ppendant to the land on which they worked, for
it was unlawful for an agricultural laborer to change his abode; and
in many other ways they were under strict laws. So that it didn't
seem much of a step to say also, we will regulate the rate of
wages--particularly as the payment of wages in money was rather a new
thing. Probably two or three centuries before most wages were paid in
articles of food or in the use of the land. So they got this first
Statute of Laborers through; it required all persons able in body
under sixty to do labor to such persons as require labor or else be
committed to gaol. That, of course, is compulsory labor; the law would
therefore be unconstitutional with us to-day except in so far as it
applied, under a criminal statute, in regard to tramps or vagrants. In
some States we commit tramps and vagrants to gaol if they won't do a
certain amount of work for their lodging, under the theory that they
have committed a criminal act in being vagrants. Otherwise this
principle, a law requiring all persons to work, is now obsolete. Then
it went on to say, no workman or servant can depart from service
before the time agreed upon; lawful enough, to-day, although laborers
do not like to make a definite contract. The South, however, has
adopted this principle as to agricultural labor, just as in the
England of the fourteenth century. Southern States have an elaborate
system of legislation for the purpose of enforcing labor upon idle
negroes, which, when it creates a system of "peonage," is forbidden by
the Federal laws and Constitution. They are compelled, as in the old
English statute, to serve under contract or for a period of time, and
if they break it, are made liable by this statute to some fine or
penalty imposed by the nearest justice of the peace; and when they
cannot pay this, they may be Imprisoned. Finally, this Statute of
Laborers first states the principle that the old "wage and no more"
shall be given, thus establishing the notion that there was a legal
wage, which lasted in England for centuries and gave rise to the later
law under which strikes were held unlawful. Here, they meant such
wages as prevailed before the Black Death.

(1350) The next year the statute is made more elaborate, and
specifies, for common laborers, one penny a day; for mowers,
carpenters, masons, tilers, and thatchers, three pence, and so on. It
is curious that the relative scale is much the same as to-day: masons
a littl