5. The journeymen (also called valets, compagnons, serviteurs, massips, locatifs, garçons, etc.) were either future masters or else workmen for life, unable to set up for themselves because they lacked the indispensable “wherewithal,” as certain statutes crudely express it. Their time of apprenticeship over, they remained with the master with whom they had lived; or else, especially in the building trades, having perfected themselves by travel, they went to the market for disengaged hands[12] and offered their services. They were hired in certain places where the unemployed of all trades assembled. They were required to give proof that they were free of all other engagements, and to present certificates, not only of capability, but of good conduct, signed by their last master. Thieves, murderers, and outlaws, and even “dreamers” and slackers, stood no chance of being engaged, while those who, though unmarried, took a woman about with them, or who had contracted debts at the inns, were avoided. They were required to be decently clothed, not only out of consideration for their clients, but also because they had to live and work all day in the master’s house. The master, when he was satisfied with the references given, and when he had assured himself that he was not defrauding another master who had more need of hands than himself, could engage the workman. The contract which bound them was often verbal, but there was a certain solemnity attaching to it; for the workman had to swear on the Gospels and by the saints that he would work in compliance with the rules of the craft.
The engagement was of very varying duration; it might be entered into for a year, a month, a week, or a day. The workman who left before the time agreed upon might be seized, forced to go back to the workshop, and punished by a fine. If the master wished to dismiss the workman before the date arranged, he had first to state his reasons for so doing before a mixed assembly composed of masters and journeymen. A mutual indemnity seems to have been the rule, whether the workman abandoned the work he had begun, or whether the master prematurely dismissed the man he had hired.[13]
The journeyman had to work in his master’s workshop, and it was exceptional for him to go alone to a client (in which case he was duly authorized by the master), or to finish an urgent piece of work at home. The length of the working day was regulated by the daylight. Lighting was in those days so imperfect that night work was forbidden, as nothing fine or highly finished could be done by the dim light of candles. This rule could never be broken except in certain crafts—by the founders, for example, whose work could not be interrupted without serious loss—or by those who worked for the king, the bishop, or the lord.[14] The rest worked from sunrise to sunset, an arrangement which made summer and winter days curiously unequal. Some neighbouring clock marked the beginning and end of the day, and a few rests amounting to about an hour and a half broke its length. All this was very indefinite, and disputes were frequent as to the time for entering or leaving the workshop. The Paris workmen often complained of being kept too late, and of the danger of being obliged to go home in the dark at the mercy of thieves and footpads. It was necessary for the royal provost to issue a decree before the difficulty was overcome.
The workers, however, reaped the benefit of the many holidays which starred the calendar and brought a little brightness into the grey monotony of the days. The Sunday holiday was scrupulously observed without interfering with the Saturday afternoon, when work stopped earlier, or the religious festivals which often fell on a week day. It has been calculated[15] that the days thus officially kept as holidays amounted to at least thirty, and it may be safely said that work was less continuous then than nowadays.
To leave work voluntarily at normal times was strictly forbidden, and the police took up and imprisoned any idlers or vagabonds found wandering in the towns. But even in those days Monday was often taken as an unauthorized holiday. Certain crafts had their regular dead season:[16] thus at Paris among the bucklers (makers of brass buckles) the valets were dismissed during the month of August; but such holidays, probably unpaid, were rare, as was also the arrangement to be found among the weavers at Lunéville, which limited the amount of work a journeyman might do in a day.
For various reasons it is difficult to state precisely what wages were paid; there are very few documents; the price of labour varied very much in different crafts and at different periods; the buying power of money at any given time is a difficult matter to determine;[17] and finally, it was the custom to pay a workman partly with money and partly in kind. It must not be forgotten too that a man ate with his master, a decided economy on the one hand, and on the other a guarantee that he was decently fed. Sometimes he received an ell of cloth, a suit of clothes, or a pair of shoes.[18] It has been stated that his wages (which were paid weekly or fortnightly) were, in the thirteenth century, enough for him to live on decently.[19] It has been possible to reconstruct the earnings and expenditure of a fuller at Léon in the year 1280; the inventory of a soap-maker of Bruges of about the same date[20] has been published; it has been estimated that in those days the daily wage of a compagnon at Aix-la-Chapelle was worth two geese, and his weekly wage a sheep; comparisons have been made, and it has been concluded that a workman earned more in Flanders than in Paris, more in Paris than in the provinces. All this seems likely enough; but I should not dare to generalize from such problematic calculations. I limit myself to stating that historians are almost unanimous in holding that, taking into consideration that less was spent on food, rent, and furniture, and above all on intellectual needs (because both the demands were less and the prices lower), it was easier for a workman’s family to make both ends meet in those days than it is now.
It is at any rate certain that a journeyman’s salary was sometimes guaranteed to him; this is shown by an article of the regulations in force among the tailors of Montpellier, dated July 3, 1323:
“If a master does one of his workmen a wrong in connection with the wages due to him, that master must be held to give satisfaction to the said workman, according to the judgment of the other masters; and, if he does not do this, no workman may henceforward work with him until he is acquitted; and, in case of non-payment, he must give and hand over to the relief fund of the guild ten ‘deniers tournois’ [of Tours].”
On the whole, then, in spite of the varying conditions in the Middle Ages, it is not too much to say that, materially, the position of the journeyman was at least equal, if not superior, to that of the workman of to-day. It was also better morally. He sometimes assisted in the drawing up and execution of the laws of the community; he was his master’s companion in ideas, beliefs, education, tastes. Above all, there was the possibility of rising one day to the same social level. Certainly one paid and the other was paid, and that alone was enough to set up a barrier between the two. But where “small” industry predominated, there was not as yet a violent and lasting struggle between two diametrically opposed classes. Nevertheless, from this time onwards, an ever-increasing strife and discord may be traced.
First the privileges accorded to the sons of masters tended to close the guilds and to keep the workmen in the position of wage-earners; this gave rise to serious dissatisfaction. Besides this, the masters were not always just, as even their statutes prove. Those of the tailors of Montpellier, which we have just quoted, decreed that the workshops of every master who had defrauded a workman of his wages should be boycotted. These injustices therefore must have occurred, since trouble was taken to repress them. Still more acute was the dissatisfaction in towns where the rudiments of “great” industry existed. Strikes broke out, with a spice of violence. In 1280 the cloth-workers of Provins rose and killed the mayor;[21] at Ypres, at the same date, there was a similar revolt for a similar reason, viz. the attempt to impose on the workmen too long a working day. At Chalon, the king of France had to intervene to regulate the hours of labour. Already the question of combination was discussed, and the masters did their best to prevent it. At Rheims in 1292 a decision by arbitration prohibited alliances whether of compagnons against masters or of masters against compagnons. This already displays the spirit of the famous law which was to be voted by the Constituent Assembly in 1791.[22] In the year 1280, in the Coutume de Beauvoisis by the jurist Beaumanoir, the combination of workmen is clearly defined as an offence[23]—“any alliance against the common profit, when any class of persons pledge themselves, undertake, or covenant not to work at so low a wage as before, and so raise their wages on their own authority, agree not to work for less, and combine to put constraint or threats on the compagnons who will not enter their alliance.”