moral and geographical position of these commonwealths enabled them to profit alike by the barbarism of the West and the civilization of the East. Italian ships covered every sea. Italian factories rose on every shore. The tables of Italian moneychangers were set in every city. Manufactures flourished. Banks were established. The operations of the commercial machine were facilitated by many useful and beautiful inventions. We doubt whether any country of Europe, our own excepted, has at the present time reached so high a point of wealth and civilization as some parts of Italy had attained four hundred years ago. Historians rarely descend to those details from which alone the real state of a community can be collected. Hence posterity is too often deceived by the vague hyperboles of poets and rhetoricians, who mistake the splendour of a court for the happiness of a people. Fortunately John Villani has given us an ample and precise account of the state of Florence in the early part of the fourteenth century. The revenue of the Republic amounted to three hundred thousand florins; a sum which, allowing for the depreciation of the precious metals, was at least equivalent to six hundred thousand pounds sterling; a larger sum than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded annually to Elizabeth. The manufacture of wool alone employed two hundred factories and thirty thousand workmen. The cloth annually produced sold, at an average, for twelve hundred thousand florins; a sum fully equal in exchangeable value to two millions and a half of our money. Four hundred thousand florins were annually coined. Eighty banks conducted the commercial operations, not of Florence only but of all Europe. The transactions of these establishments were sometimes of a magnitude which may surprise even the contemporaries of the Barings and the Rothchilds. Two houses advanced to Edward the Third of England upwards of three hundred thousand marks, at a time when the mark contained more silver than fifty shillings of the present day, and when the value of silver was more than quadruple of what it now is. The city and its environs. contained a hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants.

D. MEDIEVAL INDUSTRIAL POLICY

12. The Spirit of Solidarity in the Medieval Town

Town and gild ordinances furnish abundant evidence of a spirit of social solidarity animating industrial legislation which is quite foreign to the modern point of view. There was a determined attempt on the part of the authorities to prevent "regrating," or buying to sell again at a higher price; "forestalling," or outwitting fellow dealers.

by purchasing goods before they came into open market; and "engrossing," or the modern cornering-the-market. Gild documents are replete with statutes the purpose of which was to secure to the consumer the use of the best raw materials, the exercise of care and skill on the part of the workman, and full measure. While instances could be multiplied, the custom in the city of Chester that “a man or woman making false measure and being arrested, compounded for it with four shillings;" the custom in the same town of punishing with the ducking stool, the maker of bad ale; and the statute of the spurriers of London to the effect that "no one of the trade of spurriers shall work longer than from the beginning of the day until curfew rings out of the church of St. Sepulcher," are typical examples of legislation of this kind. But perhaps, to the modern mind, the strangest of all the customs was the levying of export duties and the frequent prohibition of the export of certain articles, usually food-stuffs. The purpose of such taxes and prohibitions is implicit in the frequently appended clause, "because of the scarcity of the commodity in the city of late." A careful examination of the evidence shows that it was framed in the interest of producers-consumers by men who were not sufficiently used to the intermediate money term to separate the two parts of the economic process.

An explanation of the attitude implicit in this legislation is simple when the conditions of life in the medieval town are kept clearly in mind. These laws were enacted, not because men of the Middle Ages were less acquisitive than modern men, or were more imbued with the spirit of Christianity, but because of the peculiar exigencies of Medieval town life. The Medieval town, settled by alien merchants, villeins from near-by manors, emancipated or runaway serfs, and fortune seekers from far and near, began its career with no sharply drawn class lines and few local traditions. It was the product of a new industrial movement which threatened to rob the First and Second Estates of the social and economic preeminence which they had enjoyed for centuries. The nature and aspirations of town life were incompatible with the customs of feudalism. There was an inevitable opposition between the larger industrial entity which bourgoisie life made necessary and the smaller unit in which alone the spirit of feudalism could survive. There developed consequently a hostility between the old and the new, and it became necessary to fight for existence. From such a common struggle a spirit of solidarity necessarily emerged.

An influence even stronger was the economic dependence of the town. It will not be denied, I think, that where the conditions of existence are severė, a strong feeling of common interests grows

up within the group. Such conditions existed in the medieval town. It must be admitted that the transition from the Roman system of slavery to the medieval system of serfdom represented a great economic gain. The serf, freed from gang work and thrown on his own resources, with rents fixed by immutable custom, and with the assurance of a right to enjoy all the surplus produced above the stipulated rent, held a position that gave promise of efficiency. He was in position to produce an agricultural surplus, a necessary antecedent to the development of the town. But the real gain in the transition from slavery to serfdom was potential and not actual. It is very doubtful whether the serf of the twelfth century was producing as much as the slave in the palmy days of the Empire. To make this potential surplus actual, the wants of the agricultural laborer had to be developed. Despite the principle of the indefinite expansibility of wants, this process was slow, depending upon the chance visits of travelling merchants, the fairs, and the slow development of the towns. Consequently the precariousness of its food supply made the threat of starvation a very real one to the town. The result was necessarily legislation which sought to conserve the food supply.

