The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-03-07

ation with other employers with re- spect to wages, and that there was a tacit understanding between all the employees employing men of the kind Fraser Chalmers were employing, that they should receive so much and no more.
 had grown up ~'inging to the old fashioned idea that a man had the right to sell his labor for what he could get; that he was free to con tract for it as the employer was to contract with him for it. but I be Heved when l had finished that strike that that proposition had not a. leg to stand on. Freedom to contract Of necessity involves freedom not to contract, and that freedom the work man IS without, because his la bor resembles a perishajb1e commodi- ty; he must get rid of it every day in his life or he and his family must
 suffer the consequences.
 This conclusion led me to an in vestigation to see whether he had al ways been without a well defined place in the scheme of things or had lost 1t in the hurley-bur of our
 modern race for wealth, and, at the risk Of burdening you with a recita- of facts some or all of you may i0e already familiar with, I want to sketch briefly what my own investi
 ga.tion proved l found that the ear Hest authentic record of Iab2r's posi- ton in the social structure was from a time immediately preceding the Norman conquest of Great Britain, in 1o66 It was a part of the feudal, and was called the manoriaI system. Dur ing that period the cultivated DOT tiOTS of Great Britain and the ESu- rOpean continent were divided into large tracts or estates on which the actual work of cultivation was per formed by the workman, whose posi- tiOn was somewhat peculiar. He 1 could have the place or manor on which he was born without the con sent of the Overlord, but, although he did not own the small piece of land which he cultivated for his own use, he was entitled to it by immemorial usage, and could appeal to the au- thorities if it was withheld from him. For this piece of land and his right to cultivate it, he paid with labor,
 also fixed by inmemoriaI custom,
 such as work on that portion of the i estate which the overlOrd retained for himself for two or three days out of | each week through the year and con tinuous work for one or two weeks during the blowing and harvesting
 seasons.
 | Craft Gilds.
 ] At the same time that this manoriaI
 or feudal system was obtaining in the
 countryside, craft giIds existed in the
 towns and cities These were unions
 of mechanics engaged in handicrafts.
 and were designed to promote frater- n al TaI9 1l,o+r nd
 to produce good work, and they were
 operated under minute regulations,
 including, among other things, the
 prohibition of nigllt-work- They re- | strained competition in the interest of i the trade, by binding their members not to pass beyond certain limits in their production lest the interests of
 their gild associates should suffer. IDuring this period of giIds the work
 men owned their own tools, carried
 on their work either in their own
 houses or in nearby places, the eIn-
 ployer was assisted by a few journey
 men and apprentices, but there was
 no Wice gulf between him and them,
 and all belonged to the same social
 class.
 The decline of these two workmen's l system in country and city was so
 gradual as to be impossible to de-
 limit, and the substitution Of money
 III place Of barter had much to do
 with the breaking down of both. In, 1 both the country and the city plans. the workman had his definite posi-
 tlon- h the country he was invar-
 laply an actual sharer in the produce
 or the land of the overlord for whom l he worked. In the city he was the 'soeial equal of the man for whom he
 worked, and continkonslY had such