CHAPTER XIV: GILD REGULATION.

§ 787. Erroneous interpretations of social phenomena are often caused by carrying back modern ideas into ancient times, and supposing that motives which might then have prompted us to do certain things were the motives which prompted uncivilized or semi-civilized men to do them. One example occurs in the usual belief that the symbols which everywhere meet us in the accounts of men’s usages, were consciously chosen—that symbols originated as symbols. But in all cases they were the rudiments of things that were once in actual use. It is assumed, for instance, that a totem, the distinguishing mark of a tribe or individual, was at the outset deliberately selected; whereas, as we have seen (§§ 144, 176), the primitive totem was something rendered sacred by a supposed personal relation to it, usually as ancestor; and when, at a later stage among some tribes, it became a custom for the young savage to choose a totem for himself, the act bore the same relation to the original genesis of totems, as the act of choosing a coat of arms bears to the original genesis of coats of arms. In either case symbolization is secondary not primary.

The undeveloped man is uninventive. As tools and weapons were derived from the original simple stick or club by incidental deviations, so throughout: it was not by intention that the processes and usages of early social life were reached, but through modifications made unawares. Edition: current; Page: [449] Non uninventiveness only, but conversatism too, prevents conscious divergence from whatever is established. With the savage the power of custom is overwhelming, and also with the partially civilized. We may therefore be sure that institutions of which we seek the origins have arisen not by design but by incidental growth. Familiar as we are with the formation of societies, associations, unions, and combinations of all types, we are led to think that the savage, similarly prompted, proceeds in analogous ways; but we are wrong in thus interpreting his doings.

Proof is furnished by the truth before pointed out, that the initial step in social evolution is made in an unintended way. Men never entered into any social contract, as Hobbes and Rousseau supposed. Subordination began when some warrior of superior prowess, growing conspicuous in battle, gathered round him the less capable; and when, in subsequent battles he again, as a matter of course, took the lead. Though during intervals between wars he was not at first acknowledged as head, yet inevitably he exercised special influence—influence which eventually grew into chieftainship. And if the primary social institution arose in this undesigned way, we may be sure that secondary institutions also were undesigned.

The implication is that gilds were not social inventions. Another fact has the same implication: they are found all over the world. Were they social inventions they would be exceptional; whereas they exist, or have existed, among many peoples of different types. In two ways then we are prompted to ask out of what preceding social structures they arose; and to this the obvious reply is—family-groups developed into clusters of relatives. Urban influences and urban occupations presently caused them to deviate from the primitive type of structure; but the primitive type was that contemplated in the three preceding chapters.

We have just seen that while still rural in its character, the village community had begun to differentiate: certain Edition: current; Page: [450] leading occupations falling into the hands of particular individuals or families. Industrial structures afterwards reached, must have arisen from these germs. As shown by several quotations in the last chapters, one of these village-communities had a political government as well as an industrial government. Though originally coextensive, these, in the ordinary course of evolution, presently ceased to be so; and the industrial body, contained within the whole political body, tended to acquire separateness: leaving outside of it that mass of unprivileged and immigrant persons who had no claims of kinship. If we ask what happened when one of these village-communities, favourably circumstanced, grew to unusual size, or when several became united into a small town, we may conclude that while increase in the numbers of all those industrially occupied was followed by definite combination of them, smaller increases in the numbers of those occupied in special trades must in smaller degrees have also tended to produce segregation. The different kinds of gilds must severally have had their indefinite forms before they became known as gilds. Though at a late stage, when gilds had become familiar combinations, new ones might artificially assume definite shapes in imitation of those already existing, we may not suppose that the original gilds were formed artificially and definitely. But now carrying with us this preliminary conception let us contemplate the evidence.

§ 788. Already it has been shown that naturally, as they become specialized, occupations tend to become family-occupations; and, as families grow into stirps, to become the occupations of increasing clusters of relatives. Alike because of the ease with which each descendant is initiated in the “art and mystery” of the craft, and because of the difficulty in the way of his admission as a worker in any other group than the domestic one, he falls into the inherited kind of business; and clan-monopolizations necessarily establish Edition: current; Page: [451] themselves. Here are illustrations taken from extinct and remote societies.

