When we are continually assured that there is a new and better way of doing anything, it is only reasonable to ask if anyone has tried it before. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating," and if some one has eaten such a pudding before us, we may be saved from using up good materials in a bad concoction. Until now the attention of historians has been so fixed upon the great military autocracy of Rome, that the growth of trade unionism and socialism under that government has been overlooked. Here we will trace and put together such facts as seem curiously parallel to the growth of modern unionism; and which, when they outstep our present position, may serve to show what further developments may be expected by us.

The first great step, which bore centuries of bitter results, was the favouring of the townsman as against the countryman. The voter in Rome could push laws to his own advantage in the hurly-burly of the public assembly, while the countryman was working hard in his furrow miles away. The conquered provinces were a great temptation; they had to yield tribute, grain came pouring into Rome, and why should not this abundance benefit the citizen by being sold at a low price? They forgot the countryman. His toil29 was none the less because Carthage or Sicily or Egypt were being plundered. But his pay was much the less if his produce lost its market value. The cheap corn of Gracchus was the knell of the honest agriculturist, as Professor Oman has pointed out. The only remedy was to try to cheapen production in Italy. This was done by giving up the small farmer altogether, and running only big estates by slave-labour, the human machine which was to Rome what machinery is to us. This staved off the evil somewhat. But soon the townsman demanded more and more, and at last free doles of corn were given to him, and agriculture became impossible in Italy. What tribute-corn did to Italy, cheap transport has done to England. The townsman is always favoured at the cost of the countryman, and the country is being depopulated. Not only cheap bread, but doles of every kind—hospitals, wash-houses, music, games, libraries—all are given to the townsman, while the countryman cannot possibly share in such doles. A large policy of equivalent benefits to the countryman would be the only corrective to this one-sided and deleterious favouritism. But the votes carry it, as they did in Rome.

In the earlier part of the second century, under Trajan, two little statements show what was going on. A guild or trade union of firemen in Asia Minor wished to be incorporated: but the emperor forbade, because such trade guilds became political centres. There must have been some experience of such movement for it to be anticipated. The other statement is that the more able and wealthy men avoided entering the guild of permanent aldermen, or30 curia, because of the burdens which were thrown upon them. A century later, about 230 a.d., all trades were organised into corporations or trades unions, recognised by the government, instead of being only private societies as before. This seems to have been a compulsory unionism; but there was some difference in class between this trades unionism and our own. In Rome the trades were in the hands of smaller men, and not of large firms and companies as much as with us; and on the other hand the mere mechanic was usually a slave, this slave labour being economically the equivalent of machinery in our time. Hence the Roman trades unions were small employers of the status of our plumbers or upholsterers, more than, as with us, a large mass of crude labour organised against all capital. They were trade unions, rather than unions of the mechanics as against the managers. The compulsory entry of all the master employers into a union would no doubt be a step very welcome to modern unionism; and the compulsory extension of it, so as to leave no free labour, would be an ideal condition, in which picketing would be quite superseded by legal compulsion to join the union. The differences therefore were mainly such as our trades unions would desire, and aim at in future; in short unionism by 230 a.d. was more developed than it is at present with us.

But here came in a very difficult question, which is before us also whenever unionism becomes dominant in any trade. It is all very well to let unions pillage capital, or even pillage each other, but can they be allowed to pillage the poor? This at once clashes with the favouring of the proletariat. It has already31 raised an acute difficulty in England. The Bricklayers\' union cannot be competed with from abroad, except very slightly by means of imported wooden houses. Hence this union has been able to close its grip firmly on the throat of the public; it has raised wages, and it has cut down work from eight hundred or nine hundred bricks laid daily to two hundred and seventy or three hundred and thirty in different standards now. By raising the cost of labour to about three times the amount, the cost of building as a whole must be nearly doubled. The dearness of lodging of the poor is really due to the remorseless extortion of the bricklayers, abetted by the extravagant building regulations locally in force in their interest, to increase the expenditure on a building. In the country there is disgraceful overcrowding for lack of cottage accommodation, and in towns miserable rooms fetch high rents. The ground-landlord, who is so much abused, has little to do with this; for ground-rents are seldom more than a tenth of the house rent and taxes. If all land were confiscated to-morrow it would not lower most rentals more than a fraction. If the Bricklayers\' union and all its results were abolished, rentals would descend to nearly half the present amounts.

If we were to meet this difficulty in the way that Rome dealt with it, the Government would give the Bricklayers\' union an absolute monopoly of building, on condition that dwellings under a certain value were charged at a third of the cost of labour, that is on the old terms of a full day\'s work fifty years ago, leaving all later profits to be gained from the wealthier classes. In the present straits about housing it is by32 no means certain that this would not be a popular course.

In Rome the grain importers and the bakers were the two trades which touched the proletariat most closely. And early in the third century these, and probably other essential trades, were organised as monopolist unions, on condition that the union was bound over to do a certain amount of work for the poor at a nominal rate. Thus the wastrel was favoured and protected, with his right to maintenance; and all profits of the business were to be made from work done for those who could afford to pay for it. This is unquestionably an ideal toward which a great deal of social legislation is tending at present. Railway companies and tramways are bound to carry workmen at nominal rates, while all their profits are to be earned from wealth. So far has this burden been imposed, that the construction of one railway line at least has been prevented by the heavy toll of cheap transport which was demanded before sanctioning it.

If the trade is not in the hands of a single firm for a whole district, like a railway company, there arises the problem, how is the burden of cheap work for the poor to be distributed over the constituent firms? This was solved in Rome by the union, which was the sole body recognised in law. Each member of the union was assessed by his union, on the basis of both his capital and his trade returns, and he had to do so much of the cheap work in proportion. Hence the wealth of each firm determined the amount of their proletariat taxation. If they could withdraw temporarily part of the capital from the business, their33 assessment would be lighter. Hence to each person the aim was to work with the smallest amount of capital, and to remove from the business all spare capital, and invest it elsewhere. This naturally resulted in business being badly worked. The difficulty was met by the law that all capital once in the business could never be withdrawn; and all profits—and, later, all acquired wealth—must be kept in the business, so that the richer firms should do their full share of proletariat service. The results of these logical developments of unionism and help to the proletariat, wer............