Page:Karl Kautsky - The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) - tr. William Edward Bohn (1910).djvu/185

 for labor legislation is becoming more and more a class-struggle between proletarians and capitalists. On the continent of Europe and in the United States, where the struggle for labor laws commenced much later than in England, it bore this character from the start. The proletariat has nothing more to hope for from the property-holding classes in its endeavor to raise itself. It now depends wholly upon its own efforts.

Struggles between laborers and exploiters art nothing new. Extremely bitter and protracted ones occurred toward the end of the Middle Ages between apprentices and masters. As early as the fifteenth century, masters here and there would seek to escape from work by increasing the number of their apprentices. On the other hand they made it more and more difficult for any but their sons to become masters. Gradually the family relation between master and man was loosened, and the modern division into classes had begun.

As soon as the master began to play the part of modern capitalist, conflicts were inevitable. And in one respect the apprentices were in a good position to assert themselves. In each city they were well organized. Each gild included all the apprentices in a particular trade; it controlled absolutely the supply of labor so far as that trade was concerned. When the time of conflict arrived, it could use with tremendous effectiveness the weapons which have become so familiar in modern times, the strike and the boycott.