CHAPTER IV

THE CRAFTS

There are histories of virtually every craft ever invented. Most of these histories are concerned with the technology of the craft and pay little attention to the historical context. Tools and techniques are important elements in reconstructing the history of a craft, as I shall demonstrate in this chapter, but more is needed. Only a handful of crafts have received the attention of historians seeking to set forth how the craft fit into the society and economy around it.<s1>s The handful of histories that do stress the historical context, on the other hand, sometimes pass over the practical aspects of a craft with too light a hand. These dwell on regulations and economic records and literary evidence at the expense of discussing the physical and capital requirements of production. The present chapter strikes a balance between these two genres by showing how tool and shop affected, and were in turn affected by, the social and economic milieu. The emphasis throughout is on the pragmatic and tangible, with the aim of demonstrating how the internal and the external sides of the craft influenced each other to produce the historical reality.

When one conjures a mental image of a medieval craftsman at work, that of a shoemaker at his bench is probably one of the most common and familiar. When Jobst Amman, a sixteenth century engraver who illustrated a famous book on occupations, sought to depict the craft, he chose to show precisely this scene.<s2>s Shoemaking is a ancient craft and is, in fact, one of the oldest incorporated trades on record.<s3>s The maker of shoes, however, had another function, which was equally if not more important to his economic survival. The shoes, once made, had to be sold, and in this the manufacturer became a retailer. There were three types of manufacturers in Augsburg: those who, like the weavers, sold their product to merchants who then sold either to retailers or directly to the consumer; those who, like the joiners, manufactured only on demand; and those who made their product and stockpiled it, hoping to sell to the general public. The shoemakers fell into both the latter two categories. Some shoemakers had a large and wealthy ciientele, who came to the shoemaker's shop and requested specific items, which the shoemaker then made. Other shoemakers made their shoes then sold them in the open market to the general public. Only in a city could this second type of enterprise be supported. Thirty thousand people was too large a market to operate using direct personal relations between maker and buyer,; furthermore, the range of wealth was such that there were many who could afford only the plainest of shoes and could purchase them only at rare intervals. In either case, the shoemaker became a retailer as well as a manufacturer, and it was this element that set him apart from artisans like the weavers. The shoemaker was in direct contact with the consumer, while the weaver was several steps removed from the consumer.<s4>s Put another way, the shoemakers were at the end of a long vertical chain that began with the cattle rancher, progressed through the butcher and the tanner or tawer, and terminated with the shoemaker (among other leather industries). The weaver was not at the end, but toward the middle of the producing and selling process.

While it may seem pedantic to point out that shoemakers made shoes, it is a necessary preliminary, for they did not merely make shoes, they made new shoes. This was the earliest distinction made in the craft: the Schuhmacher and the Schuhflicker were distinctly separate craftsmen.<s5>s Lines were carefully and explicitly drawn between the shoemaker and the cobbler in Augsburg, as well as in most other cities. The cobbler was allowed to work only with used leather, while the shoemaker worked only with new leather. The cobbler also took care of shoe repair. Shoemakers made other items of leather as well; most notably, wine sacks.<s6>s Another specialist was the cordwainer. The term is derived from''cordovan'', which is in turn derived from Cordoba, the Spanish city with which the leather was long associated.<s7>s Cordovan is a fine calf leather that was very expensive. The expense and fine style associated with the leather and the finished shoe often required a market area larger than a single city, and cordwainers in some places became shoe merchants in much the same way that some weavers became cloth merchants. The term ''cordwainer'' does not appear in seventeenth century Augsburg, so presumably those who worked in cordovan, if any, did not form a separate entity.

The making of shoes required comparatively little skill and little capital investment. In the countryside, peasants could make their own shoes with household tools and leather from a family cow. At its most basic, shoemaking consisted of cutting the leather, sewing the pieces of the upper shoe together (called''fitting''), shaping the upper to a last (a wooden block formed approximately into a foot shape -- this was called ''lasting''), and nailing the sole to the shoe called "bottoming").<s8>s Every shoe was made the same way; a shoemaker rarely made shoes especially for the right and left foot, and such handiwork was considered extremely tricky.<s9>s The tools necessary in this process consist of a knife, an awl, needles, pincers, a variety of lasts, a hammer, and a stirrup (used in the lasting). All except the last were perfectly ordinary tools, and the last was readily fashioned from plain wood.<s10>s A shoemaker might have many awls, needles, lasts, knives and so on, to work in various leathers, but the basic tool set stayed the same. Real variety came in non-leather items. Wood was used for soles or for entire shoes. Fine cloths, such as silk and velvet, were used for the uppers of expensive shoes. Here, choice of material was the important factor, for the shoemaker was not likely to have done the embroidery or brocade work himself.

The shoemaker's shop was most often his home as well, conforming to the usual image of a craftsman's place of business. His main capital investment was little more than a bench and some tools, everything else being inventory. Illustration 1 shows a shoemaker's shop as it may have appeared in the eighteenth century. This shop was a marketplace stall, for there is virtually no stock evident. The back wall holds samples of shoes for the convenience of customers. The master, who is sizing a gentleman's foot, has at least two assistants (left) and perhaps two others (toward the back), making this an operation of notable size. Both of the obvious customers, the seated gentleman and the man standing at the back wall, are of respectable station well above the status of the shoemaker. Since no hides are visible, the shoemaker probably had a storeroom, either attached to this stall or in some other building.

The shop itself was small, its size being measured in the number of workbenches, or St@hle. In Esslingen, each shop was limited to three benches.<s11>s It is possible that a similar restriction was in place at Augsburg, though there is no surviving record of a regulation to that effect.<s12>s Besides a shop, some, perhaps most or all, shoemakers needed a stall in the city marketplace. These stalls provided a place to sell shoes to the general public. The existence of the stalls indicates that selling out of the workshop was probably limited to what in early modern America was called''bespoke work''; that is, work done to order for specific customers.<s13>s We have figures for seventeenth century Zittau, where there were thirty six stalls for shoemakers (Schuhmacherb$nke) and sixteen for leatherers (Lederb$nke) in the city market. Most stalls were valued around 400 Thaler, but some commanded as little as 315 Thaler or as much as 600 Thaler.<s14>s The shoemakers of Augsburg had their stalls in the city market, probably at prices similar to those in Zittau. The dual function of the shoemaker, as retailer and manufacturer, is reiterated here in the existence of two places of business, one for the making and the other for the selling of shoes.

