whatever else they may have accomplished, aided in this freedom for the serf. Those costly expeditions dissipated the estates of the barons, and, to use Hume's somewhat strained expression, "Their poverty extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave." And so, following the rise of the farmer, came this new class--the free laborer. By the latter part of the fourteenth century labor was no longer, as a rule, "bound to one spot or one master; it was free to hire itself to what employer and to choose what field of employment it would." This is the beginning of the labor class as we know it. In those times labor was abundant and therefore cheap. The landowners in the country and the craftsmen in the town found plenty of help, and the new class then coming upon the stage could go where it was needed. From a serf the common laborer had become his own master as far as choosing his own employer and the place of his employment. But just at this time a condition of affairs arose which put an end to this state of things. In 1348 came the Great Plague. That swept away more than half of the three or four millions who then made up the population of England. The plague and the sudden rise of wages which followed, although coupled with an increase in the cost of living, quite naturally brought on an outburst of lawless self-indulgence which told especially upon the laborer looking for work. He easily became the "sturdy beggar" or "bandit of the woods." While harvests rotted to the ground from lack of hands, in the towns labor was just as scarce and equally as independent. The landowners and wealthier craftsmen were startled and terrified by "what seemed in their age the extravagant demands of the new labor classes." Here we have the labor problem at once and at the beginning. And from that time to this that problem has been with us. With the capitalist one person and the laborer another there has been always more or less discord. As Richard T. Ely has somewhere said, although in theory capital and labor should be allies and not enemies, the interests of those furnishing capital or labor are not precisely identical. But five hundred years ago the labor class of to-day had just come into existence. It had no organization then, and its members few political rights. The landowners and craftsmen could appeal effectively to the crown and Parliament through their wealth, their political power, and the craftsmen, especially, through their organizations. The laborer had only himself and brute force. As a result, the legislation of that day reflects the demands of the upper and middle classes only. The laboring class was considered only as it affected the landowners and craftsmen. So the labor troubles of that day were met with the Statute of Laborers. "Every man or woman," runs this famous provision, "of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of threescore years, ... and not having of