ARTICLE V.-COMBINATIONS AND TRUSTS.*

INDUSTRY, as a factor in the development of the human race, is based upon the axiom that united harmonious effort is essential to the production of the highest results. This principle must be accepted as a fundamental law in social economy. It is the rule to which all others are subservient, governing in all nations and among all civilized people. The very earliest histories recite the methods by which communities realized and acted upon the practical advantage of combined effort; and in these recitals we recognize the kind of people among whom this law of combination operated. If among races where the idea of despotism prevailed, where intelligence and wealth were confined to a comparative few, between whom and the laboring classes an impassable gap lay, if this was the condition of society, the combinations were formed and controlled by the aristocracy which trained and used the laborer as a part of a living machine, valuable only as each component part worked in unison for the end sought by the common inaster. Egypt and India stand out as types of such a social status, all of whose industries bear the impress of an over-mastering, allpowerful head, which dominated a host of human beings, little else than machines. The consequence flows naturally therefrom. Karnak and Cheops stand to-day as monuments of an industrial society subservient to the Egyptian despot, in whom were united pope, general, and king. Those gigantic piles testify to the combined labor of thousands of workmen

*The Article, here published, received, in June, 1889, the John A. Porter Prize. This prize-of the value of two hundred and fifty dollars -is annually offered, by the Kingsley Trust Association, for the best essay on a prescribed subject. It may be competed for by any person who has been pursuing a regular course for a degree in any department of the University, during the whole of the current academic year. The award of the prize to Edward G. Buckland, B.A., of Great Bend, Kansas, of the Senior Class in the Law School, was announced on Commencement Day, June, 1889; with special commendation of Frederick H. Means, B.A., of Dorchester, Mass., of the Junior Class of the Divinity School.

who were sunken in ignorance and slavery like the fellah of our own times. The drawings on the monuments represent entire armies, harnessed for the transport of the stone blocks or colossi and driven along with whips. India presents the caste system where Sudra and Pariah were the slaves of the Vaisya and the Brahman. In every case, combination was controlled by power and intelligence. The possessors of capital, energy, and education were the only ones who could comprehend, and take advantage of, this law of united effort; and history bears witness that they exercised their dominion to its fullest extent.

Under the Jewish theocracy, it was impossible for this law to work out its natural results. The Mosaic law commanded a re-distribution of property every fifty years, by which the original owners or their descendants received the identical estates given to them when they settled the land. The evident intent was that Jehovah should be regarded as the actual owner of the land—the people being merely tenants, with the right of assignment for a limited term of years. This division of land into inalienable hereditary portions united all the advantages of socialism with all the advantages of individualism, at the same time preventing pauperism and an inordinate accumulation of property in the hands of one person. The exemption of all debtors in the year of Jubilee worked the same result against the massing of personal property; and the whole Mosaic code tended to discourage industrial combination. It will thus be seen that the Jews occupied a peculiar middle ground between the two extremes of ancient social conditions.

Where, on the other hand, as opposed to Egypt and India, social rank was either absent or indistinct; where intelligence was a common heritage, and a love of liberty inherent in all classes, there this law of combination was equally comprehended by all, and in Greece and Rome appeared the first combination of labor for its own defense and its first struggle against capital.

From the history of Greece we gather many evidences of the existence of trade unions or guilds. During the time of Theseus, the Athenian, the skilled workmen of Athens were organized into a separate class of citizens, and upon those

trades which were devoted to equipping and supplying the army, special rights and privileges were conferred. "The fact that Grecian history mentions the existence of numerous trades, and that their members had special festivals, partially helps to establish the belief that guilds were in vogue in those days. The merchants celebrated the festival of Hermes; the metalworkers, và xalxea or the copper festival. This latter, Etimologos pronounces as the oldest and most esteemed of all the trades." The various expressions of the Greek vocabulary, combined with certain references in history and the well known tendency of the Greeks to form coteries and secret societies, not only help to confirm the belief that guilds existed in Greece, but lead to the supposition that the right of the guilds to maintain their organization was recognized by the State.

