CHAPTER IGOVERNMENTAL REGULATIONS
We turn now to a study of the printing industry in some aspects concerning the industry as a whole, rather than the life and work of the great printers. A very large part of what follows will be found to deal with conditions in France. This happens because the study has been far better worked out for France than for any other country. While much incidental information is to be obtained from other histories, Mellotté’sHistoire Economique de l’Imprimeriestands alone as a study of the printing industry from this point of view. Unfortunately it concerns only France and ends with the French Revolution of 1789. Conditions in France, however, were not greatly different from those existing elsewhere and for that reason the study which follows, based largely on Mellotté’s work, will give a fairly accurate idea of the condition of the industry in general. It is to be regretted that Mellotté’s book has not been translated into the English as it is a mine of information of great interest and value to all students of the industry.
The history of the printing industry is hardly intelligible unless one begins with a general understanding of the industries of the Middle Ages and the organization of those who were engaged in them. When Gutenberg practiced printing there was no such thing in the world as a factory. Perhaps the nearest approach to one might be found in some royal arsenal, shipyard, or mint where certain industries were carried on on a large scale. The day of invention had not yet dawned. Machinery, except of the most primitive types, did not exist. Consequently, industrial and social conditions were different in every respect from those which now prevail.
The work of the Middle Ages was hand-work carried on by a small group of workmen living in the household of the master; in other words it was what we call today household industry. Very often there was no one engaged in the work except the master and his family. Sometimes he had an apprentice or two. Master workmen usually employed as many apprentices as they could use. The apprentices paid for the privilege of learning the trade. As we shall see presently, the knowledge of a trade and admission to the ranks of the master workmen was a privilege very well worth paying for.
The apprenticeship indenture or agreement was a contract covering a certain number of years, usually seven. During this period the apprentice was obliged to work for the master to the best of his ability, to be careful of the master’s goods, and to be subject in every way to his personal control, a control which extended to the infliction of corporal punishment if the apprentice were idle or disobedient.
The master was bound to teach the apprentice his trade so that if the apprentice used due diligence he might at the end of his agreement qualify as a journeyman. He was obliged to furnish him board and lodging in his own (the master’s) home, to keep him decently clothed and, especially toward the end of the period, to give him a small wage for pocket money. We shall look a little closer at this matter of apprenticeship in a later chapter.
The masters themselves were organized into guilds. These guilds were a combination of what we now know as trade unions and employers’ associations. Everybody connected with the trade in a regular and legal manner belonged to the guild. In some cases the master workman became so prosperous that he employed a considerable number of other master workmen and devoted his time to superintendence, but whether he were in this way an ancestor of a modern captain of industry or were at the other end of the scale, anapprentice just under indenture, he was recognized as part and parcel of the trade guild. If he were not free of the guild he was not permitted to work at the industry excepting as an employee. As we shall see, there grew up in this way an intermediate class of hired workmen who were neither apprentices nor masters.
The guilds acted very honestly and conscientiously in the interests of both the public and the trade. While they monopolized the industry, restricted the number of persons engaged in it, and permitted no outside competition, they guaranteed the quality of workmanship and product. A guild member putting inferior goods upon the market or in any way detracting from the workmanlike standards of the guild was liable to severe penalties, and as a rule these penalties were conscientiously inflicted.[1]
1. A more detailed account of the guilds will be found in Chapter V.
1. A more detailed account of the guilds will be found in Chapter V.
The introduction of printing raised new questions. Printing did not fit into this scheme of things for several reasons. As a newly discovered art it did not properly belong to any of the known industries, which had gradually become consolidated into strong guilds. The printers, therefore, found themselves outside the recognized trade law.
They were, therefore, taken in hand by the authorities until such time as their own trade organization developed. Not only was the printing trade outside the guild organizations, but it was different from them in several important principles. In the first place, it was from the beginning a machine occupation; in the second place, it involved division of labor; and in the third place, it dealt with a product entirely different from that of the other craftsmen. The dawn of the printing industry was the dawn of an age of machinery in production. The product of the printing press was not simply an article of consumption. There is no comparison between a piece of cloth or a pair of shoes and a book. The book is a source of information andenlightenment, or the reverse. It may stir men to the ecstasies of devotion or incite them to rebellion or unsettle the foundations of their religious faith. It may serve the highest interests of mankind or it may be in the last degree dangerous to the church, the state, and the individual.
