The instinct of workmanship, and the state of industrial arts

by Thorstein Veblen

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The circumstances of life for the common man underwent more than one substantial change during the era of handicraft, and these changes were not all in the same sense. The dominant note changes from workmanship in the earlier phases of the era to pecuniary competition and political anxiety toward the close, particularly as regards the industrial communities of the Continent. The era is a long period of history, all told, running over some five or six centuries, from an advanced stage of the feudal age to the eighteenth century, or to various earlier dates in those countries where the handicraft system came to a provisional close in the era of statemaking; and the discipline of life does not run to the same effect in the earlier of these phases of the development as in the later. Not that handicraft ceased to be the prevailing method in the mechanical industries of these countries when the reaction overtook them, but the technological advance had been seriously checked, and such handicraft industry as still went on had ceased to dominate the economic situation and no longer held the primacy among the factors that shaped the life of the communities in question. Its place as a dominant force was taken by the new political interests and by such commercial enterprise as still went on.

But through the centuries of its earlier growth the handicraft industry, simply as a routine of workmanship, shaped the conditions of life for the common people more pervasively and consistently than any other one factor. Its discipline, therefore, was of protracted duration and touched the current habits of thought in an intimate and enduring fashion; so as to leave a large and enduring effect on the institutions of the peoples among whom it prevailed. The English-speaking community shows these effects in a larger measure and a more evident manner than any other,—visible only in a less degree in the Low Countries, and more equivocally in the Scandinavian countries. These peoples had not been subjected to the handicraft discipline for a longer time or in a more exacting fashion than their Continental neighbours, but they had on the other hand escaped the full measure of the political activity of the era of statemaking that did so much to neutralise the effects of the handicraft system in the larger Continental countries.

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Something has been said above of the way in which the discipline of life under the rule of handicraft shaped and coloured men’s thinking in those materialistic sciences whose early growth runs parallel with the technological advance in modern times. It has also been evident that this training in the manner of conceiving things for the purposes of technology wrought certain broad changes in the theological and philosophical conceptions that guided the inquiring spirits of the same and subsequent generations. This effect wrought by the routine of life under the handicraft system on scientific and philosophical conceptions is of a very pervasive character, being of the nature of an habitual bent, an attitude or frame of mind, whose characteristic mark is the acceptance of creative workmanship as a finality. It became an element of common sense in the apprehension of thoughtful men whose frame of mind was formed under the traditions of that era that creative workmanship is an ultimate, irreducible factor in the constitution of things, accepted as a matter of course and used unsparingly and with ever-growing conviction as a terminus a quo and ad quem.[135]

Creative workmanship, fortified in ever-growing measure by the conception of serviceability to human use, works its way gradually into the central place in the theoretical speculations of the time, so that by the close of the era it dominates all intellectual enterprise in the thoughtful portions of Christendom. Hence it becomes not only the instrument of inquiry in the sciences, but a major premise in all work of innovation and reconstruction of the scheme of institutions. In that extensive revision of the institutional framework that characterises modern times it is the life of the common people, their rights and obligations, that is forever in view, and their life is conceived in terms of craftsmanlike industry and the petty trade. By and large, the outcome of this revision of civil and legal matters under handicraft auspices is the system of Natural Rights, including the concept of Natural Liberty. The whole scheme so worked out is manifestly of the same piece with that Order of Nature and Natural Law that dominated the inquiries of the scientists and the speculations of the philosophers.

It lies in the nature of the case that the English-speaking community should take the lead in the final advance in all these matters and should work out the most finished, secure and enduring results within these premises, both in the field of scientific inquiry and in that of the theory of institutions. It lies in the nature of the case because the English-speaking community had the benefit of the technological gains made before their time, because they had a long and passably uneventful experience of the handicraft routine in industry and in the workday life to whose wants the handicraft industry ministered, and because the discipline of the handicraft era was not in their case neutralised in its closing phase by the turmoil, insecurity and civic debaucheries of an epoch of war and political intrigue. And here again the neighbouring peoples come into the case as copartners in this work with England in much the same measure in which their experience through this period was of the same general nature.

