And yet this industrial era had to bring its own hardships, and, unhappily, its own hatreds. The class hatred, as it is called--the animosity felt by the man who works with his hands against the class that has the money and works with its brains--arose directly out of the conditions which the steam-engine produced. To-day, when that industrial era has lasted more {191} than a hundred years, it is that hatred which makes our life so very difficult for us all, both for the classes above and for the classes below. And we are compelled to realise that the hate is largely due to the hard treatment of the lower classes by the higher in those early years. It is quite different now; there is little or no animosity, as I believe, felt by the upper classes in any country towards the lower, but I do believe that the lower classes are in some part justified in thinking that their better treatment has been won by their own effort rather than freely given by those above them. In the East the same animosities have not been aroused, for the Eastern industries have not developed along the same lines and have not caused the same difficulties. In the industrial West, and everywhere that the white man has made his settlements, the hand workers are now protected by their organisation into Trades Unions--combinations of workers formed principally in order to bargain with the employers about the wages and the hours of work and the conditions under which the work is to be done. At the beginning of the industrial era the workers were not able to come together in this way; so the employer made his bargain with each man separately, and, as many were anxious to get work, the employer could engage them very cheaply and make them work very hard. Nor was it only the men, or only the fully grown women, that were thus made to labour long hours for low pay. Even little children, because their labour could be engaged so cheaply, were hired to work many hours a day at such jobs about the machines and factories as a child could do. Very often the conditions as to ventilation, and so on, under which the work had to be done, were such as would not be allowed by the law now; but no one then seems to have considered the hardships of the men and women and, above all, of the children. We may believe it {192} was out of thoughtlessness and lack of recognition of their sufferings, rather than sheer cruelty, on the employer's part, that all this was done; but done it was, and it has left a bitterness of feeling which still lasts.