B EGE MAY 19 1903 LIBRARY COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY TROW DIRECTORY NEW YORK LABOR IN ITS RELATIONS TO LAW I HISTORY OF THE LAW OF LABOR Earliest Employment Relation was Slavery. Logically, the simplest relation of employer and employee is that of slavery, and it is convenient, in sketching the history and tendency of this employment relation-certainly the second in importance of human relations—that this is so; for historically, also, it came first; the simplest came first. The greatest ethical lesson of modern historical research has, I think, been to destroy the fiction of the Golden Age. For all classical writers refer to an actual time when all things were perfect, and whence humanity has deteriorated to modern faults and modern laws. Perhaps there is a survival of this classic tradition in the rhetoric of the modern demagogue, who usually assumes that mankind, and more specifically the growing gen eration, are naturally perfect, and would always seek the better reason were it free to them to choose. Unhappily, neither the age of gold nor the heart of gold is a reality. They are to be won by hard work, and by training of character, consciously directed; and the solace lies in this, that we have now put them in the future rather than the past. The earliest and simplest relation, then, of human labor is that of slavery; and the conflicts of this day are nothing new, but are to be found in history, particularly in the history of our own race. Perhaps, even, we shall not find the remedies new, or new in principle, at least, though we may have better hope of them in our time than of old, now that the coarsest work is done for us by natural agencies, and humanity has, or should have, leisure for reason and kindliness. Present Altruistic Tendency to Favor Labor. The writings of Kidd and others are not necessary to tell us that the universal tendency among people who think to-day is one of allowance for presumption in favor of the laborer as against his employer. Possibly this is solely due to the fact that the great sins of the employer of labor are all past. As Herbert Spencer has pointed out, complaints only become audible when the serious danger of their cause has been removed. So, women |