; a chief agent of peace, 132 ; 
 not in itself a capitalist, but a 
 capitalizer, 133 ; it is the servant, 
 not the master, of society, 134 ; 
 the agent for the distribution of 
 capital, 134, 135 ; it is not a 
 monopolizer, illustrated by rail- 
 way consolidations, 136, 137 ; 
 the future of, and its effect on 
 society, 139, 140. 
 
 Cost, Socialist theory of, 98, n. 
 
 Craft-guild, a division of the guild, 
 172, 173 ; members of, become 
 capitalists, 173 ; exclusive nature 
 of, 174. 
 
 EPONYM, the, description of, 20, 21. 
 
 FAMILY, the, a purely social in- 
 stitution, 12 ; Koman organiza- 
 tion of, 57, 58. 
 
 Feud, right of, originally regarded 
 as inalienable, 73 n. 
 
 Feudalism, as illustrating the so- 
 cial character of the Person, 63, 
 64, et seq.; Irish local law of, 64, 
 65 ; the Frankish Manse of, and 
 its tributary households, 109, 
 110. 
 
 France, Droits Feodaux in early, 
 80 ; social organization in me- 
 diaeval, 81 ; minute classification 
 of freemen and serfs in early, 
 82, 83, et seq. 
 
 Frith-guild, the, in England was 
 founded in the eleventh century 
 on old usages, 156, 157; the social 
 character and religious tendency 
 of, 157, 158 ; the beauty of the 
 bond of union in, 159 ; as related 
 to the town-guild-, 161, 162 ; gov- 
 ernment of, 165, 166. 
 
 GENS, the, institution of, its basis 
 
INDEX. 
 
 313 
 
 and constitution, 19, 20, et seq.; 
 Morgan's idea of the Eoman, 20, 
 n. ; among the North American 
 Indians, 52. 
 
 George, his " Poverty and Pro- 
 gress," quoted, 4, n. 
 
 Girardin, quoted, 306. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, quoted, 296. 
 
 Guild, the, passes into the munici- 
 pality, 117, 118 ; compared with 
 the Corporation, 143 ; based on 
 fellowship, 144 ; its origin, 144, 
 145 ; how related to the House- 
 hold, 145, 146 ; the Aire part- 
 nership an early form of, 146, 
 147 ; social dues of, as distin- 
 guished from modern taxes, 147 ; 
 it helps make the modern citi- 
 zen, 148, 149 ; effect of, on the 
 freeman, 149 ; sense of honor 
 in, as exhibited in the use of 
 money, 150, 151, et seq.; not 
 essentially anti-feudal, 153 ; in 
 Northern France, 154 ; neces- 
 sarily too narrow in its spirit, 
 154, 155 ; social conditions in 
 the time of, 166, 167 ; govern- 
 ment of, separates from that of 
 town, 170 ; caste division in the, 
 170, 171 ; breaks up into craft- 
 guilds, 172, 173 ; gives rise to 
 Trades- Union, 174 ; subsequent 
 form of, incompatible with mod- 
 ern freedom, 174, 175 ; market 
 regulations in time of, 175, 176 ; 
 privileges in, fortified by cus- 
 tom, 177, 178 ; effect of political 
 differentiation on, 179, 180; out- 
 worn, 184, 185. 
 
 HARRISON, F., quoted, 215, 216, 
 
 253. 
 
 Hearn, Dr., quoted, 18, 20, 21. 
 Health and Home, significance of 
 
 the, among the Aryan races, 15, 
 
 16, 21, 22. 
 Holyoake, George J., quoted, 287, 
 
 289, 290. 
 Homestead, size of Irish, dependent 
 
 on physical strength of freeman, 
 
 Honor, the Guild conducive to the 
 
 early rise of, 150, 151, et seq.; in 
 money matters, 151, 152. 
 
 House-father, the (or Household- 
 er), 12 ; perpetual succession of, 
 14 ; office of, 18 ; development 
 of, from barbarism to free citi- 
 zenship, 23. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, quoted, 306. 
 
 INDIVIDUAL, the, Mazzini's idea of 
 the sovereignty of, 234 ; stands 
 or falls with Society, 234, 235 ; 
 competitive power of, and its re- 
 sult, 293, 294. 
 
 International Association, the, 225, 
 226, et seq; not practical, but 
 political, 227; its platform, 228 ; 
 Geneva branch of, declares for 
 Atheism, 229 ; Paris Commune, 
 how related to, 230, 231 ; its con- 
 trol of the National Guard, 231 ; 
 destroys all order, 233, 234. 
 
 JEVONS, Prof., quoted, 242. 
 
