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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.

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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

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

the horse may go lame, or a man be taken prisoner, or lose his life. Thou art a devil and an apostate.

The third are such as are busied with trade; we cannot do without them. They bring from one kingdom to another what is good cheap there, and whatever is good cheap beyond the sea they bring to this town, and whatever is good cheap here they carry over the sea. Thou, trader, shouldst trust God that He will find thee a livelihood with true winnings. Yet now thou swearest so loudly how good thy wares are, and what profit thou givest the buyer thereby; more than ten or thirty times takest thou the names of the saints in vain-God and all His saints, for wares scarce worth five shillings! That which is worth five shillings thou sellest, maybe, sixpence higher than if thou hadst not been a blasphemer of our Lord, for thou swearest loud and boldly: "I have been already offered far more for these wares": and that is a lie. And if thou wilt buy anything from simple folk, thou turnest all thy mind to see how thou mayst get it from him without money, and weavest many lies before his face; and thou biddest thy partner go to the fair also, and goest then a while away and sayest to thy partner what thou wilt give the man for his wares, and biddest him come and offer less. Then the simple country fellow is affrightened, and will gladly see thee come back. "Of a truth," thou sayest, "by all the saints, no man will give thee so much for this as I!" Yet another would have given more.

The fourth are such as sell meat and drink, which no man can disregard. Wherefore it is all the more needful that they shouldst be true and honest therein; for other deceit dealeth only with earthly goods, but this deceit with a man's body. If thou offerst measly or rotten flesh that thou hast kept so long until it be corrupt, then art thou guilty perchance of one man's life, perchance of ten. Or if thou offerest flesh that was unwholesome before the slaughter, or unripe of age, which thou knowest well and yet givest it for sale, so that folk eat it into their clean souls which are so dear a treasure to Almighty God, then dost thou corrupt the noble treasure which God hast buried in every man; thou art guilty of the blood of these folk. The same say I of him who selleth fish. So are certain innkeepers and cooks in the town, who keep their sodden flesh too long, whereof a guest eateth and falleth sick thereafter for his life. long. So also do certain others betray folk with corrupt wine or mouldy beer, unsodden mead, or give false measure, or mix water with the wine. Certain others, again, bake rotten corn to bread, whereby a man may lightly eat his own death; and they salt their bread which is most unwholesome.

The fifth folk are such as till the earth for wine or corn. They should live truly towards their lords and towards their fellows, and among each other; not plough one over the other's landmark, nor trespass nor reap beyond the mark, nor feed their cattle to another's harm, nor betray their fellows to the lord. Ye lords, ye deal sometimes so ill with your poor folk, and can never tax them too high; ye would fain ever tax them higher and higher. Thou boor, thou bringest to the town a load of wood that is all full of crooked billets beneath; so sellest thou air for wood! And the hay thou layest so cunningly on the wagon that no man can profit thereby; thou art a right false deceiver.

The sixth folk are all that deal with medicine, and these must take great head against untruth. He who is no good master of that art, let him in nowise undertake it, or folks' blood will be upon his head. Take heed, thou doctor, and keep thyself from this as thou lovest the kingdom of heaven. We have murderers enough without thee to slay honest folk.

So are some men deceivers and liars like the craftsmen. The shoemaker sayeth, "See, there are two most excellent soles," and he hath burned them before the fire. And the baker floods his dough with yeast, so that thou hath bought mere air for bread. And the huxter pours sometimes beer or water into his oil; and the butcher will sell calves' flesh at times, saying: "It is three weeks old," and it is scarce a week old.

15. The Control of Industry in the Gild Period13

BY L. F. SALZMANN

Broadly speaking, the control of industry may be said to be 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. Nor can we entirely ignore legislation for purpose of revenue-subsidies and customs.

