e city and marched
and acted as one on festive occasions.

As typical of the organization of industry at the turning-point may be
given the list of gilds at Antwerp drawn up by Albert Duerer: [Sidenote:
1520] There were goldsmiths, painters, stone-cutters, embroiderers,
sculptors, joiners, carpenters, sailors, fishermen, butchers,
cloth-weavers, bakers, cobblers, "and all sorts of artisans and many
laborers and merchants of provisions." The list is fully as
significant for what it omits as for what it includes. Be it noted
that there was no gild of printers, for that art had grown up since the
crafts had begun to decline, and, though in some places found as a
gild, was usually a combination of a learned profession and a
capitalistic venture. Again, in this great banking and trading port,
there is no mention of gilds of wholesale merchants (for the "merchants
of provisions" were certainly not this) nor of bankers. These were two
fully capitalized businesses. Finally, observe that there were many
skilled and unskilled laborers {538} not included in a special gild.
Here we have the beginning of the proletariat. A century earlier there
would have been no special class of laborers, a century later no gilds
worth mentioning.

The gilds were handicapped by their own petty regulations.
Notwithstanding the fact that their high standards of craftsmanship
produced an excellent grade of goods, they were over-regulated and
hide-bound, averse to new methods. There was as great a contrast
between their meticulous traditions and the freer paths of the new
capitalism as there was between scholasticism and science. They could
neither raise nor administer the funds needed for foreign commerce and
for export industries. Presently new technical methods were adopted by
the capitalists, a finer way of smelting ores, and a new way of making
brass, invented by Peter von Hoffberg, that saved 50 per cent. of the
fuel previously used. In the textile industries came first the
spinning-wheel, then the stocking-frame. So in other manufactures, new
machinery required novel organization. Significant was the growth of
new towns. The old cities were often so gild-ridden that they decayed,
while places like Manchester sprang up suddenly at the call of
employment. The constant effort of the gild had been to suppress
competition and to organize a completely stationary society. In a
dynamic world that which refuses to change, perishes. So t