CHAPTER 4
Market Manipulation
Certain ordinances have lately been made by certain fishmongers of London and confirmed by oath amongst themselves, as to the sale of fish, that it shall be sold exclusively through their hands at a higher price than it otherwise would be. . ..
—Legal testimony concerning the fishmongers’ guild, London, 1321
No-one inside the said guilds is allowed to charge less than anyone else, so they all engage in monopolies and practise collusion among each other . . . such that if any one of them charges less than the others, he is hunted down and kicked out.
—Mayor’s report on the town guilds, Dijon, 1529
In our countryside, a number of crafts, namely tailors, weavers, smiths, shearers, etc., have, by their own decision, set up guilds and ordinances among themselves, by which means they have increased the prices of their work and wages, and the poor common country-dweller is burdened not a little.
—Complaint by rural people in the district of Münchenstein,
Swiss canton of Basel, eighteenth century
The fact that people were willing to spend resources to get into (or around) guilds, and that guilds were willing to spend resources to keep people out, suggests that all parties thought guilds created unusually high profits for their members—higher than if the occupation were open to all. Where did these abnormal profits come from? One source was the entry barriers examined in Chapter 3, which guilds used to limit the number of producers, exclude entrants who might compete with existing members, and facilitate tacit collusion. But guilds could also generate artificially high profits for their members by directly manipulating markets.
As we shall see in this chapter, many guilds enjoyed the right to influence prices, limit supplies, and restrict internal competition. Guilds also had privileges entitling them to restrict competition for inputs such as labour and raw materials, so their members’ costs were lower than if input markets had been competitive.
If guilds could bring about artificially high prices for what their members produced and artificially low prices for the inputs they used, they could generate artificially large profits—what economists call “cartel rents”. When a guild generated such cartel rents, it was good for guild members. But it was not so good for the rest of the economy. Customers paid higher prices. Workers got lower wages. Suppliers of raw materials received lower prices. Outsiders who couldn’t get into the guild had to do work that was less well paid. Guilds spent resources lobbying to sustain their entitlements to manipulate markets, and opponents spent resources to stop them. The economy as a whole suffered for two reasons: higher prices and lower output limited production and exchange; and resources were consumed in conflict over extraction.
The poor are likely to have suffered disproportionately. Studies of modern developing economies find that when entrenched producers enjoy market power and charge higher than competitive prices, the poorest households suffer most because they have fewer options to substitute among different consumption choices and do not receive any counterbalancing boost in income from the increased profits generated for the cartel members.1 A recent survey suggests that the existence of market power increases the percentage of wealth owned by the top 10 per cent of households by between 10 and 24 percentage points; removing illegitimate market power, including government-granted cartels and entry barriers, has the potential to reduce inequality considerably.2 If guilds were able to manipulate markets successfully, the benefit to guild members would have been surpassed by the harm to everyone else, especially the poorest.
Yet there is a diametrically opposed view of market manipulation by guilds. Some scholars argue that guilds were not even interested in extracting cartel profits; by intervening in markets, they contend, guilds actually protected consumers by setting maximum as well as minimum prices.3 Other scholars draw a chronological distinction, portraying medieval guilds as flexible and competitive associations which seldom sought to manipulate markets; according to this view, it was only in the post-1500 period of “guild decadence” that guilds mutated into rigid and stifling organizations that fixed prices, limited output, and underpaid workers.4 A different approach focuses on enforcement, acknowledging that guilds enjoyed the right to act as cartels, which could have had negative effects, but claiming that in practice guilds failed to enforce their cartel privileges.5 Cities, according to this view, were too large for guilds to be able to monitor compliance with their market-manipulating rules, which were violated by their own free-riding members and by interloping outsiders.6 Even when craft guilds tried to manipulate markets, it is claimed, they were effectively blocked by other forces in pre-modern society: merchants who enjoyed much greater economic and political power;7 town governments which imposed anti-monopolistic policies that kept prices and quantities competitive;8 princes and emperors who monitored guilds carefully and revoked their privileges when they behaved anti-competitively.9
Some scholars go so far as to argue that guilds’ manipulation of markets was beneficial. A traditional but still influential strand of labour history, for instance, interprets guild intervention in labour markets as fostering worker protection and producer solidarity, although some see this gradually disappearing as guilds became “degenerate” after 1500.10 More recently, S. R. Epstein and Maarten Prak have argued that when guilds fixed prices in markets for raw materials and intermediate goods, they were actually playing an important “coordination role”, making complex production processes work better by correcting market failures.11
Views on guilds’ manipulation of markets thus differ widely. This chapter brings together what we know empirically and shines light on these divergent views. It begins by using the qualitative and quantitative databases to explore whether, how, when, and where guilds tried to manipulate markets for their inputs and outputs. Since the more than 2,500 observations of market manipulation in these databases span the seven and a half centuries from 1112 to the 1860s, this enables us to investigate the widely held view that guilds were market-oriented in the medieval period, only degenerating into cartelistic behaviour during their early modern “decadence”. Having established what legal entitlements guilds enjoyed to manipulate markets, the chapter goes on to investigate what guilds actually did in practice, and what effects this had on everyone else.
Guilds in many occupations, countries, and time-periods, this chapter finds, enjoyed legal rights to manipulate markets. Many guilds, it also finds, put these market privileges into practice. Guild members, customers, suppliers, workers, and outsiders believed that guilds manipulated markets. They not only complained that guilds behaved in this way, but changed their own behaviour in response. Guilds were successful enough at manipulating markets to exert real economic effects on themselves and the rest of the economy.
Of course, no guild was always successful at manipulating all the markets its members used. Political authorities often granted guilds privileges enabling them to manipulate certain markets; but sometimes governments refused, or even partly rescinded existing privileges. Different guilds could hinder each other’s market manipulation, but they could also agree to carve up markets between them to suppress competition by third parties. Individual guild members had incentives to free-ride on the guild cartel by slightly undercutting agreed prices, producing slightly above the output quota while still enjoying the artificially high cartel prices, or paying slightly above the agreed guild rate for workers or raw materials in order to capture better or more plentiful inputs. Customers, competitors, and workers often tried to buy and sell in contravention of guilds’ market privileges. Historical sources typically reveal a messy situation which resembles neither a perfect cartel nor a competitive market, but rather an expensive struggle by guilds to manipulate markets in their members’ favour, enabling them to reap rents for a certain period but compelling them to spend resources to get more favours from governments, defend their market privileges against other guilds, monitor internal free-riding, and persecute illegal competitors. As with entry barriers, so too with market manipulation, this did not mean that guilds had no economic effects, just that these effects consisted partly of manipulating formal markets in favour of their members and partly of pushing transactions that violated guild rules into the black-market informal sector. Neither effect was good for the economy—or, indeed, for most people in society other than guild members and their political protectors.
MANIPULATING OUTPUT MARKETS
Did guilds actually have the right to manipulate markets? They did.12 The qualitative database contains 1,733 observations of such guild entitlements, 65 per cent in markets for outputs (the goods and services guild members produced) and the other 35 per cent in markets for inputs (the labour, raw materials, and real estate they used).
Table 4.1 displays the main ways guilds manipulated output markets. These included directly fixing prices, limiting output volumes, restricting production and marketing activities, laying down physical limits on workshops and equipment, and restricting the size of the workforce.
Of course, a guild couldn’t succeed in setting prices and quantities independently of one another. As a matter of economic logic, if a guild simultaneously imposed a price floor and a policy to limit output in some way, only one of those could be a binding constraint. In practice, however, guilds typically sought monopoly rents for their members using multiple strategies at the same time. In an economic climate characterized by uncertainty, this was a safety net, since the guild could not always predict whether a pricing strategy or an output strategy would prove binding. Imposing a multiplicity of cartel regulations at the same time also made enforcement easier, since if a cartel-breaker evaded detection of one type of offence he might be caught for another. Pursuing multiple strategies also addressed political complexities, since the shifting balance of power in a town made some monopoly strategies easier to defend than others to the guild’s political patrons. For these reasons, we often observe guilds pursuing several of the approaches to market manipulation shown in Table 4.1 at the same time, but altering the emphasis as economic and political circumstances changed.
Guild Price-Fixing
A first way guilds tried to manipulate output markets was by setting prices at higher than competitive levels. Like any other cartel, a guild had an incentive to disguise direct price-gouging so as to avoid public censure. Surviving documentary sources, which were often inspected or even generated by the public authorities, therefore severely under-record such activities.13 Nonetheless, many guilds organized and enforced collective agreements among their members to fix output prices, as revealed by 96 observations in the qualitative guilds database, comprising 5.5 per cent of the cases in Table 4.1. The pervasiveness of guild price-fixing is clear: these observations span nearly seven centuries from 1177 to 1860, stem from more than fifty different occupations, and come from twelve societies across northwestern, Nordic, central, eastern-central, and southern Europe.
TABLE 4.1: Output Markets and Their Manipulation by Guilds, 1236–1860s |
||||||
|
Medieval |
Early Modern |
Whole Period |
|||
Type of market manipulation |
no. |
row % |
no. |
row % |
no. |
col. % |
Fixing prices for output |
52 |
54.2hh |
44 |
45.8 |
96 |
5.5 |
Restricting quantity of output |
31 |
44.3hh |
39 |
55.7 |
70 |
4.0 |
Limits on production and marketing activities |
||||||
Prohibitions on selling goods produced by others |
31 |
40.8hh |
45 |
59.2 |
76 |
4.4 |
Limits on time members could spend working/selling |
89 |
91.8hh |
8 |
8.2 |
97 |
5.6 |
Restrictions on where members could work/sell |
16 |
16.7ll |
80 |
83.3 |
96 |
5.5 |
Restrictions on approaching customers |
30 |
35.3h |
55 |
64.7 |
85 |
4.9 |
Sub-total limits on production and marketing |
166 |
46.9hh |
188 |
53.1 |
354 |
20.4 |
Physical limits on workshops |
||||||
Limits on number of workshops (normally 1) |
14 |
31.8s |
30 |
68.2 |
44 |
2.5 |
Limits on size of workshop |
1 |
20.0s |
4 |
80.0 |
5 |
0.3 |
Limits on stock of wares in shop or stall |
0 |
0.0s |
3 |
100.0 |
3 |
0.2 |
Limits on raw material master could buy or process |
12 |
50.0hh |
12 |
50.0 |
24 |
1.4 |
Limits on amount of equipment in workshop |
24 |
33.8s |
47 |
66.2 |
71 |
4.1 |
Sub-total physical limits on workshops |
51 |
34.7hh |
96 |
65.3 |
147 |
8.5 |
Limits on size of workforce |
||||||
Limits on number of apprentices |
123 |
40.2hh |
183 |
59.8 |
306 |
17.7 |
Limits on number of journeymen |
38 |
27.3s |
101 |
72.7 |
139 |
8.0 |
Limits on number of other employees |
4 |
44.4s |
5 |
55.6 |
9 |
0.5 |
Sub-total limits on size of workforce |
165 |
36.3hh |
289 |
63.7 |
454 |
26.2 |
Total |
465 |
41.5hh |
656 |
58.5 |
1,121 |
100.0 |
Notes: s = % medieval is not significantly different than in guilds database. hh = % medieval is higher than in guilds database at 0.05 level. h = % medieval is higher than in guilds database at 0.10 level. ll = % medieval is lower than in guilds database at 0.05 level. Source: Qualitative guilds database: 1,121 observations of guilds manipulating markets for their members’ output. |
Guilds adopted a variety of approaches to fixing prices. In about a quarter of the 96 observations, guilds simply agreed internally on prices, with no further information given. But it is clear that these prices must have been higher than competitive ones, since the guilds found it necessary to enforce them coercively: the medieval Coventry dyers’ guild hired thugs;14 the eighteenth-century Iglau (Jihlava) woollen-weavers’ guild inflicted fines of 37 days’ wages on masters and 375 days’ wages on buyers.15 In another quarter of cases, guilds were explicitly characterized as imposing prices that were artificially high, as in Coventry in 1391–96 when the barbers’ guild was described as harming inhabitants by making medical services more costly.16 In about one-sixth of cases, guilds imposed price floors, as in London in 1344 when the pursers’ guild made all members swear not to sell below a certain price.17 In about one-twelfth of cases, guilds forbade their members to undercut each other’s prices, as in 1284 when the Douai fishmongers’ guild beat one of its members almost to death for selling his wares at a lower price than his fellows,18 or in 1736 when a Kristianstad cabinetmaker defended guild pricing on the grounds that “one master should not sell at a lower price, in that way ruining the others”.19
What about the attitude of the political authorities? As already mentioned, some scholars claim that guilds could not set artificially high prices because governments prevented them from doing so.20 Municipal and princely governments did sometimes oppose high guild prices or even impose price ceilings, particularly for foodstuffs during crises when price-gouging evoked consumer complaints and threatened public order. Such cases account for about 5 per cent of the 96 observations of guild price-fixing in Table 4.1. But in many other situations the political authorities actively supported guild price-setting in the interests of protecting producer interest-groups, and these account for about 15 per cent of the 96 cases in the database. In early modern Nuremberg, for instance, the town council set maximum prices for many of the wares produced by bakers, butchers, and brewers because these affected daily necessities purchased by consumers whom guild masters would otherwise have colluded to overcharge; but it set minimum prices in response to pressure from many other guilds whose members successfully argued that producer protection was more important.21 In many pre-modern European towns, the government sought guild advice in setting prices, as in early modern Antwerp where guilds were so routinely consulted in setting both prices and wages in “their” occupation that they protested when the authorities took decisions without such consultation.22 In other cases, guilds openly mobilized government authority in setting prices. In Württemberg between 1650 and 1797, worsted prices were fixed by inter-guild negotiations between weavers and merchant-dyers, supervised and enforced by state officials.23 In Nuremberg in 1723, the government encouraged the mirror-makers’ guild to set up a cartel which centralized imports of mirror-glass, shared them out among masters, obliged masters to communicate all incoming mirror orders to the guild elder who allocated them among masters, stored the finished wares, sold them locally and abroad, and shared out the revenues among guild members.24 Governments did not, therefore, prevent guild price-fixing. Sometimes they tried to forbid it, but more often they solicited guild input on how prices should be fixed or even actively promoted guild pricing—unsurprisingly, given their incentive to retain the stream of benefits which, as we saw in Chapter 2, they received from grateful guilds.
Guild Output Quotas
Limiting supply is another way to make prices artificially high. Demand curves slope downwards, so the lower the quantity supplied, the higher the price consumers are willing to pay. If a group of producers can restrict the quantity supplied, consumers will have to pay a higher price, without any need for the guild to fix prices formally. Even when evidence on prices is not available—as in many pre-modern economies—deliberate restrictions on supply show that a group of producers is exploiting its position as sole seller.
Guilds often preferred to increase prices indirectly by limiting output. Imposing high prices directly might attract unwelcome public protests. Restricting supply could be more easily justified, especially by deploying the lump-of-labour argument. This is the idea that the economy has a finite amount of demand, so each producer’s output has to be limited to ensure there is enough for everyone. The fourteenth-century Catalan political philosopher Fransesc Eiximenis was only one of many contemporaries who justified guild output restrictions on these grounds, declaring: “If a shoemaker comes along with new tools and makes 70 shoes in a day where others make 20 . . . that would be the ruin of 100 or 200 shoemakers”.25 Demand was exogenously imposed, according to this view: new producers did not consume anything; new technology that more than tripled shoemaking productivity would not lower prices and thus could not increase demand. It is hardly surprising that guilds were able to persuade so many contemporaries that limits on output were benign, since this lump-of-labour fallacy is still widespread today, notably in debates about immigration.
Guild supply restrictions were widespread, as shown by 70 observations in the qualitative database. These observations span the five and a half centuries between 1209 and 1762, are drawn from 9 European societies, and involve more than 20 different occupations, ranging from locally oriented crafts such as those of bakers, butchers, coopers, fruiterers, brick-makers, and tanners, to export-oriented industries such as those of cotton-producers, ironmasters, scythe-smiths, woollen-weavers, and worsted-weavers. Supply restrictions were thus a pervasive feature of pre-modern guild activity.
