tuted to curtail their liberty; against the latter the workmen rebelled; but the masters held together and resisted all reform. The public desired the abolition of the system, but the State found it useful as a means of gaining the support of the middle classes, and subsequently as a means of exacting pecuniary assistance. Workmen were isolated in their methods of working, and consequently weak; they could not act with the same facility as the earlier craftsmen had done in the towns, for they had neither the consciousness of power, nor compactness of organisation, with which to use it.

§ 64. The first loan to kings by the guilds in England was made to Hen. VIII. in 1544; after this followed, under pretence of a zeal for the purity of religion, the most shameless confiscation of the whole property of the craft-guilds in favour of the king's private purse, first by 37 Hen. VIII. c. 4, and then by 1 Ed. VI. c. 14. The Corporation of the city of London had to pay £18,700 for the redemption of their own property and trust funds. From this time all such trading corporations were subjected to continual exactions in order to supply the Government with money; in manifold ways Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. contrived to screw out of the companies a portion of their wealth. This practice was continued through the Civil War, and the Commonwealth, during which time they had to suffer great exactions and oppressions. Kings and courtiers enriched themselves at the expense of the companies and of the public, by granting monopolies, and for the alleged purposes of oversight and control.

§ 65. The causes which led to the final overthrow of the craft-guilds arose out of the conduct of the trading classes themselves; the growth of large capital and its investment in manufactures, led to oppressions and abuses until the law stepped in as a relief. The statute 2 and 3 of Philip and Mary indicates the commencement; after stating that "the rich clothiers do oppress the weavers, some by setting up and keeping in their houses divers looms, and maintaining them by journeymen and other persons unskilful; some by engrossing looms into their own hands, and letting them out at such unreasonable rents as the poor artificers are not able to maintain

F

themselves by, whereby they are found to forsake their occupations, etc., it is enacted that no clothier living out of the city, burgh, or market town, shall keep more than two looms, nor more than two apprentices." This Act endeavoured to protect alike the workmen and the small masters, against the competition of rich capitalists. But neither Act of Parliament nor corporation law can long resist the logic of facts: the discoveries and inventions then being made, and applied to industry, had the effect of aggregating the manufactures into the hands of comparatively few capitalists; craft-guilds and corporations, with such forces arrayed against them, lost their self-importance, and, in their insane endeavour to arrest the progress of events, made themselves hated and despised. Contentions and excesses caused the removal of several trades to new centres, where they were free from the influence of intemperate corporate control. Manchester and Birmingham, and other places of industrial note, rose into importance, whose career of prosperity was soon to leave the ancient cities and corporate towns, with all their restrictive ordinances, far behind. The growing industries of these new centres threw into the shade the old boroughs, deprived them of their assumed importance, wrested from them their pretentious powers, and left to them but a mere shadow of their former grandeur. The craft-guilds declined, by reason of their breaking away from their ancient lines, and by the imposition of restrictive laws, with the object of creating and maintaining monopolies.

§ 66. In France, the people swept them away on the night of August 4, 1789. In Germany they were brought piecemeal to death, by several bureaucratic enactments, the last remnants being ultimately destroyed by the North German Industrial Code, 1869. In England they gradually died out under the new industrial system. All that remains of the ancient guilds in the livery companies of to-day is the feasting and drinking, the processions and regalia, which point to their mediæval origin; and their immense revenues, chiefly derived from monopolies granted in a bygone age, supplemented by gifts and legacies of former members and officers of the guilds, given with the object of benefiting the crafts to which they belonged, and which,

though they have had to submit to an investigation by a Royal Commission, up to the present day have managed to evade governmental control.

