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 THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY IN GENERAL

To understand the "how" of things, we must first know the "why" of things. We justify the existence of an institution by showing that it meets the needs of a class in society and then determine the means by which it was established. All social institutions are rooted in economic necessity and we need only to know the mode of wealth production and distribution prevailing in any historical period to be able to explain all the social phenomena of that time.

Primitive man probably produced nothing. He lived directly off of nature, as the beasts do. The discovery of the use of FIRE brought about the formation of the Family, and man entered upon the savage state. The Domestication of the Animals (the dog, the horse, the ox, the sheep) and the beginning of Agriculture founded Barbarism and its attendant communal institutions. Human Slavery came when tools and processes were improved to the extent that a man could produce out of the earth more than enough to feed himself. Private Property appeared after it was found possible to separate herding, agriculture and the handicrafts, and the slaves became chattels shortly afterwards. Numerous Chattel Slave Societies succeeded each other until the breaking up of the Roman Empire by the Barbaric Communal Tribes which overran the whole of Europe. The amalgamation of these two systems transferred the subject class from a condition of chattel property to a condition of Serfdom; in which conditions he was a creature bound to the soil—having the right to live upon and cultivate the land, but compelled to contribute to the support of the lord of the land and denied the right to move from place to place—the distinctive feature of the Feudal System. The growth of the Merchant Class, the rise of the Factory System of production, with its subdivision of labor in the shop, and the quarrel between the Guild