Chapter XIV · (continued 2)

Among the most natural characters in the book are Eustace and Buffalo, who delight the reader with their various shrewd sayings and their dog-like fidelity to St. Martin. One or two curious facts have an incidental place in the story; for instance, the derivation of the modern German word for grandson—Enkel—vouched for by Simrock, and which is a survival of the old custom of reckoning the two nearest degrees of relationship by the two joints of the leg; the knee signifying the son, and the ankle the grandson.

A very good point is also made in Withimer’s spiritual probation, his penance in the cave with St. Martin, and his meekly submitting, after a terrible struggle with his own pride and passions, to receive a scourging from the saint, and to cut off his

“Forsachis [renouncest] tu diabolæ? … End ec [and I] for sacho allum diaboles workum [works] en wordum [words] Thunaer ende woten ende [and] allein them unholdum [unclean] the ira genotes [companions] sint.… Gelobis tu [believest thou] in got alamehtigan [Almighty] Fadaer [Father]?”

We meant to have spoken more at length of the mythology of the Teutonic races, but have no space for the subject. The authorities Bolanden has followed are Tacitus, Grimm, and Arnkiel. Concerning history, manners, and customs he quotes Julius Cæsar, Tacitus, Procopius, Strabo, Pliny, Schmidt, Simrock, Wirth, Heber, Cantù, Ozanam, and Arnkiel. For the traditions of St. Martin’s life Sulpicius Severus, his deacon, friend, and biographer, is the authority. We should like to give an example of the poetry of the ancient Germans; but as the Nibelungenlied is accessible to every scholar and widely known even to the ordinary reading public, no specimen of inferior war-hymns would be worth drawing attention to. We will conclude by a beautiful description of the simplicity and humble appearance of a holy bishop of the fourth century, Justinus of Strassburg, and who, as well as St. Martin, had a high opinion of the grand “raw material,” ready to the hand of Christian workers, in the brave, truthful, loyal, hospitable, even if cruel and uncivilized, Germans of the “forest primeval.”

Bolanden says: “The simplicity of the bishop reminded one of the apostolic age. He bore no outward sign of his high rank, and his only garments were two tunics of white wool, one long with long sleeves, and another, sleeveless and short, over it, while over all hung a cloak of Roman make. His feet were shod with sandals. His black beard hung low over his breast, while a ring of whitening hair encircled his bald head. His features were thin, as if with fasting and mortification, his glance calm, and his demeanor humble; while his hands, used to toil, were extraordinarily strong, for he followed the example of St. Paul, who refused to be a burden upon any one.… For precisely the most pious and holy of the bishops of the Frankish country gave themselves to manual labor, to give a good example to the Franks, who shrank from work as from a shameful occupation,… and this, too, by no means to the prejudice of the vineyard of the Lord. On the contrary, those self-denying men, indifferent to life, seeking no earthly honors or distinctions, thinking only of the service of God, were the pillars of the

Bolanden’s book has, of course, an arrière-pensée, which is so evident through the story that it rather spoils the mere literary value of the book, as “a purpose” more or less cramps any literary production. But, as a clever contemporary says, “In the hot theological controversies of the present day it is hard to treat any subject, even remotely connected with ecclesiastical history, without betraying a ‘tendency.’” Bolanden is outspoken enough as to his, which has for object the present Prussian laws against religious freedom. But we think we may safely say that the first book of the series will be the most original and interesting, illustrating as it does a period so little known and not yet become, like the middle ages, the hackneyed theme of every novelist, from first to fifth rate, of every civilized and literary European nationality.

SACERDOS ALTER CHRISTUS.[26]

1871

LABOR IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.[27]

There was a time, not far distant, when men thought they had found in the United States of America the sovereignty of labor. It was the boast of its people that there were no American paupers. The working classes looked with something like contempt upon the condition of their fellow-laborers in Europe. Here was the land where every man’s independence rested in his own hands and his willingness to labor. No day should come when an honest day’s work would not earn, not bread alone, but a home—an American home. This was the time when the followers of Boone were disclosing to wondering eyes the virgin richness of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys; when, later, adventurous spirits led the way over the Rocky Mountains to a new western empire; when, close succeeding, California opened its Aladdin’s caves, not to the lash of kings or tyrants over toiling slaves, but to the picks and pans of free labor. Yes, here at last was found what the poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome had only dreamed of—the ideal commonwealth, a golden age. Thus had a free republic, established in the richest and grandest territory the sun shone on, conquered at last the problem of ages, and labor stood the peer of capital—nay, aspired to be its master.

Is this state of things true of to-day? In part, yes, it may be answered. Looking at the comparative independence and comfort of the great masses of the working classes of this country, noting that intelligent zeal for personal liberty which pervades them, much reason for congratulation still remains. But the pressure of those social conditions affecting labor in other countries is beginning to be seriously felt. The reserve forces of capital are coming up. The “salad days” of the nation are over. It has grown to manhood, and, growing thus, has met the harsh experiences inseparable from national as from individual life. It begins to feel the burdens of maturity, and to be harassed by its anxieties. Labor has met war, its wild fever, its deadly collapse; labor has met debt, the second and costlier price of war, sucking out the life-blood after the wounds of battle have been stanched; and, lastly, labor has met capital, which, like one of those genii described in the Arabian tales, rises portentous to its full strength and stature out of the smoke of war and the shadow of debt. These two forces, labor and capital—which, to borrow an image from the ancient myths, Ἀνάγκη or Necessitas seems to have linked together in iron bonds—mutually hostile yet inseparable co-laborers in the work of human progress, are preparing to try their strength in the New World as they have done in the Old. The first murmurs of that contest which it was deemed republican institutions could for ever avert are plainly heard. Daily observation shows that the laws governing the accumulation of wealth elsewhere—increase stimulating increase in a geometrical ratio—are not suspended here. “The rich are growing richer, the poor poorer.” Any of the great daily newspapers need only to be looked at from week to week and month to month to find the growing record of strikes, the agitation of labor, the increase of pauperism. The glory of the country, its greatest source of prosperity, has had in it an element of weakness. That rich and wide domain, which invited immigration, postponed, but has not been able eventually to stay, the aggregation of surplus labor—especially on the two seaboards—which everywhere becomes the bond-slave of capital, and fights its battles against free labor. In a word, politics, the barriers of merely political pronunciamientos, have yielded in the United States, as elsewhere, to those primal laws of supply and demand which govern the wages of labor. We are assimilating to the economic conditions of Europe. A revolution has taken place during the course of the last quarter of a century in the industrial features of this country. The flux and reflux both of labor and capital between America and Europe are instant and inevitable. Henceforward the contest between them will be fought out on the old conditions, little or not at all affected by political or—what is the same thing—sentimental considerations.

Must we sink into the old ruts along which labor has slowly and painfully dragged its burdens for ages in Europe? Is there no help for this Sisyphus? Must the stone roll down the hill again, after having mounted so near the top? Or is it possible that the light which the founders of this republic set up as a beacon for the political regeneration of mankind one hundred years ago may be rekindled in the same land in a succeeding age to lead the way to the regeneration of labor? It is a task for the highest, the most Christian, the most Catholic statesmanship. The church, faithful to its great rôle of emancipator or manumitter, which it took up, in advance of the age, in the darkest eclipse of the declension of the Roman Empire, and has never since abandoned, will be found again in the van of this movement. Labor and capital, which, left to themselves, would rend each other, may find in its arbitrament a truce—peace—harmonious working.

Is the hope that this republic shall be the first to utter to Europe and the world some grand maxims in social economy, as one hundred years ago it did in politics, chimerical? By its realization we shall be able to avert from this country the atheistic commune which is threatening to ravage Europe, or to meet it and defeat it should it come.

Wise action must be the result of good information. Such a work, therefore, as this of Dr. Young’s on Labor in Europe and America is a valuable auxiliary to those who like to know what they have to deal with before moving in any matter. It is a bulky volume of over eight hundred pages octavo of closely-printed matter; but it is not so appalling as it looks, the number of countries surveyed and the diversity of the conditions of labor presented making it interesting even to the general reader. Dr. Young’s position as chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics has given him exceptional advantages and facilities for obtaining information in the preparation of such a work, and it is fair to say that he appears to have availed himself of them with great industry and ability. It is, in fact, the work of a specialist who is devoted to his subject, and is therefore primâ facie worthy of attentive consideration. Nor does it fail in great part to make good its pretensions. Yet it has all the faults of the current works of the infant science of statistics. It jams everything into columns of tabular statements, and seeks to draw infallible averages and wide-sweeping deductions from them which cannot be always sustained on closer scrutiny. Observation is everywhere too limited, the conditions of society and of individual existence and labor too minutely diversified and shifting, to be toted up like a sum in addition by a calculating machine. Were we to listen to the statisticians, however, we would displace the Pope and put them in his chair. They would feel quite at ease there, and the infallibility they shake their heads at in Pio Nono would fit them to a charm. Like the jailer in Monte Christo, they would blot out all individuality and number every one and everything

How different, how inferior, such a work as this, for instance, of Dr. Young’s—comprehensive and well digested as it truly is—to any one of his great namesake’s in the last century, Arthur Young, who, more justly than M. Adolphe Quetelet, deserves the title of the “father of modern statistics.” One is like the Turkey carpet that Macaulay speaks of in his criticism on Montgomery, which contains indeed all the colors that are to be found in a masterpiece of painting, but is fit only for its own uses; the other is a picture instinct with life. The old method of personal, detailed, and necessarily limited observation, while it excelled in picturesqueness, gave at the same time solid, accurate, special information which the hasty generalizations of the present day too often miss. The latter confuse the mind by their immense array of figures.

