URBAN ARTISANS

1
URBAN ARTISANS

• Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most
  manufacturing was done by urban artisans
• Skilled craftsmen who lived in cities
• Worked with simple tools
• Worked in their homes or in small shops
• Apprentices performed menial work
• Most of the rest of the work done by the artisan
  himself
• Real skill was required
• Necessitating a period of training

2
ONE BIG FAMILY

• Family life and work were intertwined
• Wives sometimes helped with work, kept accounts,
  and sold finished products
• Family lived in the shop
• Either in a back room or in the attic
• Masters often housed and fed their journeymen and
  apprentices
• Creating a large extended family
• Little life outside this extended family

3
PREMODERN WORK CULTURE

• Artisans only worked intensely for short periods
• Followed by slower work that allowed talking and
  singing
• Artisans who worked in heat drank alcohol on the
  job
• Did not have a modern work culture since artisans
  routinely mixed recreation and labor together

4
CAREER STAGES

• Divided into three categories
• Apprentices
• Journeymen
• Masters
• Tradition held that each artisan should have the
  opportunity to pass through all three stages
  during his productive life

5
APPRENTICESHIP

• Apprenticeship began in early teens and provided
  essential training for individuals specialty
• Fee had to be paid for entering an apprenticeship
  and an iron clad contract bound the apprentice to
  his master for a specified period of time
• Tradition attempted to insure fair treatment for
  the apprentice
• Master was required to feed and house him and
  provide necessary level of training for
  participation in the trade

6
JOURNEYMEN

• Apprentice usually became a journeyman after
  training was completed
• Worked for wages, often supplemented by food and
  housing provided by the master
• After an appropriate number of years, during
  which the journeyman was supposed to save money,
  he might be able to buy or inherit a shop and
  equipment and become a master
• Artisans had a social and economic ladder that
  they climbed as they gained skill and capital

7
GUILDS I

• Each urban trade had its guild and most had the
  legal power to deny a worker the right to
  practice a trade unless he was a member of the
  organization
• In an attempt to limit the number of workers in a
  given trade in a city
• Guilds existed to protect the standard of living
  and economic opportunities of its members, not to
  maximize production

8
GUILDS 2

• Also tried to restrict production so the artisans
  would receive decent prices for their products
• Maintained strict controls over methods of work
  and prevented innovation in techniques
• Stabilized earnings and upheld value of
  traditional skills
• Part of primary goal of protecting the welfare of
  its members

9
GUILDS 3

• Also social groups
• Sponsored a variety of social functions and
  supervised trade rituals
• Organized funerals for deceased members and
  provided benefits to their families
• Organized parades and celebrations of trade
  holidays
• Ran initiation rituals for apprentices
• Had a large influence on artisans leisure time
  as well as his work

10
LIMITATIONS I

• Not all artisans belonged to guilds
• Guild traditions occasionally broke down
• When large numbers of urban newcomers overwhelmed
  guild traditions and created competition for jobs
  and wages among journeymen
• When journeymen were overabundant, masters were
  tempted to convert guilds to serve their own
  interestsnot those of the trade at large

11
LIMITATIONS II

• Guild regulations held that masters should be
  roughly equal and therefore limited the number of
  journeymen any single master could employ
• But when journeymen were overabundant and cheap,
  masters sometimes sought to hire more of them
  than the regulations allowed
• Also used guild regulations to block journeymen,
  except their own sons, from rising to the
  position of master
• Strangled upward mobility within the trade
• Journeymen sometimes responded by forming
  organizations of their own
• Guild system never broke down entirely in the
  18th century, although it did begin to show signs
  of weakness

12
PROBLEMS

• Journeymen were intensely dependent on masters
• Bossed around by them all day
• Often could never afford to marry
• Many artisans, even masters, were poor
• Only ate starchy, often spoiled, food
• Housing was often overcrowded
• Suffered from occupational health problems
• Lead poisoning for painters and printers
• Blindness for tailors
• Many were deformed by their work
• Not an easy nor secure life, but artisans valued
  it highly and would struggle to maintain it

13
INDUSTRIALIZATION

• Industrialization did not immediately destroy the
  artisans
• Remained largest urban social group for a long
  time
• As late as 1850, there were as many artisans in
  England as factory workers
• Until the mid to late 19th century, they
  increased in proportion to overall population
  growth

14
REASONS

• As population expanded and wealth increased with
  industrial and agricultural improvements, need
  for artisans actually rose
• New crafts such as machine building created by
  industrialization
• Growing cities required more artisans of various
  types
• Early mechanical processes not applicable to
  urban artisan trades
• Mechanization affected rural spinners and weavers
  more
• Artisans continued to dominate working class of
  the 19th century in terms of numbers, income,
  social cohesion, and purpose

15
DIFFERENCES

• Artisans were distinct from factory labor
• Worked in different places
• Artisans tended to live in city centers while
  factory workers lived in nearby suburbs
• Most artisans viewed factory workers with
  suspicion and did not want to live near them
• Hated factory system and coarseness and violence
  of factory workers
• Never completely identified with factory workers

