Craft guild

“ The number of craft guilds in an important city might be very large. London and Paris at one time each had more than one hundred, and Cologne in Germany had as many as eighty. The members of a particular guild usually lived in the same street or quarter of the city, not only for companionship but also for better supervision of their labor. [12]
INDUSTRIAL MONOPOLY Just as the merchant guild regulated town trade, so the craft guilds had charge of town industry. No one could engage in any craft without becoming a member of the guild which controlled it and submitting to the guild regulations. ”

“ In fact, every London trade of twenty men had its own guild. The guild secured good work for its members and the members maintained the reputation of the work standards of the guild. Bad work was punished and night work prohibited as leading to bad work. The guild exercised moral control over its members and provided sickness and death benefits for them. There was much overlapping in the two forms of association: the craft guild and the religious fraternity. Apprentices were taken in to assure an adequate supply of competent workers for the future. ”

“ Guilds are best remembered, however, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as monopolist organisations, and a third of all the towns in England, with the possible exception of London, had their merchant guild, or body of traders and handicraftsmen, engrossing the local commerce to the exclusion of all men without their ranks. The craft guild was a century behind the merchant guild in its rise and development. ”

“ In some boroughs, fines for infractions of these regulations were split between the guild and the government.
In some towns, the merchant guilds attempted to directly regulate the craft guilds. Crafts fought each other. There was a street battle with much bloodshed between the goldsmiths and the parmenters and between the tailors and the cordwainers in 1267 in London. There was also a major fight between the goldsmiths and the tailors in 1268. The Parish Clerks' Company was chartered in 1233. ”

“ The head officer of the guild usually controlled the borough, which excluded rival merchant guilds. A man might belong to more than one guild, e.g. one for his trade and another for religion.
Craft guilds grew up in the towns, such as the tanners at Oxford, which later merged with the shoemakers into a cordwainers' guild. There were weavers' guilds in several towns, including London, which were given royal sanction and protection for annual payments (twelve pounds of silver for London) . They paid an annual tribute and were given a monopoly of weaving cloth within a radius of several miles. ”

“ If we remember the thousand-and-one prohibitions with which the guild statutes bristled—the prohibition to mould seals with engraved letters, the regulations which in every craft prevented all change and consequently all improvement in manufacture, it is easy to understand how “great” industry, without deliberate effort, but by its very development, overthrew the economic order which had reigned in the Middle Ages. The guilds, moreover, with the best intentions in the world, fought against innovations which seemed to them abominations. ”

“ The merchant guild could admit into their guild country villeins, who became freemen if unclaimed by their lords for a year and a day. Every merchant who had made three long voyages on his own behalf and at his own cost ranked as a thegn. There were also some craft guilds composed of handicraftsmen or artisans. Escaped bonded agricultural workers, poor people, and traders without land migrated to towns to live, but were not citizens. ”

“ Against the autocratic power of the merchant guild arose the craft guilds, or associations of workers in the various trades, those trades abandoned by the merchants, and these guilds "soon rose into dangerous rivalry with the original merchant guild of the town." ”

“ The craft guild was then a common seller of its produce and a common buyer of the raw materials, and its members were merchants and manual workers at the same time. Therefore, the predominance taken by the old craft guilds from the very beginnings of the free city life guaranteed to manual labour the high position which it afterwards occupied in the city. (4) In fact, in a medieval city manual labour was no token of inferiority; it bore, on the contrary, traces of the high respect it had been kept in in the village community. ”

“ Every guild possessed, in one of the numerous churches, a chapel or at least an altar of its own, maintained and adorned at the guild's expense. Control was exercised over the members' regular attendance at divine service, and neglect of this duty was severely punished. At religious processions, like that on Corpus Christi Day, all craft guilds displayed extraordinary splendour; the members appeared corporately, in holiday clothes, and armed. The seniors, with badges and maces, marched ahead, followed by the brethren of the guild, in closed ranks, with ensigns spread and swords drawn. ”

“ The female as well as the male members had a right to wear the livery of the guild. Women were engaged in trade and even in manufacture, and so had direct interest in the craft guilds, aside from that which they would naturally feel through the relations thereto of their husbands and brothers. In the work of his trade a member was always allowed to employ his wife, his children, and his maid, for the whole household of the guild brother belonged to the guild. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Industry was carried on under a system of enterprise at once public and private, associative and individual. The unit of production was the workshop [Pg xiv] 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. ”

“ The making and selling of goods diverged e.g. as the cloth merchant severed from the tailor and the leather merchant severed from the butcher. These craftsmen formed themselves into guilds, which sought charters to require all craftsmen to belong to the guild of their craft, to have legal control of the craft work, and be able to expel any craftsman for disobedience. These guilds were composed of master craftsmen, their journeymen, and apprentices. ”

“ The economic aim comes first in time and importance. The guild was first and foremost a fighting organization for the defence of the trade interests of those who belonged to it. It was jealous both of the welfare and of the honour of the craft—two things intimately connected; for it realized that good reputation is one of the conditions of good business. Naturally the first means to suggest itself for the attainment of this double ideal was the regulation of production and sale.
With regard to production, the guilds prided themselves on giving an official guarantee to the consumer. ”

