29. "The gilds were monopolies." Were they narrowly closed monopolies or could any worthy person be a member? What difference does this make with respect to your judgment concerning the social usefulness of the organization?

30. "The gilds were monopolies. They had to be and for precisely the same reason that the government of any country is a monopoly. Its sway must be undisputed." Is there any justification for this position? 31. "The gilds were very important agencies of social control." List the services they rendered in this respect.

32. Was there in the mediaeval gilds anything in the nature of a joint stock or any associated trading on the part of the craft as a body? Do we have organizations which have such features today?

33. "The craft gild ordinances are interesting as an early attempt to overcome certain evils of anonymous production [the producer not being known to the consumer]." What does this mean? Just what regulations are in point? Do we have anonymous production today? If so, are there any modern attempts to meet this condition? 34. "As we should expect, the doctrine of caveat emptor first appears in the cloth industry." What is this doctrine? Why should it ever have appeared? Why did it appear first in the cloth industry? 35. What factors made for the disappearance of the gild merchant? Of the craft gild? Answer in terms of the functions of the gilds.

36. "The simple gild merchant passed off the stage when economic life became too complex for it." Explain. What took the place of the gild merchant?

37. "The market for which the gildsman produced was very different from the market for which the modern business manager produces." Cite the outstanding differences. Which of these differences may be interpreted as subheads under the characterization of the modern market as speculative?

38. "To use modern terms, which were meaningless then, the gildsman was at once employer and workman, capitalist and laborer." Compare the "labor problems" of gild and modern industrial economy. Could labor unions have grown up in the mediaeval town? What does your answer imply with respect to the conditions which give rise to labor unions?

39. "Apprenticeship was a system of business education. It trained the worker with respect to the internal problems of business-i.e., those having to do with production, marketing, and administration. It also trained with respect to the external problems of business-i.e. those having to do with the relationship of the business and of the business manager to the rest of organized society." Why has apprenticeship broken down? What agencies are today carrying on its work with respect to business education?

40. Was there "industrial organization" in the "industrial plants" of the craftsmen? If so, describe its structure and then characterize it.

41. Have we today any producers who may be said to be survivals of the handicraft system of industry?

42. "Life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was corporate rather than individual." Explain. Was this true only in the town? What did we find to be the situation in the manor with respect to individualism?

43. "The relations between producer and consumer were personal in the mediaeval period. Today they are impersonal." Explain and illustrate. Can you cite other fields in which personal relations have yielded to impersonal relations? "We need to develop an impersonal code of ethics." How does this follow?

44. "The mediaeval merchant was not the specialist he later became." Explain.

45. Characterize the means of transportation and the means of transmission of ideas in mediaeval England.

46. In his History of Commerce, Day tells of a "glover who was traveling to market [1499] and was drowned with his horse in a pit which a miller had dug to get clay from the road. A court acquitted the miller on the ground that he had no malicious intent and really did not know of any other place where he could get the kind of clay he wanted." What would a modern court decide? What is the significance of this story for purposes of this study?

47. Draw up a comparison of the market and the fair. We have today institutions bearing these names. Are they derived from the mediaeval institutions? If so, have they retained their old functions?

48. "Markets and fairs represent a phase of commerce which can best be described as periodic." Explain. How should you characterize the modern phase of commerce?

49. Discuss the commercial organization of the towns. Was the trade in the towns along modern lines, such as wholesale and retail trade? Did they have stores? Were certain streets of the towns given over to certain industries? Had occupations been definitely differentiated?

50. Who were the pedlars? What kind of goods did they sell? Who were their customers?

51. Indicate the relative importance of the fair, the market, and the pedlar in the commercial organization of the time. Do these agencies play as prominent a part today as they did in mediaeval times? If not, why not?

52. Outline the hindrances to international trade. What were the consequences upon the size and character of that trade?

53. The merchants of the staple: (a) What were their functions? (b) What were the significant features of their organization? Answer the same questions for the merchant adventurers.

54. "The staplers and merchant adventurers combined the essential elements of the gild and of the fair." Is there any truth in this statement?

55. Why should the merchant adventurers have been given a monopoly? Could any successful merchant have joined them? If so, did they have a monopoly? Is the case parallel to that of the gilds? Is it parallel to our modern patents and copyrights ?

56. Work out a series of propositions characterizing mediaeval currency. What is the relation of the modern banker to the mediaeval moneychanger?

57. What was the law merchant? Whence came it? In what sense was it international law? What, if anything, do we owe to the law merchant?

58. Draw up in parallel columns a comparison of mediaeval and modern trade.

59. Show why the lack of commerce requires small groups of people to produce everything for themselves and why this self-sufficiency involves a low standard of living.

