[Sidenote: Regulation of labor]
In place of the old serfdom under one master came a new and detailed regulation of labor by the government. This regulation was entirely from the point of view, and consequently all but entirely in the interests, of the propertied classes. The form was the old form of medieval paternalism, but the spirit was the new spirit of capitalistic gain. The endeavor of the government to be fair to the laborer as well as to the employer is very faint, but it is just perceptible in some laws.
Most of the taxes and burdens of the state were loaded on the backs of the poor. Hours of labor were fixed at from 12 to 15 according to the season. {554} Regulation of wages was not sporadic, but was a regular part of the work of certain magistrates, in England of the justices of the peace. Parliament enforced with incredible severity the duty of the poor and able-bodied man to work. Sturdy idlers were arrested and drafted into the new proletariat needed by capital. When whipping, branding, and short terms of imprisonment, did not suffice to compel men to work, a law was passed to brand able-bodied vagrants on the chest with a "V," [Sidenote: 1547] and to assign them to some honest neighbor "to have and to hold as a slave for the space of two years then next following." The master should "only give him bread and water and small drink and such refuse of meat as he should think meet to cause the said slave to work." If the slave still idled, or if he ran away and was caught again he was to be marked on the face with an "S" and to be adjudged a slave for life. If finally refractory he was to be sentenced as a felon. This terrible measure, intended partly to reduce lawless vagrancy, partly to supply cheap labor to employers, failed of its purpose and was repealed in two years. Its re-enactment was vainly urged by Cecil upon Parliament in 1559. As a substitute for it in this year the law was passed forbidding masters to receive any workman without a testimonial from his last employer; laborers were not allowed to stop work or change employers without good cause, and conversely employers were forbidden to dismiss servants "unduly."
[Sidenote: The proletariat]
In Germany the features of the modern struggle between owners and workers are plainest. In mining, especially, there developed a real proletariat, a class of laborers seeking employment wherever it was best paid and combining and striking for higher wages. To combat them were formed pools of employers to keep down wages and to blacklist agitators. Typical of these was the agreement made by Duke George of {555} Saxony and other large mine-owners not to raise wages, [Sidenote: 1520] not to allow miners to go from place to place seeking work, and not to hire any troublesome agitator once dismissed by any operator.
It is extraordinary how rapidly many features of the modern proletariat developed. Take, for example, the housing problem. As this became acute some employers built model tenements for their workers. Others started stores at which they could buy food and clothing, and even paid them in part in goods instead of in money. Labor tended to become fluid, moving from one town to another and from one industry to another according to demand. Such a thing had been not unknown in the previous centuries; it was strongly opposed by law in the sixteenth. The new risks run by workers were brought out when, for the first time in history, a great mining accident took place in 1515, a flood by which eighty-eight miners were drowned. Women began to be employed in factories and were cruelly exploited. Most sickening of all, children were forced, as they still are in some places, to wear out their little lives in grinding toil. The lace-making industry in Belgium, for example, fell entirely into the hands of children. Far from protesting against this outrage, the law actually sanctioned it by the provision that no girl over twelve be allowed to make lace, lest the supply of maidservants be diminished.
[Sidenote: Strikes]
Strikes there were and rebellions of all sorts, every one of them beaten back by the forces of the government and of the capitalists combined. The kings of commerce were then, more than now, a timorous and violent race, for then they were conscious of being usurpers. When they saw a Münzer or a Kett—the mad Hamlets of the people—mop and mow and stage their deeds before the world, they became frantic with terror and could do nought but take subtle counsel to {556} kill these heirs, or pretenders, to their realms. The great rebellions are all that history now pays much attention to, but in reality the warfare on the poor was ceaseless, a chronic disease of the body politic. Louis XI spared nothing, disfranchisement, expulsion, wholesale execution, to beat down the lean and hungry conspirators against the public order, whose raucous cries of misery he detested. With somewhat gentler, because stronger, hand, his successors followed in his footsteps. But when needed the troops were there to support the rich. The great strike of printers at Lyons is one example of several in France. In the German mines there were occasional strikes, sternly suppressed by the princes acting in agreement.
[Sidenote: Degradation of the poor]
There can be no doubt that the economic developments of the sixteenth century worked tremendous hardship to the poor. It was noted everywhere that whereas wine and meat were common articles in 1500, they had become luxuries by 1600. Some scholars have even argued from this a diminution of the wealth of Europe during the century. This, however, was not the case. The aggregate of capital, if we may judge from many other indications, notably increased throughout the century. But it became more and more concentrated in a few hands.