The control of industry is a subject for the treatment of which there are materials sufficient for more than one large volume. I do not, however, regret that I can devote comparatively small space to the subject, as its principles are simple and admit of broad treatment. There is, moreover, in the case of the student who is not a specialist, a danger of obscuring the outlines with a multiplicity of detail. And there is also the danger of selecting some puzzling and obscure incident or enactment, due to local causes of which we are ignorant, and using it as a basis for ingenious generalisations. Broadly speaking, the Control of Industry may be said to be either External, by parliamentary or municipal legislation, or Internal, by means of craft gilds. These two sections again admit of subdivision according as their objects are the protection of the consumer, the employer or the workman. Nor can we entirely ignore legislation for purposes of revenue—subsidies, customs, and octroi dues.
Of industrial legislation by the King's Council, the predecessor of Parliament, we find very little trace. The royal charters of the twelfth century confirming or licensing craft gilds may be more justly regarded as revenue enactments, their object being rather to secure a certain annual return from the craft to which the royal protection was granted than to exercise any control over the craft. The proclamation in the early thirteenth century of the Assize of Cloth and of the Assize of Bread and Ale may be considered to mark the beginning of a national control of industry, though in each case existing regulations were formally adopted rather than new rules imposed. The growth of the towns and the rise of a wealthy merchant class during the reign of Henry III. brought about the birth of Parliament, and naturally led to a certain amount of trade legislation. But with trade—the distribution of finished products by persons other than the producers—we are not concerned. Edward III., thanks perhaps to his queen Philippa, from the cloth land of Hainault, realised the possibilities of the English cloth manufacture, and endeavoured to foster it by a series of statutes to which reference has been made above. During his reign, in 1349, the Black Death, that great landmark in medieval history, by reducing the numbers of the craftsmen increased the market value of the survivors, who at once demanded and obtained higher wages. Parliament retorted by passing the Statute of Labourers,[714] according to which no smith, carpenter, mason, tiler, shipwright, leather-worker, tailor, or other artificer was to take higher wages than he had received three years earlier, before the pestilence. Though this was legislation in favour of the employer, it was not exactly a case of favouring the wealthy, for by imposing a penalty on the giver of excessive wages as well as upon the receiver, an attempt was made to prevent the small employer being deprived of his workmen by richer rivals. The Act was, so far as we can judge, inspired partly by fear that the capitalist might control the sources of labour, and partly by fear that those sources might get beyond control. Whatever its origin, the statute failed in its expressed intention, and wages remained, as Thorold Rogers has shown,[715] permanently higher. This was not due to any laxity in applying the Act; for many years after it was passed justices were appointed in every part of England to enforce it,[716] but the records of their proceedings, as for instance in Somerset in 1360,[717] where many hundreds of offenders are named, show that the workmen had no hesitation in demanding, and found no difficulty in getting wages higher than the law allowed. Wholesale imprisonment as a remedy for scarcity of labour was scarcely satisfactory, and the small fines which were inflicted proved no deterrent.
As the position of the artificer had improved after the Black Death, so the crafts in general were assuming a greater importance in public estimation, and from about 1380 onwards the regulation of industries occupies an increasing amount of space on the Statute Rolls. With their growing influence, most of the crafts began to make their voices heard crying out for protection, which was usually given them with a liberal hand. But, although the pernicious effects of protective measures (deterioration of quality and rise of price) were to a large extent checked by the control kept over quality and prices by the national and municipal authorities, the consumer was sometimes roused to action. One of the best instances of the struggle between public and private interests is to be found in the case of the Yarmouth herring fishery. Edward III. had granted to Yarmouth the monopoly of the sale of herrings on the east coast during the season of the fishery. As a consequence the price of herrings had risen enormously, and the king was driven to cancel the privilege: the men of Yarmouth at once began to pull the strings, and in 1378 recovered their monopoly, with the same result as before. Once more the consumer made his voice heard, and in 1382 the Yarmouth charter was revoked, only to be restored in 1385 on the ground that without protection of this kind Yarmouth would be ruined.
If a large number of parliamentary enactments were protective of the producer, as for instance the prohibition in 1463 of the import of a vast variety of goods, from silk ribbands to dripping-pans, and from razors to tennis balls, including such incompatibles as playing cards and sacring bells,[718] yet still more were protective of the consumer. For one thing, of course, a single Act prohibiting certain imports might protect a dozen classes of manufactures, while the denunciation of one particular species of fraud would probably lead ingenious swindlers to invent a succession of others, each requiring a separate Act for its suppression. Sentimental admirers of the past are apt to imagine that the medieval workman loved a piece of good work for its own sake and never scamped a job. Nothing could be further from the truth. The medieval craftsman was not called a man of craft for nothing! He had no more conscience than a plumber, and his knowledge of ways that are dark and tricks that are vain was extensive and peculiar. The subtle craft of the London bakers, who, while making up their customer's dough, stole a large portion of the dough under their customers' eyes by means of a little trap-door in the kneading-board and a boy sitting under the counter,[719] was exceptional only in its ingenuity. Cloth was stretched and strained to the utmost and cunningly folded to hide defects, a length of bad cloth would be joined on to a length of superior quality, or a whole cheap cloth substituted for the good cloth which the customers had purchased; inferior leather was faked up to look like the best, and sold at night to the unwary; pots and kettles were made of bad metal which melted when put on the fire; and everything that could be weighed or measured was sold by false measure.
