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 wageearner,
 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lo say that the domestic system existed from the earliest times till it was superseded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 seventeenth
 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.