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Show TRADE GUILDS IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF LABOR BY JOHN J. BEALIN. (Continued.) j During the age of the guilds, England was known as "Merry England." Today she is "Busy England." The great middle class of people the honest yeomanry had come into existence At this time churches and hospitals were' no longer I luilt by the neighboring Baron, but.on the contrary, con-trary, these were constructed and maintained by the contributions of .the plain people. If a churci vero needed we read of the members of the Stonecutters' Stone-cutters' Guild donating their labor to do this particular par-ticular kind of work; the screen was painted by another an-other guild; the altar built and decorated by another an-other guild; the vestments were contributed by d -nations of money some turning in cattle where money was not plenty, for at this particular period of law the barter and exchange was in vogue. The life of the people was free from care. It was one of honest toil without drudgery. Old age had no horrors for people as It was provided for through the instrumentality of men's individual efforts or through the kind' offices of the guild. The parish house in connection with the church was the scene of the annual parish dinner. On the village green directly connected with the church and parish house, there were all kinds of merry-making; and at stated times, particularly Holy Week, the great Passion Play was given in the parish hall. We will now study guild life in England. There were four kinds of guilds faith' guilds, town guilds, merchant guilds and craft guilds. It i3 with the latter we will deal. Laws of the Trade Guilds. "The early English guild was an institution of local self-help which, before the poor laws were invented, took the place in old times of the modern, friendly, or benefit, society, but, with a . higher I aim; while it joined all classes together in the care of the needy and for objects of common welfare, it did not neglect the forms and practice of religion, reli-gion, justice and morality." Tolman Smith. "The laws of these fraternities of artisans were also directed to watch over the morality of tho members; they were forbidden to live in sin. Luxury Lux-ury was prohibited. An act of dishonesty caused forfeiture of all privileges of the guard. Apprentices Appren-tices in every trade were only such as were of legal marriage." Dolby's "Ages of Faith." ' Pinner's Guild of London. ''As an illustration of the working of a trade or craft guild we will take that of the 'Pinners' of the City of London, the register of which, dating dat-ing A .D. 1464, is now in the British museum. These arc some of the chief articles approved for the guild by the mayor and corporation of the City of London and granted by royal charter: (l) No foreigner to be allowed to keep a shop for the sale of pins. (2) No foreigner to take to the making of pins without undergoing previous examination and receiving approval of the guild officers. (3) No master to receive another masters workmen. (4) If a servant or Workman who has served his master faithfully fall sick he shall be kept by the craft. (5) Power to the craft to expel those who do ill and bring discredit upon it. (6) Work to the craft, at nights, on Saturdays and on the eves of the feasts is. strictly prohibited. (7) Sunday closing is rigidly enforced." Gasquet's "Eve of the Reformation." Hence four hundred years ago the working people peo-ple of England under their guilds were in possession posses-sion of many things for which trade unionists are contending now. They had better than the eight-hour eight-hour law. There-was but five hours' work during the week, and then there is the care-taking of the men of the craft during their sickness and old age a far better system than our old age pension. pen-sion. Child Labor Law in 1466. They had the child labor law in vogue. One has just been enacted in New York State. "In 1466 a man was fined two shillings for setting set-ting a child to work before he had been fully apprenticed; ap-prenticed; and also another had to pay two shillings shil-lings for working after 7 o'clock on a winter night. Two shillings in this instance would be about equal to $5 at the present time." Gasquet's "Eve of the Reformation." Arbitration and Disputes. I It is evident that the working people, as for duration of employment, were far better circumstanced circum-stanced than they would have been had they what is known as the eight-hour day. Proof has been given also that child labor law was also in existence. exis-tence. It was also . demonstrated beyond dispute that boards of mediation and arbitration were in existence. For example,; in St.. Dunstan's parish there was a disagreement between a man named Baker and the parish, and there was charged up an item of two and one-half pence on the arbitration and settlement of the question. The decision was rendered against Baker. The usual custom of settling difficulties was as follows: The parish priest on Sundays made an announcement calling on each party to the contest con-test to name a friend to sit in judgment; these two usually met at the parish house and nominated