GUILDS
IN
THE MIDDLE AGES
BY
GEORGES RENARD
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
G. D. H. COLE
[Illustration]
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BOOKS.
WELFARE WORK.
Employers' Experiments for Improving Working Conditions in
Factories. By E. DOROTHEA PROUD, B.A., C.B.E. With a Foreword by
the Right Hon. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, P.C., M.P., Prime Minister. Demy
8vo. Second Edition. 8s. 6d. net.
MR. LLOYD GEORGE says: "Her knowledge of welfare work is unique, and
her book bids fair to become the standard work on the subject. I warmly
commend it to employers, to Lady Superintendents, and to all those
members of the general public who care for the welfare of the workers
in our factories."
WOMEN IN MODERN INDUSTRY.
By B. L. HUTCHINS. With a Chapter on the 1906 Wage Census by J. J.
MALLON. 4s. 6d. net.
"Miss Hutchins's book, which attempts for the first time to give a
coherent account of women's labour problems, will be found of great
value in helping us to understand the question.... It is an excellent
piece of work, upon which she is much to be congratulated, and the bulk
of it will be of permanent value."--_The Times._
THE GIRL IN INDUSTRY.
A Scientific Investigation. By D. J. COLLIER. With a Foreword and
Introduction by B. L. HUTCHINS. 9d. net.
"... an important book from the point of view of applied economics,
but, in the light of the coming continuation schools, it is scarcely
less important in education."--_The Times._
DOWNWARD PATHS.
An Enquiry into the Causes which contribute to the making of the
Prostitute. With a Foreword by A. MAUDE ROYDEN. Second Edition. 3s.
net.
"... the authors treat their very difficult and complicated problem
with sympathy, earnestness and moderation."--_The Spectator._
A RATIONAL WAGES SYSTEM.
Some Notes on the Method of Paying the Worker a Reward for
Efficiency in Addition to Wages. By HENRY ATKINSON, Member of the
Institution of Mechanical Engineers; Engineer Expert to the Mixed
Tribunal, Cairo. Paper, 1s. net. Cloth, 1s. 6d. net.
"Certainly deserves the earnest consideration of both masters and
men.... We trust this book will sell by the hundreds of thousands,
for it deals boldly with topics too many people try to shelve as
disagreeable."--_Practical Engineer._
THE FEEDING OF SCHOOL CHILDREN.
By M. E. BULKLEY, of the London School of Economics. Crown 8vo. 4s.
6d. net.
"An admirable statement of the history and present position of the
problem."--_New Statesman._
LIVELIHOOD AND POVERTY.
By A. L. BOWLEY, Sc.D., Reader in Statistics, University of London,
and A. R. BURNETT-HURST, B.Sc., formerly Research Assistant at the
London School of Economics. With an Introduction by R. H. TAWNEY,
B.A. Crown 8vo. 4s. net.
"This book should serve, as Mr. Rowntree's served in its day, to rivet
the public attention on the problem of low wages. It is emphatically
a book which every one who possesses either patriotism or conscience
should study and reflect upon."--_Manchester Guardian._
LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
SELF-GOVERNMENT IN INDUSTRY.
By G. D. H. COLE, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Second
Edition. 4s. 6d. net.
"The argument is bold, original, and challenging ... a book which is
indispensable to every student of social institutions and every citizen
who is thinking about the kind of society that will develop from the
catastrophe of the war."--_The Nation._
"... a praiseworthy attempt to explain the future organisation of
British Government on National Guild lines.... Mr. Cole's volume may be
commended as by far the most thoughtful exposition of this view of the
course of social evolution."--_The New Statesman._
THE WORLD OF LABOUR.
By G. D. H. COLE, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. With a
Frontispiece by WILL DYSON. Third Edition revised. 4s. 6d. net.
"The most informative and best-written book on the Labour problem we
have ever read."--_English Review._
GUILD PRINCIPLES IN WAR AND PEACE.
By S. G. HOBSON. With an Introduction by A. R. ORAGE. Crown 8vo.
Second Edition. 2s. 6d. net.
"His analysis of the wage-system and its effect on national character
is masterly and incisive; so, too, his inquiry into industrial
partnership."--_The Nation._
"... quite the best brief exposition of the general doctrine of this
school of reform."--_Manchester Guardian._
NATIONAL GUILDS.
An Enquiry into the Wage System and the Way Out. By S. G. HOBSON.
With an Introduction by A. R. ORAGE. Crown 8vo. Third Edition. 6s.
net.