Again, Dr. Young has given, we think, a disproportionate share of attention to Europe, Asia, and even Africa—occupying in all over seven hundred pages with his account of labor in those countries, while he handles the subject in the United States and Canada in just one hundred pages. His explanation is that his work is intended chiefly for circulation in the United States, but this explanation is unsatisfactory. His long introductory history of labor from the remotest times, compiled, as it plainly is, from the works of European scholars within everybody’s reach, and his view, chiefly at second hand, from the reports of American consuls, of the state of labor in Europe, are manifestly inferior, both in interest and authority, to the copious original works of the statisticians of particular foreign countries; while his history of American labor and presentation of its existing conditions, which ought to have given its real value to his work, are extremely meagre and superficial. His own tour through the manufacturing centres of England and the Continent appears from his statements to have been of too flying a nature to yield any very authoritative results. But we wish it to be distinctly understood that while the plan of Dr. Young’s work, and, in some respects, its execution, appear to us defective, we are by no means disposed to undervalue the great utility of what he has accomplished in thus presenting to the American reader in compact form a survey of the history of labor down to our own times. It is only from a study of the subject in its widest aspects that an intelligent comprehension of the factors of the problems before us in America can be arrived at.

Dr. Young begins by a review of the origin of slavery and gradual development of wage labor, following its thread through the rise and decline of the ancient empires of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The conquest and carrying off of alien races for the uses of manual labor, while their conquerors followed the profession of arms, was the most fruitful source of slavery in ancient times. This species of slavery is still found in Africa. It was long ago extinguished in Europe. It was crippled in America by the suppression of the slave trade, and has finally disappeared in the United States by the emancipation of the negro race. On the other hand, we have never had in this country the predial slavery which is bound to the soil and digs the ground it originally sprang from, of which the last II. But there is no doubt that that form would have developed itself in the United States from negro slavery if the distinction of color could have been annihilated. It was already tending in that direction when the war intervened.

We must pass over Dr. Young’s account of labor under the feudal system, but we cannot help noting the prejudice he seems to share with the vulgar against the monks. To read his pages, one would necessarily be led to infer that the clergy were among the worst oppressors of the poor; that they ground their unhappy serfs, and were the allies of the nobles and military commanders in keeping down the working classes. That all this farrago of calumny is directly the reverse of the truth is now so universally admitted by students of those ages that it is needless to enter into the question, nor would our space permit us to do so. It will suffice to quote Hallam, who, while opposed to the principles upon which monasteries are founded, calls those of the middle ages “green spots in the wilderness where the feeble and the persecuted could find refuge.”[28] And again, speaking of the devastation of immense tracts by war, he says: “We owe the agricultural restoration of the great part of Europe to the monks.”[29] It is singular that such testimony is omitted by Dr. Young. It would be still more singular if it had escaped his observation. His admissions are as ridiculous as his omissions. In a foot-note of a single line, which is lost in the midst of two chapters on the subject, he says: “It is admitted that the abbots were most indulgent landlords.” This is as if a writer on the woollen manufacture of the present day should devote a hundred pages to the knitting-needles of the old women in our country towns, and inform his readers in a one-line footnote: “Steam machinery was also used in this age in the manufacture of woollens.” The monastery was as distinctively the economic feature of the civilization of the middle ages as the steam-engine is of our times. Each played the same part in its development. It is just as easy to be blind to one as to the other.

Passing over the period included between Elizabeth and George III., and the early days of what Dr. Young aptly terms the “era of machinery,” we come down to the consideration of the organization and prices of labor, the rates of wages and cost of subsistence, and the habits of the working classes in England at the present day. These are fruitful themes, and are treated of in detail. We will endeavor to present a few items of comparison, from the statistics given in connection with them, with those afforded later in the case of the United States.

What we have said about the change that has taken place in the conditions of labor in the United States is shown by Dr. Young’s account of the trades-unions of the United Kingdom. Instead of, as formerly, maintaining their position on a totally different and higher plane than European workmen, American mechanics now take the law, in many cases, from English organizations. For instance, the “Amalgamated Society of Engineers,” a union including machinists, millwrights, smiths, and pattern-makers, and numbering at the close s. 6¾d. Its expenditure during the same year amounted to £67,199 17s., 5½d., including such items as telegrams, banking expenses, delegations, grants to other trades, parliamentary committees, gas-stokers defence fund—disclosing, in fact, all the incidents of a powerful and active organization.

The “Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners” has 265 branches, 14 of which are in the United States. The membership, however, appears to be small in this country, numbering only 445 men. The governmental organization of societies of this class is very elaborate and centralizing in character. Monthly reports are received from all the branches, including those in the United States. For instance, the monthly reports of the Amalgamated Carpenters’ Society for January, 1875, from the United States, represent the state of trade as “bad,” “dull,” or “slack,” with the exception of San Francisco, where it is reported “good,” and Newark as “improving.” Although no data are here given, it is not to be doubted that this system of reports will be, or has already been, extended to such organizations as the “Miners’ National Association,” numbering 140,000, and the National Agricultural Laborers’ Union, numbering 60,000, thus seriously affecting the immigration not only of skilled but of agricultural labor. In fact, we are already aware that personal reports have been made by Joseph Arch and others, some of them not favorable. The formidable character of the trades-unions of Great Britain is seen by the mere statement of their aggregate membership, which Dr. Young estimates, with all deductions, at 800,000 in January, 1875.

The question of strikes in England is too large a one to be entered into here. Dr. Young gives a brief history of the great Preston strike of 1836, of the Nottingham, the Staffordshire Colliery, the Pottery, and the Yorkshire strikes, all of which proved unsuccessful after terrible suffering on the part of the workmen and great loss on both sides had been endured. A short account is also given of the unsuccessful “Amalgamated Engineers’” strike of 1851-52, and the protracted engineers’ strike on the Tyne, 1871-72, for the nine hours’ system, which resulted in a compromise. Experience has demonstrated of strikes, 1st, that they are usually unsuccessful; 2d, that they lessen the employer’s ability to maintain even the wages paid before the strike, by giving an advantage to his competitor in other countries which he cannot always recover; 3d, that where they are fought out to the end they cause suffering and develop disease in the weak, and in women and children, which no wages can pay for or cure; 4th, that they deteriorate the character of the men engaged in them by promoting a feeling of lawlessness and desire for stimulation even among the best disposed; 5th, that, even if successful, there is a greater dead loss in money spent than is

Dr. Young illustrates the rates of wages in the United Kingdom by tables. He accompanies the tables with the explanation that “in a very large number of occupations the hands are paid by the piece or by weight, and the actual rate of wages would not indicate the sum an operative would take home with him at the end of the week as the price of his labor. The sums stated in all these tables are therefore the average sums earned per week, whether the labor be paid by the day or the piece.” The same explanation holds good for the United States. Of these tabular statements our space will only permit us to give two or three, to which we shall subjoin the rates of wages in the United States in the same occupations by way of comparison. The British pound sterling is computed at $4 84, and the shilling at 24 cents.

WAGES IN COTTON-MILLS.

The reduction in the hours of labor and the increase in the rates of wages in English cotton-mills are shown in the following table:

Statement showing the average weekly earnings of operatives in cotton-mills during the years 1839, 1849, 1859, and 1873.

OCCUPATION. SEX. WORK OF 69 HOURS. WORK OF 60 HOURS.

1839. 1849. 1859. 1873.

Steam-engine tenders, $5 76 $5 72 $7 20 $7 68

Warehousemen, 4 32 4 80 5 28 6 24

Carding:

Stretchers, Women and girls, 1 68 1 80 1 92 2 88

Strippers, Young men, 2 64 2 88 3 36 4 56

Overlookers, 6 00 6 72 6 72 7 68

Spinning:

Winders on self-acting mules, 3 84 4 32 4 80 6 00

Piecers, Women and young men, 1 94 2 16 2 40 3 84

Overlookers, 4 80 5 28 6 24 7 20

Reeling:

Throttle-rulers, Women, 2 16 2 28 2 28 3 00

Warpers, 5 28 5 28 5 52 6 24

Sizers, 5 52 5 52 6 00 7 20

Doubling:

Doublers, Women, 1 68 1 80 2 16 3 00

Overlookers, 5 76 6 00 6 72 7 68

“Other branches show the same ratio of advance.”

Co., of Manchester, operating 250,000 spindles, and producing yarns from No. 60 to 220, sewing cottons, lace yarn, crape yarn, and two-fold warp yarns:

Average wages (per week of 59 hours) of persons employed in 1872.

OCCUPATION. WAGES.

Carding:

Overseer,$10 89

Second hand,7 26

Drawing-frame tenders,2 66

Speeder-tenders,3 14

Grinders,5 32

Strippers,5 32

Spinning:

Overseer,14 52

Mule-spinners,$13 31 to 15 73

Mule-backside piecers,2 42 to 3 87

Repair-shop, engine-room, etc.:

Foreman or overseer,14 52

Wood and iron workers,7 74

Engineer,9 68

Laborers,5 32

These tables will be found on pp. 330-31. Now let us compare the wages there given with those paid to the same class of operatives in the United States. On pages 750-51, Dr. Young gives a table showing the average weekly wages paid in American cotton-mills in various States in 1869 and 1874. We select

Wages in cotton-mills (weekly average).