NOTE. Since the above was first written some of the City Companies have devoted large sums to the cause of technical education, and to other useful purposes; but in the main the indictment stands good even in this year of our Lord 1890. The Royal Commission to inquire into "all the City Companies, the circumstances and dates of their foundation, the objects for which they were founded, how far these objects are now being carried into effect, and into any Acts of Parliament, Charters, Trust Deeds, Decrees of Court, or other documents founding, regulating, or affecting the said companies, or any of them," was appointed on July 29th, 1880. The results of the labours of the Commission are embodied in three volumes of reports, issued in 1884, as follows: Vol. I. (c.-4073) containing 366 pages; Vol. II. (c.-4073-1) containing 830 pages; Vol. III. (c.-4073-II) containing 870 pages, or a total of 2,070 pages of printed matter, much of which is extremely valuable. The Commission estimated in their Report, Vol. I., that the total annual income of the City Companies was from £750,000 to £850,000, the capital value of the property being computed to be fifteen millions sterling. The trust income was about £200,000 yearly; the corporate income from £500,000 to £600,000 yearly. Of the latter about £425,000 was thus accounted for: (1) For Maintenance, £175,000; (2) Entertainments, £100,000; (3) Benevolence, £150,000. Since the Inquiry large sums have been voted for the City and Guilds Technical Institute, the People's Palace, the Polytechnics now being established, and for other useful purposes.

CHAPTER II.

TRADE UNIONS, THEIR ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND

DEVELOPMENT.

PART I.-THEIR ORIGIN-SUCCESSORS OF GUILDS.

§ 1. In England there grew up, as successors to the old guilds, trade unions of working journeymen. These, like the first guilds of the old freemen, sprang into existence as a defence against the great capitalists, who, being individually strong, were able to compete with each other, at the expense of the weak and of the public. This statement, as to the origin of trade unions, is far from being a new one, for both the friends and enemies of these associations have repeatedly pointed out their similarity to, and connection with, the old guilds; the former to justify, by this pedigree, their existence; the latter to condemn them at once, and in toto, by describing them as mere continuations of institutions long since antiquated, and no longer of utility. The enemies of trade societies generally dispense with all further inquiries into the real merits of their working by the dodge of applying to them the eminently useful epithet of "long condemned associations for the restriction of trade."*

§ 2. Every one who has made himself familiar with the organisation and rules of a trade society, and with the constitution of the old guilds, will at once perceive their resemblance

*This statement was true when written in 1877, as any reference to a file of newspapers will substantiate. Since that date trade unions have been courted and bepraised, mainly, perhaps, on account of their political importance and influence.

to the Craft-Guilds, of which indeed they are the real and legitimate descendants. When, from time to time, the poorer members of the guilds were gradually elbowed out by the wealthier, they soon began to feel the necessity for combination, and hence arose, in later times, the trade unions, which are as complete guilds in themselves, as were the town-guilds and craft-guilds of an earlier age. They are not, however, mere continuations of those now antiquated societies, but legitimate successors to them, based upon new conditions, social and industrial. This antiquity of descent does not justify their existence, unless other and more cogent reasons are given; but at least it should bespeak for them a more candid examination before they are too hastily condemned.

§ 3. Wherever we find, in any trade, the formation of trade unions, it will be found that they arose out of the same or similar circumstances, and were established for the same objects, as the Frith-guilds and the craft-guilds previously in existence. Under the breaking up of an old system, the men who were the sufferers from the disorganisation thereby caused, instituted a union in order that they might be able to maintain their independence and position. This fact, together with the identity of their constitution, at once justifies their being called successors of the old guilds, and also, to some extent, justifies the existence of these unions, because the effects resulting from disintegration, unless otherwise checked by strong restrictions, necessarily call forth, in all times, similar organisations to those destroyed. This might even be called "an historical law."

§ 4. Combinations and associations of workmen resembling trade societies, existed in England before 1562, but they were exceptions, chiefly in the building trades. The reason for this is obvious. Those trades, in the Middle Ages, approximated more nearly to our modern system of extended manufactures, with a limited number of masters, and large masses of workmen, often having sub-contractors, for portions of the work, and using their power to make deductions of wages from the work people, as in more recent times.

§ 5. As before shown, the statute 2 and 3 Ed. VI. c. 15 refers, as to abuses, not to associations of journeymen alone,