SIX CENTURIES OF WORK AND WAGES.
IN this work Professor Rogers has essayed to give a history of English labour from the forty-third year of Henry III., i.e., 1259, up to the present time. The subject is an engrossing one, and it is ably treated in these volumes, which form a valuable addition to the social history of this country. Professor Rogers's History of Agriculture and Prices in England, although still in- complete, is a masterly production; but it is beyond the scope of the general reader, and makes great demands on the student, and we are, therefore, glad to see that a goodly measure of what may be deemed the most readable and popular portions of that laborious work have been transferred with a judicious hand to these pages. It is not too much to say that for the period over which both travel together, viz., for the first 324 years of the 600 treated of, the volumes before us may be looked upon as a compendium of the larger work, and the result is an interesting book on a sub- ject of no small importance, on which hitherto it has been im- possible to find a concise and reliable treatise. In one respect, this book is a singular specimen of the publisher's art. It is not large, and its 600 pages could well have been comprised within the covers of one volume ; but for no evident reason, but apparently as some strange freak, it is cut into two volumes, the division taking place in the middle of a sentence at the 304th page, and Volume II. commencing with p. 305. The result of this extraordinary process has been a source of constant irritation to us during perusal, and it halves the value of an already sufficiently meagre index. It is to be hoped that in future editions this senseless division will be avoided, and the index amplified.
• Si:. Centuries of Work and Wages. By James B. Thorold Rogers, M.P. 2 vols. London : Bonnenschein and Co. 1884. In the opening chapters of this work Professor Rogers has given a lively picture of the social intercourse and business transactions of our forefathers in mediwval England. This was desirable, as the question of wages permeates every part of social life. The chief occupation of the people was agriculture ; in country districts "almost every one not only possessed land, but he cultivated it," and hence the history of agriculture incorporated in these pages is as needful as it is interesting. Artificers were few, except in towns, which were small. The serf, so long as he paid his dues in money or labour to the lord, was safe from dispossession ; and there is no doubt that, hard as the terms of his tenure often were, it was not precarious, but there existed a real bargain between the serf and his lord, and that his position was far from being the insecure one described in our law-books. Throughout his researches Professor Rogers has never met with an instance of the sale of a serf, nor has he found record of any labour-rent which could not be replaced by an equivalent money payment. On most manors there was a bailiff, who was himself sometimes a serf, as was the case in the manor of Cuxham, of which the warden and scholars of Merton College, Oxford, were the lords, where for three generations the Oldmans were bailiffs, father, son, and grandson. The whole family seems to have perished in the Black Death, and their chattels accrued to the College. In each manor, most exact accounts were kept. These were always in the same form ; and from their enormous number, from their being in rough, but grammatical Latin, and also from the fact that they were mostly penned just before Michaelmas, in each year, Professor Rogers concludes that education must have been far more widely diffused than is com- monly supposed. He is convinced "that instruction must have been far more accessible than modern writers are wont to imagine," and that schools were attached to every monastery. Generally the land under plough was communal—a system of tenure which was quite contrary to improvement in agriculture, as it gave no certain prospect of advantage on individual endea- vour or outlay. These arable lands were held about equally by the lord and his tenants. Of pasture, all natural or water- meadow was held by the lord in severalty ; and as artificial grasses and root-crops were unknown, such meadow was extremely valuable. The common pasture was used without stint—an arrangement which gave rise to numberless complaints. Ploughing was done by oxen and horses ; and the marling and claying of light, poor lands was an important and costly opera- tion. Stock were small, and no effort was made to improve them ; and, indeed, the scarcity of winter-food, and the poverty of the summer pastures, must have been inimical to any attempt at improvement. But great pains were taken to improve the breeds of sheep ; for wool was the chief production of the English, who virtually had a monopoly of the trade for many centuries. The rot was much dreaded, and it made sad havoc among the flocks. It was vaguely noted