[Sidenote: Partial Decay of Craft Gilds]
By the opening of the sixteenth century the craft gilds, though not so weakened as the merchant gilds, were suffering from various internal diseases which sapped their vitality. They tended to become exclusive and to direct their power and affluence in hereditary grooves. They steadily raised their entrance fees and qualifications. Struggles between gilds in allied trades, such as spinning, weaving, fulling, and dyeing, often resulted in the reduction of several gilds to a dependent position. The regulation of the processes of manufacture, once designed to keep up the standard of skill, came in time to be a powerful hindrance to technical improvements; and in the method as well as in the amount of his work, the enterprising master found himself handicapped. Even the old conscientiousness often gave way to greed, until in many places inferior workmanship received the approval of the gild.
Many craft gilds exhibited in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a tendency to split somewhat along the present lines of capital and labor. On the one hand the old gild organization would be usurped and controlled by the wealthier master-workmen, called "livery men," because they wore rich uniforms, or a class of dealers would arise and organize a "merchants' company" to conduct a wholesale business in the products of a particular industry. Thus the rich drapers sold all the cloth, but did not help to make it. On the other hand it became increasingly difficult for journeymen and apprentices to rise to the station of masters; oftentimes they remained wage-earners for life. In order to better their condition they formed new associations, which in England were called journeymen's or yeomen's companies. These new organizations were symptomatic of injustice but otherwise unimportant. The craft gilds, with all their imperfections, were to continue in power awhile longer, slowly giving away as new trades arose outside of their control, gradually succumbing in competition with capitalists who refused to be bound by gild rules and who were to evolve a new "domestic system," [Footnote: See Vol. II, ch xviii.] and slowly suffering diminution of prestige through royal interference.
[Sidenote: Life in the Towns]
In the year 1500 the European towns displayed little uniformity in government or in the amount of liberty they possessed. Some were petty republics subject only in a very vague way to an extraneous potentate; some merely paid annual tribute to a lord; some were administered by officers of a king or feudal magnate; others were controlled by oligarchical commercial associations. But of the general appearance and life of sixteenth-century towns, it is possible to secure a more uniform notion.
It must be borne in mind that the towns were comparatively small, for the great bulk of people still lived in the country. A town of 5000 inhabitants was then accounted large; and even the largest places, like Nuremberg, Strassburg, London, Paris, and Bruges, would have been only small cities in our eyes. The approach to an ordinary city of the time lay through suburbs, farms, and garden-plots, for the townsman still supplemented industry with small-scale agriculture. Usually the town itself was inclosed by strong walls, and admission was to be gained only by passing through the gates, where one might be accosted by soldiers and forced to pay toll. Inside the walls were clustered houses of every description. Rising from the midst of tumble-down dwellings might stand a magnificent cathedral, town-hall, or gild building. Here and there a prosperous merchant would have his luxurious home, built in what we now call the Gothic style, with pointed windows and gables, and, to save space in a walled town, with the second story projecting out over the street.
The streets were usually in deplorable condition. There might be one or two broad highways, but the rest were mere alleys, devious, dark, and dirty. Often their narrowness made them impassable for wagons. In places the pedestrian waded gallantly through mud and garbage; pigs grunted ponderously as he pushed them aside; chickens ran under his feet; and occasionally a dead dog obstructed the way. There were no sidewalks, and only the main thoroughfares were paved. Dirt and filth and refuse were ordinarily disposed of only when a heaven-sent rain washed them down the open gutters constructed along the middle, or on each side, of a street. Not only was there no general sewerage for the town, but there was likewise no public water supply. In many of the garden plots at the rear of the low-roofed dwellings were dug wells which provided water for the family; and the visitor, before he left the town, would be likely to meet with water-sellers calling out their ware. To guard against the danger of fires, each municipality encouraged its citizens to build their houses of stone and to keep a tub full of water before every building; and in each district a special official was equipped with a proper hook and cord for pulling down houses on fire. At night respectable town-life was practically at a standstill: the gates were shut; the curfew sounded; no street-lamps dispelled the darkness, except possibly an occasional lantern which an altruistic or festive townsman might hang in his front-window; and no efficient police-force existed—merely a handful of townsmen were drafted from time to time as "watchmen" to preserve order, and the "night watch" was famed rather for its ability to sleep or to roister than to protect life or purse. Under these circumstances the citizen who would escape an assault by ruffians or thieves remained prudently indoors at night and retired early to bed. Picturesque and quaint the sixteenth-century town may have been; but it was also an uncomfortable and an unhealthful place in which to live.
TRADE PRIOR TO THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
Just as agriculture is the ultimate basis of human society, so town- life has always been an index of culture and civilization. And the fortunes of town-life have ever depended upon the vicissitudes of trade and commerce. So the reviving commerce of the later middle ages between Europe and the East meant the growth of cities and betokened an advance in civilization.
[Sidenote: Revival of Trade with the East]