REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 783 



strengthen their power.* As long as the corporations of the arts 

 and trades remained voluntary organizations, meeting wants that 

 could be provided for in no other way, they played an important 

 and indispensable part in the machinery of feudal society. It 

 was in the interest of order and industry that they established 

 monopolies, collected fees and dues, and sold privileges. With 

 the money thus obtained, they protected life and property, pro- 

 moted trade and commerce by the construction and maintenance 

 of land and river routes,f and provided for the social wants of 

 their members. But when they fell into the hands of the Govern- 

 ment they were doomed. The vicious traits inherent in all organ- 

 izations received a new impulse under the protection of the law, 

 and eventually converted them into an intolerable evil. " Each 

 corporation," says Depping, after telling how the interests of 

 the public were ignored, " had in view only the personal advan- 

 tage of the masters of the trade. The result was long apprentice- 

 ships, . . . heavy fines imposed on the apprentices, efforts to 

 exclude from the markets of Paris the unauthorized traders and 

 artisans, special privileges demanded by the industries devoted 

 to the production of luxuries, restriction put upon emulation 

 and competition, and finally a mechanical uniformity in manu- 

 facture." X 



Even in the time of Philippe le Bel these evils were recognized, 

 and an effort was made by that prince to remedy them. Many of 

 the privileges of the corporations were abolished, the most nota- 

 ble being the permission granted to the Parisians to bake their 

 own bread.* But the poison of monopoly had entered too deeply 

 into the industrial system of the age to be eradicated so easily. 

 The constant effort of the monopolists was to increase their mo- 

 nopoly ; the constant effort of the Government was to exploit it 

 to convert it into a gold mine for the tax gatherers and an asylum 

 for the office seekers. Enormous initiation fees were charged. In 

 Paris they reached the incredible sum of a thousand livres ; in 

 the lesser cities they were five hundred. || It became impossible 

 in some places in Germany to gain admission to the corporations 

 except through marriage with the daughter or the widow of a 

 master.^ The terms of apprenticeship and journeymanship were 

 prolonged beyond all rational limit. The French coopers had to 

 serve seven years, and the hatmakers ten years. If a man served 

 an apprenticeship in Rouen and moved to Paris, he had to serve 

 another. I) Tests of fitness for admission, like the production of a 



* See the striking example given by Depping, p. xxxii. f Pigeonneau, vol. i, p. 117. 

 \ Reglemens sur les Arts et Metiers, p. Ixxxiii. * Ibid., Ixxxiv. 



I Boehmert. Block's Dictionnaire general de la Politique, vol. i, p. 538. 

 ^ Palgrave. Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. i, p. 4.S1. 

 () Blanqui. History of Political Economy, p. 185. 



