ROMAN LAW HISTORICAL SCIENCES 305" 



were old established or legally authorized. While we have not full 

 particulars as to the senatorial and imperial legislation, it seems 

 clear that besides Religious Clubs, Burial Societies, and Poor Men's 

 Benefit Clubs, the law recognized, or at least tolerated, a great many 

 workingmen's societies closely corresponding to the trade-unions of 

 the present day. 1 Each trade seems to have had its own associa- 

 tion. There were separate unions of carpenters, masons and stone- 

 cutters, of fishermen, sailors, boatmen and mule-drivers, of carriage- 

 builders, carpet-weavers and cutlers, of butchers, poultry-dealers, 

 cooks, laundry men and tailors; in short, we find no less than one 

 hundred different trades in which associations appear to have 

 existed. 2 There is no evidence of federation having been attempted 

 among similar unions in different cities, but the large unions had 

 local subdivisions. Thus the building carpenters of Rome had about 

 twelve hundred members divided into sixty decuriae. The unions 

 were organized on the principle of industrial democracy, and could 

 enact any by-laws not conflicting with the general law. Their reven- 

 ues were considerable, as evidenced by the way in which they spent 

 them and by the fact that their meeting-halls (scholae) were substan- 

 tial, even sumptuous, buildings. We cannot tell whether they ever 

 aimed at limitation of apprentices, trade monopoly, or the enforce- 

 ment of a minimum wage or of the "union shop," but there can be 

 no doubt that their object was then, as it is now, to strengthen the 

 position of the workingman and to enable him in various ways to 

 improve his condition. Thus a lawsuit was carried on by the Roman 

 laundrymen against the imperial fisc for the possession of a valuable 

 plot of land, and the laundrymen were victorious after eighteen 

 years of litigation. 3 As to strikes we have few particulars, and 

 though we know they occurred, we cannot tell what were their 

 effects. If they tended to disturb the peace, they were no doubt 

 sternly suppressed by the Roman magistrates, as happened in one 

 strike of which an account has been preserved. 4 But of all the 

 vicissitudes of the Roman unions the most fully described and the 

 most interesting is that socialistic system of state control depicted 

 in the Theodosian Code, under which they passed in the fourth 

 century. Under this system every artisan was compelled to enlist 

 in the union of his trade, and each union became virtually a branch 

 of the state's administrative machinery. For facts such as these the 

 economic historian is indebted partly to the archceologist, but chiefly 

 to the civil lawyer. 



1 The most complete discussion of this subject is that of Waltzing, Etude hist, 

 sur les Corporations Professionnelles, Brussels, 1895. 



2 See list in Waltzing, vol. n, p. 148. 



3 Ibid. vol. I, p. 188. 



4 Ibid. vol. i, p. 192. 