Prior to the middle of the sixteenth century parliamentary attention was mainly concentrated on the cloth trade, and the preambles to the various statutes show that those in authority, including the more responsible manufacturers, realised that honesty is the best policy in the end. In 1390 it was pointed out that the frauds of the west country clothiers had not only endangered the reputations, and even the lives, of merchants who brought them for export, but had brought dishonour on the English name abroad.[720] Two years later it was the reputation of Guildford cloths that had been damaged by sharp practices.[721] The worsteds of Norfolk had early come into favour on the Continent, but in 1410 the Flemish merchants became exasperated at their bad quality,[722] and thirty years later the foreign demand for worsteds had been almost killed,[723] while in 1464 English cloth in general was in grave disrepute, not only abroad, but even in its native land, foreign cloth being largely imported.[724] To give them their due, the gilds recognised the importance to their own interests of maintaining a high standard of workmanship, and co-operated loyally with the municipal authorities to that end.
Although we have classed the control of industries by municipal by-laws as 'external,' and control by gild regulations as 'internal,' no hard and fast line can really be drawn between the two. In England, in contrast to the experience of many Continental states, the two authorities worked together with very little friction, the craft gilds recognising the paramount position of the merchant gild or town council, and the latter, in turn, protecting the interest of the gilds and using their organisation to control the various crafts. The question of the origin of gilds is interesting rather than important, and has given rise to much discussion. It is known that the Roman crafts were organised into collegia, but while it is quite possible that some of the trade gilds in Constantinople, and even in Italy and Spain, might be able to trace their pedigrees back to Roman times, it is more than improbable that there was any connection between the Roman collegia and the English craft gilds of the twelfth century. The gilds of which we find mention in Anglo-Saxon records were clearly fraternities of purely social and religious import. These gilds, friendly societies for the support of religious observances benefiting the souls of all the members, and for the mutual relief of such members as had met with misfortune, survived the Conquest and increased greatly, till by the end of the fourteenth century there could have been hardly a village without at least one gild. It is natural to suppose that in towns, where the choice of gilds was considerable, there would be a tendency for members of the same trade to join the same gild. The strength gained by such union under the common bond of an oath to obey the same statutes and the same officers, and the advantage of the Church's protection must soon have become obvious, and as in 1378 we find the weavers of London forming a fraternity whose ordinances are entirely of a religious nature and contain no reference to the occupation of the members,[725] so we may well believe that many of the early gilds, while apparently purely religious, were in fact trade unions. Whatever may have been the methods in which craft gilds came into existence, we find them increasing in numbers and influence from the middle of the twelfth century onwards. Meanwhile, however, the capitalists and wealthy traders by means of 'merchant gilds' and similar bodies had so firmly established an oligarchic control over the towns and boroughs that they were able to keep the craft gilds in a subordinate position. Everywhere the town authorities, whether they were mayor and council, or gild merchant, or governors, could impose regulations upon the crafts, while such rules as the crafts drew up for their own management were legal only if accepted by the town council. The case of Coventry was typical, where, in 1421, the mayor and councillors summoned the wardens of the crafts with their ordinances. 'And the poyntes that byn lawfull good and honest for the Cite be alowyd hem and all other thrown asid and had for none.'[726] In the same way at Norwich in 1449, the mayor drew up a complete set of ordinances for the crafts.[727] But although keeping a firm hand on the gilds, and taking measures to protect the interests of the consumers and of the town in general, the civic authorities left the gilds in control of the internal affairs of their crafts. So that the craftsman in his relations to another of the same trade was a gild brother, but in his relations to all other men he was a townsman.