OCCUPATION. RHODE ISLAND.

1869. 1874.

Carding:

Overseer,$17 00$17 00

Picker-tenders,7 807 72

Railway-tenders,3 50[B]4 47

Drawing-frame tenders,5 00[C]5 40

Speeder-tenders,6 12[C]7 48

Picker-boy,6 25[A]4 03

Grinders,9 089 10

Strippers,7 267 50

Spinning:

Overseer,15 6017 69

Mule-spinners,9 5010 16

Mule-backside piecers,2 85[A]2 52

Frame-spinners,5 00[B]3 70

Dressing:

Overseer,13 7514 80

Second hand,9 0011 83

Spoolers,5 00[C]4 32

Warpers,5 75[C]6 98

Drawers and twisters,5 00

Dressers,11 2513 11

Weaving:

Overseer,18 3318 00

Weavers,8 00[C]7 91

Drawing-in hands,7 50[C]7 25

Repair-shop, engine-room, etc.:

Foreman,18 0015 79

Wood-workers,15 0013 58

Iron-workers,13 1613 68

Engineer,18 0013 71

Laborers,9 338 59

Overseer in cloth-room,15 0012 42

It will appear, therefore, from an examination of the tables that the average weekly wages in Rhode Island cotton-mills (which fairly represent those of the rest of the country) are in most cases from a third to nearly double those paid in Manchester. But it will also be observed that, whereas English wages appear to have increased steadily in every grade, the American rates show a decided tendency downwards. The highest skilled American labor holds its own with difficulty, but in the lower grades cheaper labor has been extensively employed since 1869. Dr. Young’s explanation must also be borne in mind in reading these tables—viz., that the labor is frequently piece-work. In some instances the English operatives also employ their own helpers.

But do these figures really represent the present rate of wages? Doubtless the average given is a fair one. But any one whose attention was directed to the strike at the Lonsdale Mills, R. I., January, 1875, must have noticed that wages are in reality much lower than here given. Into the merits of that controversy we do not enter—we wish merely to arrive at the figures. The company would appear to have done everything they could for the comfort and improvement of the condition of their hands, and the reduction complained of probably could not be avoided in the then depressed state of the market. The special correspondent of the New York Herald of that date gives the statement of the superintendent, who said that the weavers before the reduction were receiving fifty cents per cut (wide goods), and with the reduction of 10 per cent. the price paid would be forty-five cents per cut; or, in other words, they would earn about $1 a day. Taking the statements

Notwithstanding the readiness of operatives to strike the moment the opportunity offers—a readiness perfectly well known and appreciated by their employers—and notwithstanding also, it may be said, the determination of employers to regulate wages by the laws of trade, it is nevertheless one of the most noble and encouraging features of the industrial pursuits of this age that the employers in many instances—and those generally the chief—show that they intend that their minds shall not be diverted from the purpose of improving the condition of their workmen, both mentally and materially. It is well that the mild voice of Christian charity should still be able to make itself heard in the midst of this whir of iron machinery.

In the condition of no kind of labor does the United States compare more favorably with England and the Continent of Europe than in agriculture. Here the respective wages paid hardly admit of comparison. But it is not to be lost sight of that, wretched as the condition of the English agricultural laborer may appear to us, his way of viewing things is not ours. The rough, arduous, irregular, exposed labor of the Western backwoodsman, or even farmer, appears to him more terrible than the dull, stated servitude, with its beer in the present and its work-house in the future, that shock our free thought. The report of the delegates of the Agricultural Union was decidedly unfavorable in the case of Canada, where the conditions of labor do not essentially vary from those of the Northwestern States. This question of agricultural labor is, however, too vast a one to be treated of here. Dr. Young’s reports are very valuable, but take, perhaps, the American view of the question too much for granted.[30]

WAGES OF MECHANICS AND SKILLED ARTISANS IN GREAT BRITAIN.

This branch of his subject is copiously treated by Dr. Young in connection with his tour through the chief manufacturing cities of the United Kingdom in 1872. From the numerous tables presented we select one under the head of “Skilled trades in London, weekly wages in 1871” (page 242) as being the most comprehensive.

The average daily wages of persons employed in the same trades in the United States in 1874 was from $2 25 for shoemakers to $3 33 for bricklayers or masons (pp. 745-747); or, in other words, from 50 per cent. to 100 per cent. more than in England.

Statement showing the established rates of wages obtained by members of the various trades societies of the metropolis, in summer and winter, compiled under the supervision of Alsager Hay Hill, LL.B.

TRADES. NUMBER OF MEMBERS. RATE OF WAGES.

Sum’r Winter

Bakers, $3 87 $5 08

Basket-makers, 3 63 4 84

Boat-builders, 8 47 7 26

Bookbinders, 702 7 26 7 26

Brass-cock finishers, 8 47 8 47

Brass-finishers, 8 47 8 47

Bricklayers, 2,386 16[D] 16[D]

Brush-makers, 400 [E] [E]

Cabinet-makers, 500 7 26 7 26

Cabinet-makers, deal, 450 7 99 7 99

Carpenters, 4,740 9 14 9 14

Carvers and gilders, 50 4 84 4 84

Coach-builders, 25 9 68 9 68

Coach-makers, 320 9 68 9 68

Coach-smiths, 200 4 84 12 58

Coach-trimmers and makers, 6 05 6 05

Compositors, 3,550 4 84 8 47

Cork-cutters, 100 7 26 7 26

Cordwainers, 3,678 [F] [F]

Curriers, 1,900 8 47 8 47

Engineers, 33,539 16[D] 16[D]

18[D] 16[D]

Farriers, 220 9 68 12 10

French polishers, 30 7 26 7 26

Hammermen, 80 5 81 5 81

Iron-founders and moulders, 7,372 9 20 9 20

Letterpress printers, 7 26 7 26

Painters, house, 14[D] 14[D]

Pianoforte makers, 400 16[D] 16[D]

Plasterers, 14[D] 14[D]

Plumbers, 18[D] 18[D]

Pressmen, printers, 60 7 26 7 26

Skinners, 225 7 26 7 26

Steam-engine makers, 100 16[D] 16[D]

18[D] 18[D]

Stone-masons, 17,193 9 14 7 82

PURCHASING POWER OF WAGES.

But we cannot stop at the mere figures in dollars and cents. In this connection we must consider what those wages will buy in each country—what is their purchasing power:

“If a workman in Birmingham” says Dr. Young, “receive for fifty-four hours’ labor 30s., or about $8 33 in United States currency, and another, of the same occupation, in Philadelphia earn $12 50, it would be inaccurate to say that the earnings of the latter were 50 per cent. more than those of the former. The question is not what is the United States equivalent of the thirty British shillings, but what is the purchasing power of the wages of the one workman in England and of the other in the United States? In other words, how much food, clothing, and shelter will the earnings of the one purchase as compared with the other?”

For the solution of this question Dr. Young enters into an elaborate analysis of the price of provisions, clothing, house-rent, etc., in each country. In this we are unable to follow him. But taking the amount paid for board by single men and women employed in mechanical labor in the great cities of both countries, the average price paid by men in Great Britain ranges from $2 50 to $3 50 per week; in the United States, from $4 50 to $5 50. For women, in manufacturing cities in England, from $1 50 to $2 50 per week; in the United States, from $2 50 to $3 50. In the great American manufacturing centre, Philadelphia, the average price of mechanics’ board is, for men, $5 per week; for women, $3. But this does not mean a single room for each; in most cases two, in some three, four, and even five, sleep in the same chamber. British workmen probably eat as much meat as American workmen, but they have not the same variety of dishes. House-rent is cheaper in most English cities even than in Philadelphia, where great and commendable efforts have always been made to provide good and cheap houses for working-men. Clothing Dr. Young estimates at less than half the price in England for the laboring classes compared with the United States; partly from cheaper rates, and partly from the inferior kind British workmen consent to wear—fustian or corduroy being the most common material.

We would wish to follow Dr. Young, if it were possible, into a comparison of the rates of wages

In the comparison of the general rates of wages and cost of living in Great Britain and the United States, so many and so great diversities exist in both countries that it is a hazardous matter to draw general conclusions. Stated broadly, it would appear that the rate of wages in Great Britain since 1865 has shown a steady tendency to advance, with some fluctuations, while the cost of living is nearly stationary; in the United States, within the same period of ten years, wages have remained stationary or shown a tendency to decline, allowing for the fluctuations caused by a depreciated currency, while the cost of living has increased. The commercial depression existing since 1873 has affected labor in both countries, but more sensibly in the United States. The great falling off in immigration since 1873 is a remarkable and sensitive test of the depreciation of the labor market in the United States and the simultaneous rise of wages in Europe. From the recent report of the New York Emigration Commissioners it appears that there were landed at Castle Garden during 1875 84,560 immigrants, against 140,041 for 1874 and 294,581 for 1873. The falling off has been equally divided among all nationalities. Nor does this tell the whole story; for the steamship companies show a very large return of laborers to Europe during the past year. It is not intended to convey the impression by these figures that European emigration has finally stayed its course towards these shores, but it is evident that it has received a serious temporary check. It is not the purpose of this paper to investigate what the remedy for this state of things may be. But it may be stated as the conviction of the writer that a mere return to specie payments, though beneficial, will not do all for the country that its advocates claim. Something more will be required—that is, economy, curtailment of expenses, national and individual—before we can reach bottom. Like youth sometimes, we have temporarily outgrown our strength. We have no vast deposits of wealth, the hoardings of centuries, to fall back upon like some European countries. We have always lived right up to our income, and have not yet adjusted ourselves to our sudden plunge into national debt. Hope has all along buoyed us up to over-production and consequent over-expenditure. The supply of labor must equalize itself to the

We are not able to follow Dr. Young in his researches into the rate of wages and cost of subsistence in the various countries of continental Europe which he visited. None of them approach so near the American standard as Great Britain. In most of them labor is poorly paid and the working classes live meanly according to our notions, yet contrive, withal, to enjoy a degree of comfort, and even happiness, which to us seems hard to understand under the circumstances.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

A HISTORICAL ROMANCE.

