The Obstacle of Industrialism

by A.J. Penty

Not the least of the obstacles that stand in the way of a return of Christendom is the monstrous disproportion that exists between the material and spiritual sides of life. For centuries, and especially since the Industrial Revolution, a larger and larger proportion of our energies have been devoted to the increase and development of our material resources, with the result that the balance between the material and spiritual sides of life which is indispensable to any healthy and normal civilization has been entirely destroyed, and the spiritual life almost crushed out of existence by the dead weight of material preoccupations.

The fact that undue concentration on material things tends to choke the spiritual life was over and over again insisted upon by Jesus Christ. "Take ye no thought, saying. What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or where-withal shall we be clothed (for after all these things do the Gentiles seek)? for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." This is the true political economy; it is the political economy of Christendom, and it is because in some measure the Medievalists pursued this ideal that they were not perplexed by the problem of riches and poverty as it perplexes us to-day. Industrialism is the organization of society on the opposite assumption, "Seek ye first," it says, "material prosperity, and all other things shall be added unto you." But somehow or other it does not work out. These other things are not added, and in the long run the pursuit of riches does not even bring material prosperity. For the concentration of all effort and mental energy upon material achievement upsets the spiritual equilibrium of society. It produces contrasts of wealth and poverty, and out of these come envy, jealousy, class hatreds, economic and military warfare, and finally the destruction of the wealth that has been so laboriously created. For no society built on a lie can endure.

Our industrial society exhibits a spirit that shows itself irreconcilably hostile to all the higher interests of mankind, and all men who care for spiritual things are conscious of this antagonism. Yet as a nation we lack the , courage to face the fact that Industrialism is incompatible with the spiritual life. In the Middle Ages, when the material development of civilization was in its infancy, there were not wanting men to protest with all their might against the corrupting influence of wealth and luxury. St. Francis, in the thirteenth century even, sought to counter the evil by preaching the Gospel of Poverty, and at a later date sumptuary laws were enacted to put a boundary to the growth of personal extravagance, for many people saw the social dangers attendant upon an increase of luxury. In Germany, which in the Middle Ages was the most prosperous country in Europe, extravagance and luxury grew at an alarming pace towards the end of the fifteenth century. Many of the merchants had become richer than kings and emperors, and vanity had prompted them to give visible evidence of their great riches in the adoption of a higher and higher standard of living.

Feasting and gambling increased, while extravagance in dress became the order of the day. Commenting on this, Wimpheling, who was one of the most widely read authors of the period, said that "wealth and prosperity are attended with great dangers, as we see exemplified: they induce extravagance in dress, in banqueting, and what is still worse, they engender a desire for still more. This desire debases the mind of man and degenerates into contempt of God, His Church, and His Commandments." And experience was to prove it led to social catastrophe. The peril arises from the fact that, as extravagance increases, a kind of social compulsion is brought to bear upon others to live up to it whether they can afford to do so or not, and as only the rich can afford to keep up with the standard thus set, a point is soon reached when the need of money is very widely felt. When that point was reached in Germany the same thing happened that has happened with us to-day. Nobody wanted to do any really productive work, but everybody wanted to go into trade where money was to be made. Mercantile houses, shops, and taverns multiplied inordinately, and complaints were made that there was no money but only debts, and that whole districts were drained by usury. The growth of this state of things was followed by the attempt which each class made to save itself from bankruptcy by transferring its burdens on to the shoulders of the class beneath it, which led to the progressive impoverishment of the working class, who had to bear the brunt because the burden could be shifted no farther. Then there arose a bitter enmity between the propertied and the unpropertied classes, and class hatred increased in intensity until finally it led in 1524 to the Peasants' War, which convulsed almost every corner of the Empire from the Alps to the Baltic.

We see then that in attacking extravagance and luxury the Church has been led by a true social instinct. But it becomes daily more evident that to attack extravagance and luxury is not enough. It is necessary to attack those general principles and assumptions of our social and industrial system which of their own nature tend to promote such vices. This fact has of late received some recognition by the Church. The Report of the Archbishop's Committee on "Christianity and Industrial Problems" marks an advance in thought to the extent that it has broken away from that purely personal explanation of social phenomena which satisfied most Churchmen until yesterday, and has recognized that "charity'' with the Church has not been interpreted (as it should be) as "a sort of glorified justice" that "looks at least as much to the prevention of evil as to its cure. On the contrary, it has meant far too exclusively what may be called ambulance work for mankind—the picking up of the wounded and the curing of their wounds." "We have," says the Report, "neglected to attack the forces of wrong. We have been content with the ambulance work when we ought to have been assaulting the strongholds of evil."

In laying down the broad principles which should govern the conduct of Christians in their relation to social questions nothing could be more admirable than this Report. But as it proceeds, the clear vision that marks the early part of the Report gets bedimmed and the writers get entangled in the economic defences of the existing system. Their protests are silenced by those pleas of economic necessity behind which the upholders of the existing order take cover. Thus while on the one hand luxury is attacked, on the other the Report hesitates to carry its attack to its logical conclusion by condemning root and branch those quantitative conceptions upon which our industrial system is based. For it is undoubtedly true that the progressive growth of luxury is a necessary condition of the continued existence of a system that is based upon conceptions of indefinite industrial expansion. It is not too much to say that people nowadays are goaded by advertisers into becoming luxurious. Indeed, unless a man is poor, his difficulty nowadays is how to avoid becoming luxurious, for circumstances combine to force, the individual along the path of luxury whether he likes it or not, and people succumb to luxurious tendencies because they are afraid to appear mean. It may be admitted that expenditure need not be luxurious though it pass the bounds of necessity. Expenditure on the arts, for instance, is of this nature. But this is not the kind of expenditure that is encouraged by latter-day conceptions of industrial expansion. On the contrary, what is encouraged in every sort of vain and useless expenditure on all kinds of things that people would be better without; while the dilemma in which we are placed is that such useless expenditure is necessary to keep the wheels of industry running. There is plenty of unemployment to-day, yet under our existing system if the rich could be induced to abandon luxury unemployment would be actually increased. Hence it is that until we have the courage to attack the principles upon which the industrial system is built there can be no escape from this fundamental dilemma.

This kind of inconsistency must come to an end. We must frankly recognize that the purely quantitative standard is antipathetic to everything that Christianity stands for, for not until we do shall we be able to translate our ideals into the terms of actuality. We must oppose the conception of "maximum production" with that of a "sufficient production." Quantity up to a certain point of course we must have, but we must break with the theory that exalts a standard of quantity as the final test of industrial righteousness, since so long as we accept such a standard, the time will never come when we can say we have produced enough. Appearances will always be against a return to sanity, because when production proceeds beyond a certain point it upsets distribution; and by upsetting distribution, competition is increased and unemployment and poverty is created. The widespread existence of such poverty in turn lends a colour to the demand for still more production, and so we go on from bad to worse, driven from one desperate expedient to another in a vain effort to escape from the consequences of exalting the quantitative standard. The remedy is for us to refuse any longer to sacrifice Christian principles to economic expediency. We can be perfectly assured that what is wrong morally is bad economics; and that professors of economics who maintain the contrary suffer from a constitutional inability to distinguish between appearance and reality.

When we search for an explanation of current fallacies of economics we find that they rest finally on a false philosophy of life—on the belief that work at the best is a disagreeable necessity that it is desirable to reduce to a minimum. In former times it was the normal thing for men to find pleasure and satisfaction in their work. But this is no longer the case. The vast majority of people to-day do not look for any such pleasure or satisfaction. They work in order to get money to live. Their hearts are not in their work, their real interests are outside, either in the pursuit of pleasure, or in some hobby or occupation extraneous to their daily work. Not only do they do as little as they can, but what they do is done in a coeval and slovenly way. The grudging and resentful temper engendered by their daily work infects the whole of life. Character deteriorates: men become restless and dissatisfied. It would matter little if the hours of work were reduced to four or even two hours a day. They would still be restless and dissatisfied. For they would still be in a fundamentally wrong relation to life, and that fact would vitiate the extra leisure they had gained. Men are not men until they have found their true vocation and ministry. When Carlyle said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work : let him ask no other blessedness," he was expressing one of the primary truths of Christian ethics.

All Christians must deplore this demoralization that has overtaken the modern world, and many Christian moralists, recognizing the evil, have attempted to combat it. But they have all failed. They have failed to establish points of contact with the modern mind, and this for the simple reason that they have chosen to ignore the vital facts of the situation. With men to-day as in the past it would be the normal and natural thing for them to find pleasure in their work were it not that they are prevented from doing so by circumstances. Their work fails to inspire them for two reasons. Firstly because as it is done at the dictation and in the interests of profiteers, they cannot feel the call of service; and secondly, because under our industrial system work has become so monotonous that everyone is bored by it.

Recognizing these facts, any analysis of the problem of work and industry that would grapple with the realities of the situation must reassert the claims of the producer. It may be true that the needs of the consumer are the primary basis of any economic system. Yet the producer has equal claims for consideration, since an analysis based entirely upon the needs of the consumer will, if carried to its logical conclusion, lead inevitably to the enslavement and degradation of the producer, for instead of being regarded as a human being he will come to be regarded merely as an instrument for the increase of wealth. To such an extent has development proceeded in this direction that the only way to restore a condition of normality in industry is to assert the claims of the producer, affirming self-expression through work to be a spiritual necessity. The moment we assert this we come into collision with Industrialism as a machine producing wealth, no matter how equitably its products could under some future system be distributed, because it denies all opportunities whatsoever for self-expression.

Industrialism destroys interest in work because it tends towards an ever increasing specialization. This is the key to the problem. We are accustomed to associate the evil with the spread of machine production, but strictly speaking the evil does not reside in machinery, but in the subdivision of labour which preceded the introduction of machinery and which is responsible for its misapplication. And here it is necessary to distinguish between the division of labour which is legitimate and the subdivision of labour which is illegitimate. The former is a necessity in every civilized community, for it is obvious that a man cannot supply all his own needs, since to some extent he is inevitably dependent upon others. No sooner did civilization begin to develop than this necessity brought about the specialization of men into different trades. One man became a weaver, another a carpenter, and so forth. Up to this point the division of labour is justified, not merely because it is a necessity of civilization, but because it enlarges the opportunities of expression of the individual. What, however, we understand by the subdivision of labour is measures taken to increase the output in the interests of profiteering by splitting up a trade into a great number of separate processes. This we must condemn, because by reducing men to automation it undermines their moral and spiritual life and disintegrates personality, while it leads inevitably to sweating and economic insecurity. This system came into existence in the early part of the seventeenth century, the classical example being that eulogized by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, namely pin-making, in which industry, he explained, it takes twenty men to make a pin, each man being specialized on a single process for a lifetime. In our day this method has reached its logical conclusion in the system known as "scientific management." The subdivision of labour attacks the craft; scientific (management attacks the man. Its acknowledged object is further to increase output by the elimination of all the motions of the arms and fingers and body that do not directly contribute to the fashioning of the article under process of manufacture. As such it completes the dehumanization and despiritualization of labour begun by the subdivision of labour.