"A well-written, well-arranged, and attractive book, setting forth
the whole argument.... It is an advantage to have so lucid and so
complete an exposition of a scheme which ... many people are finding
attractive."--_New Statesman._
THE COLLECTIVIST STATE IN THE MAKING.
By E. DAVIES, Chairman of the Railway Nationalisation Society.
Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
"... of high interest and real value ... contains a short but
able analysis of the causes which make for the spread of
collectivism."--_Times._
"Mr. Davies has made a compilation that is worthy of himself and his
subject."--_New Age._
THE WAR OF STEEL AND GOLD.
By HENRY NOEL BRAILSFORD, Author of "The Broom of the War God."
Ninth Edition. 3s. 6d. net.
"This book is, within its range, the most complete study of our recent
foreign policy that we have seen ... it is an admirable piece of work,
and in its synthesis of ideas original."--_Manchester Guardian._
* * * * *
_The Three Latest Publications of the Ratan Tata Foundation._
CASUAL LABOUR AT THE DOCKS.
By H. A. MESS, B.A. Crown 8vo. 2s. net.
THE HOMEWORKER AND HER OUTLOOK.
A Descriptive Study of Tailoresses and Boxmakers. By V. DE
VESSELITSKY. With an Introduction by R. H. TAWNEY. Crown 8vo. 2s.
net.
EXPENDITURE AND WASTE.
A Study in War-Time. By V. DE VESSELITSKY. Crown 8vo. 8d. net.
LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
GUILDS
IN
THE MIDDLE AGES
BY
GEORGES RENARD
TRANSLATED BY
DOROTHY TERRY
AND EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
G. D. H. COLE
[Illustration]
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1918
PREFACE
This short book is the first part of a larger work by M. Georges
Renard, the well-known French economic writer. The second part of the
original deals with the modern Trade Union movement, and the part here
reproduced is complete in itself.
G. D. H. COLE.
_October 1918._
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. By G. D. H. Cole ix
CHAPTER I
ORIGIN AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 1
CHAPTER II
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE GUILDS 6
1. Various types.--2. The simple Guild and the complex
Guild.--3. The half-democratic Guild.--4. The
apprentice.--5. The _compagnon_.--6. Women in the
Guilds.--7. The capitalistic Guild.
CHAPTER III
THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE GUILDS 27
CHAPTER IV
THE AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GUILDS 32
1. Economic aim.--2. Social and moral aim; the
fraternity.--3. Political aim. Classification of the
Guilds; their internal disputes.
CHAPTER V
THE MERITS AND DEFECTS OF THE GUILD SYSTEM 68
CHAPTER VI
EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 73
1. Change in economic conditions. The extension of
the markets and large-scale production; division of
producers into classes; _compagnonnage_.--2. Change in
intellectual conditions. The Renaissance. The
Reformation.--3. Change in political conditions. The
central authority is driven to interfere: (_a_) through
political interest; (_b_) through fiscal interest;
(_c_) through public interest.
CHAPTER VII
INTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY 107
1. Division at the heart of the Guilds: (_a_) separation
of the members; (_b_) subjection of inferiors to
superiors.--2. Division between the Craft Guilds.--3.
Vexatious regulations.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DEATH OF THE GUILDS 116
1. Their suppression in the different countries of
Europe. They become the victims of: (_a_) "great"
commerce and "great" industry; (_b_) the law of the
reduction of effort; (_c_) science; (_d_) fashion;
(_e_) new economic theories.--2. Action against them in
England, France, and other European countries.--3.
Survivals, and attempts to restore the Guilds.
AUTHOR'S BIBLIOGRAPHY 137
EDITOR'S BIBLIOGRAPHY 140
INTRODUCTION
TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
It is a curious gap in our economic literature that no simple
introductory study of Mediaeval Guilds has yet been published in
England. The subject is, of course, dealt with in passing in every
text-book of economic history, and there have been several admirable
studies of particular aspects of Mediaeval Guild organization,
particularly of the period of its decay; but no one has yet attempted
to write a short account of the system as a whole, such as might serve
as a text-book for those who desire to get a general knowledge of the
industrial system of the Middle Ages.
This is all the more remarkable, because to an increasing extent in
recent years men's thoughts have turned back to the Mediaeval Guilds in
their search for solutions of present-day industrial problems. Nor is
this tendency entirely new, though it has recently assumed a new form.