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.

VI.

There was a castle in Yorkshire whose tall, majestic towers commanded a view of the country for miles around, rising far above the sombre depths of the ancient forest-trees that covered the hills on which the castle was seated.

A silence like the grave reigned within and around this princely habitation. Merry young pages no longer bounded over balustrades and the walks winding from the drawbridge. The Gothic arches no more re-echoed with the noisy clamor of the hounds nor the loud cheering of the young hunters. Rank weeds covered the lofty ramparts and clusters of wild flowers swung between their solitary battlements, as though nature had struggled to conceal the eternal mourning which they seemed for ever condemned to wear.

A traveller approached the castle and examined with great attention the arches bearing the arms of the earls of Northumberland. He held by the bridle a beautiful horse, covered with sweat and dust, whose drooping head and trembling limbs attested his extreme fatigue.

“This is certainly the place!” he exclaimed, still looking around him. “I recognize the crouching lion of Northumberland!” He knocked loudly and waited a long time.

At length the door opened and an old man appeared before him.

“It is he whom I wish to see,” replied the stranger.

The old domestic contracted his white eyebrows. “That cannot be. Since the death of his father he sees nobody.”

“The old Count of Northumberland dead!” replied Sir Walsh (for it was he).

“Alas! yes, for an entire year. We buried him at Alnwick,” answered the old servant, wiping away a tear.

“Go to your master,” replied Sir Walsh,” and tell him that some one asks to see him on the part of the king. I will wait for you here.”

“On the part of the king!” replied the old servant. “On the part of the king! That will make a difference, I think, and I do not want you to stay here. Follow me.”

After fastening the horse to one of the iron rings which were fixed in the wall of the inner court, he led Sir Walsh into the castle. They crossed long courts, then entered magnificent galleries, where they saw arranged, between the Gothic arches which separated the vast and deeply-embrasured windows, the richest armorial trophies of all ages. Lances, longbows, and javelins filled up the interstices. Shields and bucklers, borne in battle by the ancestors of the noble earl, were eating away with rust, and the festoons of spider-webs which hung from the huge antlers of stag and deer bore witness to the neglect and indifference of the master of the castle.

Sir Walsh, as he passed along, regarded all these things with an admiration mingled with astonishment. He could not understand the state of abandonment in which he found a habitation that he had always heard described as being one of the most magnificent in all England. The delicately-sculptured wainscoting, the costly paintings, the rich gilding of the rafters and ceilings, were renowned among artists and considered as models which they labored to imitate.

“How singular all this is!” he said to himself. “How can Lord Percy, whom I have known at court, so brilliant and accomplished, content himself in a place like this, magnificent without doubt, but abandoned, desolate, especially since the death of his father? And why has he not returned to court, where his tastes and habits naturally call him?”

While absorbed in these reflections Sir Walsh, preceded by his aged conductor, entered a large octagonal saloon, gilded all over and pierced with crosslets on every side, through which poured floods of brilliantly-colored light, reflected from the stained glass with which they were ornamented.

The view extended very far, and a large river, like a broad belt of silver, wound through the beautiful fields, interspersed with clumps of trees that increased still more the beauty of the landscape.

Walsh paused, enraptured with the

The old domestic noiselessly entered Lord Percy’s chamber, and paused near the door in order to observe him; then an expression of profound sadness stole over his features and he advanced still more slowly.

Seated in the embrasure of a large window, and always dressed in the deepest mourning, Lord Percy scarcely ever left his room. Surrounded by a great number of books and papers, he appeared to be absorbed in reading, and the messenger was quite near before he was aware of his presence.

“My lord!” he said in a very low and gentle voice, “there is a stranger here who wishes to speak to you.”

“You know very well that I receive nobody, Henry,” said the Earl of Northumberland without turning his head. “Have you asked him his business?”

“Most assuredly,” replied Henry with a lofty and important air. “I know it, too. He comes here on the part of the king—of the king himself,” he repeated.

“On the part of the king!” cried Northumberland, turning pale. “Of the king! What does he want with me? Have I not done enough for him? Is he not satisfied with having destroyed all my hopes, all my happiness, all my future? Of what consequence to him now is my existence?”

And, overwhelmed with the weight of his afflictions, he folded his arms on his breast and forgot to give his servant an answer.

“My dear son,” murmured the old man softly, after a moment of silent attention, “are you going now to torment yourself again, and may be, after all, without any cause?” For he dreaded beyond expression anything that might arouse or excite what he termed his master’s “manias.”

“No, my old foster-father, do not be alarmed!” replied Northumberland, who knew very well what was passing in his mind. “Go, and bring in this stranger.”

He then arose, in a state of agitation he was unable to control.

Henry soon returned, bringing Sir Walsh.

On entering, the latter was prepared to give Northumberland a joyful surprise and fold him in his arms; but on being suddenly ushered into his presence he recoiled in astonishment. Could this be the gay and brilliant young man he had known, always cheerful, always affable, whose handsome face and charming manner attracted all around him? Dressed in the deepest mourning, which by contrast increased the pallor of his face, his expression anxious and haggard, a painful constraint was observable in all his movements.

“You do not recognize me, Lord Percy,” said Sir Walsh at last. “There was a time when you called me your friend, and I was proud to bear the title!”

“Oh! no, my dear Walsh,” replied Northumberland, “I could not have forgotten you. Rather say you no longer recognize me; for time has passed like a dream. Since you saw me last I have been transformed into another person. But tell me, why does the name of him who sends you come to invade my solitude? What have I done to him to bring him here again to disturb my ashes? For am I not already dead? Does this castle not strike you as being strangely like a

“But I think,” said Sir Walsh, astonished at this outburst and forcing a smile, “that some young girl, descended from her palace of clouds to the midst of your abode, draws around her crowds of your astonished vassals. They admire her snowy robes and crown of stars.”

“No,” replied Northumberland gloomily; “no, never! No female inhabits this place. She who ought to have ruled here will never come, and she who did rule would not remain!”

“What do you mean by that riddle?” inquired Walsh. “What! is the Countess of Northumberland no longer here?”

“No, she is no longer here,” replied Lord Percy. And he passed his hand over his eyes, unable to conceal the emotion all these questions excited; for, in spite of himself, the sight of an old friend had agitated him to the depths of his soul. Man was not made for solitude; he is a social being; he has need of his fellow-men to love them, or even to complain of and to them; and for many long, weary months no human being had knocked at his door or come to offer a word of consolation.

Walsh regarded him with increasing solicitude; at length, unable to restrain his feelings, he threw his arms around his neck.

“My dear Percy,” he exclaimed, “what has happened to you? You seem overwhelmed with sorrow. I felt so happy in anticipation of surprising you by this visit, and again seeing you at the head of all the young nobles of the north, loved as you were among us, the life of the chase and of all those sports in which you excelled! Alas! my friend, what misfortune has befallen you? Tell me; for I swear I will never more leave you.”

“What misfortune has befallen me, do you ask, my dear old friend?” replied Northumberland, deeply moved. “Yes, you are ignorant of all. And what does it matter? It was irreparable. But tell me the cause that brought you to me. Why has the king sent you hither?”

“For nothing that need give you the least uneasiness,” replied Walsh—“a commission readily executed, and in which you must assist me. We will return to this later. Tell me first of yourself—of yourself alone, my friend—and of your father.”

“My father? He died in my arms more than a year ago without suffering. I have done what he wished,” continued Northumberland, his eyes filling with tears. “I have nothing with which to reproach myself on that account. I have obeyed him. Yes,” he added, fixing his eyes on the floor, “that is the only thought that ever comes to console me.”

“I do not understand you!” replied Walsh. “Speak more explicitly; explain what you mean.”

“Well, know, then,” replied Northumberland in an altered voice, and making a violent effort to control himself—“know that for a long time I loved Anne Boleyn—yes, Anne Boleyn! We were betrothed. The day, the hour, for our marriage were fixed, when the king tore her from me for ever! In his jealous hatred he commanded Cardinal Wolsey, to whose household I belonged, to summon me before him, and forbid me in his name dreaming, for an instant, of marrying her; but on my refusing to obey he appealed to my father, who ordered sometimes imagine I see Queen Catherine enter my chamber; the reflection of her gold-embroidered robes sheds a dazzling light around her. Her ladies follow. I hear the rustling of their heavy trains; I hear them laugh and converse together about the tournament of the day before. Then all becomes dark! Anne Boleyn turns her eyes away from me; she is envious of the queen; pride, ambition, stifle in her heart every sentiment of affection. Then my agony is renewed. I weep, I sigh, and the shadows vanish into nothingness.

