CHAPTER VIII

INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE INDUSTRY

The workers in the industry were divided into four clearly defined classes, namely apprentices, laborers, journeymen, and masters. In this, as in most respects in this volume, the study is based largely on conditions prevailing in France for the reason that we have much more abundant material from French sources than elsewhere. The conditions in France, however, were probably substantially the same as those which existed elsewhere, so that by studying conditions in France we get a very fair idea of those which generally prevailed at this period.

_Apprentices_

The apprentices, as now, were the boys and young men learning the industry under an apprenticeship agreement. The age of apprentices varied considerably. They were not often received under seventeen or above twenty-four. Perhaps the majority of them were received at the age of nineteen or twenty.

The printer’s apprentice was probably a little older as a rule than the apprentice in other industries because he had to have a much more extensive previous education. It was not only necessary that he should be well versed in his own language and in the essentials of ordinary education, but it was necessary that he should also be able to read and write both Latin and Greek. While it is true that after a few years many books were printed in the native tongue of the printers, it must not be forgotten that the printing of this period was almost entirely book printing and to a very great extent the printing of books of what we should call today religion and serious literature. Latin was the universal language of the Catholic Church as it is today. It was also the language of learned men everywhere. No scholar thought of writing a serious work in English, French, or German. He might translate one into the vernacular or he might, especially after the beginning of the religious controversies, write a controversial book in his native language, but for the most part serious writing was done in Latin. There was a considerable amount of printing of Greek classics in the original, although there was not much use of Greek for original composition. Under these circumstances it is clear that the knowledge of these tongues was very important. The enforcement, however, of the strict requirements of this period was a cause of many disputes in the industry. The employers then as now were ready to hire cheap help for cheap jobs, and they were given to taking on apprentices far beyond the requirements of recruiting the industry because they could get a good deal of work out of them which otherwise must be given to higher priced men. In many cases they were willing to take on apprentices who did not understand Greek or even Latin. The result was injury to the industry itself and to the interests of the workmen, as is always the case when employers take on improperly trained apprentices who are incapable of development into the highest efficiency. We shall meet these half-trained apprentices a little later.

Further requirements were that the apprentice should be of good life and manners and that he should be a Catholic and a native of France and unmarried.

An apprenticeship agreement was a formal contract. Originally this was a verbal contract only, a sort of “gentlemen’s agreement.” After the reorganization of 1618 it was a written contract drawn up by a notary. The period of apprenticeship varied somewhat, especially before 1618. In general, however, it was four years. The condition of the contract was that the apprentice should pay a specified sum to the master for the privilege of learning the trade and that he should agree to serve his master with care and diligence for a period of four years and not neglect his master’s interests nor spoil his master’s goods. In return the master was bound to teach him the trade of printing so that at the end of his time he would be qualified as a journeyman. In addition the master was bound to furnish the apprentice lodging, food, clothing in specified quantity, and sometimes a very small amount of money.

The apprentice lived in the master’s house and ate either at the master’s table or at the table set for the journeymen, who also received their food from the master. If the apprentice absented himself for any reason from his work his absence must be atoned for by double time added to the period of apprenticeship. If his absences were repeated he was liable to be discharged. In this case the master was held to be the sufferer, the contract of apprenticeship was cancelled, and the entire amount paid in by the apprentice as a premium was forfeited to the master. It frequently happened that apprentices desired to be relieved of their contracts before the expiration of their time. Sometimes it happened that they changed their minds about becoming printers, more often, probably, they sought short cuts into the industry. It has always been the misfortune of printing that a very imperfect knowledge of it has a comparatively higher market value than an equally imperfect knowledge of other industries, while the period of apprenticeship required for full learning of the trade is long and wearisome. The apprentices were often tempted by offers of occupation as laborers or even as journeymen in some of the poorer shops which were willing to evade regulations. The habit of canceling indentures before their expiration for a money consideration thus grew up to the serious detriment of the industry.

The printers made profit by taking the premium from the apprentice and then selling him his freedom before his indenture had expired. The injury to the industry and to the well-trained workman of this competition of half-trained, incompetent workmen is perfectly clear.

The masters, of course, complained that the apprentices were idle, wasteful, and unteachable, and probably some of them were. Boys and young men were good, bad, and indifferent in the Middle Ages just as they are now. The apprentices complained on the other hand that they were overworked, underfed, and personally abused in many instances. Doubtless these complaints were often well founded because grownup men were good, bad, and indifferent in the Middle Ages very much as they are now.

