LOCK-OUTS

lock-outs, arbitration and conciliation, &c., &c.) are many details on cognate subjects. i. history in the united kingdom 1. _until the close of the 15th century._--of the main conditions of industrial labour in early anglo-saxon england details are scanty. monastic industrial communities were added in christian times to village industrial communities. while generally husbandry was the first object of toil, and developed under elaborate regulation in the manorial system, still a considerable variety of industries grew up, the aim being expressly to make each social group self-sufficing, and to protect and regulate village artisans in the interest of village resources. this protective system, resting on a communal or co-operative view of labour and social life, has been compared as analogous to the much later and wider system under which the main purpose was to keep england as a whole self-sufficing.[3] it has also been shown how greatly a fresh spirit of enterprise in industry and trade was stimulated first by the danish and next by the norman invasion; the former brought in a vigour shown in growth of villages, increase in number of freemen, and formation of trading towns; the latter especially opened up new communications with the most civilized continental people, and was followed by a considerable immigration of artisans, particularly of flemings. in saxon england slavery in the strictest sense existed, as is shown in the earliest english laws, but it seems that the true slave class as distinct from the serf class was comparatively small, and it may well be that the labour of an ordinary serf was not practically more severe, and the remuneration in maintenance and kind not much less than that of agricultural labourers in recent times. in spite of the steady protest of the church, slavery (as the exception, not the general rule) did not die out for many centuries, and was apt to be revived as a punishment for criminals, e.g. in the fierce provisions of the statute of edward vi. against beggars, not repealed until 1597. at no time, however, was it general, and as the larger village and city populations grew the ratio of serfs and slaves to the freemen in the whole population rapidly diminished, for the city populations "had not the habit and use of slavery," and while serfs might sometimes find a refuge in the cities from exceptionally severe taskmasters, "there is no doubt that freemen gradually united with them under the lord's protection, that strangers engaged in trade sojourned among them, and that a race of artisans gradually grew up in which original class feelings were greatly modified." from these conditions grew two parallel tendencies in regulation of labour. on the one hand there was, under royal charters, the burgh or municipal organization and control of artisan and craft labour, passing later into the more specialized organization in craft gilds; on the other hand, there was a necessity, sometimes acute, to prevent undue diminution in the numbers available for husbandry or agricultural labour. to the latter cause must be traced a provision appearing in a succession of statutes (see especially an act of richard