Farm Ownership Linked With Trades Unions

by Reverend John LaFarge, S.J.

Consistently has America probed the causes which keep the labor situation in the United States in perpetual turmoil. It has insisted, in season and out of season, that the internal difficulties which the unions experience are not to be blamed upon the principle of trades-unionism in either form that it may take, whether of the industrial or of the crafts union. It believes that these difficulties are due to personal factors which can be remedied by a change of heart in certain leaders and by the education in the true concept of Christian trades-unionism of the great body of American labor. But another element in the trades-union situation must be reckoned with if trades-unionism is to be saved.

Speaking over the National Farm and Home Hour, William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, declared that “the farmer’s welfare is labor’s welfare. The two are inseparable.” Mr. Green gave as the reason for his statement the “close and direct relationship” that exists between labor’s economy and the farmer’s economy. “This means that the buying power of the farmer depends directly upon the buying power of labor.” Large-scale agriculture, too, has produced a corresponding body of farm laborers, so that agricultural workers’ unions are now forming in fruit and vegetable farming, in beet growing, in onion growing, in large-scale dairies and in fruit and vegetable packing and canning.

It is not the alleged identity of interests between labor and agriculture which is our concern. Indeed, such an identity is vigorously denied by many prominent farm leaders who look upon such identification as mere propaganda for the proposed Farmer-Labor party. We are concerned with the danger to trades-unionism that was pointed out by Dr. Goetz Briefs of Georgetown University at the recent convention in Richmond, of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference: the formation of an ever-increasing wage-earning proletariat due to the vanishing ownership of the land.

The effect of this vanishing ownership, said Dr. Briefs, is to intensify to the point of madness the rivalries among wage-earners, and between wage-earners and their employers. It makes no difference whether it is an industrial or an agricultural wage-earner that is concerned. The bitterness and rivalry, with corresponding difficulty of reaching a solution increase as a greater and greater percentage of our citizens move into the purely wage-earning class, and thus swell the ranks of an eventual proletariat. The terrific pressure upon trades-unionism created by such a situation adds fuel to the flames of internecine labor disputes. A wider and wider area is opened up for the ambitions of organizers and organizations, and, worst of all, youth grows up conceiving of life only in terms of labor with no other idea of man’s temporal existence.

The Catholic Church appeals to charity and justice as the remedy for these disputes. But charity and justice belong to the supernatural order. They are gifts of Divine Grace, and Divine Grace builds upon nature. If that nature is to be restored, there must be a much greater equalization than now prevails between the two main types of wage-earning and the agrarian; and that can only be accomplished by the restoration of private property to the landless proletariat.

Growing tenantry is a sign of the proletarianizing process. In the rural districts, tenantry has increased from thirty-five per cent of the number of farms in 1900 to forty-five percent in 1935. As was shown by Dr. Edgar B. Schmiedeler, O.S.B., Director of the Catholic Rural Life Bureau of the N.C.W.C., this increased tenantry brings with it physical “erosion” of the farms, which are not cared for by those who do not own them; and social “erosion,” in the shape of irresponsible drifters; “vanishing liberty, since renters, like wage-earners, are not the free people that owners are.” But more threatening than that, it means the continuing of the ranks of competing industrial job seekers in the cities.

The Most Rev. Edwin V. O’Hara, Bishop of Great Falls, father of the Catholic Rural Life Conference, resumed recent Papal teaching as: “First, wide diffusion of privately owned property in land; secondly, the ownership of the land by those who operate it; and, thirdly, the desirability of the family-sized farms as opposed to the larger holdings on which farm laborers were little better than serfs.”

How can all this be brought about? The yearly discussions of the Catholic Rural Life Conference have crystallized certain ideas. The opinion has been very positively formed that no amount of mere economic allurement will attach people to the land who are at present disaffected from it. Farming may be made an attractive business for some of the higher-ups in the cotton or the wheat or the dairying oligarchy, or in the large-scale trucking enterprises, but though some way may be devised to make it yield a good living for the little farmers, the multitudes will not be attracted to farming merely because of its paying facilities. Nor will the multitudes be won by any back to the land mysticism, however it may appeal to individuals. Land as a mere money-making agent, or land as an end in itself, does not offer a sufficiently powerful and reliable incentive. People will only learn to appreciate the land and to value land ownership when they look upon it as an instrument; an instrument given to man by the Creator Himself, but an instrument primarily for a spiritual purpose, and only secondarily for the purpose of commercial or monetary profit.

This spiritual purpose is the sustenance and the physical permanence of the farm home, as the seat of the Christian family. This was put very plainly by the Most Rev. Aloysius J. Muench, Bishop of Fargo, as the fifth of six points with which he summed up the topic of religion and rural welfare: “The principles of social justice, effective tenancy legislation, etc., must have their first point in the farm home. The farmstead as a homestead must be cherished as the priceless social institute in the land.”