“What happiness can any one expect to find in the honors of a usurped rank? Ah! my friend, I have seen, and felt, and suffered everything. Our faults are the sole cause of all our afflictions. Therefore, far from feeling incensed at the injustice of men, I no more recognize an enemy among them. My heart goes out with deepest pity toward the suffering ones of earth, and I would gladly be able to console them all.”

Saying this, Northumberland paused, overcome by emotion.

“Ah!” at length replied Walsh, who had listened with rapt attention, “how limited are our judgments! Had I been asked the name of the happiest mortal living, I should have given yours without a moment’s hesitation.”

“I know it, and have been told it a hundred times,” replied Northumberland earnestly. “Many men have had their marriage relations dissolved, their fortunes changed, and have still borne up courageously under their misfortunes; but with me it cannot be thus. If Anne Boleyn had married another lord of the court—well, I might have been reconciled. I should at least have been spared the outrage of her dishonor;

“Dear Percy,” replied Walsh, “you cannot imagine how much you exaggerate all this! The solitude in which you live has excited you to such a degree that you almost imagine she bears the name of Countess of Northumberland.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed excitedly, “she bears it in my heart; and there, at least, no one can dispute her right!”

“And poor Lady Shrewsbury?” replied Walsh.

“Lady Shrewsbury,” cried Northumberland, “is the victim, like myself, of compulsion! Never have I regarded her as my wife. If the king had demanded my head, I should not have been bound to obey; but a father’s curse is a weight that cannot be supported! My obstinacy would have brought upon his tottering old age the bitterness of poverty and want. No, no; that is my only excuse, and Lady Shrewsbury herself would have forgiven me had she known my sorrow.”

“My dear Percy,” interrupted Walsh anxiously, “I am deeply grieved to find you in this condition; your heart misleads you, and I perceive the commission with which I am charged will be anything but agreeable. However, what can I do? Here,” he added, unfolding a letter and a roll of written parchment, from which hung the king’s seals, “take and read.”

He preferred giving him the order to read rather than have the unpleasant task of verbally announcing what he now foresaw would cause him such extreme grief. Northumberland had no sooner glanced over it than the parchment fell from his hands.

“Who? I?” he cried. “I go to arrest the archbishop at the very moment when all the nobility of these parts are assembled to assist at the ceremony of his installation! I, formerly of his household, who have spent all the happiest years of my youth with him—charge me with such a commission? The king wishes, then, to have me regarded with horror and detestation by all the inhabitants of this country! Know, my friend,” continued Percy, fixing his flashing eyes upon Walsh, “that since Wolsey came here he has made himself universally loved and cherished. He is no longer the vain, imperious man whom you knew; adversity has entirely changed him. He occupies himself only in doing good, reconciling family differences, and relieving the distressed. And this gorgeous entry, which causes the king so much uneasiness, he was to have made on foot with the utmost possible simplicity.

“For a long time Wolsey hesitated, entirely for fear of seeing his enemies array themselves against him; but his clergy seemed so wounded at conduct contrary to the usage of all his predecessors that he at length consented. But see how they deceive the king, and endeavor to excite him against those who least of all merit his displeasure!”

“What shall I say to you, my dear Northumberland?” replied Walsh. “When the king issues an order, how can its execution be avoided? All that you say is

“Ah!” replied Northumberland, “why has he imposed such a commission on me? See if even the slightest pleasure of my life is not instantly extinguished. I was rejoicing at seeing you, and immediately I am made to pay for it.”

He continued for a long time talking in this manner, when, Walsh having expressed a desire to go through the castle, Northumberland consented. They found everything in a state of extreme disorder. In many places no care was taken even to open the house to admit the light of day. As old Henry successively opened to them each new hall of the immense castle, the dust, collected in heaps like piles of down, arose and flew away to collect again further on in the apartment upon some more valuable piece of furniture.

Walsh could not avoid expressing to the earl his surprise at seeing him so neglect the magnificent abode of his ancestors. “It is wrong,” replied Percy, “but I prize nothing any more. Of what consequence is it to me whether the roof that shelters me is handsome or plain? When our hearts are crushed by sorrow, we become oblivious to all outward surroundings.”

* * * * *

When night came on, his host retired and left him to that repose of which, after the fatigue of his journey, he stood so much in need. Northumberland ordered old Henry to retire and leave him alone as usual; but Henry had decided otherwise, and continued for a long time to come and go and pass the chamber slowly under various pretexts, as his solicitude on account of his master was more and more increased on remarking that his habitual sadness had been redoubled since the advent of his visitor.

“Accursed stranger!” he said to himself, “bird of ill-omen, what has brought him here? That famished maw of his would have been very well able to carry him far from the moats of our castle! It is the king who sends him here; but is not our son king of these parts?” And thus muttering to himself, old Henry walked on. Not being able to determine on leaving his master, he stopped and peered through the door in order to observe Lord Percy. The latter sat leaning on the table before him, his eyes closed, his head resting on his hands, and seemingly oblivious to everything around him.

“There he sits still, to take a cold with this trouble!” continued Henry. “However, I must go and leave him.” And the old domestic, still turning his palsied head to look back, passed slowly under the heavy tapestry screen, that fell rustling behind him.

“He is gone,” said Northumberland to himself—“gone, perhaps, for ever; for who knows how long Henry has yet to live? What happiness to think we must die! When weary with suffering, the soul reposes with a bitter joy upon the brink of that tomb which alone can deliver her from her woes! How the certainty of seeing them end sweetens the sorrows we endure! Here where I stand” (he arose to his feet), “beside this hearth, each one of my sires has taken his place, and each has successively passed away. Their armor hangs here

“Have you not sometimes seen, in the midst of a violent storm, a poor bird wildly struggling with winds and waves? You behold it for a moment in the whirlpool, and suddenly it disappears. Just so I have passed through the midst of the world; I had hoped to shine there, because I was dazzled with it. To-day it becomes necessary to forget it. O my soul! I wish thee, I command thee, to forget.”

At this moment a slight noise was heard. Northumberland started.

“What do you want, Henry?” he asked, seeing the old man standing like a shadow at the end of the apartment.

“Nothing!” he replied impatiently.

“But truly,” said Lord Percy, “why have you returned?”

“To see if you were asleep,” brusquely answered the old servant, approaching him. “It was scarcely worth the trouble,” he continued, elevating his voice, “of harboring so carefully this new-comer, if he must pay his reckoning in this way.”

“Ah!” replied Northumberland, regarding his old foster-father with a suppliant expression.” Tell me, Henry, have you never known what it was to grieve for one whom you loved?”

“Ay, in sooth,” replied Henry, “unfortunately I have known it; but we are not able to live, like you, in idleness, and have hardly time to be unhappy. When I lost my poor Alice, your foster-mother, what anguish did I not feel in the depths of my soul! Well, if I had stopped to think of her, I should have heard immediately my name resounding through all the turrets of the castle: ‘Henry! my lord—my lord goes hunting; hurry! make haste! my lord gives a ball this evening to all the ladies of the country.’ And away I had to go, to come, to run; otherwise my lord your father would fly into a passion. How would you find time to weep if somebody was always calling after you? Besides, I—poor Henry—if they had seen me sitting, like you, all the day in silence, with tears in my eyes and my arms folded, they would have laughed at me, and the pages would have called me a fool.”

“That is true; you are right,” replied Northumberland in an abstracted manner. “You say, then they gave balls here?”

“And superb ones, too!” replied Henry, who liked, above all things, to talk about the old times. “In those days you were not here; they educated you with Monseigneur the Cardinal, our good archbishop at present.”

On hearing these words Northumberland became violently agitated, and his old servant, perceiving his countenance change and his features contract, stopped suddenly in great alarm.

“You are ill, my lord?” he exclaimed.

“No, no,” replied Northumberland; “be calm. Leave me, Henry; I want to be alone. Go to your bed—I command you.”

Henry, forced to leave his master, as he went reproached himself fêtes the Countess of Northumberland had given in the castle; he imagined it was the recollection of his mother that had so affected Lord Percy.

“The archbishop! the archbishop!” repeated Northumberland. “Oh! let me banish the name, in mercy—for a few hours, at least! He said, I believe, that they gave balls here! What did he say? Yes, that must be it: my mother loved them. Yes,” he continued, looking round at the large and magnificent panels of his chamber, “here they hung garlands and baskets of flowers; a thousand lamps reflected their brilliant colors; delicious music floated on the perfumed air; crowds of people of every age, sex, and rank eagerly gathered here. Time has very soon reduced them to an equality; the sound of their footsteps is heard no more; their voices are mute; they have all passed away. I alone still exist.”

The entire night was spent in these reflections, and when day began to dawn the heavy tramp of horses was heard in the courtyard, and soon, in the cold fog of morning, there issued from the castle gate a troop of armed men wearing long cloth cloaks and caps. It was the earl’s retainers, whom he had assembled during the night from all the surrounding country. He rode in the midst of them in profound silence; even Sir Walsh, reading in his countenance the melancholy dejection under which he labored, had simply pressed his hand without daring to address him a word.