At best the work of the apprentice was very hard. Living as he did in the master’s house and working in the shop as a beginner, he was a cross between a domestic servant, an errand boy, and a learner in the industry. The master’s wife might call upon him to wash the kitchen floor. The foreman might send him out with a package of proofs. The workmen might send him out for a bottle of wine or a pot of beer, or he might be set to work on one of the legitimate tasks of his apprenticeship only to be called away at almost any time by some such personal demand as those just indicated. His hours, like those of everybody else in the trade, were very long. He was expected to keep the shop clean and in order, to clean the type and the presses, to mix ink, to dampen paper, and if he were strong and well grown he might even be put to working on the press. These and a thousand other things, many of them unknown to modern shops, were required of him besides the work at the case and elsewhere which gave him his real knowledge of the trade.

The question of the number of apprentices was a burning one. Previous to 1618 it was one of the great causes of strikes and labor disputes. The masters at that time desired to increase the number of apprentices indefinitely, to which the journeymen objected on account of the injury to their interests by having too many workmen, especially cheap ones. The journeymen succeeded in securing a royal edict which limited the number of apprentices to be employed in any establishment to two for each press, one on composition and the other on presswork. The shop conditions which have been already described show that this taking of the press as a unit was fairly equitable. In the absence of machine work both composition and presswork were slow, and had a more nearly equal rate of speed than now. After 1618 the masters attempted to enforce the limitation of apprentices as against each other. They feared the competition of the man who succeeded in getting into his shop a supply of cheap help which enabled him to cut prices, consequently the journeymen no longer appear as parties to this dispute.

During the whole period there were complaints that the apprenticeship regulations were not enforced and that some of the masters insisted upon taking more than the proper number of apprentices and taking them with less than the proper qualifications. This seems to have been a very real difficulty and one which was never entirely overcome. The temptation to obtain cheap labor, regardless of the welfare of either the apprentice or the industry, was too great, and many printers found it impossible to resist it, especially as during the latter part of this period the conditions in the industry became very bad and it was almost impossible to make any money at it.

Throughout this period, especially after 1618, all regulations as to apprenticeship were relaxed in favor of the sons of masters and other persons whom the masters desired particularly to favor. One of the most significant and far-reaching of the regulations of the printing trade was that which admitted the sons of masters directly to membership without any previous training. We shall discuss this a little more fully later.

_Laborers_

The class of workmen called laborers constituted a source of one of the greatest difficulties and abuses in the industry, especially during the seventeenth century.

At this period there were no restrictions on their employment, or at least none that were successfully enforced. After that period they were less freely employed. They were ignorant or unskilled workmen incapable of becoming journeymen. It was into this class that the apprentices dropped who were employed without sufficient previous education, more especially those who were ignorant in Greek and Latin. The class was further made up of apprentices who had not finished their time, workmen who proved incompetent to hold journeymen’s positions, and men who could do rough work but had never been apprentices. Obviously there was a good deal of work which these men could do. Part of it was work which would otherwise be done by apprentices, part work which would otherwise be done by journeymen. The unrestricted hiring of these men limited the number of journeymen’s positions, reduced wages, lowered standards, and was in every way detrimental to the industry.

_Journeymen_

In the printing industry the journeyman was not the same as the master. In other industries after the apprentice had finished his time and qualified by submitting a piece of work of approved standard, he became a master workman. He was made free of the guild and ordinarily set up in business for himself. Theoretically a somewhat similar condition prevailed in the printing trade. Before the reorganization of 1618 and the consequent restriction of mastership the apprentice became a master workman when he had completed his time, and was at liberty to set up for himself if he so desired.

After the reorganization the apprentice after having finished his time became a journeyman in the shop to which he had been apprenticed. Originally he was restricted to that shop. He was then required to serve as a journeyman from two to four years. At the expiration of that period he passed a theoretical and practical examination. This covered his proficiency in the languages and other academic subjects required and the submission of a piece of completed work. He was also obliged to submit a certificate of character covering the requirements of apprenticeship and testifying as to his conduct while an apprentice.

The question of his admission to the Community was then voted upon by the syndics, and if he was found qualified and admitted he was formally received into the Community at a public meeting at which were present the syndics and the elders of the Community. He was then sworn in as a member of the Community by the Lieutenant-General of Police. Before being sworn in, however, he was required to pay certain fees. Originally these fees were small, but they afterward became very large.

As a matter of fact, very few journeymen became masters. The heavy fees in themselves were almost prohibitive, but the greatest obstacle was the difficulty about raising the necessary capital. No other business at that time required so heavy an outlay for equipment, material, and labor before any return whatever could be realized. The equipment was very expensive and there were no small jobs such as are found in modern commercial offices, especially those of the less pretentious type, to keep the plant going. The printer was obliged to go to the entire expense for material and labor involved in getting out an edition of a book before he could begin to get any returns from it. Sometimes he knew where he could sell the book (Caxton seems to have been particularly successful in this regard), but more often he did not know. There is in existence a letter written by Sweynheym and Pannartz to the Pope asking him for assistance. They set forth their case by saying that they have sunk a great deal of money in procuring equipment and printing books which have sold slowly. They complain that they have a large house full of books but with nothing in it to eat, and beg that he will either assist them in the sale of their books or tide them over until they can find a market.