16
VALUES

• Artisans had a sense of pride of work, status,
  and dignity that few factory workers possessed
• Avoided showy spending on clothing and drink
• More inclined to save money than factory workers
• Family structure was tighter
• Retained an interest in establishing their
  children in a trade and educated them accordingly
• Limited the size of their families by delaying
  marriage
• In the interest of maintaining their material
  well being and caring properly for their children

French cabinet maker and family
17
MATERIAL CONDITIONS

• Material conditions of artisans still varied
  greatly
• Single women had to work long hours to survive
• Craftsmen faced with industrial competition had
  to work longer and longer hours at lower and
  lower wages to remain competitive
• In 1830, silk workers in Lyon had to work 16-18
  hours a day to survive
• But at the same time, pay levels of carpenters
  and butchers increased

18
INSECURE BUT SOLID

• Overall, the artisan did not have an easy life
• Construction workers suffered from seasonal
  unemployment
• Personal disasters could quickly reduce an
  artisan family to poverty
• Suffered severely during economic crises
• Demand for semi-luxury artisan produced products
  fell more rapidly than demand for factory
  produced necessities
• Food prices always went up
• Forced to reduce purchases, pawn possessions, or
  appeal to charity
• Artisans were not destitute in normal times and
  possessed a small, though insecure, margin above
  the subsistence level

19
CLASH OF VALUES

• Artisans still saw their economic and social
  values undermined by the spread of
  industrialization
• The principles of the new industry clashed with
  principles of an artisan economy

20
SKILL

• Artisans relied on stable skills
• Industry involved rapidly changing methods and
  the use of large numbers of unskilled workers
• Skill and training were not completely eliminated
  but, on the whole, industrial skills were quickly
  and easily learned and apprenticeship was
  unnecessary

21
LIMITS REMOVED

• Artisans traditional pace of work, involving
  frequent breaks and holidays, was threatened by
  new machines
• Artisans traditionally had protected themselves
  against competitive pressure by restricting
  innovation in techniques and limiting the size of
  the labor force
• These limitations were removed by industry and
  workers were hired as they were needed and
  machines introduced at will

22
GAP

• Artisan interest in reducing the degree of
  inequality in the workplace was also ignored by
  the new factories
• Factory owners acquired great wealth and tried to
  expand it without limit
• The gap between them and their workers was huge
• Very rare for a worker to rise to be a factory
  owner
• All the new innovations of the factory system
  represented a real shock to the artisan emphasis
  on stability

23
THE REAL THREAT

• Few urban artisans were forced into factories
  during the early Industrial Revolution
• Most factory workers came from the ranks of
  dispossessed peasants and unskilled urban poor
• The threat of the factory system threatened
  artisans in a more subtle way
• It displaced them from their fundamental control
  of the urban economy

24
RELATIVE DECLINE

• Number of artisans grew during this period and
  their average earnings increased
• But their relative position declined
• Factory working class grew faster than number of
  artisans did
• Wealth of entrepreneurial middle class
  overshadowed any increase in artisan pay
• Even some factory workers earned more than
  artisans
• Industry was dynamic and expanding
• There was concern that new principle would sooner
  or later spread into yet unaffected trades

25
REACTION

• It was fear of displacement, more than actual
  displacement, that dominated artisan activity
  during the first half of the 19th century
• Caused some artisans to attack the factory system
• Luddites
• Artisans newspapers, pamphlets, and petitions to
  the government often demanded an end to machines
  in manufacturing

26
CHANGING CONDITIONS

• Rise of the upper middle class to dominance after
  the French Revolution (and their emphasis on
  free trade) allowed them to abolish guilds
• Changed relationship between masters and
  journeymen
• Masters began to protect their social and
  economic position in a changing economy by
  limiting their ranks
• Some became employers and stopped performing any
  manual labor

27
MORE CHANGE

• Social relations between masters and journeymen
  also changed
• Became less common for masters to house and feed
  journeymen
• Masters also intensified practice of reserving
  masterships only for their sons
• Gradual development of permanent wage-earning
  status for journeymen was a shock to the artisan
  tradition
• Which had formerly valued upward mobility, rough
  equality, and a family-like relationship between
  master and journeymen

28
DECLINE OF APPRENTICESHIP

• Apprenticeship also declined
• Masters now expected the children they hired to
  work, not learn
• Journeymen became increasingly reluctant to delay
  their work by training a kid
• Aspects of industrial organization were being
  applied to the skilled trades without the actual
  introduction of machine

29
SUMMARY

• The artisan lost the social and economic
  protection of his guild at the same time as the
  personal ties between master and journeyman were
  weakening
• The place of the city of the artisan in the city
  also slipped as factory workers became more
  numerous and the upper middle class seized
  exclusive control of urban governments