So far as the industry itself was concerned the important feature of this edict was the organization of the Community of Printers. This Community embraced all the printing trades; that is to say, printing, book binding, type founding, and bookselling. The master workmen carrying on shops in any of these allied industries were members of the Community. It differed from the trade guilds in that it was an organization of employers only. It did not include even the master workmen who were not employers. Certain matters were decided upon by the Community as a whole, but the work of the Community was carried on for the most part by a sort of Executive Committee called the Syndics. This Committee consisted of a chairman, who is usually referred to as the Syndic, and four associates or assessors. This board was chosen annually. Originally the elections were held in general assemblages of the industry at which all members of the Community were entitled to vote. Later the elections were in the hands of a board consisting of the five syndics for the year, past members of the board of syndics, and twenty-four electors. Of these twenty-four, eight were printers, eight booksellers, and eight binders. The type founders appear never to have been very important members of the Community and probably soon ceased to be represented among the syndics. At the time the Community was organized typefounding was not a separate industry, but was carried on by the printers themselves. The duty of the syndics was to act as the corporate representatives of the industry. They fixed wages and prices. They adjusted disputes between their fellow-members and acted for the employers in dealing with the employees. They had powers of visitation and supervision. Through these they were supposed to exercise a sort of censorship over printing, to maintain the quality of work done, to see that trade regulations were enforced and trade agreements carried out; in a word, to exercise the same minute control over the industry which was exercised by the guilds.