ABSTRACT
The technical conditions which contribute to make the guild-organized crafts into 'closed groups', organized on the lines of more or less intensive co-operation, are absent in the industries which are carried out as 'free professions'. The individual crafts present a vaguely defined and ever fluid group which recruits itself from every stratum of Nupe society, the peasant class as well as the 'intelligentsia', slaves and clients as well as members of the nobility. Mat-weavers work with their hands, straw-hat makers use a block of clay or wood over which they shape the crown of the head, a tool which they can easily make themselves. Weavers have to purchase looms and thus to invest a certain capital in tools; but specialized skill and training under experienced masters represent as much a 'working capital' as does loom or money. In machine-tailoring the money capital represents the only investment of the craftsman; training and special skill are negligible factors.