The earlier Trade Unions often sought to establish their direct descent
from the Guilds of the Middle Ages: one of the most ambitious projects
of the Owenite period in British Trade Unionism was the "Builders'
Guild" of 1834; and, a generation later, William Morris, and to a less
extent John Ruskin, constantly strove to carry men's minds back to the
industrial order which passed away with the first beginnings of modern
capitalism.
Moreover, in our own times, an even more determined attempt is being
made to apply the lessons of the Middle Ages to modern industrial
problems. Mr. A. J. Penty's _The Restoration of the Guild System_,
published in 1907, began this movement, which was then taken up and
transformed into the constructive theory of National Guilds, first by
Mr. A. R. Orage and Mr. S. G. Hobson in the _New Age_, and later by
the writers and speakers of the National Guilds League. A substantial
literature, all of which assumes at least a general acquaintance with
mediaeval conditions, has grown up around this movement; but so far no
National Guildsman has attempted to write the history of the Mediaeval
Guilds, or even to explain at all clearly their relation to the system
which he sets out to advocate.
Until this very necessary work is executed, the present translation
of M. Renard's study of Mediaeval Guilds should fill a useful place.
Indeed, in some ways, M. Renard has the advantage. He is not a National
Guildsman, but a moderate French Socialist of the political school, and
he therefore presents the history of the Guilds without a preconceived
bias in their favour. It is no small part of the value of M. Renard's
study that he brings out the defects of the mediaeval system quite as
clearly as its merits.
It must be clearly stated at the outset that the value which a study
of Mediaeval Guilds possesses for the modern world is not based on any
historical continuity. The value lies rather in the very discontinuity
of economic history, in the sharp break which modern industrialism has
made with the past. Historians of Labour combination have often pointed
out that the Trade Unions of the modern world are not in any sense
descended from the Guilds of the Middle Ages, and have no direct or
genealogical connection with them. This is true, and the connection
which has sometimes been assumed has been shown to be quite imaginary.
But it does not follow that, because there is no historical connection,
there is not a spiritual connection, a common motive present in both
forms of association. This connection, indeed, is now beginning to be
widely understood. As the Trade Union movement develops in power and
intelligence, it inevitably stretches out its hands towards the control
of industry. The Trade Union, no doubt, begins as a mere bargaining
body, "a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of
maintaining or improving their conditions of employment"; but it cannot
grow to its full stature without becoming far more than this, without
claiming for itself and its members the right to control production.
At first this claim may be almost unconscious; but out of it grows a
conscious theory of Trade Union purpose. The Syndicalist movement,
native to France, but spreading the influence of its ideas over the
whole industrialized world, the Industrial Unionist movement, the
American equivalent of Syndicalism, and our own doctrine of National
Guilds, or Guild Socialism, are all conscious attempts to build a
policy upon the half-conscious tendencies of Trade Union action. In all
these the claim is made in varying forms that the workers themselves
shall control in the common interest the industries in which they are
engaged.
In one of these theories at least there is a conscious retrospection
to the Middle Ages. National Guildsmen are seeking to formulate for
modern industrial Society a principle of industrial self-government
analogous to that which was embodied in the Mediaeval Guilds. They do
not idealize the Middle Ages; but they realize that the old Guild
system did embody a great and valuable principle which the modern world
has forgotten. They are not setting out to restore the Middle Ages; but
they are setting out to find a democratic form of industrial autonomy
which will spring from the principle which inspired the economic system
of mediaeval Europe.
Mediaeval Guilds assumed many different forms under the varying
circumstances of their origin--in Holland and Italy, France and
England, Scotland and Germany. But, underlying all their different
manifestations, a fundamental identity of principle can be found;
for, in all, the direct control of industry was in the hands of the
associated producers. The relations of the Guilds to other forms of
association differed widely from time to time and from place to place.
In some cases the Guilds dominated and almost constituted the State
or the municipal authority; in others, the power of the State and
the municipality were freely exercised to keep them under control.
But, whatever their exact relationship to other social powers, their
essential character persisted. It was an axiom of mediaeval industry
that direct management and control should be in the hands of the
producers under a system of regulation in the common interest.
With these general observations in mind, we can now proceed to look
more closely at the actual form which mediaeval organization assumed,
particularly in this country. M. Renard naturally has the Continental,
and especially the French, examples mainly in mind. We must therefore
in this introduction dwell particularly upon the conditions which
prevailed in mediaeval England.
