454 



GUILDS 



GUILLEMIN 



the towns the advance of civilisation brought 

 with it a multitude of crafts, the workmen in 

 which organised themselves into the craft guilds. 

 In many cases the guild organisation was identical 

 with or grew into the government of the towns. 

 But as the merchant guilds were first in the field, 

 and moreover as the great merchants were fre- 

 quently also the local landholders, the merchant 

 guilds claimed and for a long time maintained 

 a privileged position. Hence fierce and bitter 

 struggles between the merchant and craft guilds, 

 which after continuing for many generations ended 

 on the whole in favour of the latter towards the 

 end of the 14th century. 



From what has been said it will be evident that 

 the guilds had a far wider scope than the trades^ 

 unions of the present time. The distinction between 

 labour and capital did not then exist ; the guilds 

 were an organisation of the whole industrial class, 

 and they were associated with the business of local 

 and civic self-government in the widest sense of the 

 word. They were most powerful on the Continent, 

 especially in the towns of Flanders and south 

 Germany, where the civic life was strongest and 

 the central government particularly weak ; there 

 the guild struggles, especially the struggle of the 

 craft against the merchant guilds, were fought out 

 most vigorously. In England, where after the 

 Norman Conquest there had been a comparatively 

 strong central power, the guilds found less scope 

 for independent activity in that way. 



The inner organisation of the guilds rested on 

 the arrangement of the workers into master, jour- 

 neyman, and apprentice. The right to the inde- 

 pendent exercise of a trade depended on being 

 member of a guild, and guild membership carried 

 with it the privileges of citizenship. On the one 

 hand, the guild had its own particular branch of 

 industry reserved to it and a local market for its 

 produce secured ; on the other hand, the guild had 

 to see that its members possessed the due qualifica- 

 tions, moral and technical, and that the work they 

 turned out was of fair and reasonable quality. In 

 other words the interests of producers and consumers 

 were supposed to be reconciled on equitable terms. 

 Those objects could be attained, and the guild 

 organisation generally could be maintained only by 

 a system of regulations, which were often very 

 minute, and yet were not sufficient to prevent 

 continual disputes between the various crafts. On 

 the whole the guild organisation was best adapted 

 to a stable condition of industry and of society. 



The causes of the decline and fall of guilds hav 

 not yet been thoroughly investigated, but the main* 

 reason may be found in the fact that they became 

 stagnant and did not adapt themselves to the 

 conditions of modern progress. As they had grown 

 up and flourished under medieval conditions, so. 

 they began to decay under the new influences whichj 

 overthrew the medieval system. Under the cen- 

 tralised governments which rose on the ruins of 

 feudalism, and during the great wars waged by 

 them in the 16th and 17th centuries, the free civic 

 life of Flanders an 1 Germany was crushed out. In 

 England the central power represented by Henry 

 VIII. gave a severe blow to the guilds by confiscat- 

 ing their property on the plea that it was used for 

 purposes of superstition ; only the London corpora- 

 tions redeemed their funds by paying a fine of 

 18,700. The mercantile system was best adapted 

 to such governments, and the guild organisation had 

 to conform to the new system. Strong governments 

 like France and Prussia regulated the guild organ- 

 isation in the interest of the central power as then 

 understood, the result being to deprive the members 

 of free initiative and to make their constitution 

 more rigid than ever. Above all, it was the great 

 industry of more recent times which finally broke 



up and superseded the guild industry. This may 

 be best illustrated by the early history of the steam- 

 engine, which was at once the originating cause 

 and the embodiment of the industrial revolution 

 that made guilds a thing of the past. Because 

 of the opposition of the trade-guilds of Glasgow, 

 James Watt could pursue his experiments only 

 within the limits of the university there. The 

 skill, energy, and enterprise which produced the 

 first effective steam-engine under Watt's initiative, 

 were found at Birmingham, a town where trade 

 corporations did not exist. These facts are typical 

 of the whole movement. Guild restrictions, whether 

 imposed by themselves or by strong central author- 

 ity, were not consistent with the new industry, for 

 which freedom was a prime necessity. This was at 

 length recognised in the legislation of the most 

 advanced countries of Europe. After a partially 

 successful attempt by Turgot in 1776, trade cor- 

 porations were entirely abolished in France at the 

 revolution of 1789. All special industrial privileges 

 enjoyed by guilds or corporations in England were 

 removed by the municipal Reform Act of 1835. The 

 North German Industrial Code of 1869 had the same 

 effect in Germany. Thus the guild organisation, 

 which during the middle ages realised the ideals of 

 freedom, progress, and equity in such measure as 

 was attainable by the men of that time, had become 

 opposed to the wider claims of freedom, progress, 

 and equity as now understood, and had to be swept 

 away. 



The name of guild has recently been revived in 

 connection with associations for various social pur- 

 poses, self-improvement, &c. These we need not 

 say are entirely different from the old guilds, to 

 which this name were better restricted. The co- 

 operative society is the only institution existing in 

 the western world that really corresponds to the 

 historic guild. The London livery companies still 

 continue, but they have lost the substantial char- 

 acteristics of the organisations of which they are a 

 survival and relic. Recent investigation, however, 

 has shown that guilds have long flourished very 

 extensively in China. The castes of India in many 

 respects perform the same functions, industrial and 

 social, as the medieval guild. 



See the articles CO-OPERATION, TRADES-UNIONS, CITY, 

 CORPORATION, HANSEATIC LEAGUE, &c. The whole sub- 

 ject of guilds has not yet been sufficiently investigated, 

 and in some important cases the materials for such investi- 

 gation no longer exist. Most of the documents relat- 

 ing to the guilds of Paris, for example, were destroyed 

 during the revolutionary period of 1789. See L. Breri- 

 tano, On the History and Development of Gilds, first pub- 

 lished as preface to English Gilds by Lucy Toulmin 

 Smith (1870), and appearing later as introduction to 

 the same writer's Arbeiteryilden der Gegenwart ( 1871 ) ; 

 Ochenowski, England's Wirthschaftliche Entwickelung im 

 Ausgange des Mittelalters (1879); Dr C. Gross, The 

 Gild Merchant : a Contribution to English Municipal 

 History (2 vols. 1890); article ' Gewerbe,' by G. Schon- 

 berg, in Schonberg's Handbook of Political Economy ( 2d 

 ed. 1886) ; E. Bain, Merchant and Craft Guilds of Aber- 

 deen (1887) ; and Walford, Gilds : their Origin and Con- 

 stitution (2d ed. 1889). For the earlier period of English 

 guilds, W. J. Ashley's Introduction to English Economic 

 History and Theory (1888) may be particularly recom- 

 mended. 



Guillemin, AMADE VICTOR, a popular writer 

 on science, was born in Sa6ne-et-Loire, 5th July 

 1826, and became a professor of Mathematics at 

 Paris. Of his numerous illustrated works many 

 have been translated into English, including The 

 Heavens (1866), The Sun (1869), The World of 

 Comets (1876), and The Forces of Nature (1872) and 

 Application of Physical Forces ( 1877 ), the last two 

 by Mrs Norman Lockyer. Both in France and 

 England Guillemin's works have gone through 

 many editions. Died January 2, 1893. 



