Master (social class)

“ 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. ”

“ I am sorry to say that I was not ready enough to say to him what I afterwards thought: 'my friend, if you would only allow yourself to become a member of this pampered working class, then would all your woes be at an end, by your own showing.' His line of argument is common enough, and is founded on the assumption that one class must be masters of the other: but to my mind no man is good enough to be any one's master without injuring himself at least, whatever he does for the servant. ”

“ Goading as have been the cruelties to which I have been subjected—bitter as have been the trials through which I have passed—exasperating as have been, and still are, the indignities offered to my manhood—I find in them no excuse for the slightest departure from truth in dealing with any branch of this subject.
First of all, I will state, as well as I can, the legal and social relation of master and slave. A master is one—to speak in the vocabulary of the southern states—who claims and exercises a right of property in the person of a fellow-man. ”

“ The characteristic and pervasive human relation in such a culture is that of master and servant, and the social (domestic and civil) structure is an organisation of graded servitude, in which no one is his own master but the overlord, even nominally. ”

“ But the myth-making faculty remains active in other directions, often with the co-operation of the masters. One’s own school is the best in the world; one’s country is always right and always victorious; one’s social class (if one is rich) is better than any other class. ”

“ There are three grades of servants, named ‘kitchen,’ ‘hall,’ and ‘room,’ after the places in which they take their meals.”—Booth, VIII., 229.
“There is no class less open to democratic ideas than a contented servant class. Compared with them their titled and wealthy employers are revolutionists. They cannot bear change, their minds are saturated with the idea of social grades and distinctions, they will not even live with one another on terms of social equality.”—William Clarke, Contemporary Review, December, 1900. ”

“ The master is not the head of a great family, its judge, its governor, its physician, its priest and its father, as the fond dream of the advocates of slavery, and sometimes, doubtless, the reality, made him. Middlemen, in the shape of administradores, stand between the owner and the slaves. The slave is little else than an item of labor raised or bought. ”

“ In the choice of masters, who are to instruct them in the above branches of business, prefer those who will work with them; by this means they will acquire habits of industry, and be better preserved from vice, than if they worked alone, or under the eye of persons less interested in their welfare. ”

“ All English literature of the world describes domestic service in the old feudal spirit and with the old feudal language, which regarded the master as belonging to a privileged class and the servant to an inferior one. ”

“ There cannot be the least doubt, as it seems to us, that this measure is not only safe and seasonable, but that the policy of the master, so long as he remains a master, requires it not less than the true happiness of the slave. But especially is it desirable, among the preparations to the great work of general emancipation, which we trust is not only borne in mind constantly by all good men, but is not far distant in reality. ”

“ The law demands it as a duty that we [405] should tame our passions to suit the conditions which it has assigned us. It supposes that this duty will become habitual and consequently easy of performance, and that we will conform ourselves to its requirements. This, and this alone, is the true foundation of all the distinction between the master and the apprentice, between the freeman and the slave. ”

“ The master is commanded to give to all his slaves, that behave themselves faithfully, a writing, fixing beforehand the price at which they may be redeemed; and which he is bound to accept, when tendered by them, or on their behalf. ”

“ In the case of inferiors the contrast is still more fatal: under strict law, they become the subordinate workers in great schools, healthily aiding, echoing, or supplying, with multitudinous force of hand, the mind of the leading masters: they are the nameless carvers of great architecture—stainers of glass—hammerers of iron— helpful scholars, whose work ranks round, if not with, their master's, and never disgraces it. ”

“ We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters; though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals. ”

“ If masters fully understood the immense amount of influence which they possess, they would extend their sympathy and confidence to their workmen,—which Would cost them so very little, and profit them so very much. We know of no instance where an employer has displayed a concern for the social well-being and improvement of his workmen, in which he has not been repaid by their increased respect and zeal on his behalf. ”

“ I have found that to grow acquainted with the class that is the chief object of social legislation is to see more plainly the room for improvement, and also to see how much better, how much sounder, that class is than it appeared to be from the outside: how much might be gained, of material advantage especially, and at the same time how much there is to be lost of those qualities of character which have been acquired through long training and by infinite sacrifice. ”

“ The working classes have the largest share in the government of the nation, and on them its progress depends.” They possess, in his verdict, “the strenuousness and modesty which comes by contact with hardship, and the sympathy which comes by daily contact with suffering. They, as a class, are more unaffected, more generous, more capable of sacrifice, than members of other classes. They have solid sense and are good men of business, but they cannot be said to have the wide outlook which takes in a unity in which all classes are included. ”

“ It is assisted by those who to-day see instinctively the first tentative effort towards the construction of a sociology—investigation into the lives and wages, social character, beliefs and prejudices of various selected classes and localities. Biography is not without its contribution, especially the biography of typical men—a labour-leader who reveals himself as a conspicuous member of a labouring class at the base, or a politician who voices the scepticisms, manners, fascinations, and prejudices of a cultured, leisured society at the summit of the social order. ”

“ So far from this, they expressly enjoin it on masters to "give unto their servants that which is just and equal," all the law of disinterested love would require; accompanying the injunction with the significant hint, that they themselves have a Master, and that with him there is "no respect of persons." ”