 LABOR, as related to capital, ground 
 of dispute concerning, 4 ; change 
 of, into capital, 6 ; social rights 
 of, 28, 29 ; social law of, 43, 44 ; 
 Proudhon quoted on, 96, 97, et 
 seq. ; alone cannot associate, 99, 
 100. 
 
 Labor Question, the, stated, 3. 
 
 Land, Anglo-Saxon division of, into 
 folk- land and book -land, 76 n. ; 
 social bearing of, 92, 93. 
 
 Lares, how worshipped by Aryan 
 race, 16 ; abode of the gentile, 21. 
 
 Larousse, quoted, 21 n. 
 
 Lassalle, quoted, on the relation of 
 Labor to Capital, 4 n. ; his au- 
 tonomous instrument, 5 n. 
 
 Law, mutual dependence the basis 
 of Anglo-Saxon, 76. 
 
 MARKET, contrast between modern 
 
 and mediaeval, 175, 176, et seq. ; 
 
 the law of the, promotes growth 
 
 of the individual, 193. 
 Martin, Meliton, his "Le Travail 
 
 Huinain " quoted, 28 n. 
 Marx, Karl, quoted, 244, 245. 
 
314 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Metternich, quoted, 306. 
 
 Mill, J. S., quoted, 200, 240, 241, 
 246, 261, 262. 
 
 Monopoly, and its final effect dis- 
 cussed, 188, 139. 
 
 Municipality, the beginning of, 
 how related to the Corporation, 
 112, 113 ; development of, in 
 France, 119, 120 ; maturity of, 
 in America, 279. 
 
 NEXUM, how connected with con- 
 tract, 61, 62. 
 Nordhoff, quoted, 299, 302. 
 
 OWNERSHIP, the principle of, 51. 
 
 PERSON, the, with reference to So- 
 ciety and the State, 47 ; stands 
 on contract, 60 ; a social charac- 
 ter, 62, 63, etseq. ; how related to 
 the Aryan House-father, 126, 137; 
 development of, by association, 
 into the Corporation, 130, 131. 
 
 Price, principles underlying, 177 ; 
 effect of Exchange on, 179. 
 
 Production, the source of, 5. 
 
 Privilege, in the .Guild. Its con- 
 trol of property and price, 177, 
 178; contrast between ancient 
 and modern, 180, 181. 
 
 Property, definition of, 29 n. ; dis- 
 cussed, 51, 52, et seq. ; Morgan 
 quoted on early form of, 52 ; 
 Laveleye's theories on the foun- 
 dation of, 54 ; right of, "not 
 natural but social," 54, 55 ; Ro- 
 man terms of, 55, 56 ; social evo- 
 lution of, 57; personal and joint, 
 58, 59, et seq.; essential to the 
 personality of a freeman, 74 ; 
 the basis of rank among free- 
 men, 74 n. ; Fustel de Coulanges 
 quoted on rights of private, 80 n ; 
 usurpation of, by lords and bish- 
 ops, 85 ; Person rises above, 86, 
 87; Laveleye's theory on the 
 rights of individuals to, dis- 
 cussed, 87, 88 ; summary of the 
 argument on Person and, 90, 
 91, et seq.; Society, not land, 
 the source of wealth, 92, 93 ; 
 
 Proudhon quoted on, 95, 96, et 
 seq.; Proudhon' s "impossibil- 
 ity" of, 99. 
 
 "Protection," the nerve current of 
 feudal society, 78, 79. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE PRINCIPLE, the, 
 its place in political develop- 
 ment, 23. 
 
 Rhode Island, settlement of, a 
 "lively experiment," 280. 
 
 Ricardo, quoted, 240. 
 
 Rogers, Thorold, quoted, 247. 
 
 SACRA, institution of, 14, 15, et seq. 
 
 Senior, quoted, 242, 265. 
 
 Slavic race, the, its work for civil- 
 ization, 11 n. 
 
 Smith, Adam, quoted, 239, 240, 
 260. 
 
 Social Group, the modern, 27; dy- 
 namic movement of, 32 ; attrac- 
 tion and repulsion in the, 32, 33 ; 
 final force in, 36 ; course of de- 
 cay in, 88. 
 
 Social Institutions, the, discussed 
 in this book, 47, 48. 
 
 Socialism, element of Nihilism in, 
 45 ; the individual of, 46 ; it con- 
 fiscates profit, 295 ; Greeley's def- 
 inition of, 297, 298. 
 
 Social Law, the, as applied to La- 
 bor and Capital, 43. 
 
 Social need, the, 10 ; its effect on 
 Capital and Labor, 25 ; land fol- 
 lows, 292, 293. 
 
