e up a wealthy
merchant class and where the prospect of the ordinary workman ever
reaching the position of an employer was slight.

The changes of the Industrial Revolution, however, made a profound
difference. With the growth of factories and the increase in the size
of business establishments the employer and employee came to be
farther apart, while at the same time the employees in any one
establishment or trade were thrown more closely together. The hand of
government was at about the same time entirely withdrawn from the
control of wages, hours, length of engagements, and other conditions
of labor. Any workman was at liberty to enter or leave any occupation
under any circumstances that he chose, and an employer could similarly
hire or discharge any laborer for any cause or at any time he saw fit.
Under these circumstances of homogeneity of the interests of the
laborers, of opposition of their interests to those of the employer,
and of the absence of any external control, combinations among the
workmen, or trade unions, naturally sprang up.

*79. Opposition of the Law and of Public Opinion. The Combination
Acts.*--Their growth, however, was slow and interrupted. The poverty,
ignorance, and lack of training of the laborers interposed a serious
obstacle to the formation of permanent unions; and a still more
tangible difficulty lay in the opposition of the law and of public
opinion. A trade union may be defined as a permanent organized
society, the object of which is to obtain more favorable conditions of
labor for its members. In order to retain its existence a certain
amount of intelligence and self-control and a certain degree of
regularity of contributions on the part of its members are necessary,
and these powers were but slightly developed in the early years of
this century. In order to obtain the objects of the union a "strike,"
or concerted refusal to work except on certain conditions, is the
natural means to be employed. But such action, or in fact the
existence of a combination contemplating such action, was against the
law. A series of statutes known as the "Combination Acts" had been
passed from time to time since the sixteenth century, the object of
which had been to prevent artisans, either employers or employees,
from combining to change the rate of wages or other conditions of
labor, which should be legally established by the government. The last
of the combination acts were passed in 1799 and 1800,