Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/476

 production in the Middle Ages was directed. The guild system of the Middle Ages was inseparably connected with other institutions. The guilds lasted through the whole medieval period up to the French Revolution; but as early as 1672 the matter of their abolition was considered in the German parliament, though without result. Even in 1614, in the French États Généraux, the abolition of the guilds was demanded by the middle class, whose production the guilds everywhere restricted; but also without result. Indeed thirteen years before the Revolution, in 1776, a minister of the Reformed party in France, the famous Turgot, abolished the guilds, but the privileged world of medieval feudalism considered itself, and with perfect justice, in mortal danger if its vital principle of privilege did not extend to all classes of society; and so, six months after the abolition of the guilds, the king was empowered to revoke this edict and to reestablish the guilds. Nothing but the Revolution could overthrow (and it did overthrow in one day, by the capture of the Bastille) that which in Germany had been vainly assailed since 1672 and in France since 1614—for almost two centuries—by legal means.

You see from this, Gentlemen, that however great the advantages of reformation by legal means are, such means have nevertheless in all the more important points one great disadvantage—that of being absolutely powerless for whole centuries; and, furthermore, that the revolutionary means, undeniable as its disadvantages are, has as a compensation the advantage of attaining quickly and effectively a practical result.

If you will now keep in mind that the guilds were connected in an inseparable manner with the whole social arrangement of the Middle Ages, you will see at once how the first machine, Arkwright's spinning-jenny, embodied a complete revolution in those social conditions.

For how could machine production be possible under the guild system, in which the number of journeymen and apprentices a master workman could employ was determined