because no children went hungry to school—­a distribution of bath-money to the children whose parents found difficulty in providing it was habitual in several places As to Labour Congresses, they also were a regular Feature of the middles ages.  In some parts of Germany craftsmen of the same trade, belonging to different communes, used to come together every year to discuss questions relative to their trade, the years of apprenticeship, the wandering years, the wages, and so on; and in 1572, the Hanseatic towns formally recognized the right of the crafts to come together at periodical congresses, and to take any resolutions, so long as they were not contrary to the cities’ rolls, relative to the quality of goods.  Such Labour Congresses, partly international like the Hansa itself, are known to have been held by bakers, founders, smiths, tanners, sword-makers and cask-makers.(11)

The craft organization required, of course, a close supervision of the craftsmen by the guild, and special jurates were always nominated for that purpose.  But it is most remarkable that, so long as the cities lived their free life, no complaints were heard about the supervision; while, after the State had stepped in, confiscating the property of the guilds and destroying their independence in favour of its own bureaucracy, the complaints became simply countless.(12) On the other hand, the immensity of progress realized in all arts under the mediaeval guild system is the best proof that the system was no hindrance to individual initiative.(13) The fact is, that the medieval guild, like the medieval parish, “street,” or “quarter,” was not a body of citizens, placed under the control of State functionaries; it was a union of all men connected with a given trade:  jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers of manufactured goods, and artisans—­masters, “compaynes,” and apprentices.  For the inner organization of the trade its assembly was sovereign, so long as it did not hamper the other guilds, in which case the matter was brought before the guild of the guilds—­the city.  But there was in it something more than that.  It had its own self-jurisdiction, its own military force, its own general assemblies, its own traditions of struggles, glory, and independence, its own relations with other guilds of the same trade in other cities:  it had, in a word, a full organic life which could only result from the integrality of the vital functions.  When the town was called to arms, the guild appeared as a separate company (Schaar), armed with its own arms (or its own guns, lovingly decorated by the guild, at a subsequent epoch), under its own self-elected commanders.  It was, in a word, as independent a unit of the federation as the republic of Uri or Geneva was fifty years ago in the Swiss Confederation.  So that, to compare it with a modern trade union, divested of all attributes of State sovereignty, and reduced to a couple of functions of secondary importance, is as unreasonable as to