Guilds’ most frequently observed tactic for restricting supply was to specify a volume of output which no master was allowed to exceed. Such cases make up 61 per cent of the 70 observations of guild supply restrictions in the database. Guilds explicitly described such quotas as necessary to keep their members in business. In the Upper Rhine region in 1494, for example, the ironsmiths’ guild described its output quota as preventing its members’ businesses from collapsing “on account of over-smithing”.26 In the Württemberg Black Forest in 1674, likewise, the worsted-weavers’ guilds declared that their new output quota would prevent “reduction in price of the cloths”.27
The second approach to restricting supply, comprising the remaining 39 per cent of observations, consisted of guilds agreeing internally to restrict output on an ad hoc basis, without specifying a precise quota. The motivation remained the same, as in London in 1321 when the quotas imposed by the weavers’ guild were described as “uniquely profiting” its members,28 or in early modern Dijon where the bakers’ and butchers’ guilds repeatedly choked off supplies in order to put pressure on the town government to increase the official price.29
Explicit output quotas had the advantage that they were easier to monitor and police, which is probably why they accounted for more than half the 70 cases in Table 4.1. But sometimes guilds preferred to impose ad hoc supply restrictions because they could be adapted flexibly to a particular situation, such as the desire to put pressure on governments.
Limits on Marketing
Direct interventions on prices and supplies together accounted for only about 10 per cent of observations of guild manipulations of output markets. Guilds also used a variety of other tactics. One was to impose limits on their members’ production and marketing activities, as shown by 354 observations in the qualitative database, comprising 20 per cent of the cases in Table 4.1. The practice was pervasive: the observations span the six hundred years from the mid-twelfth to the mid-nineteenth century, derive from 13 European societies, and come from guilds in over 30 different occupations.
Many guilds, for instance, forbade their members to sell goods they had not themselves produced, even if this was a profit-maximizing strategy. This particularly applied to selling imported wares, but also often extended to buying goods from other local producers for resale in guild members’ shops. The qualitative guilds database contains 76 observations of guilds imposing such prohibitions, as shown in Table 4.1. Again, the political authorities often acquiesced in or even supported such practices, especially when guilds pointed out that governments would share in the resulting rents, as in 1267 when the Pontoise bakers’ guild argued that “they cannot pay their tax to the king if bread is imported from outside”,30 or in 1620 when the Iglau (Jihlava) woollen-weavers’ guild insisted that selling non-local cloths harmed “our populous craft, from which the non-trivial well-being of the town as a whole derives”.31
Another way guilds restricted supply was by limiting the amount of time guild members could devote to producing or selling. The qualitative guilds database contains 97 observations of guilds imposing such restrictions, accounting for about 6 per cent of observations in Table 4.1.
One major form this took was to ban night work. Many guilds that imposed such bans claimed that they were thereby maintaining quality and protecting consumers by requiring masters to work in daylight. Doubt is cast on this argument by the fact that these same guilds permitted night work if a master was producing for the royal family, a clear indication that high quality could be achieved outside the regulated hours.32 Consumers themselves objected that guild restrictions on working hours created scarcity and increased prices, so much so that in Paris in 1307 consumer complaints led the crown to abolish guild bans on night work.33 Other guilds acknowledged that the main aim in restricting working hours was to limit supply, as in thirteenth-century Soria where the weavers’ guild banned night work to prevent members from exceeding output quotas or employing women.34 Guild restrictions on working hours helped enforce cartel rules, as well, since tacit collusion is easier to sustain when the actions of individual producers are observable by all market participants.35
Restriction on working times also took other forms, including closing workshops in certain periods, again for the purpose of restricting output. In thirteenth-century Venice, for instance, the glassmakers’ guild required all furnaces to close for 5 months annually to prevent the market being flooded with wares.36 In seventeenth-century Lüneburg, the bakers’ guild banned baking on any day when “there is still enough old bread in the town”.37 And in seventeenth-century Haarlem, the painters’ guild limited the annual number of days on which art sales could be held, on the grounds that more paintings could be sold “only by lowering the average price”.38
Guilds also sought to limit competition in output markets by restricting the locations in which members could do business, either forbidding them to operate in places where they would compete excessively with other guild members or obliging them to operate in sites where their compliance with guild restrictions on competition could be monitored. The qualitative database contains 96 observations of guilds imposing such restrictions, as shown in Table 4.1. The practice was pervasive, spanning the 568 years from 1288 to 1856, coming from ten European societies, and deriving from more than 60 different occupations.
Most of the locational regulations guilds imposed were directed at stopping members from doing business in places where they would compete excessively with each other. One frequent approach, accounting for 45 per cent of location restrictions in Table 4.1, was for guilds to forbid peddling, door-to-door selling, street-hawking, or rural trading. These restrictions were directed explicitly at preventing price competition, as in 1465 when the Valencia silk-weavers’ guild forbade its members to peddle or engage in street-selling, “in order to maintain the level of prices”.39 Another tactic, comprising 39 per cent of cases, was to mandate a minimum distance between shops or workshops, so that each master could enjoy locational rents, protected from competition in a particular catchment area; these regulations were particularly common in Italian cities. Even when no shop was involved, a guild might mandate spatial separation to prevent competition, as in York in 1578, when the minstrels’ guild forbade any member to play in the same place as another guild member, “wherebie they shal be worse thought of”.40 Another approach was to limit visits to the market, as in the eighteenth-century Bohemian town of Reichenberg (Liberec), where the woollen-weavers’ guild forbade any member to travel to Prague more than once a fortnight, lest he exceed the guild sales quota.41
While some guilds limited competition by forbidding their members to sell in particular locations where they might compete with their fellows, others did the opposite. In 8 per cent of location-based restrictions in Table 4.1, guilds limited competition by obliging members to operate in particular locations where their compliance with guild rules on prices and output could be monitored. Thus, in Zaragoza in 1548, the woollen-weavers’ guild required members to weave in public to prevent them from working “secretly”.42 Likewise, in eighteenth-century Sweden guilds set up shared selling-places in order to monitor “price-discipline”.43 Some guilds took this to its logical extreme and mandated centralized sales, as in eighteenth-century Nuremberg where the mirror-makers’ guild operated as a fully developed cartel syndicate, with the eldest master giving up his own business and marketing everyone else’s output in return for 3 per cent of turnover.44
A final widespread guild tactic to reduce the internal competition that might bid down prices was to regulate the ways guild members could approach customers. The qualitative database contains 85 observations of guilds banning members from hustling for business, from advertising, from enticing away customers, and even from taking more than their allocated share of orders. Such practices were pervasive in the European guild system: the observations derive from seven European societies, come from more than 40 different occupations, and span the 582 years between 1248 and 1830.
Two-thirds of the 85 cases consisted of all-encompassing prohibitions against “enticing away” a fellow master’s customers. As the Exeter tailors’ guild put it in the mid-fifteenth century, “you shall not steer, procure, nor excite, by yourself or by any other means, to withdraw from. . . any brother of the craft, any of their customers”.45 Some guilds explicitly stated that this was to prevent price competition, as in Rome in 1404, where the smiths’ guild threatened a fine of 25 scudi (equivalent to 130 days’ master’s wages) for any guild member who enticed away a colleague’s customer “by offering him a lower price”.46 Another commonly observed prohibition, comprising 13 per cent of the restrictions on approaching customers in Table 4.1, was directed at hustling for business, as in Verona in 1274, where the tailors’ guild banned any member from competing by shouting loudly from stall to stall or even speaking to customers at the same time as another master.47 Other regulations prohibited advertising, as in Lüneburg in 1638, when the hatters’ guild prosecuted one of its members who had mounted a large gilded hat outside his workshop to advertise his wares.48 Still other guilds forbade their members from taking on “too many” customers, as in early modern Nuremberg where several guilds limited the number of customers to whom a master could supply wares.49 In about 16 per cent of cases of this type of restriction, guilds went so far as to require any master who got an order to share it with any other master who was present, as with the Bologna carpenters’ guild in 1248,50 or the York fishermen’s guild in 1593.51 Other guilds allocated orders among guild members centrally, as did the weavers’ guild of fifteenth-century Barcelona,52 the carters’ guild of early modern Rostock,53 and the drummers’ guild of eighteenth-century Rome.54
Physical Limits on Workshops, Equipment, and Materials
Guilds could also limit supply by imposing physical limits on workshops, equipment, or raw materials, as shown by 147 observations in the qualitative database, accounting for 8.5 per cent of the cases in Table 4.1. Such restrictions were very widespread, spanning five and a half centuries from 1252 to 1798, coming from ten European societies, and representing more than 50 different occupations.
In about 30 per cent of observations of physical limits imposed on workshops, guilds stipulated that each master could have only a single store, or market stall, with no branches. In many cases, the explicit aim was to restrict output and shore up prices, as in fifteenth-century Spain where almost all guilds sought to control competition by prohibiting masters from having branch shops.55 Restricting each master to a single shop created incentives for him to expand it, which in turn led guilds to impose “virtually universal restrictions on workshop size”.56
Sometimes restricting the size of workshops or stalls meant literally limiting their physical dimensions, as when the Middle Rhine hatters’ guild mandated in 1477 that all its masters’ stalls in the periodic market had to be of precisely equal size, or when the beret-makers’ guild in 1605 went so far as to lay down that each stall could be no more than eight feet in length, and no guild member could keep baskets of additional wares under the counter.57 Other Middle Rhine guilds limited stall size by specifying a maximum quantity of wares, as in 1510 when the rope-makers’ guild limited each master’s stall to 2.5 hundredweight of ropes, in 1552 when the kettle-makers’ guild imposed a limit of 40 kettles per stall, or in 1625 when the bakers’ guild forbade masters to replenish their stalls with new bread for the duration of the market.58
Some guilds limited the amount of raw materials each master was allowed to process. The qualitative database contains 24 observations of guilds imposing such limits, accounting for 16 per cent of the observations of physical limits on workshops in Table 4.1. Again, the practice was widespread, with observations spanning more than five centuries from 1252 to 1768, covering five societies in northern, central and southern Europe, and coming from 13 different occupations. Thus coopers’ guilds limited the quantity of barrel-wood each master could have,59 bakers’ guilds the volume of wheat and rye,60 cotton-workers’ guilds the number of sacks of raw cotton,61 tanners’ guilds the number of hides,62 iron-workers’ and scythe-smiths’ guilds the volume of charcoal,63 woollen-weavers’ and drapers’ guilds the quantity of raw wool.64
But the most common physical limit imposed on workshops, accounting for nearly half of such cases, was a restriction on the amount of equipment each master could use. The 71 observations of such equipment restrictions span the 530 years from 1268 to 1798, come from seven European societies, and derive from more than 20 different occupations. Weavers’ guilds limited the number of looms per master,65 spinners’ guilds the number of spindles,66 honey-processors’ guilds the number of honey-tables,67 tanners’ guilds the number of lime-pits,68 shoemakers’ guilds the number of lasts,69 ironworkers’ guilds the number of hearths or furnaces,70 and wire-makers’ guilds the number of capstans.71 Guilds explicitly described equipment limits as being designed to reduce competition among members, as in the fifteenth-century Upper Rhine region where the iron-forge-masters’ guild limited each master to one furnace in order to prevent “ruinous” competition,72 or in early modern Rostock where the harbour-carters’ guild restricted each member to sending a single wagon to the harbour each day “so that everyone has something to do, and will have his livelihood”.73
Limits on Workforce Size
Another widely used means of restricting supply, so that prices would not be bid down, was to limit the number of workers each master could employ at any one time. The qualitative database contains 454 observations of guilds imposing such restrictions, accounting for more than one-quarter of the cases in Table 4.1.
Many guilds strongly favoured ceilings on the number of apprentices each master could have, since this limited entry as well as output. The qualitative database contains 306 observations of guilds restricting apprentice numbers, as can be seen in Table 4.1. Some imposed a maximum on the number of apprentices a master could keep at any one time (78 per cent of cases), others required each master to observe a time-gap between apprentices (11 per cent), others prevented a new master from employing an apprentice until he had been a master for a particular length of time (7 per cent), and others imposed a moratorium on employing apprentices at all (4 per cent). Guilds openly acknowledged that the purpose of such measures was to limit both output and entry. In 1562, for example, the Middle Rhine strap-makers’ guild federation limited each master to employing a single apprentice every 12 years, because “there is so little work present in the craft”.74 These findings cast doubt on the idea that in guild-regulated sectors of the pre-modern economy, more productive and knowledgeable producers would have been able to train more new producers than their unproductive and ignorant fellow masters—an idea investigated more deeply in Chapter 7, where we analyze guilds’ overall effect on human capital investment.
Guilds also restricted the size of the journeyman workforce, as revealed by 139 observations in the qualitative database. The most frequently observed approach (88 per cent of cases) was to limit the number of journeyman a master could employ at any one time. But some guilds limited the extent to which masters could lend each other journeymen, forbade such lending altogether, or prohibited a new master from employing a journeyman until he had been a member of the guild for a specified number of years. The explicit purpose here was to prevent over-production, as when the Iglau (Jihlava) woollen-weavers’ guild ordered in 1573 that anyone who employed more than the maximum number of journeymen “has to stop work for 13 weeks”.75
Some guilds even regulated how many family members a master could employ, as in Paris in 1268, when the woollen-weavers’ guild restricted each master to letting just one of his brothers and one of his nephews weave in the workshop.76 Quantitatively even more important, as we shall see in the next chapter, were the limits imposed by many guilds on work by females. These aimed to curtail both output from each workshop and competition against male workers.
Finally, there were guilds that imposed a ceiling on the overall size of the workforce in each shop, regardless of its composition. Again, guilds explicitly described this as a means of preventing over-production. In 1553, for instance, the Salzburg goldsmiths’ guild ordered that no workshop should have “more than six workers, including the master, so that the work shall be equally shared out,”77 and in 1584 the Aachen shoemakers’ guild ordered that a master could only employ a limited number of workers, “in order to maintain and further the guild and equal livelihoods among one another”.78
Table 4.1 makes it possible to assess the argument advanced by some scholars, that medieval guilds were flexible and competitive associations which seldom sought to manipulate markets. According to this view, it was only after 1500 that guilds mutated into rigid, stifling, and “decadent” organizations that sought to generate artificially high profits for their members by fixing prices, limiting output, and restricting competition.79 The chronological distribution of cases in Table 4.1 decisively refutes this idea. For the total of 1,121 observations of all types of guild manipulation of output markets, the medieval period accounted for more than 41 per cent, significantly more than its 27 per cent share of observations in the overall guild database.80 The medieval period also accounts for a significantly higher share of observations of each of the main types of market manipulation—price-fixing, direct output controls, limits on production and marketing, physical limits on workshops, and limits on workshop size—than it does of observations in the overall guilds database. Among the fourteen sub-categories of market manipulation in Table 4.1, only one (location restrictions) were significantly less common in the medieval than the early modern period; six were distributed between the medieval and early modern periods in proportion to their share of observations in the overall database; and seven were significantly more common in the medieval than the early modern period.
These findings refute the idea that medieval guilds were flexible and competitive associations unconcerned with market manipulation. Not only did guilds seek to manipulate output markets from the twelfth century onwards, but observations of their doing so are disproportionately frequent in the medieval period, long before any putative early modern guild “decadence”. Manipulation of output markets was deeply rooted in the European guild system from its medieval beginnings, and cannot be regarded as a degenerate development of the period after 1500.
