TRADE GUILDS AND THE COMING OF THE NEW INDUSTRY
The outstanding factor in the industrial, social, and economic life of
the Middle Ages is the trade guild. The real life of any people is not
the story of its wars or the record of the doings of its kings and
nobles. It is the life of the people themselves. The moment we try to
study this aspect of these old times we find that in the towns
especially the life of the people centers around their trade guilds. The
guild was an organization of all the workmen in any given trade. It
included the master workman, the journeyman, and the apprentice. It
controlled the whole life of the industry from the buying of materials
to the selling of the finished product, from the indenturing of the
apprentice to the certification of the master workman. Its peculiar
strength lay in the fact that it did not exercise this control in the
interest of either the employer or the employed. It exercised it in the
interest of the industry as a whole. It did not forget the interests of
the public. It did not permit the industry to be practised by the
unauthorized or outsiders. It limited competition. It distributed labor.
It prevented over-production. It assumed great responsibility for its
members and it held them to a very strict accountability.
Of course, such an organization was possible only under conditions of
production far different from those which now prevail. All work was
hand-work and each hand-worker was supposed to make the whole of the
thing produced. There were no machines of any importance and there was
practically no division of labor. The armorer, for example, made his
helmet, carrying it through every process from the first shaping of the
steel to the attaching of the last plume. The shoemaker selected his
leather and carried it through every process until the shoe was
finished. Men learned trades in those days. They did not learn to tend a
machine. A trade was worth something because the trade organization of
that day made lack of employment impossible for a decent man in ordinary
times. Learning a trade took a long time. As soon as the boy was old
enough to begin to learn he was apprenticed to a master workman, usually
for a term of seven years. Usually he paid something for his
apprenticeship, in some cases a considerable amount. He lived in the
master’s family and was supported by him until he was out of his time.
He then usually worked as a journeyman until he could accumulate the
small capital necessary to set up as an independent master.
Having been apprenticed under guild regulations to a guild member he
became a member of the guild himself as soon as he qualified as a
journeyman. Meantime he had not only been thoroughly instructed in the
practice of the industry but he had absorbed the craftsman’s spirit and
become imbued with the great principles of guild life. These principles
were five:
1. General protection of workmen. This has perhaps been sufficiently
described already.
2. Limitation of competition. This has also been remarked upon.
3. Perfection of work. The guild always stood behind the quality of the
product made by its members. If goods were not up to standard in quality
it was not only held to be a disgrace to the guild, but the offending
member was liable to severe punishment at the hands of the guild itself.
The guilds maintained their own inspectors. These inspectors visited the
shops and the fairs or occasional markets where goods were sold. If they
found poor work in the shop or if they found that poor work had been put
in the hands of the merchants for sale, they reported it to the guild
officers who immediately dealt with the offending member.
4. Honesty in business. The guild member not only made his goods but
sold them, generally directly to the public. Sometimes he sold them to
merchants and sometimes he sent them to certain cities where at certain
times markets or fairs were held, there to be sold on commission. More
often, however, he made and sold his own goods in his own shop and lived
in the same building with his family, his apprentices, and sometimes his
journeymen. The guild stood for full weight and measure and for honesty
in all business transactions. It punished faults in these directions as
sternly as in the making of poor goods.
5. The maintenance of the social order. The guilds were always to be
found arranged on the side of law and order, although that did not
always mean that they were on the side of the king or other constituted
authority in periods of civil disturbance.
The members of the guilds, all fighting men usually serving under their
own guild banners and their own leaders, were an important part of the
military force of the medieval cities. Although they might and did fight
on one side or the other of some civic quarrel they always stood for
order in the community just as they did for honesty in production and
trade. This, however, is closely connected with the further fact that
the guilds had a distinct religious side. The medieval man was not
perhaps very much more religious than his modern descendant, but he was
religious in a different way and paid much more attention to the forms
of religion. Religious ceremonies formed a part of the regular routine
of guild life and in many cases special churches were closely identified
with certain guilds. Closely connected with the guilds were
organizations known as confraternities. These confraternities were
religious, charitable, and social organizations. Although usually drawn
from members of some particular industry, they did not attempt to
exercise the trade control which was in the hands of the guilds. They
adopted the name of some saint who was chosen as their patron. They had
a solemn feast following attendance at church on his day in the
calendar, and they maintained a fund out of which the needy could be
assisted and the dead buried with due provision of masses for the repose
of his soul in case the family funds were not sufficient.
You see we are dealing with a time when the lives of men were very
simple, very neighborly, and at least so far as observance goes, very
religious. It is very important that we should have some fairly clear
idea of these times if we are to understand at all how the early
printers lived, what they did, and why they did it.
The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries were the golden age
of the guilds. They were at the height of their power and influence at
the period of the invention of printing. The sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth centuries were a period of decline. At first the decline was
slow. After the sixteenth century, however, the decline was rapid, and
long before the end of the eighteenth century the guilds had lost
practically all of their old-time power and influence. In some portions
of Europe the old guild organization still exists, but its influence is
very slight and its purposes are far different from those of the old
organizations of the Middle Ages.
