umerous through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
notwithstanding the efforts of the gilds, supported by municipal and
national authority. The prohibition of any workers setting up business
in a town unless they had previously obtained the approval of the
officials of their trade was more and more vigorous in the later
ordinances; the fines imposed upon masters who engaged journeymen who
had not paid the dues, newcomers into the town, were higher. The
complaints of the intrusion of outsiders were more loud and frequent.
There was evidently more unsupervised, unregulated labor.

But the increase in the number of these unorganized laborers, these
craftsmen and traders not under the control of the gilds, was most
marked in the rural districts, that is to say, in market towns and in
villages entirely outside of the old manufacturing and trading
centres. Even in the fourteenth century there were a number of
weavers, and probably of other craftsmen, who worked in the villages
in the vicinity of the larger towns, such as London, Norwich, and
York, and took their products to be sold on fair or market days in
these towns. But toward the end of the fifteenth century this rural
labor received a new kind of encouragement and a corresponding
extension far beyond anything before existing. The English
cloth-making industry at this period was increasing rapidly. Whereas
during the earlier periods, as we have seen, wool was the greatest of
English exports, now it was coming to be manufactured within the
country. In connection with this manufacture a new kind of industrial
organization began to show itself which, when it was completed,
became known as the "domestic system." A class of merchants or
manufacturers arose who are spoken of as "clothiers," or "merchant
clothiers," who bought the wool or other raw material, and gave it out
to carders or combers, spinners, weavers, fullers, and other
craftsmen, paying them for their respective parts in the process of
manufacture, and themselves disposing of the product at home or for
export. The clothiers were in this way a new class of employers,
putting the master weavers or other craftsmen to work for wages. The
latter still had their journeymen and apprentices, but the initiative
in their industry was taken by the merchants, who provided the raw
material and much of the money capital, and took charge of the sale of
the completed goods. The craftsmen who were employed in this form of
in