TABLE 4.2: Input Markets and Their Manipulation by Guilds, 1112–1856 |
||||||
|
Medieval |
Early Modern |
Whole Period |
|||
Type of market manipulation |
no. |
row % |
no. |
row % |
no. |
col. % |
Labour markets |
||||||
Capping workers’ pay or benefits |
43 |
40.6hh |
63 |
59.4 |
106 |
17.3 |
Forbidding masters to entice others’ workers |
84 |
40.6hh |
123 |
59.4 |
207 |
33.8 |
Impeding workers from changing employers |
1 |
7.1l |
13 |
92.9 |
14 |
2.3 |
Allocating workers centrally |
2 |
14.3s |
12 |
85.7 |
14 |
2.3 |
Blacklisting recalcitrant employees |
6 |
85.7hh |
1 |
14.3 |
7 |
1.1 |
Preventing outsiders from hiring workers |
0 |
0.0s |
4 |
100.0 |
4 |
0.7 |
Sub-total labour markets |
136 |
38.6hh |
216 |
61.4 |
352 |
57.5 |
Markets for raw materials |
||||||
Compulsory sharing among guild members |
20 |
40.8hh |
29 |
59.2 |
49 |
8.0 |
Central purchasing of raw materials by guild |
28 |
62.2hh |
17 |
37.8 |
45 |
7.4 |
Purchasing prerogatives for guild members |
8 |
18.6s |
35 |
81.4 |
43 |
7.0 |
Banning internal competition for raw materials |
7 |
19.4s |
29 |
80.6 |
36 |
5.9 |
Denying access to non-guild members |
6 |
20.7s |
23 |
79.3 |
29 |
4.7 |
Price ceilings on raw materials |
3 |
16.7s |
15 |
83.3 |
18 |
2.9 |
Bans on selling or exporting raw materials |
5 |
29.4s |
12 |
70.6 |
17 |
2.8 |
Sub-total markets for raw materials |
77 |
32.5h |
160 |
67.5 |
237 |
38.7 |
Markets for shops, workshops, stalls |
11 |
47.8hh |
12 |
52.2 |
23 |
3.8 |
Total |
224 |
36.6hh |
388 |
63.4 |
612 |
100.0 |
Notes: s = % medieval is not significantly different than in guilds database. hh = % medieval is higher than in guilds database at 0.05 level. h = % medieval is higher than in guilds database at 0.10 level. l = % medieval is lower than in guilds database at 0.10 level. Source: Qualitative guilds database: 612 observations of guilds manipulating markets for their members’ inputs. |
MANIPULATING INPUT MARKETS
Guilds sought to shape markets not only for the goods and services their members produced, but also for the inputs they used—labour, raw materials, and even shops and stalls. A guild’s privileges usually gave its masters the right to be the sole legitimate buyers of certain inputs, to influence their price, to exclude competition for them, or to regulate their supplies in other ways. Guilds used these privileges to manipulate markets for inputs so their members would enjoy artificially low costs. The qualitative database contains 612 observations of guilds manipulating input markets, and these are shown in Table 4.2.
Guild Intervention to Depress Labour Costs
Most pre-industrial occupations were labour-intensive, so wages typically made up a large share of production costs. Guilds, being organizations of employers, had an interest in intervening in labour markets to keep workers’ pay low. The qualitative database contains 352 observations of guilds regulating labour markets in their members’ interest, accounting for more than 57 per cent of the cases in Table 4.2. This type of market manipulation was very widespread, as shown by the fact that these observations span the 744 years between 1112 and 1856, come from 13 European societies, and include guilds in more than 100 occupations.
A first approach was to fix a maximum rate of pay which no employer was allowed to exceed. The qualitative database contains 106 observations of guilds capping wages in this way in more than 50 different occupations over the 576 years from 1200 to 1776. Most of these observations of wage-capping (70 per cent) involve a guild imposing ceilings on the wages its members were allowed to pay journeymen. Another 2 per cent involve forbidding masters to compete for journeymen by offering non-wage benefits, as in Lüneburg in 1583, where all guild masters were prohibited from offering journeymen extra Monday holidays,81 or in the Wuppertal in 1754, where the linen-weavers’ guild forbade its members to offer journeymen hot food, coffee, or tea at the evening meal.82 Some guilds stated explicitly that a major justification for the very existence of guilds was to help employers control their workers, as in Paris in 1776 when a leading objection to Turgot’s attempt to abolish the French guilds was that it would create among workers a “pernicious spirit of independence”.83
A further 21 per cent of cases of wage-capping involved guilds imposing maximum pay for freelance workers, especially spinners. In Württemberg in 1611, for instance, the worsted-weavers’ guilds secured an ordinance providing that “spinning a pound [of yarn] shall be paid at as high a wage as the guild agrees among its members, and the dyers as well as the worsted-weavers shall support this in all ways, and each master shall then unfailingly stick to the agreed wage”. Local court records show that this regulation was enforced, inflicting brutal hardship on thousands of poor women and girls.84
A few cases of this type of guild manipulation of input markets (6 per cent of the total) involved capping the wages of apprentices or prohibiting paying them any wage at all. Finally, in a small number of cases (2 per cent) guilds capped the wage which one master of the guild could pay to another, as when the wool guild of seventeenth-century Padua imposed a cap on the wages a merchant member of the guild could pay a weaver member.85
Even more frequently than they capped wages directly, guilds depressed them indirectly, by restricting competition for employees. The most widely observed approach, accounting for 207 observations in the database, was for a guild to forbid any guild master to hire away another’s employee. Many guilds made it difficult for workers to change masters by, for instance, requiring a journeyman who wanted to change jobs to leave town, get a departure permit, or carry a passport certifying that he had left his previous job with the approval of his master or the guild. In still other cases, guilds went so far as to allocate journeymen to masters centrally, preventing them from shopping around among masters for better wages or conditions. This practice was much more common in some European societies than others. In 1731, for example, the Marseille tailors’ guild appointed a labour-allocation officer to suppress competition for workers by assigning journeymen centrally to guild masters. A journeyman from Bristol who was swept up in the resulting arrests remarked in astonishment that “in England there was no guild labour-allocation officer, the journeymen being free to take employment with the master whom they find most appropriate”.86 In some cases, guilds blacklisted employees who demanded better wages or resisted guild regulation of the labour market. Finally, there were guilds that kept wages down by preventing non-guild-members from hiring their workforce, as in 1784 when the Barcelona woollen-weavers’ guild secured an edict prohibiting their spinners from accepting higher-paid work spinning for cotton-weavers.87
These findings cast a sober light on the arguments mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, which view guild regulation of labour markets as benefiting the pre-modern economy by fostering worker protection and solidarity.88 On the contrary, the 352 observations in Table 4.2 show clearly that guild intervention in labour markets was undertaken primarily in the interest of employers. Guilds were cartels of masters. They capped their employees’ pay directly, and they deliberately manipulated markets so as to reduce competition for labour. Guilds thus not only reflected employers’ interests, but provided institutional mechanisms that helped employers reach enforceable agreements to refrain from competing for workers, thereby keeping employees poorly paid and dependent on employers’ favour.
Guild Manipulation to Depress the Cost of Shops and Raw Materials
Guilds also intervened in markets for other inputs. Craftsmen needed to buy raw materials and intermediate inputs; retailers needed to buy wares; everyone needed shop space. Guilds often manipulated markets for these inputs either to cap their prices directly or to prevent competition that would bid up prices.
The qualitative database contains 237 observations of guilds restricting competition in markets for raw materials and intermediate inputs, comprising about 39 per cent of the cases in Table 4.2. This practice was widespread, as shown by the fact that the observations of guilds imposing such restrictions are drawn from over 90 different occupations, span more than six and a half centuries between 1200 and 1856, and come from 15 European societies.
The most common way in which guilds tried to manipulate raw materials markets was by requiring any guild member who bought such inputs to share the purchase with his fellows, thus preventing competition that might push up prices. In medieval Rome, for instance, the butchers’ guild ruled that any master who bought more than 30 sheep or pigs had to cede them to any colleague who asked, at two-thirds of the cost price.89 Another common approach consisted of a guild mandating centralized purchases of raw materials, which the guild then allocated among the masters, as when the medieval Florentine wool guild centralized supplies of woad and alum.90 Guilds also implemented purchasing prerogatives which gave members the right to buy raw materials before anyone outside the guild was allowed access to them, as in seventeenth-century Bologna where the shoemakers’ guild obtained a decree compelling the tanners to reserve half of each tanned hide intact for a day after processing so that it might be sold “in one piece at the pleasure of the shoemakers and distributed in accordance with the orders of the heads of the said shoemakers”.91
A further large group of observations involved banning competition for raw materials. Some guilds depressed the cost of raw materials by denying anyone outside the guild the right to purchase them at all. In sixteenth-century Lüneburg, for example, the woollen-weavers’ guild forbade women and men to buy raw wool from peasants, “which caused the price of wool to rise and their guild to suffer great damage”,92 because the guild masters were being compelled to pay the competitive price for their main raw material. In seventeenth-century Alzey, likewise, the tinkers’ guild got a Dutch merchant imprisoned and thrown out of the country for infringing on the monopsony privileges of the guild masters by purchasing three hundredweight of copper and brass.93 In a number of cases, guilds depressed the cost of raw materials by imposing a direct price-ceiling, as in early modern Kirchdorf-Micheldorf where the scythe-smiths’ guild ruled that no master was to pay higher than the price the guild fixed for charcoal on pain of being fined or banned.94 A further group of observations involved a guild forbidding exports of key raw materials or requiring members to get guild permission before selling raw materials to an outsider, as in medieval Ferrara where a shoemaker was only allowed to sell raw materials if all his guild fellows agreed.95
Finally, there were guilds that intervened in markets for real estate. Most guild masters needed a workshop for making goods or a shop for selling services, and the guild database contains 23 observations of guilds manipulating markets for commercial real estate. To give just one example, the Rome butchers’ guild ruled in 1527 that any master who managed to obtain the shop or stall of one of his colleagues by offering a higher rent would be fined 28 ducats on top of paying damages to his fellow master.96
Guilds intervened widely, therefore, to reduce competition in markets for their inputs. They enforced prerogative rights giving them priority access to employees and raw materials. They imposed wage ceilings on their workers and price ceilings on their suppliers. They forbade competition among their own members, especially for workers. They intervened in markets for labour and raw materials to prevent competition from outsiders. And just as they intervened in markets for their own products to prevent prices being bid down, they intervened in markets for their inputs to prevent costs from being bid up. By acting in this way, they sought to increase their members’ revenues and decrease their costs, thereby enabling them to reap artificially high profits.
The chronological pattern revealed by Table 4.2 decisively refutes the idea that manipulation of markets was alien to the “flexible” guilds of the Middle Ages and only emerged among the “degenerate” guilds of the early modern period. This was no more true of input markets than of output markets. Across the 612 observations of guild regulations of input markets shown in Table 4.2, the medieval period accounted for over 36 per cent, significantly more than its 27 per cent share of observations in the overall guilds database. For each of the three main types of input market— labour, raw materials, and real estate—the medieval period was significantly over-represented relative to its share of observations in the wider guilds database.97 Among the 14 sub-categories of market manipulation in Table 4.2, the medieval period was significantly under-represented in only one (impeding workers from changing employers), represented in proportion to its share of the wider guild database in seven, and significantly over-represented in six. Thus interventions in input markets were a pervasive feature of European craft guilds from their medieval beginnings. Market manipulation shows no sign of being a degenerate innovation introduced by early modern guilds.
DID THIS MATTER?
How much did all this matter? Guilds might well have enjoyed privileges to manipulate markets formally, but at the same time have lacked the desire to enforce them in practice. Or they might have tried to enforce them but failed. Merchants and politicians might have opposed them. Ordinary people might have circumvented them.
What do we learn from the words and behaviour of consumers, other producers, merchants, town governments, rulers, guild members, workers, and suppliers? Did guild labour market manipulations improve worker protection and solidarity? Did guild price-setting benefit industry by “coordinating” different stages of production?
One strong reason to think guilds believed it was desirable and possible to manipulate markets is that they were so intent on getting the rights to do so. As we have seen, guilds in numerous occupations and European societies, across a period of seven centuries or more, proclaimed their legal entitlement to intervene in markets for their members’ inputs and outputs. If guilds did not realistically aspire to manipulate markets, why would they claim the right to do so? And, having obtained these rights, why hold back from using them?
But there is much more evidence than this. We can look at what contemporaries said: did they believe that guilds manipulated markets? We can look at political conflict: did people put pressure on governments to grant or rescind guilds’ privileges to manipulate markets? We can look at legal conflicts: did guilds and their opponents litigate over prices, quotas, wages, or other types of market manipulation? We can look at other types of conflict: did guilds’ market manipulation evoke violence, boycotts, strikes, or ostracism? We can look at labour disputes: did guilds’ interventions in labour markets give rise to harmonious working relationships or to resentment and resistance? We can look at detection and punishment: did guilds adopt a laissez-faire approach to the operation of markets, or did they devote resources to detecting and punishing violations of their market regulations? We can look at the operation of complex industrial processes: did guild price-fixing coordinate multiple stages of production, or did producers use markets, firms, and sub-contracting relationships? Finally, we can look at prices and output. Did guild price-fixing increase or decrease prices? Did output quotas differ from the volume that was technically feasible?
Contemporary Testimony about Guilds’ Market Manipulation
If guilds had not manipulated markets in practice, contemporaries should not have believed that they did. But medieval and early modern European archives contain abundant testimony from contemporaries, reporting—indeed, criticizing and lamenting—the ways in which guilds fixed output prices, restricted supply, reduced workers’ wages, and capped raw material prices.
The qualitative guilds database contains 91 observations of contemporary statements about how guilds manipulated markets, as shown in Table 4.3. These observations include only those cases in which the remark has been recorded, as opposed to the many other cases, examined in later sections, where someone’s belief that guilds were manipulating markets is revealed by his or her behaviour.
Remarks from contemporaries testifying to their belief that guilds manipulated markets are recorded over a period of more than seven centuries, from 1127 to 1829. Just over 25 per cent of the observations come from the medieval period, compared to 27 per cent of medieval observations in the guilds database, a difference which is not statistically significant. These findings cast doubt on claims that medieval guilds were open and competitive or that market manipulation only came into play when guilds became cartelistic and “decadent” in the early modern period. Across the whole existence of guilds, contemporaries complained that guilds manipulated markets.
