rteenth century, in the reign of Edward
III., a pestilence seriously depopulated the country, and reduced the
supply of laborers so much that it was not equal to the demand for
labor, and wages began to rise. Laws were therefore enacted that each
able-bodied man and woman in the realm, not over three score, "not
living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his own
whereof to live, nor land about whose tillage he might employ himself,
nor serving any other," should be bound to serve at the wages accustomed
to be given five years previously. No persons were allowed to pay an
advance on these wages, on pain of forfeiting to the Crown double what
they had paid. Previous to the fifteenth century, workmen in various
occupations were impressed into the service of the king at wages
regardless of their will as to the terms and place of employment.
Indeed, all through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were
continual attempts to fix the rate of wages arbitrarily by law, and also
the hours of labor. These, by one old statute, were decreed to last from
5 A.M. to 7 or 8 P.M.

These acts, and others of similar nature, were intended for the
subjugation of laborers and the benefit of the employers of labor. It is
only since the era of popular government that legislation for an
opposite purpose has come in vogue. Gradually the right of the
workingman to have the price of his labor fixed as is the price of other
commodities, by the law of supply and demand, came to be recognized,
although the progress was pitifully slow. The old ideas of the relation
between "master" and "servant" were very tenacious of life, and the
substitution of the terms "workman" and "employer" is a change which has
taken place in England during the present generation.

It was the petty tyranny and the grinding extortion which the laborers
had begun to feel, even though they were far better paid and better
treated than their fathers, that caused the formation of the original
trade unions. Laborers saw that each was helpless alone, but that
combined they were a power which their employers need not despise. The
old craft guilds furnished them an example of effective combination
among those engaged in the same trade; and as men everywhere in every
age, when a common danger or misfortune has confronted them, have come
together for mutual help and defence, these ignorant laborers, in
violation of stringent statutes, but following blindly the