It was in the Middle Ages that, for the first time, both the English
national State and English industry assumed definite shapes and forms
of organization, and entered into more or less defined and constant
relationships. Concerning their organization, and, still more,
concerning the actual, and substantial relations between them, there
are many points of obscurity which may never be cleared up; but, apart
from special obscurities, the main structure of mediaeval economic
life is clearly known. Just as, in the manorial system, agriculture
assumed a clear and definite relationship to the feudal State, so, with
the rise of town life and the beginnings of an industrial system, the
Mediaeval Guilds found a defined sphere and function in the structure
of Society and a defined relation to the mediaeval State.
It is always necessary, in considering the economic life of the Middle
Ages, to bear in mind the relatively tiny place which industry occupied
in Society. England, and indeed every country, was predominantly
agricultural; and England differed from the more advanced Continental
countries in that she was long an exporter of raw materials and an
importer of manufactured goods. This is the main reason why the
Mediaeval Guild system never reached, in this country, anything
like the power or dimensions to which it attained in Flanders, in
Italy, and in parts of Germany. But, even if English Guilds were less
perfect specimens, they nevertheless illustrated essentially the
same tendencies; and the economic structure of mediaeval England was
essentially the same as that which prevailed throughout civilized
Europe. It is indeed a structure which, at one period or another, has
existed over practically the whole of the civilized world.
Industry was carried on under a system of enterprise at once public
and private, associative and individual. The unit of production was
the workshop of the individual master-craftsman; but the craftsman
held his position as a master only by virtue of full membership in his
Craft Guild. He was not free to adopt any methods of production or any
scale of production he might choose; he was subjected to an elaborate
regulation of both the quantity and the quality of his products, of the
price which he should charge to the consumer, and of his relations to
his journeymen and apprentices. He worked within a clearly defined code
of rules which had the object at once of safeguarding the independence,
equality and prosperity of the craftsmen, of keeping broad the highway
of promotion from apprentice to journeyman and from journeyman to
master, and also of preserving the integrity and well-being of the
craft by guarding the consumer against exploitation and shoddy goods.
The Guild was thus internally a self-regulating unit laying down the
conditions under which production was to be carried on, and occupying
a recognized status in the community based on the performance of
certain communal functions. It was not, however, wholly independent
or self-contained; it had intimate relations with other Guilds, with
the municipal authority of the town in which it was situated, and,
in increasing measure, with the national State within whose area it
lay. There is about these relations, with which we are here primarily
concerned, a considerably greater obscurity than about the main
structure of industrial organization. In particular, one of the most
obscure chapters in English industrial history is that which deals with
the relation between the Craft Guilds of which we have been speaking
and the municipal authorities.
In the great days of the Guild system the industrial market was almost
entirely local. Long-distance or overseas trade existed only in a
few commodities, and, in this country, these were almost entirely raw
materials or easily portable luxuries. England was, as we have seen,
an agricultural country, and the nascent industry of the towns existed
only to supply a limited range of commodities within a restricted
local market. While these conditions remained in being, organization
developed in each town separately, and industry came hardly at all
into touch with the national State. Then, gradually, the market
widened and the demand for manufactured commodities increased. As this
happened, industry began to overflow the boundaries set to it by the
purely local Guild organization. Foreign trade, and to a less extent
internal exchange, increased in variety and amount; and a distinct
class of traders, separated from the craftsmen-producers, grew steadily
in power and prominence. New industries, moreover, and rival methods
of industrial organization began to grow up outside the towns and to
challenge the supremacy of the Guilds; while, in the Guilds themselves,
the system of regulation began to break down, and inequality of wealth
and social consideration among the Guildsmen destroyed the democratic
basis of the earlier Guild organization.
These developments coincided in time with a big growth in the power
and organization of the national State, a growth based largely on
the imposition of a common justice and the establishment of a common
security. This made possible, while the parallel economic developments
made necessary, a national economic policy; and the State, beginning
with the woollen industry, then after agriculture of by far the
greatest national and international importance, began to develop
a policy of economic intervention. The State had intervened in
agriculture after the Black Death; even earlier it had begun its long
series of interventions in connection with the woollen industry; in
1381 the first Navigation Act was passed; and during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries complicated codes of industrial regulation by the
State became the rule and practice of English statecraft.