Concerning the Hebrews it may be remarked that the name “bakers’ street” (Jer. xxxvii. 21) shows that in Jerusalem the bakers dwelt together; and again that “the cheesemakers of Jerusalem dwelt together in a special quarter, the cheesemakers’ valley (Jos. War. v. 4. 1).” This clustering together is indirectly implied by the fact which Lumbroso points out:—

Moreover in Nehemiah iii. 8, 31, 32, allusion is made to something like gilds of goldsmiths, apothecaries, and spice-merchants.

How the implied usage, spontaneously originating, gradually passes into imperative law, or something like it, is shown in the case of ancient Egypt. Rawlinson writes:—

As already shown in § 733, such specialized groups of workers had arisen in Rome before recorded times.

Let us turn to existing peoples. In China, where ancestor-worship is so dominant and family-organization consequently so pronounced, there are unions of silk-weavers and dyers, gold-beaters, blacksmiths, millers, needle-makers, carpenters, masons, barbers, kittysols, pewterers, fishing-boat-owners, tea-merchants, bankers. And though, in the following extract from Williams, we get no clue to the origin of these gilds, which doubtless dates back thousands of years, yet we get evidence concerning their nature and actions quite congruous with the hypothesis of family-origin.

Indications of family-origin are elsewhere yielded by the localization of trades already illustrated in Hebrew usages. For if gilds grew out of groups of kindred, the proximity of like traders would of course result: relatives would gather together for mutual protection. In Cairo at the present time such localization may be observed, and harmonizes with references contained in the Arabian Nights, which, though fictions, furnish valid evidence of social habits. Again in Shway Yoe’s account of Burma we read:—

So, too, is it in Siberia. At Nijni Novgorod the streets are called after the names of the merchandize sold therein. And it was thus in ancient England. Says Kemble:—

Then, as ordinarily happens, that which grew up as a custom tended to become a law. Early in the sixteenth century it was enacted that—

Presented as these facts are by societies unlike in race and remote from one another in place and time, we cannot but infer that gilds germinated from some structure common to them all; and the multiplying family-group is the only such structure.

§ 789. Of evidences that the gild in its primitive form arose out of the cluster of relatives, perhaps the strongest is the religious bond which held together its members; implied by periodical meetings for joint worship. Among Christian nations this points back to the pre-Christian times in which there doubtless existed among the peoples of Northern Europe, as among those of Southern Europe, and as still among the Hindus, occasions on which the eldest ascendant male of the family-group made sacrifices to the spirits of ancestors. Naturally this habit survived when the worship came to be of another kind.

Whether the members of the group formed a rural community or an urban community, essentially similar connexions were thus formed and maintained among them. Of course perpetual conquests of people by people, and consequent social dislocations, have tended to confuse the evidence. Some, however, may here be given. Writing of Mexico, Prescott says:—

Movers’ account of a far-distant people, the Phœnicians, yields facts of allied meaning.

And this segregation carried out, probably associated those of the same stirp. Doubtless retaining their preceding pagan usages, along with the super-posed Christian creed, the early English exhibited kindred relations. Says Brentano—“The Craft-Gilds were, like the rest of the Gilds, at the same time religious fraternities.” According to its statutes the Abbotsbury Gild, dating from the time of Canute, had for its purposes—

The long survival of this religious character is shown by Mrs. Green’s digest of fifteenth century records.

But in its primitive form this multiplying family-group out of which the industrial group developed (becoming as time went on changed by the admission of those of other blood) had not only a religious character but also a political character; and tended to evolve within itself the essentials of an independent social structure.

§ 790. The quasi-political autonomy of these early groups was a concomitant of the enmities among them. Between adjacent tribes of savages, trespasses frequently committed generate chronic antagonisms; and chronic antagonisms were similarly generated between settlements of the scarcely less savage men from whom we have descended. Says Cunningham:—

And how well established was this diffused enmity is implied by the fact that, just as the other savages above referred to, had neutral meeting places for the occasional exchange of commodities; so the Anglo-Saxons had boundary stones within the waste lands, or “marks,” separating their settlements, at which they met to trade.

