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and their resources exhausted rather than developed. Christianity protested against any employment of wealth that disregarded the glory of God and the good of man.

This then was the characteristic difference between the ancient civilization and the new order which was beginning to flourish in the twelfth century. These principles, even though imperfectly realized, help us to understand the character of modern civilization. A capricious and arbitrary ruler had been hailed with divine honors in ancient times; in the Middle Ages the supremacy of Eternal and Supernatural Authority over all human beings was maintained. The Christian doctrine of price, the Christian condemnation of gain at the expense of another man, affected all the mediæval organizations of municipal life and regulation of intermunicipal commerce, and introduced marked contrasts to the conditions of business in ancient cities. The Christian appreciation of the duty of work rendered the lot of the mediæval villein a very different thing from that of the slave in the ancient empire. The responsibility of proprietors was so far insisted on as to place substantial checks on tyranny of every kind. For these principles were not mere pious opinions, but effective maxims in practical life.

B. MANORIAL AND GILD ECONOMY

3. The Manor, a Self-Sufficient Economy2

BY WILLIAM J. ASHLEY

Til nearly the end of the fourteenth century, England was a purely agricultural country. Such manufactures as it possessed were entirely for consumption within the land; and for goods of finer qualities it was dependent upon importation from abroad.

In the eleventh century, and long afterwards, the whole country, outside the larger towns, was divided into manors, in each of which one person, called the lord, possessed certain important and valuable rights over all the other inhabitants. Let us picture to ourselves an eleventh-century manor in Middle or Southern England. There was a village street, and along each side of it the houses of the cultivators of the soil, with little yards around them: as yet there were no scattered farmhouses, such as were to appear later. Stretching away from the village was the arable land, divided usually into three great fields, sown, one with wheat, one with oats or beans, while one was left fallow. The fields were sub-divided 'Adapted from An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory, I, 5-49 (1894).

into "furlongs;" and each furlong into acre or half-acre strips, separated, not by hedges, but by "balks" or unploughed turf; and these strips were distributed among the cultivators in such a way that each man's holding was made up of strips scattered up and down the three fields, and no man held two adjoining pieces. Each holder was obliged to cultivate his strips in accordance with the rotation. of crops observed by his neighbors. There were also meadows, enclosed for hay-harvest, and divided into portions by lot, or rotation, or custom, and after harvest thrown open again for the cattle to pasture upon. In most cases there was also some permanent pasture or wood, into which the cattle were turned, either "without stint," or in numbers proportioned to the extent of each man's holding.

The land was regarded as the property, not of the cultivators, but of a lord. It was divided into that part cultivated for the immediate benefit of the lord, the demesne or inland, and that held of him by tenants, the land in villenage, the latter being usually about two-thirds of the whole. The demesne consisted partly of separate closes, partly of acres scattered among those of the tenants in the common fields. Of the land held in villenage, the greater part was held in whole or half virgates. The virgate was a holding made up of scattered acre or half-acre strips in the three fields, with proportionate rights to meadow and pasture; and its extent, varying from sixteen to forty-eight acres, was usually thirty acres. The holders of such virgates formed an estate socially equal among themselves, and all of them were under the same obligations of service to the lord.

The principal services which the lord exacted of the villein were, first, a man's labor for two or three days a week throughout the year, known as week work, or daily works, and second, additional labor for a few days at spring and autumn ploughing and at harvest. On such occasions the lord demanded the labor of the whole family, with the exception of the housewife. Besides these, there were usually small quarterly payments to be made in money, and miscellaneous dues in kind, so many hens and eggs, and so many bushels of oats at different seasons; as well as miscellaneous services, of which the most important is carting. During the boondays it was usual for the lord to feed the laborers.

The fundamental characteristic of the manorial group, regarded from the economic point of view, was its self sufficiency, its social independence. The same families tilled the village fields from father to son. Each manor had its own law courts for the maintenance of order. Then as now, every village had its own church; with this

advantage or disadvantage, that the priest did not belong to a different social class from his parishioners. The village included men who carried on all the occupations and crafts necessary for every-day life. There was always a water or wind-mill which the tenants were bound to use, paying dues which formed a considerable part of the lord's income. Many villages had their own blacksmith and carpenter, probably holding land on condition of repairing the ploughs of the demesne and the villagers.

Thus the inhabitants of an average English village went on, year in, year out, with the same customary methods of cultivation, living on what they produced, and scarcely coming in contact with the outside world. The very existence of towns, indeed, implied that the purely agricultural districts produced more than was required for their own consumption; and corn and cattle were regularly sent, even to distant markets. But the other dealings of the villages with the outside world were few. First, there was the purchase of salt, an absolute necessity in the medieval world, where people lived on salted meat for five months in the year. Second, iron was continually needed for the ploughs and other farm implements. Third, when a fresh disease, the scab, appeared among the sheep, tar became of great importance as a remedy. Perhaps the only other recurring need, which the village could not itself supply, was that of millstones.

