the first time in
history, a great mining accident took place in 1515, a flood by which
eighty-eight miners were drowned. Women began to be employed in
factories and were cruelly exploited. Most sickening of all, children
were forced, as they still are in some places, to wear out their little
lives in grinding toil. The lace-making industry in Belgium, for
example, fell entirely into the hands of children. Far from protesting
against this outrage, the law actually sanctioned it by the provision
that no girl over twelve be allowed to make lace, lest the supply of
maidservants be diminished.

[Sidenote: Strikes]

Strikes there were and rebellions of all sorts, every one of them
beaten back by the forces of the government and of the capitalists
combined. The kings of commerce were then, more than now, a timorous
and violent race, for then they were conscious of being usurpers. When
they saw a Muenzer or a Kett--the mad Hamlets of the people--mop and mow
and stage their deeds before the world, they became frantic with terror
and could do nought but take subtle counsel to {556} kill these heirs,
or pretenders, to their realms. The great rebellions are all that
history now pays much attention to, but in reality the warfare on the
poor was ceaseless, a chronic disease of the body politic. Louis XI
spared nothing, disfranchisement, expulsion, wholesale execution, to
beat down the lean and hungry conspirators against the public order,
whose raucous cries of misery he detested. With somewhat gentler,
because stronger, hand, his successors followed in his footsteps. But
when needed the troops were there to support the rich. The great
strike of printers at Lyons is one example of several in France. In
the German mines there were occasional strikes, sternly suppressed by
the princes acting in agreement.

[Sidenote: Degradation of the poor]

There can be no doubt that the economic developments of the sixteenth
century worked tremendous hardship to the poor. It was noted
everywhere that whereas wine and meat were common articles in 1500,
they had become luxuries by 1600. Some scholars have even argued from
this a diminution of the wealth of Europe during the century. This,
however, was not the case. The aggregate of capital, if we may judge
from many other indications, notably increased throughout the century.
But it became more and more concentrated in a few hands.

The chief natural cause of the depression of