ABSTRACT
Transformation of the craft organization along three lines, amalgamation of kindred crafts, differentiation of classes in a craft and absorption of crafts by trading organizations. One of the best examples of a group of crafts so bound together as to favour the growth of economic dependence in their relation to one another, is to be found in the industries concerned in the preparation and manipulation of leather. Many records of similar disputes in other French towns illustrate the general tendency within the cloth manufacture towards differentiation into separately organized handicrafts. The amalgamation of kindred crafts are naturally to be found in connexion with the largest and most widespread of the industries, that of cloth-making; though these, are rendered less complete by the withdrawal of the weavers into the country districts. The organizations which had arisen to represent the purely trading class absorbed in many cases the organizations of the handicrafts over which they had acquired an economic control.