Now it is apparent that the value to be placed upon such a method of work will depend upon our philosophy of life. If we are materialists and are convinced that the great end of life is to increase wealth—profit and commodities—regardless of the use to which the commodities are put or the degradation of the workers through the methods employed in their production, then we shall regard even such a system as scientific management as evidence of progress. But if we believe as Christians in the aboriginal and imperishable worth of the individual, we shall condemn the system as essentially anti-Christian. We shall maintain that any increase of wealth obtained by such means carries with it a curse, inasmuch as it ignores the sacredness of human personality and degrades man to the level of a machine.

The principle of the subdivision of labour has penetrated into every department of human activity. Overspecialization is the bane of the modern world. It affects the intellectual world, not perhaps to the same degree, but with results that are as potent for evil as those which we deplore in the world of labour. For just as the machine-tender becomes atrophied in certain directions, so the intellectual specialist develops one side of his mind at the expense of other sides, and thereby loses that balance and judgment which are essential to work of permanent value. It is said that in Germany before the War specialization among intellectual workers had reached such a degree of development that men tended to become monomaniacs on one subject, or even one small part of a subject, to the detriment of general culture. This was the Culture that gave to the Germans their sense of superiority over other peoples and was a contributory cause of the War. Specialization up to a certain point we must have if civilization is to exist at all. But a limit must be placed somewhere if men are not to disintegrate morally, intellectually, and spiritually, and to imperil the stability of civilization. An intimate connection exists between the convulsions which have overtaken society and this over-specialization; since when specialization is complete it breaks up society, because the co-ordinating idea which binds men together no longer operates. It is the corollary of that isolation of the soul which Mr. Belloc rightly sees as the fruit of the Reformation.

I said that to the development of specialization a limit must be placed somewhere. That limit, I submit, should be placed at the point craft development had reached before the division of labour degenerated into the subdivision of labour. To suffer specialization to proceed farther is, to use an engineering term "to trespass on the margin of safety." In calculating the strengths of the material he uses, the engineer keeps well within the margin of safety, for he knows that all structures suffer from wear and tear and may at some time or other be subjected to an exceptional strain, and therefore in common prudence he makes allowances for such contingencies in his calculations, distinguishing clearly between a "safe load" and a "breaking load." A sane sociology would make a corresponding destruction. It would recognize that there was a limit beyond which productivity could not be increased without imperilling the stability of the social structure. It would condemn the subdivision of labour because it trespassed on the margin of psychological safety and indefinite industrial expansion because it trespassed on the margin of economic safety. Failure to recognize the truth of this principle is responsible for the disintegration of society to-day. Though it is only since the War that our peril has received any public recognition, the process of disintegration has nevertheless been at work since the seventeenth century, when the subdivision of labour was instituted. If, then, society is to be reconstructed on a stable basis, productivity must not be allowed to trespass on the margin of safety; in other words, we must repudiate the subdivision of labour and return to the handicrafts as the basis of production, using machinery only in an accessory way.

It is now some seventy years since Ruskin wrote his impassioned protests against the human degradation involved in the subdivision of labour. Yet it is only of late that any signs have been forthcoming that his protests have not been entirely in vain. Thus in the Report of the American Committee on "The Church and Industrial Reconstruction" we read: "The tendency to regard labour simply as a means of production has been greatly intensified by modem machinery which has often had the effect of reducing the man almost to the level of a machine. He is left to do what inventive genius is unable to design a machine to do. The process of manufacture is carried to a higher and higher degree of specialization, until the worker's task tends to become a deadening routine and he himself hardly more than a semi-mechanical part of the factory. These conditions almost inevitably result in the loss of the sense of personal creation and fine craftsmanship. In the simpler days before the advent of large-scale production the worker helped to plan the work and with his own strength and skill to carry it into execution. In such a task a man could really find self-expression. But now he does not plan the work or any part of it, and everything except the monotonous details is accomplished by an automatic machine. The work no longer seems really his. The factory, therefore, means barren monotony for millions of men, deadens their imagination, and robs them of any sense of creative joy, and in these results we have had an altogether too complacent acquiescence. If we are seriously concerned about the development of personality we ought to be earnestly seeking ways of affording to modern workers opportunity for self-expression in their tasks by giving tihem industrial education and making it possible for them to share in directing the industry as a whole. At the very least we ought to guarantee them sufficient leisure for self -development in other activities outside the factory. We have shown an inexcusable apathy towards this destruction of human values in the process of producing things. We have been concerned with impersonal goods, with profits and dividends, forgetting that the factor we indifferently spoke of as 'labour' is nothing less than immortal souls for whom the Lord Christ died."

Read more...

Reflections on a Rotten Apple

by G.K. Chesterton

Our age is obviously the Nonsense Age; the wiser sort of nonsense being provided for the children and the sillier sort of nonsense for the grown-up people. The eighteenth century has been called the Age of Reason; I suppose there is no doubt that the twentieth century is the Age of Unreason. But even that is an understatement. The Age of Reason was nicknamed from a famous rationalist book. [Thomas Paine's 1794- 95.] But the rationalist was not really so much concerned to urge the rational against the irrational; but rather specially to urge the natural against the supernatural. But there is a degree of the unreasonable that would go even beyond the unnatural. It is not merely an incredible tale, but an inconsistent idea. As I pointed out to somebody long ago, it is one thing to believe that a beanstalk scaled the sky, and quite another to believe that fifty-seven beans make five.

For instance, a man may disbelieve in miracles; normally on some principle of determinist thought; in some cases even on examination of the evidence. But on being told of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, he is told something that is logical if it is not natural. He is not told that there were fewer fishes because the fishes had been multiplied. Multiplication is still a mathematical term; and a mob all feeding on miraculous fishes is a less mysterious or monstrous sight than a man saying that multiplication is the same as subtraction. Such a story, for such a sceptic, does not carry conviction; but it does make sense. He can recognise the logical consequence, if he cannot understand the logical cause. But no pope or priest ever asked him to believe that thousands died of starvation in the desert because they were loaded with loaves and fishes. No creed or dogma ever declared that there was too little food because there was too much fish. But that is the precise, practical and prosaic definition of the present situation in the modern science of economics. And the man of the Nonsense Age must bow his head and repeat his , the motto of his time, . ["I believe because it is impossible."]

Or again, the term unreason is sometimes used rather more reasonably; for a sort of loose or elliptical statement, which is at least illogical in form. The most popular case is what was called the Irish Bull; often suspected of resembling the Papal Bull, in being a supernatural monster bred of credulity and superstition. But even this old sort of confusion stopped short of the new sort of contradiction. If any Irishman really does say, "We are not birds, to be in two places at once," at least we know what he means, even if it is not what he says. But suppose he says that one bird has been miraculously multiplied into a million birds, and that in consequence there are fewer birds in the world than there were before. We should then be dealing, not merely with an Irish Bull but with a Mad Bull, and concerned not with the incredible but with the incomprehensible. Or, to apply the parable, the Irish have sometimes been accused of unbalanced emotion or morbid sentiment. But nobody says that they merely imagined the Great Famine, in which multitudes starved because the potatoes were few and small. Only suppose an Irishman had said that they starved because the potatoes were gigantic and innumerable. I think we should not yet have heard the last of the wrong-headed absurdity of that Irishman. Yet that is an exact description of the economic condition to-day as it affects the Englishman. And, to a great extent, the American. We learn that there is a famine because there is not a scarcity; and there is such a good potato-crop that there are no potatoes. The Irishman, with his bull or his bird, is quite a hard-headed realist and rationalist compared to that. Thus, the old examples of the fantastic fell far short of the modern fact; whether they were mysteries supposed to be above reason or merely muddles supposed to be below it. Their miracles were more normal than our scientific averages; and the Irish blunder was less illogical than the actual logic of events.

For it seems that we live to-day in a world of witchcraft, in which the orchards wither because they prosper, and the multitude of apples on the apple-tree of itself turns them into forbidden fruit, and makes the effort to consume them in every sense fruitless. This is the modern economic paradox, which is called Over-Production, or a glut in the market, and though at first sight it sounds like the wildest fantasy, it is well to realise in what sense it is the most solid of facts. Let it be clearly understood, therefore, that as a description of the objective social situation at this instant in this industrial society, the paradox is perfectly true. But it is not really true that the contradiction in terms is true. If we take it, not as a description but as a definition, if we take it as a matter of abstract argument, then certainly the contradiction is untrue, as every contradiction is untrue.

The truth is that a third element has entered into the matter, which is not mentioned in this abstract statement of it. That element might be stated in many ways; perhaps the shortest statement of it is in the fable of the man who sold razors, and afterwards explained to an indignant customer, with simple dignity, that he had never said the razors would shave. When asked if razors were not made to shave, he replied that they were made to sell. That is A Short History of Trade and Industry During the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.

God made a world of reason as sure as God made little apples (as the beautiful proverb goes); and God did not make little apples larger than large apples. It is not true that a man whose apple-tree is loaded with apples will suffer from a want of apples; though he may indulge in a waste of apples. But if he never looks upon apples as things to eat, but always looks on them as things to sell, he will really get into another sort of complication; which may end in a sort of contradiction. If, instead of producing as many apples as he wants, he produces as many apples as he imagines the whole world wants, with the hope of capturing the trade of the whole world - then he will be either successful or unsuccessful in competing with the man next door who also wants the whole world's trade to himself. Between them, they will produce so many apples that apples in the market will be about as valuable as pebbles on the beach. Thus each of them willfind he has very little money in his pocket, with which to go and buy fresh pears at the fruiterer's shop. If he had never expected to get fruit at the fruiterer's shop, but had put up his hand and pulled them off his own tree, his difficulty would never have arisen. It seems simple; but at the root of all apple-trees and apple-growing, it is really as simple as that.

Of course I do not mean that the practice is at present simple; for no practical problem is simple, least of all at the present time, when everything is confused by the corrupt and evasive muddlers who are called practical politicians. But the principle is simple; and the only way to proceed through a complex situation is to start with the right first principle. How far we can do without, or control, or merely modify the disadvantages of buying and selling is quite another matter. But the disadvantages do arise from buying and selling, and not from producing: not even from over-producing. And it is some satisfaction to realise that we are not living in a nightmare in which No is the same as Yes; that even the modern world has not actually gone mad, with all its ingenious attempts to do so; that two and two do in fact make four; and that the man who has four apples really has more than the man who has three. For some modern metaphysicians and moral philosophers seem disposed to leave us in doubt on these points. It is not the fundamental reason in things that is at fault; it is a particular hitch or falsification, arising from a very recent trick of regarding everything only in relation to trade. Trade is all very well in its way, but Trade has been put in the place of Truth. Trade, which is in its nature a secondary or dependent thing, has been treated as a primary and independent thing; as an absolute. The moderns, mad upon mere multiplication, have even made a plural out of what is eternally singular, in the sense of single. They have taken what all ancient philosophers called the Good, and translated it as the Goods.