We have then to distinguish already two periods in which the State
assumed differing relations to mediaeval industrial organization. In
the earlier days of the Guild system industry was local in character,
and the Guilds came into relations primarily with the municipal
authority, and only occasionally with the State, even when the Guild
charter was obtained directly from the Crown. In the second period,
when the Guild system was already at the beginning of its long period
of disintegration, the State was developing a comprehensive economic
policy which covered every aspect of industrial organization.
Let us look rather more closely at the first of these two periods,
the period of the rise and predominance of Guild organization; and
let us repeat our question as to the relations which existed between
the Guilds and the State or municipal authority. The first form
of Guild organization in this country was undoubtedly that of the
"Guild Merchant," a general organization including both trading and
manufacturing elements, and deriving special privileges for its trade
by virtue of a Charter secured directly from the Crown. Here, then,
is our first clear relation. The Guild Merchant derived, if not its
organization, at any rate its privileges and authority, from the direct
grant of the State. In practice the principal power thus acquired was
the right to trade throughout the kingdom. The relations of the Guild
Merchant to the municipal authorities are far more obscure. It used
to be maintained that they were identical; but this view has been
clearly disproved. We cannot, however, trace many signs of the active
intervention of the municipality in the affairs of the Guild Merchant,
though it is clear that the jurisdiction of the City authorities
remained, in form at least, unaffected by the creation of a Guild
Merchant.
The Guilds Merchant reached their zenith in the twelfth century.
Thereafter, as trade and industry grew in extent and complexity, the
general organization of all merchants and master-craftsmen in a single
body gave way to a system of Craft Guilds, each representing as a rule
a single craft or "mistery." Some of these Guilds were predominantly
Guilds of traders, some of producers; while some included both trading
and producing elements. By the fourteenth century the Guilds Merchant
had everywhere disappeared, and the Craft Guilds were in possession of
the field. Thus came into being the organization of industry generally
known as the "Mediaeval Guild system."
What, then, were the relations of these Craft Guilds to the
municipalities and to the State? They arose, we have seen, out of the
ashes of the Guild Merchant. Often they were definitely created and
fostered by the municipal authorities. The borough claimed the right
of regulating production and trade in the interest of its burgesses,
the right to uphold quality of product and fair dealing, to punish
offenders, and in the last resort to fix both the prices of commodities
and the remuneration of journeymen and apprentices. The greater part
of these functions was actually exercised by the Crafts themselves,
which, as we have seen, made their own regulations for the ordering of
trade and production; but the city authorities always maintained and
asserted a right of intervention in the affairs of the Guilds whenever
the well-being and good service of the consumer were involved; and
this right was frequently exercised in the case of the Guilds which
organized the supply of food and drink. Neither the limits of Guild
authority nor the limits of municipal intervention were accurately
or uniformly defined. In practice the system oscillated from the
one side to the other. Sometimes the Guilds asserted and maintained
a comparative immunity from municipal regulation, and sometimes a
recalcitrant Guild was brought to book by a strong-handed municipal
authority. The poise and balance between the parties was in many cases
made the more even because both alike often derived their authority
from a special Charter granted by the Crown. Indeed, one of the regular
resorts of the Craft Guild, in its battle for independence from outside
control, was to get from the Crown a definite Charter of incorporation,
granting to the Guild the widest range of powers that it was able to
secure.
The Guild was essentially a local organization, and, in placing it
in its relation to the municipal authority, we are describing it in
its essential economic character. Its relation to the national State,
like that of the municipality itself, was far more occasional and
incidental, and, apart from one or two broad issues of policy connected
mainly with the woollen industry, the interest of the national State
in the towns, and therefore in industrial organization, was primarily
financial. The protection of the consumer was a very minor motive; the
stimulation of urban industry had hardly become a general object of
policy systematically pursued; and the granting of Charters, whether
to town or to Guild, was far less a matter of economic policy than
an obvious device for raising the wind. Charters were always most
plentiful when the Crown was most in need of money.
The period of merely occasional intervention in industry by the State
lasted down to the time of Elizabeth, when for the first time the
State undertook a comprehensive system of industrial regulation.