This early state, during which inter-village relations were swayed by sentiments like those which now sway international relations, long continued, and left its traces in the intercourse between groups after large places had grown up. In another county a trader had no better status than if he belonged to another country. As Cunningham says, “the Norwich merchant who visited London was as much of a foreigner there as a man from Bruges or Rouen.” One consequence was that transactions with outsiders were municipally administered.

This condition of things had for its natural concomitant a practical identity of the gild organization with the municipal organization. The earliest gilds—cnighten gilds—as existing in Canterbury (where the gild is described as “cnights of Canterbury, or ceapmann guild”), Winchester, London, and Cambridge—were in large measure agencies for local government. “In many cases the inhabitants of the town and the inhabitants of the guild were practically coextensive bodies;” and by the charter of Edward IV, the city-franchise was practically limited to the members of the trades and mysteries. In further evidence may be named the regulations of the Cambridge gild which “were less concerned with the recovery of property than with enforcing due Edition: current; Page: [456] money penalties for manslaughter and personal injuries.” So, too, Lappenberg tells us that—“At the head of the gilds, as of the cities, we usually find earldormen.” And still more specific is Brentano, who, concerning town-organization before and after the Conquest, writes:—

Of course, following the process of evolution, primitive coincidence passed into divergence as growth became great. This is shown by the fact that in London, the political administration separated from the industrial so early that there remains little clear trace of the original gild-merchant. Moreover we see, locally illustrated, the truth already illustrated at large, that all kinds of regulation are differentiated from one primitive kind. Even still, where social development is less advanced, as in the principalities of Eastern Europe, the old communal organization is traceable in both the municipal and the trading organizations.

§ 791. Turning now to the industrial characters of these merchant-gilds, which gradually differentiated from earlier local combinations having religious and municipal characters, we have first to note that subordination of the industrial government to the political government is again shown. These gilds were incorporated by charters—charters each of which, in the beginning, was bought from some feudal superior, who might be archbishop, lay seigneur, or lord of the manor, chapter, or monastery; but who, in later times, when feudal powers were subordinated by royal powers, became the king. By one of these charters there was practically made over to the gild, for a consideration, the right of electing officers, of authorizing the carrying on of trades, and of making industrial regulations. Of course they had Edition: current; Page: [457] this quasi-political character at the time when they were practically identical with the municipal governments, and they retained it in large measure after they became separate. One proof of this is that they had their own laws and courts, in which civil causes might be determined.

At the outset one of these merchant-gilds included the various kinds of traders inhabiting the place. Each member of it was a maker of the article he dealt in—a substantial artisan having such property and household as enabled him to carry on a business and train an apprentice. His membership conferred gild-privileges on his wife, daughter, and maid-servants, and in most cases on his widow. But whereas originally each master was himself a worker, in course of time, as towns grew and some masters prospered more than others, there arose distinctions: differentiation began. Becoming rulers of the gild, its wealthier members grew into a gild-aristocracy; and as fast as there arose a class of masters distinguished from the class of workers, the class of masters strove to monopolize gild-privileges, and successfully sought to keep out the inferior class, not only by prohibitory payments but even by regulations which excluded manual workers—sometimes all those who had “blue nails.” Thus, in Scotland, according to Burton, men were made “incapable of holding the rank of guild-brethren, unless they should abandon the pursuit of their craft with their own hands, and conduct it solely by employing hired operatives.” As is remarked by Mrs. Green in her Town Life in the Fifteenth Century:—

And she adds that “there is evidence to show that it often preceded by a long time the charters which make it legally binding.”