“ He produced for his guild first; for a brotherhood of men who knew each other, knew the technics of the craft, and, in naming the price of each product, could appreciate the skill displayed in its fabrication or the labour bestowed upon it. Then the guild, not the separate producer, offered the goods for sale in the community, and this last, in its turn, offered to the brotherhood of allied communities those goods which were exported, and assumed responsibility for their quality. ”

“ The Armourers were one of the smaller companies of the city of London, yet the above-mentioned guild was not, I conceive, a trade guild. Most of those associations of artisans combined with the regulations respecting their craft or mystery others that made them partake also of the nature of the religious guilds which were then so numerous, and resembled benefit clubs in modern times; [2] but I think we shall see reason to believe, that this fraternity or guild of St. George was in reality a religious guild, though there may be some obscurity about the matter. ”

“ It has been remarked above, that even in the case of craft guilds, such as this Society of Pinners undoubtedly was, many of the ordinary purposes of the religious guilds were looked to equally with the more obvious object of protecting the special trade or handicraft of the specific society. ”

“ In London, the Goldsmiths, the Mercers, and the Saddlers became the first guilds to receive, in 1394-5, charters of incorporation, which gave them perpetual existence. As such they could hold land in "mortmain", thus depriving the King of rights that came to him on the death of a tenant-in-chief. They were called Livery Companies.
In all towns, the organization of craft associations spread rapidly downwards through the trades and sought self-government. Craft guilds were gaining much power relative to the old merchant guilds in governing the towns. ”

“ Craft-guilds. —Craftsmen of like occupations joined together in guilds also and they, too, became not only numerous but very influential. They regulated their own internal affairs and specified how many apprentices might be entered, and under what circumstances a man might become a journeyman or master craftsman. Numerous other guilds, social and religious, were extant throughout Europe. ”

“ These, too, after the Black Death period, increased in power and wealth. Each guild looked well after the interests of its own craft. It regulated the number of apprentices which a craftsman might have, the hours of work, the rate of pay; it made provision for helping its members in sickness and need; and it saw to burying them decently when they died. Guilds took a lively interest in their parish churches, helped sometimes in forming new schools, hospitals, and alms-houses, and had regular times for meeting together for business and for [Pg 143] feasting. ”

“ This explains why even here they sought to reduce competition to a minimum. Only six barbers were allowed in Limoges, and when one of them died, his successor was elected after a competitive examination. At Angers the head of the guild only created new master butchers every seven years, and even then it was necessary to obtain the consent of the other masters. [52] In certain towns when a family in possession of a craft died out, its house of business and appliances reverted to the guild, which indemnified the heirs. ”

“ If a member falls into misfortune his guild is expected to succor him and especially, if he dies, to look after his widow and assist his orphans to learn their father's craft. Each organization also has its own banner, very splendid, hung ordinarily beside the guild's altar, but in the civic processions proudly carried by one of the syndics, the craft's officers. To be a syndic in an influential guild is the ordinary ambition of about every young industrialist. ”

“ Now that the monasteries had ceased to be the exclusive nurseries of art and literature, the masters of the different arts and crafts usually belonged to the middle classes of the towns, where at first each art or craft had its own fraternity, and as the idea of trade-association crew, the crafts most nearly related would form a guild or corporation. All who joined these corporations bound themselves to work only as the ruler of the guild permitted. ”

“ In all large towns the merchants had formed associations for mutual protection and the advancement of trade, called merchant guilds. Artisans now instituted similar societies, under the name of craft guilds. For a long time the merchant guilds endeavored to shut out the craft guilds,—the men, as they said, "with dirty hands and blue nails,"—from having any part in the government of the towns. But eventually the latter got their full share, and in some cases, as in London, became the more influential party of the two. ”

“ Craft guilds grew up later, not, as in other countries, opposed to the merchants, but under their authority, formed merely to promote and regulate matters belonging to their own crafts. Master and wardens met regularly in the common hall, and every full craftsman worth twenty shillings might be a brother. ”

“ In France, from the days of the Consulate and of the Empire, professional guilds (notaries, lawyers, solicitors, law-court officers, stockbrokers, etc.) were formed and still exist. The practice of more than one profession—such as medicine, dispensing, printing—remained under the control of the public authority. Butchers and bakers, under new regulations, remained in this state till 1858 and 1863. In 1805, three hundred wine-sellers demanded, without success, the restoration of the old craft guilds and of their own in particular. ”

“ The guilds were more or [Pg 20] less of the nature of masonic societies, whose concerns were by no means limited to the mere trade-function that appeared on the surface. "Business" had not as yet begun to absorb the whole life of men. The craft or "mystery" was a function intimately interwoven with the whole concrete social existence. But it is interesting to observe among the symptoms of transition characterising the sixteenth century, as noted above, the formation of companies of merchants apart from and outside the old guild-organisation. ”

“ 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. ”