The shoes made and sold included riding boots, formal shoes, house shoes, work shoes and boots, children's shoes, even elevated shoes that served as golashes when inclement weather turned the streets to mud. In addition, they made all manner of leggings, for men and women. This was a craft that was strongly influenced by the whims of fashion. While a seventeenth century artisan did not have to respond to changes in the market with the alacrity of his modern counterpart, it was entirely possible for a shoemaker to be caught unprepared by a shift in taste and thereby lose customers. The Reformation introduced an era of fairly sharp breaks with traditional styles that lasted well into the seventeenth century.

Three basic shoe styles predominated. The Renaissance had produced the Schlappschuhe or Schwabelschuhe, a soft shoe with a curled and pointed tip that could reach preposterous lengths. Renaissance courts throughout Europe adopted this style. During the Reformation this shoe occasioned sharp criticism, and there were those who declared the shoe impious.<s15>s There were, of course, those who declared nearly every item of apparel impious at one point in the Reformation or another, but the style undeniably did lose favor during the sixteenth century. The Schlappschuhe gave way to the Ochsenm$uler (also, Entenschn$bel or B$rentazen), a

shoe with a broad, rounded toe and narrow heel. By the seventeenth century, the basic dress shoe was the geschligte Schuh or Pludertracht. This was a soft shoe with slits or openings in the material, which could be silk or very fine wool.<s16>s An indication of the price range for shoes can be obtained from the following list, taken from seventeenth century Ulm:<s17>s

These prices placed a new pair of shoes beyond the reach of the habnits of the city, and thus of nearly half the population. The poor probably bought from cobblers, for it is likely that most habnits did not have the leather or the tools to make their own shoes, as the peasants did. The shoemakers made shoes for the wealthy, the middle class, and for common working men like themselves. Shoemakers almost never owned tanning vats, but went to the tanners for this service.

The market for shoes, it can be seen, encompassed the entire city, but the market for new shoes was somewhat more restricted. Some shoemakers probably had a smaller clientele and sold more expensive styles, while others probably tended to make their living from the marketplace. In any event, the fact that shoemakers supplied one of the basic needs of life accounts for the large size of their guild -- eighth largest in 1610.<s18>s Demand for shoes was inelastic; supply was relatively so, as Augsburg's meat industry was exceptionally large. Profit margins were low due to the high number of shoemakers and the presence of the cobblers. There was little room under such conditions for expansion or innovation in either technology or business methods. If the shoemakers were conservative and traditional, it was only because the market offered little opportunity for taking risks.

The most serious source of competition for a shoemaker was not the rural shoemaker or the cobbler, it was other shoemakers. There was probably little direct competition, as most guilds frowned upon the craftsman who stole a fellow-guildsman's customer, but indirect competition on prices occurred when two comparable shoes were sold at different prices. The open market and the large number of shoemakers combined to keep prices and profit margins low, keeping most shoemakers close to poverty. In addition to this, there was the very real factor of competition from rural shoemakers and city cobblers. In Augsburg the main concern in regard to rural competition centered on journeymen who did their training with village shoemakers. In an attempt to keep standards high and to prevent a tide of new masters coming in from the countryside, the guild required the journeyman's period of training be spent in cities. Rural journeymen were barred from presenting a masterpiece in the guild. Cobblers, on the other hand, were an immediate threat, for some did seek to expand into the manufacture of new shoes. This was strictly forbidden, but could not wholly be prevented, and many petitions in the archives complain of the problem. In an attempt to keep the cobbler in the second-hand shoe business, the Shoemakers Guild requested, and the city granted, an ordinance forbidding the cobbler from selling his shoes in the public market.<s19>s

Shoemaking was a respectable, though by no means prestigious, occupation. No fortunes were made here; it was not a Kunsthandwerk, producing objects of great value and beauty. The avenues by which individual shoemakers could rise in prestige were all closed. Yet the guild was of such general economic and social importance that shoemakers everywhere were of respectable station. They also had a history of political activism, possibly due simply to their large numbers.<s20>s

Shoemakers did come in for their share of criticism and social censure. Most commonly they were accused of burning the soles of shoes to stiffen them and make them appear to be strong. The shoe would soon crack, and water would pour in through the openings.<s21>s The shoemakers were even criticized by Geiler von Kaiserberg, who pointed to them as an example of those artisans who cared nothing for quality but bragged about how many shoes they could make in a day.<s22>s The shoemakers also were faulted for laziness, in part because it was they who helped popularize Blue Monday -- the custom of not working on Mondays. Modern workers, on the other hand, can thank them for helping to invent the weekend. A poem that complains about the general level of activity in the shop alludes to the custom of Blue Monday:

This complaint about low productivity may be a reflection of a demand that was higher than the supply. The figures on the number of shoemakers in Augsburg, given in Chapter VI, provide more indirect evidence for this theory.

Sylvia Thrupp once observed that a guild that could create an upper-class market with a product for which there was comparatively inelastic demand, would weather economic storms better than any other.<s24>s This was certainly the case with the shoemakers, though their market included the middle classes as well as the upper class. The number of shoemakers in Augsburg remalined stable throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, save for the period of the Thirty Years' War, and the craft recovered more quickly than most in the wake of that catastrophe. This stability was not universal. In Eschwege there were 126 shoemakers and tanners (they were both in the same guild) in 1608, while in 1769 there were only 86, even though the total number of guildsmen in all trades fell only slightly (from 489 to 442). The shoemakers' decline was due to a loss of the export business that had sustained the craft in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.<s25>s Augsburg, on the other hand, never had an export market in shoes and so her craftsmen avoided the ramifications of rapid change in the international economy.

The shoemakers of Augsburg manufactured for and sold to a strictly local market. There were enough wealthy patricians to support the full high-end market, and enough people at other levels of income to provide the demand for a full range of prices and styles. The retailing function of the shoemakers was the more significant aspect historically, because it brought the shoemakers into the public eye and official attention. Their large size made any collective action of potential importance to the city. Despite what other historians have said, the greatest problem facing shoemakers was not competition.<s26>s It will be shown in a later chapter that the most serious problem was internal, and concerned the situation of the journeymen shoemakers.

