{"product_id":"2940013673687","title":"THE ARMIES OF LABOR, A CHRONICLE OF THE ORGANIZED WAGE-EARNERS","description":"CONTENTS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     I.    THE BACKGROUND\u003cbr\u003e     II.   FORMATIVE YEARS\u003cbr\u003e     III.  TRANSITION YEARS\u003cbr\u003e     IV.   AMALGAMATION\u003cbr\u003e     V.    FEDERATION\u003cbr\u003e     VI.   THE TRADE UNION\u003cbr\u003e     VII.  THE RAILWAY BROTHERHOODS\u003cbr\u003e     VIII. ISSUES AND WARFARE\u003cbr\u003e     IX.   THE NEW TERRORISM: THE I.W.W.\u003cbr\u003e     X.    LABOR AND POLITICS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE ARMIES OF LABOR\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER I. THE BACKGROUND\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThree momentous things symbolize the era that begins its cycle with\u003cbr\u003ethe memorable year of 1776: the Declaration of Independence, the steam\u003cbr\u003eengine, and Adam Smith's book, \"The Wealth of Nations.\" The Declaration\u003cbr\u003egave birth to a new nation, whose millions of acres of free land were to\u003cbr\u003eshift the economic equilibrium of the world; the engine multiplied man's\u003cbr\u003eproductivity a thousandfold and uprooted in a generation the customs of\u003cbr\u003ecenturies; the book gave to statesmen a new view of economic affairs and\u003cbr\u003eprofoundly influenced the course of international trade relations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe American people, as they faced the approaching age with the\u003cbr\u003eexperiences of the race behind them, fashioned many of their\u003cbr\u003einstitutions and laws on British models. This is true to such an extent\u003cbr\u003ethat the subject of this book, the rise of labor in America, cannot be\u003cbr\u003eunderstood without a preliminary survey of the British industrial system\u003cbr\u003enor even without some reference to the feudal system, of which English\u003cbr\u003esociety for many centuries bore the marks and to which many relics\u003cbr\u003eof tenure and of class and governmental responsibility may be traced.\u003cbr\u003eFeudalism was a society in which the status of an individual was fixed:\u003cbr\u003ehe was underman or overman in a rigid social scale according as he\u003cbr\u003econsidered his relation to his superiors or to his inferiors. Whatever\u003cbr\u003emovement there was took place horizontally, in the same class or on the\u003cbr\u003esame social level. The movement was not vertical, as it so frequently is\u003cbr\u003etoday, and men did not ordinarily rise above the social level of their\u003cbr\u003ebirth, never by design, and only perhaps by rare accident or genius. It\u003cbr\u003ewas a little world of lords and serfs; of knights who graced court and\u003cbr\u003ecastle, jousted at tournaments, or fought upon the field of battle;\u003cbr\u003eand of serfs who toiled in the fields, served in the castle, or, as the\u003cbr\u003eretainers of the knight, formed the crude soldiery of medieval days.\u003cbr\u003eFor their labor and allegiance they were clothed and housed and fed.\u003cbr\u003eYet though there were feast days gay with the color of pageantry and\u003cbr\u003eprocession, the worker was always in a servile state, an underman\u003cbr\u003edependent upon his master, and sometimes looking upon his condition as\u003cbr\u003elittle better than slavery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith the break-up of this rigid system came in England the emancipation\u003cbr\u003eof the serf, the rise of the artisan class, and the beginnings of\u003cbr\u003epeasant agriculture. That personal gravitation which always draws\u003cbr\u003etogether men of similar ambitions and tasks now began to work\u003cbr\u003esignificant changes in the economic order. The peasantry, more or less\u003cbr\u003escattered in the country, found it difficult to unite their powers for\u003cbr\u003eredressing their grievances, although there were some peasant revolts\u003cbr\u003eof no mean proportions. But the artisans of the towns were soon grouped\u003cbr\u003einto powerful organizations, called guilds, so carefully managed and so\u003cbr\u003ewell disciplined that they dominated every craft and controlled\u003cbr\u003eevery detail in every trade. The relation of master to journeyman and\u003cbr\u003eapprentice, the wages, hours, quantity, and quality of the output, were\u003cbr\u003eall minutely regulated. Merchant guilds, similarly constituted, also\u003cbr\u003eprospered. The magnificent guild halls that remain in our day are\u003cbr\u003emonuments of the power and splendor of these organizations that made\u003cbr\u003ethe towns of the later Middle Ages flourishing centers of trade, of\u003cbr\u003ehandicrafts, and of art. As towns developed, they dealt the final blow\u003cbr\u003eto an agricultural system based on feudalism; they became cities of\u003cbr\u003erefuge for the runaway serfs, and their charters, insuring political and\u003cbr\u003eeconomic freedom, gave them superior advantages for trading.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070174347504,"sku":"2940013673687","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013673687_p0.jpg?v=1763584100","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013673687","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}