TABLE 4.3: Contemporary Statements that Guilds Manipulated Markets, 1127–1829 |
||||||||||||
Country |
1100–99 |
1200–99 |
1300–99 |
1400–99 |
Subtotal medieval |
1500–99 |
1600–99 |
1700–99 |
1800–99 |
Subtotal early modern |
Whole period |
|
no. |
% |
|||||||||||
Austria |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
– |
4 |
6 |
6.6h |
Bohemia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
1.1s |
Bulgaria |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1.1s |
Denmark |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
– |
– |
3 |
3 |
3.3hh |
England |
– |
– |
6 |
2 |
8 |
8 |
2 |
– |
– |
10 |
18 |
19.8hh |
Estonia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
– |
– |
3 |
3 |
3.3hh |
France |
– |
3 |
– |
– |
3 |
4 |
3 |
6 |
– |
13 |
16 |
17.6s |
Germany |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
– |
6 |
8 |
8.8ll |
Italy |
– |
1 |
1 |
– |
2 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
– |
8 |
10 |
11.0s |
Poland |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
3 |
– |
4 |
4 |
4.4hh |
Scotland |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
1 |
1 |
1.1hh |
S. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
1.1ll |
Spain |
1 |
1 |
3 |
1 |
6 |
4 |
3 |
1 |
– |
8 |
14 |
15.4hh |
Sweden |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
– |
3 |
3 |
3.3s |
Switzerland |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
2.2s |
Total no. |
1 |
5 |
11 |
6 |
23 |
23 |
24 |
19 |
2 |
68 |
91 |
100.0 |
Total % |
1.1 |
5.5 |
12.1 |
6.6 |
25.3 |
25.3 |
26.4 |
20.9 |
2.2 |
74.7 |
100.0 |
|
Significance |
s |
s |
hh |
s |
s |
hh |
hh |
s |
s |
s |
|
|
Notes: s = not significantly different from percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. ll = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. l = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. hh = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. h = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. The N. Netherlands has zero observations in this table, significantly lower (at the 0.05 level) than its percentage of observations in the guilds database overall. For all other countries and centuries not represented in this table, their percentage of observations (zero) is not significantly lower than in the guilds database overall. Source: Qualitative guilds database: 91 observations of contemporary statements that guilds manipulated markets in their members’ interests. |
The observations in Table 4.3 come from every part of society: from consumers, other producers, merchants, non-guilded competitors, workers, suppliers, towns, parliaments, princes, and intellectuals. About 10 per cent of observations come from consumers. In Coventry in the 1390s, for example, the barbers’ guild was described as “making the cost of that art so much dearer to the damage of the whole people”.98 In Aalborg in 1685, poor people complained “not a little” concerning the high prices imposed by the bakers’ guild.99 In eighteenth-century Dubno (now in Ukraine) the guilds of Jewish tailors, butchers, and bakers were recorded as being “oppressive to poor Jews”.100 In the eighteenth-century Swiss village of Münchenstein, the guilds of rural craftsmen had “increased the prices of their work and wages and the poor common country-dweller is burdened not a little”.101
Another 8 per cent of observations in Table 4.3 consist of complaints from downstream producers and wholesale merchants. Thus in 1327, saddlers in London complained that the guilds of the painters and joiners “do set every point of their trade at a fixed price. . . by reason whereof they are making themselves kings of the land”.102 In 1562 a Toledo merchant complained that the guilds were causing “price combinations in costs, which are so excessive that the citizens of the town are injured by them”.103 In 1596 the Bologna shoemakers complained that the tanners’ guild was forcing them “to pay high prices for ‘bad quality’ leathers”.104 In 1599 the Barcelona clothiers complained that the high prices imposed by the weavers’ guild were causing “great harm to all of the inhabitants of Barcelona”.105
A further 4 per cent of observations came from non-guilded competitors, as in Reval in 1670 where the “free” shoemakers in the cathedral enclave complained that the shoemakers’ guild had “agreed in good monopolistic style not to release any sole [leather] or other leather to the cathedral shoemakers, nor to permit a journeyman who has left his job with a guild shoemaker to take work with a [cathedral] master”.106 Another 4 per cent of observations came from workers, as in Chester in 1590 where the guild of wrights and slaters was said to be oppressing their workmen by paying them “such wages they be not able to live on”.107 Suppliers’ comments (7 per cent of the total) testify to their belief that guilds manipulated markets, as in Dijon in 1550, where farmers complained that the butchers’ guild was engaging in “monopolles et intelligences” (price-fixing and collusion) in the purchase of livestock,108 or in Turin in 1744, where tanners complained that the shoemakers’ guild was causing them “losses entrained by the vile price to which the avidity of the said shoemakers are limiting our leather”.109
About 20 per cent of observations consist of comments from guild members themselves. In Dijon in 1646 new guild masters described how they had to pay off their guild entry fees by “overcharg[ing] for their products and services, and sell[ing] them at an excessive and extraordinary price”.110 In Elbeuf, 71 wool masters declared in 1783 that guild wage ceilings were highly desirable since “the more workers are paid, the less they work and the less productively they work”.111 Conversely, workers expressed their resentment of guilds, as in the popular eighteenth-century song in which an out-of-work journeyman ascribes his hardship to the London weavers’ guild and complains “that the Masters of the Hall, they are the cause of all / Our Lamentation and Vexation, Vengeance seize ’em all.”112
Given these comments by ordinary consumers and producers, it is not surprising that officials, rulers, and intellectuals thought guilds manipulated markets. About 16 per cent of observations consist of remarks by municipal authorities, as in London in 1422 when the aldermen and lord mayor told the London brewers’ guild “that you sell dear ale and set your ale at greater price than you should do”,113 in Frankfurt in 1565 when the town council fined the bakers’ guild 100 fl for causing a “deliberate rise in prices”,114 or in Reval in 1651 when the mayor said guilds were charging “unbearably excessive prices”.115
Another 7 per cent of observations come from parliaments. In Poland in 1640, the Diet urged that the privileges of the Lwów furriers’ guild be limited in order “to make purchase cheaper”.116 In England in that same year, the MP Sir John Culpeper described guilds as
a nest of wasps, or swarm of vermin, which have overcrept the Land, I mean the Monopolers and Polers of the People: These, like the Frogs of Egypt, have gotten the possession of our Dwellings, and we have scarce a Room free from them: They sup in our Cup, they dip in our Dish, they sit by our Fire . . . they shelter themselves under the name of a Corporate, they make By-laws, which serve their turns to squeese us, and fill their Purses.117
Another 16 per cent of observations come from rulers and their officials. Thus in Paris in 1268 the crown forbade the woollen-weavers’ guild to form “any alliance whereby people cannot buy from their craft at as low a price as possible and whereby members of the said craft cannot produce at the craft as cheaply as they wish”.118 In Austria in 1638, the government demanded that dyers’ guild assemblies be attended by two town councilors, “for the prevention of various secret understandings, abuses, and stoppages aimed at [guild members’] own advantage”.119 In Reval in 1653, likewise, a Swedish government official described the town’s guilds as perpetrating “poor and fraudulent work and embezzlement of what is given to them to process and finish”.120
A final 8 per cent of observations came from contemporary intellectuals. In England in 1621, Francis Bacon deplored the by-laws of guilds, “which many times were against the prerogative of the King, the common law of the realm, and the liberty of the subject, being fraternities in evil”.121 In mid-seventeenth-century Austria, Johann Joachim Becher declared that German guild masters practised monopolium and, knowing they are the sole suppliers, they “take advantage of customers with their prices”.122
People in all walks of life thus had no doubt that guilds manipulated markets. Consumers, downstream producers, non-guilded outsiders, workers, suppliers, officials, intellectuals, and guild members themselves, all explicitly remarked on how guilds intervened in markets in ways that had real economic effects. Such testimony comes from so many social groups, so many parts of Europe, and so many time-periods that it cannot be dismissed as exceptional. Any claim that guilds did not enforce their market privileges must explain why so many contemporaries thought that the guilds they encountered in their daily existence did just that.
Political Conflict over Guilds’ Market Manipulation
If guild market privileges had been unenforceable, they should not have evoked political conflict. Instead, guilds devoted resources to persuading governments to grant such privileges, and those harmed by them exerted political pressure to prevent it. Would they have done so had they not believed that guilds’ market manipulations were effective?
The guilds database contains 199 observations of political conflict over guilds’ manipulation of markets—by means of price-setting, output quotas, equipment restrictions, workforce ceilings, and interventions in markets for labour and raw materials. The observations derive from guilds in 60 different occupations and, as Table 4.4 shows, span more than six centuries and come from 17 European societies, an indication of the pervasiveness of political conflict over guilds’ market manipulation.
Although Table 4.4 covers the 613 years from 1247 to 1860, the medieval period accounts for only 20 per cent of observations, significantly less than the 27 per cent of medieval observations in the overall guilds database. This does not mean that medieval guilds did not manipulate markets sufficiently to cause political conflict. One need only consider the strife in 1247 between the Poitiers butchers’ guild and the town council over the guild’s output restrictions,123 the clash in 1342 between the Valencia caulkers’ guild and the town council over the guild’s labour input ceilings,124 or the struggle in 1415 when the Coventry commonalty complained to the House of Commons about the high prices charged by the dyers’ guild and the monopsony they were practising in the market for madder (a red dye-plant).125 But although guild market manipulation evoked political conflict as early as 1247, it was disproportionately common after 1500.
TABLE 4.4: Political Conflict over Guilds Manipulating Markets, 1247–1860 |
||||||||||||
Country |
1200–99 |
1300–99 |
1400–99 |
Subtotal medieval |
1500–99 |
1600–99 |
1700–99 |
1800–99 |
“early modern” |
Subtotal early modern |
Whole period |
|
no. |
% |
|||||||||||
Austria |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
6 |
1 |
– |
– |
7 |
7 |
3.5s |
Bohemia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
4 |
4 |
– |
1 |
12 |
12 |
6.0hh |
Bulgaria |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
– |
3 |
3 |
1.5s |
Denmark |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
0.5s |
England |
– |
6 |
5 |
11 |
6 |
1 |
– |
– |
2 |
9 |
20 |
10.1s |
Estonia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
3 |
1.5hh |
France |
3 |
– |
– |
3 |
4 |
8 |
10 |
– |
– |
22 |
25 |
12.6s |
Germany |
1 |
3 |
8 |
12 |
13 |
7 |
5 |
– |
4 |
29 |
41 |
20.6ll |
Hungary |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
1 |
1 |
0.5s |
Italy |
1 |
4 |
3 |
8 |
4 |
8 |
13 |
– |
– |
25 |
33 |
16.6s |
N. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
7 |
3 |
– |
– |
11 |
11 |
5.5s |
Poland |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
3 |
– |
– |
4 |
4 |
2.0s |
Portugal |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
0.5s |
S. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
1 |
– |
1 |
4 |
4 |
2.0ll |
Spain |
2 |
2 |
1 |
5 |
4 |
9 |
3 |
– |
– |
16 |
21 |
10.6hh |
Sweden |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
7 |
– |
– |
7 |
7 |
3.5h |
Switzerland |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
4 |
– |
– |
5 |
5 |
2.5s |
Total no. |
7 |
15 |
17 |
39 |
36 |
57 |
55 |
4 |
8 |
160 |
199 |
100.0 |
Total % |
3.5 |
7.5 |
8.5 |
19.6 |
18.1 |
28.6 |
27.6 |
2.0 |
4.0 |
80.4 |
100.0 |
|
Significance |
s |
s |
s |
ll |
s |
hh |
s |
s |
ll |
hh |
|
|
Notes: s = not significantly different from percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. ll = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. l = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. hh = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. h = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. For all centuries and countries not represented in this table, their percentage of observations (zero) is not significantly lower than in the guilds database overall. Source: Qualitative guilds database: 199 observations of political conflict and lobbying about guilds manipulating markets in their members’ interests. |
The largest group of cases (38 per cent) consisted of conflicts evoked by guilds’ price-fixing, as in London in 1363 when the Commons complained to Parliament that the grocers’ guild was collusively increasing prices,126 in Freiburg in the 1480s when the weavers’ guild lobbied the authorities to stop nuns from undercutting guild cloth prices,127 in early modern Bologna where the guilds of the butchers, tanners, and shoemakers engaged in constant political conflict over each other’s price-fixing,128 or in eighteenth-century French towns where bakers’ guilds perpetually bickered with consumers and urban officials over high bread prices.129
A second large category (23 per cent) comprised conflicts over guild output restrictions. In London in 1300, for instance, other textile guilds complained to the municipal authorities that the weavers’ guild was limiting its members to weaving one cloth every four days.130 In sixteenth-century Barcelona, political strife arose over the tanners’ guild’s demand to limit leather imports.131 In Lower Austria in 1611, the Kirchdorf and Waidhofen scythe-smiths’ guilds lobbied the imperial authorities over each other’s scythe quotas.132 And in the Hungarian town of Miskolc in 1813, the Christian table-makers’ guild lobbied to restrict the output of the Jewish table-makers.133
A smaller category (4 per cent) consisted of political conflicts over equipment limits, as in 1494 when the Upper Rhine ironworkers lobbied to limit each smith to a single fire,134 or in Turin in 1730 when the silk guild lobbied to enforce loom limits.135 Another small category (4 per cent) comprised conflicts over restricting the size of the workforce. Guild limits on the number of apprentices each master could employ evoked conflict among the Valencia caulkers in 1342,136 the Venice tinsmiths in 1489,137 the Delft potters in 1641,138 and the Luxembourg tailors in 1777.139 Limits on journeyman numbers gave rise to conflict among the Stendal woollen-weavers in 1495,140 the Kassel shoemakers in 1540,141 and the Augsburg clockmakers in 1582.142
A large group of conflicts (24 per cent) arose over guilds’ manipulation of raw material markets. In the 1270s, for example, the Paris haberdashers’ guild lobbied to prevent female silk-spinners from selling yarn to Jews and Lombards.143 In 1412, likewise, the wooden-shoe-makers’ guilds of the Middle Rhine towns formed a federation to help them manipulate the market for iron sole-plates.144 Between 1614 and 1622, the Barcelona weavers’ and clothiers’ guilds lobbied to ban wool exports.145 And throughout the eighteenth century, the tanners and shoemakers in Stockholm bickered constantly over manipulation of markets for hides and leather.146 Finally, 7 per cent of cases arose from guilds’ intervention in labour markets, as in 1406 when conflicts arose because the Rome wool guild fixed piece-rate ceilings for outworkers,147 and in 1776 when the Paris guilds lobbied to retain their right to cap journeymen’s wages.148
These findings refute the argument, advanced by some scholars, that guild market manipulation was prevented by protective state intervention.149 Many of the political conflicts in Table 4.4 show guilds lobbying town governments, princes, and emperors to grant, confirm, and maintain their rights to shape markets in their members’ interests. Although they did not always succeed, they evidently viewed the probability of success as high enough to make it worthwhile to invest resources in such conflicts.
The 199 political conflicts in Table 4.4 also refute the argument that guilds found it impossible to enforce their market privileges in practice.150 Throughout Europe, over more than six centuries, guilds devoted resources to influencing the political process in order to shape markets in their members’ interests, and their opponents devoted resources to trying to stop them. Political conflict surrounded the market manipulations of so many different guilds in so many places and time-periods that it cannot be dismissed as exceptional. People do not devote resources to political struggles over market privileges that have no practical effect. If guilds could not effectively engage in market manipulation, why were they and their opponents so willing to invest in political action over it?
Litigation over Guilds’ Market Manipulation
Legal conflicts over guilds’ market manipulation raise the same question. If guilds’ rights to manipulate prices and supplies had been unenforceable, no one should have had any reason to devote resources to legal conflicts over them. But the qualitative database contains 107 observations of guilds and their opponents engaging in litigation over price-fixing, output restrictions, wage ceilings, raw-material prerogatives, and other types of market privilege. These legal conflicts arose from guild market manipulations in over 40 occupations across 14 European societies and span the 539 years from 1265 to 1804. As Table 4.5 shows, about 22 per cent of observations date from the medieval period, slightly lower than the 27 per cent of medieval observations in the guilds database, but not to a statistically significant degree. Neither guild market manipulation nor the legal conflicts it evoked were limited to, or significantly more often observed in, the period after 1500.
The largest category of litigation (almost one-third of the cases in Table 4.5) arose over guild price-fixing. In 1267 a lawsuit between the Pontoise town council and the bakers’ guild over the guild’s cartel pricing went all the way to the Parlement de Paris.151 In 1344 the London pursers’ guild sued a master who sold his wares below the agreed guild price.152 And throughout the eighteenth century, the Bologna shoemakers litigated against the tanners over fixing leather prices.153
A second category of legal conflict (10 per cent of cases) arose over guild output restrictions, as in 1415 when the Kostheim scythe-smiths’ guild litigated over the sickle quota,154 in the 1530s when the Mainz tanners’ guild litigated over the hide quota,155 or in 1613 when the Nuremberg woollen-weavers’ guild sued a master for violating the cloth quota.156
A third category (9 per cent of cases) arose over workforce restrictions, as in 1424 when the Coventry weavers’ guild resorted to official arbitration over limits on the number of apprentices a master could employ,157 in 1600 when the Antwerp bakers’ and masons’ guilds sued masters who employed too many apprentices,158 or the 1790s when the in Nuremberg coopers’ guild sued a member for keeping one journeymen “above the ordinance”.159
TABLE 4.5: Legal Conflict over Guilds Manipulating Markets, 1265–1804 |
||||||||||||
Country |
1200–99 |
1300–99 |
1400–99 |
Subtotal medieval |
1500–99 |
1600–99 |
1700–99 |
1800–99 |
“early modern” |
Subtotal early modern |
Whole period |
|
no. |
% |
|||||||||||
Austria |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
0.9s |
Bohemia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
4 |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
5 |
5 |
4.7hh |
Bulgaria |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
1 |
1 |
0.9s |
Denmark |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
0.9s |
England |
– |
9 |
2 |
11 |
4 |
1 |
– |
– |
2 |
7 |
18 |
16.8hh |
Estonia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
0.9s |
France |
6 |
1 |
– |
7 |
2 |
7 |
6 |
– |
1 |
16 |
23 |
21.5s |
Germany |
– |
2 |
1 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
6 |
– |
– |
12 |
15 |
14.0ll |
Italy |
– |
1 |
– |
1 |
2 |
11 |
4 |
– |
– |
17 |
18 |
16.8s |
N. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
0.9ll |
Poland |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
0.9s |
S. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
3 |
– |
– |
– |
4 |
4 |
3.7s |
Spain |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
2 |
6 |
2 |
– |
– |
10 |
11 |
10.3s |
Sweden |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
7 |
– |
– |
7 |
7 |
6.5hh |
Total no. |
6 |
13 |
4 |
23 |
19 |
35 |
26 |
1 |
3 |
84 |
107 |
100.0 |
Total % |
5.6 |
12.1 |
3.7 |
21.5 |
17.8 |
32.7 |
24.3 |
0.9 |
2.8 |
78.5 |
100.0 |
|
Significance |
s |
hh |
ll |
sl |
s |
hh |
s |
s |
l |
s |
|
|
Notes: s = not significantly different from percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. ll = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. l = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. hh = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. h = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. For all centuries and countries not represented in this table, their percentage of observations (zero) is not significantly lower than in the guilds database overall. Source: Qualitative guilds database: 107 observations of legal conflict over guilds manipulating markets in their members’ interests. |
A further category of litigation (7 per cent) concerned equipment restrictions. The Bruges cheesemongers’ guild sued a member in 1535 for keeping a market stall as well as a shop,160 and in 1594 the York shoemakers’ guild sued a member for keeping two shops.161 In 1615 the Venice glassmakers’ guild sued a member for operating two furnaces.162
Litigation also arose over guild manipulation of labour markets, comprising 14 per cent of the cases in Table 4.5. Thus in 1396 the London saddlers’ guild litigated against the journeymen’s association over wages;163 in 1534 the Oppenheim tanners’ guild sued a member who enticed away a colleague’s journeyman;164 and during the eighteenth century guilds in Malmö prosecuted journeymen for resisting centralized job allocation.165
A final category of legal conflict (26 per cent of cases) arose over guild manipulation of raw material markets. Thus in the 1530s, the Iglau (Jihlava) woollen-weavers’ guild litigated against a neighbouring seigneur over yarn supplies.166 In 1615 the Venice sausage-makers’ guild sued one of its own members for failing to share with his fellows a shipment of pork offal from Padua.167 And in eighteenth-century Madrid, the cabinetmakers’ guild sued a carpenter for buying wood reserved for cabinetmakers.168
Guilds thus engaged in legal conflicts over their price-fixing, output quotas, workforce restrictions, equipment limits, wage ceilings, and raw material prerogatives. Such litigation was observed in a wide variety of guilded occupations in a large number of European societies from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century. Why would guilds have expended resources on litigation over forms of market manipulation from which they did not expect to benefit?