in very early times that there was danger in the presence of a small white snail in the grass ; and modern science has shown that the fluke is carried by a water-snail (Limnams trunculatus), thus confirming the sus- picions of the mediwval farmers. In 1280 a new disease, the scab, appeared among the flocks. It was not until artificial grasses and root.crops were introduced from Holland in the seventeenth century, that any real improvement in farming-stock was possible. Pigs, the scavengers of the medixval village, were abundant, and "every peasant had his pig in the sty." Poultry was cheap and plentiful ; "poultry-and-egg rents were the very commonest form of rendering dues." The houses were mean and dirty, and the habits of the people were indescribably filthy. Pestilence was common, and the rate of mortality must have been enormous. Leprosy and scurvy were ever present; nor were they banished from England until the Hollanders, to whom modern civilisation owes "infinite benefits beyond those which were derived from the spectacle of their obstinate struggle for freedom," introduced the cultivation of edible roots and herbs for man and cattle alike. Yet, on the whole, the peasant was well off. Food, though coarse in quality, was abundant, at least in summer; and as the staple food of the English was wheat, the most costly grain grown, there were few famines, and only occasional scarcity. "Except," says Professor Rogers, "that the thirteenth-century villager was generally better off, there was little change induced in the rustic's condition from the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century." The towns were inhabited by merchants and artisans, and "the essential of the medireval town was the formation of the guilds of merchants and craftsmen." The guilds were the benefit societies
of the middle ages ; they were rich and powerful, and often possessed great political influence. Membership in a guild was a birthright, and carried with it great advantages. The artisans of London and other trading towns received through the organisation of their guilds a kind of military training which was of great importance in those times ; and the train-bands and apprentices of London provided a force equal to the Militia, and quite sufficient for defensive operations, although they could not stand the charge of Regulars in the open field. It should be noted that the side espoused by London during the various political dissensions of the period "was always, in the end, and generally at an early period, victorious." London was the chief port and the centre of government. It was an ever- open market, and its busy streets were like a perpetual fair. For a bit of picturesque writing, let the reader turn to p. 112, where he will find an account, drawn from actual sources, of a journey made by one of the bailiffs, Oldman, from Cuxham to London in order to make an extensive purchase of foreign mill-stones for the mill belonging to Merton College. Markets were a necessity of the times, and were held in most towns, whilst fairs played a still more important part in the social economy of the middle ages, and in the distribution of produce ; and as every one attended them, as estates were widely scattered, and as pilgrimages were common events, roads had to be kept in good repair; and there is plenty of evidence that the roads at this period were numerous and excellent. No fair obtained so high a position as that of Stourbridge, which was held in a field near Cambridge, and was opened and concluded with great solemnity. At this fair, everything that could be bought was to be obtained. "It was famous in its day as Novgorod or Leipsic. There were few households which were possessed of any wealth which did not send a purchaser or give a commission for Stourbridge fair." Here merchants congregated from all parts of Europe ; and doubtless at such meetings the affairs of Church and State were keenly reviewed, discontent ripened into action, and the tenets of the Bible-men and the doctrines and teachings of the Lollards were discussed and circulated.
The Black Death, with its appalling mortality, forms an epoch in the history of English labour. Well-placed, on the whole, before that calamity, the labouring classes now suddenly found themselves masters of the situation, and the general rise in labour of all kinds was not less than fifty per cent. At the same time agricultural produce felt no rise, but "everything to which labour adds its principal value i exalted proportionately." The efforts of the landlords to annul the money-payments in lieu of labour-dues were met by combination, organised through- out the country by Wiklif's poor priests, and culminating in Tyler's rebellion, which, although suppressed, was indirectly successful in its objects. Landlord cultivation was gradually abandoned, at first for stock and land leases, but these soon dis- appeared, and the ordinary lease, usually for short periods only, took its place.