These conditions tended to keep the journeymen permanently in that position and to confine the masters to those who came into the business by inheritance or marriage. The printing industry has thus the unfortunate prominence of being the leading influence in breaking up the old unities of industry and bringing about the modern industrial system. It was the first industry in which there was developed a distinct class of masters who were not and never had been workmen, and in which the workman could become a master only under unusual circumstances. The sharp division of industry into employers and employed with antagonistic interests and divergent aims begins here.

The hours of labor in the printing industry were very long. Throughout France they averaged about fourteen hours a day, and similar conditions appear to have prevailed elsewhere. As already indicated, a certain amount of product, particularly on the press, was considered to be a fair day’s work. In 1572 the 3350 sheets per day required of a pressman at Lyons compelled him to work from two o’clock in the morning to eight or nine in the evening without leaving the shop. This appears from evidence submitted in litigation. Printers were boarded and generally lodged by their employers. Plantin’s establishment, still in existence in Amsterdam, shows living quarters for all of the workmen who were employed in the plant. They were given their meals in the shop and were permitted to send the apprentices out for wine or beer, which they drank in considerable quantities. The men themselves objected to going out for their food, although they often complained of the quality of that furnished. Their objection was based upon the fact that they so depended upon each other for their work that if men went out, especially if they overstayed their time, they would be likely to hold up each other’s work and make it impossible to complete the required task of the day even in the very liberal time allowance which was then regarded as reasonable.

It is not to be wondered at that the long hours, close confinement, and hard work encouraged the drinking habits which were proverbial among printers. The natural result of so much drinking was a good deal of disorder and violence, especially on holidays. There is no reason to suppose, however, that printers as a class were worse than other workmen of their day and generation. They were much superior in education and they were recognized as being of higher social condition. They were exempt from many of the legal requirements upon journeymen in other trades, and their industry was more than once recognized by royal edict as being an art or profession and not a mechanical trade. The printers were very proud of this social distinction and, as has been already stated, emphasized their claim to it by wearing swords, which in those days was the mark of the gentleman or professional man.

The hard work and long hours had two compensations; one partial, the other very real. The first, which printing shared with other industries, was the great number of holidays. The shops did not work on Sundays or feast days. Under modern conditions there are slightly more than 300 working days in the year, taking out Sundays and holidays and making no allowance for illness or voluntary absence. In the period with which we are dealing there were only from 230 to 240 working days in the year; that is to say, there were 60 or 70 more holidays than we now have. Probably shorter hours and more days of work would have been better for all concerned. The other compensation was the very high rate of wages. To state the printer’s wages of that time in terms of money would carry very little information, partly because of the difference in coinage and partly because of the difference in the purchasing power of money. The really enlightening fact is that the wages of a printer were from two to three times those of journeymen in the other skilled trades. Actual wages were fixed by the operation of the law of supply and demand and by the skill of the individual workman. There was what we should call today a “scale” fixed either by custom or by law. The scale, however, instead of being a minimum, as now, was a maximum, the variations being below instead of above it.

Unfortunately there was a great deal of unemployment, owing to the prevalence of a form of work which will be presently described. This unemployment was not only a serious evil in itself, but it led to competition among workmen, who were often willing to work for less than the going rate rather than to go idle. Another tendency toward the lowering of wages was the competition in the book trade caused by literary piracy and the work of printers from the smaller towns or even outside countries who could do work cheaper than it could be done in the larger cities. For example, in the absence of copyright a printer might go to the expense of getting out an edition of an important work only to have a rival buy one of his copies and throw into the market an edition at a price based on the cost of manufacture only, while it is obvious that even if the competition were based on the cost of manufacture the printer from Lyons could undersell the printer from Paris because his presses turned out 700 more sheets a day, an advantage of 25 per cent.

All this competition had a tendency to reduce selling prices and to drive down the workman’s pay. It was for these reasons that the employers were so anxious to use laborers instead of journeymen, and apprentices instead of either. All these depressing tendencies had full sway under the curiously inverted scale system which made the scale a maximum instead of a minimum.

Journeymen were divided into two classes, day workers and piece workers. The day worker was engaged under an annual contract which covered his salary, his board, and usually his lodging. In the printing trade these contracts were written after 1618. In the other industries they were not written, although verbal contracts were common to all industries.