Joinery and shoemaking are the two crafts that most closely resembled one another, because in both crafts the master was engaged in making and selling. A master joiner made furniture and other objects of wood. The variety of items made, the range of necessary skills, and the prices the items could command, all were greater in joinery than in shoemaking. These practical and economic differences led to differences in form and function. More importantly, joiners also undertook construction projects on contract, and this resulted in most significant differences in the two crafts' demand for labor. Finally, certain joiners did important work for the elite of the city, which gave to the joiners a social standing higher than that enjoyed by the shoemakers.

There were five woodworking industries of significance in Augsburg: sawyers, carvers, turners, carpenters and joiners. Sawyers converted logs into planks in their sawmills and stockpiled them in lumber yards.<s27>s It was the sawyers who were the major importers of wood. Carpenters did the basic wood construction work, today called ''roughing''; i.e., framing, floors, foundations, walls. They also made rough furnitures such as workbenches and large tables. Carvers made a wide variety of items from wooden utensils to decorative work. Turners made whatever required lathe-work: chairs, tables, stools. To the joiner fell those tasks requiring his special skill -- joining two pieces of wood by means of a mortice and tenon joint. The most familiar form of this joint is the dovetail. The other technique that belonged to the joiners alone was the use of glue.<s28>s Together, joinery and gluing were applied to chests and boxes, desks, armoires, cabinets, beds, panelling, trellis-work, windows, doors, staircases, cupboards, pews, pulpits, altars, and even picture frames.<s29>s Some examples of beds and armoires are given by Illustrations 2 and 3. Joiners generally worked in hardwoods, though softwoods were used in certain cases.

The tools of a joiner mainly consisted of cutting and chopping tools.<s30>s As the name of the craft implies, joinery was the art of cutting and fitting, not of carving and shaping. Gouges and files were standard tools, as was the wooden mallet for setting joints in place. Axes, drills and knives, clamps and vises, all the familiar tools of woodworking belonged to the joiner.<s31>s The image of a joiner's shop does not spring to mind so readily as does a shoemaker's. Perhaps because joiners made works of beauty, we have many illustrations of their work but few of them at work.<s31>s Diderot's Encyclopedie has ensured that at least some representation survives (see Illustrations 4 - 6). The illustrations show that there were two distinct locations where a master joiner worked: his shop, in which furniture was made, and on a construction site, where the joiner worked on windows, doors, ceilings and the like. Illustration 4 shows an interior which may not be a shop but a construction site. In particular, the windows appear to be unfinished. Even so, the work being done is obviously furniture-making, which was the type of work done in a joiner's shop. The illustration shows that the workbench was the center of activity around the which basic tasks of joinery were performed: sawing, measuring, drilling, gouging and shaping, and gluing (the steaming pot borne by the Knecht at the lower right contains glue). The contruction site shown in Illustrations 5 and 6 show that the joiner set up workbenches on the site and brought his tools there. The fine detail work, such as the patterned work being done by the worker at the left in Illustration 5 and grooves being gouged by the two workers in the center of the same illustration, are the type of jobs that could not be done by the carpenters who built the floors, frames and ceilings.

A joiner, like a shoemaker, had to be both manufacturer and retailer, making his wares and selling them. Like the shoemaker, too, a joiner made some items for general sale in the city market, while other work was ''bespoken''. Undoubtedly some joiners specialized in construction work, others in expensive custom work and still others in lower priced goods for general sale. Undoubtedly, too, there was considerable overlap and change, even during the career of an individual master. Unlike a shoemaker, however, a joiner sometimes had jobs that were so large that they required an agreement beforehand on terms and conditions -- in short, a construction contract.

These were particularly common in the case of public or church buildings.<s32>s The demand for labor was most frequent and critical on contract jobs, which were usually large enough to require several men. The shop itself could also employ a few men in addition to the master, if the joiner's business was large. The elasticity of demand and the temporary nature of contract work, made the joiner's need for extra hands inconstant.

A journeyman joiner, like a journeyman shoemaker, often travelled to several cities in the course of his training. With so many men on the move, there developed a place, known as a Herberg, to house the journeymen during their stay. A Herberg was an establishment -- sometimes simply the house of a master, sometimes a regular inn owned by the guild -- in which lived journeymen looking for work. A guild that used a Herberg was called a geschenkte Handwerk, after the Geschenk, a gift given to a journeyman when he departed for the next town. In a geschenkte Handwerk, masters could hire only at the Herberg. If a master needed a man, he informed the Zuschickmeister, the master who operated the Herberg (literally,''placement master''), who posted a list of openings each week. No journeyman was allowed to seek work, and no master was to seek a worker, except through the Zuschickmeister. This central labor pool allowed the guild to meet the fluctuating labor demands of the craft. The Herberg also provided a home for those journeymen who did not have a long-term relationship with a master and so had no residence. A journeyman was free to live where he pleased, but there were those who were unable or unwilling to find independent quarters. To these, the master of the Herberg was Vatter, his wife was Mutter, his children were Bruder and Schwester. Likewise, a fellow journeyman was Bruder. I cannot tell if the journeymen joiners in Augsburg ever formed their own organization (a Bruderschaft).

As with the shoemaker, it is difficult to say how far down the economic scale the joiner's market extended. There is no doubt that they did work for the elite. There is a document from 1548 that can best be called an invoice. It details the work done item by item -- a prayer stool, work on windows and doors, trellis work -- with line item charges and a grand total. The work was done to prepare some rooms for the visit of Emperor Charles V. The bill is addressed to the Emperor himself.<s33>s At the other end of the scale, one presumes that the poor had little need of a joiner, and if they bought his wares it was only second-hand. Even so, a stool certainly cost little enough and could be purchased new by most anyone who did more than make ends meet. Another indication that joiners and shoemakers catered to a market of similar size is the fact that both guilds had about the same number of masters. Both served a market that consisted of about half the population of Augsburg, the other half being habnits.<s34>s

Joiners were of respectable social station, almost wholly contained within the confines of the lower middle classes. Some were highly skilled, influenced by Renaissance art and capable of works of great beauty. The wealth needed to make the transition into the patriciate, however, was never available to joiners. No matter how exquisite his armoire or ceiling might be, a joiner was still but a commoner, and the limitations of his market prohibited him from amassing the necessary wealth to overcome this. Nevertheless, some joiners did work for prestigious families and for institutions such as the cathedral or the city. The contacts formed as a result of this work afforded an opportunity, not for the joiner himself, but for his son. A sympathetic patrician could see to it that the joiner's son received an education, for example, or apprenticeship with a merchant. By such means it was possible for joiners to achieve a modicum of upward mobility.

