There were some industries, however, in great commercial centres, which from their first planting were dependent, either for materials or for the vent of their products, on distant trade. Organisation, in such callings, was almost certain to proceed on capitalist lines; the rules laid down by the leading men were devised by great employers, and not, as in the craft-gilds, by small masters who personally worked at the trade. The working and dressing of cloth at Florence was dependent on the importation of undressed cloths, which were converted into excellently finished fabrics and exported on profitable terms. This Arte di Ccdimala appears to have been organised and regulated as a capitalist industry from the earliest times; and the Arte di Lana, which was dependent on the importation of raw wool from the North, was also an association of wealthy employers. The Arte di Seta was another long-established industry; it had been improved by immigrants from Lucca in the early part of the fourteenth century, and was conducted on similar lines. Capitalist organisation was not universal in industries of this commercial type; for we find that the silk-trade of Venice in the thirteenth century was regulated by small masters, who were however dependent on the services of merchants for securing a stock of materials to be used in regular work and for selling the fabrics of the looms; it need be no matter of surprise, that a change had occurred before the most flourishing period of the Venetian silk-trade in the fifteenth century, and that merchants were engaged in it as capitalist employers.
The capitalist organisation of industry was not confined to the more advanced communities, but might be found in the most backward countries, when the commercial conditions were favourable. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when there was little export of cloth, weavers’ gilds existed in London, Winchester, Beverley, and other centres, and the trade was probably conducted by independent workmen. But the clothing-trade of England was developed with increasing success, so that in the fifteenth century large quantities of woollen cloths were exported; it was evidently assuming the conditions of a capitalist trade, and was being organised by large employers. In England the transition to the new condition of affairs took place with little friction; weaving began to be practised in villages where civic gilds had no jurisdiction, and the quality of the product was inspected by a royal officer, so that the capitalist system of giving out materials to the weavers and buying their cloth was able to make its way imperceptibly.
In continental towns, where there was a large number of independent masters strongly organised in craft-gilds, a very decided antagonism prevailed between the old order and the new that was being gradually introduced. In France the corps-de-metier assumed a more and more oligarchical character, as increasing obstacles were being put in the way of journeymen who aimed at attaining the status of independent masters. A further indication of the same tendency, and of the differentiation of the journeymen as a permanent class within the trade, is found in the existence of journeyman gilds at Strassburg and elsewhere. The rise of a wealthy capitalist class within a craft-gild tended on the one hand to change the character of the old association and to make it a company of capitalists and traders, each of whom employed a large number of paid workmen; and, on the other hand, to call forth associations among the journeymen who had little hope of attaining to a higher status as independent masters, and who were therefore interested in maintaining favourable conditions for a wage-earning class. In other cases the pressure of the changed conditions was most severely felt by the small masters, since the men with large capital and a growing trade were able to pay better wages; the capitalists and journeymen were then united in opposition to the small masters, who desired to retain the restrictions imposed by the old craft-gilds.
Where the conservative policy was successful and the small independent masters held their own, the results were not satisfactory; the craft-gilds could maintain the old rules, but they could not control the course of trade; business migrated to the centres where it could be conducted on capitalistic lines. In Flanders and in England we hear much of the conflict between urban and suburban workmen; this antagonism was partly due to the fact that the journeymen were inclined to migrate to districts where the rules which prevented them from setting up in business or working for capitalist employers could not be enforced. The trend of affairs was going against the old type of craft-gild; and these institutions, in so far as they were incompatible with the investment of capital in industrial occupations, were bound to pass away.
To some extent, however, they proved to be compatible with the new order; the craft-gilds played an important part by exercising a right of search, and by insisting that the wares exposed for sale should be good in quality. Both in France and in England they were retained to some extent as convenient instruments for the royal or parliamentary control of the conditions of work and the quality of the output; occasionally, too, they retained their name and tradition, though they had changed their character and become associations of employers. At the close of the sixteenth century the organisation of industry by capitalists, which had been exceptional in the fourteenth century, had come to be an ordinary arrangement in the principal manufacturing centres.
The freedom thus obtained for capitalist administration proved of immense importance in facilitating the planting of industries at new centres and in undeveloped lands. Under no circumstances is this a simple task; but in the Middle Ages and in the earlier part of modern times it could only be accomplished by transferring skilled labour from one place to another. It was through the migration of great employers, with the labour which followed in their wake, that the silk-trade was developed in Venice, Bologna, Genoa, Florence, ^.nd France; that an improved manufacture of woollen cloth was introduced into England under Edward III; that the Spanish cities responded in some degree to the call made upon them by colonial demand, and that the manufactures of linen, glass, and pottery were introduced into France. A most remarkable development of industry in the fifteenth century seems to have been carried through by the Florentine capitalists, who were interested in the dressing and dyeing of cloth. They devoted themselves to encouraging the weaving of cloth in the wool-growing lands of the North, in order to command a supply of the half-manufactured goods which could be so finished at Florence as to be a most valuable article of commerce. In medieval times the industrial system had been intensely local in character; but as capital and capitalist organisation were introduced, the local attachments were severed one by one; in the new era the great employer is prepared to carry on business in any place and under any government where there is good prospect of working at a profit.
In the preceding sections an attempt has been made to show how the rising power of capitalism broke down the medieval forms of commercial and industrial regulation; the capitalists, who could not dominate them, migrated to places where they were free from old-fashioned restrictions. Capital offered facilities for the planting of new industries, the development of trade, and the opening up of mines and other natural advantages; so that the means lay at hand for promoting material progress of every kind. Hence new questions of economic policy came to the front. The efforts of traders were no longer confined to retaining exclusive commercial rights; but they began to consider how the various resources within a given area might be developed, so that by the interaction of different interests the greatest material prosperity might be attained in the community as a whole. We have already seen that in the fifteenth century the French monarchs had come to be directly interested in the welfare of the trading as well as in that of the landed classes; and at this period some of the German princes were becoming alive to the necessity of paying attention to all the different elements in the community. Other influences were at work elsewhere which tended to the growth of a new economic system; many of the cities of Italy and of Germany had become great territorial Powers, and, with a keen eye to business, they were endeavouring to devise schemes of policy which should enable them to reap the greatest advantage from their acquisitions.
It is of course true that many European cities had from the earliest period of their development had landed possessions and agricultural interests, and that the burgesses had enjoyed rights in respect of tillage and pasturage. But the questions which arose under these old circumstances were very different from those which presented themselves to citizens ruling over a large province and controlling the development of a considerable territory. Several of the cities of Italy and of the Rhineland had attained to great political importance in the early part of the fourteenth century; in some