I believe that certain mystics, in the American business world, protested against the slump by pinning labels to their coats inscribed, Trade Is Good," along with other similar proclamations, such as, "Capone Is Dead," or "Cancer Is Pleasant," or "Death Is Abolished," or any other hard realistic truths for which they might find space upon their persons. But what interests me about these magicians is that, having decided to call up ideal conditions by means of spells and incantations to control the elements, they did not (so to speak) understand the elements of the elements. They did not go to the root of the matter, and imagine that their troubles had really come to an end. Rather they worshipped the means instead of the end. While they were about it, they ought to have said, not "Trade Is Good," but "Living Is Good," or "Life Is Good." I suppose it would be too much to expect such thoroughly respectable people to say, "God Is Good"; but it is really true that their conception of what is good lacks the philosophical finality that belonged to the goodness of God. When God looked on created things and saw that they were good, it meant that they were good in themselves and as they stood; but by the modern mercantile idea, God would only have looked at them and seen that they were The Goods. In other words, there would be a label tied to the tree or the hill, as to the hat of the Mad Hatter, with "This Style, 10/6." All the flowers and birds would be ticketed with their reduced prices; all the creation would be for sale or all the creatures seeking employment; with all the morning stars making sky-signs together and all the Sons of God shouting for jobs. In other words, these people are incapable of imagining any good except that which comes from bartering something for something else. The idea of a man enjoying a thing in itself, for himself, is inconceivable to them. The notion of a man eating his own apples off his own apple-tree seems like a fairy-tale. Yet the fall from that first creation that was called good has very largely come from the restless impotence for valuing things in themselves; the madness of the trader who cannot see any good in a good, except as something to get rid of. It was once admitted that with sin and death there entered the world something that we call change. It is none the less true and tragic, because what we called change, we called afterwards exchange. Anyhow, the result of that extravagance of exchange has been that when there are too many apples there are too few apple-eaters. I do not insist on the symbol of Eden, or the parable of the apple-tree, but it is odd to notice that even that accidental image pursues us at every stage of this strange story. The last result of treating a tree as a shop or a store instead of as a store-room, the last effect of treating apples as goods rather than as good, has been in a desperate drive of public charity and in poor men selling apples in the street.

In all normal civilisations the trader existed and must exist. But in all normal civilisations the trader was the exception; certainly he was never the rule; and most certainly he was never the ruler. The predominance which he has gained in the modern world is the cause of all the disasters of the modern world. The universal habit of humanity has been to produce and consume as part of the same process; largely conducted by the same people in the same place. Sometimes goods were produced and consumed on the same great feudal manor; sometimes even on the same small peasant farm. Sometimes there was a tribute from serfs as yet hardly distinguishable from slaves; sometimes there was a co-operation between free-men which the superficial can hardly distinguish from communism. But none of these many historical methods, whatever their vices or limitations, was strangled in the particular tangle of our own time; because most of the people, for most of the time, were thinking about growing food and then eating it; not entirely about growing food and selling it at the stiffest price to somebody who had nothing to eat. And I for one do not believe that there is any way out of the modern tangle, except to increase the proportion of the people who are living according to the ancient simplicity. Nobody in his five wits proposes that there should be no trade and no traders. Nevertheless, it is important to remember, as a matter of mere logic, that there might conceivably be great wealth, even if there were no trade and no traders. It is important for the sort of man whose only hope is that Trade Is Good or whose only secret terror is that Trade Is Bad. In principle, prosperity might be very great, even if trade were very bad. If a village were so fortunately situated that, for some reason, it was easy for every family to keep its own chickens, to grow its own vegetables, to milk its own cow and (I will add) to brew its own beer, the standard of life and property might be very high indeed, even though the long memory of the Oldest Inhabitant only recorded two or three pure transactions of trade; if he could only recall the one far-off event of his neighbour buying a new hat from a gipsy's barrow; or the singular incident of Farmer Billings purchasing an umbrella.

As I have said, I do not imagine, or desire, that things would ever be quite so simple as that. But we must understand things in their simplicity before we can explain or correct their complexity. The complexity of commercial society has become intolerable, because that society is commercial and nothing else. The whole mind of the community is occupied, not with the idea of possessing things, but with the idea of passing them on. When the simple enthusiasts already mentioned say that Trade is Good, they mean that all the people who possess goods are perpetually parting with them. These Optimists presumably invoke the poet, with some slight emendation of the poet's meaning, when he cries aloud, 'Our souls are love and a perpetual farewell.' In that sense, our individualistic and commercial modern society is actually the very reverse of a society founded on Private Property. I mean that the actual direct and isolated enjoyment of private property, as distinct from the excitement of exchanging it or getting a profit on it, is rather rarer than in many simple communities that seem almost communal in their simplicity. In the case of this sort of private consumption, which is also private production, it is very unlikely that it will run continually into overproduction. There is a limit to the number of apples a man can eat, and there will probably be a limit, drawn by his rich and healthy hatred of work, to the number of apples which he will produce but cannot eat. But there is no limit to the number of apples he may possibly sell; and he soon becomes a pushing, dexterous and successful Salesman and turns the whole world upside-down. For it is he who produces this huge pantomimic paradox with which this rambling reflection began. It is he who makes a wilder revolution than the apple of Adam which was the loosening of death, or the apple of Newton which was the apocalypse of gravitation, by proclaiming the supreme blasphemy and heresy, that the apple was made for the market and not for the mouth. It was he, by starting the wild race of pouring endless apples into a bottomless market, who opened the abyss of irony and contradiction into which we are staring to-day. That trick of treating the trade as the test, and the only test, has left us face to face with a piece of stark staring nonsense written in gigantic letters across the world; more gigantic than all its own absurd advertisements and announcements; the statement that the more we produce the less we possess.

Oscar Wilde would probably have fainted with equal promptitude, if told he was being used in an argument about American salesmanship, or in defence of a thrifty and respectable family life on the farm. But it does so happen that one true epigram, among many of his false epigrams, sums up correctly and compactly a certain truth, not (I am happy to say) about Art, but about all that he desired to separate from Art; ethics and even economics. He said in one of his plays: "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." [The quotation is from (1892).] It is extraordinarily true; and the answer to most other things that he said. But it is yet more extraordinary that the modern men who make that mistake most obviously are not the cynics. On the contrary, they are those who call themselves the Optimists; perhaps even those who would call themselves the Idealists; certainly those who regard themselves as the Regular Guys and the Sons of Service and Uplift. It is too often those very people who have spoilt all their good effect, and weakened their considerable good example in work and social contact, by that very error: that things are to be judged by the price and not by the value. And since Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing, they have swept us into a society which is no longer solid but fluid, as unfathomable as a sea and as treacherous as a quicksand.

Whether anything more solid can be built again upon a social philosophy of values, there is now no space to discuss at length here; but I am certain that nothing solid can be built on any other philosophy; certainly not upon the utterly unphilosophical philosophy of blind buying and selling; of bullying people into purchasing what they do not want; of making it badly so that they may break it and imagine they want it again; of keeping rubbish in rapid circulation like a dust-storm in a desert; and pretending that you are teaching men to hope, because you do not leave them one intelligent instant in which to despair.

Taken from The American Chesterton Society

Read more...

Industrialism and Guilds

by Arthur Penty

In a recent article in the Labour Monthly, Mr. W. Mellor criticizes National Guildsmen, saying that "they began as compromisers and they have been compromising ever since." The criticism is valid; National Guild theory was a compromise. It was a compromise between Medievalism and Industrialism, and the movement has been compromising ever since, because it was committed to a theory that attempted to reconcile irreconcilables.

The truth of this can best be demonstrated by following the fortunes of the National Guilds League, into whose hands the development of National Guild theory passed, once its organization was formed. The National Guilds League, though it borrowed Medieval principles, was modern in that it did not question the permanence and stability of our Industrial system. But having been born of a compromise it was unstable and found itself at the mercy of circumstances. The choice before the movement was whether it would become more modern or more Medieval. But upon this vital issue it could never make up its mind, and so it happened that it came to travel in opposite directions. Its theory became more Medieval and its policy more modernist and revolutionary. Let me explain.

As originally formulated, the National Guild theory was that of a number of highly-centralized Guilds working in conjunction with the State. Nowadays National Guilds are not interpreted by the League as highly-centralized Guilds, but as a federation of local Guilds, while the idea of the sovereignty of the State has so far disappeared that it no longer finds a place in the basis of the League. Thus when the League was founded its objects were stated to be:

"The abolition of the Wage System and the establishment of self-government in industry through a system of National Guilds working in conjunction with the State."

Nowadays its objects are declared to be:

"The abolition of the Wage System and the establishment by the workers of self-government in industry through a democratic system of National Guilds, working in conjunction with other functional organizations in the Community."

As explained by Mr. Cole at the Conference when the change was made, this new basis was recommended as a formula which would allow members who held different opinions as to the position of the State in a future society to remain in the League and work together for immediate practical ends. Those who believed that the State should be abolished entirely, and those who believed that the State, instead of being the all- powerful Leviathan it is to-day, would in the future be stripped of its illegitimate functions and be reduced to the position of one power among a plurality of powers, were both allowed to interpret the basis in their own way. No one apparently believed any longer in the State's absolute sovereignty.

These changes are significant. But the greatest change of all is in the attitude of the League towards Industrialism, which, from being regarded as a thing of permanence and stability, is nowadays looked upon as being on the verge of collapse. When we remember that the reason which led the movement to reject the idea of restoring the Medieval type of Guilds in favour of the idea of establishing National Guilds turned on this very issue; the advocates of Medieval Guilds, affirming that Industrialism was doomed to dissolution and decay, while the advocates of National Guilds denied it, we begin to feel that there is not much left of the National Guild position, and the fact that every departure from the original position has been in the direction of a return to the principles of Medieval social organization is a striking testimony to their truth and universality.

Though, as I have shown, the transformation of thought that took place within the National Guild Movement was in a Medievalist direction, it was, unfortunately, not consciously Medieval, but came about as a consequence of the pressure of events. But a time came when another group of forces of a very different character began to exercise an influence over it, and it was then that the central weakness of the movement came into the light of day, for it was then seen that the movement stood for nothing sufficiently fundamental to enable it to steer its course successfully between the Scylla and Charybdis of modern politics. By the end of 1919 dissatisfaction was being freely expressed with the policy of encroaching control, which hitherto had been the policy of the movement. This dissatisfaction coincided with the spread of Communist propaganda in this country, which turned the thought of the more ardent spirits in the movement from a belief in reform by constitutional means to a belief in force. Thus it came about that the trend of the movement towards Medievalism was brought abruptly to an end, and the movement became a house divided against itself, in which state of mind it has remained ever since, for neither the Revolutionaries nor the Medievalists within the League are in a sufficiently strong position to force a decision, while the centre was too hesitant to throw its weight in either one direction or the other, failing to understand that no compromise was possible between opposed beliefs. Since then the League has been waning in power, though owing to the successful organization of the Building Guilds the Guild idea has been booming in the country, and Guild literature and speakers have been in greater demand than ever.

