The Connecticut labor news., 1924-10-25

tuuSlTy, IS 1eCOSIllZcu LOQay as ndturdI
 instead of an artificial form of organ
 ization. If this were not so trade unionism would have passed away long
 ago, This being so the records of the
 distant past should give us ample evil
 dence of trade union organization, for
 the same motives which influence men
 today would have influenced them in
 the same manner in the past.
 The student of history nows that
 the ancient work1nen were we'll organ
 ized and federated, and furthermore
 that at one time the workers of an
 cient Rome and Asia Minor were even
 more thoroughly organized than the
 wage earners are at the present time.
 Two conditions, however, have made it
 impossible for us to learn much con-
 corning them, for the ancient workmen
 left no written records behind them,
 and the historians and writers of that
 period looked upon manual labor with
 more or less contempt, referring to la
 bor only incidentally, and when some
 great strike for time being affected
 the public.
 Aside from the occasional references
 made to trade union activities by the
 writers of antiquity, the only records in teMstence are the inscriptions found up ] on stone slabs, erected either by the
 trade unions themselves or by the ..xL~~:x:ac Fee, aod fr,n~. .act-rx ,e these are. they serve to indicate most widespread trade union activity, and furthermore indicate that some of the very problems which confront the trade union movement of today were similar in principle and application to those which the trade unions of antiquity were forced to deal with.
 We can even find the forerunner of the modern injunction in some of the edicts issued by Roman proconsals. A stone slab in the museum at Constan- tinople indicates1that the Roman pro- consul at Ephesuss about the year 200 A. D., issued an injunction against striking bakers, the translation of the inscription reading, in part:
 "I, therefore, order the Bakers Union not to hold meetings as faction, nor to be leaders in recklessness. but strictly to obey the regulations made for the general welfare, and to supply the city unfailingly with the labor es- sential for bread making.
 |, When from this time forward any one of them shall be caught in the act of attending a meeting contrary to orders, or of starting new tumuit or riot, he shall be arrested and shall un- dergo the fitting penalty. And should any one plotting against the city dare to hide himself, he shall in addition have decuria marked on his foot, and the receiver of such a man shall be liable to the same penalty.
 This language is quite similar in its purpose to that found in the modern labor injunction. The striking bakers were ordered to return to work and furnish bread. If any one of them dis obeyed these orders, he was to be ar rested; and if any citizen should hide one of these men for the purpose of preventing his arrest, both the striker and the citizen were to be punished by being branded on the foot.
 While architects were examing the of that majestic cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris some years ago, to discover whether the foundation re- mained sufficiently secure to support its beautiful Gothic superstructure, they i found that during the period of Roman occupation a temple to Jupiter had oc- cupied the site, and that the ruins of : this ancient temple had been used partly to build in the foundation, and also to fill in the trench which had been dug by the foundation builders.
 Among the evidences of ancient Ro- man occupation which the architects found were several votive altars which had been placed in the by trade unions One of these had been erected by the Boatman's Union of the River Seine, an offshoot of the parent organization, the Boatman's Union of the River Ti- Der, which had jurisdiction over the water transportation between the city of Rome and the sea. This altar was examined with great interest by the writer when he first saw 1t, and pho tograph which was secured some time from the French Govern ment, is reproduced because of its sig nificance. In its nutilated condition 1t i still carried the following inscriptions:
 ""Tibero Caesari Aug Jovi Optino Maxitno Monumentum Naute Parisiac Publice Posuerunt,"
 C. Osborne Wards translation of the inscription is