It was doubtless necessary that the companies should be pulled down from the lofty heights which they once had occupied. It was requisite that all relics of the detailed system of trade-organisation which the Middle Ages had handed down to us should be broken up, to make room for a régime more conformable to modern conditions of industry. The anarchic reign of individualism through which trade passed at the beginning of this century was an unavoidable step in economic development.
But it was a step attended with infinite loss and inestimable suffering, and it is well that proofs are not wanting of the approaching end of unrestrained competition and anti-social individualism. Signs of change are not wanting. Experience is continually demonstrating that organisation can accomplish vastly more than individual enterprise; that combination is immeasurably more powerful than competition. It is indeed the tracing out of this reaction in favour of combination for common ends, which lends to the economic history of the last hundred years its chief, perhaps its only, human interest.
Socialists and other forms of organisation.
The reaction has manifested itself in various ways. The Socialists have always made State-organisation of labour one of the strongest planks of their platform[231]. At the same time Englishmen have looked with peculiar jealousy on any attempts by the state to extend its sphere of action. Nevertheless a steady development has been witnessed in this direction; the various Civil Services show a uniform increase with the numbers and requirements of the nation. The Board of Trade, the Local Government Board, the Charity and Ecclesiastical Commissioners, are further indications of the same tendency towards organisation.
Trades Unions; their achievements.
Improvement in status of labour.
The Gilds cannot, as we have seen, be censured for low aims; moreover their endeavours to reach the level they set themselves were constant and sincere. And the latter half of the nineteenth century has seen a repetition of somewhat similar attempts.
The Trades Union movement[232] is one pregnant with promise for the future[233]. Though the Unions were formed in the first instances for the purpose of resistance to the masters, it may be hoped that as the need for this grows weaker the analogy which their promoters love to institute between them and the old Craft Gilds may become more and more real. They have already done much to raise the condition of labour, and as Friendly Societies they are of the highest value to the workmen[234]. There are signs too that we may even obtain organisations which, with due allowance for altered conditions, may accomplish much of the other good work which Gilds performed for mediæval industry.
Attempts at regulation of trade.
Further necessary approximation to Gilds.
Appreciation of the common interests of masters and men,
and of the necessity of ensuring a higher standard of work.
The Unions already aim at ensuring stability of employment through deliberate regulation of trade. By this means they hope to strike a death-blow at that root-evil of our present industrial system, irregularity of employment and uncertainty of wages.
But they yet fall short of the Gilds in two important particulars, and until these deficiencies are made good Trades Unions can only be considered as insufficient means to a highly desirable end.