If an Englishman or Frenchman or Belgian or Swiss were to read among the central arguments for this proposal the assertion “that the moral posture that the corporate spirit provides goes missing where occupational freedom for the trades prevails,” he would certainly first have to inquire if such accusations had been written and printed in the second half of the nineteenth century; for it is certainly going a bit far to deny moral posture to the millions of inhabitants of the states that have occupational freedom because they are fortunate enough to have removed the guild system and are no longer inspired by this kind of “corporate spirit.” What moral principle actually shines forth from the corporate spirit of the guilds? The guilds have long since degenerated into communities for whom the only things that seem clear are the concepts “privilege, protection of our privilege, warding off the non-privileged and their wares.” Their activity is not one that strengthens from within, but rather one that wards off the outside. Where is the proof showing that a guild as such promotes its trade, that it holds consultations about improvements in the management of the trade, that it procures machines to facilitate common work, that it maintains newspapers, design patterns, models, libraries for the ongoing training of the master craftsmen and journeymen and apprentices? Only quite recently was the decision to establish guild warehouses finally made. Just how many problems that posed, however, may be answered by those who were present when it occurred. This much is certain here: that only the most urgent distress led to the stipulation of a rule, and that guild members first have to be threatened in their very existence before they decide on doing something like this.
But now that we have enumerated what does not happen in the guilds, we should also mention what does happen. There, we find that the main preoccupation is the pursuit of every alleged encroachment upon the rights of the guilds. Leafing through the history of Germany’s crafts, we learn on almost every page of the unkindness with which the so-called “Bönhasen,” whose only transgression was “work,” have been shamefully prosecuted and expelled from the city, right down to our own era; about the way in which their manufactured wares have been confiscated, and how, with their finished wares, they have been pushed into misery with wife and child. Should one recognize in such deeds, which occur even today in a similar fashion, expressions of love toward a fellow Christian? Heaven protect us from continuing such “cooperative meaning and aspiration!” Whoever wants to know the extent of such aspirations should just study a few of the innumerable case files concerning infringements upon guild rights that have accumulated in the archives of the occupational courts. There, the turners forbid the chair makers from fastening buttons and decorations on their chairs; the shoemakers won’t tolerate somebody selling rubber shoes that they themselves cannot even manufacture, much less repair; for years, the carpenters and the cabinetmakers have been disputing the manufacture of wooden staircases and to which of their fields it belongs;
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