Despite the similarities between joinery and shoemaking, there was one difference of fundamental importance: demand for joined work was far more elastic than demand for shoes. The situation was most pronounced in the area of construction, an industry tied both to population and to general economic trends, but it existed in the furniture trade as well. Joiners in the 1610's were enjoying the last era of extensive building that Augsburg would know for generations. A century and a half of population growth was about to come to an end. The Thirty Years' War would leave over two thousand dwellings empty.<s35>s The collapse of the mining and weaving industries in Augsburg was well under way, and would send the wealth of the city plummeting.<s36>s Whereas the shoemakers soon replenished their numbers after the devastations of the war, the joiners never recovered. Their failure to recover had nothing to do with guild regulations or innovation or competition. It resulted from a sharp deciine in their market.

The fact that goldsmiths did well after the war is a reflection of their more secure market. Selling almost exclusively to the wealthy, Augsburg goldsmiths extended their market to the south German nobility through superior craftsmanship and a legacy of excellent contacts at German courts made by Augsburg's great trading families. The joiners, on the other hand, although likewise selling expensive items to the rich, were dependent upon the citizens of Augsburg for much of their income. When the size of that market was reduced drastically by war, disease and famine, it was impossible for most joiners to extend their business beyond the city walls, and thus their businesses could not survive.

Shoemakers faced competition from other makers of shoes. Joiners faced competition from other workers in wood and from workers in the decorative arts in general, especially those who did inlay and leaf. The difficulty was that a piece of furniture might be made by a joiner and then finished by a gold or silver smith and the finished product sold by a merchant (Kramer). The difficulty in regulating who had the right to sell any joined work resulted in a number of disputes.

Demand for joined work was not constant but variable, particularly in construction work, resulting in a highly irregular demand for labor. Because this demand was not constant, the master joiner could not simply take on a large number of Gesellen for five or seven years, under the usual guild regulations governing the treatment of journeymen. Rather, a master might need one journeyman this month and eight the next and none the month after that. The journeymen themselves were open to exploitation in such circumstances, and the master was vulnerable to labor shortages that could result in loss of work. The Herberg was a solution to both problems.

The special social position of joiners is also worth stressing. The shoemakers sold shoes to the very rich, certainly, for everyone needed shoes, but even the most expensive shoes did not cost more than a few florins and entailed little contact between producer and buyer. The finishing work on a patrician's new home or, even more, the work on a public building or monument, would entail frequent contact between patrician and joiner and, considering the cost of such a project, a fair degree of confidence and trust. If, as seems probable, a joiner established a reputation for superior craftsmanship and was employed repeatedly by the elite, the bestowing of social favors on such a favorite would be natural. There were probably other crafts that likewise formed a kind of interface between the elite and the bulk of the middle class.

Milling was a different craft from shoemaking or joinery, because there was no retailing involved. Millers merely processed grain, turning it into flour or malt for a fee. The customer took care of both supply and demand; the miller concerned himself only with the maintenance and operation of his mill. Because grain was involved, the city regulated the industry heavily. This, and the high degree of market control exercised by the millers, set this craft apart from most others in Augsburg.

The primary market for the miller was the baker. The baker purchased the grain at the corn market from grain wholesalers, who brought the grain in from the countryside. He then physically brought the grain to the mill (or hired someone to do this for him), where workers took the sacks, marked them as to owner and type of milling to be done, and stored them. There were few ovens in the houses of the citizens. In contrast to the countryside, where farmers grew or purchased their grain, brought it to the miller for milling, then baked their own bread, people in the city simply bought from the baker and had no contact with the city's millers. In the vital business of supplying the citizens of Augsburg with their daily bread, the millers were comparatively invisible to the consumer.

Besides bakers, there were three other types of customers who frequented the mills. Confectioners needed flour, usually of a higher grade. Brewers did not use flour, but they had a high demand for malt, which does require milling. In some places, at least, there was a mill specially devoted to the production of malt. Finally, there were private individuals and institutions who had ovens and did use the miller's services. There were prices set for each type of consumer.

In a sense, the shop and tool were one and the same for the miller, for virtually the entire edifice was one big machine. A mill was technologically very advanced; so advanced, in fact, that the techniques created in the Middle Ages would not be superseded until the nineteenth century. Modern grain mills use rollers rather than stones for the grinding process, and steam replaced water as the motive power, but the invention of these two techniques did not occur until the late eighteenth century. They were not combined until 1820, and gained no general success until the third quarter of the nineteenth century.<s37>s

A mill harnessed the motion of water, windmills being impractical in a city, and converted it to the rotary motion of a millstone by means of an advanced system of gears. The waterwheel alone, often measuring fourteen feet in diameter, represented sophisticated engineering knowledge. Illustration 7 shows the complexity of this portion of the machinery. Different wheels were known to be appropriate for different types of stream flow; in the steady waters of the Lechkanal, most wheels probably were of the undershot type. Millers also knew how to arrange the gears so that the millstone actually rotated more quickly than did the waterwheel, yet not so quickly that the stones overheated and ruined the grain.

