The opening of new markets and the stimulus given not only to invention but to production and communication by the intellectual movement and consequent discoveries and inventions which were going on at this time upset industrial conditions tremendously. As usual, however, the workmen were the last to feel this change. Men paid more gold for commodities because they could not get them at the same old price, but wages for a long period remained fixed by custom. The laborer, like other people, had to pay more for what he bought, but unlike other people did not get any more for what he sold. This condition was made even worse by ignorant and sometimes disastrous attempts to control by legislation a situation which nobody understood. Statutes to fix prices and curtail profits are never enforceable unless backed by a government monopoly of production. Consequently the extensive legislation for these purposes was useless. Unfortunately there was also legislation forbidding combination of workmen, forbidding their passage from place to place in search of work, and forbidding their asking or receiving more than the customary rate of wages. Some of this was old legislation revived. Some of it was new. While not entirely effective, it was much more effective than the legislation with regard to commodity prices, because in the nature of things it was much more easily enforceable. The natural consequence of these conditions was the disruption of the old economic order. The employer and employed, who had been associated together in the old guilds, separated into antagonistic, if not hostile, camps. Capital and labor instead of co-operating contested for supremacy. Guilds, if they survived at all, gradually became associations of masters. We shall see how this worked out in the development of the Community of Printers. The workmen gathered into organizations of their own which were the ancestors of the modern labor unions. The modern industrial system with all its power and with all its abuses came into existence. Printing did not fit into the guild system at all. As has already been pointed out, the very nature of the industry prevented it. Indeed it was not legally regarded as an industry or a mechanical occupation until the great reorganization of the trade in 1618, a date to which we shall have frequent occasion to refer. At first it was regarded as an art or profession and those who practiced it were legally recognized as not being mechanics and not being liable to the laws governing mechanics. From 1450 to 1618 the printing industry was a sort of industrial outlaw. It was not under guild control on the one hand and was not amenable to the general statutes regarding industry on the other. That meant that the regulations which were at this period so advantageous to the other industries did not apply to this one, with numerous unfortunate results.