Now the underlying cause of this failure of the National Guild Movement is that it has never been honest with itself over the question of Industrialism. When at the beginning of its career it believed Industrialism to be a thing of permanence and stability, it was in a more or less defensible position. But when it came to the conclusion that our Industrial System was breaking up, the justification of its general policy disappeared, for what could be the use of seeking to superimpose Guilds over present-day Industrial activities if those activities did not possess within themselves the elements of stability? Clearly this crisis could have been met in only one way, by broadening the basis on which the movement rested, by frankly recognizing that the problem of restoring Guilds is only one among many problems that will have to be faced before the social problem can be solved. Yet on this more general fundamental problem of society the National Guild Movement has absolutely nothing to say. On the contrary, it continues the Socialist tradition of thought of assuming that the only social problems are finally those of organization and ownership. For Guildsmen, when they speak of changing the system, mean little more than changing the ownership of the system. Hence, the real issue with them is finally the problem of how power may be attained. But it is obvious that the attainment of power and a capacity to use it for the public advantage are two entirely different things, and what reason is there to suppose that if the Labour or the Communist Party succeeded to power, they would not be just as much at the mercy of economic forces of society as capitalists are to-day? Frankly I can see none, for neither Socialists, Communists or Labourites recognize the existence of the problem of men and machines that lies at the centre of the economic problem. And because they do not recognize this problem, it is a certainty that they would be at its mercy. They would be as impotent in the face of the present economic morass as the present Government, differing with them only to the extent that they would at least attempt to be more generous and equitable in their attitude towards the workers.

If we compare Socialist thought to-day with the Socialist thought that penetrated the Chartist Movement, we may say that while current thought is of a far more practical order, with more precision in detail, there is not the same grasp of the main essentials of the problem that confronts society as in Chartist times. To explain my meaning, let us consider the different meanings attached to the proposal to abolish the Wage System in Chartist times and in our own, for it is our link with the past. As expounded by the National Guild Movement, the Wage System is defined as being a state of things in which labour is bought and sold as a commodity in the same way as other commodities are bought and sold, and its abolition is the demand that labour no longer be bought and sold in this way. As such it is really a demand for the regularization, stabilization and moralization of the wage relationship and for industrial maintenance during times of unemployment. But when Socialists of Chartist times demanded the abolition of the Wage System they meant what they said. They meant that the system of distributing purchasing power by means of payment for work done was incompatible with the unrestricted use of machinery. They saw that if machinery is to reduce labour to a minimum then it follows that some other system of distributing purchasing power must be substituted for the present one of payment for work done. For the Wage System breaks down entirely when machinery becomes automatic. Hence it was they demanded that purchasing power should no longer be dependent on the receipt of wages, and it was as a means of creating a new social order, in which it would be possible to distribute purchasing power independent of payment for work done, that they came to demand the abolition of the private ownership of land and capital, and the means of production and exchange. The one was the necessary corollary of the other.

But Socialists and Guildsmen to-day have not that same intellectual grip of the general situation as had their predecessors of Chartist times. Their ideas are not organically related to any central idea. On the contrary, they believe in a number of separate ideas, more or less loosely related, but which are not part of an organic whole. In the Report on Fabian Policy, the abolition of the Wage System is rejected as an impracticable proposal, which in the sense in which it was understood by the Chartists is perfectly true. It is impracticable. But apparently Fabians had no suspicion whatsoever that the idea was logically related to the problem of machinery, which was the reason for the Chartist advocacy of the doctrine (equally impracticable) of the abolition of private property in land, capital, and the means of production and exchange, which doctrine the Fabians retained, in sublime unconsciousness of its origin, basing their propaganda on an accessory idea, and rejecting the proposal which gave it at least a logical validity. Guildsmen, like the Fabians, were so completely unaware that there was any connection between the Chartist demand for the abolition of the Wage System and the problem of machinery, that when they revived the phrase they came to interpret it as meaning the regularization, stabilization and moralization of the wage relationship, entirely unaware of the fact that such a policy is impossible so long as the unrestricted use of machinery is permitted. But when truth is turned out of the front door, it has a way of coming in at the back, and the incompatibility of the wage relationship with the prevailing system of industry, which the early Socialists rightly connected with the unrestricted use of machinery, has in these latter days come to be connected with the problem of credit, and in connection with the Douglas-New Age Scheme, the demand is made for "dividends for all" on the assumption that the dividend is to be considered the successor of the wage.

Now this idea is sufficiently plausible to gain converts among people who do not see clearly what such a suggestion involves. Such people object to the idea of wages for several reasons. In the first place, because the receiving of wages seems to imply a servile status; in the next because on the wage basis, artists and poets, scholars and others who do not do work that is of immediate economic value get left out in the cold; and lastly, because the distribution of purchasing power on the basis of payment for work done does not suggest to many minds a sense of the corporate responsibility of society for the welfare of its individual members.

Now when we come to examine these objections we find they are based upon a confusion of thought. Wages, it is true, are apt nowadays to connote a servile condition, but this is not because a system of payment for work done necessarily involves any degradation, but because under modern conditions it so happens that most people who do any useful work are in a servile condition. Under the Medieval Guild system, the journeymen and apprentices received what were, technically speaking, wages; but we do not associate such payments as they received with the evils of the Wage System because, though wages existed under the Guilds, they did not imply the brutal and inhuman relationship which wages do to-day, for labour was not then a commodity, the price of which was determined by the competition of the markets, but was paid for at a fixed rate determined by the Guilds, of which both masters and men were alike members. Moreover, the journeyman only remained a wage- earner during the earlier part of his life. He could look forward to a day when, as a matter of course, he would set up in business on his own account, for as there was a limit placed to the number of assistants any master could employ, opportunities for advancement were open to all who desired to use them. The Wage System therefore did not in those days present itself as an evil in the way it does to-day. On the contrary, it is the growth of large organizations, on a basis of the subdivision of labour and the unrestricted use of machinery, that has created the evils which we associate with the Wage System to-day; for under such conditions, those personal relationships which humanize life tend to disappear, and their place is taken by a cash-nexus divorced from all sentiment and personal regard. It is such conditions that make the Wage System to-day so brutal, but if the use of machinery were restricted and the subdivision of labour abolished as we demand, that disturbing element which makes wages at once so uncertain, brutal and servile would be removed.

The Medieval Guilds accepted payment for work done as being the normal thing in society, but that did not preclude them from giving aid to the sick and unfortunate or of treating exceptional circumstances in exceptional ways. But owing to the fact that under industrialism all the normal human relationships have become degraded, people are always seeking to make the exception into the rule. Thus because under our existing economic system work that is of no immediate economic value cannot command proper remuneration, they repudiate the normal thing that payment should be for work done, in order that some provision shall be made for the exceptional. But surely this is irrational, for there is no reason why a system of payment should be uniform. It was in the past frankly recognized that certain kinds of activities depended upon patronage, and this should be recognized to-day. But again there is the same prejudice against patronage as against wages, because like all right and human things, it lends itself to abuse. The Church and Guilds in the Middle Ages were the patrons of learning and the arts, and if restored they would become such again in the future. It is because of the decline of the one and the disappearance of the other that learning and the arts are in such difficulties, but it is vain to suppose that people can ever be led to make the exception into the rule. For if they have not sufficient interest in these things as to be willing to act as their patrons, there is no prospect whatsoever that they could be induced to turn the economic system upside down in order that such exceptional activities may be provided for.

And the instinct of the people would be right, for if payment in the future is not to be on a basis of work done, then we must have industrial conscription, for how otherwise is the necessary work of the community to get done? And I don't see how the artist or poet is going to fare advantageously under such conditions. The Church and Guilds might be persuaded to discriminate in their favour, but I cannot see it happening under a national system of industrial conscription.

Further, it is necessary to consider how such a proposition as "dividends for all" would in practice be applied. Reformers may have visions of a wonderful system of industry under which all existing evils would be abolished and each individual have complete and absolute liberty, but in practice the popularization of such an idea could have no other effect than to create a popular vested interest in the maintenance of the existing system of industry with all its abuses. For you cannot abolish the Black Country and draw dividends on it, since the two ideas are mutually exclusive.

But is there anything practical at all in this proposal of "dividends for all?" It is obvious that it can only be theoretically justified on the assumption that the present system has within itself the elements of permanence and stability. If the wage system were the only thing that was breaking down, then the plea that purchasing power must in the future be distributed by means of dividends rather than wages would at any rate be plausible. But the fact is that simultaneously with the breakdown of the wage system, there is going on the breakdown of every other institution in modern society. Politics, religion, art, industry, technical skill, the institution of the family, and all other social traditions are in a state of disintegration. As it is apparent that all these problems are organically related to each other, it is evidently impossible to effect change or reform in any one of them apart from dealing with the problem of machinery that lies behind them all. Thus, to go no further, "dividends for all" is only possible on the assumption that our financial and industrial system can be preserved.

This brings me to the central idea of the Douglas-New Age Scheme which we must now proceed to consider. Mr. Douglas sees, as most people who think do, that the deadlock that has overtaken industry is no ordinary trade depression that will gradually disappear before the normal operations of demand and supply as previous depressions have done. On the contrary, he maintains that the present situation is the logical outcome of the pursuit of the policy of Maximum Production on a basis of bank credit. Our system of credit, he says, upsets the balance between supply and demand by reason of the fact that whereas credits are given for increasing production, they are not given for increasing consumption. That Mr. Douglas has put his finger on the immediate cause of the present deadlock, apart from the economic confusion resulting from the war and the stupidities of the Peace Treaty, is not, I think, to be denied. There can be no doubt that the wholesale issue of credit by the banks to individuals, on the basis of "to him that hath shall be given" is the immediate cause of the present financial deadlock, for it is impossible in the long run to offer facilities for the increase of production without giving corresponding opportunities for the increase of consumption, without upsetting the balance between demand and supply. But while we may agree that the wholesale issue of credit is the immediate cause of the deadlock, it is clearly not the ultimate cause, as we shall find out later. But meanwhile Mr. Douglas proposes to correct this discrepancy between demand and supply by selling goods below cost, the selling price of any commodity bearing the same ratio to its actual cost as the total National Consumption of all descriptions of commodities does to the National Production of Credit, while the Government is called upon to reimburse to the producers of any commodity the difference between their total cost incurred and their total price received by means of treasury notes, such notes being debited, as now, to the National Credit Account.

