Evening star., 1936-08-13
This Golden Age.

One OF the deluSlonS OF professional
reformers is that this golden age is in
point of fact an era of unprecedented
hardship, poverty and sorrow. Ignorant
or unscrupulous agitators have made a
convenience of the depression to propa-
gandize the notion that the whole wicked
capitalist system of society has crashed
and that people of all classes can do
nothing better than to make certain that
the wreckage is complete.
But drastic correction for such mis-
representation may be found in the his
tory of the human race. Consider these
passages from Dorothy Mills The Mid
die Ages: THE serf was not free
man: he belonged to the manor and
could not leave it without the consent
of the lord. In theory he was secure in
the possession of his hut, miserable and
poor as it often was, and of his strips in
the fields as long as he paid service for
them, but not longer. Serfs, however,
were seldom turned out, as the daily life
and welfare of the lord and his family
depended on their work A serf had to
give three days work a week in the
lords fields, and special services and pay
ments, generally in kind, at certain sea-
sons. He was required to convey produce
that might be sent to be sold at fairs
wherever and whenever he was bidden'.
He would have to use his own OK or
horse to convey such produce and if he
were too poor to own an animal he
would have to shoulder the load on his
own back. He was obliged to have all
his -four ground in the lords mill, his
bread baked in the lords oven, and he
had to pay for these services. The serf
could neither marry, himself, nor could
his daughter be married, without the
lords consent"
1t was not until the end of the fifteenth
century that labor was theoretically free
in England; as late as 1875 a consid-
cradle portion of the population of
France was in bondage. Victor Duruy,
referring to conditions under Louis XIV,
says: "All the evidence shows the ter
rible misery of the people. The peasants
of Normandy lived largely on oats and
dressed in skins. In Beauce, the granary
of Paris, the farmers begged for part of
the year. 1t was on occasion necessary
to make bread of ferns. In a number of
provinces the use of meat was unknown.
According to one writer, the consump-
ton for three-quarters of the population
in 1762 did not rise above pound per
head month. Even the rich were poor,
since the Offices which they bought so
dearly and which locked up such masses
of capital were poorly paid by the state,
hardly giving adequate interest on the
money invested, while the vast estates,
poorly cultivated, were unproductive."
But much more shocking indictment
of civilization in continental Europe in
the eighteenth century is given by the
moralist philosopher La Bruyere in the
oft-quoted words: Certain wild ami
mails, male and female, dark, pale,
burned by the sun, might be seen spread
over the countryside, bound to the soil
which they dug and which they titled
with a strange obstinacy. They had an
articulate voice and when they rose to
their feet they displayed human face;
in short, they were human beings. At
night they retired into the novels, where
they lived on black bread, water and
roots. They saved others the trouble of
sowing, working and gathering their
food"
Yet the guillotine cured none of these
ills. Only the gradual evolution of the
world order of social organization brought
relief. Also, it Is noteworthy that the
widest distribution of wealth occurred
in America, not in any European land.
Coolidge's administration-the boom
epoch, when nobody dreamed of scrap
ping the Constitution or Of declaring war
on economic royalists." The crash of 1929
probably was inevitable in view of the
"overexpansion." But it ought no longer
to be imagined that even in the worst
slumps of modern experience the masses
have suffered under capitalism as their
ancestors did under feudalism. The ma
chine age has its faults and there is no
efficiency in attempting to deny them,
but there have been many less comfort
able periods in the annals of the race.