the hairdressers waylay the barbers and the barbers the hairdressers; the cloth dealers don’t tolerate the tailors who sell cloth and fabrics, and the tailors go to court as soon as the cloth dealers display finished pieces of clothing in their shops. The trials are the chief cause of guild expenditures, and some guilds have regular funds for lawyers, which are naturally used for their stated purpose, i.e., wasted in litigation. In this as in other cases, the guild system only nourishes despicable resentment and spiteful jealously. Egoism harms every single person anyway and makes moral progress difficult enough for him, but the guild system makes it possible for this egoism to penetrate and poison entire social circles and to shroud its public appearance in the cloak of law. Who can take pleasure in such an unkind struggle, in which it is citizen against citizen, class against class, all working together to stifle the public spirit?
We could complete this unedifying picture of the immoral effects of the guild system by portraying craft abuses, the hostel system, the carousing of journeymen and master craftsmen, etc., only we would prefer to turn to the more friendly pages of our working life today. In the business sphere, too, as we shall see, morality and ethics flourish best where freedom reigns. Work is in itself a fundamental means for promoting morality. In a certain sense, therefore, everything that strengthens people in their industriousness also serves the higher goal of morality. But nothing is better at spurring people to work, or at making work more enjoyable, than the certainty that, through work, one does something good for himself and the world and improves his lot. The commandment “Pray and work!” guides the human heart toward heaven in one direction and toward earth in the other, but the commandment would be insufficient in the latter regard if it did not simultaneously contain within itself the promise that the honest worker should also enjoy the fruits of this labor. But this cannot take place if human laws, here below, diminish and atrophy the fruits of labor, if they prevent the free use of human energies and talents and thereby rob the worker of his just wage.
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