Note 25 — Chapter V · THE BIO-SOCIOLOGISTS.

We know that there are three great systems of labor: the system resting upon slavery, the feudal system, and the system now in force, i.e. that of free labor. In the first two, which intrinsically do not differ much, crime had a totally different character from what it has under the last. Under the feudal system the peasants lived in the most deplorable condition, without hope of betterment. In many countries conditions were so bad that great bands of thieves and brigands overran them. During the reign of Henry VIII, which lasted 38 years, 72,000 criminals were executed. “Pauperism, therefore, did not attract legislation, and crime, the offspring of pauperism and idleness, was brutally treated; and these conditions, betokening an unsound social condition, existed until progress made pauperism, and crime as well, the disgrace of the nation, and it was then that pauperism began to be recognized as a condition that might be relieved through legislation.”25