THE MERITS AND DEFECTS OF THE GUILD SYSTEM
We are now in a position to estimate the merits and defects of the
guilds before they fell into decadence and decrepitude.
It is necessary to consider separately the two types of guilds which we
have described; for although they had characteristics in common, they
present more differences than resemblances. Let us see, then, how each
acted on production and sale, and on producers and sellers.
The guild system in the "small" crafts was at once a guarantee of, and
a check on, production and sale. It endeavoured to insure and guard the
consumer against adulteration, falsification, and dishonesty; to stamp
goods with the character of finish, solidity, and relative perfection,
thus giving to them something personal and therefore artistic; to
keep within reasonable limits the profits of the manufacturer, who
was also the merchant. On the other hand, the manufacturer only dealt
with small quantities, was content with a very restricted clientèle,
and aimed at nothing beyond the local market without much chance of
either making a fortune or being ruined. Production thus had but little
vigour, and what was more serious still, its plasticity was interfered
with. The statutes which regulated it resembled feudal castles, which
protected but imprisoned those whom they sheltered. The manufacturer,
hampered by the restrictions which surrounded him, could make no
progress. Industry, bound down by directions which were too precise,
too detailed, too authoritative, could not adapt itself to the many
caprices of fashion or to the changes of taste which are the very life
of human civilizations; its forms were set, its methods petrified.
Invention could not have free play; it was accused of outraging healthy
tradition; it was considered dangerous to set out to create anything
new. In Florence in 1286[89] a cooper complained of being boycotted by
his guild because in making his barrels he bent his staves by means
of water, which was, he said, an advantage to all who bought them. At
Paris[90] it was forbidden to mould seals with letters engraved on
them; apparently the counterfeiting of seals and coins was feared. Who
knows, however, whether this prohibition did not retard by a hundred
years the invention of printing, to which--when a method of making them
movable had been discovered--these engraved letters gave birth?
With regard to producers and sellers, we may go back to the simile of
the strong castle. An instrument of defence for those who were within
the guild easily degenerated into one of tyranny for those who were
without. It was the centre of an ardent and exclusive corporate spirit.
It resolved all the individual egoisms of its members into a great
collective egoism. It is only necessary to recall the quarrels with
neighbouring guilds, and the hostility shown towards workers who were
not enrolled. To the masters of which it was composed it ensured at
least a modest and honest livelihood, the just remuneration of labour,
or, one might almost say, to use a modern formula, the whole product
of labour. It even assured a refuge against misery and distress, the
certainty of assistance in times of trouble, illness, old age, or
misfortune. The fishermen of Arles were bound to give one another
mutual assistance in stormy weather;[91] in Paris among the goldsmiths
one shop remained open every Sunday,[92] and the money from the sales
was divided among the needy of the town and the widows and sick of the
guild. Fines were often used in this way. The guild sometimes even gave
to the travelling workman who found himself at the end of his resources
the means of going in search of work elsewhere. The guild secured to
its members other advantages no less coveted: a good position in public
processions and ceremonies when state dress was worn, or even at the
melancholy solemnities of the public executions;[93] at Lyons, at
the time of the feast of St. John, two furriers with lighted torches
paraded to the church door, mounted on two white mules, and at the
entrance were received by the cross and the canons.[94] But more than
all this, the guild was not only a great family for those who belonged
to it, it was a little self-contained city, a diminutive commune which
the members administered at will, and thereby prepared themselves for
civic life and its duties; it was a training-ground for independent,
well-informed, active citizens, who, with their parliamentary
traditions, republican sentiments, and democratic hopes, formed,
with their fellow-craftsmen of other crafts, a proud, practical, and
courageous middle-class, as anxious to defend their town from outsiders
as to beautify and adorn it.
Journeymen and apprentices shared in these honourable privileges, and
did not suffer unduly from the inequality imposed on them, tempered as
it was by simplicity of manners and by the thought that it was only
temporary.
The guilds of "great" commerce and of "great" industry also had their
fine sense of honour, their complicated regulations, their exclusive
spirit. But what distinguished them was the fact that their capital
was large and that they dealt with a vast market; consequently, while
the former were busy with exchange and transport, traversed land
and sea with their convoys, and constituted themselves the carriers
and brokers of the world, the latter intensified production; they
possessed workshops which for those days were very large, and, in order
to lower their general expenses, were interested in new inventions,
and willingly adopted mechanical methods; at Florence, for example,
metallic carders, which were still prohibited in Great Britain in 1765,
were already in use under the guild system. Banking, commercial and
maritime law, the science of finance, the art of production on a large
scale and of securing international relations certainly owe a great
deal to these merchants and manufacturers, who were the precursors of
modern capitalists.
The members of these powerful guilds amassed enormous fortunes, built
themselves superb palaces, became counsellors and money-lenders to
kings, towns, or popes. Sometimes they were too adventurous in their
speculations and their bankruptcies made a wide stir. Accustomed
to affairs of the highest importance and to court intrigues, they
became diplomats, clever politicians, who willingly took their share
in government; nor was it by chance that the first man in France who
tried to reform the kingdom according to the views of the Third Estate
was Étienne Marcel, provost of the richest Parisian guild. Often,
however, these great burgesses were of an aristocratic spirit. In
the city they opposed the rise of the lower classes, and, in their
magnificent palaces, princes in fact before they were princes in
name, as the Medicis became, they gradually extinguished around them
the love of liberty and of republican virtues. At the same time they
broke up that solidarity which was the very soul of the primitive
guilds; they created a social system which perpetuated riches above
and poverty below; they enslaved and cruelly exploited the clerks
and workers they employed, their attitude towards whom was no longer
that of masters towards journeymen or _compagnons_, but that of lords
towards dependents. In a word, they broke from the conditions which
no longer sufficed for the realization of their ambitions, and they
were preparing, indeed they were already developing, an organization
of labour which anticipated the future. They were the agents of that
profound change which slowly brought about the death of the guilds.