These masters thus organized with their laborers were the capitalists of their time, and in this vital matter differed from the Unions of to-day, which are made up of laborers as such organized to confront, and if need be, to antagonize, capitalists. A royal charter was indispensable to the legal existence of those craftsmen. It took money for them to start their guilds, and in progress of time most of them became very rich. "A common fund was raised by contributions among the members, which not only provided for the trade objects of the guild; but sufficed to found chantries and masses, and set up painted windows in the church of their patron saint. Even at the present day the arms of the craft-guild may often be seen blazoned in cathedrals side by side with those of prelates and kings." This radical difference between the two must always be borne in mind in all arguments and inferences drawn over from the mediæval "unions" to those of the present day. Two points may be freely conceded to these labor-organizations before we pass to the economic objections to them. In the first place, the employers _set the example_ for the employees in a tacit if not open combination as against the employees in their own interest and emolument. The so-called "protective" tariff, for instance, is nothing in the world but a strongly-linked combination of certain rich capitalists to extort from the masses (their own laborers included) artificially lifted prices for the necessaries of life; and the certain result of shutting out imports by tariff-taxes is the shutting in of would-be exports, to the certain lowering of general wages in a country, because there is a lessened demand for laborers in consequence. For a second good instance of combinations as against employees on the part of employers, take the well-known understanding among manufacturers of the same sort of goods in the same general locality, that laborers discharged from one establishment shall not be hired in any of the rest; and that if the general voice call for a "shut down," or for three-fourths time or less, all in that line of goods shall comply. How can laborers be blamed for organizations in their own behalf when they find themselves confronted as individuals with an organization of employers?