Now the first and most obvious objection to this Scheme is that such a wholesale issue of paper money would depreciate the currency. But Douglasites are unwilling to admit this. They urge that the fixation of prices which finds a place in the Scheme would be a sufficient safeguard against this. And when we object that to make such a measure effective it would be necessary to fix prices simultaneously in all industries, since if the Scheme were applied gradually and prices fixed below cost in one industry and not in the others, the prices of commodities that were unfixed would rise to restore the balance, they reply that the rise of prices in non-regulated industries would rapidly force on the application of the scheme to other industries. But it won't do. All economic theories based upon the theory of enlightened selfishness promise such results. The adoption of Free Trade by this country, it used to be argued, would force its adoption on other countries, while the theory of unfettered individualism was justified on the grounds that while as producer the individual might suffer, he would nevertheless benefit by the cheapening of all he had to buy. But somehow or other all prophecies based upon theories of enlightened selfishness produce results the very contrary of what was intended. And this theory would certainly be no exception to the rule, for in these days of international markets the unit to be considered is not this country but the world. Under such circumstances the proposition is unthinkable. Those who believe in it only find it thinkable because they love to live in a world of abstractions divorced from reality. The only remedy for such mental states is to translate economic abstractions into concrete terms and to think always in the terms of actual wealth--of bread, clothes, buildings, ships, fuel, furniture, etc. Tested in this way, such abstractions as production and consumption will appear as the most ambiguous of categories that conceal essential differences. Thus they will include everything from food to armaments, things that support life and things that destroy it, and yet we are asked to believe that the economic balance of production can at any time be restored by selling goods below cost. But what if there are things which people do not want at any price--armaments for instance? How would selling below cost help the situation? The whole thing is absurd; it is an illusion that owes its origin to a fatal habit of divorcing the problem of money from the problem of things. It is the reductio ad absurdum of our financial system.

I said that the problem of credit might, apart from the economic consequences of the War and the Peace, be regarded as the immediate cause of the present deadlock, but that it was not the ultimate cause. In support of this contention I would draw attention to the fact that the present deadlock was foreseen by Marx. It finds a place in the Communist Manifesto (1847). And yet, though Marx foresaw this deadlock, there is not in the whole of his writings anything about the problems of credit and high finance (which is not surprising, for the problem is largely the creation of the Limited Liability Companies Act of 1862). On the contrary, he foresaw it as the logical outcome of the investment and reinvestment of surplus wealth for further increase (theory of surplus value). If, therefore, Marx foresaw this deadlock seventy-five years ago, long before this problem of credit had made its appearance, does it not prove that the problem is much more fundamental than the problem of credit? Nay, does not the problem of credit begin to appear as an effect, as a symptom of the disease rather than its cause, and will it not therefore be necessary to dig deeper than Mr. Douglas has done if a solution is to be found?

But while Marx saw that the investment and reinvestment of surplus wealth for further increase would in the long run produce an economic deadlock, he did not regard this practice as the ultimate cause, for he saw that behind the problem of finance was the problem of machinery. He saw that the capitalists were not masters of their own house, inasmuch as they were at the mercy of their machines. The progress of invention was driving capitalism along the road it was travelling, and would in the end spell its destruction. So far I can go with him. But beyond this point we part company, for there was something he did not see. He did not see that the process of industrial development that he traced was not only destructive of capitalism, but of the very fabric of society, while in the long run the unrestricted use of machinery and capitalist development would bring into existence a civilization so complex that the human mind would be unable to comprehend all its multitudinous interconnections. And because of this, because modern civilization makes demands on our alertness and many-sidedness with which our wits and sympathies cannot cope, it tends to degenerate into anarchy. This consideration, apart from any other, should be sufficient to convince us that there is no solution of our problems apart from a return to simpler conditions of life, such as would reduce the complexity of our relationships to terms commensurate with the human understanding.

Looking at the problem from this point of view, our industrial system no longer appears as the foundation upon which a more highly developed civilization can be superimposed, but as a blind alley, from which we must retrace our steps or perish. But how may this be done? This is the sphinx riddle that confronts us, and it is by no means easy to answer. Perhaps it cannot be answered completely by any individual. But of this much we can be certain; that any change in the direction of our activities must be preceded by a change in the heart and mind of the people. That such a change is actually taking place I think is undoubted. But it has not yet proceeded sufficiently far to become practical. The popular mind is thoroughly disillusionized over the idea of progress, but it is still largely under the spell of machinery, and not until that spell is broken will our minds be sufficiently liberated to think and act clearly. The first step, therefore, is to break this spell by means of propaganda. If we could do this, we should be able to see clearer, for the popularization and acceptance of an idea will, if there is any truth in it, tend to create the circumstances necessary to its transformation into the terms of practical politics.

It is a philosophical truth that no synthesis is ever complete, since in every synthesis there is always something left over that becomes the starting-point of the next synthesis. To translate this idea into the terms of the social problem, we may say that the army of unemployed is the something left over from the industrial synthesis, and therefore in our efforts to reconstruct society we must begin with it. Marx recognized this, and he proposed to use them for the purpose of overthrowing the capitalist system by a proletarian revolution. But recognizing, as we do, that our industrial system is in a state of disintegration, the problem that presents itself to us is not how the industrial and capitalist system can be captured or overthrown, but how a new civilization can be built out of its ruins, and therefore we shall attempt to deal with the unemployed as individual men rather than in the mass. Accepting the position that our industrial system is doomed, we should set to work to turn them into agriculturists and handicraftsmen. There should be no more difficulty about this, if it were undertaken in a public way, than there was about turning civilians into soldiers during the war. It is entirely a question of will and determination. Hitherto our efforts to do anything with the unemployed have been the last word in futility, but that is because the only idea behind the various schemes for dealing with them has been to make work, to mark time, as it were, until trade revived. Such an aim inspires nobody. The unemployed themselves are conscious of the futility of the work on which they are employed, and this sense of futility is demoralizing in the last degree. But if the fact that our industrial system is doomed was frankly faced, and men were given a craft or agricultural training to enable them to take their place in the new social order, their work would come to have meaning for them, and this would make all the difference in the world, for men can only do their best when they are dominated by a real motive.

By such means a new society could be built within the existing one, and as our industrial civilization falls to pieces, this new society would gradually take its place. There should be no difficulty about this, if the principle were frankly recognized that at every stage in its development the new society should be protected. The foundations of such a new society would rest, as all stable societies rest, upon agriculture, and to effect such a revival as we anticipate, agriculture would need to be protected from any foreign competition, and prices and wages would have to be fixed. There would, moreover, have to be a complete overhauling of our land system, the reform of which, it is to be presumed, will become practical politics as the situation tends to become desperate. Upon this base of agriculture the new industries in which the subdivision of labour was abolished and machinery controlled would rest. Such industries would need, in the first instance, to be protected against the competition of industries in which the existing abuses were retained, which could be done by putting a tax upon machinery and the subdivision of labour. After a time, as this new society began to develop an organized life of its own, it would no longer stand in need of protection from outside industries, for the saving of cost that would be effected by the elimination of cross-distribution and of overhead charges would more than compensate for the increased cost of its production. Still, prices and wages should remain fixed, and every industry be under the regulation of Guilds to prevent capitalism growing up again within the new society, which it certainly would if freedom of bargaining were permitted. There would be no practical difficulty about reconstruction upon such lines, once the idea was popularly understood. It is impossible to graft the principles we stand for on to modern society if taken separately. But handled together, as part of a large and comprehensive scheme, and nursed in the early stages, there is no reason why they should not be acted upon. We may not be able to return to simpler conditions of society individually, but there is no reason why we should not do so collectively.

Meanwhile external conditions are co-operating to force upon us an agricultural policy. The conclusion becomes irresistible that the days of our industrial supremacy are over. It was an accidental and temporary and not a permanent circumstance that gave colour to the theory, so popular in the first half of the last century, that we were destined to become the workshop of the world. This economic myth owed its origin to the fact that this country was the first to embark upon an industrial career in the modern sense. We had certain natural advantages, an abundance of mineral wealth, and an unrivalled geographical position, which naturally constituted us a centre for trade and commerce, while securing us from the fear of invasion. But the great fact, compared with which all others pale into insignificance, was that we were the first to use steam-power and machinery. It was this fact that enabled our goods to penetrate into every part of our world, which built up huge credits in every country abroad, and led to the enormous expansion of our mercantile marine, while constituting us the merchants and bankers of the world.

But it is apparent that this virtual monopoly could not last indefinitely. It could last no longer than we retained our monopoly of machinery, since, other things being equal, it would always be cheaper to produce goods near the markets and where raw material is found than at a distance from them, and therefore it has happened that one by one other nations adopted machine production and our monopoly came to be challenged. Before the war we were holding our own with difficulty. Lancashire was losing her cotton markets, because of the competition of America, India, Japan and Brazil. Australia had begun to produce her own woollen goods, while in many markets, for all kinds of goods, we suffered from the competition of Germany, Japan and America. But it was the war that completed the change for us by transforming the world conditions. It shattered the fabric of our commerce, industry and finance. Deprived of their accustomed supplies from us, many of our former customers were driven to begin producing all kinds of things for themselves, and as these new manufactures are carried on near to where the raw materials are found or produced, it is manifest that these markets must gradually slip from our hands. We cannot hope in the future to export such large quantities of manufactured goods to Australia, Canada, South America and elsewhere as hitherto, while the tendency is for other nations to carry their own goods in their own ships. Meanwhile, in order to finance the war, we were compelled to dispose of most of our foreign investments. Thus, in one way or other, there is not the money coming into this country that there was before the war, and our industries will not be able to provide work for such numbers as hitherto. Not being able to sell goods to the food-producing nations, we shall soon be without the money to pay for the food we must import to keep our population alive--a fact that is brought home to us by the constant falling of the rate of exchange with food-producing nations.

That is the immediate practical problem that confronts us to-day. If anything could demonstrate the folly of a nation allowing itself to become dependent upon other nations for its supply of food, and building up national industries which were dependent upon foreign supplies of raw material, the situation in which we find ourselves to-day should do so. We have allowed ourselves to drift into an impossible situation, and things must steadily go from bad to worse until agriculture is revived, for as the countries upon which we have been accustomed to rely for a supply of food are beginning to produce their own industrial wares, it follows that our exports to them will tend to become a steadily diminishing quantity, and therefore the only way to meet the situation is for us to take measures to produce as much food as possible for ourselves by the revival of agriculture.

Whether or not sufficient food can be produced in these islands to satisfy our requirements is a debatable question. But supposing it cannot, then it follows that if our foreign trade shrinks to the point at which we cannot sell sufficient goods to food-producing nations to buy the food required to support our surplus population, there can be no remedy apart from emigration, for no tinkering with the machinery of distribution can distribute more food than we can grow and import.

