Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/214

200 Rome, the serf in Russia, were completely without property, as in fact they formed part of the property of their master, but their actual physical wants were supplied, they had always food and shelter. During the Middle Ages the outcasts, gypsies, robbers, strolling players and tramps of all kinds were the only persons without the pale of property holding. They could call nothing on earth their own, no table was ever set for them, the ruling-authorities even deprived them theoretically, of the right to look upon the gifts of nature as spread for them. They fought their way out of the wretchedness in which the social systems of their day sought to imprison them, by begging, robbery and poaching, and even if the gallows and the wheel were more frequently the causes of their death than old age, they had notwithstanding, a full and merry life up to the very steps of the scaffold. The modern proletariat or lowest wages-receiving class, has no precedent in history. It is the child of our times.

The modern day-laborer is more wretched than the slave of ancient times, for he is fed by no master nor anyone else, and if his position is one of more liberty than the slave, it is principally the liberty of dying of hunger. He is by no means as well off as the outlaw of the Middle Ages, for he has none of the gay independence of that freelance. He seldom rebels against society, and has neither means nor opportunities to take by violence or treachery what is denied him by the existing conditions of life. The rich is thus richer, the poor poorer, than ever before since the beginnings of history. The same thing is true of the extravagance of the rich. We are continually being bored by the anecdotes told by grubbers in history, as to the wonderful banquets spread by Lucullus. But it remains yet to be proved that ancient Rome ever saw a feast that cost $80.000, like the ball