Trade guild

“ In Germany an elaborate attempt has been recently made to re-introduce the old guild system made over from its mediaeval form to suit modern conditions, and in other countries where the government does not interfere, the trade guilds, or unions, present insuperable obstacles to any one engaging in their industry who is not a member of the guild or has not gone through the required apprenticeship. ”

“ Later in the towns, there were merchant guilds, which were composed of prosperous traders, who later became landholders. Merchant guilds grew out of charity associations whose members were bound by oath to each other and got together for a guild-feast every month. Many market places were dominated by a merchant guild, which had a monopoly of the local trade. 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. ”

“ Ecclesiastics and women might also be members of the guild, but they were, of course, debarred from becoming burgesses.
The exclusive tendencies which the merchant guild developed made it really an oligarchy, and so there grew up [pg 175] in the towns an ever increasing population that did not share the guild privileges. As the town and its trade developed, the complexity of trade regulations made it a convenience to have guilds with specialized functions, to which the merchant guild might deputize its powers. ”

“ Such guilds may still be found in full work in many parts of India, Thus, in the northwestern districts of Bombay all heads of artisan families are ranged under their proper trade-guild. The trade-guild or caste prevents undue competition among the members, and upholds the interest of its own body in any dispute arising with other craftsmen. ”

“ All through those years which are known as the Middle Ages it was the custom for men who belonged to the same trade to form themselves into a society, or guild as it was called, to protect and help one another in their own particular work. Each trade had its own guild, and its own special saint as guardian. ”

“ The guilds acted very honestly and conscientiously in the interests of both the public and the trade. While they monopolized the industry, restricted the number of persons engaged in it, and permitted no outside competition, they guaranteed the quality of workmanship and product. A guild member putting inferior goods upon the market or in any way detracting from the workmanlike standards of the guild was liable to severe penalties, and as a rule these penalties were conscientiously inflicted. ”

“ A boy inherited his father's trade, whether he liked it or not. Each trade had its guild, to which a worker must belong if he wished to be free to carry on his business. These guilds still exist to-day, but have far less power than labour unions in America or guilds in China. ”

“ Those of the second guild are required to prove only a capital of 20,000 rubles, and their trade is confined to the interior of the empire. They may be proprietors of factories, hotels and boats; but they are not allowed to have more than two horses to their carriages. ”

“ The guild fixed wages, for instance to wool wrappers and flock pullers. Strangers who brought wool to the town for sale could sell only to guild members. A guildsman could not sell wool retail to strangers nor go into partnership with a man outside the guild. Each guild member had to swear the guildsman's oath, pay an entrance fee, and subject himself to the judgment of the guild in the guild court, which could fine or suspend a man from practicing his trade for a year. The advantages of guild membership extended beyond profit in the wool trade. ”

“ The guild established the craftsman’s social status; as a member of a trade corporation he was governed by regulations fixing the number of hands he might employ, the amount of goods he might produce, and the quality of his workmanship; on the other hand, the guild regulated the market, and ensured a demand. Tradesmen, perhaps, did not easily grow rich, but they as seldom became poor.
With centralization life changed. Competition sifted the strong from the weak; the former waxed wealthy, and hired hands at wages, the latter lost all but the ability to labour ”

“ The fact is, that the medieval guild, like the medieval parish, "street," or "quarter," was not a body of citizens, placed under the control of State functionaries; it was a union of all men connected with a given trade: jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers of manufactured goods, and artisans--masters, "compaynes," and apprentices. For the inner organization of the trade its assembly was sovereign, so long as it did not hamper the other guilds, in which case the matter was brought before the guild of the guilds--the city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When Henry IV., on the advice of Montchrestian and Laffemas, wanted to secure French markets to the French by increasing customs tariffs, all the guilds consulted declared themselves in favour of the project, with the exception of the mercers—“sellers of everything, [Pg 79] makers of nothing,” as they were called—thus plainly expressing the hostility of wholesale trade to the exclusive policy which had been pursued by the towns. The great traders represented a revolutionary tendency with regard to the guild system; they were its constant enemies ”

“ Numerous books and documents throw much interesting light on their professional ability and productiveness. The guild's moneys and important documents were kept in a safe—called the guild's chest—usually under double lock. There also the old seals of the guild were preserved, which bore inscriptions in German, Latin, or Polish, and, in the middle, the guild's arms, with the tools and insignia of the trade. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such a guild came in time to prohibit aliens from becoming apprentices, and thus from learning the trade, and even to restricting apprenticeship to the children and relatives of its members who were working in the trade. ”

“ The town guilds began to have less and less to do with agriculture, although at first they were interested in it. The wealth in the town is turned to trade and manufacture, such as there was in those days. So, by the time of the Norman conquest, in 1006, we hear little of town guilds, but in almost every case merchant guilds. The town guild has become a merchant guild, although composed of the same constituency. The commercial spirit has become the ruling spirit of the town. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The members of the guilds, all fighting men usually serving under their own guild banners and their own leaders, were an important part of the military force of the medieval cities. Although they might and did fight on one side or the other of some civic quarrel they always stood for order in the community just as they did for honesty in production and trade. ”

“ What is certain is that by means of this reform the guilds, or rather commerce and trade, had the whole government of the Republic in their hands; and it should also be noted that although the above-mentioned guilds, together with that of the jurists and notaries, constituted the seven greater arts, yet the legal guild—perhaps because it represented neither industry nor commerce—is left unnoticed by the chroniclers at271 this point. Henceforward the Commonwealth is a true republic of traders, and only to be governed by members of the guilds. ”

“ The general of the guild himself is elected by the former members of the trade, that is, those who have passed the age of forty-five. The ex-members of all the guilds also elect the chiefs of the ten great departments or groups of allied trades. ”

“ If they did not possess the right of search or the power over the trade generally, like some of the other Guilds, they by advice and action with the Corporation and Companies have upon many occasions proved most beneficial and valuable. The earliest ordinances of the Guild are of the date 1498. They provide for the elections of the Master and Wardens “wth tokens of garlands on their heds,” the charge of purchasing “clothing or lyvery” for the brotherhood at the drapers’ shops at Blackwell Hall (on or near the site of the present Guildhall Library) ”

“ The guild board determines the number of men it can employ and if it has too many the fact is reported to the general board whose business it is to find work for the surplus men in another trade. The guild board naturally anxious to preserve the credit of its own guild, always selects the least competent of their men for transfer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One of the most powerful and best organized guilds is that of the porters. The interior commerce of the country being almost 395entirely on the backs of men and pack horses, these people have the monopoly of it. They number about ten thousand, and are divided by provinces and districts under the orders of chiefs and inspectors. They have very severe rules for the government of their guild, and crimes among them are punished with death at the order of their chief. They are so powerful that they pretend that even the government dare not interfere with them. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But we find—and to their credit be it said—that the guilds have on the whole, and throughout their history, devoted themselves wisely to the promotion of public advantage, always standing shoulder to shoulder against every attempt at royal encroachment upon the freedom of the commoner, advancing wise measures for the government of the city and the undisturbed conduct of business, and taking all proper care that no member of their fraternity or any merchant of their trade should sell under weight or produce articles below a certain standard of quality. ”