50 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



evil — viz., the growth, of private capital and the combinations 

 of capitalists. The mediaeval guild was a thing apart, and its 

 type and character have disappeared forever ; and yet, peaceful 

 and judicious as those guilds were, even the anarchist and labor 

 unionist of to-day may dignify his district delegation by com- 

 paring it to the guilds of the middle ages, with more show of 

 reason than can Mr. Hudson compare them to our modern cor- 

 porations. The modern trades-union is an organization whose 

 object is to monopolize — or at least to secure — the right to labor 

 for wages for its own members ; to prevent by force, if necessary 

 and convenient (and it latterly has been supposed to be both ne- 

 cessary and convenient), the labor of anybody not one of its mem- 

 bers ; and to boycott any employer who claims the right to em- 

 ploy the labor of anybody and everybody not its members. The 

 ancient guild was composed of the masters of a certain trade ; of 

 men who had, by mastering its practical art, become entitled to 

 that designation — men who practiced it for a livelihood. It had 

 also the industrial and educational function of perpetuating 

 itself by the training of its apprentices to become, in their turn, 

 masters. In the days of feudalism, when the great crown ten- 

 ants held their territory from the crown by fee of service in its 

 wars (a service they levied on the people to perform in time of 

 war, grinding a profit to themselves by way of reprisal from 

 this same people in time of peace), these guilds preserved the 

 useful arts which ameliorate our own happier times. Each 

 guild met and discussed the state of its particular trade; de- 

 vised means of improving it (their discussions taking the place 

 now filled by the industrial newspaper, the trade- journal, and 

 the price-current). It passed laws also; but these laws were for 

 the guidance of its own members, not by any means to be sup- 

 plied outside of it in an attempt by force of arms to make em- 

 ployment for its own members at the expense of the vested 

 rights and liberties of the rest of mankind. So honorable were 

 they in thought, deed, and word, that the wealthiest London 

 merchant to-day is not above marching in procession in their 

 memory behind their banners on Lord - Mayor's - day, arrayed, 

 as Chaucer says they were in his : 



"... in one livery 

 Of a great and solemn Fraternitie." 



To compare them to the unhappy organizations of which 

 laboring-men to-day are the coerced victims — wherein the igno- 

 rance of the honest wage-worker is used to deplete his small 

 earnings for the support of vile " master- workmen " and " walk- 

 ing delegates" who toil not, neither spin — and the artificer in 

 brass or iron of mediaeval times (who kept his apprentices in his 

 own household as a part of his family, to succeed him as a mas- 