Thus it comes about that the trend of events is forcing upon us the Medieval policy which sought to make each country as self-contained as possible. Though at the moment the loss of our markets is an inconvenience which it is impossible to exaggerate and adds to our perplexity, yet I am persuaded that in the long run it will prove to be a blessing, for so long as our industries were dependent upon foreign markets it was impossible to initiate really drastic reform, for under such circumstances the factors that really governed the problem were outside of our control. The modification of a tariff, or a war, the discovery of some new raw material or some other such event in some remote corner of the world, would dislocate the labour of millions at home, while all the time our fortunes remained in the hands of capitalist adventurers, for they alone could find markets for our surplus produce. To break with this tradition has hitherto been the great obstacle in the path of reform, for it was hopeless to attempt to bring order into an economic system that ramified out into every quarter of the globe. But the obstacle that refused to yield to reason is being removed by the force of circumstances, and a situation is being created in which the social problem may be solved if we have the will and the energy. For with a revived agriculture, with the people back again on the land, a foundation will be laid which will enable a social fabric to be rebuilt that will be permanent and stable.

If it be laid down as a maxim that the first principle of a normal civilization is that it be as self-contained as possible, the second undoubtedly is that it should in no sense be living on capital, but arrange its production in such a way as largely to reproduce itself. Before the age of machines, the inroads made by man on irreplaceable material were moderate and offered no menace to posterity, the store of mineral wealth in the world remained almost intact. But our industrial methods of production use up material at an alarming pace. The machine has an insatiable appetite for fuel and minerals of all kinds, the supply of which is limited. The easily accessible sources of supply of raw materials are becoming exhausted, and the necessity of getting hold of new sources of supply was one of the causes of the war. These considerations, together with the steady and progressive decline in the quality of production, the decay of technical skill, the atrophy of the individual and the social and economic chaos that has followed everywhere in the wake of the machine, lead us inevitably to the conclusion that reaction must come, for it is simply impossible for civilization to continue on the road it is travelling. Such a reaction, by leading to the revival of pre-mechanical standards of thought and industry, will remove the greatest obstacle of all to the solution of our problems.

Read more...

The Guilds

Guilds were voluntary associations for religious, social, and commercial purposes. These associations, which attained their highest development among the Teutonic nations, especially the English, during the Middle Ages, were of four kinds:

Religious guilds
Frith guilds
Merchant guilds
Craft guilds

The word itself, less commonly, but more correctly, written gild, was derived from the Anglo-Saxon gildan meaning "to pay", whence came the noun gegilda, "the subscribing member of a guild". In its origin the word guild is found in the sense of "idol" and also of "sacrifice", which has led some writers to connect the origin of the guilds with the sacrificial assemblies and banquets of the heathen Germanic tribes. Brentano, the first to investigate the question thoroughly, associating these facts with the importance of family relationship among Teutonic nations, considers that the guild in its earliest form was developed from the family, and that the spirit of association, being congenial to Christianity, was so fostered by the Church that the institution and development of the guilds progressed rapidly. This theory finds more favour with recent scholars than the attempts to trace the guilds back to the Roman collegia. The connexion or identity of the guilds with the Carlovingian geldoniœ or confratriœ cannot be ascertained, for lack of definite information about these latter institutions, which were discouraged by the legislation of Charlemagne.

IN ENGLAND

The earliest traces of guilds in England are found in the laws of Ina in the seventh century. These guilds were formed for religious and social purposes and were voluntary in character. Subsequent enactments down to the time of Athelstan (925-940) show that they soon developed into frith guilds or peace guilds, associations with a corporate responsibility for the good conduct of their members and their mutual liability. Very frequently, as in the case of London in early times, the guild law came to be the law of the town. The main objects of these guilds was the preservation of peace, right, and liberty. Religious observances also formed an important part of guild-life, and the members assisted one another both in spiritual and temporal necessities. The oldest extant charter of a guild dates from the reign of Canute, and from this we learn that a certain Orcy presented a guild-hall (gegyld-halle) to the gyldschipe of Abbotsbury in Dorset, and that the members were associated in almsgiving, care of the sick, burial of the dead, and in providing Masses for the souls of deceased members. The social side of the guild is shown in the annual feast for which provision is made. In the "Dooms of London" we find the same religious and social practices described, with the addition of certain advantageous commercial arrangements, such as the establishment of a kind of insurance-fund against losses, and the furnishing of assistance in the capture of thieves. These provisions, however, are characteristic rather of the merchant guilds which grew up during the latter half of the eleventh century.

MERCHANT GUILDS

These differed from their predecessors, the religious or frith guilds, by being established primarily for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining the privilege of carrying on trade. Having secured this privilege the guilds guarded their monopoly jealously. Everywhere the right to buy and sell articles of food seems to have been left free, but every other branch of trade was regulated by the merchant guild or hanse, as it was often called. The first positive mention of a merchant guild, the "enighten on Cantwareberig of ceapmannegilde", occurs during the primacy of St. Anselm (1093-1109). From the time of Henry I the charters of successive sovereigns bear witness to the existence of merchant guilds in the principal towns. These charters, such as those granted to Bristol, Carlisle, Durham, Lincoln, Oxford, Salisbury, and Southampton, were of the utmost importance to the guilds as they secured to them the right and power of enforcing the guild regulations with the sanction of law. For this reason Glanvill, the lawyer, writing in the twelfth century, regards the guild merchant as identical with the commune, that is, the body of citizens with rights of municipal self-government (Ashley, op. cit., inf., 72). From the fact that out of one hundred and sixty towns which were represented in the parliaments of Edward I, ninety-two are certainly known to have possessed a merchant guild, the conclusion is drawn that a guild was to be found in every town of any size, including some that were not much more than villages.

The organization of the merchant guilds is known from the constitutions or guild rolls which have survived. These documents are only four in number, but fortunately refer to towns in four different parts of England. They are the guild statutes of Berwick and of Southampton, and the guild rolls for Leicester and Totnes (Ashley, p. 67). From these we learn that each guild was presided over by one or two aldermen assisted by two or four wardens or échevins. These officials presided over the meetings of the society and administered its funds and estates. They were assisted by a council of twelve or twenty-four members. The guildsmen were originally the actual burgesses, those inhabitants who held land within the town boundaries, whether they were merchants or holders of agricultural land; but in course of time rights of membership passed by inheritance and even by purchase. Thus the eldest sons of guildsmen were admitted free as of right, while the younger sons paid a smaller fee than others. The guildsmen could sell their rights, and heiresses might exercise their membership either in person or through their husbands or sons.

The merchant guilds possessed extensive powers, including the control and monopoly of all the trades in the town, which involved the power of fining all traders who were not members of the guild for illicit trading, and of inflicting punishment for all breaches of honesty or offences against the regulations of the guild. They also had liberty of trading in other towns and of protecting their guildsmen wherever they were trading. They exercised supervision over the quality of goods sold, and prevented strangers from directly or indirectly buying or selling to the injury of the guild. Besides these commercial advantages the guild entered largely into the life of all its members. The guildsmen took their part as a corporate body in all religious celebrations in the town, organized festivities, provided for sick or impoverished brethren, undertook the care of their orphan children, and provided for Masses and dirges for deceased members. As time went on the merchant guilds became more exclusive, and when the rise of manufactures in the twelfth century caused an increase in the number of craftsmen, it was natural that these should organize on their own account and form their own guilds.

CRAFT GUILDS

Seeing that the merchant guilds had become identical with the municipality, the craftsmen, ever increasing in numbers, struggled to break down the trading monopoly of the merchant guilds and to win for themselves the right of supervision over their own body. The weavers and fullers were the first crafts to obtain royal recognition of their guilds, and by 1130 they had guilds established in London, Lincoln, and Oxford. Little by little through the next two centuries they broke down the power of the merchant guilds, which received their death-blow by the statute of Edward III which in 1335 allowed foreign merchants to trade freely in England. In the system of craft guilds the administration lay in the hands of wardens, bailiffs, or masters, while for admission a long apprenticeship was necessary. Like the merchant guilds, the craft guilds cared for the interests both spiritual and temporal of their members, providing old age and sick pensions, pensions for widows, and burial funds. The master craftsman was an independent producer, needing little or no capital, and employing journeymen and apprentices who hoped in time to become master craftsmen themselves. Thus there was no "working class" as such, and no conflict between capital and labour. At the end of the reign of Edward III there were in London forty-eight companies, a number which later on rose to sixty. Besides the merchant and craft guilds, the religious and social guilds continued to exist through the Middle Ages, being largely in the nature of confraternities. At the Reformation these were all suppressed as superstitious foundations. The trade guilds survived as corporations or companies, such as the twelve great companies of London which still maintain a corporate existence for charitable and social purposes, though they have ceased to have close connexions with the crafts, the names of which they bear. The merchant guild of Preston also survives in a similar state, but such bodies have no real significance. The Reformation shook their constitution, while the altered industrial and social conditions finally deprived them of the power and influence they had possessed in the Middle Ages.

IN FLANDERS AND FRANCE

The word gilde, or ghilde, is but one of many terms used formerly in France and in the Low Countries to denote what the more modern word corporation stands for, viz., an association among men of the same community or profession. Gilde, métier, métier juré, confrérie, nation, maîtrises et jurandes, and other like appellations, all essentially express this idea of association, at the same time laying stress on some particular feature of it. The word gilde, however, is the first to appear and we meet it very early in the history of western continental Europe. A capitulary of 779 says: "Let no one dare to take the oath by which people are wont to form guilds. Whatever may be the conditions which have been agreed upon, let no one bind himself by oaths concerning the payment of contributions in case of fire or shipwreck." This prohibition appears several times in the laws enacted under the Carlovingian emperors; nevertheless the guilds continued to exist, at least in the northern part of the empire. The records of the provincial councils held in those districts also show that the guilds were a matter of no small concern for the ecclesiastical authorities; for a long time the Church was bent on extirpating from their organization a number of objectionable features which made them a menace to morals.

In France and the Low Countries a guild was originally a sort of fraternity for common support, protection, and amusement. The members paid each a certain contribution to the common fund; they pledged their word to give one another assistance; they took care of the children of the deceased members and had Masses offered up for the repose of their souls; they celebrated the patron saint's day with great festivities in which the poor had their share. These and other features of the guilds did not, of course, appear all at the same time. Like most human institutions they had a modest beginning, and they developed according to circumstances. Again, it should be noted that they do not everywhere present one and the same type. Some are mainly social, others emphasize the religious side of the organization, while, later on, in the merchant and craft guilds, it is the economic aspect which becomes predominant. Before speaking of the latter a word should be said of the origin of the guilds in the two countries with which we are concerned here. This has been a much debated question. Some scholars consider the guilds as the product in Christian soil, of the German instinct of association, and they would assign for their remotest origin the banquets (convivia) so common among the Teutons and Scandinavians. Others claim that they were nothing else than the Roman corporations (collegia) established in Western Europe under Roman sway and reconstructed on Christian principles after the great invasions. That the Roman colleges of artisans flourished in southern and central Gaul has been established beyond doubt by the discovery of numerous inscriptions at Nice, Nîmes, Narbonne, Lyons, and other cities. It is not likely that the Barbarian invasion broke entirely the Roman traditions in countries where the influence of Rome had been felt so deeply, and one is warranted in saying that in southern and central France the origin of the guilds was to a certain extent Roman. Such an assertion, however, could hardly be made for northern France and still less for the Low Countries. There is no evidence to show that the Roman collegia ever attained great importance in these regions. At any rate, the dominion of Rome was established there much later than in the South and was never so deep-rooted. Roman institutions and customs had scarcely had time to take root before the German invasion, and they must have given way very easily under the pressure of the conquerors, whose numbers, rapidly increasing, soon insured to them a preponderating influence.