The incorporated bodies formed and developed in these Edition: current; Page: [458] ways, while protecting their members against aggressors and giving them aid in poverty and sickness, and while imposing on them certain wholesome restraints, were mainly concerned with gaining and maintaining artificial advantages. Of these the chief was the right to buy and sell in the town articles of all kinds—not only victuals, which might be sold by the unprivileged, but everything else; and a large part of their function was that of so supervising commercial transactions as to detect and punish, by fines or otherwise, all who infringed these monopolies.

In upholding and extending their exclusive privileges, these bodies inevitably came into conflict with outsiders—sometimes with the municipal government after they became separate from it, and sometimes with unincorporated bodies of workers. An early example was yielded by certain immigrant artizans. In various towns—Winchester, Marlborough, Oxford, and Beverley—“the greatest precautions were taken to prevent a weaver obtaining the franchise of the town, and he had no standing in the courts as against a freeman.” And then, in self-defence, the weavers obtained, by payment, charters of incorporation from the Crown, putting them legally upon a like footing with their antagonists. Groups of native artizans, as, under Edward IV, the tailors of Exeter, similarly bought authority to organize themselves.

But the fact of chief significance for us here, is this. These local trade-governments assumed that liberty to work at this or that is not an inherent right, but a right which the citizen must pay for. In our days it is hard to believe that during the monarchial régime in France, there was definitely established the maxim that “the right to labour is a royal right which the prince may sell and subjects must buy.” But the difficulty of believing this diminishes on remembering that gilds bought their rights of trading from feudal authorities of one or other kind, and it further diminishes on finding that the gilds themselves interpreted in like manner Edition: current; Page: [459] the powers they had bought, and tacitly proceeded upon the maxim that the right to labour was a gild-right which the gild might sell and the affiliated citizen might purchase by payments and services.

§ 792. Progressive differentiation, with consequent increasing heterogeneity, characterized subsequent stages. Once practically coextensive with the free townsmen but presently growing distinct, the merchant-gild itself was eventually replaced by minor combinations of kindred nature—the craft-gilds. Several influences united to generate them. Guided by such evidence as Eastern countries now furnish, and by home evidence which the names of streets given in Anglo-Saxon times still yield, we have inferred that in very early days there existed localized clusters of kindred carrying on particular occupations. This implies that when all the traders of a town formed one gild, there were included in it different groups of artificers, each of which had within itself, if not an overt union, still a tacit union. It is a reasonable inference that from the outset these component groups, some of them larger and some of them smaller parts of the gild, did not cooperate with entire harmony. Hence, from the beginning, a nascent tendency to separate.

While towns were small, and these component groups severally contained few members, the general union was maintained; and it continued even after there had arisen a caste-division between the employers, equivalent to merchants, and the employed or working craftsmen. But when there arose large places the internal jealousies among gild-members, operating alike between the castes and the component groups in each caste, began to tell; and each of the groups, now relatively numerous and powerful, tended to assume independence. This tendency was furthered by another.

With increased urban growth the business of administration, whether by the municipal government or by the Edition: current; Page: [460] merchant-gild or by both, widened and complicated and presently became impracticable without sub-division of functions. The general local government of either kind, almost of necessity fell into the habit of deputing parts of its powers to particular local governments. Thus it is alleged that in London the pre-existing authorities established craft-gilds, “to which special parts of their own duties were delegated by the burgh officers or the local gild-merchant.” And concerning Beverley, in the 14th century, we have the specific statement that—

Certainly in some cases they were municipally authorized. In proof there is the fact that in Exeter the cordwainers’ gild surrendered their powers annually to the town, and were granted a renewal on payment of a fine. Still, if we remembered that ordinarily what became law had previously been custom, we may infer that craft-gilds were not established de novo, either by municipal governments or by merchant-gilds, but had been in existence long before they obtained authorization. This is, indeed, implied by the just named evidence. Had the regulative function of the Exeter cordwainers been a duty imposed upon them by the municipal authority, they would not have been required to pay a fine for the annual renewal of it—would contrariwise have refused to renew it.

