Highways and Highway Transportation

by George R. Chatburn

—The merchant guilds and the craft-guilds materially affected the production and trade of the community and country. The merchants of Phoenicia and later of Greece and Rome are said to have visited the British Isles to secure tin and copper. The great merchant guilds outfitted adventures to the ends of the then known world to secure the goods—whether they were silks, spices, furs or grain—in which they dealt. They were instrumental in the passage of laws encouraging and securing commerce. They themselves regulated the quality of goods dealt in. For example the Goldsmiths’ Guild of London required that all silver and gold-plate and jewelry manufactured within three miles of London should be brought to the guild hall for inspection. If it did not come up to the specified standard it was ordered remelted; if it did it received the “Hall Mark” that anyone purchasing it might be assured of its quality. It is said the guilds were so punctilious in the matter of quality that “Made in England” goods received in the markets of the world a standing of the highest rank; a reputation that never entirely disappeared, and as a consequence English uprightness of character became proverbial.

The Domestic System.

—All this made necessary the building of ships and harbors, and the improvement of internal highways of trade, and these in turn stimulated manufacture which as yet was carried on by hand. The family instead of the town or guild became the unit; apprentices were entered and kept, usually, as members of the family and worked along side the sons and daughters of the master. As these grew to manhood their pay, beginning with mere keep, was gradually increased with their work and responsibility until at the end of seven years they were fitted to go forth as journeymen and later themselves became masters. The work was done at or near the master’s home. The raw material was usually received from a middleman, to whom was returned the finished product; the middleman disposed of it to the merchant who in turn sold it to the consumer.

This corresponds rather closely to what is called the “sweat shop” method of the present time. Goods in a raw or a semi-raw state are received by the workman from the “manufacturer” and carried home; the workman performs, with the help of his family, certain specified operations and upon the return of the goods is paid for his work. Or in agriculture, to the contract method, whereby specified products such as sugar beets, sweet-corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, fruits, and other products for manufacture, canning, preserving, or pickling in a factory, are raised by the farmer and sold to the manufacturer at a previously agreed-upon contract price. Under the guild plan the manufacturer or importer sold usually to the ultimate consumer. So the economic system was gradually growing more complex, and the interdependence of man upon man more pronounced.

The older agricultural procedure had not entirely disappeared. Most families cultivated land, and raised more or less stock and poultry, but performed the work of manufacturing as a side line, as at present in the Middle West farmers make grain and stock raising their main industry with dairying, vegetable gardening, poultry, and eggs as mere adjuncts, although these latter often bring in about as much money as the former. Defoe[5] describes these methods (1724-1726) as follows:

[The land] was divided into small inclosures from two acres to six or seven each, seldom more; every three or four pieces of land had a house belonging to them ... hardly an house standing out of a speaking distance from another.... We could see at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth or kersie or shaloon.... At every considerable house was a manufactury.... Every clothier keeps one horse, at least, to carry his manufactures to the market, and everyone generally keeps a cow or two or more for his family. By this means the small pieces of inclosed land about each house are occupied, for they scarce sow corn enough to feed their poultry.... The houses are full of lusty fellows, some at the dye-vat, some at the looms, others dressing the cloths, the women or children carding or spinning, being all employed, from the youngest to the oldest.

Governmental Control.

—The numerous guilds reached their zenith during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and then gradually diminished in importance. Some of them, however, still remain active in London. During the recent World War several were engaged in welfare work. Guilds in France were destroyed or lapsed into desuetude during the revolution, 1791-1815. Those of Spain and Portugal likewise during the revolutionary years of 1833-40; of Austria and Germany in 1859-60 and of Italy in 1864. Guilds, as known in Europe, never found a substantial lodging in the United States.

The functions of the guilds were gradually taken over by the government, which seemed later to be a better and more satisfactory medium to control labor, trade, and commerce. Laws were enacted in England to regulate the entering of apprentices, to force able bodied men to serve as agricultural laborers in case of need, and to work the roads annually. Justices of the Peace were given authority to settle disputes and regulate wages. Foreign trade was by laws and Royal Grants encouraged; likewise immigration of artisans to introduce new industries, the establishment of foreign colonies and the development of banking and insurance. Almshouses were built and poor laws enacted to care for the old and indigent. The public roads were still very poor but a beginning was made for their betterment. Macaulay, in writing of the State of England in 1685,[6] has considerable to say regarding the condition of the highways. Speaking of the lack of homogeneity among the people he says:

There was not then the intercourse which now exists between the two classes. [The Londoner and the rustic Englishman.] Only very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in their lives. [And again], The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty found in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family.