In some cases these bargains were collective; that is to say, they were made between the Community and the journeymen’s organization soon to be described. Wherever possible, however, the masters prevented the organization of the journeymen and compelled the men to resort to individual bargaining.

The piece workers were men who were engaged for some particular contract or job which the master had in hand. Whenever an important piece of work was undertaken a number of extra men, depending upon the equipment and the time in which it was desired to do the job, were employed. Day workers and men employed for another job were supposed not to be put on and no additional men were to be employed for it, unless some of the original group dropped out. The men were supposed to know how long the job would last and were supposed not to be discharged without eight days’ notice. These men were paid by the day and were fed and sometimes lodged like the day workmen.

The workmen constantly complained that in practice they were greatly abused under this system. They claimed that they were discharged without notice, that day men were put to work on their jobs, and that additional men were hired, shortening the period of their occupation. This manipulation of the job was a frequent device of the masters in order to finish a piece of work before a holiday, especially when a Sunday and a holiday and even two holidays came together, as was not infrequently the case with the great number of holidays then observed. By hurrying up the job and finishing it before the holiday the master could avoid feeding the men over the holiday. Under ordinary circumstances he was supposed to feed his men, whether day workers or piece workers, throughout the period of their employment, whether or not he paid them on holidays. The result of this system was that a very large proportion, probably a large majority, of the printers had no regular employment, working only at such job work as they could from time to time pick up.

The journeymen were graded as first- and second-class workmen and foremen. The first-class workman was a sort of assistant foreman. He was employed upon the more difficult work or aided the foreman in the discharge of his duties. The second-class was the ordinary workman, comparable today to a man who would be earning the union scale with very little prospect of ever getting any more.

The two departments of composition and presswork were recognized then as now. Just as at present, there was keen rivalry between compositors and pressmen, each claiming that his was the superior art and required the greater skill.

In the composing room there were three subdivisions—compositors, stone-hands and make-up men, and distributors. These last appear to have been employed on that particular work exclusively. There were no divisions in the press room. As has been pointed out, two men were employed on the press, one on the ink balls and the other on the lever, but these were not separate occupations as the two men exchanged positions every hour.

The foreman was a man capable of oversight of all processes carried on in the plant. The foremanship was not divided as it now is between the foreman of the composing room and the foreman of the press room. These functions were discharged by first-class workmen under the supervision of the foreman. The foreman was also a proofreader, at least in part. He corrected the first proofs although they were afterwards corrected by the author and sometimes by the master or an editor in his employ. It was necessary, therefore, that the foreman should be not only a first-class workman but an accomplished scholar. He had to be thoroughly versed in his own language and highly trained in Latin and Greek or any other language in which books were printed in the plant. He was obliged also to be thoroughly familiar with theological, philosophical, or scientific terms, or any other special terms required for any particular kind of printing which the plant undertook.

When the workman became too old and infirm to hold his place or his eyesight failed there were several sources of at least partial support open to him if his family was not in a condition to support him. Some of these old workmen were licensed by the syndics of the Community to peddle tracts, almanacs, broadside sheets of ballads and notices, and other things which might be called the small wares of the printing trade. Some of them did a sort of junk business in old paper and parchments. In some places there were asylums for aged printers where a few found entrance. Others became pensioners on the Community. The Community in France and similar organizations elsewhere appear to have had funds especially for this purpose and to have used some of their current funds for charity. Other old men were allowed to make the rounds of the shops, particularly those in which they had been employed, taking a few coppers from their younger and more fortunate fellow workmen. There seems to have been a sort of comradeship among the printers which made these old fellows welcome as they made their periodical rounds for help.

_The Master_

The master has perhaps been sufficiently described as we went along. He was the capitalist who carried on the business. In the great days of Jenson and Aldus and the Estiennes he was often, himself, his own foreman and best journeyman. We have seen, however, how he gradually came to be in many cases a business man with little or no practical knowledge of the business.

In the early days of printing the masters seem to have been more prosperous than they were later. Godart and Merlin, of Paris, in 1538 employed 200 men. Such printers as these were rich and prosperous and held in high esteem by their fellow citizens. We have seen, however, that some of the greatest of the printers were constantly struggling with financial difficulties. The reorganization of 1618 did not seem to have the effect upon the prosperity of the masters which might have been expected. As we have seen, there was a cut-throat competition and even after the reorganization of the Community and the restrictions of mastership governmental control had a tendency to grow more and more burdensome while the market for their wares increased but slowly. It is said that in 1700 there were not two printers in Paris who were worth 25,000 francs or $5000. In 1700, $5000 was worth two or three times that amount now, but even so the fact stated shows the prostration of the industry.