A Brief History of Printing. Part II: The Economic History of Printing

by Frederick W. Hamilton

[1]. A more detailed account of the guilds will be found in Chapter V.

The introduction of printing raised new questions. Printing did not fit into this scheme of things for several reasons. As a newly discovered art it did not properly belong to any of the known industries, which had gradually become consolidated into strong guilds. The printers, therefore, found themselves outside the recognized trade law.

They were, therefore, taken in hand by the authorities until such time as their own trade organization developed. Not only was the printing trade outside the guild organizations, but it was different from them in several important principles. In the first place, it was from the beginning a machine occupation; in the second place, it involved division of labor; and in the third place, it dealt with a product entirely different from that of the other craftsmen. The dawn of the printing industry was the dawn of an age of machinery in production. The product of the printing press was not simply an article of consumption. There is no comparison between a piece of cloth or a pair of shoes and a book. The book is a source of information and enlightenment, or the reverse. It may stir men to the ecstasies of devotion or incite them to rebellion or unsettle the foundations of their religious faith. It may serve the highest interests of mankind or it may be in the last degree dangerous to the church, the state, and the individual.

Obviously, to the fifteenth century mind everything called for the regulation of the industry. The fifteenth century, like those which immediately preceded it, was an age of regulation. The idea of the freedom of commerce and industry, so dear to the modern political economist, had not yet been conceived. All industry was subject to the most minute regulations partly imposed by the state and partly imposed by the guild. All the concerns of human life were subject to regulation, including even what people in different ranks of life should eat, drink, and wear. As there was no trade organization to regulate printing, of course it became immediately the subject of governmental interest.

Scarcely had the art of printing appeared when the governmental rights of regulation were invoked to destroy it, fortunately without success. Most important inventions deprive certain workmen of their occupation. The invention of printing was no exception. It necessarily meant the economic ruin of the copyists and threatened the illuminators. By the middle of the fifteenth century the copying of books had to a considerable extent come out of the monasteries and become a regular occupation. In 1472 there were in France ten thousand of these copyists, to say nothing of the illuminators. These copyists were organized into guilds with charter rights and a definite legal position. Seeing their livelihood threatened, they attempted in every way to prevent the introduction of printing. They invoked their charter rights and attempted to protect themselves thereby against the invasion of their field by the printer. Not only that, but they were probably back of the popular clamor which raised the accusation of witchcraft against Fust and drove him out of Paris in 1465. Their opposition, however, was unsuccessful. A few of them retained their work. For a long time the manuscript book retained the esteem which is so often felt for hand work as compared with machine work. Long after the invention of printing there were many eminent collectors of books who would not have a printed book in their libraries. To this day there are a few people who live by engrossing and illuminating, although not generally by the copying of books.

An admirable illustration of the beauties and disadvantages of this kind of work may be found in the Congressional Library at Washington. There is there displayed in a series of frames a very wonderful engrossed and illuminated copy of the Constitution of the United States. The text is beautifully engrossed and the illuminated borders and the illustrations are in the finest style of modern art. At first sight it is a wonderful piece of work, but it requires but a slight examination to see that the text is full of errors. Words are omitted and misspelled so that the whole thing is practically worthless so far as its content is concerned.

A few of the copyists became printers. Probably the greater number of them lost their distinctive occupation and became absorbed in some way or other into other industries or, if they were too old for this, suffered the evils incident to permanent loss of occupation.

The illuminators at first made common cause with the copyists. Before long, however, they discovered that the copyists were making a hopeless fight and that their own occupation had a chance of surviving. They, therefore, for the most part went over to the printers and found occupation in the new industry, either directly in their old occupations as illuminators or in slightly modified form as illustrators. Many of the early books show hand-illuminated capitals and some show illuminated margins and hand-painted illustrations equal to those of the finest manuscripts. It was, however, only the more expensive books which were separately hand-illustrated. The field of book illustration, substantially as we know it through the medium of pictures mechanically reproduced, was soon developed and offered a large field for the exercise of artistic ability and taste.

The kings and rulers generally favored printing as a means of spreading intelligence. The fifteenth century kings, unlike some of a little later period, were believers in education and patrons of learning and the arts. They had not yet come to see that their thrones, or at least their prerogatives, might be threatened by learning, and therefore they did their best to encourage it. Among all these royal patrons of printing, Francis I of France is the most conspicuous. When he first came to the throne he was under the influence of those who were hostile to the new art and attempted to stifle it by stringent legislation. An edict of his issued in 1534 prohibits printing on pain of hanging for the offender. Exactly why King Francis took so positive a position is not clear, but fortunately he very soon changed his mind and repealed the edict. From this time forward he did everything in his power to encourage printing and printers, as we have already seen in recounting the history of the Estienne family. In 1536 he made an arrangement, the first of the kind, to have a copy of every book that was printed filed in the Royal Library. In 1538 he favored the printers by granting them an edict of exemption from service in the City Guard, a service to which residents generally were liable.

During King Francis’s reign labor troubles arose in the industry. Enough references have already been made to show that the strike is by no means a modern institution and that strikes in printing offices are pretty nearly as old as the industry. There were strikes, some of them of a rather serious nature, among the Parisian printers in the reign of King Francis. As soon, however, as it appeared that they were liable to injure the industry or interfere seriously with the work of the master printers the king suppressed them by a heavy-handed use of the royal authority, insisting that trade disputes must not be allowed to interfere with the successful prosecution of the industry and that the journeymen must not be permitted by strikes to put a stop to the operations of their employers.