Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/427

 The Eve of the French Revolution 389 In almost all the towns the exercise of the different arts 391. Pre- and trades is concentrated in the hands of a small number amble *° of masters, united in corporations, who alone can, to the edict abol- exclusion of all other citizens, make or sell the articles be- ishingthe longing to their particular industry. Any person who, by & uilds - inclination or necessity, intends following an art or trade can only do so by acquiring the mastership [i.e. freedom of the corporation] after a probation as long and vexatious as it is superfluous. By having to satisfy repeated exactions, the money he had so much need of in order to start his trade or open his workshop has been consumed in mere waste. . . . Citizens of all classes are deprived both of the right to choose the workmen they would employ, and of the advan- tages they would enjoy from competition operating toward improvements in manufacture and reduction in price. Often one cannot get the simplest work done without its having to go through the hands of several workmen of different corpo- rations, and without enduring the delays, tricks, and exactions which the pretensions of the different corporations, and the caprices of their arbitrary and mercenary directors, demand and encourage. Thus the effects of these establishments are, first, as regards the state, a vast tyranny over trade and industrial work; second, as regards the great body of the people, a loss of wages and the means of subsistence ; third, in respect to the inhabitants of towns in general, a slavery to exclusive privileges equivalent to a real monopoly, — a monopoly of which those who exercise it against the public are themselves the victims whenever, in their turn, they have need of the articles or the work of any other corporation. . . . Among the infinite number of unreasonable regulations, we find in some corporations that all are excluded from them ex- cept the sons of masters, or those who marry the widows of masters. Others reject all those whom they call "strangers," — that is, those born in another town. In many of them for a young man to be married is enough to exclude him from the apprenticeship, and consequently from the mastership. The spirit of monopoly which has dictated the making of