Principles of Political Economy Part 9

SECTION CLXXIII.

HISTORY OF THE WAGES OF COMMON LABOR.--IN FLOURISHING NATIONS.

A permanently[173-1] high rate of wages[173-2] is, both as cause and effect, very intimately connected with a flourishing condition of national life. It proves on the one hand, great productiveness of the public economy of the people generally: prudence, self-respect and self-control, even of the lowest cla.s.ses, virtues, which, however, are found, on the whole, only where political liberty exists, and where the lowest cla.s.ses are rightly valued by the higher.[173-3] On the other hand, it produces a condition of the great majority of that portion of the population who have to support themselves on the wages they receive, worthy of human beings, a condition in which they can educate their children, enjoy the present and provide for the future. Equality before the law and partic.i.p.ation in the affairs of government are empty phrases, and even tend to inflame the pa.s.sions, where the rate of wages is not high. When the lower cla.s.ses are dissatisfied, in highly civilized countries, with the sensitiveness and mobility of the whole national life, there can be no certainty of the freedom of the middle cla.s.ses or of the rule of the upper. Here, in other respects, also, the philanthropy of employers harmonizes remarkably well with their reasonable self-interest. According to -- 40, only the well-paid workman can accomplish anything really good, just as, conversely, only the good workman is on the whole, and in the long run, well paid. This suggests the physiological law, that where muscular activity is great, nutrition must be great, likewise; and the rapid waste and repair of tissues strengthens the muscles and gives tone to the whole physical life. With a correct insight into the relations of things, antiquity described its greatest worker, Herakles, as a great eater also. A well-paid workman, who costs and accomplishes as much in a day as two bad ones, is cheaper than they. He works much more cheerfully and faithfully, is, hence, more easily superintended, is less frequently sick, and later decrepid.[173-4] His childhood costs less, and his burial is not so expensive. In cases of need, he can more easily bear the weight of taxation or a temporary lowering of wages.[173-5] We might say of the granting of holidays and of evening leisure something similar to what we have said of the rate of wages. They are indispensable requisites to the development of a desirable individuality in the working cla.s.ses; and when used for that purpose are certainly no detriment to the product of labor or to employers.[173-6] [173-7]

In consideration of all the blessings attending a high rate of wages, we may well be induced to put up with a certain and frequently inconvenient external defiance of the lower cla.s.ses which is wont to accompany it.[173-8] It teaches the upper cla.s.ses many a moral lesson, and is surely a lesser sin in the lower, than the cowardly, malicious crimes of the oppressed. When wages are so low that they have to be supplemented by begging or public charity, the effect on morality is the same as when government officials, who cannot live on their salaries, resort to bribery or embezzlement.[173-9] [173-10]

[Footnote 173-1: A merely momentary rise in wages might be the result of a great calamity, destructive of human life, and might seduce workmen not intellectually prepared for it into idleness. Compare _von Taube_, Beschreib. von Slavonien etc., II, -- 4.]

[Footnote 173-2: On the necessity of _free_ wages, that is of an excess over and above the costs of support and of maintaining one's position, see _Roesler_, Grandsatze, 394.]

[Footnote 173-3: _Dans aucune histoire on ne rencontre un seul trait, qui prouve que l'aisance du peuple par le travail a nui a son obeissance, (Forbonnais.)_ This is true only of well governed countries. When, in England, about the middle of the eighteenth century, a great improvement took place in the condition of the laboring cla.s.ses, _Postlethwayt_ (Great Britain's commercial Interests, 1759) was one of the first to recognize its general beneficial character; also _Th. Mortimer_. (Elements of Commerce, Politics and Finance, 1774, 82 ff.) _Benjamin Franklin_, before the American revolution, was of opinion that high wages made people lazy. (On the Price of Corn, 1776. On the laboring Poor, 1768.) He afterwards, however, acknowledged its generally good effect, and that even the products of labor might be cheapened thereby. (On the Augmentation of Wages, which will be occasioned in Europe by the American Revolution. Works II, 435 ff.) See further, _Paoletti_, Veri Mezzi di render felici le Societa, ch. 15; _Ricardo_, Principles, ch. 5; _Th. Bra.s.sey_, on Work and Wages, 1872.

_Umpfenbach_, Nat. Oek, 181, calls the costliness of labor to the purchaser of labor, "givers' wages," their purchasing power to the laborer himself, "receivers' wages," and is of opinion, that as civilization advances, the former declines and the latter rises.]

