542 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



prenticeship of specified length. This being the law of every 

 gild, it resulted that each town had a semi-servile population 

 living as best it might outside the regular businesses. Simi 

 larly, gilds of wage-earners, prompted by the desire to re 

 strain competition, commonly insist upon previous appren 

 ticeship as a qualification for entrance into their unions, 

 while making strenuous efforts, and often using violence, to 

 prevent the employment of non-unionists: the tendency 

 being to produce, as of old, a class of men ineligible for any 

 regular work. 



To the same end the old gilds kept down the numbers of 

 apprentices taken by masters into their respective trades, 

 and in this their example has been followed by these modern 

 gilds. Indeed, we here find a definite link between the old 

 and the new. For one of the earliest actions taken by mod 

 ern combinations of workers was that of reviving and en 

 forcing the still-extant laws limiting the numbers of appren 

 tices; and this has become a general policy. Of the flint- 

 glass makers it is said :- 



The constant refrain of their trade organ is l Look to the rule 

 and keep boys back; for this is the foundation of the evil. &quot; 



So, too, in the printing trades there have been persistent 

 efforts to find &quot; the most effective way of checking boy- 

 labour.&quot; 



&quot; And the engineering trades, at this time entering the Trade Union 

 world, were basing their whole policy on the assumption that the duly 

 apprenticed mechanic, like the doctor or the solicitor, had a right to 

 exclude illegal men from his occupation.&quot; 



In the days of craft-gilds the State-regulation of prices 

 prevailed widely; but that the gilds, either as deputies of 

 the government or of their own motion, also regulated 

 prices, we have some evidence. &quot; A statute of Edward VI 

 seems to have limited the powers hitherto enjoyed by tho 

 gilds of fixing wages and prices,&quot; says Cunningham. Even 

 in the absence of proofs we might fairly infer that their 

 rules were intended to check underselling; as also to pre- 



