ABSTRACT
The gild franchises of the merchants and manufacturers gave to them a “collective lordship” similar to the private lordship of the barons, for their gilds were erected into governments with their popular assemblies, their legislatures, their courts, their executives, and even with authority to enforce fines and imprisonment of violators of their rules. The abolition of the legal power of the gilds required the courts both to take over the rules of fair competition and to enforce the contracts which had grown out of their customs and had been enforced in their own courts. A commodity ticket is good at a warehouse, a factory, a farm, because it is simply a title of ownership, a bill of lading, a warehouse receipt, a claim to a seat or standing room in a theater or street car, which calls for a given quantity of commodity or service.