But whether a legacy of Roman civilization or a native institution of the young Teutonic race, the guild would never have attained its wonderful development had not the Church taken it under its tutelage and infused into it the vivifying spirit of Christian charity. Furthermore, it is certain that a large number of guilds owed their existence solely to the aspirations which gave rise to chivalry and induced thousands of men to join the monastic communities. Towards the end of the tenth century, with the greater security following the Norman invasions, there was an increase of trade on the Continent. In each of the large towns, such as Rouen, Paris, Bruges, Arras, Saint-Omer, there soon arose a corporation which was known as the Merchant Guild and which was, in some instances at least, a development of an older association. None but the brethren of the corporation were allowed to trade in any article except food. Whether the communes (chartered towns) of France and the Low Countries had their origin in the Merchant Guild is a moot question, although it seems certain that the merchants were at least instrumental in the granting of charters by princes, for the right of managing its own affairs, conferred on the town, practically meant that its government fell into the hands of the trading class. At the origin of the Merchant Guild, any townsman might become a member of the corporation on payment of a stated fee, but with the increase of their wealth, the traders showed more and more a tendency to shut out the poorer classes from their association. The latter classes, however, were not without organization; they had their own corporations (the craft guilds), most of which seem to have been constituted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Each one of these craft guilds, like the merchant guilds, had its charter and statutes, its patron saint, its banner and altar, its hall, its feast day, and its place in the religious processions and public festivities. There were in the craft guilds three classes of persons: the apprentices, or learners (apprendre, "to learn"), the journeymen (journée, "day"), or men hired to work by the day, and the masters or employers.

The apprentice had to remain from three to ten years in a condition of entire dependence under a master, in order to be qualified to exercise his trade as a journeyman. Before a master could engage an apprentice, he had to satisfy the officers of the guild of the soundness of his moral character. He was to treat the boy as he would his own child, and was held responsible not only for his professional, but also for his moral, education. On completing his apprenticeship, the young artisan became a journeyman (compagnon); at least, such was the rule from the fourteenth century onward. To become a master, he must have some means and pass an examination before the elders. At the head of the corporation was a board of trustees composed of two or more deans (doyens, syndics) assisted by a secretary, a treasurer, and six or more jurymen (jurés, assesseurs, trouveurs, prud'hommes). These officers were elected from among the masters and entrusted with the management of the guild's interests, the care of its orphans, the defence of its privileges, and the protection of its members. It was more especially the duty of the jurymen to enforce the statutes of the guild bearing on the relations between employer and employee, engagement of apprentices and journeymen, salaries, hours of work, holidays, etc. They could punish or even expel from the corporation any member whose conduct incurred their disapprobation.

From this strong organization, all pervaded with the spirit of Christianity, there resulted great benefits for the artisan. His work, which was well regulated and broken by many holidays, did not tax his strength too severely; the good life he was induced to live saved him from need, while his rights and interests were protected against the vexations of the local or central government. Still more noteworthy was the brotherly character of the relations between employee and employer, to which the great cities of the Middle Ages were indebted for the social peace which they enjoyed for many centuries. This alone would outweigh what disadvantages may have been attached to this organization of labour. The guilds of the Low Countries, otherwise similar to the French guilds, differed from them in one respect: political importance. The latter never gained enough influence to free themselves from the condition of utter dependence in which they had been placed by the kings, but in the Low Countries several circumstances combined which gave the labouring classes a power they could not have in France. Of these circumstances, the most important were the wealth of the cities, the large number of artisans, and their organization into military brotherhoods (confréries militaires) which formed a regular militia, capable of holding its own against the feudal armies, as was illustrated many times in the history of Flanders and Liège.

As this article has to deal mainly with the guilds in the Middle Ages, but little can be said of the corporations of artists, which, in France and the Low Countries, were few and had not much importance before the sixteenth century. The explanation of this tardy growth is found, at least partly, in the fact that, during the greater part of the Middle Ages, the fine arts remained within the Church or under its supervision; even in the thirteenth century the number of laymen engaged in these professions was still very small, as is shown in "Le Livre des métiers de Paris", or book of the statutes of the Paris craft guilds, drawn up by Etienne Boileau under the direction of St. Louis. Two other classes of guilds which deserve a special mention are the basoches (see Vol. VI, p. 193) and the temporary or permanent corporations for the exhibition of religious and other plays. The best known of the latter class of guilds is "La Confrérie de la Passion", established in 1402. Its Mystères form the link which unites the French tragedy of the seventeenth century with the dramatic literature of the Middle Ages.

After the end of the fifteenth century, under the despotic rule of the French kings, the guilds ceased to be a means of protection for a majority of their members — the journeymen — who formed associations of their own, regardless of all professional and even religious distinctions. Their privileges became a means of filling the royal coffers at the expense of the employers; the latter retaliated on the public, all the more readily that they had no competition to fear. By the middle of the eighteenth century the outcry against the guilds was general in France. In 1776 Turgot, then prime minister, planned their suppression, but his fall gave them some respite. In 1791 they were abolished by the Constituent Assembly. But remnants of these corporations are still found in many French and Belgian customs, as, for instance, the fees to be paid by notaries, solicitors, sheriff's officers, when they enter office. In the first half of the nineteenth century, several attempts were made in France to partially restore the craft guilds, but without success. During the last thirty years, however, there has been a Catholic movement in France and Belgium to counteract the evil effects of socialism by forming associations of employers and employed.

IN GERMANY

The first well-known German guild is that of the watermen of Worms, its charter (Zunftbrief) dating from 1106; the shoemakers of Würzburg received theirs in 1112; the weavers of Cologne, in 1149, the shoemakers of Magdeburg, in 1158. But it was not until the thirteenth century that the German guilds became numerous and important. Zunft, Innung, Genossenschaft, Brüderschaft, Gesellschaft, are the terms used in Germany to designate these associations. Here, as in Italy and the Low Countries, the most conspicuous guilds were those connected with the manufacture of linen and wool. In Ulm, for instance, towards the end of the fifteenth century, there were so many linen-weavers that the number of pieces of linen prepared in one year amounted at one time to 200,000. In the year 1466 there were 743 master weavers in Augsburg (Herberger, "Augsburg, und seine frühere Industrie", p. 46). In the large cities, the linen- and the wool-weavers formed two distinct corporations, and the wool-weavers again were divided into two classes: the makers of fine Flemish or Italian goods, and the makers of the coarser homespun materials.

Other important guilds were those of the tanners and the furriers; the latter included the shoemakers, the tailors, the glove-makers, and the stocking-knitters. In the shoemaker's trade there was a sharp distinction between the Neumeister, who made new shoes, the cobbler, and the slipper maker. The most striking example of an elaborate classification according to craft is found in the metal-workers: the farriers, knife-makers, locksmiths, chain-forgers, nail-makers, often formed separate and distinct corporations; the armourers were divided into helmet-makers, escutcheon-makers, harness-makers, harness-polishers, etc. Sometimes they went so far as to have special guilds for each separate article of a suit of armour. This accounts for the remarkable skill and finish seen in the simplest details.

A class of brotherhoods which deserves special mention is that of the guilds of the mining trades, which from an early date were very important in Saxony and Bohemia. "No politician or socialist of modern times", says H. Achenbach (Gemeines Deutsches Bergrecht, I, 69, 109), "can suggest a labour organization which will better accomplish the object of helping the labourer, elevating his position, and maintaining fair relations between the employer and the employed than that of the mining works centuries ago." The statutes of these mining guilds show, indeed, a remarkable care for the well-being of the labourer and the protection of his interests. Hygienic conditions in the mines, ventilation of the pits, precautions against accident, bathing houses, time of labour (eight hours daily — sometimes less), supply of the necessaries of life at fair prices, scale of wages, care of the sick and disabled, etc. — no detail seems to have been lost sight of.

As to their organization, government, and relations with the public or the civil authorities, the German guilds did not substantially differ from those in other European countries. The members were divided into apprentices, journeymen, and masters. At the head of the corporation was a director assisted by several officers. He was the sworn and responsible power of the guild, called the meetings, presided at them, had the right of final decision, managed the property of the guild, led it in case of war. Each guild had its fully equipped court of justice and enjoyed complete independence in all private concerns, but all the guilds were subject to the town council and town authorities, and were obliged to submit their statutes and ordinances to them. In the event of quarrels, either within or between the guilds, the civil authorities exercised the rights of a commercial judge; in conjunction with the guild, they also made regulations for the markets and police arrangements, fixed the prices of wares, organized the supervision of traffic and the protection from fraud or dishonest dealing.

The purchase of raw material was managed by the guild as a body so as to prevent monopoly. Strict regulations protected the rights of every one. There was equality between all the members with regard to the sale of their productions. The protection of purchasers and customers was assured by the city authorities; the guild was held responsible for the quality and quantity of the goods which it brought for sale to the market. In Germany, as elsewhere, however, the most striking feature of the guilds was the close connexion they established between religion and daily life. Labour was conceived by them as the complement of prayer, as the foundation of a well-regulated life. We read in the book "A Christian Admonition": "Let the societies and brotherhoods so regulate their lives according to Christian love in all things that their work may be blessed. Let us work according to God's law, and not for reward, else shall our labour be without blessing and bring evil on our souls." Each guild had its patron saint, who, according to tradition, had practised its particular branch of industry, and whose feast day was celebrated by attending church and by processions; each had its banner, its altar, or chapel in the church, and had Masses offered up for the living and the dead members. The religious observance of Sunday and holy days was commanded by most of the guilds. Whoever worked or made others work on those days, or on Saturday after the vesper bell, or neglected to fast on the days appointed by the Church, incurred a penalty. This union of religion and labour was a strong tie between the members of the guilds, and it was of great assistance in settling peacefully the differences arising between masters and companions.

The guilds were also mutual and benevolent societies; they helped the impoverished and sick members; they took care of the widows and orphans; they remembered the poor outside the society. Many benevolent institutions owed their foundation to some guild, as, for instance, St. Job's Hospital for smallpox patients at Hamburg, which was founded in 1505 by a guild of fishmongers, shopkeepers, and hucksters. There were a large number of these benevolent associations of tradesmen in the Middle Ages; at the close of the fifteenth century there were seventy at Lubeck, eighty at Cologne, and over one hundred at Hamburg.

In connexion with the guilds should be mentioned the workmen's clubs, which were very common at the end of the fifteenth century. So long as the German journeyman remained at work in a city, he belonged to one of these clubs, which supplied for him the place of his family and country. If he fell sick he was not left to public charity, but taken into the family of some master or cared for by his brother members wherever he went he could make himself known by the society's badge or password, and receive help and protection from the local branch of the association to which he belonged. Thus the journeyman was, in the first place, associated with the family of his employer, in whose house he generally lodged and boarded; in the second place, he stood in close relation with his associates of the same age and trade, co-members with him of the society which protected and helped him; finally, he enjoyed special connexion with the Church, because he generally belonged to one of the sodalities which were ordinarily, but not necessarily, a part of the society's organization.

