THE CRAFT GUILDS OF FRANCE.
2IO
The workmeu were forbidden to bind themselves by oaths, to elect a chief, to assemble in
greater numbers than five in front of a workshop, to wear swords or sticks, to attempt anyseditious movement [strike], etc.
But the effect of this sweeping enactment w^as simply nil.
The societies were for a time carried on in secret, then one was excepted as a particular favour,
then another, and so on, till none remained to claim exemption.
As late as 1673 new crafts
were incorporated into guilds, but there is no occasion to pursue the inquiry. Laws more or
less severe were enacted one year, to be modified or reversed the next, and this vacillating
policy continued, until in 1776 a vigorous attempt
and
was made
to reconstruct the
whole system,
In the reign of Louis XVI., and under the ministry of
it was perceived that the guilds exercised an evil influence on the industry of the
Turgot,
country by limiting competition, checking progress and invention, and confining the stalwart
to establish absolute free trade.
limbs of the eighteenth century giant in the swaddling clothes so appropriate and serviceable
That astute minister threw open the crafts and trades to aU
to the fifth century babe.
aU guilds and fraternities, excepting only the goldsmiths,
chemists {jpliarmacicns), publishers and printers, and the maitrcs harliers-pcrruquiers-etuvistcs
compound-craftsmen wlio united the functions of barber, wigmaker, and bath-keeper. The
comers, suppressed and abolished
preamble of this
—
edict, delivered at Versailles
12th March 1776, will serve
to
show the
state
of the country at that date.
" In almost all the towns of our
trades is
concentrated in the hands of
alone, to
kingdom the exercise of the different arts and
a small number of masters united in communities, who
all other citizens, are empowered to manufacture or sell the particular objects
which they hold the exclusive privilege, so that those of our subjects who of
inclination or necessity are destined for the exercise of these arts and trades, can only succeed
the exclusion of
of
commerce
of
by acquiring the mastership, to which they are not admitted except by proofs as
and vexatious as they are superfluous, and by submitting to multitudinous fees and exlong
actions, by which means a portion of the funds which they need for the establishment of their
thereto
business or workshop, or even for their sustenance, is consumed to then- great loss, etc."
"Amongst the unreasonable and infinitely diversified clauses of these statutes, always
dictated in the interest of the masters of each community, there are some which exclude en.
tirely all others except the sons of masters or those
reject all
those
We thus
whom
they
call strangers, that
is,
.
who marry the widows of masters others
who are born in some other town, etc."
;
those
see that from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, matters
any perceptible alteration.
But this edict, coupled with reforms of other
.
had not undergone
flagrant abuses, cost Turgot his position,
and
the ordinance did not long survive him. His successor Necker reconstituted all the corporations
in a slightly modified form in 1778.
It required the terribly clean-sweeping broom of the
French Eevolution
to annihilate all these
dusty cobwebs, the growth of centuries of privilege
The trades guilds had served their turn as the nurseries of art and industry,
"
"
their fraternal bonds had been excellent institutions in the
good old times when might was
on the extension
right, but for ages they had ceased to be anything else but irritating fetters
of commerce.
The National Assembly of 1793 at once and for ever abolished them, and the
and abuse.
—
Commerce, the masters unions, and the trades unions of to-day possibly their
lineal descendants
have taken their place. The ancient institution of the prud'homvies, howIn every town of France the
ever, still exists as an authority acknowledged by the State.
Chambers
of
—