INTERNAL CAUSES OF DECAY
The guilds could only have been successful in their resistance to all
these menaces if they had possessed plasticity, flexibility in adapting
themselves, a desire for reformation, an eagerness to fall in with
every new demand society might make, a spirit of continuity, unity, and
justice,--in fact, such a combination of strong and great qualities as
is rarely to be met with in the history of human institutions.
We shall find that, instead of this, they allowed their inherent faults
and failings, which we have already discovered in germ, to develop at
the very height of their prosperity.
It will be seen at a glance that three things grew up in their midst:
_a lack of solidarity between those who occupied the various degrees of
the hierarchy_; _divisions between the different craft guilds_; _and a
narrow traditionalism which could not even ensure the good quality of
products_.
Let us trace the disastrous effects of these three dissolvent forces.
I. _Division in the heart of the Guilds._--(_a_) In principle there
existed in the guild a hierarchy which justified its own existence.
It was founded on age and election. On the one hand, an inequality
which time corrected every day and finally did away with. Adolescence
was the age of apprenticeship; early manhood that of the journeyman;
maturity that of mastership; and a man's earnings, independence, and
power increased not only with the years, but according to his talent
and capabilities. On the other hand--and here we have a still more
provisional inequality--the elected officers received for a few months
only, a power which they exercised under strict control, and then went
modestly back into the ranks.
This order of things, however, was soon upset by the growing domination
of hereditary power and of wealth.
The masters, anxious to secure a life of ease for their posterity,
and filled with a sort of dynastic ambition, made the acquisition of
mastership more and more difficult for those who had not the good luck
to be their sons, nephews, or sons-in-law. Even in the Middle Ages they
had given way to the influence of domestic affection, but, as modern
times draw nearer, the circle of the privileged narrows. Those who
were connected with the family by any tie received all the favours;
periods of apprenticeship, rights and expenses of admissions, were
reduced or done away with; technical proofs of ability degenerated
into a simple formality which could be passed through at home. For
every one else, old obligations were not only maintained but added
to; expenses increased to such an extent that in France the Crown
intervened more than once to prevent their rise;[128] crying injustices
served as a pretext for the great ordinance of 1581; candidates were
taken advantage of and made to give banquets, even when they had been
refused admission; the tests became more and more complicated, cost
more and more, and were often conducted with revolting partiality. As
if this were not enough, the guilds arbitrarily reduced the number of
masterships, some of them refusing to admit new masters for ten years,
while others definitely decided only to admit the sons of masters.
From the sixteenth century, the butchers in Paris, Poitiers, and other
places quite frankly decreed that mastership was to be hereditary among
them.
The same narrowing down applied to the attainment of magistracies. The
duties of wardens and officers tended to be perpetuated in certain
families: the electoral lists were weeded out in such a way as only to
include the oldest masters. Sometimes even the officers nominated their
successors, and this gave them the opportunity of forming a permanent
oligarchy which divided the honours among its members. One step more
in the same direction would have been enough to make them in turn
hereditary.
The influence of money was combined with this family favouritism,
counteracting it at times, but usually backing it up. None could
be master unless he were rich, for the cost of admission, in the
eighteenth century in France, rose to 1500 and 1800 francs. At the end
of the seventeenth century, in the same country, the guilds which were
in debt themselves sold letters of mastership to the highest bidder
or contracted debts with their richest members, and even put up the
wardenships for sale.
(_b_) These measures, which, through the fault of the guilds
themselves, falsified the normal action of their statutes, were
accompanied by an increasingly strict subjection of inferiors to
superiors.
The journeymen were treated with growing severity. Not only were
they forbidden as heretofore to set up for themselves, but their
condition was certainly worse in the seventeenth century than in the
thirteenth. The working day, which averaged twelve hours, was prolonged
to sixteen during the lighter months. Holidays, reduced in number by
the Reformation, were in turn reduced by the Catholics. La Fontaine's
cobbler, who worked on his own account, complained of M. le curé who
De quelque nouveau saint charge toujours son prône.
But the journeyman, who had no reason to dislike so many holidays; was
not pleased to find their number decreasing in the following century.
The increase in the nominal wages was not enough to compensate for
the rise in the price of provisions and rent; the value of gold and
silver had gone down considerably since the influx of precious metals
which the New World had poured over Europe. More than this, at the
very time when cheap labour was increasing through the employment of
peasants, women, and children, the jealous persistence of the masters
in barring entrance into the higher grade to those among their workmen
who possessed the necessary capabilities made the price of hired labour
fall still lower. _Compagnonnage_ acted as a check on these causes of
depression, but it was quite insufficient, and was hampered in many
ways.
This ever-deepening separation between masters and journeymen was
followed by separations between the masters themselves. In certain
guilds they became divided into the _young_, _modern_, _old_, and
_bachelor masters_--these last ex-officers,--each section possessing
different rights.
The officers abused their rights to visit, search, seize, and fine;
the regulations were so difficult to carry out literally, that it was
always possible to discover some weak point in them by means of which
a rival could be annoyed. Money could also be made at his expense
if the delinquent would and could pay to be let off. The officers
thus created a monopoly within a monopoly--and, if we may judge by
the enquiries and lawsuits to which it gave rise,[129] an extremely
profitable monopoly. In 1684 the officers of the cloth-of-gold and silk
workers were convicted of having taken £72 for authorizing a breach of
the rules. It may well be imagined what a source of angry discontent
were those breaches of trust, and it will be seen to what an extent the
guild system had been discredited by the very persons whose mission it
was to see it loyally carried out.