In a public address a few days before the Richmond meeting, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Alexander Troyanovsky, flung down a challenge to the principle of widely distributed, family-sized land ownership as the foundation for a healthy economic life in the nation. It is impossible, said Mr. Troyanovsky, to apply modern technique to the small-sized or family farm. Modern agricultural technique requires large-scale farming, and this means that the only course for American farming is to become collective. That Soviet statement is simply contrary to fact. Where the local community is organized on a cooperative basis, small farms can enjoy every bit of the modern technical facilities—mechanical, electric, biological, etc.,—as are enjoyed in any collective or large-scale enterprise. As was stated by the Conference in a resolution that drew general applause: “We must retain fee-simple ownership of land in small parcels and make technology and scientific research serve this type of land tenure.” A pioneer spirit can use twentieth-century methods.

Behind the Soviet challenge, however, lay a threat of a much deeper nature, a threat that hangs like a cloud over our congressional deliberations at the present time, to the effect that only rigid governmental control can restrain the domination of large-scale farming, curb wasteful competition and greed, and afford sufficient protection to the small farmer. Hence the farmer is confronted with only two entrees on his menu: virtual dictatorship or ruinous laissez-faire. To this challenge we reply:

First, that an immense amount can (and must) be done by the Government, State as well as Federal, to encourage distributed land-ownership and the useful organization of rural economy which does not fall into the class of rigid control or virtual dictatorship. As Bishop Muench noted in the third of his six points, the state can “safeguard the farmers’ interests in the sale of property so that that acquisition of private property is possible.” Taxes can favor small-scale ownership without invading the rights of individuals or destroying all private initiative. Taxation, said Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas at the recent opening of Congress, should favor the family-size farm. Governmental credit can be organized to help the small owner quite as much as the large.

Second, the amount that can be accomplished in this direction by voluntary effort is woefully underestimated. An experiment like that of Father Ligutti in Granger, Iowa, would have been thought utterly impracticable a few years ago. Yet Father Ligutti’s Slavs and Italians have demonstrated a high degree of self-subsistence and skillful utilization of modern technical resources within a framework provided for them through Federal aid. Other experiments spring up daily, all of them in one form or another teaching that no limit has yet been found to the efficacy of cooperation on Christian—not on merely materialistic—lines. The surface of cooperation between city and country groups, between producer and consumer, on a voluntary and regional basis, has hardly been scratched. How many charitable individuals, for instance, in our large cities, have experimented in a most eminently practical form of cooperation, that of making loans, on long-term payments, to young families starting life in the country? Incredibly little has been done in the field of voluntary international cooperation. We talk of export and surpluses as if these things were decreed by the gods on Olympus. Yet they are amenable to voluntary understandings which transcend governmental lines.

At the present time I know of at least one Catholic rural community which is trying to organize itself upon a cooperative basis. Pastor and Sisters are leading in the work. The community is in the East, and is fairly accessible to large centres. Let us suppose that a city Catholic, with some means and some leisure, were to interest himself in the affairs of such a community, were to spend a certain part of his time therein, study on the spot its possibilities for the exemplification of the Christian cooperative, confer with the local men and women who are trying to put the program across, and extend a certain amount of practical aid to the initial ventures—what an immense amount of good could be accomplished for the Catholic social program! Why should a community of decent, self-respecting people, of our own Faith, be obliged always to choose between the dismal alternatives of starting from absolute scratch, or else applying for Federal bounties which are granted only upon rigidly specified lines, entail heavy obligations and dependencies, and, anyhow, do not touch this sort of effort.

While I was writing this paragraph, Father McGoey, of Toronto, dropped in, who has accomplished such wonders in establishing his forty practically self-sustaining families, with their 241 souls, upon the land. He sees a plenty of ways which an intelligent, city Catholic can aid such a rural community. He can help the cooperatives to finance their project. He can help provide outlets in the city, such as a consumer’s organization, for the community’s produce. He can assist the rural community in getting books and furniture for a rural library. But the useful task of all, in Father McGoey’s opinion, for the city person, is to bring the rural dweller to a better appreciation of his own opportunities. This he can do best if he is himself a man who has made a successful career of city life, and so can add realism to his own comparisons.

Finally, it seems to me that we vastly underestimate, in this, as in other matters pertaining to social justice, the immense efficacy of a widespread popular education in the principles of a right order. Were our Catholic periodicals—speaking of Catholics alone—and our Catholic lecturers and preachers and professors of sociology and economics throughout the country to unite upon a wide and general program of educating the American as to the evils of proletarianism, the necessity of distributed private ownership and the family social unit, the nature and efficacy of Christian cooperation and Christian cooperatives, the possibilities, spiritual cultural of Catholic parish life, a definite brake would be put upon the centralizing and depersonalizing theories of agrarian economy which are now invading political circles. The majority of thinking farm leaders welcome these basic truths when they are explained to them. “We simply must accept your Catholic family-economics program,” said the non-Catholic President of a secular college in conversation with a delegate to the Richmond convention. We have had, I believe, altogether too much agrarian defeatism. Let us begin to market the harvest of knowledge which alone can stop the Bolshevist weed from springing up and choking industry and agriculture to death.

From America Magazine (1937)
Farm Ownership Linked With Trades Unions: The Catholic plan replies to a Soviet challenge

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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

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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.

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