These conditions tended to keep the journeymen permanently in that position and to confine the masters to those who came into the business by inheritance or marriage. The printing industry has thus the unfortunate prominence of being the leading influence in breaking up the old unities of industry and bringing about the modern industrial system. It was the first industry in which there was developed a distinct class of masters who were not and never had been workmen, and in which the workman could become a master only under unusual circumstances. The sharp division of industry into employers and employed with antagonistic interests and divergent aims begins here. The hours of labor in the printing industry were very long. Throughout France they averaged about fourteen hours a day, and similar conditions appear to have prevailed elsewhere. As already indicated, a certain amount of product, particularly on the press, was considered to be a fair day’s work. In 1572 the 3350 sheets per day required of a pressman at Lyons compelled him to work from two o’clock in the morning to eight or nine in the evening without leaving the shop. This appears from evidence submitted in litigation. Printers were boarded and generally lodged by their employers. Plantin’s establishment, still in existence in Amsterdam, shows living quarters for all of the workmen who were employed in the plant. They were given their meals in the shop and were permitted to send the apprentices out for wine or beer, which they drank in considerable quantities. The men themselves objected to going out for their food, although they often complained of the quality of that furnished. Their objection was based upon the fact that they so depended upon each other for their work that if men went out, especially if they overstayed their time, they would be likely to hold up each other’s work and make it impossible to complete the required task of the day even in the very liberal time allowance which was then regarded as reasonable. It is not to be wondered at that the long hours, close confinement, and hard work encouraged the drinking habits which were proverbial among printers. The natural result of so much drinking was a good deal of disorder and violence, especially on holidays. There is no reason to suppose, however, that printers as a class were worse than other workmen of their day and generation. They were much superior in education and they were recognized as being of higher social condition. They were exempt from many of the legal requirements upon journeymen in other trades, and their industry was more than once recognized by royal edict as being an art or profession and not a mechanical trade. The printers were very proud of this social distinction and, as has been already stated, emphasized their claim to it by wearing swords, which in those days was the mark of the gentleman or professional man.