All skilled labor was in the hands of the guilds. These guilds got their charters from the crown. They fixed prices, regulated the number of apprentices, and decided who should work and who should not. To work at an art without a license from the guild was punishable by fine and imprisonment; to repeat the offense was death. Citizens could neither sell their labor nor buy the labor of their neighbors or families, without permission. The guild was master, and the guild got its authority by dividing profits with a corrupt court. Thus a few laborers received very high wages, but for the many there was no work. The guild made common cause with the priest and the peer. The collection of taxes was farmed out to the "farmers-general," who kept half they got. When the yearly contract was signed, the Secretary of State was given a present called "The Bottle of Wine," by the successful bidders. This present was in cash and varied anywhere from fifty to a hundred thousand francs. Where the custom began, no one knew; but it ended with Turgot, who turned in to the government treasury a perquisite that had been made him of seventy thousand francs, and issued an order that no official should accept a present of money from a government contractor. Needless to say, Turgot was regarded as an unsafe person, and his official career was cut short. Thomas E. Watson, in his most interesting book, "The Story of France," says: The Catholic church was a huge religious monopoly. Its hierarchy was entrenched in a power before which the king himself was a secondary potentate. Then followed those consequences which have always followed when too much power is granted to any set of men. The Catholic church absorbed much of the wealth of the land. The higher priesthood became an aristocracy, imitating in every respect the feudal aristocracy, which was rich, idle and licentious. Just as the State regarded the subject from the standpoint of taxpayer only; just as the State imposed upon the common people all the burdens of government while denying them the benefits; so the nobility of the Catholic church lived sumptuously, lazily, licentiously--shirking their duties, forgetting the responsibilities of their sacred calling, neglecting the flock committed to their care, allowing ignorance and superstition to take full possession of the minds of the common people. In the records of the human race there can be found no evidence more damming to absolutism and the union of Church and State than is to be found in the degraded, besotted condition of the common people of France immediately proceeding the French Revolution. All France was orthodox. The masses believed. With boundless credulity they knelt at the foot of the priest.