cultivation of the land." All these were new and larger avenues for the employment of labor. By this time the laborer had grown entirely away from serfage, had been freed from the terrible grasp of a hopeless future, and the possibility of a degree of comfort and independence had come into existence. We need not linger longer over his early days. The laborer still had his peculiar trials and hardships, but he had a future. From a subject class, the terror as well as necessity of its employers, he has grown to be their equal before the law, and this by his own efforts, aided, of course, by the advance of society and the broader humanity of mankind. The increase of manufacture brought with it a new danger to the working class as we reach our times, and brought about a state of things which gave rise to trades unions. Manufacture naturally in the beginning was carried on in a small way, but in modern times, especially as we get into this century, the small concerns grew into large ones. Instead of one man or partnership with a comparatively small amount of capital, the corporation or joint-stock company with its large aggregation of capital carries on the business of manufacture and trade. This aggregation of capital has made an entire change in the relation between employer and employee. The corporation came in the line of progress. Consolidation of capital has come to stay, and properly so, but it brought with it dangers, just as every step in advance has done. It was to meet the new dangers to the wage-earners that trades unions came into being, for trades unions and labor unions are really only organizations of labor as corporations are aggregations of capital.