This decline was the result of the changing economic conditions. One of
the most important of these was the development of the modern type of
production in factories using costly equipment and employing large
numbers of men. The old type of production required little or no
capital. There was practically no costly machinery. The work was done in
the master workman’s house by himself, his sons, and apprentices. No
expensive outlay for materials or plant was required. The journeyman
required practically no capital for starting in business beyond his
personal strength and skill.
Printing was the first industry which could not be carried on under the
old conditions. From the beginning the printer must have capital to
supply type, presses, and other equipment, to purchase material, which
was costly, and to maintain himself and those who were working with him
while a long process was being brought to completion and the product
marketed. In order to carry on the business to any advantage a
considerable number of persons must be employed. Under these
circumstances printing was necessarily from the beginning an enterprise
which required the co-operation of capital and labor to an extent
hitherto unknown.
Another reason for the decline of the guilds may be found in the
increasing power of the government and its progressive control of the
citizen. The control and protection thus exercised by the government
rendered the protection and control exercised by the guild over its
members not only unnecessary but improper. While in some respects
governmental control and the freedom of a well-organized system of
courts did not protect the rights of the individual and insure the
quality of product as effectively as the guilds had done, it was
inevitable that particular regulations should give way to general
regulation and that the individual should not only be taught but
compelled to look to the state rather than to an association of
individuals for the protection of his rights and the definition of his
duties.
It was probably this more than anything else which brought about an
increasing antagonism between the guilds and the state in every country.
In the years of their growth and power the guilds, as we have seen, had
been the strong supporters of the social order, the pillars of the
state, and the firm reliance of the government, or at any rate of that
party in the government which they supported. When the government became
strong enough to desire to stand alone, the power of the guilds, which
had formerly been useful, became decidedly objectionable, and the entire
influence of the state was more and more directed against them.
Another important social change was the development of free labor and
free capital, resulting in the separation of industrial classes. Under
the guild system there was no separation between labor and capital, or
between the employers and the employed as classes. The guilds were
associations in which labor and so much capital as there was were
combined in a close organization, while there was neither labor nor
capital in any particular amount outside the guild. With the gradual
change of conditions, growth of population, increase of wealth, and
greater intercourse between communities there grew up on one end of the
social scale groups of laborers who were not members of any guild and on
the other end accumulations of capital which were either in the hands of
men who were neither craftsmen nor guild members or of those who had
larger accumulations than they could use in their own business. This
development of laborers seeking employment and capital seeking
investment was fatal to the guild system when once the progress of
invention made the factory system possible.
One of the factors which accelerated this movement was a curious
combination of high prices fixed by the economic law of supply and
demand and low wages fixed by the ancient law of custom. It must be
remembered that at this time the science of political economy did not
exist. People did not know the laws which govern business and control
prices and wages. They ignorantly supposed, as some persons still
suppose, that these things may be governed by statute, being entirely
unaware of the fact that they are really the product of causes for the
most part beyond human control. In the early Middle Ages wages and
prices were fixed on a basis of custom. The three centuries which formed
the golden age of the guilds were a period of very slight industrial
changes. There were no great changes in population. There was no
colonizing, with the consequent opening of new markets. There were no
modern inventions. There was no particular change in the amount of gold
and silver in circulation. Consequently the law of supply and demand
made itself felt so little through variations in prices and in wages
that it was entirely neglected. It became the custom to pay a certain
amount for each commodity, and especially to pay a fixed rate of wages
in certain occupations. Nobody thought of paying less or of asking more
than this customary sum. In case anybody did attempt any modification of
this sort he was promptly checked by law. Attempts were also frequently
made to prevent by law variations in prices.
This condition of things was completely upset by the changes which took
place about the time of the discovery of America. One of the immediate
results of the opening up of the mines and treasure hoards of Mexico and
Central and South America, with the consequent enormous increases in the
amount of gold and silver in circulation, was a rise in general prices
of about 100 per cent or, to put it differently, a cutting in two of the
value of gold and silver. Gold and silver are just like other
commodities. When the amount of gold in a given market is doubled its
value is halved; that is to say, you have to pay twice as much for
whatever you want to buy.
The opening of new markets and the stimulus given not only to invention
but to production and communication by the intellectual movement and
consequent discoveries and inventions which were going on at this time
upset industrial conditions tremendously. As usual, however, the workmen
were the last to feel this change. Men paid more gold for commodities
because they could not get them at the same old price, but wages for a
long period remained fixed by custom. The laborer, like other people,
had to pay more for what he bought, but unlike other people did not get
any more for what he sold. This condition was made even worse by
ignorant and sometimes disastrous attempts to control by legislation a
situation which nobody understood. Statutes to fix prices and curtail
profits are never enforceable unless backed by a government monopoly of
production. Consequently the extensive legislation for these purposes
was useless. Unfortunately there was also legislation forbidding
combination of workmen, forbidding their passage from place to place in
search of work, and forbidding their asking or receiving more than the
customary rate of wages. Some of this was old legislation revived. Some
of it was new. While not entirely effective, it was much more effective
than the legislation with regard to commodity prices, because in the
nature of things it was much more easily enforceable.
