3. _Serfdom for rural labor and many limitations on the workman's freedom in the towns, were the prevailing conditions in medieval Europe._ Serfdom was both a political and an economic relation. The serf was bound to the soil; the lord could command and control him; but the serf's obligations were pretty well defined. He had to give services, but in return for them he got something definite in the form of protection and the use of land. Between the lord and the serf continued a lifelong contract, which passed by inheritance from father to son, in the case both of the master and of the serf. In the towns conditions were better for the skilled workmen, but many things bore heavily on the mass of the workers shut out from special privileges. There were strict rules of apprenticeship; gild regulations forbidding the free choice of a trade or a residence; laws against immigration; settlement laws making it impossible for poor men to remove from one place to another; arbitrary regulation of wages, either by the gilds in the towns or by national councils and parliaments, forbidding the workmen to take the competitive wages that economic conditions forced the employers to pay; combination laws forbidding laborers to combine in their own interest. It is not an attractive picture, but, as far as is possible in a few words, it is a truthful picture of the conditions that existed before the coming of the modern system. [Sidenote: The wage system not the main cause of present evils] 4. _Many continuing limitations on the freedom of the worker are not the results of the wage system or a part of it, but are opposed to its complete workings._ The worker's ignorance is a limitation, preventing the choice of an occupation for which he might naturally be fitted. Neglect of children by parents is a limitation, preventing industrial training and the development of qualities that would make it possible for the child to excel. The faults of human nature cannot be attributed to any "system"; and if they are remediable, it is by education and better social opportunity. Trade unions often forbid boys to become apprentices, and forbid the choice of a trade except under conditions so exacting that to many they are impossible. Such limitations are made by the privileged few in their own interest, but they are annoying and opposed to the interests of the many. The typical wage system would be one in which all such hindrances were lacking, in which there were no social or political limitations on free competition except such as would help in educating and training the worker. The wage system should be judged by what it is, not by things directly opposed to its spirit. § II. THE WAGE SYSTEM AS IT IS [Sidenote: Merits and faults of the definite wage payment]