As to the followers of Northumberland, they were astonished at this sudden departure; they were completely ignorant of whither their master was carrying them, having learned nothing from old Henry himself, to whom Lord Percy had deemed it inexpedient to reveal the destination, and still less the object, of this expedition. The old man felt singularly anxious on the subject, as he was every day becoming more and more accustomed to regard himself as the guardian and adviser of him whom he called his son. Therefore, after having closed the gate of the castle upon the travellers, he went sadly and took his station on the highest tower, to see in what direction his master was going.

A few moments only he followed them with his eyes; for, the valley once crossed, their route conducted them into the depths of the forest, and the cavalcade was soon lost to view.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FROM PETRARCH.

ITALIAN COMMERCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

Thucydides, in the introduction to his history, remarks that one of the principal causes that raised some of the Greek cities to such a high degree of prosperity and power was their engagement in mercantile pursuits. All the great peoples of antiquity by whom the shores of the Mediterranean were occupied—Phœnicians, Carthaginians, Etruscans, Ionians of Asia Minor—rose to wealth and importance by the same means. The Romans alone despised it.

After the subversion of the Western Empire and the last inroads of the barbarians, the natives of Italy were the first to emerge from the ruins of the ancient world. Except religion, they found no worthier or more potent element of civilization than commerce, which procures, to use the words of a celebrated writer, what is of far greater value than mere money—“the reciprocation of the peculiar advantages of different countries”; and throughout the middle ages, until the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope and the discovery of America, Italy was the most forward nation in Christendom for wealth, refinement of manners, and intellectual culture.

Italian commerce reached its greatest development between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries—that is, between the ages when Marco Polo travelled to Tartary, China, and the Indies and Christopher

When the Goths, Longobards, and Carlovingians had conquered Italy, although most of the arts and sciences were lost or hidden in cloisters, neither trade nor commerce was quite neglected; but, despite the dangers from pirates, the ignorance of the sea, and the exactions of the lawless on land, the Adriatic and Mediterranean were timidly attempted by the inhabitants of the coast, while in the interior of the country an interchange of commodities was carried on between neighboring districts at places set apart for the purpose. These places were generally the large square or principal street of a town, or under the walls of a monastery, and the interchange took place on certain days appointed by public authority.

The assemblies of the people were usually held on the Saturday, and were at first called markets; but afterwards the rarer and more important ones, which were held annually and for several consecutive days, were termed fairs, from the Latin word feria, because they always took place on the feast of some saint. Many rights and privileges were granted at an early period to the merchants who exhibited wares at these yearly gatherings; for without such inducements few cared to undertake a journey with a part, or perhaps the whole, of their earthly substance about them, along roads and across ferries beset by robber-nobles, who levied toll from passers-by and sometimes seized goods and persons for their own use.

The Venetians began earlier to sail on distant seas, and maintained themselves longer on the water, than did the natives of any other parts of Italy. Cassiodorus represents them in the sixth century as occupied solely in salt-works, from which they derived their only profit; but in course of time they issued from their lagoons to become the most industrious and venturesome traffickers in the world. At the beginning of the ninth century they had already introduced into Italy

Another rich emporium at an early period, on the same side of Italy, was Pisa. The city was four or five miles from the sea, but had a port formed by a natural bay to the southward of the old mouth of the Arno at a place called Calambrone. The Pisans at first traded principally with Sicily and Africa. They fitted out expeditions against the Saracens,[31] seized several islands in the Mediterranean, and with both land-troops and seamen took an important part in the first Crusade, being careful, before returning from the East, to establish factories at Antioch and Constantinople. They also sent fleets to humble the Mohammedan cities of Northern Africa. Through commercial jealousy and political reasons they became involved in bitter wars with the Genoese for the possession of Corsica, and with the Amalfitans, who had sided against the emperor. The Pisans, as auxiliaries of the Emperor Lothaire, sent a strong squadron to Amalfi, which was held by the Normans, and, after a rigorous blockade, took it by storm in 1137. It was on this occasion that a copy of the long-lost Pandects of Justinian was found, which is said to be the original from which all subsequent copies in Italy were made, thus reviving the study of Roman law. It was taken from its captors by the Florentines in 1411, and is now preserved in the Laurentian Library at Florence. The monk Donizo, in his metrical life of the Countess Matilda, being annoyed that the mother of the countess should have been buried in Pisa, describes the city somewhat contemptuously as a flourishing emporium whose port was filled with large ships and frequented by many different races of people, even by swarthy Moors.

To the north of Pisa rose her haughty rival, Genoa, surnamed the Superb from her pride and magnificent natural position. After four sanguinary wars with the Pisans, the Genoese swept their fleets from the sea, destroyed their port, and ruined their foreign commerce. The city never recovered from that blow, and the population, which once exceeded 100,000, has fallen to a fifth of that number.

Protosebaste. In the meanwhile intestine disturbances and wars with neighboring republics had reduced several of those cities which had lately been most flourishing, and none could compete successfully in the fourteenth century with Venice and Genoa, to which the foreign trade of Italy was left, and to whose marts the produce of the Levant and the countries bordering on the lower Mediterranean was brought, and either there or at the great cities of the interior exchanged for domestic manufactures and the industries of Central and Northern Europe. The carrying trade was almost exclusively their own, but the home or inland business was shared by many other cities—principally by Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Lucca, and Milan. At that period the Atlantic ocean and northern coasts of Europe were but rarely navigated by Italian merchants. The Venetians alone despatched annually a large fleet, which—taking its name, the Flanders fleet, from its destination—carried on an enterprising and lucrative traffic with the Low Countries, and, in connection with the Hanseatic League or directly, spread over England, Scotland, and the nations lying on the North Sea and the Baltic, the spices, gums, silks, pearls, diamonds, and numerous other articles of oriental origin which they had procured from the Levant and further Indies. The Genoese furnished the same things to the French, Spaniards, and Moors of Andalusia; but Portugal was served by their rivals.

A maritime power had risen before this time which disputed with the Genoese and Venetians the ascendency on the Mediterranean. This was Barcelona, whose sailors were among the best on the sea, and whose merchants were largely engaged in commerce. Many bold encounters took place between the Catalans and Italians, through jealousies of trade, but the former finally succumbed.

The products of the more distant East reached Italy in Genoese and Venetian ships, through Armenian merchants at Trebizond, and through Arabs by way of Alexandria and Damascus. Those of the north, so necessary for a seafaring people, were brought from the mouth of the Don, the merchandise being floated down that great river in boats from the interior. The Mongols were the masters of all the region thereabouts; but the insinuating Italians, aware of the interest of this branch of commerce, played upon their barbarous pride with so [32] became one of the most opulent colonies of the republic, with a population at one time of 80,000.

The rival Venetians had their great deposit at the city of Azov, on the banks of the Don, twenty miles from its mouth. They were not the proprietors, and, although they received numerous favors from the Tartar governor, they were obliged to share them with the Genoese, Florentines, and others, who also did a flourishing business. The amount of goods collected there was so immense and the value so considerable, that when, as sometimes happened, a destructive fire broke out or the place was plundered, the loss was felt as a shock to commerce throughout the whole of Europe.

All along the coast of the Black Sea the Italians plied a profitable trade, and many merchants were settled at Trebizond, from which vantage-ground they had an important communication open with Armenia, whose people, being united by religion to the Latins, granted them very valuable commercial privileges. The Venetians were favored above the rest. They had churches, magazines, and inns, coined money, and in all matters in dispute were tried by judges chosen among their countrymen, or rather their own fellow-citizens. They could introduce their goods without paying duty, freely traverse the kingdom, and monopolize the exportation of camel’s hair, which was an important article of traffic. The Genoese were no less enterprising than their rivals, and restored in the port of Trebizond a mole that had been built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Large quantities of India goods, and especially spiceries, were stored by Italian merchants in the warehouses of Trebizond, Damascus, and Alexandria. There were several overland routes by which this merchandise was transported, but none of them was safe, on account of the frequent revolutions in the countries through which they ran. Some of the caravans that brought the commodities of India and China passed through Balkh, the Baetria of the ancients and at one time the commercial centre of eastern Asia, then up to Bokhara, whence they descended the Oxus for a distance, touched at Khiva, and, traversing the Caspian Sea, ascended the river Kour (the Cyrus of Strabo, xi. p. 509) for seventy miles to its junction with the Aras (the Araxes of Herodotus, iv. 40), from which they crossed by a journey of four or five days into the historical Phasis at Sharapan and down to the Euxine. Another beaten track entered Syria by the Tigris and the Euphrates, and diverged towards the several Baldachin, because canopies made of costly stuff interwoven with gold thread were manufactured in this city, which was known to the Italians as Baldacca, and in the adjective form Baldacchino. Much trade was also done by way of the Red Sea, Cairo, and Alexandria.

In all the ports of the Euxine and Mediterranean the Italians had shops and warehouses, and every rich company kept a number of factors, who despatched goods as they got orders and maintained the interests of their principals. An officer called a consul, who was appointed by the government at home, resided in each of these foreign sea-ports, to defend the rights of his countrymen, and decide differences among themselves, or between them and strangers. Consuls were recognized as official personages by the sovereign in whose territory they resided, and were honored as public magistrates by their own people, from whom they received certain fees for their support, according to the quality and amount of business they were called upon to perform.

The maritime republics of Italy were very fortunate in having transported the Crusaders to the Holy Land in their ships, for by this they acquired many rich establishments in the Levant, and it was not long before the dissolute and degraded Greeks, who would neither take counsel in peace nor could defend themselves in war, became subject to the imperious will of the Italians.

