At the dawn of the nineteenth century, this was the condition of things: the laborer was (1) prohibited from forming protective combinations or unions; (2) compelled to work sixteen hours out of each twenty-four; (3) forced to accept as recompense wages which were wholly inadequate to provide the most vital necessities of life; and, as though these conditions were not sufficiently oppressive, (4) employers were permitted to make payment at long intervals, or in “truck,” _and could charge interest at the rate of 260 per cent per annum on all cash advances made to the needy worker_. Apparently, this was the time when Marx ought to have appeared with his doctrine of wage slavery and his incitement to class hatred. But, when we compare these conditions with those which exist to-day, we can readily see that, while things are still far from being “ideal,” the worker assuredly is not sinking steadily into deeper depths of degradation. Even in this country the conditions of the laborer were far from enviable a century ago. As McMaster tells us in his “History of the People of the United States”: “His house was meaner, his food coarser, his clothing was of commoner stuff, his wages lower, and his hours of daily labor far longer than those of the men who in our time perform like service. Down to the opening of the nineteenth century, a farm hand was paid $3 a month. A strong boy could be had for $1 a month. Women who went out to service received $10 a year; type-setters were given $1 per day. The hours of work were from sunrise to sunset, and, as the sun rose later and set earlier in the Winter than in the Summer, _wages in December were one-third less than in July_. On such pittances it was only by the strictest economy that a mechanic could keep his children from starvation and himself from jail,” for these were the days when a man could be arrested upon the complaint of a creditor and, being lodged in jail, could be kept there until the indebtedness was paid--a system which actually permitted life imprisonment for debt.