The weekly examiner., 1901-08-10
LABOR IN ENGLAND.
INTERESTING EXTRACTS FROM THE
 PAGES OF HISTORY.

PAGES OF HISTORY.
 Legal Control of Trades Unions and
 of Combinations I'm Trade-Fhe
 Young Industrial Giant of Modern
 Times.
 With slight omissions, the following is an article by Andrew A. Bruce, as-. sistant professor of law in the Uniyer- sity of Wisconsin, which appeared in recent issue of the Chicago Record Herald:
 Prior to the thirteenth or fourteenth century there was practically speaking no labor question in England for the courts or the parliament to grapple with, since limited industrial deyel- opment and the institution of slavery had simplified the whole problem.
 Personal liberty indeed was. thing unknown to the great massea of the people, and it is a significant fAct that even the much vaunted Magma SCharta exacted from King John by the. insur- gent barons at time when 75 per cent of the inhabitants of England were in a state of practical slavery was worded so as to apply only to free men,"
 In 1348 and 1349 the terrible visita- tion of the black plague spread over England and carried off tens of thou sands of the English peasants and la- borers, and the survivors. taking ad- vantage of the reduction in their num- bers and the consequent scarcity of la- Dor, began everywhere to demand such exorbitant wages that bankruptcy threatened the smaller employers and the larger could operate only at a loss.
 The consequence was that the landed proprietors, whose serfs most of these laborers had formerly been and who had but recently adopted the custom of practically liberating such persons by granting to them the use of small per cells of land and the right to substitute yearly payments of money or produce for the personal service owing to their lords, became incensed not only at their own loss of revenue. but at this seeming ingratitude on the part of their former bondmen.
 The parliament being made up all most entirely of their own numbers. legislation was in their own hands, and in 1349 the famous statute of laborers was passed. The statute provided that the farm laborers and the members of nearly all the skilled trades then fol- lowed in England should not thereafter decline to work for or demand higher rates of wages than those which pre-. vailed in the year immediately preced- ing the visitation of the black plague and in spite of the constant f1uctua- tions in the price of the commodities which the laborers were compelled to buy and of the rent to be paid by them remained in force until the reign of Elizabeth. when it was repealed, but only to make way for another statute equally oppressive.
 This latter statute provided that all persons able to work as laborers or ar tisans and not having independent means might be compelled to work at agricultural pursuits and gave to the justices of the peace. always members of the landed or employing class, the right to fix the rate of wages and the hours of labor. while the statute passed at about the same time. 154S. made '.all conspiracies and covenants of work men not to make or do their work but at certain rate or price" illegal. These latter statutes. although re-enacted from time to time and changed in their. minor details. remained in force until the beginning of the nineteenth cen tury.
 1t was the passage of these statutes at so early a time in the history of England-or, rather, the English deci- sions based thereon-which has led so many of our American judges. reading no doubt the decisions without realiz- ing that there were statutes behind them. to hold that in the eyes of the law all strikes and boycotts must be essentially illegal.
 In America the statutes have, with but few exceptions. not regulated the rates of wages, and yet many judges have adopted the rulings and opinions of the English judges. We do. however, have analogous statutes. If 1t had not been for the interstate commerce and antitrust statutes, both state and na- tional. which make acts in restraint of trade unlawful, we would hardly have the plethora of injunctions leveled against the labor unions with which we are now visited.
 Rigorous though the statutes directed against labor may have been. they were not out of accord either with the gen. eral judge or legislature made law of England in regard to other callings and trades, but were a part of general system of law and legislation enacted and enforced by landed and military aristocracy to which labor and trade alike appeared servile and debased and to the interests of which the prosperity of either class seemed equally detri- mental. The story indeed of the legal control of labor in England was, in it's earlier stages at any rate. but chapter in the legal control of trade and indus try generally. and was the result of the same political and economic philoso-