The Venetians obtained in 1204 the fertile island of Candia, which became the centre of their extensive Egyptian and Asiatic trade. They also had a quarter in Constantinople, which they surrounded by a wall, the gates of which were guarded by their own soldiers, and a distinct anchorage for their own vessels in the Golden Horn. A senate and bailiff representing the doge held authority in this settlement, and exercised jurisdiction over the minor establishments of the republic in Roumelia.

The Genoese were still more powerful at the capital, and the Emperor Michael Palæologus, who was indebted to them for his return to the throne, had given them the beautiful suburbs of Pera and Galata, on an elevated plateau, which they made still more secure, under the elder Andronicus, by a moat and triple row of walls. To these places they transferred their stores and stock; nor was it long before the churches, palaces, warehouses, and public buildings of Pera vied in magnificence with those of the metropolis itself. The island of Chios, where gum-mastic was collected and the finest wine produced, was another of their colonies. These were all ruled by a podestà annually sent from Genoa. The Genoese and Venetians had also factories in Barbary, through which they drove a brisk trade with the interior of Africa. To them more than to any others was it due that for three hundred years the commerce of Italy was famous from the Straits of Gibraltar to the remotest gulf in the Euxine.

The maritime strength of the the utmost; and feared by all, and claiming to be mistress of the seas, she upheld the honor of her flag with extravagant solicitude. In 1332 she wasted the coast of Catalonia with a force of 200 galleys, and inflicted great injury on the commerce of Barcelona; and two years later, having captured twelve ships of the enemy, heavily freighted with merchandise, in the waters of Sicily, Cyprus, and Sardinia, with an example of ferocious cruelty which only the “accursed greed of gold” and a determination to exclude the Catalans from any share in Eastern commerce could prompt, six hundred prisoners were hanged at a single execution. She was resolved to command the seas, and consequently the trade of the world; but her rival, although crippled, was not prostrate, and the fourth war broke out between them in 1372 for possession of the classical island of Tenedos, so valuable as a naval station and renowned for its wheat and excellent red wine. The Genoese actually got into the lagoons of Venice, vowing to reduce her to the stagnant level of the waters, and approached so near to the city that their admiral could shout to the affrighted people on the quays, Delenda est Carthago! but by a singular freak of fortune they were themselves totally defeated, and glad to accept the mediation of Amadeus VI., Duke of Savoy. It was agreed that neither party should have the island in dispute, but that the duke should hold it at their common expense for two years and then dismantle the fortress.

During this war, called the War of Chioggia, which lasted until 1381, an unusually large number of corsairs roved the seas; but the Italians had long practised piracy, and whole communities were corsairs by condottieri could be hired to sack cities and castles and desolate whole provinces. The little town of Monaco was notorious during the middle ages for its pirates, as it still is for its ravenous land-sharks. There were two sorts of corsairs. Some were private individuals who went to sea through lust of gain, or because driven from their homes during the fights of faction, and seized whatever they could. These robberies and depredations marked piracy in its original form. Nevertheless during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries many otherwise honorable characters, who were often unjustly despoiled of their patrimony and driven as outcasts from their native cities, took to this occupation not entirely from inclination, but impelled by the brutality of their countrymen. We may recall as an extenuating circumstance what that grave judge, Lord Stowell, observed (2 Dods. 374) of the buccaneers, whose spirit at one time approached to that of chivalry in point of adventure, and whose manner of life was thought to reflect no disgrace upon distinguished Englishmen who engaged in it.

Other corsairs were patriotic citizens who armed their ships to injure the enemy during lawful hostilities; and although there was abuse in the system, they were not pirates, but privateersmen. Foreign nations used to buy ships from the Italians to increase their own armaments, or engage them to harass their opponents. It is curious, considering how completely maritime supremacy has deserted the Mediterranean for northern seas, to know that the poet Chaucer was sent by King Edward III. in November, 1372, as envoy to the republic of Genoa to hire vessels for his navy; and Tytler says (Hist. of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 261) that in the same century many of the privateers employed by the Scots against England appear to have been vessels of larger dimensions and more formidable equipment than those of England, probably from their being foreign built, and furnished by the Genoese or the Venetians, for the purposes both of trade and piracy.

It was now that the word Jane came into the language—Chaucer and Spenser use it—for a small coin so-called from Janua (Genoa). It is termed in the old English statutes a galley half-pence.

The Florentines had originally no seaboard, and were obliged to charter ships wherever they could. In 1362, having taken into the service of the republic Pierin Grimaldi of Genoa, with two galleys, and hired two more vessels, their little fleet took the island of Giglio from the Pisans, and the following year, having broken into the port of Pisa itself, they took away the chains that protected it and hung them as trophies on the porphyry columns of their Baptistery.

The foreign commerce for which the maritime cities of Italy, and particularly Genoa and Venice, so savagely disputed, to the scandal of the Christian name among the infidels, as the old English traveller Sir John de Mandeville shows, was certainly very considerable, and a source of almost fabulous profit to those engaged in it who were fortunate in their ventures. Commerce was the foundation of Italy’s prosperity, which was greater than that of any other European country from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. The Italian merchants got cottons, silken goods, brocades, Cashmere shawls, spices, rhubarb

The Italians were the best cloth-weavers in Europe in the fourteenth century, although the Flemings were not contemptible rivals. The manufacture of cloth was industriously carried on in many of their cities; in those of Tuscany particularly, the finest kind of work being done in Lucca. When this city was taken by Uguccione della Faggiuola, in 1314, the factories and goods were destroyed, and many citizens emigrated to other parts of Italy, and even into France, Germany, and England. Yet long before this Italian operatives had introduced, or at least improved, the art in the northern countries. Crapes, taffetas, velvets, silks, camelots, and serges were extensively made in Italy, the richest quality being sold at Florence, where the home industries seemed to centre, and only the most skilled artisans were employed. The art of weaving wool was practised by thousands of citizens, and, nominally at least, by some of the noblest families of the city and contado (commune), since there was a law that no one could aspire to public office unless he were a member of one of the trades-corporations of the republic. The citizens of Florence were classed from 1266 into twelve companies of trades or professions, seven of which were called arti maggiori, viz., 1. lawyers and attorneys; 2. dealers in foreign stuffs; 3. bankers and money-changers; 4. woollen manufacturers and drapers; 5. physicians and apothecaries; 6. silk manufacturers and mercers; 7. furriers. The lower trades were called arti minori. The records of these corporations are now preserved in a part of the Uffizi palace devoted to the public archives of Florence. They range from A.D. 1300 to the end of the eighteenth century. Around the hall, which was fitted up a few years ago to receive them, are the portraits of some of the distinguished men who belonged to these guilds: Dante, Cosimo de’ Medici, Francesco Guicciardini, and others. Balmes gives an interesting account, after Capmany, in his European Civilization, p. 476, of “the trades-unions and other associations which, established under the influence of the Catholic religion, commonly placed themselves under the patronage of some saint, and had pious foundations for the celebration of their feasts, and for assisting each other in their necessities.” Although his long note refers principally to the industrial organization of the city of Barcelona, it is acknowledged that Catalonia borrowed many of its customs and usages in this matter from the towns of Italy.

Before the middle of the fourteenth century there were over two hundred drapers’ shops in Florence, in which from seventy to eighty thousand pieces of cloth were made every year, to the value of 1,200,000 gold florins, and employing more than thirty thousand people. The historian John Villani says that the trade had been still more flourishing, when there were three hundred shops open and one hundred thousand pieces were made yearly, but that they were of a coarser quality and consequently did not bring as much money into the city, although more people got work. The art of dyeing cloths and other stuffs was cultivated by the Italians during the middle ages with considerable success. Alum, which is much used for this purpose, was eagerly sought after, and the Genoese obtained from Michael Palæologus, on payment of an annual sum, the exclusive right of extracting it from a certain mine in the Morea that had previously been worked by Arabs, Catalans, and others. The lessees began operations with a force of fifty men, and soon built a castle to protect themselves, and finally a town, which was destroyed by the Turks in 1455. The Florentines were so expert in dyeing wool that the material was sent to them for the purpose from other parts of Italy, and even from Germany and the Netherlands. It was only in 1858 that an immense wooden building for stretching and drying cloth in the sun, called Il tiratoio della lana, which had been used for over five hundred years, was torn down as too liable to catch fire.

say, manufactured in Ireland, and esteemed so beautiful as to be worn by the ladies of that refined city.[33] John Villani, already mentioned, says that there was a quarter of Florence called Calimala, containing twenty stores of the coarser cloths of the North, of which thirty thousand pieces, of the value of three hundred thousand gold florins, were yearly imported.