The scheme of Natural Rights, and of Natural Liberty, which so emerges is of a pronounced individualistic tenor, as it should be to answer to the scheme of experience embodied in the system of handicraft. In the crafts, particularly during the protracted early phases of the system, it is the individual workman, working for a livelihood by use of his own personal force, dexterity and diligence, that stands out as the main fact; so much so, indeed, that he appears to have stood, in the apprehension of his time, as the sole substantial factor in the industrial organisation. Similarly under the canon of Natural Liberty the individual is thrown on his own devices for his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The craftsman by immemorial custom traditionally disposed of his work and its product as he chose, under the rules of his gild. He was by prescription in full possession of what he made, subject only to the gild regulations imposed for the good of his neighbours who were similarly placed. The most sacred right included in the scheme of Natural Rights is that of property in whatever wealth has been honestly acquired, subject only to the qualification that it must not be turned to the detriment of one’s fellows. In the days of the typical handicraft system the petty trade runs along with the handicraft industry, in such a way that every master craftsman is more or less of a trader, disposing of his goods or services in plenary discretion, and even the apprentices and journeymen similarly bargain for their terms of work and at times for the disposal of their product; while the professional itinerant trader is a member of this industrial community on much the same footing as the craftsmen proper. So it is a secure item in the scheme of Natural Rights that all persons not under tutelage have an indefeasible right to dispose by purchase and sale not only of products of their own hands but of whatever items they have come by through alienation by its producer or lawful owner. And ownership is in natural-rights theory always to be traced back to the creative workmanship of its first possessor.[136]

In the sequel this natural right freely to dispose of one’s person and work, when it had found lodgment among the principles of civil rights in the eighteenth century, contributed substantially to the dissolution of that organ of surveillance and control that the craftsmen of an earlier generation had instituted in the gild system. The case is but an instance of what is continually happening and bound to happen in the field of institutional growth. Institutional principles, such as this item of civil rights, emerge from use and wont, resulting as a settled line of convention from usage and custom that grow out of the exigencies of life at the time. But use and wont is a matter of time. It takes time for habituation to attain that secure degree of conventional recognition and authenticity that will enable it to stand as an indefeasible principle of conduct, and by the time this consummation is achieved it commonly happens that the exigencies which enforced the given line of use and wont have ceased to be operative, or at least to be so imperative as in their earlier incidence. The control which the gilds were initially designed to exercise was a control that should leave the gildsmen free in the pursuit of their work, subject only to a salutary surveillance and standardisation of the output, such as would maintain the prestige of their workmanship and facilitate the disposal of the goods produced. The initial purpose seems, in modern phrase, to have been a creation of intangible assets for the benefits of the body of gildmen. Under the new conditions that came to prevail when capitalistic management took over the direction of industry these gild regulations no longer served their purpose, but they seem on the contrary to have become an obstacle to the free employment of skilled workmen.

A similar fortune was about the same time beginning to overtake this principle of Natural Liberty itself, and that even in the particular bearing which seems at the outset to have been its primary and most substantial aim. Initially, it seems, the point of interest, and indeed of contention, was the freedom of the masterless workman to dispose of his person and workmanship as he saw fit and as he best could and would,—to take care of his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness without let or hindrance from persons vested with authority or prerogative. With the passage of time, use and wont erected this conventional rule into an inalienable right. But included with it, as an integral extension of the powers which this inalienable right safeguarded, was the right of purchase and sale, touching both work and its product, the right freely to hold and dispose of property. Presently, toward the close of the handicraft era, or more specifically in the late eighteenth century in England, industry fell under capitalistic management. When this change had taken passably full effect the workman was already secure in his civil (natural) right to dispose of his workmanship as he thought best, but the circumstances of employment under capitalistic management made it impossible for him in fact to dispose of his work except to these employers, and very much on their terms, or to dispose of his person except where the exigencies of their business might require him. And the similarly inalienable right of ownership, which had similarly emerged from use and wont under the handicraft system, but which now in effect secured the capitalist-employer in his control of the material means of industry,—this sacred right of property now barred out any move that might be designed to reinstate the workman in his effective freedom to work as he chose or to dispose of his person and product as he saw fit.