the button guild. The RIAA of their time.
On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 7:32 AM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote:
> Quote from R. Heilbroner, "The Worldly Philosophers," (Simon and Shuster,
> 1953), p. 21:
>
>
> We are back in France; the year, 1666.
>
> The capitalists of the day face a disturbing challenge which the widening
> market mechanism has inevitably brought in its wake: change.
>
> The question has come up whether a guild master of the weaving industry
> should be allowed to try an innovation in his product. The verdict: "If a
> cloth weaver intends to process a piece according to his own invention, he
> must not set it on the loom, but should obtain permission from the judges of
> the town to employ the number and length of threads that he desires, after
> the question has been considered by four of the oldest merchants and four of
> the oldest weavers of the guild." One can imagine how many suggestions for
> change were tolerated.
>
> Shortly after the matter of cloth weaving has been disposed of, the
> button-makers guild raises a cry of outrage; the tailors are beginning to
> make buttons out of cloth, an unheard-of thing. The government, indignant
> that an innovation should threaten a settled industry, imposes a fine on the
> cloth button makers and even on those who wear cloth buttons. But the
> wardens of the button guild are not yet satisfied. They demand the right to
> search people's homes and wardrobes and even to arrest them on the streets
> if they are seen wearing these subversive goods.
>
> And this dread of change and innovation is not just the comic resistance of
> a few frightened merchants. Capital is fighting in terror against change,
> and no holds are barred. In England a revolutionary patent for a stocking
> frame is not only denied in 1623, but the Privy Council orders the dangerous
> contraption abolished. In France the importation of printed calicoes is
> threatening to undermine the clothing industry. It is met with measures
> which cost the lives of sixteen thousand people! In Valence alone on one
> occasion 77 persons are sentenced to be hanged, 58 broken on the wheel, 631
> sent to the galleys, and one lone and lucky individual set free for the
> crime of dealing in forbidden calico wares. . . .
>
>
> - Jed
>
>
