ably not be completed for many years to come. Under most if not all of the native governments of Asia, slavery, in some form, still remains undisturbed; in Egypt it flourishes under the reign of the present khedive, notwithstanding the efforts of that potentate to cultivate the friendship and good opinion of western rulers; and on certain portions of the African coast, as well as among the islands of Polynesia, some of the most revolting features of the slave-trade appear to have been ' recently revived.

It thus appears that slavery is one of the most conspicuous facts of human history; and its universal prevalence in former times has undoubtedly had a potent influence in the genesis of the labor question of the present day. Cassagnac, in his History of the Working and Burgher Classes, takes the position that the classes of which he treats are universally the descendants of former slaves. The theories of this writer were grossly warped by his own aristocratic pride and prejudice; yet there is no lack of historical evidence that slavery preceded wage labor in the process of social evolution, and that hired laborers, who have only appeared to any considerable extent in communities which had made some progress in civilization and in the diversification of industry, were chiefly drawn at first from a class which had been previously enslaved.

For ages the process of enslavement and that of gradual elevation out of slavery went on side by side. The ways by which persons fell into slavery were various. Cassagnac maintains that this system, or rather this thing-for it doubtless existed as a fact long before the relations it involved were defined in any code of law-had its origin in the absolute authority of the father over his children. That this was one of its early sources there is good reason to believe, for history affords many instances of the sale of children by their fathers. Laban bargained away his daughter Rachel to Jacob for seven years' service; and though he sold her for a wife, and not for a slave, the principle of possession and of the right of exchange for a pecuniary equivalent is clearly recognized in the transaction. Xenophon, in his Anabasis, mentions a Thracian king who offered to give him his daughter, and proposed to buy his if he had one; and in Athens, as late as the time of Solon, there was, according to Plutarch, no law to forbid the sale of children. It is said, too, that Athenian fathers not unfrequently availed themselves of their preroga tive in this respect. It often happens that the customs of certain existing communities, who are now at a stage of social development corresponding to that of other communities at a remote period in the past, serve to illustrate the customs of the latter. Thus, as Maine expresses it in his Village Communities, "direct observation comes to the aid of historical inquiry." An instance of this kind is furnished by the Georgians and Circassians in the notorious practice which prevails among them of selling their daughters to become the wives or concubines of wealthy Turks. It is not difficult to believe that in semicivilized, polygamous societies the children born of wives or concubines for whom a price had been paid would often be regarded by the father in the light of property. A few would be treated as favorites, but toward the greater number paternal affection would have but little force, and such as were objects of dislike would occasionally be sold; while others, less bright, energetic and ambitious than their brothers and sisters, would be assigned to servile tasks, and, through prolonged drudgery, finally sink into veritable slavery, in which condition their children would find themselves from infancy. If it be remembered that in such communities families were often very numerous, and composed

of the offspring of several different mothers, it will not seem improbable that dull or uncomely children, especially those of concubines, or of unloved wives, were in many instances thus treated.

The sale of Joseph to the Midianites, by his brethren, was an instance of the exercise of the right of the stronger, to which there have doubtless been many analogous cases.

Another source of slavery at a later period was debt, and the power which in many countries law and custom have given to the creditor over the body of the debtor. Tacitus states that among the ancient Germans the love of gambling was such that when everything else was gone, a player would often stake his liberty on the last throw, and, if he lost, would quietly suffer himself to be bound and sold. St. Ambrose mentions a similar custom as having prevailed among the Huns. In some instances, men pursued by their enemies or by the law, bartered their liberty for the privilege of asylum.

But beyond doubt the chief source of slavery was subjugation in war. In some cases a conquered territory was seized by the victors and the great mass of its former inhabitants reduced to a state of servitude. In others vast numbers of prisoners were carried into captivity and reduced to slavery in the country of their conquerors. According to Josephus the Israelites enslaved the Amalekites, whom they conquered in battle during their journey through the wilderness; and they subsequently spared the Gibeonites on condition of their becoming "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for all time. The biblical record affords numerous instances of conquering armies carrying the conquered into captivity, and the same custom is illustrated in the sculptures of Egypt, Chaldea, and Assyria. The Egyptian king Sesostris,* returning from a successful expedition through many nations, extending as far as Scythia and Thrace, is described as bringing back vast numbers of captives, whom, according to Herodotus, he employed "in collecting the immense stones used in the construction of the temple of Vulcan," and in digging "those vast and numerous canals by which Egypt is intersected." An inscription on one of the winged bulls found among the ruins of Nineveh states that 208,000 Aramæans were carried into captivity by the Assyr ian king Sennacherib in a single raid; and according to the inscription on the Bellino cylinder, the aggregate number of prisoners of war carried into Assyria by the same monarch in three other expeditions exceeded 600,000. Of the vast number of people reduced to slavery under this monarchy alone some conception may be formed when it is remembered that the reigns of many of the Assyrian kings were almost an uninterrupted succession of sanguinary campaigns. Thus Esarhaddon, who, according to Rawlinson, reigned from 680 to 667 B. C., made, during that period of thirteen years, no less than ten or twelve great military expeditions, including one into Egypt and one into the interior of the Arabian peninsula.

