I cannot lose this opportunity of referring to a very interesting little book by M. Augé-Laribé,L’évolution de la France agricole[Paris 1912]. Much of it bears directly on the labour-question, and sets forth the difficulties hindering its solution. It is peculiarly valuable to a student of the question in the ancient world, because it lays great stress on the effect of causes arising from modern conditions. Causes operating in both ancient and modern times are thereby made more readily and clearly perceptible. Such modern influences in particular as the vast development of transport, the concentration of machine-industries in towns, and the constant attraction of better and more continuous wage-earning, by which the rustic is drawn to urban centres, are highly significant. The difference from ancient conditions is so great in degree that it practically almost amounts to a difference in kind. So too in the material resources of agriculture: the development of farm-machinery has superseded much hand-labour, while Science has increased the possible returns from a given portion of soil.
Most significant of all from my point of view is the author’s insistence on theirregularityof wage-earning in rustic life as an active cause of the flitting of wage-earners to the towns. This brings it home to a student that a system of rustic slavery implies a set of conditions incompatible with such an economic migration; and also that the employment of slaves by urban craftsmen would not leave many eligible openings for immigrant rustics. It is fully consistent with my view that the wage-earning rustic was a rare figure in the Greco-Roman world.
It is perhaps in the remedies proposed by the author for present evils (and for the resulting depopulation of the countryside) that the contrast of ancient and modern is most clearly marked. Bureaucratic the French administrative system may be: but it is not the expression of a despotism that enslaves its citizens in the frantic effort to maintain itself against pressure from without. For individuals and organizations are free to think speak and act, and so to promote what seems likely to do good. Initiative and invention are not deadened by the fear that betterment will only serve as a pretext for increase of burdens. Stationary by instinct the French peasant proprietor may be: but he is free to move if he will, and no one dare propose to tie him to the soil by law.
Nor can I omit a reference to a paper of the late Prof Pelham onThe Imperial domains and the Colonate(1890, in volume of Essays, Oxford 1911).
The simplicity of the solution there offered is most attractive, and the general value of the treatise great. But I do not think it a final solution of the problem. Not only are there variations of detail in the domains known to us from the African inscriptions (some of them found since 1890). That some of the regulations may have been taken over from those of former private owners is a point not considered. And there is no mention of the notable requisition of the services ofcolonias mere retainers, to which Caesar refers without comment (above pp 183, 254). Therefore, while I welcome the proposition that the system of the Imperial domains had much to do with the creation of the later Colonate, I still think that earlier and more deep-seated causes cannot safely be ignored. Perhaps this is partly because I am looking at the matter from a labour point of view.