Such were the chief characteristics of the manorial group as a whole, self-sufficiency and corporate unity. Now let us look at the position of the individual members in the group. Some had risen to the position of free tenants, but the great majority had continued to hold by servile tenure. Of the position of this great majority. the characteristic was permanence, with its disadvantages and also with its advantages.

It is instructive to compare the village as we have seen it with the village of today. In one respect there might seem to be a close resemblance. Then, as usually now, the village was made up of one street, with a row of houses on either side. But the inhabitants of the village street now are the laborers and artisans with one or more small shop-keepers. The farmers live in separate homesteads among the fields they rent, and not in the village street. Then all the cultivators of the soil lived side by side. Second, notice the difference as to the agricultural operations themselves. Now each farmer follows his own judgment in what he does. But the peasant-farmer of the period we have been considering was bound to take his share in a common-system of cultivation, in which the time at which everything should be done and the way in which everything

should be done was regulated by custom. A further difference is seen in the relations of lord and tenant as to the cultivation. Nowadays either the landlord does not himself farm any land in the parish, or his management of it is independent of the cultivation of any other land by tenants. But then almost all the labor on the demesne was furnished by the villein tenants, who contributed ploughs, oxen, and men. Compare finally the classes in the manor. with those in the village today. In a modern parish there will usually be a squire, some three or four farmers, and beneath them a comparatively large number of agricultural laborers. But in the medieval manor, much the greater part of the land was cultivated by small holders. Between the lord of the manor and the villein tenants there was, indeed, a great gulf fixed. But there was nothing like the social separation of classes of actual cultivators that exists today.

It may be well to note the non-existence in the village group of certain elements which modern abstract economics is apt to take for granted. Individual liberty, in the sense in which we understand it, did not exist; consequently there could be no complete competition. The payments made by the villeins were not rents in the abstract economist's sense: for the economist assumes competition. The chief thought of lord and tenant was, not what the tenant could possibly afford, but what was customary. And, finally, there was as yet no capital in the modern sense. Of course there was capital in the sense in which the word is defined by economists, "wealth appropriated to reproductive employment," for the villeins had ploughs, harrows, oxen, horses. But this is one of the most unreal of economic definitions. As has been well said, by capital we mean more than this; we mean a store of wealth that can be directed into new and more profitable channels as occasion arises. In that sense the villeins certainly had no capital.

4. Wage-Work and the Handicraft System3

BY CARL BÜCHER

When the land owned by a family becomes divided up and no longer suffices for its maintenance, a part of the rural population begins to produce for the market. At first the necessary raw material is gained from their own land or drawn from the communal forests; later on, if need be, it also is purchased. All sorts of allied

Adapted from Industrial Evolution, 162-172. Translated from the third German edition by S. Morley Wickett. Copyright by Henry Holt & Co. (1930).

productions are added; and thus there develops an endlessly varied. system of peasant industry on a small scale.

But the evolution may take another course, and an independent professional class of industrial laborers arises and with them the industrial system of wage-work. Whereas all industrial skill has hitherto been exercised in close association with property in land and tillage, the adept house-laborer now frees himself from this association, and upon his technical skill founds for himself an existence. that gradually becomes independent of property in land. But he has only his simple tools for work; he has no business capital. He therefore always exercises his skill upon raw material furnished him by the producer of the raw material, who is at the same time the consumer of the finished product.

Here two distinct forms of this relationship are possible. In one case the wage-worker is taken temporarily into the house, receives his board and, if he does not belong to the place, his lodging as well, together with his daily wage; and leaves when the needs of his customer are satisfied. We may designate this whole industrial phase as that of itinerancy, and the laborer carrying on work in this manner as an itinerant. The dressmakers and seamstresses whom our women are accustomed to take into their houses may serve as an illustration. On the other hand the wage-worker may have his own place of business, and the raw material be given out to him. For working it up he receives a piece-work wage. In the country the miller and the baker working for a wage are examples. We will designate this form of work home-work. It is met with chiefly in industries that demand permanent means of production, difficult to transport. Both forms of work are still very common in all parts of the world. The system can be tracted in Babylonian temple records; it can be followed in literature from Homer down through ancient and mediaval times to the present day. These two forms of wage-work have different origins. Itinerant labor is based upon the exclusive possession of aptitude for a special kind of work, homework upon the exclusive possession of fixed means of production. Upon this basis there arise all sorts of mixed forms between homework and wage-work. The itinerant laborer is at first an experienced neighbor whose advice is sought in carrying out an important piece of work, the actual work, however, still being performed by members of the household. Even later it is the practice for the members of the customer's family to give the necessary assistance to the craftsman. In the case of home-work the latter tradesman is at first merely the owner of the business plant and technical director of the production, the customer doing the actual work. This frequently remains true in the country today with oil-presses, flax-mills, and cider-mills.

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