a third person, the custom being to name the priest as the third party. The decision given by these arbitrators was accepted as binding. There was nothing in the statutory law giving warrant to this custom, but, nevertheless, it had all the binding ' force of law. Religious Life of Guilds. "As an illustration of the religious side of the guilds, we find fCmong the documents of the municipal muni-cipal archives of Winchester there exists an order ! of the mayor a nd corporation as to the disposition i of a solemn procession on Corpus Christi in 1435. It runs thus: " 'At a convocation holden in the City of Winchester Win-chester te Friday next after the feast of Corpus Christi in the thirteenth year of the reigu of King Harrv Aixth, after the Conquest, it was ordered by Richard Calter, mayor of the City of Winchester; Job.ft Symer and Henry Putt, baliffs of the said ciy aforesaid, and also by all citizens and eom-ronality eom-ronality of same city: It is agreed of a certain Religious procession of the feast of Corpus Christi, of divers artificers and crafts within the said city; that is to say, carpenters and felters shall go first; smiths and barbers second; cooks and butchers, third; shoemakers, with two lights, fourth; tanners and japanners, fifth; plumbers and silkmen, sixth; fishers and farriers, seventh; t a venters, eighth; weavers, with two lights, ninth; fullers, with two lights, tenth; dyers with two lights, eleventh; chaundlers and brewers, twelfth; mercers, with two lights, thirteenth; the wives with one light, and John Blake with another light, fourteenth, and all these lights shall be borne orderly before the said procession before the priests of the city; And four lights for the brethren of St. John shall be borne about the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, the saina - ; ; : V . day in the same procession aforesaid." Gasquet's "Eve of the Reformation." The brethren of St. John, named had as the object of their association the keeping of a hospital hospi-tal for the poor and sick of the city. After the procession a great feast was held. The people sat down to dinner and they. hid a merry-making. Suppression of the Guilds. At the close of the reign of Henry VII, an act : of Parliament was passed confiscating the property prop-erty rights of the guilds and brotherhoods and vesting vest-ing such property in the crown. The king under this' act, sent out his commissioners, who took possession pos-session of property in order that it might be "used and exercised to more godly and virtuous purposes." pur-poses." Henry passed away before this act was put in force; but a second act of the same kind was put through Parliament in the reign of Edward VI. This act, if anything, was more drastic than the first, and provided for the complete extinction of the corporations, guilds, fraternities, etc., who had us(d money "to the support of the priests, obits, or likes, which may be taken tinder the color of religion" and all "manners, lands, tenements belonging be-longing to them" were confiscated. If practices of the Catholic religion were objectionable ob-jectionable to Edward VI and his advisers, would it not have been sufficient to have appropriated into in-to the public treasury the money held by the guilds for the offering up of the masses for the repose of the souls of the dead members if What justification justifica-tion was there for the seizing of the money that was held for the use of aged members of the various guilds, and in what way were they used, as the act instructed,' "for more godly and virtuous pur- poses f The ahrthouses in the ages of faith were different dif-ferent institutions from what we have now. They were not paid for by tax levy, but were supported by voluntary subscriptions, and in many instances by bequests left to the guilds for such purposes. When a person entered an almshouse in those days he did it of his' own volition, and when married couples were received they were not, as is the custom cus-tom in this age, separated, but were permitted to continue the companionship of a lifetime, ending their days in comfort. It will be noticed that the almshouses connected connect-ed and associated with the guilds bear no resemblance resemb-lance whatsoever to the horrible institutions that replaced them in the reign of Edward VI, which have been handed down to us to the present age, and known as the "county poorhouse." As has been stated, old age had no terrors whatsoever what-soever for the people of this age, as. through the instrumentality of the guild, provision bad been made for the care-taking, and so it was that while in apprenticeship, as journeymen, or if they lived to be superanuated. the guild was the tower of strength to the people associated with it. What might be termed the unorganized workers were taken care of during the time of sickness or old age through the instrumentality of the monastic mon-astic institutions; and never until the reign of Elizabeth, was a pauper, as such as known today, in existence in England. This condition of peace and plenty was about to receive a shock.; The guilds are about to be wiped out. They arc to fall about the same time as the monasteries. (To be Continued.) |