“ It should be shown to them, that, in this Country, labor has ceased to be degrading, in any class; that, in all classes, different grades of subordination must exist; and that it is no more degrading, for a domestic to regard the heads of a family as superiors in station, and treat them with becoming respect, than it is for children to do the same, or for men to treat their rulers with respect and deference. ”

“ Later on, when the masters became capitalists in a sort, and the apprentices were, like the masters, privileged, the class of journeymen-craftsmen came into existence; but it does not seem that the difference between them and the aristocracy of the gild was anything more than an arbitrary one. In short, during all this period the unit of labour was an intelligent man. ”

“ Godall. ‘Suppose a rural dean to be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? suppose a captain were cashiered, would he fall to be a puisne judge? The ignorance of your middle class surprises me. Outside itself, it thinks the world to lie quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation; but to the eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in ordered hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular aptitudes and knowledge. ”

“ There can be only one master in a house. It has been said that Capital and Labor have the same interests. Cant. Their interests are as wide asunder as the poles. There is only one way of treating men— with the iron rod. Masters are masters. Men are men. ”

“ There is hardly any part of the present constitution of society more essentially vicious, and morally injurious to both parties, than the relation between masters and servants. To make this a really human and a moral relation, is one of the principal desiderata in social improvement. ”

“ But he that is in the house is entered on the eighth day, and he that is bought with money, on the day on which his master receives him, unless the slave be unwilling. For if the master receive a grown slave, and he be unwilling, his master is to bear with him, to seek to win him over by instruction, and by love and kindness, for one year. ”

“ The possessing class, or masters, allow the men just so much of the wealth produced by their labour as will give them such a livelihood as is considered necessary at the time, and will permit them to breed and rear children to a working age: that is the simple condition of the “bargain” which obtains when the labour-power required is low in quality, what is called unskilled labour, and when the workers are too weak or ignorant to combine so as to threaten the masters with some form of rebellion. ”

“ We regret, however, that there is a really worthy class which such a qualification would exclude,––ploughmen, labourers, and country mechanics, who reside permanently in humble cottages, the property of the owner of the soil, and who, though their course through life lies on the bleak edge of poverty, are God-fearing, worthy men, at least morally qualified to give, in the election of a teacher, an honest and not unintelligent voice. ”

“ There was, of course, a vast number of working people who were not organised in the least in the world; men who had been used to act as their masters drove them, or rather as the system drove, of which their masters were a part. ”

“ The want of education, with which most apprentices must contend, interferes in other ways with their progress. The master is apt, in many instances, to exaggerate the difficulties to be overcome, and enlarge upon the mysteries surrounding his work-bench. ”

“ Masters, give your servants that which is just, just labour and just wages. Servants that are truly godly care not how cheap they serve their masters, provided they may get into godly families, or where they may be [63] convenient for the Word. But if a master or mistress takes this opportunity to make a prey of their servants, it is abominable. I have heard poor servants say that in some carnal families they have had more liberty to God's things and more fairness of dealing than among many professors. ”

“ If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. ”

“ As for the old masters, they undoubtedly made constant studies from their pupils and apprentices, and even their religious pictures are full of the portraits of their friends and relations, but they do not seem to have had the inestimable advantage of the existence of a class of people whose sole profession is to pose. ”

“ In England the upper professional classes go to the same schools and universities as the landed classes, and the merchants and captains of industry also send their sons to those schools. Therefore the line of social cleavage, as shown by speech and bearing, is between the upper and the lower middle classes. ”

“ And it is a duty which no organized and civilized society ever failed to perform. Parents, husbands, guardians, teachers, committees, &c., are but masters under another name, whose duty it is to protect the weak, and whose right it is to control them. ”

“ Its justification in becoming school-master lies in the necessity of making out of the raw material of life citizens who shall be productive factors in the national wealth and conservators of its order. If, therefore, it is justified in teaching the elementary branches of education, if it is justified in adding to those elementary branches departments that may be considered in the nature of luxuries, how much more is it justified in training the powers by which self-support shall be won and wealth shall be added to society! ”

“ Where the reward of the master, or rather the remuneration for his pains and trouble, is to arise from the labour of the boy, the master is interested in his learning; and the other feels an obligation, as well as an interest in learning. Though the apprentice is not absolutely paid for what he does, he finds his ease, his importance, and comfort, all depend on his proficiency; and, with young minds, such motives are much more powerful, and act through a better channel than avarice. ”

“ The knowledge of the master is to be able properly to employ his slaves, for the mastership of slaves is the employment, not the mere possession of them; not that this knowledge contains anything great or respectable; for what a slave ought to know how to do, that a master ought to know how to order ”

“ One can easily see how ties of good-fellowship and sympathy would arise between masters and servants, how a community [303] of interest would exist, so that the good of the master and his family would be the condition for the good of the servant and his family. In America, where the relation between servant and employer is usually a simple business arrangement, each giving certain specified considerations and nothing more, the relation of servant to master is shorn of all sentiment and affection ”