Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/836

820 to guarantee certain rights within it to the constituted members. The guilds were a consequence of the democratization of property. Their socialization was effected after the triumph of the exclusive jurisdiction and political power which they attained under private control. This power and jurisdiction, being legally recognized and transferred to sovereignty, was amended in the interest of order and right, and thereby became the structure of city government.

Strangely enough, the guilds, which originated and grew up as industrial associations, ultimately lost their industrial life, while the shell of their organization survived by being filled with political duties. Their fate strikingly illustrates the suffocation which organization, as it approaches perfection, with its increased coercive power, inflicts upon the persuasive principle which animates it. Owing to the restrictions of the guilds, the new industry which arose with the inventions of machinery was compelled to seek new areas and develop a new organization, the corporation.

In the origin of business corporations we find again the freedom of labor and democratization of property which furnished the basis for new associations. Here, also, the principle of coercion with its privative sanctions was the basis of organization. Perfect freedom on the part of the owners of machinery in the employment, payment, discharge, and promotion of those who worked with their machines was the condition of organizing and economizing the forces of each establishment and fitting it to overcome others in the struggle for survival. Again, also, in this struggle, proceeding for the past 150 years, the smaller and weaker establishments have disappeared, and their territory has been occupied by the larger, until, in the United States, where this private competition has been the freest, and where corporations were earliest legalized through general incorporation laws in the place of special charters, the resultant monopoly and centralization have in many industries been accomplished. The state has not only not interfered, but has contributed positively to the process of centralization by its laws creating and protecting business corporations. These corporations, being a species of