One of the factors which accelerated this movement was a curious combination of high prices fixed by the economic law of supply and demand and low wages fixed by the ancient law of custom. It must be remembered that at this time the science of political economy did not exist. People did not know the laws which govern business and control prices and wages. They ignorantly supposed, as some persons still suppose, that these things may be governed by statute, being entirely unaware of the fact that they are really the product of causes for the most part beyond human control. In the early Middle Ages wages and prices were fixed on a basis of custom. The three centuries which formed the golden age of the guilds were a period of very slight industrial changes. There were no great changes in population. There was no colonizing, with the consequent opening of new markets. There were no modern inventions. There was no particular change in the amount of gold and silver in circulation. Consequently the law of supply and demand made itself felt so little through variations in prices and in wages that it was entirely neglected. It became the custom to pay a certain amount for each commodity, and especially to pay a fixed rate of wages in certain occupations. Nobody thought of paying less or of asking more than this customary sum. In case anybody did attempt any modification of this sort he was promptly checked by law. Attempts were also frequently made to prevent by law variations in prices.
This condition of things was completely upset by the changes which took place about the time of the discovery of America. One of the immediate results of the opening up of the mines and treasure hoards of Mexico and Central and South America, with the consequent enormous increases in the amount of gold and silver in circulation, was a rise in general prices of about 100 per cent or, to put it differently, a cutting in two of the value of gold and silver. Gold and silver are just like other commodities. When the amount of gold in a given market is doubled its value is halved; that is to say, you have to pay twice as much for whatever you want to buy.
The opening of new markets and the stimulus given not only to invention but to production and communication by the intellectual movement and consequent discoveries and inventions which were going on at this time upset industrial conditions tremendously. As usual, however, the workmen were the last to feel this change. Men paid more gold for commodities because they could not get them at the same old price, but wages for a long period remained fixed by custom. The laborer, like other people, had to pay more for what he bought, but unlike other people did not get any more for what he sold. This condition was made even worse by ignorant and sometimes disastrous attempts to control by legislation a situation which nobody understood. Statutes to fix prices and curtail profits are never enforceable unless backed by a government monopoly of production. Consequently the extensive legislation for these purposes was useless. Unfortunately there was also legislation forbidding combination of workmen, forbidding their passage from place to place in search of work, and forbidding their asking or receiving more than the customary rate of wages. Some of this was old legislation revived. Some of it was new. While not entirely effective, it was much more effective than the legislation with regard to commodity prices, because in the nature of things it was much more easily enforceable.
The natural consequence of these conditions was the disruption of the old economic order. The employer and employed, who had been associated together in the old guilds, separated into antagonistic, if not hostile, camps. Capital and labor instead of co-operating contested for supremacy. Guilds, if they survived at all, gradually became associations of masters. We shall see how this worked out in the development of the Community of Printers. The workmen gathered into organizations of their own which were the ancestors of the modern labor unions. The modern industrial system with all its power and with all its abuses came into existence.
Printing did not fit into the guild system at all. As has already been pointed out, the very nature of the industry prevented it. Indeed it was not legally regarded as an industry or a mechanical occupation until the great reorganization of the trade in 1618, a date to which we shall have frequent occasion to refer. At first it was regarded as an art or profession and those who practiced it were legally recognized as not being mechanics and not being liable to the laws governing mechanics. From 1450 to 1618 the printing industry was a sort of industrial outlaw. It was not under guild control on the one hand and was not amenable to the general statutes regarding industry on the other. That meant that the regulations which were at this period so advantageous to the other industries did not apply to this one, with numerous unfortunate results.
The industry at first attached itself to the universities. It was utilized, as we have seen, not for a commercial purpose as now, but for the production of Bibles, the classics, and other learned books almost exclusively. As we have also seen, the universities attempted to control the output of the press until more effective methods of censorship were devised.
Previous to the invention of typography there had been a sort of guild of the makers and sellers of books. In most places this was known as the Confraternity of St. John the Evangelist, sometimes as the Confraternity of St. Luke, and in one place at least as the Brothers of the Pen. This organization continued to exist as an association of printers, but it did not have the power and standing of the great trade guilds of an earlier period. Soon after the invention of printing the journeymen and apprentices formed an association of their own, which very soon developed into something like a labor union. The result of these conditions was great disorganization in the trade. Strikes were frequent. In France particularly the period from 1539 to 1544 was one of great disorder. Accounts of a series of strikes in the city of Lyons at this period read almost like the accounts of a serious labor disturbance of the present time. Shops were picketed. There were parades of strikers. There were riots by the strikers and their sympathizers, and an appeal to the town authorities to settle the matter. The settlement proposed was so unfavorable to the master printers that they threatened to leave Lyons in a body. This would have been a very serious matter, as printing was then one of the great industries of the city, and the disturbance was finally settled by a compromise which granted the journeymen some of their more important demands and yet left enough to the masters so that they felt that they could continue in business. The great grievances complained of were low pay, poor food (the journeymen were boarded by their employers), too many apprentices, and the unwillingness of the masters to allow them to work at certain times when they wanted to work, such as on the eves of Sundays and feast days and the like, and to abstain from work at certain times when they did not want to work.
Attempts were made to stop the disturbances in the trade by the intervention of the government. This intervention was entirely on the side of the masters. The journeymen were forbidden to do anything whatever to injure the masters or to impede their business and they were denied the limitation of apprentices for which they had asked. Guild regulations limited the number of apprentices taken in other industries and it seemed only reasonable to the journeyman that similar regulations should obtain among the printers, but the royal authority was constantly exercised against them. This attempted settlement by royal authority was immediately followed by still more serious strikes. The masters complained that the agitation was due to the pernicious activity of labor leaders and invoked the royal edicts. The journeymen alleged abuses, claimed their rights, and undertook to enforce them by combination. The royal authority was exercised in the effort to coerce the journeymen even to the point of threatening by an edict of 1617 that workmen who interfered with the conduct of their master’s business should be put to death. This, however, was the last expiring effort of the old order of things. In the next year, 1618, a royal edict organized the trade and prescribed the regulations under which it should be conducted.
This organization, which we shall proceed to study in detail, was the basis of the conduct of the printing industry in France until 1789. It did not bring industrial peace and it did not remedy all existing evils. As we shall see, the history of printing is a history of industrial conflict throughout the whole period until 1789. Henceforth, however, the regulation of the trade, the establishment of a responsible organization, and the fixing of regulations between masters and men changed the field of strife. We hear little or nothing more of strikes. The state was recognized as the source of regulation and as the arbiter of questions which might arise between the associated employers on one hand and their partially associated employees on the other. The industrial struggles hereafter took the form of litigation rather than of strikes. The outlaw industry at last obtained a recognized, responsible position in the industrial world.