The stones themselves were from four to seven feet in diameter, eight inches thick, and weighed fifteen hundred pounds or more.<s38>s Their purchase represented the one major capital expense a miller faced, and their care and operation were his key concern and skill. The stone had to have particular qualities, and the miller would order from quarries that were hundreds of miles distant in order to obtain what he needed. The stones were usually shipped in pieces, then bound together with iron bands after delivery. Shipping added to the cost considerably, but the importance of getting the right stone made such cost unavoidable.<s39>s Next, the miller had to''dress'' the stones. Dressing was the process of chiseling a pattern of grooves in the stones in such a manner that the grain was not only finely ground, but was moved steadily from the hub outward to the edge where it was fed into sacks (or into bins; see Illustration 8). The dress had to take whole grain at the hub, feed it steadily between the stones, grinding more finely at each pass. Each stone was dressed identically. When the one stone was placed over the other, then the patterns would run opposite each other, providing the necessary shearing effect. Once the stones were dressed and set in place, they had to be balanced, which was accomplished by drilling holes in the top stone and filling them at selected spots with weights. Gears above helped regulate the space between the two stones (Illustration 7). The production of the fine powder we know today as flour had to await the multiple-pass, roller milling of modern times; but the delicacy of the adjustments in these stone mills, considering the tremendous forces and weights at work, was remarkable. A rule of thumb used in England was that the stones had to be capable of gripping a piece of brown paper at the center, newspaper further out, and tissue paper at the outer edge.<s41>s

The other major function of a miller was the supervision of his labor force. A miller was a comparatively large employer for a guild master. Three or four employees were common, and there were those who employed eight or nine. Although this seems ridiculously small by modern standards, many masters in other Augsburg crafts had no employees at all. Regulations and traditions in most guilds were based on the assumption of one apprentice and one journeyman per master, two at most. The Miller's need to supervise eight or nine Knechten was therefore an unusual problem.<s41>s One type of worker involved in the process was the Sacktrager, or sack carrier, who took the sacks of grain from the customer to the mill and returned again with sacks of flour. The Sacktra--ger are listed in the city records as a separate occupation (Beruf), so it is likely that these, although working in the mill, were paid by the customer rather than by the miller. The M^hlknechten, on the other hand, were in fact the miller's employees. It was they who saw the grain through the production process, taking in the sacks, marking them, pouring the grain into the hopper and storing the flour sacks until they were fetched by the Sacktr$ger. It was important to keep straight which customer belonged to which sack, for the quality of grain varied widely. The responsibility for this lay ultimately with the master, but the actual mechanics of it probably belonged to the employees (see Illustration 9 for a view of the interior of a mill).

In milling, therefore, there was a division of labor unknown in the other three crafts. The actual production was in the hands of employees, while the miller took care of the financial end of the business and also was responsible for various technical aspects such as repairs, purchases and design. As a final example, it was the millers themselves who oversaw the implementation of the technological innovations of steam and rollers in the nineteenth century, although the financing of such projects was by then in the hands of entrepreneurs.

The mill itself, because it was so vital to the city's supply of bread, and because the capital expense of building one was so large, was not owned by the miller. Most of the city's mills were owned by the city, though some were owned by churches. In some cities, the miller leased the mill, and these leases became at least quasi-hereditary. Elsewhere, the city was free to appoint millers as it pleased. The latter seems to have been the case in Augsburg. Baking was never as closely controlled, probably because it was possible for an individual to start a bakery with a moderate or average capital investment. The cost of building a mill -- the waterwheel, the building itself, the machinery, the stones, and not least the cost of prime waterfront land -- was so large that few private individuals could afford the cost; and with regulated prices, the potential for profit was so limited that a wealthy man's money was better spent elsewhere. Thus, it was essential for

an institution like the Church or municipality to build the mill, even though it might later sell or lease the mill to a private individual.

There was no problem with competition in this craft, for the city precluded the possibility. Rural millers were closed out of the city by statute and as the grain market was the most closely watched of all, the prohibitions were generally effective. It was possible to encroach on the grain market itself, for we find regulations against such practices, but supply from bootleg sources would have been meager because of the close watch kept on this commodity. Moreover, the competitor could still sell only to the city's bakers, since few citizens had their own ovens, making illegal operations doubly difficult. The urban millers could not compete with the rural millers, because of transportation costs. Thus, milling was unique among the four guiids in that there was absolutely no competition except within the guild itself, and there was little problem here because prices were fixed and there were fewer than 20 masters in all.

The real threats to a miller's livelihood lay in the two related areas of weather and prices. Bad weather could lead to a bad harvest, driving up grain prices. This caused a shortage of grain and a consequent decline in the number of customers calling at the mill. Since his prices were fixed by law, a miller could not respond to crises the way that a grain merchant could. At this point one suspects that competition between millers, as well as cheating the customer, became fairly widespread. If the crisis persisted, the millers usually went to the city to ask for some relief. It should be noted that the city itself was a major customer, but that the Stadtm^hl was probably so named because it was the only mill to which the city grainery took its grain. Bad weather could also damage the mill itself, a potentially more serious occurence. Drought could dry up the Lechkanal to the point that the waterwheel would turn slowly or not at all. Likewise, flood could damage the wheel itself, especially in the spring when ice floes came down the river from the Alps. If his waterwheel was damaged, the miller had to endure his costs alone, wiping out profits even if he had plenty of customers. To prevent such an eventuality, millers perforce became knowledgeable in the area of flood control and hydraulics, seeking to keep the flow of water at its optimum level.<s42>s

Although all millers in the seventeenth century were free, the craft was still tainted with the stain of Leibeigenschaft, of servitude. During the Middle Ages, mills were generally owned by feudal lords, the miller was his servant, and the early modern miller inherited this dishonorable legacy. Few social stigmata were more serious than that of Leibeigenschaft, for burgers prided themselves on their freedom. Nearly every guild had a regulation stipulating that no one, from apprentice to master to wife, nor anyone within their family, was to have been the man (or woman) of another. That the millers had once belonged to the Vogtherr or to the bishop was sufficient cause to place this craft at the bottom rung of the respectable social ladder. This was occupied by the many who were unehrliche Leute, people without honor. Millers were not officially a part of this caste, but they were tainted by having once belonged to it. Moreover, mills were popularly regarded as unsavory places, refuges of robbers and prostitutes. Since most respectable people had no need to frequent a mill, it was easier to regard the mill itself as socially unwholesome. By being the proprietor of such a place, the miller was forever viewed as something less than ehrlich. Thus, even though a miller could accumulate a respectable amount of wealth, he could not use his money to further his social status. This is again in contrast to the village miller, who was well within the circle of respectability and who was even at times admired and respected.

