Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/720

* BtXILDING. 638 BUILDING. sons, and carpenters attaelicd to each legion. Not only were bridges and aquedicts built by them, but entire cities, without pay. Finally, all arts and trades were separately organized with a nienibcrsliip known to and controlled by the State, and were corporatcly bound lo furnish free lobor to the State in rctirn for monopoly in each occu])ation, which no one not belonging to the association could practice. This obligation be- came finally so lieavy a burden to the corpora- tions as to lead to their decay. All this explains both the immense quantity and the lack of indi- viduality in Roman work. Free labor, however, was not always forced. MediiEval building shows this. It was at first, during the Monastic Age (Eighth to Eleventh centuries), a modification of the Roman, with this dift'erence, that in its artistic branches it is a labor of love. '9ie monasteries taught all the arts and trades, and were, in fact, the only schools for them : the institutes of technology and of art. T!ie masses of workmen so developed were of two classes : either members of the mon- astery — full monks, lay brothers, and novices; or they were laymen who were the property or dependents of the monaster^-, organized by trades, living in its shadow and obliged to give their work free. Neither class worked for pay — the one did it for love, the other for <luty. There- fore, while knowledge was less than in the Roman 7)eriod, intention was better, and love is show-n in the details which were usually the work of the members of the monastery. When the monopoly of art passed from the monasteries in the Elev- enth Century, the organization of free lay asso- ciations of arts and trades put an end to this condition. Only sporadically do we henceforth find free labor and free material playing any large part in building, in such cases as wlien a whole community threw itself, under the reli- gious enthusiasm of the Crusading Age, into the erection of some great cathedral. As for the second method, building by paid day's work, we know very little about it until the historic age in Greece, when we find it the prevailing method. The State engiiged directly each workman, whether slave or free, and paid him individually, and appointed olficials to over- see the work. There were a business committee and technical overseers, the latter including an architect and a clerk of the works. The State supplied all materials by dealing directly with individuals, for tran.sportation, quarrying, etc. The reports of these overseers and committees, the accounts rendered with itemized details, are extant in a number of cases, even for such im- portant buildings as the Krechtbeum and Proi)y- la»a at Athens, the tem))les of Elcusis and the Parthenon. The ]>erfection of Greek work of the Golden Age in all its details is partly accounted for by the individual responsibility thus placed I'.poneach workman. The Greeks never entirely gave up the direct engagement of workmen by day's work or job work in monuments of the first class, especially temples, nor did they ever leave the quantity of the materials to be used at the mercy of the contractor, even in contract work, but saw that they were supplied by the State. The contract method first obtained a foothold in Greece in works that belonged to engineering rather than architecture; in the erection of city walls, like those of Athens, of arsenals, like that of the PirEEUs; in the draining of lakes, etc. Ihen, in the Fourth Century B.C., this method invaded the finer branches of building, but even then no one contractor was given the entire work; it was jiortioned among a nudtitude of small contractors, and a considerable i)art of the work was kept out of the contractors' hands alto- gether, being under the direct supervision of the State architect. The Romans never appear to have used such free and individual labor. Livy's references show that in Republican times the State, repre- sented by tile Censors, had public structures put up for a lump sum by a single contractor. With the Greeks the contractor and the architect had rarely been the same man; but contractors and l>uilders were identical. Among the Romans the same man was often both architect and con- tractor, as well as builder, except in eases where contracting was indulged in without technical knowledge as a mere speculation, which led to many abuses, as in the famous ease of Verres. Contract work thus shared forced labor with the Romans. Organized, not individual, labor was their watchword, but not free organization. This was carried to an extreme by the Byzantine State, which governed the arts and trades with an iron hand. The individual responsibility of workmen and the system of days' work was not revived until, after an interval of over a thou- sand years, the organization of the lay artists and artisans of Italy in the Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth centuries, which spread gradually to the rest of Eurojje, and is accountable for the return of artistic quality in the details of archi- tecture of the late Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance periods. Membership in the guilds, which represented the culminaliou of this organ- ized labor, besides conferring freedom to work, entailed obligations of good work, and if work was defective, expulsion followed. The labor as- sociations of those days, ditTerent from our own, gave m(ue thought to the quality of their work and the developmcit of their art than to the assertion of claims. Architects, sculptors, and painters, even those of the highest merit, belonged to these guilds. The architects of this period usually possessed what those of Greece had pos- sessed, a general and even pr.actieal knowledge of the principal related arts of architectural decoration, desigrf, sculpture, and sometimes even of painting. Even more than in the Golden Age of Greece, all work was done by the employer dealing directly with individual work- men, eillier by day's work, or, what is its practi- cal eciuivalenl, job work. The liead arcliitect was engaged in the same way, and he was tlius the head builder, but not the contractor. It is in- teresting to note how, as was the case in Greece, contract work crept in with the decay of the Renaissance, though it did not become general until the last century. At present the architect and the builder are more clearly in separate spheres than ever be- fore, though each must, in his way, keep in touch with all the arts and trades that are required to make a building complete. The difTerentiation of these occupations has steadily increased, as well as their efliciency in practical ways. The architect and builder must keep informed of all such changes. They nuist also know aboit the State and city legislation alTecting building, frontage, projections, stoops, drainage, use, strength and quality of material, context and