Other Forms of Conflict
The conflicts evoked by guilds’ manipulation of markets did not consist only of lobbying and litigation, but took many additional forms—boycotts, ostracism, strikes, demonstrations, and violent action. The qualitative database contains 87 observations of such extra-political, extra-legal conflicts, drawn from 12 societies and more than 40 different occupations. As Table 4.6 shows, these examples span over five centuries, from 1260 to 1798. The medieval period accounts for about 25 per cent of observations, not significantly different from the 27 per cent of medieval observations in the overall guilds database. Non-political, non-legal conflict over guild market manipulation thus did not emerge as a new phenomenon during a putative phase of early modern guild decadence but was a pervasive feature of the European guild system from the thirteenth century onwards.
As with political and legal disputes, so too with these other forms of conflict, guild price-fixing evoked the largest share of observations (36 per cent). Guilds used physical violence to prevent their members from undercutting agreed prices. The Douai fishmongers did so in 1284,169 the Coventry dyers in the fourteenth century,170 and the Hof bakers in the 1530s.171 Guild price-fixing also gave rise to physical confrontations involving large groups of guild members, as in the case of the London painters, joiners, and saddlers in 1320,172 and the Winterswijk linen-weavers in 1751–52.173
A second category of cases (15 per cent) arose from guild output restrictions, as in 1300 when the London woollen-weavers’ guild destroyed looms to limit cloth production,174 or in 1408 when the Murcia masons’ guild went on strike in defence of its minimum prices and restrictions on working hours.175 Guilds also used informal collective action to evoke formal public action. This emerges vividly from a conflict in Iglau (Jihlava) in 1620, when a group of carters drove into town transporting imported cloths which merchants planned to sell in violation of the weavers’ guild quota. A large group of weavers surrounded the wagons, heckled the carters, shouted insults about the merchants, and threatened to destroy the cloths. The town council immediately invited the guild to present its concerns and within two days issued an edict forbidding the import or sale of cloths not produced by guild members.176 Informal conflict was thus used to evoke formal redress.
TABLE 4.6: Other Types of Conflict over Guilds Manipulating Markets, 1260–1798 |
|||||||||||
Country |
1200–99 |
1300–99 |
1400–99 |
“medieval” |
Subtotal medieval |
1500–99 |
1600–99 |
1700–99 |
Subtotal early modern |
Whole period |
|
no. |
% |
||||||||||
Austria |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
2.3s |
Bohemia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
1 |
– |
4 |
4 |
4.6hh |
Denmark |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
2.3hh |
England |
1 |
9 |
1 |
2 |
13 |
4 |
– |
– |
4 |
17 |
19.5hh |
France |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
3 |
3 |
6 |
12 |
13 |
14.9s |
Germany |
– |
2 |
1 |
– |
3 |
10 |
– |
4 |
14 |
17 |
19.5l |
Hungary |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
1.1s |
Italy |
1 |
1 |
1 |
– |
3 |
1 |
7 |
6 |
14 |
17 |
19.5s |
N. Netherlands |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
1 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
3.4s |
S. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
– |
2 |
2 |
2.3s |
Spain |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
1 |
1 |
2 |
– |
3 |
4 |
4.6s |
Sweden |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5.7hh |
Total no. |
3 |
13 |
4 |
2 |
22 |
24 |
17 |
24 |
65 |
87 |
100.0 |
Total % |
3.4 |
14.9 |
4.6 |
2.3 |
25.3 |
27.6 |
19.5 |
27.6 |
74.7 |
100.0 |
|
Significance |
s |
hh |
l |
s |
s |
hh |
s |
s |
s |
|
|
Notes: s = not significantly different from percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. ll = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. l = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. hh = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. h = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. The nineteenth century has zero observations in this table, significantly lower (at the 0.10 level) than its percentage of observations in the guilds database overall. For all other countries and centuries not represented in this table, their percentage of observations (zero) is not significantly lower than in the guilds database overall. Source: Qualitative guilds database: 87 observations of other forms of conflict (non-political, non-legal) over guilds’ manipulation of markets in their members’ interests. |
A further category of informal conflict (7 per cent of cases) arose over workforce limits, as in 1500 when several Middle Rhine hatters’ guilds boycotted the Frankfurt hatters’ guild for violating limits on journeyman numbers,177 or in the 1780s when informal conflict raged inside the Vienna shoemakers’ guild over the imposition of lower journeyman numbers on suburban than on city masters.178
An additional type of non-political, non-legal conflict (5 per cent of cases) arose over equipment limits, as in 1582 when the Augsburg clockmakers’ guild was riven by internal quarrels between the “young masters,” who were limited to a single workshop, and the “old masters,” who were allowed to have two,179 or in 1730 when violent clashes broke out between the craftsmen faction of the Turin weavers’ guild (which favoured a loom limit) and the merchant faction (which opposed it).180
Guild manipulation of raw material markets was the source of 8 per cent of the cases in Table 4.6, as in sixteenth-century Dijon where the butchers’ guild engaged in collective intimidation of cattle-wholesalers,181 or in seventeenth-century Rome where the gold-beaters’ guild clashed with the butchers’ guild over prices and supplies of the vellum used to separate gold leaves.182
A final substantial category of informal conflicts (30 per cent of cases) arose over guild manipulation of labour markets, as in 1305 when the wage ceilings imposed by the Venice glassmakers’ guild provoked “threats” from labourers,183 or in 1798 when the Nuremberg cartwrights’ guild mounted violent demonstrations against a master who enticed away a colleague’s journeyman.184 Such violence casts doubt on the notion, advanced in some traditional scholarship, that guild intervention in labour markets benefited the economy by ensuring worker protection or harmonious labour relations; on the contrary, guilds provided mechanisms whereby employers could reach and enforce collective agreements at the expense of workers.
Boycotts, strikes, demonstrations, and violent action are costly. They consume time, they involve physical risks, and they attract political and legal repercussions. If guilds had not actually enforced their rights to manipulate markets, people would surely not have allocated resources to such conflicts.
Collective Action by Workers
Guilds’ intervention in labour markets did not just give rise to political, legal, and informal conflicts on the part of guild masters. It also gave rise to collective action on the part of their employees, further testifying to its real economic effects. The qualitative database contains 78 observations of collective conflicts evoked by guilds’ machinations in labour markets. These conflicts, shown in Table 4.7, derive from 12 European societies, and were sparked by guild action in over 30 different occupations.
Although these conflicts span nearly 530 years, from 1303 to 1830, they are disproportionately concentrated in the medieval period, which accounts for 42 per cent of the total, significantly higher than its 27 per cent share of observations in the overall guilds database. Medieval guilds were not flexible, liberally minded associations with no interest in manipulating markets, but rather steely and implacable employers’ organizations that intervened in labour markets seriously enough to provoke concerted defiance from workers.
The largest category of collective labour conflicts (42 per cent of the cases in Table 4.7) arose from guilds’ efforts to keep worker resistance fragmented by preventing journeymen from forming collective associations of their own.185 Many guilds justified such prohibitions by claiming that journeymen’s associations led to “subversion”, as with the Freiburg woollen-weavers’ guild in 1365,186 “discord and wicked undertakings”, as with the Lüneburg brewers’ guild in 1519,187 or “many harms . . . to the common good”, as with the Barcelona guilds in 1629.188 A number of guilds secured prohibitions against journeymen’s associations in the wake of labour unrest, as did the Cracow bakers’ guild in 1375189 and the Prussian blacksmiths’ guilds in the late fourteenth century.190 Guilds explicitly justified banning journeymen’s associations on the grounds that this was a good tactic for stifling worker resistance: the London saddlers’ guild in 1396,191 the Schweidnitz woollen-weavers’ guild in 1435,192 and the Dijon cabinetmakers’ guild in 1579.193 In Turin in the 1730s and 1740s, guilds even opposed journeymen’s festivities and celebrations, arguing that they “offer the occasion to the journeymen to suborn one another to change masters, which then issues in the masters often, for this reason, lacking the workers they need”.194
TABLE 4.7: Collective Conflicts between Employers and Workers over Guild Manipulation of Labour Markets, 1303–1830 |
||||||||||||
Country |
1300–99 |
1400–99 |
“medieval” |
Subtotal medieval |
1500–99 |
1600–99 |
1700–99 |
1800–99 |
“early modern” |
Subtotal early modern |
Whole period |
|
no. |
% |
|||||||||||
Austria |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
– |
3 |
1 |
– |
1 |
5 |
6 |
7.7hh |
Bohemia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
1.3s |
England |
7 |
7 |
– |
14 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
14 |
17.9hh |
France |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
4 |
9 |
– |
– |
16 |
16 |
20.5s |
Germany |
3 |
3 |
– |
6 |
3 |
– |
2 |
1 |
– |
6 |
12 |
15.4ll |
Hungary |
– |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
2 |
2.6hh |
Italy |
5 |
2 |
– |
7 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
– |
– |
4 |
11 |
14.1s |
N. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
1.3s |
Poland |
2 |
1 |
1 |
4 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
5 |
6.4hh |
S. Netherlands |
– |
1 |
– |
1 |
2 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
3 |
3.8s |
Spain |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
2 |
– |
– |
1 |
4 |
4 |
5.1s |
Sweden |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
– |
– |
3 |
3 |
3.8s |
Total no. |
17 |
14 |
2 |
33 |
12 |
12 |
17 |
1 |
3 |
45 |
78 |
100.0 |
Total % |
21.8 |
17.9 |
2.6 |
42.3 |
15.4 |
15.4 |
21.8 |
1.3 |
3.8 |
57.7 |
100.0 |
|
Significance |
hh |
hh |
s |
hh |
s |
s |
s |
s |
s |
ll |
|
|
Notes: s = not significantly different from percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. ll = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. l = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. hh = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. h = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. The thirteenth century has zero observations in this table, significantly lower (at the 0.05 level) than its share of observations in the guilds database overall. For all other countries and centuries not represented in this table, their share of observations (zero) is not significantly lower than in the guilds database overall. Source: Qualitative guilds database: 79 observations of collective conflicts with employees arising from guild manipulation of labour markets. |
A second category of collective labour conflict (14 per cent of the cases in Table 4.7) arose when guilds tried to prevent adjacent or subordinate occupations from setting up guilds, as in 1324 and 1338 when the Florence wool guild forbade the sottoposti (subordinate craftsmen) “to make constitutions or statutes . . . except by special license of the consuls of that [officially organized] craft under whose authority they stand”.195 Similarly, in 1401 the Rome wool guild forbade its subordinate “worker” members to form associations,196 and in Lyon in 1781 the hatters’ guild demanded the suppression of “combinations” among the pickers, carders, and cutters.197
A further group of cases (8 per cent of conflicts in Table 4.7) arose over guilds’ attempts to control employees’ associations once formed, as in late medieval Poland where guilds of masters confronted associations of journeymen over controlling the latter’s finances and activities,198 or in Sweden in 1720 where craft guilds forbade journeymen to hold meetings unless the masters were present.199
About 5 per cent of observations consisted of guilds acting to break workers’ strikes, as with the blacklisting of striking journeymen by the Breslau belt-makers’ guild in 1329200 or the Mainz tailors’ guild in 1455.201 In Amsterdam in 1633, the masters of the hatters’ guild acted “as though they were one body” in drawing up a register of disobedient journeymen and committing themselves, on pain of a money fine, to blacklist any worker who dared to strike.202
On some occasions (4 per cent of cases in Table 4.7), guilds went so far as to organize collective violence against employees. In Chester in 1358, the weavers’ guild broke a journeymen’s strike “with pole-axes, baslards and iron-pointed poles”.203 In sixteenth-century Klausenburg (Cluj Napoca) the goldsmiths’ guild broke a journeymen’s strike by beating up the ringleaders and getting the town constables to throw them in prison.204 In 3 per cent of observations, guilds broke strikes by hiring scabs, as in sixteenth-century Antwerp where the cloth-finishers’ guild permitted its members to hire non-guilded labourers.205
Another form of collective labour conflict (8 per cent of cases) involved guilds mobilizing political influence to break strikes. In 1387, for instance, the London cordwainers’ guild got the municipal authorities to punish three journeymen who organized labour unrest “to the damage of the commonalty and the prejudice of the trade.206 In 1729, likewise, the Louviers woollen-weavers’ guild threatened to get the authorities to throw striking journeymen in prison.207
Contemporaries were fully aware that guilds systematically intervened in labour markets to depress the pay and the conditions of workers, as is illustrated in 18 per cent of observations in Table 4.7. Many journeymen’s strikes were directly evoked by guild wage ceilings. This was true of strikes against the wage caps imposed by the cloth-finishers’ guild in sixteenth-century Antwerp,208 the carpenters’ guild in Leipzig in 1555,209 the Klausenburg (Cluj Napoca) goldsmiths’ guild in 1576 (where the guild also limited meals and holidays),210 the Paris hosiers’ guild in 1724,211 the Louviers woollen-weavers’ guild in 1729,212 and the Brittany builders’ guilds in 1762.213 In 1747, the municipal consulate of Turin described the wigmakers’ guild as seeking “to subordinate and completely reduce to slavery the journeymen and the apprentices”.214 An eighteenth-century diarist described the Paris printers’ guild as treating its journeymen so badly that it “assimilated their future, so to speak, to that of the Negroes in America by making them real slaves”.215
Such evidence refutes the notion that guilds refrained from enforcing their right to manipulate labour markets. The idea that guilds fostered worker protection and solidarity between employers and employees also appears farfetched in the light of the bitter labour conflicts provoked by guild action. Workers, employers, and governments all believed that guilds intervened in labour markets, that these machinations had real economic effects, and that they were directed at furthering the interests of employers at the expense of the workers.
Systems of Detection and Punishment
Evidence on detection and punishment casts further light on the practical realities of the guilds’ market manipulation. If guilds had not expected to enforce their rules about how output and input markets should operate, they should have had no incentive to set up mechanisms for detecting and punishing violations. But they did. The qualitative database contains 184 observations of guilds deploying such mechanisms, drawn from guilds in 60 different occupations and 13 European societies.
As Table 4.8 shows, these observations span the 548 years from 1250 to 1798, and thus cover craft guilds from their medieval beginnings to the era of their gradual demise. The medieval period accounts for just over 28 per cent of observations, not significantly different from its 27 per cent share of the overall guilds database. This refutes the notion that medieval guilds were liberal associations and that the enforcement of market interventions was only initiated by their decadent early modern successors.