Two factors were of basic importance in setting milling apart from other crafts: the extremely high capital investment needed to set up a new shop, and the heavy regulation of the craft by the government. In addition to these must be counted the restricted nature of the market (selling to one's suppliers) and the use of complex, water-powered machinery instead of hand tools. Each of these factors had effects on the form and function of the craft.

The mechanics of how the city regulated milling will be discussed in a later chapter. Here it will be sufficient to note that regulation of prices was the most significant aspect of government control and that the major effect of the price regulations was to eliminate competition on the basis of price among millers. It is important to point out that this was the only one of the four crafts to have price regulations, the lack of which is generally regarded as one hallmark of capitalism. With no competition on prices, the median income was noticeably higher in this craft than in the others.

The high start-up costs involved in milling served to eliminate other forms of competition as well, for those who could afford to build a mill were not interested in doing so. Only the city could bear the costs and only the city had an interest in such an investment. The monopolistic consequences of such a lack of competition never came to pass because the city regulated

both supply and prices. This resulted in precisely the situation desired by any early modern government: stability, at least so far as milling was concerned.

Millers had a market that differed significantly from that of most crafts. They did not have to deal with suppliers who might try to exploit them. Neither did they have to deal with the general public. One effect of this situation was that the miller never had to face the wrath of the mob in times of famine, for it was the grain merchant and baker who were held to be responsible. The invisibility of millers in the public eye also helps account for the fact that popular images of millers all deal with rural millers, for in the countryside the consumer dealt with the miller directly.

The complexity of the milling process demanded a labor force larger than was usual. It also caused a division of labor, so that the miller became primarily a manager and something of an engineer or technician, while the Knechten became laborers whose best hope was to attain some supervisory position. It is worth noting that this situation did not lead to conflicts within the craft and was not the result of ''exclusivism'' on the part of the masters. The result of this was to create relations in the mill that were closer to employer-employee than master-journeyman in nature. The use of Knecht instead of Gesell is one indication of this. The nature of the relationship was determined by the conditions of production, not by the century in which it existed nor by the degree to which''capitalism'' had penetrated the economy.

This last of the four crafts was also the most unusual, for it was a service craft rather than a producing craft. Service industries in pre-modern times have received no attention at all, so far as I am aware, yet they provide interesting insights into''the guild system''. This craft is unusual, too, in that it was an amalgamation of two crafts: barbering and bathing. Both crafts were only marginally concerned with the activities denoted by those terms today. In fact, both crafts were primarily concerned with surgery. One modern author defined their purview of competence this way:

The archaic nature of the crafts is indicated by the fact that many of these terms are outdated, or describe procedures that are no longer used. The main areas of competence included in the list were broken limbs, treatment of injuries and wounds, syphillis, dropsy, consumption, epidemic diseases and a wide variety of other illnesses. Barbers were general practitioners for the common man. Their techniques included all types of surgery, bleeding, enemas, bandaging, and the administration of plasters. Generally speaking, if one's ailment was such that a medicine was needed, one went to the Apothekar. If one needed a physician, one went to the Barbier or Bader, if one was of ordinary means, or to a Doktor if one had money. It should be noted that barbers also cut hair.

The principal difference between a Barbier and a Bader is that the latter operated a Bad, a public bathhouse. A bathhouse was the site for a wide variety of activities both medical and social in nature. The medical value of bathing had long been recognized by Europeans, and private baths were available only to the few. Bathhouses offered pools for general bathing, in which the patrons sat, talked, even drank and ate, but did not wash themselves. Illustrations 10 and 1 1 show the types of social activities that took place in a bathhouse. Most city bathhouses were enclosed, as in Illustration 12. The most frequent washing done at a bathhouse was the washing of the head, done after a shave and haircut. The cutting of hair was offered as a service (for a fee, of course) to the patrons, but no bather could cut hair for people who did not bathe; das trockene Scheeren was reserved to the barbers.<s44>s Steam baths were also offered at some places. The air was heated by hot stones and the patrons sat about on benches, much the same as they do today. It will be observed from the illustrations that partial or complete nudity was the norm at public baths as, indeed, it still is in Europe. Two other services were normally offered: massages, and a type of bleeding called Schr[pfen. The massage was considered part of the bath, though one often had to pay extra for it. Schr[pfen was the placing of a cup over an incision, often in the head or back, and funneling the blood into a tub below (see Illustration 12). This was a comparatively mild form of bleeding, as it did not tap into veins or arteries. One translation for Schr[pfen is ''mechanical leech'', which gives an indication of the type of bleeding being done. This type of bleeding was regarded as regular health care, performed on a healthy person to prevent the accumulation of bad humors. It was also considered best administered in the baths rather than by a barber, perhaps because of the warm air.

The bathhouse was a public building, owned by the city, in much the same fashion as a mill. In the Middle Ages, baths were all owned by public bodies -- lords, churches, governments -- and the capital expenditure required to build a new one was such that only public ones survived. Because health care was involved, and the general health of its citizenry, the city considered a bathhouse as belonging to the public domain and hence naturally under its authority. Very likely, the same leasing arrangements that applied with mills applied also with the baths.

Barbers and bathers, like the millers, had a history of Leibeigenschaft, and were also social misfits. They did not have the continual reinforcement of unsavoriness that the mill provided, however, and in some cities at least were able to have the stigma removed by legisla - tion.<s45>s A social aversion remained, however. Churchmen condemned the bathhouses in particular. Barbering remained socially misfit, perhaps because those barbers who continued to practice medicine came under increasing condemnation by university-trained doctors. Also, because these were service trades, there was no product to give the artisan dignity; he simply served others -- a status implicity inferior to those he served.

Barbers had very small shops and normally had no labor considerations of any kind. They needed no manufacturing or warehousing space and could operate out of small rooms. In fact, like the itinerant cobbler, barbers could and did journey from town to town, or village to

village, essentially carrying their office on their back.<s46>s They had a variety of tools, and also had shelves stocked with chemicals and herbs for making salves, plasters and drugs for killing pain during operations. The barber's chair was the only fixture of any noticeable size. Two views of a barber's shop are given in Illustrations 16 and 17 (Illustration 16 incidentally contains an excellent representation of the Schnabelschuh popular in the sixteenth century). The first picture shows a very plain room that may have been some type of operating room. Illustrations 14 and 15 also depict similarly austere settings for amputations. The operation shown in Illustration 16 is the cauterizing of a wound. The Barbierstube of Illustration 19, on the other hand, looks cluttered and distinctly domestic, and may actually have been a private residence rather than a separate shop. The frightening-looking operation being performed at the right of this picture is another form of Schr[pfen.

