Water- or wind-mills, mills for grinding flour, for crushing nuts or olives, for raising water; iron mills; mills for fulling cloth, for making paper, sugar, silk stuffs—all these expensive appliances were in use, and gradually spread over Europe during the period which brought to a close and immediately followed the Middle Ages. Thus old industries changed their method, and new industries were from the start modelled on the new system.

Printing may be quoted as an example; the printing press, with its movable letters, took the place of writing—the work of human fingers. It may be said of it that it was born mechanical, and if we ask why it killed the slow industry of the old copyists who protested in vain, we need only look at the unexpected results it achieved. The identity of the copies produced; the speed, which allowed demands hitherto forced to wait months and years to be met in a few days, and which gave, so to speak, wings to thought; and the unheard-of cheapness, which reduced the price of a Bible from 600 to 60 crowns and even less (things which evidently could not be obtained without the co-operation of the Prince of Darkness, as was proved by the red characters which flamed at the head of the chapters), such were the diabolical but invaluable advantages which in less than half a century assured the triumph and the rapid spread of the new invention.

If we remember the thousand-and-one prohibitions with which the guild statutes bristled—the prohibition to mould seals with engraved letters, the regulations which in every craft prevented all change and consequently all improvement in manufacture, it is easy to understand how “great” industry, without deliberate effort, but by its very development, overthrew the economic order which had reigned in the Middle Ages. The guilds, moreover, with the best intentions in the world, fought against innovations which seemed to them abominations. In England in the year 1555 the gig-mill, a mechanical appliance, was forbidden by law.[102] The first English coaches, called “flying coaches,” were attacked and censured[103] because they threatened to injure the art of riding and the manufacture of saddles and spurs, and because, being too cold in winter and too hot in summer, they were bad for the health of travellers; but, above all, because, on account of their extreme speed, they would be dangerous. The public authorities were begged to limit them to thirty miles a day (rather less than the distance a fast train covers to-day in an hour); and later, in France, when the turgotines were instituted, which shortened by half the length of a journey, an abbot added the strange complaint that, by going so fast, they deprived the passenger of the means of hearing mass.[104]

“Great” commerce and “great” industry, however, continued to develop in the direction they had originally taken, and finally overcame the old-fashioned timidity of the guilds, which were gradually reduced to defending the interests of the small crafts. The great merchant guilds were predominant at first; the Lord Mayor of London was chosen from the city guilds, and the guild of the river merchants gave to Paris its coat-of-arms and motto and was an embryonic form of the municipal councils which followed later. As time went on, however, they disappeared or separated themselves from the organized crafts. At Paris, the Hanse of the river merchants does not figure among the six guilds which head the list, although they did not actually lose their privileges till the year 1672. In London,[105] the city guilds slowly ceased to have any connection with the crafts whose names they bore. The great capitalists, whether bankers, merchants, or great manufacturers, voluntarily formed themselves into a separate group and, as far as possible, cut themselves clear of the trammels of the guild system.

Meantime, under the system of large-scale production, the workers were either subjected to the guilds as we have seen them at Florence in the Arte della Lana,[106] or else, if they were not enrolled, were treated by their individual masters in such a way as to keep them permanently in a precarious and subordinate position. Whether they worked crowded together in great workshops—where, owing to their numbers, they were under severe discipline—or at home, in which case their isolation only brought them, under the appearance of liberty, harder conditions, they soon saw that, with the rarest possible exceptions, they were destined to be wage-earners for life. They no longer had the hope, the ambition, even the idea of one day owning the factory in which they laboured, or the business which every week paid its thousands of workers. The divorce was complete between the manual worker and the instruments of production, and, in consequence, between the men who were the servants of these expensive appliances and the master-manufacturers who owned them. Masters and workmen, henceforth separated by their present and their future, by their education, their manner of life, and their aspirations, formed two classes, united as yet, in that both were interested in the intensity of industrial activity, but opposed, in that the one wished to keep the other in subjection and to sweat out of him as much work as possible, as cheaply as possible.

It is from this time, and still only in “great” industry, that a working class can be spoken of. For a long time it was fairly small; but the self-consciousness it was acquiring was shown by the strikes, the combinations, and the attempts at union which were common in England from the sixteenth century; by combinations which were already national, like that of the papermakers in France at the end of the seventeenth century; by the popular songs in which the discontent of the workmen was expressed in bitter complaints or biting irony.[107] The energy and diplomacy displayed in the sixteenth century by the master printers of Lyons and Paris in preventing their workmen from striking (fair le tric, which was the name given in those days to concerted abstention from work[108]) is well known; so is the song sung in England by the wool workers[109] towards the end of the seventeenth century, the title of which is curious. The master is supposed to speak.

