586 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Next observe that industrial towns, usually formed by coalescence 

 of j^reoxisting rural divisions rendered populous because local circum- 

 stances favored some form of trade, and presently becoming places of 

 hiding for fugitives, and of security for escaped serfs, began to stand 

 toward the small feudally-governed groups around them in relations 

 like those in which these stood to one another : competing with them 

 for adherents, and often fortifying themselves. 



Again, there is the fact that these cities and boroughs, which by 

 royal charter or otherwise had acquired powers of administering their 

 own affairs, habitually formed within themselves combinations for 

 protective purposes. In England, in Spain, in France, in Germany 

 sometimes with assent of the king, sometimes notwithstanding his re- 

 luctance as in England, sometimes in defiance of him, as in ancient Hol- 

 land there rose up guilds, which, having their roots in quasi-religious 

 unions among related persons, presently gave origin to frith-guilds and 

 merchant-guilds ; and these, defensive in their relations to one another, 

 formed the basis of that municipal organization which carried on the 

 general defense against aggressing nobles. 



Then there is the further fact that, in countries where the antago- 

 nisms between these industrial communities and the surrounding mili- 

 tant communities were violent and chronic, the industrial communi- 

 ties combined to defend themselves. In Spain, the pohlaciones, which 

 when they flourished and grew into large towns were invaded and 

 robbed by adjacent feudal lords, formed leagues for mutual j^rotec- 

 tion ; and again, at a later date, there arose under like needs, more 

 extensive confederations of cities and towns, which, under severe pen- 

 alties for non-fulfillment of the obligations, bound themselves to aid 

 one another in resisting aggressions, whether by king or nobles. In 

 Germany, too, we have the perpetual alliance entered into by sixty 

 towns on the Rhine in 1255, when, during the troubles that followed 

 the deposition of the Emperor Frederick II., the tyranny of the nobles 

 had become insupportable. And we have the kindred unions formed 

 under like incentives in Holland. So that, both in small and in large 

 ways, the industrial groups here and there growing up within a nation 

 are, in many cases, forced by local antagonisms partially to assume 

 activities and structures like those which the nation as a whole is 

 forced to assume in its antagonisms with nations around. 



Here the implication chiefly concerning us is that, if industrialism 

 is thus checked by a return to militancy, the growth of popular power 

 is arrested. Especially where, as happened in the Italian republics, 

 defensive war passes into offensive war, and there grows uj) an ambi- 

 tion to conquer other territories and towns, the free form of govern- 

 ment proper to industrial life becomes qualified by, if it does not 

 revert to, the coercive form accompanying militant life. Or where, 

 as happened in Spain, the feuds between towns and nobles continue 

 through long periods, the rise of free institutions is arrested ; since, 



