In one case[49] we find a currier, who had taken to tanning, forced to choose between the two trades; in another we find goldsmiths forbidden to encroach on the business of money-changing. Interminable disputes dragged on between the tailors, who sold new clothes, and the sellers of old clothes,[50] and the courts laboured for years and years to fix the exact moment at which a new suit became an old one! The harness makers quarrelled with the saddlers; the sword polishers with the sword-pommel makers; the bakers with the confectioners; the cooks with the mustard makers; the woollen merchants with the fullers; the leather-dressers with the shamoy-dressers; the dealers in geese with the poulterers, etc, etc.[51] When it was not a question of the right of manufacture, they quarrelled over the best pitches. At Paris the money-changers of the Pont-au-Change complained that the approach to their shop was obstructed by the birdsellers, and tried to force them to settle elsewhere. The wheelwrights established in the Rue de la Charronnerie (it might have happened yesterday) compelled the clothes-sellers to move about with their hand-barrows, instead of taking up their station in their neighbourhood. These ever-recurring legal disputes were inherent in the guild system and could only disappear with the system itself. Lastly, this competition for monopolies made itself felt in the very heart of each guild. It led directly to rigorous limitation of the number of masters. If, in fact, all those who were qualified to receive mastership had been left free to set up, those who first held the privilege would have risked being lost in the crowd of newcomers. This explains why even here they sought to reduce competition to a minimum. Only six barbers were allowed in Limoges, and when one of them died, his successor was elected after a competitive examination. At Angers the head of the guild only created new master butchers every seven years, and even then it was necessary to obtain the consent of the other masters.[52] In certain towns when a family in possession of a craft died out, its house of business and appliances reverted to the guild, which indemnified the heirs.[53] It was an expense, but it meant one competitor the less. Is it to be wondered at that mastership in many crafts gradually became hereditary? It was only necessary to push the principle a little further. If we consult the _Book of Crafts_ drawn up by Étienne Boileau from 1261 to 1270 by order of Louis IX., we read in the Statutes of the napery weavers of Paris: "No one may be master weaver except the son of a master." Thus, from the thirteenth century, guild organization, in the pursuit of its economic ends, closed its ranks and tended to become a narrow oligarchy.