impetus to the trade union movement. The experience of this strike proved conclusively that the principles of trade unionism were becoming general and that even the unskilled workmen. were better able to organize than they had been a generation or two before.

Since 1889 there has been a rapid growth among the organized laborers of the United Kingdom. The membership of British and Irish trade unions increased rapidly until 1892, when 1,503,000 persons were enrolled, then slowly declined until 1895, and since the latter year has again mounted steadily. In 1901 there were 1,923,000 members, and at the present time (August, 1903), the number of trade unionists in the United Kingdom is probably in excess of 2,000,000. The actual increase in the power of the unions, however, has probably been much greater than that indicated by the statistics. There is always a large number of workingmen in sympathy with the movement, although not a part of it, and these men vote and act with the unionists and follow their lead. The concentration of large groups of unionists in particular districts has also tended to increase their power and their political and industrial influence.

During the last decade the trade unions of the United Kingdom have increased not only in membership, but in stability, permanence, and power.. In 1901 the principal unions, representing only three-fifths of the total membership of the organizations of the Kingdom, had accumulated funds amounting to over twenty millions of dollars and were enjoying an annual income amounting to ten millions of dollars. During the ten years from 1892 to 1901 inclusive, the principal unions, representing only a fraction of the membership of the Kingdom, expended upon dispute benefits, working and miscellaneous expenses, and unemployed, sick, accident, superannuation, funeral, and other benefits, the enormous sum of seventy-three and a half millions of dollars. This period has also been marked by the further development of labor federation, although this evolution has not progressed as far in England as in the United States. During the decade victories have been achieved in the field of politics, especially in the government of municipalities. The trade union has been successful in securing from the London

County Council and from a majority of municipal bodies important concessions in the matter of the maintenance of the union wage and the union working day. The chief victory in politics, however, has probably been the Compulsory Liability Law of 1897, by which workingmen in a large number of industries may receive compensation for accidents. The Taff Vale decision of 1902, which changes the legal status of unions, has temporarily thrown the movement out of joint. Although its full consequences cannot as yet be accurately foretold, this decision must be recognized as fraught with danger to the orderly and peaceful progress of trade unionism in England. Its first effect has been to cause the unions to participate more actively than formerly in the political movements of the time. Nevertheless, British trade unionism, which has outlasted so much persecution and so many attacks, will hardly fail to survive this final assault by the supreme judicial tribunal of the British Empire.

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CHAPTER VII

LABOR IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES

Labour in 1700 and Labor in 1900 Simple Conditions in Colonial Times. Poverty. Slavery in the South. Labor in the North. Class Distinctions. Fixing Wages by Law. Two Shillings a Day. The Pay of Women and Indians. The Cost of Living. Poverty, Hard Work, Long Hours, but no Starvation. Indentured Servants. Apprenticed at Seven. No Labor Unions in the Colonies.

N the American colonies land was plenty, but money scarce.

IN

There

were many acres to till, but few nien to till them. The needs of the people were simple, and were satisfied in a large, rough, substantial fashion. During the century and a half following the arrival of the Cavaliers in Virginia and the stern Puritans in New England, the history of American labor was the simple story of a conquest of nature by hardy pioneers. Scattered in settlements along the narrow fringe of coast line, venturing but a few miles up the navigable rivers, lived the English, French, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, and Spaniards, the inhabitants of the America of that day. These sturdy settlers spent their lives in subduing the wilderness, in trading with the Indians for furs, in raising tobacco, wheat, or Indian corn, in building ships, and in plying various rude handicrafts. In the Colonial days there was little wealth and less penury. The country was poor, but there was not the sharp contrast between fabulous wealth and abject misery, between the spacious mansions of the rich and the hiving tenements of the poor, which is a distinguishing characteristic of the present time.

Of course, differences and class distinctions existed, but the contrast was rather one of station in life than of the means of enjoyment. There were even then rich men and poor men. Favored gentlemen counted their laborers by the hundreds and their acres by the tens of thousands, while, on the other hand, the slaves, who in the South performed the hard work of colonization, owned neither lands nor tenements, neither the clothes on their

backs nor their own bodies. But even the opulent could find no other outlet for their wealth than in the enjoyment of a rude plenty, for most of the luxuries of even the poor of to-day were unattainable to the wealthy of Colonial times.

During Colonial days and for four-score years under the Republic, the labor system of the South was based upon the institution of slavery. The relation of employer to workman was not that of one freely contracting person to another, but the relation of owners to property. On the vast tobacco plantations, stretching for miles from river to river, the owner was absolute lord and master over the hundreds of black slaves who worked for him in the field or served him in his household. There was no payment of wages to the slaves, and where a slave was loaned by one plantation owner to another it was not wages but a regular rent or hire which was paid, and not to the slave but to his master. In the South there was a sharp line of cleavage, not only between the master and his property, the slave, but equally between the slave owner and the slaveless man. The Virginian or Carolinian who owned no slaves was in the position of a landless man in Europe during the middle ages. He counted for nothing, had no political or social influence, and deteriorated into the so-called "white trash," which has shown its capabilities only since the Civil War.

In the Northern states the conditions were much better, but even here a line was drawn between those who worked with their hands and those who lived from the product of other men's labor. In the old Colonial days the toiler had no education and few political rights. His work was largely that of an unskilled man. He did not possess the means or the opportunity of educating himself or his children, and his wages, even when paid in money, were barely sufficient to feed and lodge him and to provide him with an annual suit of homespun clothing. The workingman at that time wore what was practically a distinctive dress, and there was no danger of confounding him with the "gentleman" who walked upon the other side of the way.

It is difficult to compare the wages of people living in one state of