OUR STATUTE OF LABORERS
Star, Western
Our Statute Of Laborers A Twentieth Century Law Based on a Fourteenth Century Failure--Lesson for the Future By Western Starr. A DEPLETION of manpower by the scourge of war, or by a plague of...
...The essence of it...
...This control is exercised though control of opportunity...
...Chattel slavery differs from industrial slavery in degree, only...
...After amendments and re-enactments, made in a vain hope that reiteration might make the statute effective, it remained in force until repealed by 5th Elizabeth cap...
...There was great difficulty in securing the manpower necessary to perform the basic labor of agriculture,—to produce the food supply for the nation...
...2. Persons leaving service before the time of their agreements are to be imprisoned...
...There is a principle involved, incidental to the main problem that bears emphatically on the future adjustment of labor's place in the regeneration so ardently desired...
...6. Food must be sold at reasonable prices...
...Exactly to the extent that any man or group or class of men are dependent upon the purposes of other men, they are in slavery...
...Parliament continually complained that the Statute of Laborers was not obeyed, and continually added more drastic penalties and safeguards...
...Had Many Failures IF IT be a sound principle of science that a continuous series of similar facts indicates the continuous operation of continuing and identical causes, it is the province of the statesmen as it is of the scientist to reduce such events into the law of their causation...
...and the slow exhaustion of the vitality of a nation by the methods of industrial servitude is more insidious, more treacherous, more poisonous, morally, than the less subtle if more brutal form of chattel slavery...
...Slavery is not so much a thing as a state of mind...
...8. Wages paid in excess of statutory provision can be seized for the King's use...
...Statute of Laborers THIS Statute (called the Statute of Laborers), with successive amendments and re-enactments carried repeatedly increasing penalties, with, if any, only insignificant results on the wages of farm labor...
...A DEPLETION of manpower by the scourge of war, or by a plague of disease is by no means a novel experience in world history...
...The Immediate result was such a dearth of labor, an actual scarcity of help that an abnormal advance in wages set in...
...The duration of the experiment varies,—has always varied in direct ratio with the measure of economic freedom of the poorer elements of the population in any particular society when the experiment is made...
...all is the control of life,—power of domination over the lives of men...
...Among those enumerated are saddlers, tanners, farriers, shoemakers, tailors, smiths, carpenters, masons, tilers, pazetters, carters, and others...
...and those declining to labor are to be imprisoned in the common jail...
...4. This Statute had eight clauses covering the following provisions: 1. All persons under 60 years old are obliged to accept farm labor, whether serf or free, at wages customary in the year 1347,—unless they are engaged in merchandising,—were employed regularly as mechanics,—had private means, or occupied land...
...a relaxation of restraints, despair, indifference to the rights of others, carelessness, brutal habits of mind...
...Summer and Winter schedules of wages are fixed and Bummer migration from town to country is prohibited...
...But that is another story...
...These incidents to calamity find various forms of expression, and at times assure a form of social action in legislation...
...In 1347, this royal proclamation was enacted by the British parliament into a law of the realm...
...The persistent obliquity of vision that continues to hold the ancient delusion that statutory enactment can effectively or permanently regulate prices whether of labor or of the products of labor, shows how Slight has been the improvement in the dispositions or intelligence of men in five centuries...
...Froissart reports the loss to productive industry, by the plague in Europe in the 14th Century, at one-third...
...4. Lords of Manors paying more are to be liable to treble damages...
...The study of the struggle for justice and freedom reveals many brilliant experiments, and thus far, an equal number of abysmal failures...
...The cost of living rose to prohibitive prices,— much land went out of cultivation...
...Being only a man-made dict, made in defiance of nature's unalterable decree, the royal proclamation was as utterly unavailing as was the order of old Canute to stop the rise of the ocean tides...
...National distress became severe...
...Industrial servitude is a far more profitable form of the institution, for the master...
...It would no doubt include all the activities operated by the government directly or under the supervision of government, as all war activities and those contributing or dependent upon them, and the utilities taken on since the law was passed...
...In July, 1918, a law on the statute books of the United States came into effect that in principle and possible purpose re-enacts the English Statute of Laborers of the Fourteenth Century...
...3. Only the old wages are to be paid and they who seek to get more are to be proceeded against in the Lord's Court...
...This disease,—this cause has been slavery,—called the Nemesis of Nations,—that is the Avenger...
...Merely Empty Noise WHILE the statute is merely empty noise, brutem Fulmen, so far as any constitutional or natural economic law is concerned, interdepartmental comity, whereby priorities of service or materials are regulated, gave to its enforcement the aid of arbitrary power, and aside from the exercise of such power this statute is on a par with the English Statute of Laborers, beginning in the period when the black death had devastated English labor to a degree comparable with the dislocation of American labor by the effects of the war...
...The Lord (of the Manor) was to have first claim to labor of his serfs...
...This measure provides, among other things, funds to "aid in the standardization of all wages paid by the government and its agencies...
...The long periods of gradual decay or the sudden fall of states correspond with the virulence of the identical disorder that has caused the collapse of all those states that have left only a memory and a warning for our times...
...7. Alms are strictly forbidden to ablebodied laborers...
...In this crisis the King, overlooking the example of his predecessor, old Canute, issued his royal proclamation forbidding the increase in wages and prohibiting the migration of laborers from place to place in search of higher wages,—placing the royal ban on employers raising wages...
...Just how broad the field covered by the term "Government Agencies" may be construed to be, is problematical...
...The loss of population,—withdrawn from peace Industries,—by plague or by absorption in war Industries, imposes economic distresses that are common to all classes or groups of society, except the laboring classes...
...That is: Labor has ever looked with complaisance on regulation and control which by authority and arbitrary power seems to improve the "Condition of Labor,"—higher wages, shorter hours, better housing, generally improved conditions are welcomed and applauded, notwithstanding the fact that the will of authority is thereby established: a vicious principle that must poison its most benevolent intentions,—once accepted, labor can not be heard to complain if and when the "same authority, under pretext of emergency however specious, proceeds to reverse its attitude and to prevent advances in wages, to lengthen hours of serivce and impose less desirable conditions when unopposed natural influences would tend to reduce the profits of exploitation...
...This law is in the form of a paragraph near the close of the Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill, approved and in effect as of July 1st, 1918...
...The demoralisation always attendant on the fact of war is quite as evident a consequence of the panic that attends a plague...
...The Statute pleads "the present emergency" as excuse or justification and provides that "no money now or hereafter appropriated for the payment of wages not fixed by Statute shall be available to pay wages in excess of the standard determined upon by the war "labor policies board...
...6. Artificers are liable to the same conditions...
...The futility of the decree of old Canute against the tides was not more absolute than the decrees of King and parliament against the operations of a natural economic law...
...More than two centuries of futility demonstrated the folly of the English law...
Vol. 11 • February 1919 • No. 2
