Show ANCIENT corporations trade monopolies that were almost sav age in their operation apprentices becaro no better than serfs and slaves they were not merely pitilessly fined and brutally punished they wore often left in ignorance of the craft that they had purchased the right to learn in that frightful social and moral revulsion following tho long and devastating wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the corporations became more determined than ever to maintain their industrial aristocracy and monopoly they refused to admit any trade less ancient and honorable ban their own to the rights and privileges of the law they soiled themselves by contact with no person of illegitimate birth and in their savage and relentless lent less pursuit of persons engaged in unauthorized biaso they invaded the homes of contraband workmen conns eating both their toola and the hidden products of their toil leaving them and their families destitute and starving to such absurd lengths was tho creation of corporations carried for the production of new taxes and new places for court favorites that occupations like the teaching of dancing the selling of flow 1 ers and the catching birds were organized gani zed and homogeneous occupations like the hatmakers and carpenters were divided and subdivided beyond tha comprehension of the modem mind but despite the ingenuity of lawyers and the vigilance of armies of inspectors the lines of demarcation could not be drawn eo sharply as to avoid cod flicks of interests the makers of fels hats quarreled with the makers of cotton hats the spinners who had purchased the right to use hemp quarreled with those that had purchased the right to use flax the shoemakers fought with the cobblers that reproduced mora than two thirds of an old shoe the cut lers that made the handles of knives fought with those that made the blades the relations of the makers of wooden porringers por ringers and the makers of wooden spoons were equally belligerent franklin smith in popular science monthly |