If a large number of parliamentary enactments were protective of the producer, as for instance the prohibition in 1463 of the import of a vast variety of goods from silk ribbands to drippingpans, and from razors to tennis balls, including such incompatibles as playing-cards and sacring bells, yet still more were they protective of the consumer. For one thing, of course, a single act prohibiting certain imports might protect a dozen classes of manufacturers, while

12 Adapted from English Industries in the Middle Ages, 200-237 (1913).

the denunciation of one particular species of fraud would probably lead ingenious swindlers to invent a succession of others, each requiring a separate act for its suppression. Sentimental admirers of the past are likely to imagine that the medieval workman loved a piece of good work for its own sake and never scamped a job. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The medieval craftsman was not called a man of craft for nothing! He had no more conscience than a plumber, and his knowledge of ways that are dark and tricks that are vain was extensive and peculiar. The subtle craft of the London bakers, who, while making up their customer's dough, stole a large portion of the dough under their customers' eyes by means of a little trap-door in the kneading board and a boy sitting under the counter, was exceptional only in its ingenuity. Cloth was stretched and strained to the utmost and cunningly folded to hide defects, or a length of bad cloth would be joined on to a length of superior quality; inferior leather was faked up to look like the best, and sold at night to the unwary; pots and kettles were made of bad metal which melted when put on the fire, and everything that could be weighed or measured was sold by false measure.

From the consumer's point of view the regulation of prices was perhaps the most important problem. The price of raw material was too much dependent upon supply and demand to admit of much regulation. The local authorities, civic and manorial, took constant measures to prevent the artificial enhancement of what we may call raw foodstuffs, corn, fish, and meat, the "regrator and forestaller," that is to say, the middleman who intercepted supplies before they reached the market and forced prices up for his own sole benefit, being universally regarded as a miscreant. The economists of that period had not grasped the fact that the cleverness shown in buying an article cheap and selling the same thing without any further expenditure of labor, dear, if done on a sufficiently large scale, justifies the bestowal of the honor of knighthood or a peerage. In the case of manufactured foodstuffs, such as bread and ale, the price was automatically fixed by the price of the raw material, and in general prices of manufactures were regulated by the cost of the materials. The principle that the craftsman should be content with a reasonable profit and not turn the casual needs of his neighbors to his own benefit is constantly brought out in local regulations.

The question of prices, which were thus so largely composed of a varying sum for material, and a fixed sum for workmanship, is very intimately connected with the question of wages. The mediæval

economist seems to have accepted the Ruskinian theory that all men engaged in a particular branch of trade should be paid equal wages. There were, of course, grades in each profession, as master or foreman, workman, and assistant or common laborer, but within each grade the rate of payment was fixed. Wages were at all times paid on the two systems of piece-work and time, and the hours were, as a rule, long. For the building trade at Beverley in the fifteenth century work began in summer at 4:00 A. M. and continued until 7:00 P. M.; at 6:00 A. M. there was a quarter of an hour's interval for refreshment, at 8:00, half an hour for breakfast, at 11:00 an hour and a half to dine and sleep, and at 3:00 half an hour for further refreshment. During the winter months the builders worked from dawn till dusk, with half an hour for breakfast at 9:00 o'clock, an hour for dinner at noon, and a quarter of an hour's interval at 3:00. Wages, of course, when paid by the day, varied in winter and summer. But, against the long hours, we have to set off the comparative frequency of holidays.

For the protection of the consumer a very thorough system of search or inspection was established. The search of weights and measures, provisions, cloth, and tanned leather usually belonged to the mayor or equivalent borough officer, or in country districts to the manorial lord, but usually with other manufactures, and very often in the case of cloth and leather, the mayor deputed the duty of search to members of the craft gilds elected and sworn for that purpose. They could inspect the wares either in the workshops or when they were exposed for sale, and seize any badly made articles. The forfeited goods were either burnt or given to the poor, and the offending craftsman fined, set in the pillory, or, if an old offender, banished from the town. To facilitate tracing the responsibility for bad work, weavers, fullers, hatters, metal-workers, tile-makers, and other craftsmen, including bakers, were ordered to put their private trademarks on their wares. This process must have been much simplified by the custom so prevalent of segregating or localizing the trades, so that the goldsmiths dwelt in one quarter, the shoemakers in another, etc.

As the trades were kept each to its own district, so was the craftsman restricted to his own trade. By a law issued in 1364 artificers were obliged to keep to one "mystery" or craft, an exception being made in favor of women acting as brewers, bakers, carders, spinners, and workers of wool and linen and silk-the versatility of woman, the "eternal amateur," being thus recognized some five centuries and a half before Mr. Chesterton rediscovered it. Later

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