The natural consequence of these conditions was the disruption of the
old economic order. The employer and employed, who had been associated
together in the old guilds, separated into antagonistic, if not hostile,
camps. Capital and labor instead of co-operating contested for
supremacy. Guilds, if they survived at all, gradually became
associations of masters. We shall see how this worked out in the
development of the Community of Printers. The workmen gathered into
organizations of their own which were the ancestors of the modern labor
unions. The modern industrial system with all its power and with all its
abuses came into existence.
Printing did not fit into the guild system at all. As has already been
pointed out, the very nature of the industry prevented it. Indeed it was
not legally regarded as an industry or a mechanical occupation until the
great reorganization of the trade in 1618, a date to which we shall have
frequent occasion to refer. At first it was regarded as an art or
profession and those who practiced it were legally recognized as not
being mechanics and not being liable to the laws governing mechanics.
From 1450 to 1618 the printing industry was a sort of industrial outlaw.
It was not under guild control on the one hand and was not amenable to
the general statutes regarding industry on the other. That meant that
the regulations which were at this period so advantageous to the other
industries did not apply to this one, with numerous unfortunate results.
The industry at first attached itself to the universities. It was
utilized, as we have seen, not for a commercial purpose as now, but for
the production of Bibles, the classics, and other learned books almost
exclusively. As we have also seen, the universities attempted to control
the output of the press until more effective methods of censorship were
devised.
Previous to the invention of typography there had been a sort of guild
of the makers and sellers of books. In most places this was known as the
Confraternity of St. John the Evangelist, sometimes as the Confraternity
of St. Luke, and in one place at least as the Brothers of the Pen. This
organization continued to exist as an association of printers, but it
did not have the power and standing of the great trade guilds of an
earlier period. Soon after the invention of printing the journeymen and
apprentices formed an association of their own, which very soon
developed into something like a labor union. The result of these
conditions was great disorganization in the trade. Strikes were
frequent. In France particularly the period from 1539 to 1544 was one of
great disorder. Accounts of a series of strikes in the city of Lyons at
this period read almost like the accounts of a serious labor disturbance
of the present time. Shops were picketed. There were parades of
strikers. There were riots by the strikers and their sympathizers, and
an appeal to the town authorities to settle the matter. The settlement
proposed was so unfavorable to the master printers that they threatened
to leave Lyons in a body. This would have been a very serious matter, as
printing was then one of the great industries of the city, and the
disturbance was finally settled by a compromise which granted the
journeymen some of their more important demands and yet left enough to
the masters so that they felt that they could continue in business. The
great grievances complained of were low pay, poor food (the journeymen
were boarded by their employers), too many apprentices, and the
unwillingness of the masters to allow them to work at certain times when
they wanted to work, such as on the eves of Sundays and feast days and
the like, and to abstain from work at certain times when they did not
want to work.
Attempts were made to stop the disturbances in the trade by the
intervention of the government. This intervention was entirely on the
side of the masters. The journeymen were forbidden to do anything
whatever to injure the masters or to impede their business and they were
denied the limitation of apprentices for which they had asked. Guild
regulations limited the number of apprentices taken in other industries
and it seemed only reasonable to the journeyman that similar regulations
should obtain among the printers, but the royal authority was constantly
exercised against them. This attempted settlement by royal authority was
immediately followed by still more serious strikes. The masters
complained that the agitation was due to the pernicious activity of
labor leaders and invoked the royal edicts. The journeymen alleged
abuses, claimed their rights, and undertook to enforce them by
combination. The royal authority was exercised in the effort to coerce
the journeymen even to the point of threatening by an edict of 1617 that
workmen who interfered with the conduct of their master’s business
should be put to death. This, however, was the last expiring effort of
the old order of things. In the next year, 1618, a royal edict organized
the trade and prescribed the regulations under which it should be
conducted.
This organization, which we shall proceed to study in detail, was the
basis of the conduct of the printing industry in France until 1789. It
did not bring industrial peace and it did not remedy all existing evils.
As we shall see, the history of printing is a history of industrial
conflict throughout the whole period until 1789. Henceforth, however,
the regulation of the trade, the establishment of a responsible
organization, and the fixing of regulations between masters and men
changed the field of strife. We hear little or nothing more of strikes.
The state was recognized as the source of regulation and as the arbiter
of questions which might arise between the associated employers on one
hand and their partially associated employees on the other. The
industrial struggles hereafter took the form of litigation rather than
of strikes. The outlaw industry at last obtained a recognized,
responsible position in the industrial world.