This, however, no longer meant the exclusive dominance of financial
considerations, although the need for raising money was always very
present to the minds of Elizabeth and her ministers. The new policy was
primarily political in motive rather than economic, and was directed
on the one side to the fostering and development of trade, and on
the other to the conservation of the man-power of the nation. The
Elizabethan Statute of Artificers, passed in 1563, laid down elaborate
provisions both for regulating the flow of labour into various classes
of occupations and for prescribing the conditions under which the
work was to be carried on. Attention in modern times has been mainly
directed to the clauses dealing with wages; but the principle of
the Act was very much wider than any mere regulation of wages. It
rested upon the principle of compulsory labour for all who were not
in possession of independent means; and its basis was the obligation
upon every one who could not show cause to the contrary to labour on
the land. At the same time it aimed at protecting the supply of labour
for the urban industries, and, still more, at giving to urban industry
an advantage against the growing competition of the country-side. In
short, it incorporated a general scheme for the redistribution of the
national man-power in accordance with a definite conception of national
policy. This distribution was accomplished mainly by an elaborate code
of regulations for apprenticeship, parts of which lived on right into
the nineteenth century.
With this regulation of trade and commerce went also a regulation of
wages. As in the case of the Statute of Labourers, the object was
primarily that of preventing the labourer from earning more than his
customary standard, allowing for variations in the cost of living. The
rates of wages which the Justices of the Peace were ordered to fix were
thus primarily _maxima_, and the Act contained stringent penalties
against those who obtained, or paid, more than these _maxima_. In some
cases, however, if rarely, the rates laid down were also _minima_,
and employers were fined for paying less. This was, however, clearly
exceptional, and a special declaratory Act passed under James I., which
clearly empowered the justices to fix binding minimum rates, shows that
there had been legal doubt about it.
In any case the general tendency of the Tudor legislation is clear.
It aimed at establishing and enforcing by law the existing social
structure, at standardizing the relations between the classes, and at
putting them all in their places under the direction of the sovereign
State. In short, the Tudor system represents, in the most complete form
possible, the State regulation of private industry.
While these measures were being taken by the State, the Guild system
was in decay. As wealth grew and accumulated, the tendencies towards
oligarchy within the Guilds and exclusiveness in relation to outsiders
grew more and more marked. Among the Guildsmen wide social distinctions
appeared, and the master-craftsman before long found himself, in
relation to the rich trader or large-scale manufacturer, very much
in the position of a labourer in relation to his employer. The
richer Guilds, especially those connected with trade, sought by the
limitation of entry and the exaction of high entrance fees and dues
after entry, to keep the Guild "select" and establish an oligarchy in
its government. At the same time the growth of new industries which
had never come under Guild regulation, and the grant by the Crown of
special privileges to individual monopolists and patentees, contributed
to the downfall of the old system. Where the Guilds did not die, they
were transformed into exclusive and privileged companies which in no
sense carried on the mediaeval tradition.
Especially in the later stages of Guild development, and with growing
intensity as they drew nearer to decay and dissolution, struggles
raged in many of the Guilds and between Guild and Guild among the
diverse elements of which they had come to be composed. M. Renard
speaks of struggles in the Guilds of Florence between the more and
less capitalistic and powerful elements, and Mr. George Unwin, in his
book on _Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries_, has presented a picture of similar struggles in the
Guilds of England. These conflicts, however various in some respects,
assumed mainly the form of a constant struggle for supremacy between
the craftsmen-producers who were typical of the great days of the
Guilds and the trading or merchant class which was gradually extending
its control over production as well as sale. Gradually, as capital
accumulated in the hands of the traders, the rift between them and the
master-craftsmen widened and, gradually too, the master-craftsmen lost
their independence and their status as free producers. Not only the
marketing of the goods which they produced, but also the essential raw
materials of their crafts, passed under the control of the traders,
either by the operation of economic forces alone, or by the purchase of
some valuable concession or monopoly from the Crown. Moreover, where
the actual producer retained his power, he did so by a transformation
of function. Gradually, he turned into a capitalist trader and lost all
unity of interest and outlook with the working craftsman.
We need not here follow the Guild system through its later stages of
decay and dissolution. Where the Guilds did not die they shrank up as
a rule into capitalistic and oligarchical associations. Step by step,
power within the Guild was taken away from the ordinary Guild member by
the creation of privileged orders, access to which was possible only
to "men of substance." This process of oligarchization can be traced
very clearly in Mr. George Unwin's admirable history of the Guilds and
Companies of London. No doubt its coming was more obvious in London
than in smaller industrial centres; but the essential features of the
change were everywhere substantially the same. The constant attacks on
patents and monopolies in the later years of the reign of Elizabeth and
under the Stuarts were, in part, attacks upon the privileges granted to
mere courtiers and adventurers; but when monopoly came their way, the
undemocratic Guilds and Livery Companies were to the full as forward in
abusing their powers as the merest of adventurers who found or bought
the royal favour.