Obviously, to the fifteenth century mind everything called for the regulation of the industry. The fifteenth century, like those which immediately preceded it, was an age of regulation. The idea of the freedom of commerce and industry, so dear to the modern political economist, had not yet been conceived. All industry was subject to the most minute regulations partly imposed by the state and partly imposed by the guild. All the concerns of human life were subject to regulation, including even what people in different ranks of life should eat, drink, and wear. As there was no trade organization to regulate printing, of course it became immediately the subject of governmental interest.
Scarcely had the art of printing appeared when the governmental rights of regulation were invoked to destroy it, fortunately without success. Most important inventions deprive certain workmen of their occupation. The invention of printing was no exception. It necessarily meant the economic ruin of the copyists and threatened the illuminators. By the middle of the fifteenth century the copying of books had to a considerable extent come out of the monasteries and become a regular occupation. In 1472 there were in France ten thousand of these copyists, to say nothing of the illuminators. These copyists were organized into guilds with charter rights and a definite legal position. Seeing their livelihood threatened, they attempted in every way to prevent the introduction of printing. They invoked their charter rights and attempted to protect themselves thereby against the invasion of their field by the printer. Not only that, but they were probably back of the popular clamor which raised the accusation of witchcraft against Fustand drove him out of Paris in 1465. Their opposition, however, was unsuccessful. A few of them retained their work. For a long time the manuscript book retained the esteem which is so often felt for hand work as compared with machine work. Long after the invention of printing there were many eminent collectors of books who would not have a printed book in their libraries. To this day there are a few people who live by engrossing and illuminating, although not generally by the copying of books.
An admirable illustration of the beauties and disadvantages of this kind of work may be found in the Congressional Library at Washington. There is there displayed in a series of frames a very wonderful engrossed and illuminated copy of the Constitution of the United States. The text is beautifully engrossed and the illuminated borders and the illustrations are in the finest style of modern art. At first sight it is a wonderful piece of work, but it requires but a slight examination to see that the text is full of errors. Words are omitted and misspelled so that the whole thing is practically worthless so far as its content is concerned.
A few of the copyists became printers. Probably the greater number of them lost their distinctive occupation and became absorbed in some way or other into other industries or, if they were too old for this, suffered the evils incident to permanent loss of occupation.
The illuminators at first made common cause with the copyists. Before long, however, they discovered that the copyists were making a hopeless fight and that their own occupation had a chance of surviving. They, therefore, for the most part went over to the printers and found occupation in the new industry, either directly in their old occupations as illuminators or in slightly modified form as illustrators. Many of the early books show hand-illuminated capitals and some show illuminated margins and hand-painted illustrations equal to those of the finest manuscripts. It was, however, only the more expensive books whichwere separately hand-illustrated. The field of book illustration, substantially as we know it through the medium of pictures mechanically reproduced, was soon developed and offered a large field for the exercise of artistic ability and taste.
The kings and rulers generally favored printing as a means of spreading intelligence. The fifteenth century kings, unlike some of a little later period, were believers in education and patrons of learning and the arts. They had not yet come to see that their thrones, or at least their prerogatives, might be threatened by learning, and therefore they did their best to encourage it. Among all these royal patrons of printing, Francis I of France is the most conspicuous. When he first came to the throne he was under the influence of those who were hostile to the new art and attempted to stifle it by stringent legislation. An edict of his issued in 1534 prohibits printing on pain of hanging for the offender. Exactly why King Francis took so positive a position is not clear, but fortunately he very soon changed his mind and repealed the edict. From this time forward he did everything in his power to encourage printing and printers, as we have already seen in recounting the history of the Estienne family. In 1536 he made an arrangement, the first of the kind, to have a copy of every book that was printed filed in the Royal Library. In 1538 he favored the printers by granting them an edict of exemption from service in the City Guard, a service to which residents generally were liable.
During King Francis’s reign labor troubles arose in the industry. Enough references have already been made to show that the strike is by no means a modern institution and that strikes in printing offices are pretty nearly as old as the industry. There were strikes, some of them of a rather serious nature, among the Parisian printers in the reign of King Francis. As soon, however, as it appeared that they were liable to injure the industry or interfere seriously with the work of the master printers the king suppressed them by a heavy-handeduse of the royal authority, insisting that trade disputes must not be allowed to interfere with the successful prosecution of the industry and that the journeymen must not be permitted by strikes to put a stop to the operations of their employers.