The mechanisms guilds used to enforce their rules about markets fall into two main groups. The first, accounting for two-thirds of the cases in Table 4.8, were operated by guilds themselves, while the remainder consisted of mechanisms operated by the public authorities (though typically triggered by guild requests). The percentage of observations that involved public enforcement rose from 33 per cent in the medieval period to 38 per cent in the early modern period, but the rise was not statistically significant. Assistance from the public authorities was already important for craft guilds in enforcing their market manipulation as early as the thirteenth century, and it continued to be important to the end of the eighteenth century.
TABLE 4.8: Guilds’ Use of Detection and Punishment to Enforce Market Manipulation, 1250–1798 |
||||||||||||
Country |
1200–99 |
1300–99 |
1400–99 |
“medieval” |
Subtotal medieval |
1500–99 |
1600–99 |
1700–99 |
“early modern” |
Subtotal early modern |
Whole period |
|
no. |
% |
|||||||||||
Austria |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
2 |
– |
2 |
1 |
– |
3 |
5 |
2.7s |
Bohemia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
3 |
– |
1 |
6 |
6 |
3.3hh |
Denmark |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
– |
2 |
2 |
1.1s |
England |
– |
23 |
2 |
1 |
26 |
1 |
1 |
– |
– |
2 |
28 |
15.2hh |
France |
7 |
– |
– |
– |
7 |
2 |
9 |
22 |
1 |
34 |
41 |
22.3hh |
Germany |
– |
1 |
7 |
– |
8 |
8 |
10 |
9 |
5 |
32 |
40 |
21.7l |
Hungary |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
2 |
1.1h |
Italy |
3 |
3 |
– |
1 |
7 |
3 |
13 |
9 |
– |
25 |
32 |
17.4s |
N. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
1 |
– |
4 |
4 |
2.2ll |
Poland |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
1 |
2 |
1.1s |
S. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
4 |
– |
– |
5 |
5 |
2.7ll |
Spain |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
4 |
7 |
– |
12 |
13 |
7.1s |
Sweden |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
4 |
– |
4 |
4 |
2.2s |
Total no. |
11 |
28 |
10 |
3 |
52 |
20 |
50 |
55 |
7 |
132 |
184 |
100.0 |
Total % |
6.0 |
15.2 |
5.4 |
1.6 |
28.3 |
10.9 |
27.2 |
29.9 |
3.8 |
71.7 |
100.0 |
|
Significance |
s |
hh |
ll |
ll |
s |
l |
hh |
s |
ll |
s |
|
|
Notes: s = not significantly different from percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. ll = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. l = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. hh = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. h = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. The nineteenth century has zero observations in this table, significantly lower (at the 0.05 level) than its share of observations in the guilds database overall. Switzerland has zero observations in this table, significantly lower (at the 0.05 level) than its share of observations in the guilds database overall. For all other countries and centuries not represented in this table, their share of observations (zero) is not significantly lower than in the guilds database overall. Source: Qualitative guilds database: 184 observations of guilds’ use of detection and punishment to enforce their privileges to manipulate markets. |
Guild-operated enforcement consisted of a combination of informal and formal methods. Informal mechanisms included violence and threats (the largest single category), but also blacklisting, ostracism, requiring people to swear oaths not to behave in certain ways, declaring someone to be dishonourable, corporate censure, street demonstrations, and accusations from ordinary guild members. Together, these informal mechanisms comprised 23 per cent of all observations in Table 4.8, and illustrate the importance of personalized, informal pressure as a method of implementing guilds’ market manipulations.
Formal guild-operated enforcement included guild fines, inter-guild alliances, guild inspections, the centralized allocation of labour and raw materials, detection activities by guild officers, confiscations, judgments by guild courts, documentation requirements, expulsions, employing spies, destroying equipment, and dismissal from guild office. Together, these formal mechanisms of guild enforcement comprised 40 per cent of observations in Table 4.8. Thus, though guilds did use informal means to enforce their market manipulations, formal mechanisms were quantitatively more important.
Within internal guild enforcement, the balance between informal and formal mechanisms changed significantly over time. Informal guild enforcement mechanisms made up 57 per cent of observations in the medieval period, and only 15 per cent in the early modern period, a difference which is statistically significant. Throughout their existence guilds deployed a combination of formal and informal internal mechanisms to enforce their privileges to manipulate markets, but the balance did shift significantly towards formal internal mechanisms between the medieval and the early modern period.
Enforcement mechanisms operated by the public authorities—all, of course, formal in character—made up over one-third of the 184 cases in Table 4.9, as already mentioned. The most important form they took consisted of prosecutions in royal or municipal courts. To these can be added prosecutions in seigneurial and church courts, police arrests, government fines, imprisonment, banishment, confiscation, closing down workshops, exclusion from the market, expulsion from the industry, pillorying, and even capital punishment. Guilds therefore mobilized a whole gamut of legitimate public coercion mechanisms to enforce their market manipulations, the most frequently observed being prosecutions in public courts. The guilds’ use of the public courts was much more important than their use of their own guild courts, an indication of how, if a guild was going to use a formal mechanism, it preferred to use one with the clout of the public authorities behind it. Generally, craft guilds tended to find that their own courts had limited coercive power, a finding also observed among merchant guilds.216
TABLE 4.9: Guilds Viewed as Causing Prices to be Higher, 1321–1829 |
|||||||||||
Country |
1300–99 |
1400–99 |
Subtotal medieval |
1500–99 |
1600–99 |
1700–99 |
1800–99 |
“early modern” |
Subtotal early modern |
Whole period |
|
no. |
% |
||||||||||
Austria |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
2.0s |
Bohemia |
– |
– |
– |
– |
3 |
1 |
– |
– |
4 |
4 |
8.2hh |
Denmark |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
2.0s |
England |
3 |
– |
3 |
2 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
5 |
10.2s |
France |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
– |
– |
2 |
2 |
4.1ll |
Germany |
– |
2 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
4 |
– |
– |
7 |
9 |
18.4s |
Italy |
1 |
– |
1 |
1 |
1 |
5 |
– |
1 |
8 |
9 |
18.4s |
S. Netherlands |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
2 |
– |
– |
2 |
2 |
4.1s |
Spain |
– |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
1 |
– |
– |
2 |
2 |
4.1s |
Switzerland |
– |
– |
– |
4 |
– |
– |
10 |
– |
14 |
14 |
28.6hh |
Total no. |
4 |
2 |
6 |
9 |
8 |
15 |
10 |
1 |
43 |
49 |
100.0 |
Total % |
8.2 |
4.1 |
12.2 |
18.4 |
16.3 |
30.6 |
20.4 |
2.0 |
87.8 |
100.0 |
|
Significance |
s |
s |
ll |
s |
s |
s |
hh |
s |
hh |
|
|
Notes: s = not significantly different from percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. ll = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. l = significantly lower than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. hh = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.05 level. h = significantly higher than percentage of observations in guilds database at 0.10 level. The thirteenth century has zero observations in this table, significantly lower (at the 0.10 level) than its share of observations in the guilds database overall. The N. Netherlands has zero observations in this table, significantly lower (at the 0.10 level) than its share of observations in the guilds database overall. For all other countries and centuries not represented in this table, their share of observations (zero) is not significantly lower than in the guilds database overall. Source: Qualitative guilds database: 49 observations of guilds causing prices to be higher. |
All these enforcement activities absorbed resources. Internal guild enforcement absorbed the time and foregone earnings of guild members. Public mechanisms involved not just opportunity costs but pecuniary ones, since using the public court system and inducing the public authorities to mobilize legitimate coercion often required paying hard cash, as Chapter 2 showed. Why would guilds have expended resources on setting up and mobilizing so many elaborate mechanisms of detection and punishment to enforce market interventions which they did not believe would benefit their members in practice?
Guilds’ Effects on Prices and Supplies
A recognized characteristic of a guild was that its members charged higher prices than outsiders for the same products. Johan Heinrich Zedler’s famous 1733 Universal Dictionary, for instance, defined the four main pejorative epithets guilds used for illicit producers—“ground-rabbits” (Bönhasen), “botchers” (Pfuscher), “bunglers” (Stümper), and “encroachers” (Störer)—as referring to “those who have not become masters in an orderly way and nonetheless practise the craft secretly and furtively, do the work more cheaply, and thereby damage the proper, officially settled, official masters”.217 By definition, according to contemporaries, producers outside a guild “do the work more cheaply”.
This view is reflected in 49 observations in the guilds database in which contemporaries registered their belief, whether in speech or in action, that guilds made prices higher. As Table 4.9 shows, these observations span the 508 years from 1321 to 1829. The medieval period accounts for only 12 per cent of observations, significantly less than its 27 per cent share of the overall guilds database. The nineteenth century in particular is strongly represented, comprising 20 per cent of observations in Table 4.9, compared to only 4 per cent of the guilds database, a statistically significant difference. This may arise from the survival of guilds well into the nineteenth century in societies such as Switzerland (as in many other parts of German-speaking central Europe), long after their abolition in neighbouring polities such as France and the Netherlands, making price comparisons more blatant. A report to the Swiss Society for General Welfare in 1829 makes this point:
A first, general, and uncontested outcome of the existing [guild] ordinances is probably that they make the various craft items more expensive. . .. Even ordinary craft products such as those of tailors and shoemakers show significant differences; and when a Paris tailor secures 50,000 francs’ worth of orders on a single journey into Switzerland, not all of this can be ascribed to dandyism; for who would not rather be clothed by his fellow citizen if the latter even remotely approached the price and quality offered by the foreigner?218
The observations in Table 4.9 are drawn from guilds in over 30 different occupations. It may not seem surprising that guilded producers were regarded by contemporaries as charging high prices in skilled occupations, as with the Coventry barber-surgeons’ guild in the 1390s,219 the Rome glassblowers’ and crystal-makers’ guilds in 1567,220 and the Lucerne glassmakers’ guild in 1597.221 In surgery or glassmaking, high guild prices might be regarded as a premium consumers paid for guild guarantees of quality and skill. However, contemporaries described guilds as charging artificially high prices in ordinary occupations producing everyday goods, such as the London fishmongers’ guild in 1321,222 the Middle Rhine wooden-shoe-makers’ guilds in 1473,223 the Hamburg groats-makers’ and woollen-weavers’ guilds in 1545,224 the Friedland (Frýdlant) tailors’ guild in 1662,225 and the Milan haberdashers’ guild in 1655.226 In 1738, poor inhabitants of Augsburg who could not afford the costly shoes supplied by the guilded town shoemakers would “go for a walk in the country”, where they would visit a rural shoemaker, give him the shoes they were currently wearing, and smuggle a cheap new pair of non-guilded shoes back into Augsburg “on their feet”.227 Guilds thus inflated prices not just in skilled occupations such as medicine and glassmaking, but also in everyday crafts and services, thus viscerally affecting the living standards of ordinary consumers.
Prices increased and decreased with the expansion and contraction of guild control, as emerges from 8 per cent of the cases in Table 4.9. In 1618, the Duchy of Coburg obliged hitherto non-guilded cartwrights and plough-makers to join guilds, resulting in an immediate rise in the prices of carts and ploughs.228 When guild-free enclaves expanded in late-eighteenth-century Bordeaux, prices for craft products fell.229 An 1828 report from the Swiss canton of Freyburg described how, since the abolition of guilds 30 years previously, industrial activity “has not only noticeably proliferated, but also made noticeable progress in performance and products, and prices have become more moderate and cheaper”.230
Modern economists focus on price overcharges—the amount by which a cartel price exceeds the competitive price—as the best measure of the economic harm caused by cartels, given the lack of information on losses in output or consumer welfare.231 But getting information on the price effects of cartels is very difficult even for modern developing economies: an estimated three-quarters of cartels remain undetected, and even for detected cartels quantitative information is limited, with the result that antitrust authorities rely mostly on evidence of coordination activities, just as we have done in this chapter for guilds.232 In historical developing economies, the problem is even more acute since archival documents almost never provide enough detail to calculate the quantitative effect of guilds’ cartel privileges on prices. Nonetheless, the quantitative guilds database includes 15 observations of guilds in which such a calculation proves possible. Although the observations are few in number, Table 4.10 shows that they cover a wide range, coming from six societies in northwest, central, eastern-central, and Mediterranean Europe, spanning a period of more than five centuries, and referring to sectors as varied as food-provisioning, clothing, textile-manufacturing, leather-working, barrel-making, and shipbuilding.
Table 4.10 shows that guilds enabled their members to charge prices that were considerably higher than those of non-guilded competitors. On the low end of the spectrum, a ship built in guilded Amsterdam in the seventeenth century was estimated to cost 4 per cent more than if the same ship had been built in the guild-free zone of the Zaanstreek nearby. By contrast, a ship built by the more restrictive guilds of Rotterdam was an estimated 12 to 18 per cent more costly than in the Zaanstreek. Another relatively modest price premium is the 10 per cent fee rise accepted by the Monschau shearers from the woollen manufacturers in 1762 in return for refraining from organizing a guild; the implication is that a guild would have raised shearing fees by more than 10 per cent. On the high end of the spectrum, conversely, guilded Christian butchers were charging 44 per cent more for beef than non-guilded Jewish butchers in seventeenth-century Prague, guilded coopers were charging 50 per cent more than their non-guilded counterparts in nineteenth-century Basel, and guilded fishmongers were charging 54 per cent more than non-guilded fishmongers in fourteenth-century London. This is not to mention the Middle Rhine wooden-shoe-makers’ guild which imposed prices 125 per cent higher than those of non-guilded interlopers, or the fourteenth-century London goldsmiths’ guild which compelled its poorer members to charge “treble the price” they said they would otherwise charge.
TABLE 4.10: Size of Price Premium Imposed by Guilds, 1321–1829 |
||||
Town |
Country |
Date |
Occupation |
Guild Price |
London |
England |
1321 |
fishmongers |
53.8a |
London |
England |
1364 |
various |
33.3b |
London |
England |
1377 |
goldsmiths |
200.0c |
Middle Rhine towns |
Germany |
1470 |
wooden-shoe-makers |
125.0d |
Rotterdam |
N. Netherlands |
17th c. |
shipbuilders |
18.2e |
Amsterdam |
N. Netherlands |
17th c. |
shipbuilders |
3.6e |
Rotterdam |
N. Netherlands |
17th c. |
shipbuilders |
12.0e |
Prague |
Bohemia |
1642 |
butchers |
43.7f |
Bologna |
Italy |
1730 |
tanners |
27.3g |
Monschau |
Germany |
1762 |
shearers |
10.0h |
Venice |
Italy |
1762 |
silk-weavers |
83.3i |
Turin |
Italy |
1775 |
glovers |
14.0j |
Turin |
Italy |
1780 |
leather-workers |
18.0k |
Basel |
Switzerland |
1829 |
coopers |
49.9l |
Basel |
Switzerland |
1829 |
masons |
25.0l |
Mean (n=15) |
|
|
|
47.8m |
Notes and sources: a Mickwitz 1936, 148: guild members charge 1d for 6-7 herrings, non-guilded charge 1d for 10 herrings. b Lipson 1915, I: 383-4: ordinance strengthening guild monopolies causes prices to rise “by a third”. c Unwin 1908, 73: poor members of goldsmiths’ guild say guild compels them to sell “at treble the price”. d Göttmann 1979, 105-6: guild price for a pair of shoes is 9 h; non-guilded interlopers charge 4 h. e De Vries and Van der Woude 1997, 298: a ship costing 27,500 guilders to build in the (non-guilded) Zaanstreek costs 28,500 in (guilded) Amsterdam and 32,500 in (guilded) Rotterdam; another ship costs 50,000 guilders to build in the non-guilded Zaanstreek but 56,000 in guilded Rotterdam. f Spiegel 1927, 131: heavily taxed but non-guilded Jewish butchers sell beef for 3-3.5 kr/lb, lightly taxed but guilded Christian butchers sell it for 4.67 kr/lb. g Poni 1991, 90: guild price of good-quality leather is 14 soldi/lb; non-guilded producers charge 11 soldi. h Barkhausen 1958, 193: shearers accept 10% fee rise from woollen manufacturers not to organize guild. i Trivellato 2008, 220 n. 78: Turkish merchants sell illegally commissioned damasks for 8-10 lire per braccio, even though lowest current guild price is 16-17 lire. j Caligaris 1998, 65-6: tariff protection gives guilded glovers 14% price advantage over imports. k Caligaris 1998, 68: tariff protection enables guilded leather-workers to charge 17-19% more for shoes. l Pestalozzi 1829, 50: non-guilded rural coopers charge price 1/3 lower than guilded coopers; non-guilded rural masons charge price 1/5 lower than guilded masons. m Mean = for all 14 observations. Where a range is given, the calculation uses average (e.g. 6.5 herrings for 1 d in London in 1321). |
Across the 15 observations in Table 4.10, the average price gap between guilded and non-guilded producers was 47 per cent. This is even higher than the price rises imposed by modern cartels. Connor’s analysis of cartel episodes between 1770 and 2013 found that 94 per cent resulted in some increase in price over the competitive level, with the median increase being 23 percentage points above the competitive price.233 Ivaldi et al.’s analysis of cartels in 20 developing economies from 1995 to 2013 found that the cartel price constituted a mean overcharge of 23.1 per cent, with a minimum of 2.4 per cent and a maximum of 75.234 The two modern economies where cartel price overcharges resemble those in pre-modern Europe are Pakistan at 42.5 per cent and Turkey at 53.5 per cent.235
That pre-modern guilds caused greater price rises than most modern cartels may result from the fact that the guilds enjoyed legal monopolies: this meant they could appeal to the authorities to help them enforce measures they took to limit price-reducing competition.
