The craft guild was then a common seller of its produce and a common buyer of the raw materials, and its members were merchants and manual workers at the same time.  Therefore, the predominance taken by the old craft guilds from the very beginnings of the free city life guaranteed to manual labour the high position which it afterwards occupied in the city.(4) In fact, in a medieval city manual labour was no token of inferiority; it bore, on the contrary, traces of the high respect it had been kept in in the village community.  Manual labour in a “mystery” was considered as a pious duty towards the citizens:  a public function (Amt), as honourable as any other.  An idea of “justice” to the community, of “right” towards both producer and consumer, which would seem so extravagant now, penetrated production and exchange.  The tanner’s, the cooper’s, or the shoemaker’s work must be “just,” fair, they wrote in those times.  Wood, leather or thread which are used by the artisan must be “right”; bread must be baked “in justice,” and so on.  Transport this language into our present life, and it would seem affected and unnatural; but it was natural and unaffected then, because the medieval artisan did not produce for an unknown buyer, or to throw his goods into an unknown market.  He produced for his guild first; for a brotherhood of men who knew each other, knew the technics of the craft, and, in naming the price of each product, could appreciate the skill displayed in its fabrication or the labour bestowed upon it.  Then the guild, not the separate producer, offered the goods for sale in the community, and this last, in its turn, offered to the brotherhood of allied communities those goods which were exported, and assumed responsibility for their quality.  With such an organization, it was the ambition of each craft not to offer goods of inferior quality, and technical defects or adulterations became a matter concerning the whole community, because, an ordinance says, “they would destroy public confidence."(5) Production being thus a social duty, placed under the control of the whole amitas, manual labour could not fall into the degraded condition which it occupies now, so long as the free city was living.

A difference between master and apprentice, or between master and worker (compayne, Geselle), existed but in the medieval cities from their very beginnings; this was at the outset a mere difference of age and skill, not of wealth and power.  After a seven years’ apprenticeship, and after having proved his knowledge and capacities by a work of art, the apprentice became a master himself.  And only much later, in the sixteenth century, after the royal power had destroy ed the city and the craft organization, was it possible to become master in virtue of simple inheritance or wealth.  But this was also the time of a general decay in medieval industries and art.