1. The Color and the Labor Questions
Two of our most serious social and political questions do not come to the surface in Roman history, at least not in the form in which they present themselves today. I mean the “color question” and the labor question. Lord Cromer in the book to which reference has already been made ventures the opinion that “antipathy based on differences of colour is a plant of comparatively recent growth.” He connects its development with the fact that in modern times the white man has enslaved only the black man. Out of this relation the hostility of the two races has developed, and has extended its scope so as to determine in some measure the attitude of the white man toward the brown and yellow man. The Roman had both white and black slaves. All foreigners were on the same plane below himself. Consequently he did not have that difficulty in dealing with the dark races which some modern nations experience.
In the towns and villages of the Roman Empire we find inscriptions attesting the existence of nearly five hundred different trade-guilds.[30] Industry was carried to a high degree of specialization. We find organizations of carpenters, joiners, gold-smiths, silver-smiths, sandal-makers, bakers, skippers, actors, gladiators, and of men in almost every conceivable occupation. Yet we have no record of an industrial strike in Roman history,[30a] nor of the intrusion of the labor question into politics. The Roman trade-guilds do not seem to have tried to raise wages or to improve working conditions, in spite of their great numbers and their large membership. They were primarily benevolent and social societies. Most of the laborers worked in their own homes or in small shops, and not in large factories where common conditions develop class consciousness and a sense of solidarity. Furthermore, the great majority of the manual laborers were either slaves or freedmen, and joint action to improve their condition would have been well nigh impossible.