Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA t/ English Influence. — In the first chapter the account related quite entirely to conditions in England. These events are of value in explaining the development of the movement in America as well. It must be remembered that so far as legal precedents and political principles are concerned their effects were practically the same. Experiences of workingmen, stored away and preserved as traditions, were potent in shaping mental attitude. The period of early colonization ran parallel with the economic conditions in England with but little division of labor and less division of industrial functions. There were the guild control, or at least, distinct traces of it; developing commercial activity, both encouraged and controlled by English colonial policy; and the century-old methods of agriculture. Settlers came with habits formed by these activities and views shaped by tradition. Industrial motives, as compared with religious and political, were of greater importance in colonization than has yet been generally recognized. These motives induced large numbers of settlers to come to the new world. During the succeeding century when communication with England was closer and new colonists were continually arriving, the policy of suppression was in vogue in the mother country, culminating in the sweeping legislation of 1799 and 1800 condemning all combinations to affect wages as being "in restraint of trade." Effects in America. — Here in America the conflict was repeated. Statutes were enacted regulating rates of wages, providing punishment for those who refused to work for the customary wage, and fixing prices of staples. These enactments came just at the breaking up of the period to which they were adapted and were of little if any practical importan...