The river merchants of Paris, the Flemish and German Hanse, the English Guild Merchants, and the _Arte di Calimala_ in the commune of Florence,[27] may be taken as types of the great commercial guilds. They were the first to succeed in making their power felt, and represent, first by right of priority, and later by right of wealth, all that existed in the way of business, the _Universitas mercatorum_, and they long retained an uncontested supremacy. Not only the whole body, but the heads of the houses or societies dependent on them, had numberless subordinates, destined for the most part to remain subordinates--cashiers, book-keepers, porters, brokers, carriers, agents, messengers. These paid agents--often sent abroad to the depots, branch houses, bonded warehouses, _fondouks_, owned collectively or individually by the wholesale merchants whose servants they were--were always under the strictest regulations. Take, for instance, the prohibition to marry which the Hanseatic League imposed on the young employees whom it planted like soldiers in the countries with which it traded. Nor was the Florentine _Arte di Calimala_, so called after the ill-famed street in which its rich and sombre shops were situated, any more lenient to those of its agents who, especially in France, were set to watch over its interests. The merchants of the Calimala--buyers, finishers, and retailers of fine cloth, money-changers too, and great business magnates, constantly acting as mediums of communication between the West and the East--were far from treating their indispensable but untrustworthy subordinates in a spirit of brotherhood. They looked on them with suspicion as inferiors. They complain of their "unbridled malice";[28] they reproach them, and probably not without reason, with making their fortunes at the expense of the firms which paid them. It was decided that in the case of a dispute as to wages, if nothing had been arranged in writing, the master could settle the matter at will without being bound by precedent or by anything he had paid in a similar case. If the employee was unlucky enough to return to Florence much richer than he left it, he was at once spied upon, information was lodged against him, and an inquiry instituted by the consuls of the guild; after which he was summoned to appear and made to disgorge and restore his unlawful profits. If he could not explain the origin of his surplus gains, he was treated as a bankrupt, his name and effigy were posted up, and the town authority was appealed to that he might be tortured till a confession of theft or fraud was forced from him; he was then banished from the Commune. Thus we see exasperated masters dealing severely with dishonest servants: capital ruling labour without tact or consideration. The autocratic and capitalistic character of the great industrial guilds is even more striking.[29]