It was probably this more than anything else which brought about an increasing antagonism between the guilds and the state in every country. In the years of their growth and power the guilds, as we have seen, had been the strong supporters of the social order, the pillars of the state, and the firm reliance of the government, or at any rate of that party in the government which they supported. When the government became strong enough to desire to stand alone, the power of the guilds, which had formerly been useful, became decidedly objectionable, and the entire influence of the state was more and more directed against them. Another important social change was the development of free labor and free capital, resulting in the separation of industrial classes. Under the guild system there was no separation between labor and capital, or between the employers and the employed as classes. The guilds were associations in which labor and so much capital as there was were combined in a close organization, while there was neither labor nor capital in any particular amount outside the guild. With the gradual change of conditions, growth of population, increase of wealth, and greater intercourse between communities there grew up on one end of the social scale groups of laborers who were not members of any guild and on the other end accumulations of capital which were either in the hands of men who were neither craftsmen nor guild members or of those who had larger accumulations than they could use in their own business. This development of laborers seeking employment and capital seeking investment was fatal to the guild system when once the progress of invention made the factory system possible.