Such friction arises, of course, because each guild is granted a strict monopoly of trade within certain prescribed limits. A saddle maker from a strange city who started a shop without being admitted to the proper guild would soon find his shop closed, his products burned, and his own feet in the stocks by the town donjon. The guilds are supposed to be under strict regulations, however, in return for these privileges. Their conditions of labor are laid down, as are the hours and days of working. The precise quality of their products is fixed, and sometimes even the size of the articles and the selling price. Night work, as a rule, is forbidden, because one cannot then see to produce perfect goods, although carpenters are allowed to make coffins after sunset. On days before festivals everyone must close by 3 P.M., and on feast days only pastry shops (selling cakes and sweetmeats) are allowed to be open. Violaters are subject to a fine, which goes partly to the guild corporation, partly to the town treasury; and these fines form a good part of the municipal revenue.
The guilds are not labor unions. The controlling members are all masters—the employers of labor, although usually doing business on a very small scale. A guild is also a religious and benevolent institution. Every corporation has its patron saint, with a special chapel in some church where a priest is engaged to say masses for the souls of deceased members.[114] If a member falls into misfortune his guild is expected to succor him and especially, if he dies, to look after his widow and assist his orphans to learn their father's craft. Each organization also has its own banner, very splendid, hung ordinarily beside the guild's altar, but in the civic processions proudly carried by one of the syndics, the craft's officers. To be a syndic in an influential guild is the ordinary ambition of about every young industrialist. It means the acme of power and dignity attainable, short of being elected echevin.
The road to full guild membership is a fairly difficult one, yet it can be traversed by lads of good morals and legitimate birth if they have application and intelligence. A master can have from one to three apprentices and also his own son, if he has one who desires to learn the trade. The apprentices serve from three to twelve years.
Apprentices, Hired Workers and Masters
A COMMONER (THIRTEENTH CENTURY)
From a bas-relief in the cathedral of Rheims.
The more difficult the craft the longer the service; thus it takes a ten-year apprenticeship to become a qualified jeweler. The lads thus "bound out" cannot ordinarily quit their master under any circumstances before the proper time. If they run away they can be haled back and roundly punished. They are usually knocked about plentifully, are none too well clothed, sleep in cold garrets, are fed on the leavings from the master's table, and can seldom call a moment their own except on holidays. Their master may give them a little pocket money, but no regular wages. On the other hand, he is bound to teach them his trade and to protect them against evil influences. Often enough, of course, matters end by the favorite apprentice marrying his master's daughter and practically taking over the establishment.
At the end of the apprenticeship the young industrialist becomes a hired worker, perhaps in his old master's shop, perhaps somewhere else.[115] He is engaged and paid by the week, and often changes employers many times while in this stage of his career. The guild protects him against gross exploitation, but his hours are long—from 5 A.M. to 7 P.M. during the summer months. Finally, if he has led a moral life, proved a good workman, and accumulated a small capital, he may apply to the syndics for admission as a full master himself. A kind of examination takes place. If, for example, he has been a weaver he must produce an extremely good bolt of cloth and show skill in actually making and adjusting the parts of his loom. This ordeal passed, he pays a fee (divisible between the city and the guild) and undergoes an initiation, full of horseplay and absurd allegory. Thus a candidate for the position of baker must solemnly present a "new pot full of walnuts and wafers" to the chief syndic; and upon the latter's accepting the contents, the candidate deliberately "breaks the pot against the wall"—a proclamation that he is now a full member of the guild. The last act is of course a grand feast—the whole fraternity guzzling down tankard after tankard at the expense of the new "brother."