ABSTRACT
Growth of Industry.—Industry is the term collectively applied to the processes which adapt raw materials to man’s use. The transformation of wheat into bread, of wool into clothing, of skins into leather, of iron into tools, are typical industrial operations. But by convention the expression is extended to cover the extraction from the earth of certain important minerals like coal, iron and other metals. At the earliest stage, there were no specialized industrial employments. The primitive agriculturist was his own manufacturer, baking his own bread, brewing his own beer, weaving his wool into cloth and shaping the rough garments he wore. This is sometimes described as the stage of household industry, or the family system It passed away with the rise of a class of specialized craftsmen. The history of this development is wrapped in almost as much obscurity as the evolution of the merchant class, but there is reason to believe that the earliest professional artisans were serfs on the estates of great feudal landowners. The steps by which these servile craftsmen won their freedom and came to form an important element in the population of the new towns cannot be traced with precision, but the stage which the process had reached by the twelfth century is perfectly clear. By that time there were numerous bodies of craftsmen all over Europe, concentrated mainly in towns, socially inferior to the merchant class, but possessing in their gilds important organs for the defence of their interests. The industry practised by these medieval artisans was on a small scale and for a limited, local market. The master-craftsman worked in his small workshop with the simplest tools, assisted only by a few journeymen and apprentices. His customers were drawn from his own town or its immediate neighbourhood, and he sold his goods direct to them. There was no intermediary between producer and consumer, nor was there any social gulf such as exists to-day between employers and workmen. Capital played an insignificant part in production; the expense of establishing an independent business was small; and every journeyman passed naturally into the ranks of the master class. Apprentices, journeymen and masters all belonged to the same social grade; they differed only in being at different stages of their career.