In 1585 King Henry III of France issued an edict relieving printers from the application of a general edict taxing artisans. This action was based on the ground that the work of the printer was so far superior in character to that of other mechanics that the printer was not to be regarded as a mechanic at all. He was formally recognized as being in a social class above the members of the trade guilds and almost, if not quite, in the class of gentlemen. Of course, we are speaking now in terms of the sixteenth century and not of the twentieth.
As an incident of this recognized social superiority the printer was permitted to wear a sword, a right which was denied to artisans generally. The old prints showing the interiors of print shops almost invariably show at least one of the workmen wearing a sword, or show a sword conspicuously displayed standing against a pillar or the wall. The introduction of the sword into these pictures is deliberately done to indicate the social pretensions of the printer of this period. It is worth remembering because although it involves a certain artificial social distinction which we now consider rather absurd it also involves certain principles which we should do well not to lose sight of. In those days printing was regarded as a profession rather than strictly a trade, and the printer was deeply impressed with the value and importance of his work, a value and importance which were not only claimed by him but recognized by his fellow citizens. It was very strongly felt that a man who made a book was engaged in a much more important piece of work than a man who made a pair of shoes or forged a sword. The more of this spirit of self respect, the more of this recognition of the importance of printing and the printed productwe can recover today, the better off we shall be.
From the beginning printers were troubled by typographical errors. Some of the earlier printers, like Caxton and Gehring, had their books corrected by hand after they were printed. As a rule, however, the modern practice of more or less careful proof reading preceded publication. There were constant complaints of inaccuracy, especially on the part of the cheap printers and the printers of pirated editions. The influence of the better printers and the insistent demands of the public finally brought about a reasonable degree of textual accuracy. It is interesting to note that royal regulation attempted to deal with this matter as it dealt with so many other things.
Charles IX of France issued an edict in 1592 the vital portion of which read as follows: “The said Masters shall furnish copies carefully edited, corrected, and made clear to the compositors lest through default of this their labor be hindered.” The principle underlying the edict was a good one. It is certainly in the interest of all concerned that compositors should be furnished good copy. There is unfortunately every reason to believe that the efforts of this royal champion of copy editing were not attended with very much success.
In 1618 Louis XII organized the corporation of printers which will be discussed later. Louis XIV reaffirmed the preceding edicts governing and regulating the industry, and his great minister Colbert, in 1686, issued certain new regulations. In these it was provided that every shop should have a minimum equipment of two presses well provided with type. This was probably intended to put a stop to the small shops which did poor work and were very difficult to regulate under the police regulations which will be later discussed. The number of shops in Paris was fixed by this edict at 36. Private printing—that is to say, the exercise of the industry by persons not members of the Community of Printers—was absolutely forbidden. The quality ofthe work put out was insisted upon under severe penalties in case proper standards were not maintained. The long standing disagreement between booksellers and printers was settled by a decision that booksellers could not be members of the Community of Printers, unless they were themselves printers. The bookseller, pure and simple, who was merely a dealer in books was thus barred out of the Community.
Louis XVI, the last king of the old regime, went still further in the matter of the regulation of journeymen. By his regulations every journeyman printer was obliged to register with the public authorities, to take out an identification card, and to have his domicile legally fixed and registered with the public authorities. He could not obtain employment without showing his card and could not change his residence without notifying the public authorities.
In 1789 came the Revolution which swept away all the edicts regulating printing. In this ruin royal regulation, trade organization, police supervision, and every other restraint on the trade went down together. Printing was unregulated and unlicensed. As an actual result there came a flood of printing of a very low character both mechanically and morally.
Some great houses like that of Didot stood fast by the old standards, but small printing houses flourished and the unregulated condition of the trade was in many respects most unfortunate. In the long run, however, economic laws asserted themselves as they always do. The establishment of a settled government under Napoleon and the reassertion of the old laws of libel and the like put a stop to some of the worst extravagances. At a later period, the growth and development of unions of the modern type has had its influence everywhere and the industry has at last come into its own, unhampered by artificial regulations and unrestrained by ill-advised attempts to prevent abuses which can better be dealt with by general statutes applying to all industries and by the operation of economic law.