From the time of the Stuarts, at least, the Guild system had ceased to
count at all as a method of industrial organization. It is doubtful
whether, even in their greatest days, the Guilds ever included the
whole personnel of the trades and industries which they controlled, and
it is certain that, as the tendency towards oligarchy became manifest
in them, they included a steadily decreasing proportion of those
whose work they claimed to regulate. Moreover, even of those whom they
included, a steadily decreasing number retained any control over their
policy.
This decay of the Guilds, however, is not of primary importance for
those who seek to learn lessons from their experience. If we would
judge them and learn from them, we must study them as they were in
the time of their greatest prosperity and power, before the coming
of capitalistic conditions had broken their democracy in pieces and
destroyed their essential character. Viewed in this aspect, the Guild
system was essentially a balance, made the easier to maintain because
it was not so much a balance of powers between different groups of
persons with widely divergent interests as a balance between the same
persons grouped in different ways, for the performance of different
social functions. The municipal authority was, as a rule, largely
dominated by the Guilds; and in turn the Guilds were largely dominated
by the civic spirit. The distinction between producer and consumer
was important; but it was not so much a distinction between opposing
social classes as between friendly and complementary forms of social
organization. In proportion as this was not the case, the balance on
which the Guild system rested tended to break down; but the occasion
of its breakdown was not the irreconcilable opposition of producer
and consumer, but the struggles within the Guilds themselves between
traders and craftsmen, or between exclusive and democratic tendencies.
The mediaeval organization of industry, then, was based upon the twin
ideas of function and balance. It was an organization designed for an
almost self-contained local type of Society, and before the coming of
national and international economy it broke down and fell to pieces.
As a local system of organization it reached its greatest perfection
in those countries in which town life was strongest and national
government weakest (_e.g._ in the Hanse towns of Germany; in Italy, and
in Flanders). In this country the towns never possessed the strength
or the independence necessary for the perfect development of the Guild
system; but even so all the essential principles of the Guilds were
operative.
The period since the breakdown of the Guilds has been a period
of national and international economy. From the point of view of
economic organization, it falls into two contrasted halves--a period
of State supremacy in which the State assumed the supreme direction
of industrial affairs, and a period of State abdication in the
nineteenth century, during which there was no collective organization,
and economic matters were left to the free play of economic forces
working in a _milieu_ of competition. Positively, these two periods
stand to each other in sharp contrast; negatively there is a point of
close resemblance between them. In neither was there any functional
organization co-ordinating and expressing the economic life of the
nation. In the first period the State regulated industry as a universal
and sovereign authority; in the second period nobody at all was
allowed to regulate industry, which was supposed to regulate itself by
a sort of pre-ordained harmony of economic law. In both periods the
purely economic organizations directed to the performance of specific
functions which were characteristic of mediaeval organization had
disappeared, or at all events had ceased to be the vital regulating
authorities in industrial affairs. Local functional organizations had
ceased to be adequate to the task of control; national functional
organizations had not yet come into being, or, at all events, had not
yet secured recognition.
To-day we stand at the beginning of a new period of economic history.
The Trade Union movement, created mainly as a weapon of defence, is
beginning to challenge capitalist control of industry, and to suggest
the possibility of a new form of functional organization adapted to the
international economy of the modern world. Already in Russia chaotic
but heroic experiments in workers' control are taking place, and, in
every country, the minds of the workers are turning to the idea of
control over industry as the one escape from the tyranny of capitalism
and the wage system. It is, then, of the first importance that, in
framing the functional democracy of twentieth-century industry, we
should cast back our minds to the functional industrial democracy
of the Middle Ages, in order that we may learn what we can from its
successes and its failures, and, even more, gain living inspiration
from what is good and enduring in the spirit which inspired the men who
lived in it and under it.
G. D. H. COLE.
_November 1918._
CHAPTER I
ORIGIN AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
1. The origin of guilds has been the subject of a great deal of
discussion, and two opposing theories have been advanced. According to
the first theory they were the persistence of earlier institutions;
but what were these institutions? Some say that, more particularly
in the south of France, they were of Roman and Byzantine origin, and
were derived from those _collegia_ of the poorer classes (_tenuiorum_)
which, in the last centuries of the Empire, chiefly concerned
themselves with the provision of funerals; or, again, from the
_scholae_, official and compulsory groups, which, keeping the name of
the hall in which their councils assembled, prolonged their existence
till about the year 1000. According to others they were, particularly
in the north, of German origin, and were derived from associations
resembling artificial families, the members of which mingled their
blood and exchanged vows to help each other under certain definite
circumstances; or again, they may have descended in a straight line
from the _ministeriales_, the feudal servitors who, in every royal or
feudal domain of any extent, were grouped according to their trade,
under the authority of a _panetier_,[1] a _bouteillier_,[2] a head
farrier, or a chief herdsman. According to others again, the Church,
that great international association, had, by the example of its
monastic orders and religious brotherhoods, given the laity lessons and
examples of which they were not slow to take advantage.