The Medo-Persian monarchs appear to have followed the same custom to a considerable extent in the wars by which they attained the hegemony of Asia. Herodotus tells us that, on the capture of Eretria, its inhabitants were made slaves under the orders of Darius (Hystaspes,) which orders appear to have extended to all other prisoners of Greek nationality. The women and children of Miletus were also carried into slavery by the Persians during the reign of the same ruler. Among

* Two or more kings are confounded by the Greek writers under this name. It was so, also, with the dynasty to whose most conspicuous representative the Persians, a little later, surrendered the rod of empire. Thus Philip, having conquered the Thebans, sold his captives; and his son, the great Alexander, subsequently destroyed their city and sold the inhabitants, irrespective of age or sex, into slavery.

smaller potentates similar practices prevailed. Thus Polycrates, King of Samos, puts into chains the Lesbians captured by him in a naval engagement, and compels them to dig a trench round the walls of his capital. What became of them subsequently we are not informed. In short, during the period under consideration, the practice in question was all but universal. In some instances a turn in the fortunes of war liberated and restored to their homes and possessions the people thus carried into captivity; but in a majority of cases they must have sunk permanently into the slave population.

The multiplication of slaves in this way at certain epochs must have been immense; nor was this phenomenon confined exclusively to ancient times, for Sir John Chardin states that when the Tartars made an incursion into Poland, and carried away as many captives as they could, finding that they would not be redeemed, they sold them for a crown a head; and Menjan, in his History of Algiers, represents a Mohammedan as saying scornfully to a Christian, "What! have you forgotten the time when a Christian 'at Algiers was scarce worth an onion?" Of the extent which the slave population of the western portion of Asia Minor had attained at the period of the reign of Darius (Hystaspes,) an incidental proof is furnished in the account which Herodotus gives of the visit of Aristagoras, prince of Miletus, to the Spartan king Cleomenes, whom he wished to persuade to attempt the liberation of the Ionian Greeks from Persian rule; for among other inducements to invade Asia Minor for this purpose, he mentions the "prodigious number of slaves" which the inhabitants of that region possessed, and which would be at the disposal of the conqueror.

But there was always a limit to the extent of the servile population that could be maintained compatibly with the security of the ruling class. In one instance the slaves of Argos, largely outnumbering the citizens, of whom many had been killed in war, took possession of the government, and held it for a number of years. Another case, familiar to the reader of Grecian history, is that of the revolting Helots of Sparta, who at the time of the great earthquake (470 B. C.) nearly succeeded in overthrowing that state. Another instance is furnished in connection with the irruption of the Scythians into Southwestern Asia in the seventh century before Christ. When these barbarian hordes, after a protracted career of conquest and destruction, were returning to their country, they were met, and for some time successfully resisted, by an army of their former slaves, who, during their prolonged absence, had married their wives and installed themselves at the head of their households as well as of public affairs. Herodotus naively relates that one of the Scythians proposed to his comrades that they throw aside their arrows and their darts, and rush upon their opponents without any weapons save the whips which they used for their horses. "Whilst they see us with arms," said he, "they think themselves our equals in birth and importance; but as soon as they shall see us with the whip in our hands, they will be impressed with a sense of their servile condition and resist no longer." He adds that the plan was successful. In cidentally this account serves to illustrate the similarity of spirit between the ancient and modern slaveholder; for whether the story be true in its details or not, it doubtless harmonized with what the historian knew in regard to the general feeling of masters toward their slaves.

The serious danger involved in too great a preponderance of the ser

vile class must often have led to the emancipation of considerable numbers of those who composed it. In other cases it may have induced an insensible relaxation in the rigors of their servitude, gradually leading up to their complete liberation; for there is reason to believe that some of the principal nations of antiquity passed through some such phase of social development as that which witnessed the gradual loosening of the bonds of the villeins of feudal Europe, of which latter event there will be occasion to speak more fully hereafter. Occasionally considerable bodies of slaves were emancipated at once by some ruler or military leader, who found it important to secure them as trusty allies; as when Augustus, during the campaign of Sicilius against Sextus Pompeins, liberated 20,000 of this class to make sailors of them.*

There must also have been frequent cases of individual manumissionsometimes as the result of gratitude, or attachment, on the part of the master; sometimes in fulfillment of agreements entered into with the slave to inspire him with zeal in the exercise, for his master's benefit, of some valuable faculty; while many doubtless worked their way to freedom through sheer force of character and strength of intellect. In these and various other ways the emancipated class must have received continuous accessions throughout the course of history; but in the ancient world, as has just been seen, the class of bondmen was constantly re-enforced by the enslavement of the vast numbers of prisoners taken in war; so that however frequent or extensive may have been the emancipations, slavery never approached extinction, as it did in Europe after the practice of enslaving prisoners had been abandoned. The effect of this continued process of enslavement on the one hand and emancipation on the other must have been to build up a numerous proletariat occupying a position but little superior, at least as regards physical comfort, to that of the slaves themselves. For slavery stripped its victim of whatever possessions he enjoyed previous to his enslavement; and when he, or perhaps his remote descendant, emerged from that condition, it was to find himself destitute, dependent, and obliged to procure his daily bread by working for such wages as he could obtain in competition with the slave labor by which he was surrounded.