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60. Why were financial panics, commercial crises, and industrial depressions unknown in mediaeval England? What was the nature of economic disasters which mediaeval peoples had to fear?

61. Is commerce aided by standardized and predictable conditions? What part should you expect commerce to play in facilitating the enlargement of the political unit? in suppressing local disorder? in rendering social arrangements more certain? in standardizing legal codes? in preventing war?

62. Much discussion goes on today concerning "price maintenance." What does this mean? Could such a discussion have arisen in the mediaeval period?

63. Discuss the agencies and methods of social control of mediaeval England. Did custom play a part? law? codes of ethics? religion? public opinion? voluntary organizations? government? In so far as these did play a part, try to estimate their relative importance. Do they have the same relative importance today?

64. Should you say that the social control of the mediaeval period was mainly conscious or mainly unconscious control?

65. "Control of industrial affairs in the mediaeval period may be character

ized by the propositions: (a) the control was customary, (b) the control was local." Is this true? Does this apply to the regulations concerning forestalling, engrossing, and regrating?

66. How can it be said that control of industrial activity was mainly customary in character. Was there not a large body of control resting with the church? Was there not another large body resting with the central government and with the municipal authorities? 67. Outline a discussion of the mediaeval church as an agency of social control. With respect to business activity, in what ways did the church hinder its development? Were there ways in which the church facilitated its development?

68. What was the meaning of usury? Does it mean the same thing today? How do you account for the presence of such a doctrine in mediaeval economy?

69. What was the fair price doctrine? How do you account for its presence? By what agencies were its teachings carried out? Do we have anything comparable with it today?

70. Make a list of the activities of the central government with respect to the control of industrial activity? Is the list longer or shorter than a similar list of such activities in our present society?.

71. We often speak of the relation of the state to industry, meaning, gen

erally, the relation of government, whether local or central, to industry. Characterize the relation of the state to industry in mediaeval times. 72. "Broadly speaking, the control of industry of the mediaeval period may be said to have been either external, by parliamentary or municipal legislation, or internal, by means of craft gilds. These two sections again admit of subdivision according as their objects are the protection of the consumer, the employer, or the workman." Illustrate each kind of control.

73. Was there much of what we call "individualism" in England at this time? What is individualism? Is there any word which serves as an antithesis? Was the manorial system of cultivation one which gave much scope to the individual? Did the gild system give much scope to the individual? Why should we be interested in such questions? 74. To what extent had the following "mechanisms and devices" developed in the mediaeval period: private property, competition, exchange, money economy, inheritance, specialization, division of labor, contract, wages, rent, interest, production for profit, production for a speculative market? What is meant by saying that such matters should be mentioned when one is discussing social control because of the ways in which institutions condition and control human activity?

75. It has been said that our modern society has in it three classes of structures: (a) those just beginning to come into significance, (b) those in full flower, and (c) those which have largely outlived their usefulness, but still exist as "survivals." Can you cite illustrations? Particularly, have we "survivals" which have come down to us from mediaeval society?

B. Manorial Economy

17. FUNCTIONS OF MEDIAEVAL SOCIAL ORGANISMS1

There was a time when a vast number of Englishmen hardly had reason to look beyond their village or their town, and only came occasionally into conscious contact with the world outside. The prosperity of their own village or their own town was all that concerned them then, whereas all of us now, for the very bread we eat, are affected by the state of trade between England and other lands. In the twelfth century, for almost all the purposes of life, the village or the manor was by far the most important of these social organisms, when few towns existed and when national ties were of the slightest.. As in course of time towns grew up, they became the important centers of trade and of industry; the stream of progress, instead of flowing along the narrow channels of village life, can be most readily observed in the larger life of the towns. They, in their turn, fell into the background, as national regulation and national institutions became more powerful to watch over and to promote common national interests.

Each of these different forms of social organization has been required to serve different purposes. Their powers have been brought into play (a) to secure the subsistence, (b) to provide for the defence, and (c) to regulate the activities of the persons who compose them; and in the discharge of each of these functions they have had to deal with questions that are really economic. This is obvious in regard to the means of human life, whether they are procured by agriculture, by industry, or by trade. It is also clear that the necessities of defence involve military obligations or taxation, and that the military system must be taken account of in its fiscal aspects. Similarly, legislative and judicial administration control the conditions under which industry is carried on and lay down the rules by which it is regulated. All these sides of social life have some economic bearing, and each of them must be at least alluded to in an industrial history which deals with these various groups in turn.

1 Adapted by permission from W. Cunningham and F. A. McArthur, Outlines of English Industrial History, pp. 28-29. (The Macmillan Co., 1895.)