[27]Gilds and Trade Unions (1870), p. 54.
[28]History of Industry and Commerce, vol. i. p. 310. Dr. Gross, in his Gild Merchant, apparently takes a similar view.
[29]See his Introduction to Economic History and Theory, vol. i. (1891); vol. ii. (1893); see also his Surveys: Historic and Economic (1900).
[30]Dr. Brentano himself makes this clear. “We must not forget that these gilds were not unions of labourers in the present sense of the word, but of persons who, with the help of some stock, carried on their craft on their own account. The gild contests were, consequently, not contests for acquiring political equality for labour and property, but for the recognition of political equality of trade stock and real property in the towns” (Gilds and Trade Unions, p. 73).
[31]Jupp’s History of the Carpenters’ Company, p. 313, second edition, 1848. In certain cases we see the workmen seeking incorporation as a gild or company, in order that they might themselves lawfully regulate their trades. Thus, in 1670 the wage-earning woodsawyers of the City of London, who were employed by the members of the Carpenters’, Joiners’ and Shipwrights’ Companies, formally applied to the Corporation to be made a Company. Their employers strongly objected, alleging that they had already by combination raised their wages during the past quarter of a century from 5s. to nearly 10s. per load; that they were only day labourers who worked on material provided by their employers, and consequently not entitled to rank as masters; and that if their combination were recognised by incorporation they would be able to bring the whole building trade to a standstill, as experience had already demonstrated even without incorporation. Moreover, their main object, it was alleged, was to exclude from employment “all that sort of labourers who daily resort to the City of London and parts adjacent, and by that means keep the wages and prices of these sorts of labourers at an equal and indifferent rate; and then success would be an evil precedent, all other labourers, the masons, bricklayers, plasterers, etc., having the same reason to allege for incorporation” (Ibid. p. 307). The London coal-porters in 1699 unsuccessfully petitioned the House of Commons that a Bill might be passed to establish them as “a Fellowship in such government and rules as shall be thought meet” (House of Commons Journals, vol. xiii. p. 69). Professor Unwin suggests that it was “by its failure along these traditional lines” that “the wage-earning class was driven into secret combinations, from the obscurity of which the Trade Union did not emerge till the 19th century” (Industrial Organisation in the 16th and 17th Centuries, 1904).
[32]“The Trade Union of to-day is often spoken of as the lineal descendant of the ancient Craft Gilds. There is, however, no direct or indirect connection between the ancient and modern forms of trade combination. Beyond the fact that they each had for their objects the establishment of certain trade regulations, and the provision of certain similar benefits, they had nothing in common.” “Trade Unions as a Means of Improving the Conditions of Labour,” by John Burnett; published in The Claims of Labour (Edinburgh, 1886).
“To attempt to find an immediate connection between the Gild and the Trade Union is like attempting to derive the English House of Commons from the Saxon Witanagemot. In the one case as in the other the two institutions were separated by centuries of development, and the earlier one was dead before the later one was born” (Industrial Organisation in the 16th and 17th Centuries, by Professor George Unwin, 1904, p. 8).
[33]Goldasti’s Constitutiones Imperiales, tom. iv. p. 189, quoted by Dr. Brentano, p. 60.
[34]A pamphlet of 1669 contains what appears at first sight to be a mention of Trade Unionism. “The general conspiracy amongst artificers and labourers is so apparent that within these twenty-five years the wages of joiners, bricklayers, carpenters, etc., are increased, I mean within 40 miles of London (against all reason and good government), from eighteen and twenty pence a day, to 2/6 and 3/-, and mere labourers from 10 and 12 pence a day unto 16 and 20 pence, and this not since the dreadful fire of London only, but some time before. A journeyman shoemaker has now in London (and proportionately in the country) 14 pence for making that pair of shoes, which within these 12 years he made for 10 pence.... Nor has the increase of wages amongst us been occasioned by quickness of trade and want of hands (as some do suppose) which are indeed justifiable reasons, but through an exacting humour and evil disposition in our people (like our Gravesend watermen, who by some temporary and mean pretences of the late Dutch war, have raised their ferry double to what it was, and finding the sweet thereof, keep it up still), that so they may live the better above their station, and work so much the fewer days by how much the more they exact in their wages” (Usury at Six Per Cent. Examined, by Thomas Manley, London, 1669). But we cannot infer from this unique and ambiguous passage anything more than the possibility of ephemeral combinations. It is significant that Defoe, with all his detailed description of English industry in 1724, does not mention any combinations of workmen.
[35]In an able pamphlet dated 1681, entitled The Trade of England Revived, it is stated that “we cannot make our English cloth so cheap as they do in other countries, because of the strange idleness and stubbornness of our poor,” who insist on excessive wages. But the author attributes this state of things, not to the existence of combinations, of which he seems never to have heard, but to the Poor Law and the prevalence of almsgiving.