Dictionary and Thesaurus
THE GUILD SYSTEM
The basic medieval manufacturing organization was the traditional shop -- a
master and wife, a couple of employees, and a couple of children learning
the trade. The master bought his raw materials, fabricated his product, and
sold it retail. The shop was residence, dormitory, workshop, ware-house, and
retail store. The masters of a given trade in a particular location united
into a guild. The guild served many functions:
- Economic
- It set standards of quality for the goods or services that its members sold.
- It the prices to be paid for materials and labor and to be asked for finished
products - Usually the maximum price that members would offer from labor and
materials, and the minimum price they would accept for their product.
- It set production quotas for its members, both to insure that the guild's
production would be sufficient to meet the needs of its market and to make sure
that production would not be so great as to glut its market and drive down
prices.
- The guild stood surety for loans to members. This was something like co-
signing a loan, but it was in the interest of all that members of the guild should not get a bad reputation because a few of their number had defaulted on
loans.
- Members of a guild were able to pool their capital and, perhaps even more
important, share their risks. For example, if a member of a merchant guild sent
out a shipload of goods, there was always the danger that a shipwreck could cost
him the entire value of its cargo. If eight members sent out eight shiploads and
divided their goods among those ships, however, the most a shipwreck could cost
any member was one-eighth of his shipment. [Incidentally, modern companies
evolved from this practice, which is why they sell shares of
stock to the public],
- Educational
- The guild established and enforced minimum educational standards for
apprentices. Masters were usually expected to teach their apprentices how to read
and write, enough arithmetic to keep books, and to provide decent religious
instruction in addition to teaching them the rudiments of their profession.
- Representatives of the guild regularly inspected the conditions under which
apprentices and journeymen worked. The usual arrangement for apprenticeships was
that the parent of a young man, aged about seven, would take their son to a
master of the guild in which they hoped that the boy could be trained. They paid
the master a fee (sometimes quite large) and signed an agreement that the boy
would work for the master for seven years as an apprentice. The master, in turn,
promised to educate and train him and, at the end of the seven years, provide him
with a new suit of clothes, a kit of whatever the tools of his trade were, and
enough money to begin the period of traveling and gaining experience as a
journeyman (coming from the French jour, or "day," and meaning a man paid
each day for his labor. Incidentally, many guilds stipulated that it members were
to provide their apprentices with new clothes once a year, usually at Easter.
Note that clothing stores still hold major sales just before the Easter holidays.
- Provided a board to examine candidates for journey-man and master. The
candidate for the rank of master usually created as fine an example of the guilds
product as his ability allowed. If it was considered good enough, the board would
recommend that he be granted the title of "Master." The example that he created
was known as his "master-piece." The examination system was an important means of
ensuring the competence of all of the masters of a guild. If you will
remember that the first universities were actually guilds and will note
that universities are quite slow to change in any fundamental aspect, you
will recognize that the presentation of a thesis by a candidate for
a Master's degree and his examination on that piece of work is a
continuation of medieval guild practice.
- Fraternal
- The members contributed annually to a burial fund and were expected to attend
the funeral services. These services might include, among other things, a
memorial banquet held after interment.
- The guild members also contributed to funds for the upkeep of the widows and
orphans of deceased members.
- The members collectively honored the patron saint of their trade. This
sometimes took the form of subsidizing carvings, paintings, stained-glass
windows and the like in the local church, or the guild might even construct
their own church, as did the stevedores of 13th-century Barcelona when
they built the church of Santa María del Mar. Guilds also carried
the statues of their patron saints in the religious processions that were
once major events in urban life (and still are in cities such as Valencia
and Sevilla in Spain).
- provided representation on the town council.
Townsmen often declared their independence of whatever secular or
ecclesiastical lord had claimed ownership of the city, and they built
walls to defend their rights against noble-led armies. Local government
was taken over by town councils composed of representatives of the city's
major guilds. Remnants of this state of affairs is continued in the City of
London (its innermost central section), which is governed by a Lord Mayor
and his council, who sit in Guildhall. One of these Lord mayors,
Dick
Whittington by name, has become a favorite figure in children's
stories and pantomimes.
- bailed fellow-guildsmen from jail. This was
similar to the guild's attention to the competence of its members. In the
middle ages more than today, mutual trust was essential in conducting
business. Membership in a respected guild known to back its members in case
of need secured such trust for guild members. If one person, however, gave
the guild a bad name, all members suffered the loss.
- Civic
- served in town militia. The free cities needed to depend upon their
own citizens to defend their liberties. Artisan militia could be very
effective. In the battle of Legnano in 1177, the army of the German
Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa was defeated when its flank was suddenly
attacked by members of the butcher's guild of Milan, armed with the tools
of their trade - pole-axes, cleavers, large cutting knives, and so forth.
Over time however, urban guilds - particularly in Italy gave up fighting in
the field in favor of hiring mercenary armies to do their fighting for
them.
- provided local fire defense. Since members of a given guild usually banded together in a specific neighborhood, it was only natural
that they should defend their homes and wares from the ever-present danger
of fire. So the guild itself bought and stored the fire-fighting equipment
of the day - ladders, buckets, axes, hooks, chains - and even dug
neighborhood cisterns to ensure that there would be water available with
which to fight a sudden fire.
