X.

TRADES UNIONS.

THE INTELLIGENT BALLOT IS THE LABORER'S BEST FRIEND-BY IT LAWS AND COURTS, IF WRONG,

CAN BE SPEEDILY CHANGED.

Principles are unchangeable and truths eternal. All else is modified by the changes produced by the passing years. Every new plane reached by the evolutions of the human race demands a new adjustment of the principles and a new adaptation of truth to the then present environment.

Labor, and the various organizations in its supposed interest is no exception to the universal rule. The greatest results can only be reached by the most harmonious exercise of al the powers interested in the development. All friction is an impediment and loss of power.

In the earlier stages of the progress of the race, might always made right, and superior intelligence and favorable opportunity combined physical power and the race was divided into the rulers and the subjects-the employers and the laborers-the masters and the slaves. The laborer was then fortunate if for his labor he was well fed, housed and clothed. He furnished the recruits for the army and the navy, and was the slave of the ruling powers.

His destiny was fixed by the capricious results of war or the purchasing power of wealth, and no ballot or elective franchise offered any possible escape for the laborer or the slave.

The pyramids were built with the unpaid labor of that era. No such works, erected simply as is supposed to commemorate the exercise of regal power, could ever be built in any community where the revenues for the government were raised by a regular system of taxation, and where the laborers had a vote as to the rate and payment of such a tax. There was then practically no conflict between capital and

labor. The wealth of the country supported the armies and navies, and they in turn supplied it with the labor of the captives reduced to slavery by the military power and the exigencies of war.

From necessity this produced combinations of the laborers for self-protection and to alleviate their more pressing wants. Out of these conditions and consequent necessities arose the Free Masons and Knights Templars and the Guild systems of the middle ages. The trade unions of this century are the logical outgrowth and legitimate successors of that system. In that era nearly every kind of industry had its guild. That was an age of comparatively few lines of industry or trade, and each had its own guild. Nor were the guilds limited to industrial pursuits, but were formed for social, religious, beneficent and even governmental purposes. The crafts guilds flourished for centuries, and in some parts of England until the suppression of the monasteries and other religious fraternities by Henry VIII., in the thirtyseventh year of his reign.

THE FRITH GUILDS.

The oldest form of guild life was a fraternal alliance for mutual protection against usurped authority, political and individual. It was partly social, partly religious and partly industrial. Later it divided into distinctly religious and charitable works and into purely social and secular objects, and into political guilds known as the Town or Burgher's Guild, in which for a time was centered the local political power. The Town Guild of Sleswig closed the gates of the town against the king. The citizens assembled at the sound of the guild bell, seized the king and killed him because his son had slain Duke Caunte, an alderman of that guild. In this was undoubtedly the origin of our township organization, the smallest of our political divisions of territory for selfgovernment.

The Town Guild represented the inhabitants of the township in its political, judicial and industrial interests. It protected the people from outside hostile forces and from the barons and the king from illegal and unjust exactions.

At first the Frith Guilds were composed of the family circles. Then all the relations by blood, and then the neigh

bors, and then the township inhabitants. In the reign of Athelston (901 to 925), several Frith Guilds united to form one town, its ordinances being binding upon those who resided therein, but were not members of the town guild thus formed. In this guild was vested the power of regulating the trades and occupations carried on within its boundaries, and in some cases beyond its limits. This was the foundation for the incorporation of towns by royal charter, and of municipal institutions and powers of later times and of the present day, the legislature granting the charter of powers in our day instead of the king.

The town guild was representative and democratic in the origin and use of its powers. The aldermen and wardens were always chosen by the electors, and usually by ballot.'

But conflicts arose at a very early date between the tillers of the soil, the traders or merchants and the manufacturers of the various products of the times. Often rights would be conceded, but questions would arise as to the extent or degree to which they could be exercised. Land owners desired to tax traders, and merchants insisted that the land owners must pay their part of the taxes and bear their part of the burdens of the government.