[Footnote 173-4: When in the department of the Tarn flesh food was introduced among journeymen smiths instead of mere vegetable diet, the sanitary improvement that followed was so great that the number of days lost by sickness in a year decreased from 15 to 3. (_Moleschott_.)]

[Footnote 173-5: In high stages of civilization, it is always more profitable, the result being the same, to keep a few well fed cattle than many poorly fed. (_Roscher_, Nationalok. d. Ackerbaues, -- 179.) _Infra_, -- 231. When the drainage of Oxford street in London was made while wages were rising, it happened that the cubic foot of masonry work at 10 shillings per day was cheaper than it was formerly at 6 shillings per day. (_Bra.s.sey_, 68 ff.) _Senior_ calls it an absurdity to consider the high wages paid in England as an obstacle in the way of its successful compet.i.tion with other countries. Rather would he consider it as the necessary result of the excellence of English labor. Thus, in his Lectures on the mercantile Theory of Wealth, p. 76, he says that if the English employ a part of their labor injudiciously, they must pay it not in proportion to what it really accomplishes, but to what it might do if well employed. If a man calls in a doctor to cut his hair, he must pay him as a doctor. If he puts a man to throwing silk who might earn 3 ounces of silver a week spinning cotton, he must pay him weekly 3 ounces of silver, although he may deliver no more silk within that time than an Italian who gets only 1 ounces.]

[Footnote 173-6: Norfolk country workmen never worked more than 10 hours a day except in harvest and seed time. But a plowman there accomplished as much in 5 days as another in 8. (_Marshall_, Rural Economy of N., 138.) In southwestern Germany, the country working day is from 2 to 4 hours shorter than in the northeast, and yet just as much is accomplished in the former quarter. (_von der Goltz_, Landl.

Arbeiterfrage, 88, 131.) Thus the coal diggers of South Wales work 12 hours a day, those of Northumberland, 7; and yet the same achievement is 25 per cent. dearer in case of the former. In the construction of the Paris-Rouen Railroad, the English achieved more than the French, although the former worked from 6 A. M. to 5:30 P. M., and the latter from 5 A. M. to 7 P. M. (_Bra.s.sey_, 144 ff.) Examples from English manufactories in _Marx_, Kapital, I, 401 seq. In an English factory the hours worked were 12, and afterwards, 11. This caused the number of attendants of the evening school to grow from 27 to 98. (_Horner._) _Dollfuss_, in Muhlhausen, reduced the number of hours worked from 12 to 11, and let the wages remain the same as before. The result was besides a great saving made in fuel and light, a surplus product of at least 1-2/3 per cent. Something similar observed by _M. Chevalier_, Cours, I, 151.

Hence _J. Moser_, Patr. Ph., III, 40, desired, on this account, that work in the evening should be prohibited by law. In England, not only the moral necessity, but also the economic general utility of leisure time of workmen has been defended, among others by _Postlethwayt_, Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, I, prelim. Discourse, 1751. A beautiful law, V Moses 24, 15. Only, care must be taken not to go to the other extreme, which is still more detrimental to personality. The North American ideal of 8 hours a day for work, 8 for eating, sleeping, etc., and 8 for leisure, would be injurious except to workmen intellectually very active.

But the provision to be met with in many states of the Union and in the a.r.s.enal employ of the government, that in case of doubt, the work day is to be tacitly a.s.sumed as of 8 hours, has, it is said, correspondingly lowered wages. See _supra_, -- 168.]

[Footnote 173-7: In India, where the inst.i.tution of caste is found, nearly half the year is made up of feast days, while in rationalistic China there is no Sunday and very few general holidays. (_Klemm_, A. Kulturgeschicht. VI, 425.

_Wray_, The practical Sugar Planter, 1849.) The Judaic-Christian sanctification of the seventh day is a happy medium between these two extremes. Recuperation and collectedness get their due without its costing too much to action. _Ora et labora!_ Compare _Sismondi_, N. P. II, ch.

5. Which is best, traveling on foot, to drag along all the time, or to walk decently and rest properly between times?

The rest of Sunday, even leaving the work of recuperation and edification out of account, is necessary in the interests of the family and of cleanliness. The French _decadis_ accomplished materially even too little: _ils ont a faire a deux ennemis, qui ne cederont pas, la barbe et la chemise blanche_. (_B. Constant._) Hence, an English prize essay on the material advantages of Sunday found 1,045 compet.i.tors among English working men. (Tubinger Zeitschr., 1851, 363.)]

