Charles IX of France issued an edict in 1592 the vital portion of which read as follows: “The said Masters shall furnish copies carefully edited, corrected, and made clear to the compositors lest through default of this their labor be hindered.” The principle underlying the edict was a good one. It is certainly in the interest of all concerned that compositors should be furnished good copy. There is unfortunately every reason to believe that the efforts of this royal champion of copy editing were not attended with very much success. In 1618 Louis XII organized the corporation of printers which will be discussed later. Louis XIV reaffirmed the preceding edicts governing and regulating the industry, and his great minister Colbert, in 1686, issued certain new regulations. In these it was provided that every shop should have a minimum equipment of two presses well provided with type. This was probably intended to put a stop to the small shops which did poor work and were very difficult to regulate under the police regulations which will be later discussed. The number of shops in Paris was fixed by this edict at 36. Private printing—that is to say, the exercise of the industry by persons not members of the Community of Printers—was absolutely forbidden. The quality of the work put out was insisted upon under severe penalties in case proper standards were not maintained. The long standing disagreement between booksellers and printers was settled by a decision that booksellers could not be members of the Community of Printers, unless they were themselves printers. The bookseller, pure and simple, who was merely a dealer in books was thus barred out of the Community. Louis XVI, the last king of the old regime, went still further in the matter of the regulation of journeymen. By his regulations every journeyman printer was obliged to register with the public authorities, to take out an identification card, and to have his domicile legally fixed and registered with the public authorities. He could not obtain employment without showing his card and could not change his residence without notifying the public authorities. In 1789 came the Revolution which swept away all the edicts regulating printing. In this ruin royal regulation, trade organization, police supervision, and every other restraint on the trade went down together. Printing was unregulated and unlicensed. As an actual result there came a flood of printing of a very low character both mechanically and morally.