 Society, in its Aryan origin, 11 ; 
 the four great institutions of 
 modern, 11, 12, 190 ; definitions 
 of, 23, 24 ; individual members 
 of, 26 ; primary rights of indi- 
 vidual members of, 26, 27, etseq.; 
 three functions of modern, 28 ; 
 Equality in, how regulated, 36, 
 37 ; individual and social force 
 in, compared, 42 ; the church 
 subordinate to, 43 ; Persons and 
 Property essential factors of mod- 
 ern, 89 ; duty of individuals to, 
 181, 182 ; growth and develop- 
 ment of, 271 ; principle of rep- 
 resentation in, 272 ; development 
 
INDEX. 
 
 315 
 
 and elevation of the individual 
 in, 272 ; relation between Per- 
 son and Property in, 273, 274 ; 
 elasticity of, in America, 274 ; 
 development of citizen from slave 
 of ancient, 274, 275 ; Town and 
 County organization in Ameri- 
 can, 276, 277; Sovereignty crops 
 out in American, 277, 278 ; or- 
 ganization in, reaches through 
 all classes, 285, 286 ; Substance 
 of, 305 ; Capital the essence of, 
 305, 306 ; the political and social 
 elements in, compared, 306, 307; 
 divine order of, 308. 
 
 Sovereignty, the, of the people, de- 
 velopment of, 116. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, quoted, 15 n. 
 
 Spirit world, the old Aryan idea of, 
 14. 
 
 State, the, basis and development 
 of, 38, 39 et seq., 303, 304; po- 
 litical supremacy of, 41 ; devel- 
 oped from small associations, 
 281 ; representative, not auto- 
 cratic, 307. 
 
 Strikes, History of, 208, 209; nat- 
 ural right of laborer to, denned, 
 218 ; as the organized self-inter- 
 est of a class, they are a social 
 oppression, 219. 
 
 Supply and Demand, its effect on 
 Labor a.nd Capital, 200, 201. 
 
 TANISTRY, the custom of, 17. 
 
 " Taurcrech," the, of the Irish, dis- 
 cussed, 67, 68. 
 
 Testut, Oscar, quoted, 228. 
 
 Thornton, Wm. T., quoted, 201, 
 208, 209, 213. 
 
 Tithing system, the, 74, 75 ; the 
 basis of the town corporation, 
 114, 115. 
 
 Town, the, as distinguished from 
 Village and City, 281, 282. 
 
 Town-guild, the, as related to the 
 frith or social guild, 161, 162 ; 
 the basis of the town, 163 ; pro- 
 visions for conducting trade and 
 their effect, 163, 164; in Den- 
 mark as compared with that in 
 England, 166 ; the guild-hall of, 
 
 a castellated market, 1 68 ; its 
 relations to the nobility, 169. 
 
 Trades-Union, the, development of, 
 from the Guild, 174 ; how pro- 
 moted by political repression in 
 England, 184 ; claims and objects 
 of, 189; its attitude toward So- 
 ciety, 190, 191 ; Howell quoted 
 on, 191 ; are the contests of the, 
 a source of gain socially ? 191, 
 192 ; refused recognition by the 
 old jurists, 192 ; idea of, due to 
 false dogmas, 194 ; statistics of, 
 194,195; English report on, cited, 
 195; Thornton's theory of its ef- 
 fect on wages, 196, 197, 208, 209; 
 terms and practices of, in Eng- 
 land, mentioned, 202, 203; de- 
 nounced by Prof. Cairnes, 204, 
 205 ; crushes all artistic impulse, 
 206; the vice of, 206, 207, et 
 seq. ; great mistake of, 215 ; the 
 work of, should be left to society, 
 217. 
 
 Tribal organization, the germ of 
 the State, 11, 12. 
 
 UNIVERSITAS, the, analysis of, 106, 
 107 ; its powers, how related to 
 the collegium, 107, 108. 
 
 WAGES, Thornton's theory of, 196, 
 197 ; Warren's theory of, 198 ; 
 influence of supply and demand 
 on, illustrated, 198, 199 ; raised 
 by Prosperity, not by Strikes, 
 210, 211 ; Prof. Walker's the- 
 ory of, 254 ; paid out of their 
 own product, 255, 256 ; quantity 
 of, turns on relation of Capital 
 to Society, 257, 258 ; distinction 
 between larger and higher, 258. 
 
 Wages-Fund, dogma of, is mislead- 
 ing, 251 ; Prof. Cairnes's theory 
 of, 252; Harrison's theory of, 
 253. 
 
 Walker, Prof., quoted, 248, 254. 
 
 Weeks, Mr., quoted, 220. 
 
 Wergeld, the, origin of, 71 ; an 
 outgrowth from personality, 72, 
 73 ; settlement of feud by, 73 n. ; 
 Charlemagne's regulation of, 111. 
 
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