What about guilds’ effect on the quantity of output produced? Cartels harm consumers not only because they increase the prices people have to pay for goods, but also because they limit consumption by limiting output. Even fewer data are available to address this question—in historical as in modern developing economies.236 Only in a small number of unusual cases is there documentary evidence of how much output an individual or workshop could produce when there was no guild quota. The four cases in which this is possible are shown in Table 4.11. The sources used for these cases differ widely, so they are not strictly comparable. In fifteenth-century Basel, for instance, a master tanner was able to produce an average of 360 tanned hides annually, while in 1440 the Middle Rhine tanners’ guilds impose a quota of 120 and in 1539 the Worms tanners’ guild imposed a quota of 104. If it is justified to compare tanning technology across a distance of 285 km and a period of 99 years, then these two guild quotas limited output to about one-third of what was technically feasible.237 A different example is provided by the Württemberg Black Forest worsted industry, where a master was technically able to produce at least 100 wide cloths or 200 narrow cloths annually; guild quotas imposed from the 1650s onwards limited a master to a maximum of 50 wide cloths annually.238 A final example is provided by eighteenth-century Paris, where a journeyman hatter could technically produce three hats a day, but the quota stated that he should only produce two. In this case, however, the quota was imposed by the journeymen’s association, and in some cases at least the masters objected to the quota.239 The fact that the hat quota was imposed by a journeymen’s association may account for its giving rise to a smaller reduction in output than in the other three cases in Table 4.11, in which the quota was set by a masters’ guild, a stronger organization with more levers of manipulation and enforcement at its disposal.
TABLE 4.11: Size of Supply Reduction Imposed by Guilds, 1440–1780 |
||||||
Occupation |
Place |
Date |
Output measure |
Technically feasible output |
Guild output quota |
Guild quota as % of technically feasible output |
tanning |
Basel, Middle Rhine |
15th c. |
hides annually |
360 |
120 |
33.3a |
tanning |
Basel, Worms |
15th c., 1539 |
hides annually |
360 |
104 |
28.9a |
worsted-weaving |
Württemberg |
17th c. |
wide cloths annually |
100 |
50 |
50.0b |
hat-making |
Marseille, Lyon, Paris |
1770s–1780s |
hats daily |
3 |
2 |
66.7c |
Average |
|
|
|
|
|
44.7 |
Sources: a Göttmann 1977, 109–10. b Troeltsch 1897, 37, 104, 107, 116, 156–8, 184, 203–4; Ogilvie 1997, 203–15. c Sonenscher 1987 [The Hatters], 67–9, 118–29. |
Interpreting each of these observations involves its own complexities. Yet together they suggest that quotas imposed by guilds (or journeymen’s associations) limited output substantially, in the mildest case to two-thirds of the technically feasible output and in the severest case to less than one-third. Across the four observations in Table 4.11, on average the guild quota lay at 45 per cent of the technically feasible output level, a substantial reduction in supply. Again, these output losses caused by guilds are higher than those for most cartels in modern economies. Analysis of a sample of 11 cartels in developing economies between 1994 and 2006 estimated an average output loss of 15.4 per cent.240 Once more, it seems likely that pre-modern guilds were more effective at limiting output than modern cartels because they enjoyed legal monopolies which enabled them to obtain enforcement from the authorities.
Where evidence survives, therefore, European guilds were able to bring about non-trivial reductions in supply and non-trivial increases in price. Empirically, most cartels do succeed in restricting supply and increasing prices, and guilds appear to have been no exception. These findings are not consistent with optimistic claims that guilds were unable to manipulate markets successfully because of internal free-riding and external competition. They also cast a sobering light on conjectures—discussed in detail in Chapters 7 and 8—that in guild-regulated sectors of the pre-modern economy, more productive and knowledgeable producers would have been able to command higher prices than their unproductive and ignorant fellows, which might have encouraged human capital investment and technological innovation.
Was Guild Price-Fixing Beneficial?
This raises a final issue. As already mentioned, some scholars have argued that guilds’ manipulation of markets, far from inflicting harm on the pre-modern economy, was in fact beneficial. Epstein and Prak, as we have seen, theorize that when guilds tried to fix prices, they were actually playing an important “coordination role”.241 In pre-modern economies, according to this view, coordinating supply and demand could not be left to market transactions because markets worked poorly. Instead, the argument goes, a centralized, authoritative organization was required which could set appropriate prices and coordinate the different stages of production. In this portrayal, when guilds fixed prices and quantities they were serving a beneficial purpose in an economy that would otherwise have worked much less well: “Guilds provided a framework for the vertical and horizontal integration of complicated production processes.”242
How convincing is this argument? To assess it, we must think a bit more rigorously about what might prevent individual producers from deciding how to allocate inputs between multiple stages of production, using prices to convey information about supply and demand. The answer might be the argument put forward by Ronald Coase: if transaction costs are very high, markets may function poorly in allocating resources, and there is a role to be played by an organization such as a firm which can reduce these transaction costs.243 It might be argued that a guild resembled a firm in being able to circumvent poorly functioning markets by organizing production of an upstream good (e.g., leather), collectively setting a price for it, and collectively selling it to a downstream producer (e.g., a shoemaker) or a wholesaler (e.g., a merchant).
But theory also suggests that large organizations such as guilds or firms suffer from high transaction costs, arising from multiple layers of information and negotiation inside the organization. There is no general theoretical result that states that internalizing all stages of production inside a large organization is the efficient solution. Indeed, if there were such a general principle, the entire economy would consist of one big firm—or one big guild. Instead, what we observe is the existence of quite small businesses. This is precisely because transaction costs inside large organizations are often higher than transaction costs in markets.
What about the empirical side? Is there any evidence that guild price-setting was actually required to coordinate production? Epstein and Prak adduce precisely one empirical case in support of their view that guild price-fixing played a beneficial role in coordinating complex production processes. This is Carlo Poni’s study of the Bologna leather trades which, they argue, shows that price-setting by the guilds of the butchers, tanners, and shoemakers sustained “a delicate equilibrium in the industry”.244 But this is not quite what Poni found. Leather prices in early modern Bologna were certainly fixed through negotiations (and conflict) between the butchers’, tanners’, and shoemakers’ guilds. The city authorities mediated the process but, of course, did not know the “right” price for leather and therefore depended on information provided by the guilds.245 But Poni reports that the information provided by guilds was distorted by political pressure, blackmail, and violence. People constantly complained that prices were fixed corruptly, through lobbying by more powerful guilds, pressure by more powerful guild members, or collusive links between guild oligarchies and city officials.246 The conflict between the various guilds was incessant, and the authorities found it so difficult to find out the “right” price for various items, that in 1742 the government of Bologna openly admitted that “in view of the continuing controversy between tanners and butchers over the price of hides” the only solution was to leave “each side in liberty this year to act in the way that best suits its business”.247 Poni thus did not come to the conclusion that guild price-fixing caused the Bologna leather industry to function better. Rather, he concluded, uncompromisingly, that the industry was governed by “an institutional bilateral monopoly with a barrier to entrance constituted by the rules and practices of guild membership”.248 In Poni’s account, the Bologna leather industry functioned so poorly in this climate of price-fixing by guilds that it is hard to imagine that it could have worked worse with market prices.
If it was necessary to coordinate production decisions in pre-modern industry, then there would be no observations of successful pre-modern industries operating in a decentralized way coordinated only by market mechanisms. In practice, however, we do observe successful pre-modern industries coordinating different stages of production without guild price-setting. In Mallorca, for instance, the leather trades expanded successfully after the mid-sixteenth century precisely when the cartels of the tanners’ guilds were broken by the shoemakers, who first began to import American leather and then went so far as to set up a tannery to compete with the guilded tanners. Having multiple, competing suppliers of raw materials instead of cartelistic guild “coordination” of the market benefited not only the shoemakers, as downstream producers, but the industry as a whole.249 The same can be observed in complex industries with even more numerous stages of production and sale, such as export-oriented textile production or shipbuilding. In fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Flanders, for instance, the textile region of Hondschoote grew rapidly and exported successfully all over Europe without any need for guild price coordination—and even without any need for guilds, for these only began to form in the sixteenth century.250 The West Riding of Yorkshire developed the most successful, export-oriented worsted industry in eighteenth-century Europe without guild price coordination.251 The same was true in technologically demanding, capital-intensive industries pursuing large and complex projects, such as the construction of sea-going vessels. The shipbuilding industry of the Northern Netherlands was by far the most successful in early modern Europe, yet several of its major centres were not guilded before the late sixteenth century, and the most successful Dutch shipbuilding region in the eighteenth century, the rural Zaanstreek, was never guilded.252 The same was true in early modern England, where the shipbuilding industry emerged as the second most successful in Europe (after the Northern Netherlands), without guild price-coordination—and indeed without, for the most part, any guild organization at all.253
Pre-modern industries coordinated multiple stages of production, therefore, without guild price-fixing. Industrial producers and merchants used markets to buy raw materials, intermediate inputs, and finished products, at least where they were not excluded from such markets by guild privileges. They set up larger workshops and businesses to reap economies of scale and scope between different operations, at least where guilds did not cap the size of workshops and workforces, or forbid combining different stages of production and selling in the same production unit. Industrial producers also coordinated different production stages via outsourcing and sub-contracting, again in so far as these practices were not forbidden by guild regulations. The existence of these other mechanisms—markets, firms, outsourcing, and sub-contracting—in both guilded and non-guilded industries suggests that guilds were neither necessary nor sufficient for coordinating different stages of production, and thus that guild price-setting cannot be viewed as benefiting the pre-modern economy.
CONCLUSION
One reason people were willing to pay to get into guilds was that guilds had the right to regulate markets in their members’ interests. But the existence of these guild entitlements has raised legitimate questions. Did guilds really want to intervene in markets? If they did, was market manipulation a new departure for guilds during a period of “decadence” after 1500, which contrasted fundamentally with the voluntary, flexible, and laissez-faire stance of the “original” guilds of the medieval period? Even when guilds enjoyed market privileges on paper, did they actually enforce them? Isn’t it possible that guilds were prevented from manipulating markets by political opposition or economic evasion? When guilds did intervene in markets, were the effects necessarily bad? Guilds might have increased prices and controlled supplies, but perhaps this helped coordinate complex production chains which primitive markets were unable to serve? Guilds might have intervened in labour markets, but perhaps this protected workers and fostered social solidarity?
This chapter analyzed over 1,700 observations of the rights, privileges, and entitlements guilds obtained to intervene in markets for their members’ inputs and outputs. It found that guilds all over Europe sought and gained the right to fix prices, limit output, and restrict competition in the markets for the goods and services their members produced. Guilds also claimed and secured entitlements to intervene in markets for the labour, real estate, raw materials, and intermediate goods their members used as inputs. Guilds claimed these privileges from the time they first emerged into the documentary record in the twelfth century to the time of their dissolution in the nineteenth century. If anything, guilds are observed claiming and securing these market privileges disproportionately often in the medieval period. The view that medieval guilds were liberal and market-oriented is romantic but misleading. Market manipulation by guilds was already widespread in the Middle Ages and cannot be regarded as a degenerate development of the period after 1500. Throughout their existence in Europe, guilds manifested a pervasive and understandable desire to shape the markets in which their members operated.
What about enforcement? This chapter also investigated more than 800 observations of how guilds actually behaved in seeking to manipulate markets in their members’ interest. Although data are scarce and not all guilds have yet been investigated in detail, where documents survive they show many guilds enforcing their market privileges sufficiently to have real economic effects. Customers complained about high prices and supply restrictions that made their daily lives difficult. Workers formed associations and went on strike against oppressive guild masters. Suppliers protested against the low, monopsonistic prices imposed by guilds. Guilds spent resources on lobbying governments to grant, confirm, and extend their rights to intervene in input and output markets, and their opponents spent resources trying to prevent them from doing so. Guilds invested in legal conflicts to defend their privileges to manipulate markets, and those harmed by these market machinations in turn spent resources on litigation to attack them. Guilds and their opponents engaged in costly and sometimes violent struggles over prices, supply restrictions, wage ceilings, and raw material prerogatives. As organizations of employers, guilds intervened constantly in labour markets, giving rise to bitter conflicts with workers. Guilds invested resources in systems of detection and punishment to enforce their manipulation of markets. Such activities strongly imply that guild action was effective, since people do not spend resources to secure, defend, enforce, attack, and evade forms of market manipulation that have no real economic effects.
Can the manipulation of markets by guilds be assessed in a positive light? The evidence in this chapter does not encourage this conclusion. There is no support for the idea that medieval guilds were flexible, competitive, laissez-faire organizations, nor that market manipulation was a perverse deviation that afflicted guilds as they degenerated in the early modern period. Virtually all manifestations of market manipulation are observed in the medieval period either disproportionately often or at least as intensely as in the early modern period. Nor is there any support for the view that guild price-fixing was necessary to coordinate different stages of production, since it was notably absent from a number of the most sophisticated industries in medieval and early modern Europe. The idea that guilds fostered worker protection or solidarity between employers and employees seems even more farfetched, in the light of the labour conflicts triggered by guilds’ manipulation of labour markets and then suppressed through guilds’ concerted use of political pressure, legal persecution, and direct brutality.
Why were guilds able to maintain high prices and low output in the face of competition from producers outside the guild? Some succeeded because transport costs segmented markets and created geographical protection for local producers. This was particularly true of local provisioning crafts: transport costs made it too expensive to bring in bread or beer from far afield unless local guild price-gouging became outrageous rather than merely extortionate. At that point, producers from outside the town could begin to undercut local guild masters even after covering transport costs—but only if they could circumvent guild barriers.
And that was a big “if”. Even without the natural protection provided by transport costs, a guild could maintain an output quota, a minimum price, or both, through institutional protection. Some guilds created such protection themselves by forming supra-regional guild alliances. Such alliances were formed, for instance, by a number of crafts on the Middle and Upper Rhine between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries,254 by the woollen-weavers’ guilds of various Silesian and Bohemian towns in 1514,255 by the various Upper Austrian scythe-smiths’ guilds from 1595 onwards,256 and by the worsted-weavers’ guilds of half a dozen districts of the Württemberg Black Forest between 1650 and 1797.257 Such federations and alliances enabled guilds to agree on non-compete clauses with guilds in the nearest towns and territories, precisely those that were in the best position to invade their markets and undermine guild regulation.
Much more commonly and to much greater effect, guilds secured protection from governments. Guilds’ ability to maintain price floors, output quotas, and wage ceilings, at least within a protected catchment area—and sometimes across an entire polity—was primarily due to their being supported, tacitly or openly, by the political authorities.258 External competition was rendered illegal through municipal or state recognition of a guild’s exclusive entitlement for its members to practise a particular occupation. Internal free-riding by guild members was controlled by a guild’s own disciplinary measures combined with prosecutions in public law-courts and appeals for enforcement to the municipal and state authorities, as we have seen.
Most guilds enjoyed some combination of locational advantages, tacit or open agreements with other guilds, and political protection from municipal and state governments. Together, these factors could protect a guild’s capacity to manipulate markets in its members’ interests, at least locally. Lacking such protection exposed its members to competition from outside producers who did not limit supplies, charged lower prices, and paid the market rate for their labour and materials.