Florence in the middle ages had a territory extending only a few miles round its walls; but the industry and speculative spirit of its citizens wonderfully enriched them, and, since “all things obey money” (Ecclesiastes x. 19), they soon became the predominant power, and finally the masters in Tuscany. They were money-changers, moneylenders, jewellers, and goldsmiths for the whole of Europe and no little part of the East. The elements of a business education were given to its youth in numerous schools, attended by some twelve hundred boys, who were taught arithmetic and book-keeping. A great deal of money circulated within the city itself, and a large amount was necessary, particularly before the introduction of bills of exchange, to accommodate merchants in their visits to other countries. The public mint coined annually during the fourteenth century from three hundred and fifty thousand to four hundred thousand gold florins, and about twenty thousand pounds weight of coppers, called danari da quattro, or half-farthings; and eighty private banks assisted the circulation. The beautiful golden florins were first coined in the year 1252, bearing on one side the impression of St. John Baptist, the patron, and on the other that of a lily, the device of the city. This was considered the finest coin in the world, and so much admired that many princes and governments began to imitate it while preserving its original name, and consequently perpetuating the monetary renown of Florence. It was current in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The workmanship of the Florentines was so superior that they were often called upon to conduct or superintend the coinage in foreign countries. During the reign of King David II., in the first half of the thirteenth century, he appointed a Florentine one of the two keepers of the exchange for all Scotland, and masters of the mint; and under King Robert III. (1390-1424) gold was minted for that kingdom by Bonaccio of Florence.[34] In 1278 the Exchange at London was under the direction of some Lucca merchants; and it seems to be directly from the Italian that we get our English word cash, derived from cassa, the chest in which Italian merchants kept their money. We may have some idea of what a money-centre Florence was in that age from the fact that the notorious French adventurer, the Duke of Athens, who was elected Lord of Florence in 1342, contrived in the course of only ten months to draw four hundred thousand golden florins out of the city. The Florentines, who had the reputation of being the smartest people in Italy, were extremely fond of banking in all its branches. While the middle and lower orders of society were mostly engaged in mechanical occupations, x. 10 being a favorite one—when interest was demanded or mortgages were forfeited. They were not by any means the only Italians who publicly courted the queen Regina Pecunia; the ancient name in England for a banker, which was Lombard, and the street in London called Lombard Street, preserving the memory of the Milanese and others out of Lombardy who took up their first residence there before the year 1274, and were great moneychangers and usurers. The stupendous fortunes of the Chigi, who gave Pope Alexander VII. to the church and are now Roman princes, and before them of the Medici family, which became royal, were amassed chiefly in the banking business; but it is a popular error that the well-known sign of the pawnbrokers’ three gilt balls is derived from the armorial bearings of the latter, which their agents in England and other countries placed over the doors of their loan-shops. The arms of the Medici were or, six torteaux gules except the one in chief, which was azure charged with three fleurs-de-lis or. Whether these roundlets had any allusion, as has been suggested, to doctors’ pills and the professional origin whence the family name is supposed to be derived, we cannot determine; but the gold pieces called bezants because coined at Constantinople—Byzantium—and so common at an early period in Italy that the saying Aver buoni Bisanzi was a proverbial expression of one who had plenty of money, seem to have been early the distinguishing sign of money-lenders and changers, and are the true origin of the pawnbrokers’ balls.

The shrewdness of the Italians in money matters did not always save them from disastrous failures and bankruptcies caused by wars, breach of faith in persons too high to be reached, loss of goods and bullion by fire, piracy, shipwreck, and other accidents. The first great failure of this kind was that of a mercantile company in 1296, which had existed for one hundred and twenty years, and became insolvent for 400,000 gold florins, due to citizens and strangers. It was felt throughout the republic of Florence like the loss of a battle. Even worse was the failure of the Bardi and Peruzzi in 1347. They were both merchants and bankers, and stood at the head of their class in Italy. Loans to the kings of England and Sicily brought them down. The first owed them 900,000 and the second 450,000 gold florins. These were unavailable assets when the 550,000 florins they owed their fellow-citizens and others began to be called for, and therefore they broke. This downfall carried with it a large number of smaller houses, and among them that of Corsini, of the since princely family of that name, which gave St. Andrew and Pope Clement XII. to the church. The celebrated historian John Villani was a great loser by this failure, and was even imprisoned in the Stinche in consequence of it as an insolvent. The law punished fraudulent failures very severely; but if it could be proved that the failures resulted from unavoidable accidents, the debtors were allowed to go free, after surrendering all they possessed to their creditors. Parfait Négociant, says that the invention of bills of exchange is due to French Jews who were driven out of France by Philip the Fair in 1316, and took refuge in Lombardy. By means of such bills they were able to get the value of the property they had left in the hands of friends. They were imitated by certain Ghibellines who, being exiled, went to Amsterdam and saved some of their goods left in Italy. In negotiating these bills and effecting the sale of goods, persons called sensali (brokers) were employed.

No duties were levied on exports, but imported goods had to be stored in government buildings called dogane—i.e., custom-houses, or, perhaps more accurately, bonded warehouses—from which, although they might be hypothecated, they could be withdrawn only after payment of a certain sum. There was a chamber of commerce called Mercanzia at Florence, and all the other commercial cities had their merchants’ exchange for the transaction of business, the sordid use to which they were put being often disguised by the beauties of architecture, painting, and sculpture. Thus, the Sala del Cambio at Perugia was decorated with frescoes by the celebrated Pietro Perugino, assisted by his immortal pupil Raphael of Urbino.

In all seaports there were certain judges, elected by and from among the merchants, who composed a tribunal called Consolato di Mare. They settled disputes between traders and ship-owners, gave assistance in distress, and watched over the interests of commerce. The origin of such boards of trade was very ancient among the Italians, for as early as the year 1129 one was established at Messina. It is said that the Pisans were the first to make laws regulating navigation, and that their code was approved in 1075 by Pope Gregory VII.[35] There was no appeal from the decisions of these admiralty courts, and in cases of fraud or other misdemeanor the guilty party was punished by public authority.

Sericulture began in Italy in the fourteenth century, and was practised with success, especially in Lombardy. The statutes of Modena obliged the peasants to plant a large number of mulberry-trees, in order to promote it.

The wide extent of Italian commerce and the industrial prosperity of Italy, which was a consequence of it, greatly enriched her higher classes and led to the most extravagant luxury during the latter part of the middle ages. Nations now reckoned highly civilized, and where the comforts of life are within the reach of all, were then badly clothed and poorly fed. The effeminacy of the wealthier Italians during the fourteenth century, when commerce was most extended, caused them to despise, amidst the delicacies of the East and the fruits of their own intelligence, the rude simplicity of their more northern neighbors. Even the lower classes among them felt a desire for greater convenience and refinement. Dante, Boccaccio, the chroniclers, and other writers of this period portray or lament the ever-increasing luxury of the age, and we can gather from them an accurate idea of the style of living and

The women were particularly dainty, and many sumptuary laws were enacted to restrain the excess of refinement in houses, furniture, and apparel. A very fine sort of thin, transparent linen, made in Cyprus, was much worn by the female sex. It resembled, but was not quite so indecent as the Coa vestis of the ancients. They also carried much jewelry, and were clothed in garments worked in silver and gold stuff. Their minds naturally ran on money:

The habits and head-dress of the men were often bespangled with precious stones, and their whole attire answered to their haughty bearing, which bespoke successful foreign ventures and a splendid style maintained at home. In innumerable ways they exemplified Dr. Johnson’s observation: “With what munificence a great merchant will spend his money, both from his having it at command and from his enlarged views by calculation of a good effect upon the whole.” Few of them would have dared to say with Bassanio:

When Shakspere uses the expression “royal merchant” in the play from which we have just quoted, it is, as Warburton remarks, no ranting epithet; for several Italian merchant families obtained principalities in the Archipelago and elsewhere, which their descendants enjoyed for many generations, and others of their class made sovereign alliances. For instance, James, King of Cyprus, married Catherine Cornaro, daughter of a Venetian merchant, who gave her a dowry of 100,000 golden ducats.[36]

A DAUGHTER OF THE PURITANS.

Rose Standish Howson—that was her name, and very proud she was of it. Back of the Mayflower, she knew little about her ancestors; but certain it was that in that well-filled vessel one of her forefathers had come to America, and, marrying a distant connection of the veritable Standish family, had handed this name down to all succeeding generations. Rose boasted, so far as it is proper for a well-bred New England girl to boast, that, however it might have been outside of her own country, here at least her lineage was most democratically noble; she belonged—and could prove it, too, out of a little book compiled by her grandfather—thoroughly to the old Puritan race. In all her books the name was written in full—Rose Standish Howson; and it was her unfailing source of regret that her only brother had not been called Miles. John Howson laughed good-naturedly at his sister’s foible, but was really quite as proud as she, though in a more passive way.

Their home was not in Boston. Let this important fact receive our

The whole town was in a fervor of excitement; there was a funeral, to which people came from far and near; resolutions were passed, and in the flush of enthusiasm John Howson, young as he was and just out of college, was elected on trial to fill his father’s place. So the brother and sister still lived on in their old home, but into it they infused a new manner of living. Fresh from the intellectual arena, they sought to shape society about them into some likeness to that they loved so well, and they found their old friends and playmates more than ready to meet them half-way. A book club was started, into which the current literature of the day was crowded, and from which, it was placidly affirmed, all “trash” was excluded; but Mill was there, and Darwin, and a strange mixture of German philosophy, which the young men, but more especially the young women, read, or fancied they read, and about which they talked much, after a fashion revealing more ideas than thought. There were “musicals” too, and a Shakspere club, and German and French conversations and readings, and the second winter after Dr. Howson’s death there were dramatic entertainments and concerts; and it came to pass that almost every afternoon and evening of Rose’s life was filled with some sort of intellectual work or pleasure. She was a capital housekeeper, and so her early mornings were occupied with household cares; but, later, she was always ready for a walk or talk, and her reading was done in snatches by day and by long hours of steady work late at night.