THE CLOTHIER’S DELIGHT;
OR, THE RICH MEN’S JOY, AND THE POOR MEN’S SORROW

Wherein is expressed the craftiness and subtility of Many Clothiers in England, by beating down their Workmen’s Wages.

Combers, weavers, and spinners, for little gains,
Doth earn their money, by taking of hard pains.

To the tune of “Jenny, come tae me,” etc., “Paddington’s Pound,” or “Monk hath confounded,” etc.

Of all sorts of callings that in England be,
There is none that liveth so gallant as we;
Our trading maintains us as brave as a knight,
We live at our pleasure, and take our delight;
We heapeth up riches and treasure great store,
Which we get by griping and grinding the poor.
And this is a way for to fill up our purse,
Although we do get it with many a curse.

Throughout the whole kingdom, in country and town,
There is no danger of our trade going down,
So long as the Comber can work with his comb,
And also the Weaver weave with his lomb;
The Tucker and Spinner that spins all the year,
We will make them to earn their wages full dear.
And this is the way, etc.

In former ages we us’d to give,
So that our work-folks like farmers did live;
But the times are altered, we will make them know
All we can for to bring them under our bow;
We will make to work hard for sixpence a day,
Though a shilling they deserve if they had their just pay.
And this is the way, etc.

and so on, for twelve stanzas.

From now onwards can be found all those motives for disagreement with which the “social question,” as it has developed and grown more bitter, has made us familiar;—increase of hours of work, lowering of wages by the employment of apprentices, women, and children; reductions of the sums agreed upon by means of fines, payment in kind,[110] and other tricks; draconian regulations; harsh foremen; the binding of the workers to the workshop, as the serfs were to the soil, by money advances which they could never repay. Events follow their usual course: the story is one of struggles, prosecutions, appeals to the law, and finally, when no more can be said, battles with folded arms and closed factories—strikes by workmen or employers. There follow riots in which machinery is wrecked and attacks are sometimes made upon the masters themselves. Repression ensues; the carrying of arms is forbidden, the rights of combination and public meeting denied at pain of death. And, in reply to these measures, the workers retaliate by emigration, by secret societies, by recourse to force which may damp down the fire but cannot prevent it from smouldering till in time it bursts out afresh.

The guilds and their statutes were of but feeble assistance in calming these conflicts. The greater part of the workers in the great industries did not belong to them. Worse still, the guild system itself suffered from the startling inequality which separated its great manufacturers from their employees. Between rich masters and small masters, between the sons of masters and the poor journeymen, the gulf ever widened, and an institution was soon to reveal the growing friction. I have already spoken of the separate societies, now of long standing, governed by journeymen (compagnons); but compagnonnage, united to these ancient associations by more than one tie, had a more extensive influence. Its origins are obscure.[111] It is hardly found before the beginning of the fifteenth century, and developed particularly in Central Europe, France, the Low Countries, and in Germany. It seems to be allied to freemasonry in its origins, but was distinguished by an activity peculiar to itself. Freemasonry, as far as it is possible to pierce the mists which envelop its early history, was essentially a federation of building trades. It took its birth from the bands of workmen who had their raison d’être in the construction of those vast cathedrals whose harmonious proportions are certainly the most perfect legacy left to us by the Middle Ages. The aim of the association was to keep in order the crowds of half-nomadic labourers, who for half a century or more would establish themselves in a town; to transmit from one generation to the next the secrets of the craft; to act as arbitrator in the quarrels which might arise among this restless population. Born in the shadow of the sanctuary, it was naturally mystic and religious in character; it claimed to go back to the Templars, or even to the builders of Solomon’s Temple; it was the child of an age which delighted in mystery and occult knowledge, and it imposed on its members a complicated initiation, formidable tests, signs of recognition, and pass-words. Created for men who sometimes transferred their labour and their plans from one end of Europe to the other, it scattered its lodges over different lands; it was international, and in this differed profoundly from the guilds. But with this exception, it took its place within the existing order of things, accepted the hierarchy of the guild system, and had its three degrees—i.e. included apprentices, journeymen, and masters. It was a mixed institution as much and even more bourgeois than working-class.