According to the opposite theory, each guild was a separate creation,
born, as it were, by spontaneous generation, and had no connection
with the past. Associations (_gildae_), _scholae_, colleges--all had
been killed by the hostility of the central power before they had
had time to mature fully. They were children of the necessity which
compelled the weak to unite for mutual defence in order to remedy the
disorders and abuses of which they were the victims. They were the
result of the great associative movement, which, working by turns on
political and economic lines, first gave birth to the communes, and so
created a social environment in which they could live and develop. The
craftsmen, drawn together into one street or quarter by a similar trade
or occupation, the tanners by the river, or the dockers by the port,
acquired for themselves in the towns which had won more or less freedom
the right to combine and to make their own regulations.[3]
As is nearly always the case, there is a kernel of truth in each
of these opposing theories. Certainly it is hardly likely that
the germs or the wreckage of trade associations, existing in the
_collegia_, the _scholae_, the associations, the groups in royal,
feudal, or ecclesiastical domains, should have totally disappeared, to
reappear almost immediately. Why so many deaths followed by so many
resurrections?
The provision trades in particular do not appear to have ceased to be
regulated and organized. If, as Fustel de Coulanges says, "history
is the science of becoming," it must here acknowledge that guilds
already existed potentially in society. It may even be added that in
certain cases, it was to the interest of count or bishop to encourage
their formation; for, as he demanded compulsory payment in kind or
in money, it was to his advantage to have a responsible collective
body to deal with. It is certain, too, that religious society, with
its labouring or weaving monks (the Benedictines or Umiliate for
instance), with its bodies of bridge-building brothers, with its lay
brotherhoods, was also tending to encourage the spirit of association.
But it is none the less true that these organisms,--if not exactly
formless, at any rate incomplete, unstable, with little cohesion, and
created with non-commercial aims,--could not, without the influence
of favourable surroundings, have transformed themselves into guilds
possessing statutes, magistrates, political jurisdiction, and often
political rights. It was necessary that they should find, in Europe,
social conditions in which the need for union, felt by the mass of
the population, could act on their weakness and decadence like an
invigorating wind, infusing new life into them. It was necessary
that they should find in the town[4] which sheltered them, a little
independent centre, which would permit the seeds of the future, which
they held, to grow and bear fruit unchecked.
It may then be concluded that there was, if not a definite persistence
of that which had already existed, at least a survival out of the
wreckage, or a development of germs, which, thanks to the surrounding
conditions, underwent a complete metamorphosis.
2. What we have just said explains both how it was that the guilds
were not confined to any small region, and why they were not of equal
importance in all the countries in which they were established. They
are to be met with in the whole of the Christian West, in Italy as well
as in France, in Germany as well as in England. They were introduced
simultaneously with town life in the countries of the north. There is
sufficient authority for believing that the system which they represent
predominated in those days in the three worlds which disputed the
coasts and the supremacy of the Mediterranean--the Roman Catholic, the
Byzantine, and the Mohammedan. Thus there reigned in the basin of that
great inland sea a sort of unity of economic organization.
This unity, however, did not exclude variety. The guilds were more
alive and more powerful as the towns were more free. Consequently it
was in Flanders, in Italy, in the "Imperial Towns," in the trading
ports, wherever, in fact, the central authority was weak or distant,
that they received the strongest impetus.
They prospered more brilliantly in the Italian Republics than at Rome
under the shadow of the Holy See. In France, as in England, they had
to reckon with a jealous and suspicious royalty which has ever proved
a bad neighbour to liberty. The more commercial, the more industrial
the town, the more numerous and full of life were the guilds; it was
at Bruges or at Ghent, at Florence or at Milan, at Strasburg or at
Barcelona, that they attained the height of their greatness; at all
points, that is, where trade was already cosmopolitan, and where the
woollen industry, which was in those days the most advanced, had the
fullest measure of freedom and activity.