That these craft-gilds were not usually formed for public advantage, but for the advantage of their own members, is otherwise clearly shown. In the twelfth century “the goldsmiths, glovers, butchers, and curriers, who had established themselves as corporate bodies without permission from the king, were fined.” Indeed, if we accept Brentano’s view, we must infer that instead of arising by differentiation from the merchant-gilds, they more commonly arose independently Edition: current; Page: [461] among the unorganized workers, in imitation of the organized workers. He says:—

Not the craftsmen only but also their employers became segregated. In London, in the reign of Edward III, companies of merchants were incorporated; and in pursuance of the general tendency to harden custom into law, it was enacted that merchants should severally deal only in commodities of one kind, while artisans should severally confine themselves to one occupation. A concomitant result was, of course, that the original combination of traders tended to lose its power and eventually its existence. “The various younger bodies, which were formed one after another, gradually superseded the gild-merchant altogether and left it no sphere for independent activity.”

The regulative functions of these craft-gilds were both internal and external. Internally they gave definite forms to the customs of the craft and punished gild-brothers who infringed them. To prevent unfair competition with one another, they forbade the use of inferior materials, provided against the enticing away of apprentices, and prohibited night-work. They appointed searchers to detect delinquent brothers and bring them up for judgment, and in some cases they fixed holidays to be observed by the craft. But chiefly their aims were, 1st, to exclude the competition of outsiders, and, 2nd, to keep down their own numbers so as to maintain individual profits. To this end they fixed the terms on which apprentices might be taken and strangers employed. They sought to prevent apprentices from becoming masters; and, by giving privileges to the children of gild-members, they further tended to make the body a close corporation. By impediments, pecuniary and other, admission to gild-membership was made difficult; servant-workmen not belonging Edition: current; Page: [462] to the gild were forbidden to combine; and there were disputes between gilds respecting the limits of their respective businesses.

Lastly, let us not omit to note that the original union of industrial government and political government continued to be variously shown. Only members of gilds were freemen of the town, exercising the franchise. Leading officers of the gilds continued to be the chief town-authorities. And there were, in some cases, powers deputed to the gilds by the municipality.

§ 793. The foregoing sketch of these local industrial institutions, already involved, would have been much more involved had it included descriptions of their many varieties; for in different places, at different times, under different conditions, they have had characters more or less different. Still more complex would have been the account if, instead of limiting it mainly to English gilds, it had taken note of gilds in adjacent countries. But the resulting conception would have remained substantially the same. In France, for example, the system had developed to the extent that there were over 100 incorporated trades. In Paris they were so closely associated with the municipal government that in the earliest times they had police-duties divided among them, and in war-time had to perform garrison duties. As in England, a trade could be carried on only after passing through a regulated apprenticeship. A master might not have more than one apprentice at a time. There were contests between gilds respecting the inclusion of this or that kind of work in their respective businesses.

Considered in its general character, the policy of gilds implies that prevailing antagonism which characterized the times to which they belonged. In less violent ways these small groups sought to do that which the larger groups including them did in more violent ways. To preserve its territory, or to get more territory, each nation carried on Edition: current; Page: [463] conflicts with adjacent nations. Within the region which each occupied, were feudal divisions held by lords who fought with one another for supremacy or minor advantage. The assemblage of men constituting a town, sometimes had struggles with their feudal lords, and habitually dealt with men of other towns as foreigners at enmity with them. And within each town there grew up these separate bodies of traders, all of them hostile to outsiders and often more or less hostile to one another.

But the general truth of chief concern for us, is that while each gild fought for the interests of its members by measures now defensive now aggressive, the concomitant of this industrial warfare was the submission of its members to coercive government. The ability to carry on a bread-winning business was conditional on membership of the gild and payment of taxes for its maintenance. Subordination to gild-authorities, and conformity to the laws they established, were insisted upon. Various limitations to working and trading were imposed on each gild-brother. Spies were employed to detect any breaches of regulations he might commit; and he was punished pecuniarily or otherwise when convicted.

Thus the so-called “free-man” of those days was free in but a very qualified sense. Not only in his life at large, but in the carrying on of his business, he was subject to one set of imperative orders by the government of the country, and to another set of orders, no less imperative, by this local industrial government.