TRADE-UNIONISM. 543 



vent the lowering of prices by over-production. Among the 

 merchant-adventurers there was a &quot; stint/ 7 or limit, put to 

 the quantity of commodity a member might export within 

 the year, according to his standing : a restraint on competi 

 tion. Similarly, the regulations for the trade of Bristol in 

 the 15th century, implied &quot; a ruled price for each of the 

 chief commodities of trade,&quot; and implied &quot; that no merchant 

 should sell below it,&quot; save in special cases. Clearly, for 

 bidding the sale of a commodity below a certain price, is 

 paralleled by forbidding the sale of labour below a certain 

 price ; and the man who underbids his fellow is reprobated 

 and punished in the last case as he was in the first. 



Laws imply force used to maintain them; for other 

 wise they are practically non-existent. Here, as before, 

 there is agreement between the old combinations and the 

 new, though the forces used are differently derived. The 

 most ancient trade-corporations were practically co-extensive 

 with the municipal governments, and at later stages the 

 corporations which differentiated from them, continued their 

 municipal alliances: town-authorities being largely com 

 posed of gild-authorities. Hence it can scarcely be doubted 

 that gild-regulations were enforced by municipal officials; 

 for the political actions and the industrial actions were not 

 then separated as they are now. But the wage-earners gilds, 

 having had no alliances with municipal bodies, have tried 

 to enforce their regulationsjliemselves. This has been their 

 habit from the beginning. The shoemakers of Wisbeach, in 

 striking against low wages, threatened that &quot; there shall 

 none come into the town to serve for that wages within a 

 twelve-month and a day, but we woll have an harme or a 

 legge of hym, except they woll take an othe as we have 

 doon.&quot; When we recall the past deeds of the Sheffield 

 grinders, trying to kill recalcitrant members of their body 

 by explosions of gunpowder, or by making their fast-revolv 

 ing wheels fly to pieces, or when we remember the violent 

 assaults month after month now made on non-unionists, we 



