classes became increasingly influential, the very fact that they were laborers and traders strengthened the religious ideal by a class motive. It was natural that a laboring class should regard labor as "honest," though from the history of the word such a collocation of terms as "honest labor" would once have been as absurd as "honest villain."[91] A further influence effective in America has been the fluidity of class distinctions in a new country. The "influence of the frontier" has been all on the side of the value of work and the reprobation of idleness. At least this is true for men. A certain tendency has been manifest to exempt women of the well-to-do classes from the necessity of labor, and even by training and social pressure to exclude them from the opportunity of work, and make of them a "leisure class," but this is not likely to establish itself as a permanent moral attitude. The woman will not be content to live in "The Doll's House" while the man is in the real work of the world. =3. The Distribution of the Goods of Life.=--Mediæval society made provision for both benevolence and justice. Charity, the highest of the virtues, had come to mean specifically the giving of goods. The monasteries relieved the poor and the infirm. Hospitals were established. The gentleman felt it to be not only a religious duty, but a tradition of his class to be liberal. To secure justice in the distribution of wealth, various restrictions were imposed. Goods were not to be sold for whatever they could bring, nor was money to be loaned at whatever rate of interest the borrower was willing to pay. Society aimed to find out by some means what was a "reasonable price" for products. In the case of manufactured goods this could be fixed by the opinion of fellow craftsmen. A "common estimation," where buyers and sellers met and bargained in an open market, could be trusted to give a fair value. A maximum limit was set for victuals in towns. Or, again, custom prescribed what should be the money equivalent for payments formerly made in kind, or in personal service.[92] Money-lending was under especial guard. To ask interest for the use of money, provided the principal was returned intact, seemed to be taking advantage of another's necessity. It was usury. Class morality added a different kind of restrictions. As embodied in the laws, it bound the tenants to the soil and forbade the migration of laborers. The significant thing in the whole mediæval attitude was that _society attempted to control business and industry by a moral standard_. It did not trust the individual to make his own bargains or to conduct his business as he pleased.