THE COMMUNITY OF PRINTERS
An unregulated trade, conducted under conditions of absolute freedom
approximating those of the present day, was not only out of place in the
Middle Ages but was practically impossible. We have seen how the attempt
to carry on a trade under such conditions resulted in a state of
intolerable confusion in the printing industry. Accordingly a royal
edict was issued by King Louis XII supplying the needed regulations for
the conduct of the industry according to seventeenth century ideas.
So far as the industry itself was concerned the important feature of
this edict was the organization of the Community of Printers. This
Community embraced all the printing trades; that is to say, printing,
book binding, type founding, and bookselling. The master workmen
carrying on shops in any of these allied industries were members of the
Community. It differed from the trade guilds in that it was an
organization of employers only. It did not include even the master
workmen who were not employers.
Certain matters were decided upon by the Community as a whole, but the
work of the Community was carried on for the most part by a sort of
Executive Committee called the Syndics. This Committee consisted of a
chairman, who is usually referred to as the Syndic, and four associates
or assessors. This board was chosen annually. Originally the elections
were held in general assemblages of the industry at which all members of
the Community were entitled to vote. Later the elections were in the
hands of a board consisting of the five syndics for the year, past
members of the board of syndics, and twenty-four electors. Of these
twenty-four, eight were printers, eight booksellers, and eight binders.
The type founders appear never to have been very important members of
the Community and probably soon ceased to be represented among the
syndics. At the time the Community was organized typefounding was not a
separate industry, but was carried on by the printers themselves.
The duty of the syndics was to act as the corporate representatives of
the industry. They fixed wages and prices. They adjusted disputes
between their fellow-members and acted for the employers in dealing with
the employees. They had powers of visitation and supervision. Through
these they were supposed to exercise a sort of censorship over printing,
to maintain the quality of work done, to see that trade regulations were
enforced and trade agreements carried out; in a word, to exercise the
same minute control over the industry which was exercised by the guilds.
The new organization was a very great improvement over the former lack
of organization, but it was very far from being completely successful.
Its first effort was to regulate admission to mastership and so to
membership of the Community. The number of shops in Paris in 1618 was
76. By 1686 this number had been reduced to 36 and the process was still
going on. At Troyes in 1700 there were 16 shops and in 1739 only 3. This
limitation was brought about by freezing out the small shops, by strict
regulation of admissions to the Community without which the business
could not be legally carried on, and by the purchase from time to time
of certificates of membership. A certificate of membership in the
Community was a very considerable asset to an individual and on his
death it passed to his heirs. While it could not apparently be sold
outside the family, it had distinct value and could often be purchased
and cancelled by the Community. Except by inheritances membership might
be obtained only through advancement in the trade from apprenticeship
through journeymanship to master workmanship, as we shall see later. The
fees required for membership of the Community and the capital required
for carrying on business were so great that very few attained membership
of the Community in this way. Membership of the Community, however, was
open to the sons of members or to those who might marry the widows of
members, and in a very short time membership became practically limited
to those who obtained it in one or the other of these ways.
The Community was undoubtedly very useful in giving a corporate center
to the industry and also in giving more support to trade usages,
contracts, and agreements. On the other hand its efficiency was greatly
weakened by the quarrels which immediately broke out between the three
elements of the Community and which lasted until the final break-up of
the old conditions in 1789. The quarrel was mainly between the printers
and the booksellers or publishers. The binders were soon recognized as
forming an independent industry and they were before very long
eliminated from the Community of Printers. They formed a Community of
their own in 1686 and need not be further considered.
The hostility between the booksellers and the printers began with the
invention of printing. Their interests were so closely related and yet
so antagonistic that an attempt to combine them in one Community while
at the same time keeping their functions separate resulted in constant
quarrels and in a weakening of the influence of the Community itself.
The booksellers, for instance, were lax in their supervision and control
in matters where the printers were directly concerned, while the
printers were equally negligent of the interests of the booksellers. The
printers naturally desired to restrict the number of printers but they
were glad to see the number of booksellers competing for the privilege
of handling their output increased indefinitely. The booksellers, being
fewer in number and probably richer, were more united and more
aggressive than the printers. They attempted to get control of
manuscripts so that the printers could not produce anything without
first paying toll to the owners of the manuscripts. We must always
remember that at this period the great mass of commercial and periodical
printing which supports the industry today was not in existence, and
that printing was practically confined to books and official documents.
The booksellers also wanted to print for themselves; that is to say, to
hire journeymen printers and so make themselves independent of the
master printers. By their resistence to the closing of the mastership
and by the cultivation of competition they did their best to lower the
prices of printing. In a word, they endeavored to subjugate the printers
entirely. In this they did not succeed, but they kept the quarrel alive,
very much to the detriment of the industry, until the end of the old
industrial order.