518 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



came inverted. The contractor, taking into his counsels an 

 engineer and a lawyer, got together a board of directors and 

 formed a company, which, through his .nominees, gave him 

 the desired work on profitable terms. This change, like 

 many others, shows us that an agency originally formed to 

 discharge a function, is apt to reach a stage at which its self- 

 sustentation becomes the primary thing, and the function 

 to be performed by it the secondary thing. 



818. These combinations of free men which dissolve 

 after the completion of the out-door works they are engaged 

 on, are second in order of time to the combinations of those 

 who follow indoor occupations combinations which do not 

 end, because the products of their labour do not end. I 

 refer, of course, to the compound free labour of factory 

 hands. 



Though we are without definite evidence, we may safely 

 conclude that there was here an evolution from simple germs 

 which in early days everywhere existed under the domestic 

 form of master, journeyman, and apprentice. The fact that 

 there were gild-regulations which narrowly limited the 

 number of employes, implies that prosperous masters con 

 tinually tended to increase their staffs : an illustration being 

 yielded by the fining of Thomas Blanket of Bristol in 1340 

 for having in his houses various looms and hired weavers. 

 These repressive regulations, though generally efficient, were 

 doubtless sometimes evaded. One of the motives prompting 

 migration to suburbs, or to more distant places beyond the 

 reach of gild-regulations, may have been the ability there to 

 employ more men than the gilds allowed : both masters and 

 workers desiring to escape from arbitrary restraints. Reason 

 for suspecting that some of the earliest combinations of many 

 men under one master arose in such unregulated localities, 

 is afforded by the account of an establishment which existed 

 in Henry the Eighth s time at Newbury doubtless at first 

 &quot; New-borough &quot; : implying by its name that it was of late 



