It was the petty tyranny and the grinding extortion which the laborers had begun to feel, even though they were far better paid and better treated than their fathers, that caused the formation of the original trade unions. Laborers saw that each was helpless alone, but that combined they were a power which their employers need not despise. The old craft guilds furnished them an example of effective combination among those engaged in the same trade; and as men everywhere in every age, when a common danger or misfortune has confronted them, have come together for mutual help and defence, these ignorant laborers, in violation of stringent statutes, but following blindly their human instincts of self-defence, came together and organized the first trade unions. The common law has always held trade unions to be "illegal combinations in restraint of trade." Between the reigns of Edward I. and George IV., the common law was affirmed and made more effective by the passage of over thirty acts of Parliament, all intended to abolish the trade unions. In 1800 a stringent law was passed, by which all persons combining to advance their wages or decrease the quantity of their work, or in any way affect or control those who carried on the business in which they were employed, might be committed to jail by a justice for not more than three months, or to work in the house of correction for not more than two months. Not till 1824 was an act passed slightly ameliorating this stringent law, and even then the trade unions remained for the most part secret organizations. At last, in 1871 and 1876, laws were passed under which no person can be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit an act which would not be criminal if committed by him singly; and the trade unions, thus legalized, were taken in common with other benefit societies under the protection of the law. We have already pointed out the main fact that the chief end and aim of the trade unions is the advancement of wages by securing a monopoly of the supply of labor in some particular trade. It is now fair to explain, as we have for other monopolies, the labor monopoly from the standpoint of the laborer himself.