Although, in the developments of modern historical research, Romulus, Remus, and Numa Pompilius, along with the rest of the seven kings, have been consigned to the regions of mythology, Plutarch and many other ancient authors of equal note corroborate the statement that at or about the time when Numa was supposed to have begun his reign, there existed labor combinations or guilds which exercised a great influence in the government of Rome. Indeed, so powerful were they, that Numa is said to have immediately taken measures to define and classify the rights of each collegium with reference to its rank, its internal regulations, and its external government. According to tradition, Numa established eight of these collegia, which included the following crafts: coppersmiths, potters, pipers, goldsmiths, carpenters, dyers, shoemakers, and fullers. If we accept the tradition, we can trace the course of the collegia down to the time when authentic history begins. From the first they seem to have combined under a central organization, called the collegia opificum, which became the protecting bulwark of the various trades. Tullus Hostilius was the first to suppress the collegia opificum, but under Servius Tullius they were re-established, only to be once more suppressed by the haughty Tarquinius Superbus. Even if this tradition be rejected, it is very certain that the collegia * U. S. Consular Reports, 1885, "Trade Guilds of Europe." + Mommsen de Collegia, etc., page 31.

opificum spread rapidly over the most civilized of the Roman provinces. In due time its membership greatly increased, and with the increase came an ambition for political power especially in the domestic affairs of the country. Finally in 67 B. C., the patricians secured a senatorial decree abolishing all the guilds excepting those absolutely necessary to the State. The collegia, however, soon reappeared, flourished along with, and contended against, such capitalists as Crassus under the Consulate and Triumvirate, survived the fall of the city, and became a fixed institution among the conquerors.

Thus the guilds of Medieval Europe find their origin in traditional Rome. Transplanted to the northern and western countries, they found a fertile soil where they took fresh root and grew with renewed vigor. Wandering westward into France they founded and settled Paris; northward, they early made their appearance in Magdeburg, Utrecht, and Liége. Those which remained in Italy or on the shores of the Mediterranean became rich and powerful, bringing commerce to a high state of prosperity; and, in the "Consolato del Mare," established the first international code of admiralty judicature. And so we find that whatever enterprise there was in the Dark Ages was supported by trade combinations, organized originally for self-protection, but apparently monopolizing the energy of that period.

In England, a different order of events produced a different condition of society. There is some ground for believing that a kind of guild existed under the Saxons; but if so, their continual warfare with the Celts and Danes must have prevented anything like a solid working organization. At all events, the advent of the Normans effectually broke up whatever existing order there was and transformed the Saxon kingdom of Harold into the feudal empire of William.

The feudal system crushed the life out of every form of independent labor combination and created industrial conditions so despotic, that under people less stubborn and more servile than the Celt and Saxon, England would have become a second Egypt.

It was not until the beginning of the decline of feudalism that the guilds again came into prominence. When the vassal

had prospered under his lord, and when the latter was hard pressed for funds with which to besiege Jerusalem, fight France, or rebel against a king, an exchange was effected whereby the lord received the vassal's money and the vassal received his own and his descendants' perpetual exemption from feudal service. Then as before, when the laborer's inherent nature was untrammelled by artificial restraints, the result was combination and consolidation. No sooner had the vassal purchased his liberty, than he joined with other freedmen in establishing a trade. Similar trades finally joined forces, and again the guilds arose, flourished, and exerted even a greater influence than in Rome. Entire cities came under their control; they supplied armies, purchased immunities for themselves, and in more than one instance even dared to resist the encroachments of the sovereign himself. Finally the the former vassals became as important in the government as their former masters, and were, in fact, the chief means of developing the resources of England. As Froude says in the beginning of his history: "For a long time after the Restoration, the guilds were still an important element in the city of London. The wealthy bankers, merchants, and shipowners, who traded in the city, had houses there and belonged to the companies." And thus feudalism, that stupendous combination of courage, wealth, and aristocracy, at last fell, and its decline witnessed the success of the very class which it sought to dominate. The vassal rose to power despite the lord, because while the latter, through his own extravagance, was forced to barter away the monopolistic feature which was the keystone of feudalism, the former, profiting by combination, established himself in the guild.

The growth of England's industrial institutions also developed monopolies, the right to grant which had, from the first, resided solely in the sovereign. As the commerce of England increased and spread, the men who had risen to wealth and position through the trades saw in this prerogative of the king a valuable ally to their own enrichment. Adopting their former tactics, another exchange ensued; this time with the king himself, who filled his ever empty treasury with their money, giving in return the exclusive privilege