Here then, in brief, is the great central fact in respect to labor in the ancient world, namely, the supremacy of military power in industrial as well as in political relations. For if the whip was the symbol of industrial masterhood, the sword was unceasingly employed in providing fresh shoulders for its blows; and the sword, too, as has been seen, was chiefly instrumental in preparing available material out of which to form the class of hired laborers.

Ptolemy Philadelphus liberated and restored to their homes 120,000 Jewish captives, who, at the close of the war in which they were taken, had been sold by the government as slaves to such of the inhabitants as chose to purchase them. On their emancipation, the owners were reimbursed out of the royal treasury. The motive for this unusual act of generosity was quite unique, being no other than the desire to add to the famous Alexandrian library the Hebrew Scriptures, to accomplish which the king deemed it necessary to secure the co-operation of the Jewish authorities, and took this method of gaining their good will.

It would be too much to say that this supremacy of the sword in industry has wholly disappeared, even now, in countries where a strike for increased wages is liable to be treated as an offense against the state, and suppressed by military power.

This effect was often produced by the vast destruction of property which occurred in war, leaving tens of thousands not absolutely enslaved, but so destitute as to have no resource but hired labor. Modern times furnish an instance of the reduction of large numbers of people, who were carrying on some small productive business for themselves, to the position of wage laborers through the agency of a revolution in industrial methods. To this there will be occasion to refer again when treating of the introduction of machinery as an industrial agent.

As to the actual life of the working-classes in ancient times something may be inferred from such fundamental conditions as that which has just been pointed ont. For the rest it will be necessary to depend on the casual glimpses which ancient history affords. Doubtless there were communities of greater or less extent which had for generations escaped the terrors of war; whose social arrangements, if not founded upon absolute equity, were at least comparatively free from the effects of violence and injustice; and whose condition, under the favoring smiles of nature, was at certain fortunate periods sufficiently happy to suggest to the imagination the poetic picture of Arcadia. Both in sacred and profane history there are indications of a social state in which wealth and rank did not carry with them a contempt for labor. Thus Abraham's servant, when sent into Mesopotamia in quest of a wife for Isaac, stationed himself at a well near the city of Nahor, apparently not doubting that among the damsels who came thither to draw water he would find a suitable companion for the son and prospective heir of his wealthy master. It was under similar circumstances that Moses encountered the daughters of Jethro, priest of Midian, who had come to the well to fill the troughs for their father's flocks. Herodotus (viii, 137) says that "in remoter times the families even of kings had but little money, and it was the business of the queen herself to cook for her husband"—a state of primitive simplicity to which a fair counterpart is found in Volney's description of the life of the family of a modern Arab chief. "A sheik," says he, "who has the command of five hundred horse, does not disdain to saddle and bridle his own, nor to give him barley and chopped straw. In his tent his wife makes the coffee, kneads the dough, and superintends the dressing of his victuals. His daughters and kinswomen wash the linen, and go with pitchers in their hands and veils over their faces to draw water from fountains.”* In the earlier days of Rome, it is said, it was not uncommon for senators to live in the country cultivating their land with their own hands; while consuls and dictators were often taken from the plow. "In those happy days," says Pliny, "the earth, glorious in seeing herself cultivated by the hands of triumphant victors, seemed to make new efforts and to put forth her fruits in greater abundance."

But if at certain times, and for longer or shorter periods, there have been communities in which the nobility of labor was proclaimed by the examples of the great and influential-communities in which the toil necessary to human sustenance was shared by all, and general comfort went hand in hand with general industry-such, unhappily, has not been the ordinary experience of the human race, and such, certainly, was not the usual condition of affairs among those nations of antiquity whose histories have come down to our day.

LABOR IN EGYPT.

Among the earliest of these nations, that which has the chief claim upon our attention is Egypt. The remains of her colossal architecture and sculpture which have endured to our day in the time-defying pyramids, the ruins of magnificent temples, the obelisks, colossi, and sphinxes, the labyrinth, the catacombs, and the splendid tombs of the kings, reveal to us a people of remarkable genius and skill, and invest them with a strange and fascinating interest. Far beyond the classic days of Rome and Greece there rises into view a second and remoter antiquity in which this Egyptian civilization stands, like one of the pyra mids, outlined in imposing majesty upon the very horizon of time.

* Travels in Egypt and Syria.