Side by side with the artisans' guilds, there were also merchants' guilds, organized on the same plan as the former, and having similar objects in view with respect to the communal life of their members and their moral and religious well-being. But they differed in their attitude towards trade; for, while the chief object of the artisans' guilds was the protection and improvement of the different trades, the merchants' guilds aimed at securing commercial advantages for their members and obtaining the monopoly of the trade of some country or some particular class of goods. Not alone in the German cities, but also in all foreign countries where German commerce prevailed, corporations of this sort, guilds, or Hansa (the word Hansa has the same signification as guild), had existed from an early date and had obtained recognition, privileges, and rights from the foreign rulers and communities. By degrees these Hansa in foreign countries became banded together in one large association forming an important and rival commercial body in the midst of the native merchants and traders. Such was the case in London, where the merchants who had come from Cologne, Lübeck, Hamburg, and other cities formed an association of German merchants.

To further strengthen their position, the guilds belonging to different foreign cities decided to join in one common association. In England, those of Bristol, York, Ipswich, Norwich, Hull, and other cities were affiliated with the London Hansa, and were each represented there. On the same plan were organized the associations of Novgorod in Russia, of Wisby in the island of Gothland, and the so-called Komtoor of Bruges. The last-named was divided into three branches: one comprising with Lübeck the cities of the Slavonic country and of Saxony; the second, those of Prussia and Westphalia; and the third, those of Gothland, Livonia, and Sweden. This vast corporation, calling itself the Society of German Merchants of the Holy Roman Empire, was the foundation of the general German Hansa, or Hanseatic League, which by degrees embraced all the cities (at one time more than ninety) of Lower Germany, from Riga to the Flemish boundaries, and those in the South as far as the Thuringian forests. This league attained the summit of its power in the fifteenth century, and Dantzic was then universally acknowledged as its most important city; in the year 1481, more than 1100 ships had gone from its harbour to Holland. The ships were divided into flotillas of from thirty to forty craft, each flotilla having armed ships, called Orlogschiffe or Friedenskoggen, attached to it for its protection.

After a time, the Hanseatic League was broken up into separate sections whose centres were Lübeck for the Slavonic country, Cologne for the Rhenish, Brunswick for Saxony, and Dantzic for Prussia and Livonia. The Hansa lasted from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century; its last meeting took place in 1669, and the cities of Lübeck, Bremen, Brunswick, Cologne, Hamburg, and Dantzic were the only ones that had sent representatives. The causes of the ruin of this once so powerful association were the growth of the commerce of Holland and England, the Wars of the League, against Denmark and Sweden in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the Thirty Years' War, which was so detrimental to German commerce and manufactures. Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg are still called the Hanseatic cities.

The history of the German guilds of artists is closely connected with that of the guilds of artisans. For a long time the artists were incorporated in the trade associations, and their organization into independent corporations took place only at the close of the Middle Ages. The architects were probably the first to have their own organization.

In Germany, as in the other countries of Europe, the guilds were compulsory bodies, having the right to regulate trade, under the supervision of the civil authorities; but the system was not injurious in the Middle Ages. It was so only at the close of the sixteenth century, when the guilds became narrowly exclusive with regard to the admission of new members, and were nothing but a mere benefit society for a small number of masters and their associates. The abuses of the German corporations were brought to the attention of the Imperial Government in the diets of 1548, 1577, and 1654, but it was only in the course of the nineteenth century that the guilds were successively abolished in the different States of Germany. In the last twenty-five years, there were enacted in that country a number of laws whose aim was not the re-establishment of the old corporations, which had each its special domain and privileges, but the protection of the labourers, who had been left without organization and defence by the abolition of the guilds.

IN ITALY

"Of all the establishments of Numa", says Plutarch, "no one is more highly prized than his distribution of the people into colleges according to trade and craft. "From these words we should infer that the first well-known Italian corporations date from the seventh century B. C., but some authors, whose contention is founded on a text of Florus, have claimed that Servius Tullius, and not Numa, was the founder of the Roman colleges of artisans (e. g., Heineccius, "De collegiis et corporibus opificum", 138). Whatever may be the truth on this point, it is certain that the collegia opificum existed in the sixth century B. C., because they were incorporated in the constitution of Servius Tullius which remained in force until 241 B. C. There were but few of these corporations in the Republic, but their numbers increased under the emperors; in Rome alone there were in the third century more than thirty colleges, private and public (Theodosian Code, XIII and XIV). The latter were four in number: the navicularii, who supplied Rome with provisions, the bakers, the pork butchers, and the calcis coctores et vectores, who supplied Rome with lime for building. The members of these corporations received a fixed salary from the State.

Among the private colleges were numbered the argentarii, or bankers, the negotiatores vini, or wine merchants, the medici, or physicians, and the professores, or teachers. On the whole it might be said that the collegia were prosperous until the end of the third century B. C., but in the course of the next century they began to show signs of decline. The few privileges they enjoyed had ceased to be a compensation for their responsibilities to the State, and it was only by the most drastic measures that the last emperors succeeded in keeping the artisans in their collegia.

And now arise the questions: What remained of these corporations after the invasions? Is there any connexion between them and the Italian guilds of the thirteenth century? We can only answer this query by conjecture. The period extending from the fifth to the eleventh century is extremely poor in documents; the few annalists of those days have limited their work to a bare enumeration of events and a dry list of dates. Mention is made here and there of the existence of a guild, but we are not told whether these guilds are new associations or the development of an older organization. Since we know, however, that the Roman law was to a large extent incorporated in the codes of the Goths and Lombards, we have good ground to believe that many of the municipal institutions survived the fall of Rome. In support of this view, we have the well-known fact that the Barbarians usually dwelt in the country and left the government of the cities in the hands of the clergy, most of whom, being Italians, were naturally inclined to retain the Roman institutions, all the more readily as a better education enabled them to appreciate their value. All this leads to the conclusion that, in most cities, enough of the old Roman corporation must have been preserved to form the nucleus of a new organization which slowly but steadily developed into the guild of the Middle Ages.

The mercanzia, the earliest well-known type of these guilds, existed in Venice, Genoa, Milan, Verona, Pisa, and elsewhere in the tenth century; it somewhat resembled the merchant guild of Northern Europe, being an association of all the mercantile interests of the community without any professional distinction, but, as the increase of trade which followed the First Crusade brought about an increase of industrial activity, the arts found it more convenient to have an association of their own, and the mercanzia was split into craft guilds. As an example of this evolution, we may take the Roman mercanzia. Although it had been in existence at least since the beginning of the eleventh century, it received its final constitution only in 1285. At that time it was composed of thirteen arts, all united into one common association, but in the course of the following century we see these arts withdrawing successively from the mother guild and forming independent corporations until finally the mercanzia was merely a merchant guild.

The Italian arts were not all placed on the same footing. Some, being more important, had a right of precedence over the others and a larger share of the political rights. This hierarchy varied, of course, from one city to another; in Rome the farmers and drapers came first; in Venice and Genoa, the merchants. In Florence we find the most striking illustration of this type of organization. The arts were divided into major and minor. The former were, in the order of importance, the judges and notaries, the drapers, the bankers, the wool-manufacturers, the physicians and apothecaries, the silk-manufacturers, and the skin-dressers. They formed the popolo grosso, or burgesses, and governed the city with the old feudal families; but in 1282 the latter were deprived of their political rights, and the burgesses were compelled to share the government of Florence with the popolo minuto, or minor arts — the blacksmiths, the bakers, the shoemakers, the carpenters, and the retailers of wine.

In its main lines, the organization of the Italian guilds resembled that of the French guilds. Their members were divided into apprentices, journeymen, and employers. Their life was regulated by an elaborate system of statutes bearing on the professional and religious duties of the brethren, the relations of the corporations as a body with the local government, competition, monopoly, care of the sick, of the orphans, etc. The officers were all elected usually for a term not exceeding six months. At first they were few, but their number increased rapidly with the importance of the guild. One of the most remarkable illustrations of guild government is given us by the Roman corporations. At the head of each one was a cardinal protector, but the real managers were the consuls (sometimes called priori, capitudini). Until the beginning of the fifteenth century they were invested with great judicial power, but after the return of the popes to Rome their functions became merely administrative and their authority was limited by a number of other officers-assessors, procurators, delegates, defensors, secretaries, archivists. The second great officer of the corporation was the camerlingo, or treasurer; at one time his office was even more important than that of the consul, but little by little a large part of his powers went to computors, exactors, taxators, depositors. The proveditor had the custody of the guild's furniture and was to preserve good order in the assemblies; the syndics examined the administration of the officers at the end of their term; the physician and nurses attended the sick members free of charge, and the visitor had to call on those who were in prison. Besides, there were many officers attached to the chapel: vestrymen, churchwardens, chaplains.

Guilds of artists appeared very early in Italy. Sienna, Pisa, Venice seem to have been in the lead. The first of these cities had a corporation of architects and sculptors in 1212; the statutes of the sculptors and stone-cutters of Venice date from 1307; those of the carpenters and cabinet-makers in the same city from 1385. In Rome the guilds of artists were formed relatively late; the sculptors in 1406, the painters in 1478, the goldsmiths in 1509, the masons in 1527. On the whole it is seen that the arts connected with construction were the first to have their own association, then came the goldsmiths, and finally the painters. It often happened that artists were incorporated into trade guilds, as, for instance, the painters of Florence, who still belonged to the grocers' guild in the sixteenth century. The famous "Accademia del Desegno" of that city, one of the first academies of fine arts in Europe, grew out of the "Compagnia di San Luca", a semi-religious, semi-artistic guild. The decline of the Italian guilds began in the sixteenth century and was brought about by the decay of the commerce of the country. They were abolished in Rome by Pius VII in 1807, and by the end of the first half of the nineteenth century they had become a thing of the past in all Italian cities.

IN SPAIN

What has been said of the origin of the guilds in Italy applies to Spain. In no other province (except, perhaps, Southern Gaul) had the inhabitants been influenced more deeply by Roman civilization, and the Visigoths, who settled there in the fifth century, were, of all the Barbarians, those who showed the strongest tendency to retain Roman institutions and customs. Unfortunately, the growth of this neo-Roman civilization was stopped by the Arabian invasion in the eighth century, and in the following 700 years the Christians of Spain, who were bent on the task of wresting their country from the infidels, turned their energies to warfare. Domestic trade fell into the hands of the Jews, foreign trade into those of the Italians, and manufactures existed mostly in cities under Moorish dominion. Religious and military associations were many and powerful, but merchant and craft guilds could not grow on this battlefield.

©New Advent Encyclopedia

Read more...