These “colleges” are not labor unions for the protection of the wage-earners against exploitation; they are more like the guilds that are to be developed in the Middle Ages. The chief members are the employing “masters,” and paid journeymen and apprentices have little share in the control of the organization. However, most industries in Rome are on so small a scale and the situation is so complicated by the competition of slave labor that the friction between wage-earners and their employers seldom becomes dangerously acute. The trade guilds are carefully watched by the government lest they become the hotbeds of sedition and disturbing intrigue,[137] on the other hand their existence is often useful in helping to mobilize industry in behalf of the army and to keep up the public works in general. They have a fairly tight organization, with their own officials, “prætors” and “presidents,” and the like, and the election to such a post by one’s fellow craftsmen is no slight honor. The guilds, too, have their special corporate property; and many of them possess elaborate guild halls for their feasts and meetings. =222. Very Ancient Guilds: the Flute-Blowers.=--Some of the colleges are of decidedly recent origin, but eight of them boast that their history goes back to the very early days of Rome. These are the fullers, cobblers, carpenters, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, dyers, potters, and last but not least, the flute-blowers, so important at funerals and all public festivals. From the “good old times” come many quaint stories about these guilds, and everybody remembers especially the tale concerning the flute-blowers. About 314 B.C. the censors saw fit to forbid these somewhat riotous and irregular gentry from joining in the sacred banquets to Jupiter in which they had formerly participated. In anger the whole college struck and retired in dudgeon to the friendly city of Tibur. Soon the Senate found it difficult to conduct the religious rites properly without the aid of the flute-players, and endeavored to cajole them home, but the strikers had found their fare and quarters in Tibur very pleasant and refused any reasonable terms. The people of Tibur, however, wearied of their guests and to get rid of them gave the whole corporation a generous banquet, during which all the members became so drunk that they could be loaded into wagons, trundled back to Rome and then laid down in a helpless stupor in the very Forum. The next morning the entire guild awoke, rubbed its collective eyes and found a vast crowd of jeering friends pressing around. The result was an honorable compromise. The censors relented, and the flute-players, in return for giving solemn attention to their religious duties, were awarded the right to three days of high carnival, with songs, dances, and every kind of coarse gayety.