Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/103

Rh unjust oppression or dangers from without, they began to legislate for their own immediate advancement and for their own pockets. "It became their especial business to obtain from the crown or from their lords wider commercial privileges, rights of coinage, grants of fairs, and exemptions from tolls; while within the town itself they framed regulations as to the sale and quality of goods, the control of markets, and the recovery of debts." And further, the members of the guild withdrew from the humbler trades to confine themselves to the larger business of commerce or trades requiring large capital, leaving the trades and traffic given up to their poorer neighbors. This ruling class comprised only a part of the inhabitants, only the members of the merchant guild. The great mass of the people, the artisans and the poor, the men without land, the serfs escaped from the country and gaining their freedom in the town, all had no voice in the government whatever. They lived and worked and earned their daily bread practically by permission or at least under the direct control of the merchant guild. From a simple association, the guilds in towns had become the governing body, and a government in the hands of a few at that. From the need of protection on account of individual weakness, the members of the guilds had grown to be in need of repression; and with the demand for repression came the instrument of repression—the craft guild. Against the autocratic power of the merchant guild arose the craft guilds, or associations of workers in the various trades, those trades abandoned by the merchants, and these guilds "soon rose into dangerous rivalry with the original merchant guild of the town."

These craft guilds in the old English towns, in order to attain their objects, considered it necessary to compel the whole body of craftsmen belonging to the trade to join the guild of that craft or trade; and further, that the guild should have legal control over the trade itself—who should be admitted to it, and so forth. "A royal charter was indispensable for these purposes, and over the grant of these charters took place the first struggle with the merchant guild, which had till then solely exercised jurisdiction over trade within the borough." The struggle was a fierce one and long continued, but the spread of the craft guilds went steadily on, and the control of trade passed into their hands. Then the next step—a share in the government of the borough itself—was taken, and the government of the towns passed from an oligarchy into the hands of the middle classes.

The craft guild came into being just as its predecessor had, from the necessity of association for protection, and like it was democratic at first; and, again like it, became in time an oligarchy as narrow as that which it had deposed. The craft guild arose because the artisans and tradesmen had grown to a position where they could recognize the