Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/103

Rh too highly for that. Local wool and hemp supplied the coarse material to be woven into the loose tunics worn by all alike in varying degrees of quality; the village tanner supplied the skins of leather for boots and sandals; the hunter procured wolves and cats for fur caps and other garments. There were no factories. The medieval shop and factory were in one. Goods were made within and displayed in the porch without, while the family slept in the upper part, when there was one—truly a much more snug arrangement than the vast factories of to-day, with the specialising of work, whereby a man may make screws year in, year out, ignorant of the part they are to play in the whole.

The industrial life of the towns was controlled by "gilds"—unions of traders to regulate trade and exclude foreign rivals. It was the business of these gilds to punish short weights and measures, to censure "shoddy" material, to reprove unskilled workmanship—in short, to insure commercial morality, a subject under close discussion to-day. It was this early insistence on honest dealing which made the English merchant respected throughout the commercial world, and finally helped to raise him to a position