The golden age of the workman began, and in spite of all efforts to the contrary, continued for two centuries ; nor was it
disturbed until the issue of base money by Henry VIII. and the suppression of the Guilds by his son. After these events,
the deterioration in the labourer's condition was rapid and continuous. Professor Rogers, it is hardly necessary to say, holds a brief for the labourer and the artisan, and landlords and employers of labour find little mercy at his hands. A perusal of his pages will show that he maintains his position with great force, and is supported by a powerful array of facts and figures. In the following extract his argument is concisely stated, and the process traced by which successive acts of government accomplished the degradation of English labour ;—
" It was first impoverished by the issue of base money. Next, it was robbed of its guild capital by the land thieves of Edward's regency. It was next brought into co.:taet with a new and more needy set of employers—the sheep-masters who succeeded the monks. It was then, with a pretence, and perhaps with the inten- tion of kindness, subjected to the quarter-sessions assessment, merci- lessly used in the first half of the seventeenth century, the agricultural labourer being still further impoverished by being made the residuum of all labour. The agricultural labourer was then further mulcted by enclosures, and the extinction of those immemorial rights of pasture and fuel which he had enjoyed so long. The poor.law professed to find him work, but was so administered that the reduction of his wages to a bare subsistence became an easy process and an economical expedient. When the Monarchy was restored, his employers, who fixed his wages by their own authority, relieved their own estates from their ancient dues at the expense of his poor luxuries by the excise, tied him to the soil by the Law of Settlement, and starved him by a prohibitive corn-law. The freedom of the few was bought by the servitude of the many. Fletcher of Saltoun, an ardent Republican for a narrow
claw", suggested hopeless slavery as the proper doom of the labourers, argued that the people existed only to work, and that philosophical politicians should have the power to limit their exist- ence by labour. Throughout the eighteenth century the most enlightened men gave the poor their pity, occasionally their patron- age, sometimes would assist them at the cost of other workers ; but, beyond a bare existence, never imagined that they had rights, or remembered that they had suffered wrongs. The weight of taxa- tion fell on them in every direction, and with searching severity. It was necessary to find funds at all risks and from every source, and it is obvious that the most fruitful source of taxation is that of necessary consumption and cheap luxuries. It was, of course, impos- sible to tax the absolute necessaries of the individual workman, else he would starve or perish. But the process left him nothing but a bare subsistence. The interpretation of his wages is always incom- plete, unless one takes into account the virtual reduction which taxa- tion made of them ; and to know this would require an exact and searching analysis of the customs and excise, and of their incidence. Even this would be insufficient, because to adequately interpret the situation we should have to estimate the privation of enforced abstinence, as well as the contribution of universal taxation, and measure the labourer's losses not only by what he consumed, but by what he was forced to abstain from consuming. And withal, the exist- ing condition of things bred and strengthened that mean and malig- mmt passion for profiting by the miseries of others which became the policy of the landed interest, and to some extent even now remains a dominant hope in the minds of landlords and farmers. To crown the whole, the penalties of felony and conspiracy were denounced against all labourers who associated together to better their lot by endeavouring to sell their labour in concert ; while the desperation which poverty and misery induce, and the crime they suggest, were met by a code more sanguinary and brutal than any which a civi- lised nation had ever heretofore devised, or a high-spirited one sub- mitted to."
That the condition of the artisan has so greatly improved in the last fifty years, is due to his restored power of combina- tion; and though Arch's heroic efforts have done something, much still remains to be done for the agricultural labourer, who is still in the position of "a serf without land, the most portentous phenomenon in agriculture." Professor Rogers, who scouts the propositions of Mr. George, does not fail to suggest what he considers the remedies for the present situation ; and among these are free-trade in land, judicious emigration, and labour combination and co-operation on a sound basis. But our limits being attained, we can do no more than advise the reader to study for himself this thoughtful and interesting work, in whose pages, if some opinions are set forth to which he is unable to subscribe, he will find much valuable information, abundant matter for reflection, and not a little for humiliation and sorrow.
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