[Footnote 173-8: Thus _Parkinson_, A Tour in America, complains that with four servants in the house, he was obliged to polish his own shoes, and with his wife and children to milk the cows, while his people were still asleep. Strange servants bringing a message, come in with their hats on. All domestics are called mister or misses.

Servant maids are called "helps," and their masters, "employers." If a person at a hotel asks for a laundress, he is answered: "Yes, man, I will get a lady to wash your clothes." Similarly in _Fowler_, Lights and Shadows,...

three Years' Experience in Australia. But, at the same time, it is remarkable how seldom a native born white American accepts a fee. On the other hand, Russia is the cla.s.sic land of fees. There is a popular story in that country to the effect that when G.o.d divided the earth among the different nations, they were all satisfied except the Russians, who begged a little drink-money or fee in addition, (_von Haxthausen_, Studien, I, 70.) Similarly in Egypt. (_Ebers_, Durch Gosen zum Sinai, 1873, 31 seq.) The system of feeing servants holds a middle place between the modern system of paying for everything lawfully and the medieval system in which people either rob, donate or beg.]

[Footnote 173-9: Compare _Garve_ in _Macfarlan_, 90. The wages of English wool workers in 1831 amounted to:

_Tax per capita of the_ _population for_ _In_ _support of the poor._ Leeds, 22---22s. 5s. 7d.

Gloucester, 13---15s. 8s. 8d.

Somerset, 16--19s. 8s. 9d.

Wilts, 13-7/12--15-5/12s. 16s. 6d.

_Ure_, Philosophy of Manufactures, 476. After an enthusiastic eulogy of high wages, _McCulloch_ remarks especially that the English poor rates cost more than if the laborers were obliged to provide for themselves by getting higher wages. (Principles, III, 7.) Sad results of the system which came into vogue in the South of England in 1795, to supplement wages according to the price of corn and the number of children. Previously the laboring cla.s.ses married only after the age of 25 and even at 35, and not until they had saved from 40 to 50. After the above mentioned system was adopted, even minors married. (Edinburg Review, LIII, 4, 7.)]

[Footnote 173-10: _Von Thunen_, Isolirte Staat., II, 1, 154, gives the following formula as the expression of ideal wages: sqrt(ap), in which a = the necessary requirement for maintenance of the workmen, and p = the aggregate product of his labor. _von Thunen_ attached so much importance to this formula that he had it engraved on his tomb-stone. But even if it were possible to reduce capital-generating labor and wage-labor to a common denominator, it would not be possible nor equitable to maintain the same dividing measure when capital and labor contributed in very different amounts to the production of the common product. An artist, for instance, who could make costly vessels out of very cheap clay and with cheap fuel would get too little by _von Thunen's_ law; a mechanic who used a very efficient and costly machine, too much. The fundamental defect in his theory, _von Thunen_ himself seems to have obscurely felt.

Compare the letter in his Lebensbeschreibung, 1868, 239 and _Roscher_, Geschichte der Nat. Oek., in Deutschland, 895 ff.]

SECTION CLXXIV.

HISTORY OF THE WAGES OF COMMON LABOR.--IN DECLINING COUNTRIES AND TIMES.

When, circ.u.mstances being otherwise unaltered, the aggregate income of a nation decreases, the wages of labor are wont to be lower in proportion as the points above mentioned, and which are unfavorable to the laborer in his compet.i.tion, appear.[174-1] The worse distribution, also, of the national resources, when, instead of a numerous middle cla.s.s, a few over-rich people monopolize all that is to be possessed, diminishes the wages of common labor and thus again produces a worse distribution than before.[174-2] In a similar way, wages must decline when the mode of life of the laboring cla.s.s, or the quality of their work, has deteriorated. Some of these causes may exist transitorily even among otherwise flourishing nations; as, for instance, in war times,[174-3] or when population for a while grows more rapidly than national wealth. But among nations universally declining, they are all wont to meet, and one strengthens the other.[174-4] One of the saddest symptoms of such a condition is the low value here put upon the life and strength of workmen. The cheapness of labor has indeed a charm for enterprising spirits, which induces them to employ human labor even where machinery, beasts, etc., would economically be better adapted to the performance of the work.[174-5] Day-laborers are, on this account, more profitable to persons of enterprise (_Unternehmer_=_undertaker_) because they can more easily rid themselves of them. But such egotistic calculation should have no place even in the case of actual slaves.[174-6]