It is true that differentiation of occupations characterized the town almost from the very beginning. Even in the days of the early gild merchant individual interests were not completely identical with communal interests. But the technical methods of the gildsman were simple and direct, necessitating the use of very little capital, and causing industry to be carried on on a small scale. The relationship of the master workman to the members of his establishment was personal. Generally speaking goods were made to order. The artisan knew the eccentricities of his customers, and was anxious to humor them. The industrial process was a short-time one, goods were generally consumed in the neighborhood in which they were produced, and if any flaw in material or defect in workmanship was discovered, the producer would likely hear of it. Under such conditions the social ownership of productive goods only gradually gave way to the ever-enlarging area of individual property-rights. Hence the two processes of production and consumption were practically identified in the mind. of the townsman.

This breadth of view-point in domestic relations can best be understood by its contrast with the townsman's conduct of foreign or out-of-town trade. The current code of business ethics allowed inferior materials and poor workmanship to be used in the production of articles for the foreign market. The interests.

of the foreigner were not protected by the customary, or just, price; and if, by hook or crook, the townsman could put off short weight on the foreigner, so much the better. In short, here the element of personality was minimized; and, for that reason, production, the social means, became to the artisan an individual end. In this attitude toward foreign trade is to be found the beginning of the entrepreneur view-point. As the industrial entity increased in size and complexity, as the time of the productive process was lengthened, and as business relations became more impersonal, it is quite natural that the gildsman's attitude towards foreigners should come to be his attitude towards all customers.

Yet the influence of mediæval thought in promoting the spirit of solidarity is not to be wholly overlooked. The town was born in an atmosphere saturated with the spirit of Medieval Catholicism. Brotherhood and equality had long been preached by the Church. Vertical, or inter-class equality was never realized, either in Chivalry or in the Church. But many mediæval institutions presented at least a fair semblance of horizontal, or intra-class equality. It was under the influence of ecclesiastical precedents that the towns established their new organizations. A study of the characteristic features of the gilds shows how great was the number of things for which they were indebted to religious institutions, and how few were the real innovations springing out of the newly created urban life. Influenced by such habits of thought and freed from the obstacles opposed by an already stratified society, the merchant gild legislated with the end in view of placing social interests above class or individual interests. Intellectual conditions and the pressure of economic and political necessity prevented the formal sacrifice of social weal to individual acquisition.

13.

Articles of the Spurriers of London11

In the first place,-that no one of the trade of Spurriers shall work longer than from the beginning of day until curfew rung out at the Church of St. Sepulchre, without Newgate; by reason that no man can work so neatly by night as by day. And many persons of the said trade, who compass how to practice deception in their work, desire to work by night rather than by day; and then they introduce false iron, and iron that has been cracked, for tin; and also they put gilt on false copper, and cracked. And further.— many of the said trade are wandering about all day, without working at all at their trade; and then when they have become drunk 11Adapted from University of Pennsylvania, op. cit., 21–22 (1345).

and frantic, they take to their work, to the annoyance of the sick, and all their neighborhood, as well by reason of the broils that arise. between them and the strange folks who are dwelling among them. And then they blow up their fires so vigorously, that their forges begin all at once to blaze to the great peril of themselves and of all the neighborhood around. And then, too, all the neighbors are much in dread of the sparks, which so vigorously issue forth in all directions from the mouths of the chimneys in their forges. By reason thereof it seems unto them that working by night should be put an end to, in order such false work and such perils to avoid: and, therefore, the Mayor and the Aldermen do will, by the assent of the good folks of the said trade, and for the common profit, that from henceforth such time for working, and such false work made. in the trade, shall be forbidden.

14. Mediæval Tricks of Trade12

BY BERTHOLD VON REGENSBURG

The first are ye that work in clothing, silks, or wool or fur, shoes or gloves or girdles. Men can in nowise dispense with you; men must needs have clothing; therefore should ye so serve them as to do your work truly; not to steal half the cloth, or to use other guile, mixing hair with your wool or stretching it out longer, whereby a man thinketh to have gotten good cloth, yet thou hath stretched it to be longer than it should be, and maketh a good cloth into. worthless stuff. Nowadays no man can find a good hat for thy falsehood; the rain will pour down through the brim into his bosom. Even such deceit is there in shoes, in furs, in curriers' work; one man sells an old skin for a new, and how manifold are thy deceits no man knoweth so well as thou and thy master the devil.

The second folk are such as work with iron tools. They should all be true and trustworthy in their office, whether they work by the day or the piece. When they labor by the day, they should not stand all the more idle that they may multiply the days at their work. If thou laborest by the piece, then thou shouldest not hasten too soon therefrom, that thou mayest be rid of the work as quickly as possible, and that the house may fall down in a year or two. Thou shouldest work at it truly, even as it were thy own. Thou smith, thou wilt shoe a steed with a shoe that is naught; and the beast will go perchance scarce a mile thereon when it is already broken, and

12 Adapted from a thirteenth-century sermon, translated in Coulton, A Mediaeval Garner, 348–354.