All members of the guild in the township were freemen and all were masters of some special handicraft. Hired handicraft men were unknown, nor had the wage system yet developed. Each had learned his trade under the ordinances of the guild and worked at it with a manly pride. The idea that trade was humiliating, if not dishonorable, originated with the patricians.

The establishment of the Merchants' Guild was a protest against the idea, and a declaration in favor of equal rights as citizens, not only to pursue their avocations in peace, but to take part in the administration of the government. This struggle was long and severe, and while the Merchants' Guild was victorious and they regulated their own industries, and assessed the taxes leviable upon the property, yet it resulted in the establishment of craft guilds for almost every industry, trade or profession.

At first there was no distinction in the Merchants' Guild

1 (See the conflict of Capital and Labor, Chapter 1, Sections 6-11, pp. 18-19.) Dr. Brentano's English Guilds, pp. 97-98.

between the man who traded in cloth and the man who made it, or worked it up into garments, but as soon as these merchants had obtained their victory, they sought to perpetuate their privileges by exclusive monopolies. The Weavers' Guild was the most powerful through the guild period and to the closing years of the thirteenth century. The Masons' Guild was next in membership and was the earliest genuine journeymen who traveled from place to place to work upon the cathedrals and other ecclesiastical structures of the church, and upon the palaces and castles that marked the era of the middle ages.

The craftsmen fought for a voice in the selection of the master and wardens. Sometimes they waived all rights as to the appointment of master, but insisted upon electing the wardens. Out of these long industrial and political conflicts the Craft's Guilds generally came off victorious. They thus secured control of their own affairs and regulated the laws and ordinances that affected their own trade.

WHAT THE GUILDS ESTABLISHED.

The guilds established, preserved and handed down from one generation to another the right of free association and the discussion of their grievances; to assist each other in time of need and in resisting wrong; to advance each others' interests; and to promote the welfare of the members of their particular guild.

When conflicting interests arose in consequence of altered conditions of the trades, each branch of industry sought to regulate the number who should work at that particular handicraft by a restrictive system of apprenticeship, the manner in which the trade should be carried on, the prices paid, the qualities of the articles manufactured, and the hours for work, both summer and winter. Generally disputes were settled by the master and wardens, at other times by the commonalty in the Town Guilds; sometimes by statute, decree, ordinance or charter of the executive government of the country.

The guild system, with all of its potent ordinances and regulations of the industrial, manufacturing, trading, social and beneficent organizations was dominant at least in England for some seven or eight centuries, until the suppres

sion of the monasteries and other religious organizations during the thirty-seventh year of the reign of Henry the Eighth, and probably in many places until about the close of the thirteenth century. Practically the potency of the system ended with the Tudors.

The legacies, beneficiaries and charities of the wealthy of those eras, before the Reformation, largely found expression through the Catholic Church and were administered through the monasteries, convents and other religious orders. Their destruction by Henry VIII. greatly crippled, if it did not destroy, these ancient channels of beneficent wealth and charity. One great function of the guilds was to care for its members needing assistance. When therefore the channels through which this assistance was rendered were destroyed, one of the most powerful incentives for becoming a member of the Guilds was taken away and the membership rapidly declined.1

THE EFFECT OF STATUTE LAW; IT WAS FATAL.

By the opening of the fourteenth century, however, the people began to revolt against the absolute rule of the guilds. The Statute of 23, Edw. III, 1349, marks the decadence of the guilds as a governing power. This step was fatal as it left the guilds with only an advisory function on some subjects, and no political power to enforce its decrees upon any subject. Labor at this period lost its great prestige and power and became ever after subject to other political and social and capitalistic forces, which up to that time it had dominated.

The statute above cited shows that the action of the guilds and the demands of their members had become such as to be dangerous to the public welfare unless restrained by the statute law.

After reciting in the preamble the reasons for its enactment as upon "the petition of the commonalty," because the servants, having no regard to the ordinances, refused to serve unless they have liveries and wages to double or treble of what they were wont to take. The statute proceeds to enact clauses with respect to yearly and daily wages, modes of hiring all servants in husbandry.

Trade Unionism, Old and New, by Howell, pp. 10-14.