Besides, it not unfrequently happens, that the laboring cla.s.s seek to oppose the decline of wages by increasing their industry, shortening their holidays and leisure, and by drawing their wives and children into their work. This may, under certain circ.u.mstances, result in an increase of the national income, and thus const.i.tute a transition to the restoration of high wages, especially if beforehand there was reason to complain of the idleness of the working cla.s.s. But if the other circ.u.mstances of compet.i.tion are unfavorable to the working cla.s.s, if especially they used their personally increased income to add to the population, it would not be long before they fell back to their previous state. In such case, the consequence is, that the same quant.i.ty of labor has become cheaper; that all permanent profit falls to the capitalists and landowners, and all that remains to the laboring cla.s.s is only greater toil, a sadder home-life, and sadder children. The danger of such an issue is all the greater, because few things so much contribute to reckless marriages and the thoughtless procreation of children, as the industrial cooperation of wife and child.[174-7] [174-8]

[Footnote 174-1: Hence _Adam Smith_ says that it is not the richest countries in which wages are highest, but those which are becoming rich most rapidly.]

[Footnote 174-2: The cla.s.sic lands of low wages and pauperism are especially the East Indies and China. A minister of Kienlong was punished after he had extorted about 20,000,000 thalers. (_Barrow_, II, 149.) In the confiscation of the well known _Keschen_, the authorities, according to their own accounts, found 682 pounds of gold and more than 6,000,000 pounds in silver. Considering the colossal banquets of the rich, embracing several hundred courses, of which _Meyen_, Reise um die Erde, II, 390, describes an example, the wretched food of the poor is doubly striking. Count _Gortz_ relates that in Canton, rats and serpents are regularly exposed for sale. (Reise, 445.) The lowness of wages appears from the fact--one of many--that servants frequently get nothing but their board.

(_Haussmann_, Voyage en Chine, etc.) In the cities, tradesmen with their tools run hither and thither about the streets begging for employment in the most imploring manner.

Thousands live all their lives on rafts. Numberless instances of infanticide from want of food, (-- 251.) The influence of these circ.u.mstances on the morality of the people is best ill.u.s.trated by the fact that _Keschen_, when he was amba.s.sador to Thibet, preferred to confide his newly collected treasures to the escort of the French missionaries he persecuted rather than to the mandarins named by himself, so much more highly did he estimate European than Chinese honesty. (Edinburg Rev., 1851, 425 ff.) In the Chinese picture-writing, the word happiness was designated by a mouth well corked with rice. Chinese statisticians speak of mouths (_Maul_) where ours treat of the number of heads or souls. _Ritter_, Erdkunde, II, 1060. More favorable accounts in _Plath_, Munch. Akad., 1873, 784, 788 seq.

In the East Indies, a great many of the rejected castes live on carrion, dead fish, noxious insects, and even the middle cla.s.s find wheat flour too dear, and therefore mix it with peas, etc. (_Ritter_, VI, 1143.) It is said that Bengal, in the famine of 1770, lost more than one-third of its inhabitants. (_Mill_, History of British India, III, 432.) Eloquent description of misery in _Rickard_, India, or Facts submitted to ill.u.s.trate the Character and Condition of the native Inhabitants, II, London, 1832. An immense number of badly paid servants of whom it may however be said that each one accomplishes very little. The Pindaries may pa.s.s for an extreme of Indian pauperism, corresponding to the pirate-calamity during the later Roman Republic. (Quarterly Review, XVIII, 466 ff.; _Ritter_, VI, 394 ff.)]

[Footnote 174-3: Thus, in England, during the last great war, wages rose less than the price of corn, and sank less after it. About 1810, wages were nearly 100 per cent. higher than in 1767; but, on the other hand, the price of wheat, 115; of meat, 146; of b.u.t.ter, 130, and of cheese, 153 per cent. (Edinburg Rev., XL., 28.) If it has some times been observed that crime, communistic machinations and revolutionary movements grow less frequent in times of war, the fact is not to be ascribed necessarily to a better condition of the laboring cla.s.s. It might possibly be the consequence of the strongest and wildest elements of the laboring cla.s.s finding some other career.]