From the consumer's point of view the regulation of prices was perhaps the most important problem. The price of raw material was too dependent upon supply and demand to admit of much regulation, though in 1355 Parliament interfered to bring down the price of iron,[728] forbidding its export, and ordering the Justices of Labourers (i.e. those appointed to enforce the Statute of Labourers) to punish all who sold it too high. The local authorities, civic and manorial, took constant measures to prevent the artificial enhancement of what we may call raw food stuffs, corn, fish, and meat, the 'regrator and forestaller,' that is to say, the middleman, who intercepted supplies before they reached the market and forced prices up for his own sole benefit, being universally regarded as a miscreant.[729] The economists of that period had not grasped the fact that the cleverness shown in buying an article cheap and selling the same thing, without any further expenditure of labour, dear, if done on a sufficiently large scale, justifies the bestowal of the honour of knighthood or a peerage. In the case of manufactured food stuffs, such as bread and ale, the price was automatically fixed by the price of the raw material, and in general prices of manufactures were regulated by the cost of the materials. Even in the case of such artistic work as the making of waxen images, it was considered scandalous that the makers should charge as much as 2s. the pound for images when wax was only 6d. the pound, and in 1432 the waxchandlers were ordered not to charge for workmanship more than 3d. the pound over the current price of wax.[730] The principle that the craftsman should be content with a reasonable profit, and not turn the casual needs of his neighbours to his own benefit is constantly brought out in local regulations, as, for instance, in London in 1362, when in consequence of the damage wrought by a great storm tiles were in great demand, and the tilers were ordered to go on making tiles and selling them at the usual prices.[731]
The question of prices, which were thus so largely composed of a varying sum for material, and a fixed sum for workmanship, is very intimately connected with the question of wages.[732] The medieval economist seems to have accepted the Ruskinian theory that all men engaged in a particular branch of trade should be paid equal wages—with the corollary that the better workman would obtain the more employment—as opposed to the modern practice of payment according to skill, which results in the greater employment of the bad workman because he is cheap.[733] There were, of course, grades in each profession, as master or foreman, workman, and assistant or common labourer, but within each grade the rate of payment was fixed—at least within the jurisdiction of any gild or town authority[734]—unless the work was of quite exceptional nature, as, for instance, the making of carved stalls for the royal chapel at Westminster in 1357, where the rates of pay were almost double those of ordinary workmen.[735] Wages were at all times paid on the two systems of piece-work and time, and the hours, which varied in the different trades, and at different places and periods, were as a rule long.[736] For the building trade at Beverley in the fifteenth century work began in summer (from Easter to 15th August) at 4 A.M., and continued till 7 P.M.; at 6 A.M. there was a quarter of an hour's interval for refreshment, at 8 half an hour for breakfast, at 11 an hour and a half to dine and sleep, and at 3 half an hour for further refreshment. During the winter months they worked from dawn till dusk, with half an hour for breakfast at 9 o'clock, an hour for dinner at noon, and a quarter of an hour's interval at 3. These hours agree fairly well with those laid down by Parliament in 1496,[737] which were, from mid-March to mid-September, start at 5 and stop work between 7 and 8, with half an hour for breakfast and an hour and a half for dinner and sleep (the siesta was only to be taken from beginning of May to end of July, during the rest of the time there was to be an hour for dinner and half an hour for lunch—'nonemete'). The blacksmiths of London worked, at the end of the fourteenth century, from dawn till 9 P.M., except during November, December, and January, when their hours were from 6 A.M. to 8 P.M.[738] In the case of the Cappers' gild at Coventry the journeymen's hours were in 1496 from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M.;[739] but in 1520 they had been increased, being from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M. in winter, and from 5 A.M. to 7 P.M. in summer.[740] Wages, of course, when paid by the day, varied in winter and summer, if we may use these terms for the short and long days. In London the determining dates were Easter and Michaelmas,[741] at Bristol Ash Wednesday and St. Calixtus (14th October),[742] and in the case of the workmen at Westminster the Purification (2nd February) and All Saints (1st November), giving an exceptionally short winter period.[743]
Against the long hours we have to set the comparative frequency of holidays. On Sundays and all the greater festivals, as well as a variable number of local festivals, such as the dedication day of the Church, no work was done, and on Saturdays and the days preceding festivals work as a rule ceased at four o'clock or earlier. This early closing was enforced at Norwich[744] in 1490, on the representation of the shoemakers that many of their journeymen were 'greatly disposed to riot and idelnes, whereby may succede grete poverte, so that dyuers days wekely when them luste to leve ther bodyly labour till a grete parte of the weke be almost so expended and wasted ... also contrary to the lawe of god and good guydyng temporall they labour quikly toward the Sondaye and festyuall dayes on the Saterdayes and vigils fro iiij of the clock at after none to the depnes and derknes of the nyght foloweng. And not onely that synfull disposicion but moche warse so offendyng in the morownynges of such festes and omyttyng the heryng of the dyvyne servyce.' In the case of the founders in London,[745] while no ordinary metal work, such as turning, filing, or engraving, might be done after noon had rung, an exception had to be made in the case of a casting which was actually in progress; such work might be completed after time, as otherwise the metal would have to be remelted, even if it were not spoilt by the interruption. So far as Sundays and feasts were concerned no work was permitted except in the case of farriers, who were expected to shoe the horses of strangers passing through the town.[746] A good many shops were open on the Sunday morning until seven o'clock, especially shoemakers,[747] who in Bristol were allowed at any time of the day to serve 'eny knyght or Squyer or eny other straunger goyng on her passage or journee, merchant or maryner comyng fro the see,' or, during the six Sundays of harvest, any one else who required boots.[748] Markets during the early part of the thirteenth century were often held on Sundays, but most of these were soon shifted on to week days; and fairs were usually associated with a saint's day, but a fair was an amusement at which the ordinary craftsman was an interested spectator, though the chapmen and merchants were kept busy enough. The London rule that Saturdays and vigils counted for wages as complete days, but that no payment was to be made for the Sundays and feast days[749] was generally observed, but in the case of workmen engaged in building operations at Westminster and the Tower the custom was that wages should be paid for alternate feast days, but not for any Sundays.[750]