ySji POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



masterpiece, made under rules that either hampered or destroyed 

 all skill and originality, were rigorously applied. To draw the 

 cords of monopoly still more tightly, rites and ceremonies were 

 invented, the aid and protection of saints invoked, and emblems, 

 banners, badges, and distinctive costumes to mark off each art 

 and trade designed and adoi3ted. 



The moral havoc wrought by these monopolies was greater 

 even than the industrial havoc. It crushed all feelings of justice 

 and humanity, making its victims more grasping and cruel than 

 Shylock ; it led them to the practice of every trick and decejjtion 

 of a Newgate sharper to evade the laws; it stirred up a con- 

 tention that rivaled the quarrels of the Guelphs and Ghibel- 

 lines. Apprentices became no better than serfs and slaves. They 

 were not merely pitilessly fined and brutally punished ; they were 

 often left in ignorance of the craft that they had purchased the 

 right to learn. In that frightful social and moral revulsion fol- 

 lowing the long and devastating wars of the sixteenth and seven- 

 teenth centuries, the corporations became more determined than 

 ever to maintain their industrial aristocracy and monopoly. 

 They refused to admit any trade less ancient and honorable 

 than their own, to the rights and privileges of the law ; they 

 soiled themselves by contact with no person of illegitimate birth ; 

 and in their savage and relentless pursuit of persons engaged in 

 unauthorized traffic they invaded the homes of contraband work- 

 men, confiscating both their tools and the hidden products of 

 their toil, leaving them and their families destitute and starving.* 

 To such absurd lengths was the creation of corporations carried 

 for the production of new taxes and new places for court favor- 

 ites that occupations like the teaching of dancing, the selling of 

 flowers, and the catching of birds were organized, and homo- 

 geneous occupations like the hatmakers' and carpenters' were di- 

 vided and subdivided beyond the comprehension of the modern 

 mind. But despite the ingenuity of lawyers and the vigilance of 

 armies of inspectors, the lines of demarcation could not be drawn 

 so sharply as to avoid conflicts of interests. The makers of felt 

 hats quarreled with the makers of cotton hats. The spinners 

 who had purchased the right to use hemp quarreled with those 

 that had purchased the right to use flax. The shoemakers fought 

 with the cobblers that reproduced more than two thirds of an old 

 shoe. The cutlers that made the handles of knives fought with 

 those that made the blades. The relations of the makers of 

 wooden porringers and the makers of wooden spoons were equally 

 belligerent. Blanqui says that in the middle of the seventeenth 

 century the annual cost of litigation over these inevitable inva- 



* Boehmcrt. Block's Dictionnaire general de la Politique, vol. i, pp. 53*7, 538. 



