It was in 1886 and 1887, however, when the laws which were to create a national industry and commerce were introduced, that a serious step was taken to exclude the Jews from economic activity. On the assumption that occupations were a civil right to which aliens could or could not be admitted, the Jews were systematically deprived even of the civil rights which had been theirs, to a great extent, before the Berlin Congress sought to make them politically free. As foreigners, the Jews were prohibited the right of choosing electors for the newly-created Chambers of Commerce and Trade, or of becoming members of these chambers although they formed a large majority of the merchants and manufacturers represented in these important bodies. A still more serious provision was that which decreed that five years after the foundation of a factory two-thirds of the workingmen employed therein must be Roumanians. Jews were also partly excluded from the administrative positions in joint-stock companies. They were completely excluded from employment in the financial institutions of the state, from the state railway service, and, by a provision that two-thirds of the employes on private railways must be Roumanians, were practically excluded from these as well. The sharpest blow, however, was struck in 1902, when a new law for the organization of trades, popularly known as the Artisans' Bill, was passed. In this law there is to be seen a revival of the guild organizations of the Middle Ages. To pursue his occupation every artisan was required to obtain a certificate from a guild. Jewish master artisans and workmen were hit by the requirement that aliens in order to have the right of working in accordance with this law must prove that in their own country reciprocal rights existed for Roumanians, or obtain an authorization from a Chamber of Commerce or Industry. Whatever value this requirement may have had for the protection of Roumanian workmen in foreign countries, its chief effect was to place in a position of economic helplessness the majority of the Jewish workmen as "aliens not subject to any foreign Power", and largely unable to secure authorization from such chambers controlled by competitors. Other clauses, requiring that all workingmen belong to a guild, and that fifty workmen possessing civil and political rights are empowered to form a guild, put the control of trades into the hands of non-Jews, although the majority of the artisans in many of the trades were Jews.