Barbers performed a wide variety of health services. The most common service was Aderlassen, or bleeding by opening a vein. This operation is depicted in Illustration 13. A frequent type of surgery performed was amputation which, as can be seen by Illustrations 14 and 15, depended as much on the barber's skill with a saw as on his medical knowledge. Setting bones was another important skill for a barber, and one that required some special equipment for Streckung, or stretching (Illustration 18). In fact, a barber usually possessed quite an array of specialized tools (Illustration 19), and he was probably a regular customer at the cutler's shop.

The most important market strategy for a barber was not craftsmanship but advertising. Bathhouses regularly sent out criers to announce bath days. Barbers hung out signs to attract customers. These became large and gaudy enough that the guild regulations limited the number and size available to a given shop.

Barbers and bathers had civic duties in addition to the operation of their business. Bathers often were charged with serving in cases of fire, not only because they had water but also because they had a goodly supply of buckets.<s47>s Barbers most everywhere were responsible for determining cause of death when the cause was unknown -- as was usual in the case of homicides, suicides, and most frequently of vagrants found dead on the street.<s48>s Barbers also were liable to militia service because of their skill in treating wounds and injuries.<s49>s (see Illustration 20).

Competition was a matter of frequent concern to barbers and to bathers, though for different reasons. There was a continuous spectrum of medical practitioners running from home remedies administered by a Hausfrau to midwives to quacks to peddlars to non-citizen and non-guild barbers to Doktoren. The lines were drawn clearly enough by the guild regulations, but it was so easy to practice medicine that it was impossible to prevent unauthorized people from doing so. The person needed almost no cash, and there was never any shortage of customers with ailments. This was not so much competition as it was encroachment. Unauthorized practicioners of Heilkunst did not present a real threat to the market share of the barbers as a whole, although an individual barber might lose several customers to such a person. Rather, this type of person was like a craftsman operating outside the guild -- a situation unacceptable to guild and city alike. Unlike the situation in other guilds, however, those who operated outside the Barbers and Bathers Guild sometimes argued that they had a right to practice and not belong. This particular aspect will be examined further in Chapter Seven.

The fact that this was a service craft meant that there was no element of quality control involved. Since the barber did not actually make anything, craftsmanship (as the term is used today) was irrelevant. The example of the barbers demonstrates that a concern for quality control was not intrinsic to the guild system but was peculiar to those crafts where such considerations were significant and capable of being defined. The service aspect was also the underlying factor in the small percentage of journeymen in this craft. Since nothing was made, there was little that could be given to a journeyman to do. Only where a barber had many customers could a journeyman or apprentice be useful. The bather did, in fact, have many customers and usually a number of Knechten. Here again we see that the nature of the market was crucial in determining various aspects of the structure of a craft.

Of the four crafts studied here, the capital demands for barbering were the lowest, and the competition was most severe. Not only was little capital required, little skill was required also. There was much to learn, certainly, but one could easily pose as a curer of disease and trauma. Attempts at similar deception in shoemaking or joinery would be foiled as quickly as the charlatan's first piece of shoddy work. Moreover, it was very difficult to uncover the non-guildsman who practiced secretly. In short, barbers never succeeded in establishing a high degree of control over their medical practice. Quacks could steal away customers but could never destroy the entire craft. Educated doctors, on the other hand, presented a real threat. When education became a kind of union card for medicine, it proved more universal and more powerful than did the barbering guilds and barbers were left with the only aspect of their craft in which the educated doctors were not interested -- cutting hair.

At the beginning of my research, I deliberately chose crafts that were different from one another, so it is not surprising that each craft has been found to have its own needs and problems, its own social standing and its own relationship between supply and demand, labor and capital. What is striking is that there was but one key element that distinguished one craft from another; namely, the market. The nature and extent of the market for a particular good or service was what established the economic framework inside of which each craft operated. Market forces cannot be wholly separated from other forces such as production and consumption, but the market is where these other forces meet and so can be considered a summation of them.

The crucial point in terms of the larger themes of guild and economic history is that the market for each of these crafts was completely local. These were heimische Berufe, and it is this that sets them apart from the innumerable studies of weavers, goldsmiths and the like. The latter had regional or international markets, and their craft developed sophisticated techniques for producing and selling. The crafts examined in the present work, on the other hand, never sold beyond the city walls and, with minor exceptions such as millstones, did not have to go beyond Augsburg for their supplies. Operating in a completely local market, these crafts did not directly face the pressures and changes occurring with great rapidity in the international market. Dealing in commodities for which there was steady demand and supply, they remained stable and comparatively unchanged. Not only is there no indication of the great wave of proto-capitalism so meticulously documented for other sectors of the economy, it is difficult to see where capitalist innovations could have been adopted with any effectiveness.

The second crucial determinant in a craft was product, what the craftsman made. More specifically, the key was to what economic sector the craft belonged, whether manufacturing, retailing, wholesaling, construction, service or professional. Most crafts studied by economic historians have been manufacturing or extractive industries. The example of the barbers shows

that a different set of economic realities applied in a service industry. This is an elementary fact recognized by economists but generally ignored by economic historians. The result has been a skewed picture of pre-modern economic life.

The third key variable was capital; in particular, the level of capital expenditure needed to start up a new business. Where the start-up needs were low, as in the case of shoemaking, there was competition from a variety of sources. Where capital requirements were high, there was little or no competition. Capitalist forms of financing were still in their early years in the seventeenth century, and were applied only in areas of obvious high return such as mining.

