Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/218

RV 192 but was also carried to the length of forbidding any company to confine itself to wholesale dealings. The authorities further decreed that, in times of scarcity, wholesale transactions must be abandoned altogether and retail business alone carried on, their purpose being to bring retail and wholesale prices to the same level. The custom of advancing money to fishermen or producers in the provincial districts was interdicted; even the fuda-sashi might no longer ply their calling, and neither bath-house-keepers nor hair-dressers were allowed to combine for the purpose of adopting uniform rates of charges. But this ill-judged interference produced greater evils than it was intended to remedy. The guilds had not really been exacting; their organisation had reduced the cost of distribution, and they had provided facilities of transport which brought produce within cheap and quick reach of the central markets. Ten years' experience showed that a modified form of the old system would conduce to public interests. The guilds were re-established, licence fees being, however, abolished, and no limit being set to the number of firms in a guild. Things remained thus until the beginning of the Meiji era (1867), when the guilds shared the cataclysm that overtook all the country's old institutions. It is probable that a reaction similar to that of 1851 will by and by be witnessed, and that the guilds of former days will be revived on the lines of modern American trusts. However