Die Schweiz

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 898818206

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-24712

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Flückiger, Otto

Title:: Die Schweiz

Place of publication:: Zürich

Publisher:: Druck und Verlag von Schultheß & Co

Year of publication:: 1911

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (II, 265 Seiten, IV Blatt)

Digitisation:: 2017

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Verkehrswege

Collection:: Economics Books

THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE ON INDUSTRY 497 gradually and almost imperceptibly. The change from one A-D. 1689 type of organisation to another does not necessarily involve any revolution that is apparent to the eye. The wage- earner, who is employed by a capitalist, may pursue his The vgn: ; occupation in the same sort of cottage and with the same industry on implements as those that are used by independent workmen. Hp The distinguishing feature of the capitalist, as contrasted be effected with the domestic, system lies in the fact, that under the ad former scheme, employers or undertakers own the materials? eh and pay the wages, whereas in the domestic system? the workman is his own master; he owns the materials on which he works and sells the product of his labour. But there need be no external mark that calls attention to an alteration in the economic status of the craftsman; indeed the same weaver might work for some weeks for an employer and at other times on his own account® On this account it is exceedingly difficult to follow out the course of the change. We can occasionally get definite and precise information on she point, but on the whole we are only able to infer the progress of capitalism from incidental occurrences. The tut traces nature of the difficulties and disputes, which arise in a trade, a ute may serve to show whether the labourers were wage-earners puis or not; and the character of the associations which existed of enae among them, may often give us a suggestion as to the con and trade dition of the workmen at some date®. It is, for the most disputes. | The employers sometimes owned the looms, as well, 2 and 3 P. and M. ec. 11. 2 This term is used in the sense in which it was current in Yorkshire at the peginning of the nineteenth century (Reports, 1806, m1. 1038, printed pag. 444). Mr Unwin (Industrial Organisation, p. 4), defines the terms quite differently, and »pposes the gild to the domestic system, as separate and successive phases of levelopment, but this does not seem to me to apply in English history. I prefer lo say that the domestic system existed from the earliest times till it was superseded >y capitalism; the craft gilds were a form of industrial organisation which was appropriate to the domestic, rather than to the capitalist system; and that these gilds were convenient instruments for enforcing civic, as contrasted with national policy. 8 The analogy with the agricultural change is noticeable; the yeoman farmer might often be employed as a labourer to work for a neighbour in return for wages. ¢ The true craft gild was appropriate to the domestic system, but some of the mediaeval London companies were capitalist in character and so were the seven- teenth century companies, generally speaking. Trade Unions, as associations of wage-earners, testify by their existence to the severance of classes; the inference to be drawn from the formation of yeoman gilds is doubtful. See vol. 1. p. 443. 5 Even in a great trade centre like London, the cloth-workers continued to be an association of domestic workers in the first half of the seventeenth century.

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