Western Civilization - History Of European Society

The Social and Economic Structure of the Old Regime 323

by monarchs in the late eighteenth century, as the king

of Saxony did in 1780. These corporate charters gave

the guilds monopolistic control of manufacturing in

their respective trades. Thus, only a member of the

coopers’ guild could make barrels. Such monopolies ex-

tended to all manufacturing for sale or for exchange,

but not for home use, and this naturally caused some

tension between urban guilds and rural domestic manu-

facturing. The men of an urban tailors’ guild, for exam-

ple, could fight against the sale of any goods produced

by women who worked as seamstresses in the surround-

ing countryside. Guilds used their charters to regulate

trade. They restricted access to, or training in, each oc-

cupation; defined the standards of quality; and regu-

lated the right to sell goods.

Membership in a guild involved three stages of de-

velopment: apprenticeship, when one learned the basic

skills of a trade; journeyman, when one developed

these skills as a paid employee; and master of a craft,

when one obtained the full privilege of practicing it, in-

cluding the right to train apprentices and hire journey-

men. Children became apprentices, learning a trade

from a master, at an early age. A study of the guilds of

Venice, for example, shows that apprentice goldsmiths

began at age seven, weavers at twelve; by age eighteen,

one was too old to apprentice in most crafts. A child

had to meet many requirements of the guild (such as

proof of legitimate birth or practice of Christianity) and

pay fees to both the guild and the master before be-

coming an apprentice. The children of masters had ad-

ditional advantages. Guild regulations usually required

masters to accept the children of other guild members

as apprentices, to house them in their homes, and to

provide them with adequate training and experience in

a trade. Apprentices, in turn, were obliged to serve their

masters for a fixed period of years (typically three or

Illustration 17.4
The Rising Middle Class.The wealthy middle class of busi-
nessmen, merchants, manufacturers, and bankers became increas-
ingly influential in the eighteenth century despite being largely
excluded from aristocratic circles and institutions. In this paint-
ing, a prosperous British merchant flaunts his wealth: his docks
and warehouses outside the window, his country estate in the
painting, his gold on the table, and his richly dressed family.

Illustration 17.5

Guild Labor in the Towns.The

larger towns of Europe were centers of

skilled artisanal labor such as the Ger-

man metalworkers depicted in this en-

graving. The master of such a shop

would typically employ one or more

journeymen; train children as appren-

tices in the trade; and entrust the busi-

ness side of the shop to his wife, who

oversaw sales and kept the records.

for the purpose of organizing craft production. They

received statutes or charters specifying their rights from

the monarch, making them corporations like the towns

themselves. Guild charters were still being reaffirmed