- maintained a section of the town wall.
Each guild was assigned a section of the city wall, which it was to keep in
good repair, on which it was to place guards, and which it was to defend
in case of attack.
- took turns at guard duty
- supported local magistrates
- served in local courts
- contributed to the town
treasury
- participated in local festivals. Often enough, a guild would
sponsor an event, such as a play, and some guilds had the tradition of
presenting their own plays to the public. The origin of modern Western
drama is intimately connected with the medieval guilds.
- maintained
charitable institutions. Some of these charitable institutions have
persisted to the present day. Merchant Taylors' is one of the elite
"public schools" of England, and the Goldsmiths' Library is an outstanding
repository of old and rare books.
- hospitals. Medieval society was
not cruel. Christians were expected to feed the hungry, provide drink for
the thirsty, clothe the naked, comfort the ill and visit the imprisoned.
Economic changes in the course of the 12th century led to severe social
problems, including the increased growth of the pauper class, that was too
great to be solved by the Church within the means available to it.
Throughout the 12th and 13th centuries, guilds and individual guild members
(and their sons and daughters) took responsibility for combating these
social evils. Guilds soon subsidized or even directly operated such
charitable institutions as:
- infirmaries
- leper hospitals
- charity cemeteries
- poor relief
- care for the aged
- orphanages
THE CRISIS OF THE GUILD SYSTEM,
1250-1350
The guild system non-competitive and adapted to an expanding economy. After
1250, economic expansion slowed and the guilds had to face new and competitive
conditions. The reaction of the masters of many guilds were
- to restrict admission to master's status
- to reduce labor costs by cutting salaries of journeymen and
extend the years of apprenticeship
- to lower working conditions
- to reduce civil contributions and charity
- to lower purchase price for raw materials
- to take over work of smaller guilds
- to switch to lower quality, lower cost products
- to establish monopoly areas.
These steps were insufficient in the long run. The guild system was designed
to be cooperative rather than competitive. Any desire for efficiency and
profit was balanced by the acceptance of the goal of a stable economy and
concern for the common good. A significant portion of the profits of the guilds was diverted to providing social services, but the major limitation of
the system was that it was based upon a number of small businesses and thus
could not develop any efficiency of size. Although the guilds could pool
capital, they could not permit a few individuals to accumulate enough capital
to establish large and "rationally" organized enterprises.
THE COLLAPSE OF THE GUILD SYSTEM, 1350 -
1500
After 1350, markets began to grow smaller, and the powerful long-distance
merchants had to lower their costs in order to compete. They did so by
producing their own goods, by-passing the guilds. There were two major
systems of such "proto-capitalist" production.
The "putting-Out System
Merchants' agents would rent the necessary equipment to peasant families,
sell them raw materials, and purchase the finished product. This process was
particularly common in the production of candles, clocks, pewter ware,
stockings, hats, but most particularly in weaving. This system continued to
be common until the end of the 19th century, and the early parts of George
Eliot's (1819-1880) novel,
Silas Marner, offer a good
picture of its operation at its height.
The "Factory" System
The merchants would concentrate equipment in a warehouse ("factory"), acquire
raw materials from their own farms or through agents, hire workers for wages
only, ignore any production quotas, and compete rather than co-operate. This
system was used primarily for manufacture consisting of several steps or
dealing with heavy materials. It eventually developed into the factory system
characteristic of the Industrial Era and which is still prevalent in the
post-Industrial age.
The manufacturing guilds fought the development of these proto-capitalist
systems, but were defeated by an alliance of the merchants' and the other
"great" guilds (professional groups such as doctors, druggists, lawyers,
gold- and silver-smiths). Although there were class wars in many towns, the
artisan guilds were unable to compete economically, and so eventually
disappeared. Many guilds persisted for a long time, however, especially those
in retail and small-scale service and repair. It was only with the appearance
of shopping centers and "supermarkets" after World War II that butchers and
bakers lost their professional status, while such groups as plumbers have
managed to keep that status. The professional guilds developed into the
American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, and the silver-
smiths and gold-smiths became the economy's bankers.THE RESULTS OF THE RISE OF
PROTO-CAPITALISM
The proto-capitalists of the later middle ages did not support civic
services, so urban life deteriorated. The workers' standard of living
dropped, and this reduced their ability to buy the goods they produced.
The European consumer markets grew quite restricted, and this contributed to
a general recession in the fifteenth century. Production was now
uncontrolled, and cycles of inflation and depression became common.
More production was moved to the countryside, and wealth concentrated more
rapidly in ever-fewer hands.
Together with the disappearance of the manorial system in the countryside,
the emergence of capitalism altered the structure of society. Peasants and
middle class split into two classes, the proprietors and a
proletariat, the lower levels of which merged with the pauper class.
Something of the same thing was happening among the nobility, where there was
an increasing gap between the squires and the magnates. The
medieval structure of social classes was being replaced by the modern
structure based upon economic classes.
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