Contrary to the accepted wisdom concerning guilds, it is evident that these crafts were finely tuned to the economic realities of the day. This should not surprise us. Any businessman who ignored the requirements of his market and the needs of his customers would lose his customers to another. No amount of guild regulation or''conservative'' mentality could alter that, nor did any guildsman wish that it could be so. An incompetent craftsman was scorned by his colleagues. If an artisan fell on hard times through no fault of his own, the guild took the responsibility of caring for him and his family. If, however, he were merely stupid or lazy, he could expect no help from the guild except good advice. If these crafts were not perfectly successful in responding to shifts in the economic currents, they surely cannot be condemned any more severely than can modern businesses that adapt slowly or imperfectly. Rather than judging the crafts, it would be more helpful to discover how it was they responded to change. To do this, it is first necessary to dispel the myth that they were intrinsically hostile to change or incapable of coping with it. This I have tried to accomplish in this chapter by showing how each craft functioned in direct response to particular markets.

NOTES

1. Art is one area where the social and economic context has been examined extensively. An excellent recent study along these lines is John M. Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1981). In most crafts, however, such studies are completely lacking.

2. Jost Ammans St$nde und Handwerker: Mit Versen von Hans Sachs (Frankfurt, 1568. New edition: Munich, 1923), p. 123

3. Hermann A. Berlepsch, Chronik der Gewerke, 9 volumes, (St. Gall, 1850 - 1853); Volume Four, Chronik vom ehrbaren Schuhmachergewerk,

p. 30.

4. Berlepsch, Chronik, p. 5.

5. Berlepsch, Chronik, p. 40. Flicker is a south German term. Elsewhere the term was Altmacher or Altrei]er.

6. Berlepsch, Chronik, p. 59

7. Thrupp,''Gilds'', in Cambridge Economic History, p. 253

8. Blanche E. Hazard, The Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts before 1875 (New York, 1969), p. 4

9. Berlepsch, Chronik, p. 53

10. Hazard, The Boot and Shoe Industry, p. 3

11. Berlepsch, Chronik, p. 59

12. See below, Chapter V.

13. Hazard, The Boot and Shoe Industry, p. 8.

14. Berlepsch, Chronik, p. 62.

15. Berlepsch, Chronik, p. 133-134.

16. Berlepsch, Chronik, p. 115.

17. Berlepsch, Chronik, pp. 138 - 139.

18. Clasen, Weber, p. 22.

19. There is no article extant; see, however, Peter Jorgen's petition and the accompanying Bericht from 1548: H.A., Supplication, Peter Jorgen, 1548, GSLM# 469,945.

20. Berlepsch, Chronik, p. 47.

21. Wissell, Handwerks Recht, pp. 429 and 432. These accusations concern farm shoes, and may have been applicable only in a village. It is worth noting that the petitions for Augsburg, 1610-1619, record no instance of this type of complaint.

22. Wissell, Handwerks Recht, p. 434.

23. Wissell, Handwerks Recht, p. 440.

Montag ist Sonntags Bruder

Dienstags liegen sie auch noch im Luder

Mittwoch gehen sie nach Leder

Donnerstag kommen sie weder,

Freitags schreiden sie zu

Sonnabend mangeln Pantoffeln und Schuh.

24. Thrupp,''Gilds'', p. 267.

25. Albrecht Eckhardt, Eschweger Zunftverfassung und hessische Zunftpolitik (Marburg/Lahn & Witzenhausen, 1964), p. 34.

26. Heinrich Bechtel, Wirtschaftstil des deutschen Sp$tmittelalters: der Ausdruck der Lebensform in Wirtschaft,Gesellschaft, und Kunst vom 1330 bis zum 1500 (Munich & Leipzig, 1930), p. 245.

27. L<vy-Coblentz, L'art du Meuble, p. 121, says that the Zimmerhof was a center for all woodworking trades and consisted of a whole netword of lumber yards.

28. L<vy-Coblentz, L'art du Meuble, p. 11.

29. Samuel W. Wolsey and R. W. P. Luff, Furniture in England: the Age of the Joiner (New York, 1969), pp. 16 - 17.

30. See L. A. Koltun, The Cabinetmaker's Art in Ontario circa 1850

- 1900 (Ottowa, 1979) for many photographs of tools used by joiners.

31. Levy-Coblentz, L'art du Meuble, p. 10.

32. Levy-Coblentz, L'art du Meuble, pp. 127 - 128.

33. H.A. Kistler Jacob Stenglin 1549, GSLM# 534,604.

34. This works out to about 130 customers per master on the average. This figure is based on a population of 30,000, leaving 15,000 for the market size. At 110 masters, this yields 136 customers per master. It is worth speculating that there might have been a practical limit on the size of an individual business, based on the number of transactions one master could handle per day. A shoemaker could not serve 500 customers daily, nor could he survive on one sale a week. A goldsmith, on the other hand, or a painter, may have been able to do so and, similarly, a cloth merchant may have been able to handle 500 transactions a day, through his factors. A statistical survey of towns, looking only at crafts that served the general public, could produce approximate upper and lower limits.

35. Laber, Die Schweden in Augsburg (Munich, 1932), p. 36 - 2,000 empty dwellings.

36. Mayr, Augsburger Verm[gen, (Augsburg, 1931), pp. 13 - 15.

37. Richard Bennett and John Elton, History of Corn-Milling, 4 volumes (London, 1898 - 1904), 3:305-308

38. John Storck and Walter D. Teague, Flour for Man's Bread: A History of Milling (Minneapolis, 1952), p. 102

39 Bennett and Elton Corn-Milling 3:100-101.

40. Storck and Teague, Flour, p. 103.

41. The terms Knecht and Gesell referred to different types of workers. The latter was what we normally think of as a journeyman: a young man (usually) who had completed his apprenticeship and who, by working for a variety of masters, was preparing himself for mastership. The latter term actually translates as''serf'' or''servant'', but seems to have meant''employee'' in these documents. That is to say, a Knecht was a hired worker rather than a master-in-training. The conditions and terms of employment for Knechten probably varied greatly.

42. Storck and Teague, Flour, p. 100.

43. Hermann Peters, Der Arzt und die Heilkunst in der deutschen Vergangenheit (Leipzig, 1900), p. 35

44. Peters, Arzt, p. 34.

45. A. Martin, Deutsches Badewesen in vergangenen Tagen (Jena, 1906), p. 93.

46 Peters, Arzt, p. 35.

47. Martin, Deutsches Badewesen, p. 68.

48. Peters, Arzt, p. 36.

49. Peters, Arzt, p. 38.

END CHAPTER 4