No enforcement regime is perfect. Guilds’ market privileges were violated both by free-riding insiders and interloping outsiders. But this simply created a black-market “informal sector” within which transactions were illegal, risky, and high-cost.259 It did not mean that guilds had no economic effects, just that these effects consisted partly of manipulating markets to increase prices, restrict supplies, and depress input costs in their members’ favour, and partly of pushing transactions into the black market. Even where a particular guild’s price floors, supply restrictions, or wage ceilings were not perfectly enforced, at best they created an informal sector of illegal transactions whose costs and risks were higher because of the threat of prosecution. As Chapter 3 already established, even imperfectly enforced cartels can exercise real economic effects.
Guilds, in deploying their privileges to manipulate input and output markets, exerted palpable effects on many social groups and economic activities. One component of these effects was unusually far-reaching: the restrictions guilds imposed on the half of the population that was female. Guilds erected special entry barriers against females, and even when females were permitted to operate, guilds restricted the work they could do and how much they could earn from it. The economic position of women is increasingly recognized as a central indicator and engine of economic growth. So any institution that disproportionately restricts the economic opportunities of women must be of central concern in understanding why economies grow or stagnate. Chapter 5 therefore turns to a detailed exploration of guilds’ treatment of women’s economic participation.
Epigraph sources: Legal testimony concerning the fishmongers’ guild, quoted in Unwin 1908, 40; Mayor’s report on the town guilds, quoted in Hauser 1931, 128–29; Complaint by rural people in the district of Münchenstein, quoted in Simon-Muscheid 1993, 102.
1 See the recent survey in Rodríguez-Castelán 2015, esp. 1–3.
2 Ennis and Kim 2017, 133–35, 150–51.
3 Hickson and Thompson 1991, 128–29; Epstein 1998, 688; Richardson 2001, 219.
4 For influential expositions of this view, see Gierke 1868, I:906–49; Brentano 1870, cxxiv–cxxvii; Heckscher 1935, I:142–43. For a sceptical summary of the German literature arguing that medieval guilds were good and early modern guilds bad, see Walker 1971, 88–91.
5 Epstein 1998, 684.
6 Epstein 1998, 686.
7 Hickson and Thompson 1991, 130; Epstein 1998, 686.
8 Hickson and Thompson 1991, 129; Richardson 2001, 219.
9 Epstein 1998, 686; Richardson 2001, 219.
10 For variants on this view, see Toulmin Smith 1870, passim; Brentano 1870, cxxxi, cxxxvi–cxxxviii, cxlii; Rosser 1994, 284–85, 289, 293–94, 297, 302; Lucassen 1995; Ehmer 2005, 71. For differentiated reflections on the role of guilds in creating worker solidarity in the English context, see Rosser 2015, esp. 153–55.
11 Epstein and Prak 2008, 11, 23.
12 Ehmer 2001 [Artisans], 818.
13 As pointed out for early modern Swedish guilds in Edgren 2002, 239.
14 Lipson 1915, 302–303.
15 Werner 1861, 107 (guild price-fixing); wages from Allen n.d., Vienna database, 1725 day wage of master mason was 24 kr; 1 fl = 60 kr.
16 Lipson 1915, 303.
17 Unwin 1908, 92; Mickwitz 1936, 153.
18 Mickwitz 1936, 97.
19 Edgren 1998, 160–161.
20 Hickson and Thompson 1991, 129; Epstein 1998, 686; Richardson 2001, 219.
21 Wiest 1968, 144, 148–49.
22 Deceulaer 1996, 178.
23 Ogilvie 1997, 186–222.
24 Wiest 1968, 142–43.
25 Quoted in Casey 1999, 65.
26 Quoted in Maschke 1968, 108.
27 Quoted in Ogilvie 1997, 217; see also Troeltsch 1897, 113.
28 Quoted Mickwitz 1936, 145.
29 Farr 1988, 40–43.
30 Quoted in Mickwitz 1936, 80–81.
31 Quoted in Werner 1861, 71.
32 Mickwitz 1936, 88–89.
33 Mickwitz 1936, 89.
34 Klein 1932, 175 n. 3.
35 Ivaldi et al. 2003, 22–26.
36 McCray 1999, 44–45.
37 Quoted in Bodemann 1883, XLIX.
38 De Marchi and Van Miegroet 2000, 151.
39 Quoted in Guiral-Hadziiossif 1986, 384.
40 Quoted in Palliser 1972, 101.
41 Aubin 1963, 116.
42 Quoted in Navarro 2013, 103.
43 Edgren 1997 [De svenksa], 119–20; Edgren 2002, 239.
44 Wiest 1968, 142–43.
45 Quoted in Smith 1870, 317 (spelling modernized by present author).
46 Quoted in Rodocanachi 1894, I:476. Wages from Allen n.d., Northern Italy database, day wage of Venetian master mason or carpenter was 23 soldi; 1 scudo = 120 soldi.
47 Mickwitz 1936, 22.
48 Kluge 2007, 284–85.
49 Wiest 1968, 136.
50 Mickwitz 1936, 46.
51 Palliser 1972, 101.
52 Leonhard 1909, 746.
53 Ebel 1938, 326–27.
54 Rodocanachi 1894, 2:417.
55 Klein 1932, 185.
56 Lis and Soly 2008, 87.
57 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 133–34.
58 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 133–34.
59 Bodemann 1883, LI; Hanson 1981, 53.
60 Kluge 2007, 303.
61 Mazzaoui 1972, 284.
62 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 258 (appendix 11); Rodocanachi 1894, 2:166; Leonhard 1909, 746.
63 Epstein 1991, 85; Fischer 1966, 118, 200–201.
64 Rodocanachi 1894, 2:69; Anon 1866 [Fortsetzung], 143.
65 Werner 1861, 128; Depping 1837, 114; Ebeling 2004, 127; Cerman 1993, 290; Lottin 1995, 32; Ehmer 2000, 208–209; Cerutti 1991, 142–44; Torras 1986, 8; Torras 1998 [Small Towns], 93 n. 65; Simon-Muscheid 1990, 386.
66 Casey 1999, 65.
67 Eulenburg 1893, 309.
68 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 258.
69 Commenda 1959, 105.
70 Maschke 1968, 108.
71 Braun and Burger 2008, 166.
72 Quoted in Maschke 1968, 108.
73 Quoted in Ebel 1938, 329.
74 Quoted in Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 107 n. 96.
75 Quoted in Werner 1861, 55.
76 Depping 1837, 114.
77 Quoted in Otruba 1970, 122.
78 Quoted in Kluge 2007, 278.
79 For influential expositions of this view, see Gierke 1868, I:906–49; Brentano 1870, cxxiv–cxxvii; Heckscher 1935, I;142–43. For a sceptical consideration of these arguments in the context of early modern Germany, see Walker 1971, 88–91.
80 As a reminder, throughout this book, “significant” means that the null hypothesis of no difference cannot be rejected at the 0.05 level.
81 Bodemann 1883, LXII.
82 Kisch 1989, 124.
83 Kaplan 1986 [Social Classification], 181, 188 (quotation).
84 Ogilvie 1997, 353–55; Ogilvie 2003, 292, 307–308; Ogilvie 2004 [Guilds], 297–98.
85 Caracausi 2011, 117.
86 Quoted in Sonenscher 1989 [Le droit], 381.
87 La Force 1965, 100–101.
88 Toulmin Smith 1870, passim; Brentano 1870, cxxxi, cxxxvi–cxxxviii, cxlii; Rosser 1994, 284–85, 289, 293–94, 297, 302; Lucassen 1995; Ehmer 2005, 71.
89 Rodocanachi 1894, I:165.
90 Ammannati 2014, 68.
91 Quoted in Poni 1991, 74.
92 Bodemann 1883, LIII; Pitz 1968, 39 n. 75.
93 Göttmann 1977 [Keßler], 134.
94 Fischer 1966, 118, 200–201.
95 Mickwitz 1936, 38.
96 Rodocanachi 1894, I:165.
97 In the case of raw material markets, the medieval period was over-represented only at the 0.07 level of statistical significance.
98 Quoted in Lipson 1915, I:303.
99 Quoted in Mührmann-Lund 2016, 76.
100 Quoted in Hundert 2004, 112.
101 Quoted in Simon-Muscheid 1993, 102.
102 Quoted in Unwin 1904, 23.
103 Quoted in Montemayor 1996, 230.
104 Quoted in Poni 1991, 97.
105 Quoted in Corteguera 2002, 120.
106 Quoted in Soom 1971, 131.
107 Quoted in Lipson 1915, I: 350.
108 Quoted in Farr 1988, 42 with n. 103.
109 Quoted in Cerutti 2010, 600.
110 Quoted in Hauser 1931, 154.
111 Quoted in Horn 2006, 44.
112 Quoted in Anishanslin 2016, 138–39.
113 Quoted in Unwin 1908, 234–35 (spelling modernized by present author).
114 Quoted in Göttmann 1975, 81 n. 541a.
115 Quoted in Soom 1971, 158.
116 Quoted in Link-Lenczowski 1993, 41.
117 Quoted in Rushworth 1692, 33–34.
118 Depping 1837, 122.
119 Quoted in Grüll 1953, 289.
120 Quoted in Soom 1971, 147.
121 Bacon 1621/1876, 196.
122 Becher 1688, 114.
123 Mickwitz 1936, 75.
124 Collantes de Terán Sánchez 1993, 99 n. 48.
125 Stephens 1969, 157–62.
126 Unwin 1908, 77–78.
127 Wachendorf 1934, 108–109.
128 Poni 1991, 76, 79, 87–88, 96–99.
129 Miller 1992, 237–38.
130 Mickwitz 1936, 145.
131 Corteguera 2002, 37.
132 Fischer 1966, 91.
133 Lupovitch 2007, 122.
134 Maschke 1968, 108.
135 Cerutti 1991, 142–44.
136 Collantes de Terán Sánchez 1993, 99 n. 48.
137 Mackenney 1987, 85.
138 Montias 1977, 100.
139 Deceulaer and Panhuysen 2000, 91.
140 Anon. 1866, 106.
141 Kluge 2007, 278.
142 Groiss 1980, 63 with n. 43.
143 Depping 1837, 377–79.
144 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 125–26; Kluge 2007, 291.
145 Corteguera 2002, 122.
146 Edgren 1998, 162–64.
147 Rodocanachi 1894, 2:60.
148 Kaplan 1986 [Social Classification], 181, 188 (quotation).
149 Hickson and Thompson 1991, 129; Epstein 1998, 686; Richardson 2001, 219.
150 Epstein 1998, 684.
151 Mickwitz 1936, 80–81.
152 Unwin 1908, 92.
153 Poni 1991, 76, 79, 87–88, 96–99.
154 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 134.
155 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 125.
156 Kluge 2007, 296.
157 Lipson 1915, I:286.
158 Deceulaer 1996, 196.
159 Quoted in Wiest 1968, 137.
160 Stabel 1999, 272.
161 Palliser 1979, 180.
162 Shaw 2006, 89.
163 Ashley 1893, II:111.
164 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 112 n. 127.
165 Edgren 2006, 48.
166 Werner 1861, 42–43.
167 Shaw 2006, 81.
168 MacKay 2006, 144.
169 Mickwitz 1936, 97.
170 Lipson 1915, I:302–303.
171 Kluge 2007, 301.
172 Unwin 1908, 86.
173 Mastboom 1994, 70–72.
174 Mickwitz 1936, 145.
175 Menjot 1994, 215.
176 Werner 1861, 71.
177 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 104.
178 Ehmer 2000, 208.
179 Groiss 1980, 63 with n 43.
180 Cerutti 1991, 142–44.
181 Farr 1988, 42 with n. 103.
182 Rodocanachi 1894, 2:233
183 Rosser 2015, 171.
184 Wiest 1968, 121 n. 76.
185 On the French compagnonnages, see Hauser 1907. On the German Gesellengilden or Gesellenvereinigungen, see Reith 1988; Wesoly 1985, 306–90. On the (comparatively weak and few) English journeymen’s associations, see Ashley 1893, II:107, 124.
186 Quoted in Reininghaus 1981, 59–60.
187 Bodemann 1883, LVIII.
188 Quoted in Corteguera 2002, 115–16.
189 Wyrozumski 1986, 145.
190 Wyrozumski 1986, 145.
191 Lipson 1915, I:357; Rosser 2015, 179.
192 Anon. 1866, 110.
193 Farr 1988, 68–69.
194 Quoted in Cerutti 2010, 596.
195 Najemy 2006, 136–38, 156–58; Munro 2011, 21–22; Rosser 2015, 182 (quotation).
196 Rodocanachi 1894, 2:56, 59.
197 Hafter 2001, 30–31.
198 Wyrozumski 1986, 150–51.
199 Edgren 1998, 157; Edgren 2002, 235.
200 Wyrozumski 1986, 145.
201 Wesoly 1985, 354–55.
202 Quoted in Dekker 1990, 409.
203 Quoted in Lipson 1915, I: 361.
204 Weiss 1914, 563–65.
205 Lis and Soly 2008, 96.
206 Quoted in Mundy and Riesenberg 1958, 177.
207 Horn 2015, 76.
208 Lis and Soly 2008, 96.
209 Kluge 2007, 221.
210 Weiss 1914, 563–65.
211 Kaplan 1981, 294.
212 Horn 2015, 76.
213 Musgrave 1993, 46–48, 51.
214 Quoted in Cerutti 2010, 594.
215 Quoted in Kaplan 1986 [Social Classification], 219.
216 Ogilvie 2011, 251–68.
217 Quoted in Hoffmann 2004, 183.
218 Pestalozzi 1829, 50.
219 Quoted in Lipson 1915, I:303.
220 Rodocanachi 1894, I:387.
221 Bog 1968, 78–79.
222 Mickwitz 1936, 148.
223 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 99.
224 Pitz 1968, 34.
225 Státní Oblastní Archiv Litomĕřice, Pobočka Dĕčín, Fond Rodinný archiv Clam-Gallasů, Historická sbírka, Kart. 80, fol. 59, 1 Aug. 1662.
226 D’Amico 2001, 715.
227 Kluge 2007, 73.
228 Kluge 2007, 77.
229 Pontet 1997, 119.
230 Pestalozzi 1829, 41–42.
231 Ivaldi et al. 2017, 80.
232 Ivaldi et al. 2017, 79.
233 Connor 2014, 1, 51, 58–59.
234 Ivaldi et al. 2017, 81.
235 Ivaldi et al. 2017, 82.
236 Ivaldi et al. 2017, 89.
237 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 109–10.
238 Troeltsch 1897, 37, 104, 107, 116, 156–58, 184, 203–204; Ogilvie 1997, 203–15.
239 Sonenscher 1987 [The Hatters], 67–69, 118–29.
240 Ivaldi et al. 2017, 89.
241 Epstein and Prak 2008, 11.
242 Epstein and Prak 2008, 23.
243 Coase 1937.
244 Epstein and Prak 2008, 11.
245 Poni 1991, 79.
246 See the analysis in Poni 1991, 96–99.
247 Poni 1991, 87 n. 49.
248 Poni 1991, 81–82.
249 Casado Alonso 2004, 321.
250 Coornaert 1930, 28.
251 Heaton 1965, 264–71; Hudson 1989, 72; Lipson 1965, 144–52, 241, 249.
252 De Vries and Van der Woude 1997, 298; Unger 1978, 65–67, 70, 80, 83–84, 90–92, 101–104.
253 Clapham 1949, 134; Unger 1978, 65–67, 70, 111–13; Pritchard 1987, 5, 22–24; De Vries and Van der Woude 1997, 298–99; Unger 2013, 185, 191.
254 Göttmann 1977 [Handwerk], 109–10.
255 Anon. 1866, 120–21.
256 Fischer 1966, 141–53.
257 Troeltsch 1897, 49–135; Ogilvie 1997, 86–112.
258 For an incisive analysis of how this institutional market segmentation worked in the Electorate of Mainz in the eighteenth century, see Garner 2013, esp. 143–44.
259 On these characteristics of the informal sector, see Batini, Levine, Kim and Lotti 2010; Todaro 1989, 270–71; ILO 1989; Ogilvie 2007 [Whatever], 671–74.