There were of course trade (or handicraft) associations and social guilds. Dom Gasquet describes thus their object: "Broadly speaking, they were the benefit societies and the provident associations of the Middle Ages. They undertook towards their members the duties now frequently performed by burial clubs, by hospitals, by almshouses, and by guardians of the poor." [Footnote: "Poor laws had no existence in medieval England, yet the peasants did not fear and die of starvation in old age. The Romans had no poor laws ... until the destruction of small freehold."--Francis Newman.] "Not infrequently they are found acting for the public good of the community in the mending of roads and in the repair of bridges.... The very reason of their existence was to afford mutual aid." [Footnote: Parish Life of Medieval England.] They were in very deed, as Mr. Toulmin Smith describes them, institutions of "local self-help." And everyone who knows anything of the subject is aware that they "obviated pauperism, assisted in steadying the price of labour, and formed a permanent centre." Also it has been proved that they acted as the lever which effectually made citizenship more together as a whole, bound together by common need and common responsibilities. This sense of oneness of interest of "Each for All," then, we have unfortunately as a nation lost. And with the loss have gone many of the people's rights and privileges both with regard to local self-government, local liberties, and co-operation. Now the question arises how are we to recover what was so necessary to the public well-being? And Francis Newman is ready with an answer. "To recognize little states in our towns and countries would be the first step of organization; I believe it would be an easy one.... If each town had full power to tax itself for public purposes, a thousand civilizing ameliorations would be introduced.... If local institutions had been kept up in energy, the unhealthy buildings which now exist could never have arisen; there is at present an Augean stable to cleanse.... Look at the sellers in the street, look at the cab-drivers and their horses on a rainy day; what can be more barbarous than their exposure?... Nothing surely is more obvious than that in a city where thirty or forty thousand persons live all day under the sky, having no power to shelter themselves, there ought to be numerous covered piazzas, market-places, and sheds for cabriolets. By such means, to save the poor from rheumatism and inflammations, would be cheaper than to raise their wages, if that were possible, and would confer far more direct benefit on them than the removing of taxes."