[Footnote 174-4: _Adam Smith_, loc. cit., on this point describes China as a stationary country (according to _R.

Fortune_, Wanderings in China, 1847, 9, a decided decline has been noticeable there for a long time), and Bengal as a declining one. On the condition of wages among the Romans, _Juvenal_, III, 21 ff., is one of the princ.i.p.al sources.

Hence the desire to emigrate because honest labor had no longer any foothold (23 ff.). Poor dwellings of the laboring cla.s.s, dark, exposed to danger from fire (166, 190 ff., 225), and yet comparatively dear (223 seq.). Numerous crowds of robbers and beggars (302 ff.; IV, 116 ff.; V, 8; XIV, 134). On beggary, see _Seneca_, Controv., V, 33. De Element., II, 6. De Vita beata, 25 ff. _Martial_, V, 81, XIV, 1, complains of the absence of outlook among the poorer cla.s.ses. _Horace_, too, is rich in pa.s.sages which might be appropriately cited in this connection. Characteristic question of the nabobs, in _Petron._, 48, 5: What on earth is that thing called a pauper?]

[Footnote 174-5: Thus, in China, the East Indies, etc., people travel in palanquins borne by men; in a mult.i.tude of cases, Chinese commodities are carried in wheelbarrows; and a great many roads are constructed, in reference not to wagons, properly so-called, but to this species of vehicle.

How heartless the Chinese, who, before they save a drowning man, first higgle about the reward, and take pleasure in pestilence, famine, etc., because those who survive profit by them. See _Finlaison_, Journey of the Mission to Siam, 1826, 62 ff.]

[Footnote 174-6: Hence _Menander_ (342-290 before Christ) says it is better to be the slave of a good master than to live wretched in freedom. (_Stobus_, Flor., 62, -- 7.

_Meinecke_, Fr. com. Gr., IV, 274.) _Libanios_, too, (Tom., 483, Reiske), in his "Blame of Poverty," represents slavery as better cared for, and freer from worry. Horrible contracts made even in Caesar's time, from want, by freemen, to become gladiator-slaves. _Cicero_, pro Roscio, Am. 6; _Horat._, Serm., II, 7, 58 ff.; _Petron._, 117; _Seneca_, Epist., 37. And so by Justinian, cases of declined freedom are supposed. (L. 15, _Justin._, Cod., VII, 2.) "_Dans une armee on estime bien moins un pionnier, qu'un cheval de caisson, parce que le cheval est fort cher, et qu'on a le pionier pour rien. La suppression de l'esclavage a fait pa.s.ser ce calcul de la guerre dans la vie commune._"

(_Linguet._)]

[Footnote 174-7: _Sismondi_ is guilty, however, of a philanthropic exaggeration when he says that the labor of children is always fruitless to the laboring cla.s.ses. (R. P.

I., 235.)]

[Footnote 174-8: The bringing into juxtaposition of the rates of wages in different countries is doubtless one of the most important objects of comparative statistics. Only it is necessary not to confine it to the money amount of wages, but to make it embrace the prices of the princ.i.p.al means of subsistence. Thus, in France, before the outbreak of the French Revolution, a French workman earned a cwt. of bread on an average of 10.5 days; one of meat in 36.8; an English workman, in 10.4 and 25.3 days. (_A. Young._) In the interior of Russia, a female weaver earns, in a day, almost one Prussian _scheffel_ of rye, in Bielefeld, only about one-tenth of a _scheffel_; a table-cloth weaver, in the former place, 18 silver groschens, while the _scheffel_ costs from 12 to 15 silver groschens. (_von Haxthausen_, Studien, I, 119, 170.) According to _Humboldt_, the money-wages paid in Mexico were twice as high, and the price of corn two-thirds as dear, as in France. (N. Espagne, IV, 9.) According to _Rau_, Lehrbuch, I, -- 180, the procuration of the following means of subsistence required in day labor in:

==============+============+=========+========== | | | | |_Manchester.|_Hanover.|_Hanover.| | | | | | 1810-20_ | 1700_ | 1827_ | --------------+------------+---------+---------- Cwt. beef, | 26 | 33 | 35 | " potatoes,| 1.85 | ---- | ---- | " wheat, | 5.5 | ---- | ---- | " rye, | ---- | 6.5 | 8.7 | " b.u.t.ter, | 42.3 | 87 | 64 | " sugar, | 96 | 181 | 128 | ==============+============+=========+========== |_Upper | | | |Canada. |_Brandenburg.| Gratz. | | | | | | 1830_ | 1820-33_ |1826-45_ | --------------|--------+-------------+---------- Cwt. beef, | 6.6 | 34 | 36 | " potatoes,| ---- | 1 | 2.68 | " wheat, | 2 | 7.6 | 11 | " rye, | 1.5 | 5.4 | 8.6 | " b.u.t.ter, | 22 | 83 | 84 | " sugar, | ---- | ---- | ---- | ==============+============+=========+==========

Estimated in silver, the East Indian laborer earns from 1 to 2 a year; the English, 9 to 15; the North American, 12 to 20. (_Senior._) _Hildebrand_, Nat-Oek., I, 195 ff., a.s.sures us that the average rate of wages in Germany, in 1848, amounted to 400 thalers a year; in England, to 300 thalers; and that the prices of the means of subsistence in the latter country were 1 times higher than in the former. _Engel_, Ueber die arbeitenden Kla.s.sen in England, 1845, shows only the dark side of a real picture, and is silent on the other, and is well corrected by _Hildebrand_, I, 170 ff. Excellent statistics in _Sir F. M. Eden_, State of the Poor, I, 491-589. On the more recent times, compare the Edinburgh Review, April, 1851, April, 1862; Quarterly Rev., Oct., 1859, July, 1860. _Ludlow_ and _Jones_, loc.

cit. On the situation in France, see _Blanqui's_ report in the Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences morales et politiques, II, 7. _Leplay_, Les Ouvriers des deux Mondes, II, 1858. Very important are the "Reports from Her Majesty's diplomatic and consular Agents abroad respecting the Condition of the industrial Cla.s.ses, and the Purchase-power of money in foreign Countries." (1871.)]

SECTION CLXXV.

WAGE POLICY.--SET PRICE OF LABOR.

Among the artificial means employed to alter the existing rate of wages, we may mention first, a rate of wages fixed by governmental authority.

These have, in many places, const.i.tuted an intermediate step between serfdom and the free wage-system. In most cases, this measure was intended in the interest of the upper cla.s.ses to prevent the lower obtaining the full advantage of their freedom under the favoring circ.u.mstances of compet.i.tion.[175-1] In later times, another cause has frequently been added to this, viz.: by diminishing the cost of production to increase foreign sales. (See -- 106.) In the higher stages of civilization, nations will scarcely look with favor on the diminution of the rightful, for the most part, individually small gains of the most numerous, the poorest and most care-worn cla.s.s of the community.[175-2]

The purchasers of labor would, in consequence, be badly served, since they would have lost the possibility of obtaining better workmen by paying higher wages. Hence, there would, probably, be none but mediocre labor to be found.[175-3] On the other hand, fixed rates which keep within the limits described in -- 114 are, under certain circ.u.mstances, desirable. This is especially the case where the purchasers of labor on the one hand, and the buyers of labor on the other, have formed themselves into united groups, and where the rate fixed is only in the nature a treaty of peace under governmental sanction, when a war over prices had either broken out actually or there was danger to fear that one would break out. It must not be forgotten, that thus far common labor has scarcely had any thing similar to an "exchange."[175-4]

[Footnote 175-1: The plague known as the black death of 1348, which devastated the greater part of Europe, was followed by many complaints on the part of the buyers of labor, of the cupidity and malicious conspiracies of the working cla.s.ses. (See _supra_ -- 160.) Fixed rates of wages under Peter the Cruel of Castile, 1351; contemporaneously in France, Ordonnances, II, 350, and in England, 25 Edw. III, c. 2; 37 Edw. III, c. 3. In France, the wages of a thresher were fixed at the one-twentieth or the one-thirtieth of a _scheffel_, while in present Saxony it is from one-fourteenth to one-twelfth. In England, under the same ruler, who had seen his castle at Windsor built, not by day laborers for wages, but by va.s.sal masons, va.s.sal carpenters, etc., whom he got together from all parts of the kingdom.

That the rates might not be evaded, the succeeding king forbade both the leaving of agriculture for industry and change of domicile without the consent of a justice of the peace. (12 Richard II., c. 3.) All such provisions were little heeded in the 16th century. (_Rogers_, the Statist.

Journal, 1861, 544 ff.)