Celebrating the contribution of workers, Labor Day, the
first Monday in September, was made a federal holiday in 1894. Many other countries have special days to
honor their working people. Let’s go
back in history to study the evolution of the worker’s movement.
Earliest
man lived in groups, clans and family tribes where, presumably, all contributed
in some way for the survival of the group.
It wasn’t until these groups and tribes came together to form
settlements, of sorts, that duties became more specialized. Also, at this time, there came to be another
source for labor, slavery.
So
from early times there were always peoples who had been captured in tribal
wars, the intellectually challenged and the dissidents who became enslaved to
work the fields and perform the laborious (and onerous) tasks others preferred
not to take on. As man evolved and
civilizations gradually created large, central cities the need for this
enforced labor pool became an economic necessity. All the “great” civilizations relied upon this labor source.
Now
we come to the end of those “great” civilizations where the cities outgrew the
ability of the authorities to provide the goods and services necessary to
sustain them, and man left the urban life for the rural, agricultural way of
life of the past. However, there was a
great difference between the very earliest settlements and those of the Middle
Ages. In Europe, by 900 CE there were more than 200 great families of the aristocracy
(called the higher nobility) and these families owned more than 80% of the
arable land. The social hierarchy of those days was :
#1 the Church with the Pope as the ultimate authority. His power exceeded the kings and emperors of
the European countries.
#2 the Middle
Class, consisting of knights, gentry and yeomen
( freeholders who worked their own land)
#3
and virtually everyone else
Thus
was born the feudal system, the manorial economic system in which the
landholder used the social classes below him for his support. The knights pledged their allegiance to
fight for their manor lord, often having to supply their own horses and
weaponry.
But
the basis for this social system rested with the serfs, the lowest of group
#3. Now the serfs were not, strictly
speaking, slaves. They were workers
bound to the land but were allowed property for their own use after having
tended the property of the landowner.
Some serfs were workers in simple manufactory, craft and
agricultural-related fields. For their
work they were granted the protection of the landlord. Serfs were permitted to marry whomever they
chose but could not leave the land of their lord. They, themselves, were not the property of the landowner, but
their forced labor was.
By
the late middle ages the feudal system was gradually replaced by strong
royalty-based states in England and Europe.
Trade was of major importance and guilds gradually were introduced into
the social structure. Some refer to
guilds as the forerunners of the workers unions. However, there were many differences in the organization of
guilds and their later counterparts, unions.
A guild had to be chartered by the king (or equivalent in whatever
country) and was managed on a local level under the authority of the town or
city. But the primary purpose of the
guild, unlike a union was not the protection of the members but protection of
their product. In large centers nearly
every occupation was under the representation of a guild. The guilds wielded a fair amount of
power. The rules for membership in a
guild were strict and members were divided into apprentices, journeymen and
masters. Each guild laid down rules
concerning the quality of its product, methods of manufacture and the
price. This system of monopoly could
potentially lead to abuse and it was up to the royal government to oversee the
guilds, but where there were small, self-governing towns the system was often
not controlled.
Textile
guilds such as spinners, weavers, dyers and fullers as well as silk-making were
among the earliest guilds. London’s
first chartered guild was the weaver’s guild.
Generally,
women were excluded from guild membership, some allowed women to join but not
in full participation.
Although
there were obvious advantages in the guild system, one of the main
disadvantages lay in the fact that the guild controlled all methods of
manufacturey. This prevented innovation and if a group decided to use newer methods
they were forced to leave the guilds.
One such example was the fullers of the wool industry. They turned to
water-power and were then locating their mills in rural areas to avoid the
guilds.
As
other innovations were developed the power of the guilds was diminished.
The
system of trade unionism, many years later was an important influence on the
textile industry and , perhaps, I will leave that discussion for next week.