2. _Division between the craft guilds._--One is sometimes tempted
to say that the guild system had no worse enemies than the guilds
themselves, so much bitterness did they display in their quarrels and
recriminations. Town fought with town, and in spite of the efforts
made by the central authority to unite them they had no idea whatever
of agreeing or combining among themselves. Every one has heard of the
interminable disputes which dragged on between the Hanses of Paris and
Rouen concerning the navigation of the Seine.[130] Each had, within its
own region, the monopoly of the transport industry, one from the bridge
of Charenton to that of Nantes, the other, from the latter point to
the mouth of the river. The fight between the two powerful companies
lasted several hundred years, till at last the day arrived when the two
monopolies were impartially suppressed by the Crown.
In each town, as the line drawn between two crafts was often vague
and purely conventional, the guilds were more rivals than allied
neighbours. Lawsuits resulted which, on account of their length
and the expense of legal proceedings, were absolutely ruinous to
both parties. They are mentioned at Poitiers, which was at law for a
century.[131] At Paris, the lawsuit between the wine-merchants and
the Six Guilds lasted a hundred and fifty years. The founders within
a few years[132] entered into actions "against the edge-tool makers
to prevent them from making fire-dogs; against the needle and awl
makers to contest their right of selling thimbles other than those of
Paris; against the gilders to claim from them the exclusive right of
founding, working up, and repairing copper goods; against the makers
of weights and measures to claim equal rights with them in selling
half-pound weights;[133] against the pin-makers, makers of kitchen
utensils, button-makers, and sculptors." In England, the bow-makers
might not make arrows, and the right was reserved to a special class
of arrow-makers. Legal expenses for the Paris guilds alone amounted
to nearly a thousand a year towards the middle of the eighteenth
century. From a sense of _esprit de corps_, however, they persisted in
wasting their substance, to the benefit of the legal profession which
made enormous profits, and they defied royal edicts which attempted
to restrain their zeal in litigation. They were far from putting into
practice the motto of the Six Guilds, _Vincit concordia fratrum_; far
from realizing that solidarity which was the very object of the guild
system.
3. _Vexatious regulations._--The guilds were not only jealous of each
other but also devoid of economic initiative. This was on account of
the privileges they held. As each one possessed a monopoly, they were
inclined to go to sleep in the little closed domain which belonged
to them. How could they be expected to go in search of improvements,
when they were so slow in adopting them? St. Routine was their common
patron. The application of a new method might promise larger profits or
lessen the cost of production; but it was certain to entail expense,
risk, and effort. It seemed to them easier to shut themselves behind
a wall like the Great Wall of China. Every innovation encountered
their determined opposition. A few instances chosen from among a
thousand will suffice to prove their obstinate conservatism. I will
take one from Great Britain.[134] "In 1765, on the eve of those great
inventions which were entirely to transform working appliances, it was
forbidden, under penalty of a fine, to substitute metal carders for
the teazles still in use in the greater number of the branches of the
textile industry." I will take two other instances from France; at
Poitiers[135] the cap-makers greeted the advent of loom-made stockings
with marked disfavour, and at Paris the disputes between Erard, the
maker of clavecins, and the musical-instrument makers are well known.
This exaggerated respect for tradition was also the result of the
change which had taken place in the internal government of the guilds.
Their direction had passed into the hands of the old members, who,
no doubt, possessed the experience of age, but had also that fear of
everything new so common to those of advanced years.
Like so many other closed and static bodies, the guilds were faithful
to the past, hostile to the future, and were to find themselves without
resources and defenceless when they had to meet the cold but tonic
breath of that competition, which is no doubt cruel for the weak
and death to ill-timed enterprise, but which is also stimulating to
human activity and an encouragement to the progress of industrial and
commercial technique.
Would that their tyrannical regulations had succeeded in guaranteeing
honest exchange and good quality of production! In this respect,
however, they no longer exercised the least control. Antoine de
Montchrestien in the time of Henry IV. denounced the deceptions of
commerce and industry.[136] In England from the fourteenth century damp
spices, second-hand furs, and sheep-skins passing as buck-skin were on
the market, and in the woollen trade the principle arose that it is for
the buyer to take his own precautions.[137]
Henceforth the statutes were broken by the very people who had made
them and sworn to keep them. Men were found practising several
professions, cornering raw materials and carrying on clandestine sales
below the fixed tariffs; illegal practices for securing clients or for
enticing away a colleague's workmen became common. Over and over again
the officers and wardens of a craft had to inflict severe punishments,
but in many cases they were themselves guilty supervisors in need of
supervision! Their frauds often merited the condemnation they received.
Thus, through their own failings, quite as much as through the action
of unfavourable surroundings, the guild system dwindled away, till,
near the end of the seventeenth century, it was little more than one
of those worn-out institutions which live on from force of habit;
institutions which one hesitates to help in destroying, because it is
difficult to know how they can be replaced, but so weak and tottering
that they are at the mercy of the first shock. The eighteenth century
was to give them their _coup de grâce_.