Having won the favour of the rich and distinguished popular families, he cultivated the love of the plebeians. In this, his pleasant and familiar manner secured him great success. He treated them as his equals, and, the true Alcibiades of his time, he adapted himself to their personal characteristics and prejudices. Chronicles tell us that he watched from his towers to see if the chimneys of the poorer classes smoked regularly at the hour for preparing food, and sent provisions whenever this token of a meal was missed on any roof. Such wise generosity acquired him the affection of the people. The foreign wars and the stagnation of trade had impoverished a great part of the citizens, especially the spinners and the silk operatives, then called Tuscans, of whom there were fifteen thousand in Genoa. The history of the manufacture of silk, through which so many Italian families acquired wealth and rank, has not yet been adequately treated. The history of trades and crafts in the Peninsula would be a useful work, and would show that even in the midst of the fiercest contests of faction, commerce was always held in merited honour and was regulated by few and simple restrictions;--that merchants and artisans had their art-unions or corporations with their own laws, arms and masters, that the trades were thus united in associations as a means of perfecting their products and as a security against fraud. The historian of our manufactures would tell us that in Genoa, before 1432, the trade of silk-weaving had its _capitudini_, or officers, consisting of two consuls and six councillors, who inspected the quality of the fabrics, provided for their sale, took charge of the profits and decided upon the complaints of the operatives. The government issued many proclamations and made numerous laws to promote the woollen trade; among which those of Doge Pietro Fregoso are remarkable. He forbade the operatives, who lived in the quarter still called _Borgo del Lanieri_, to leave the walls of the city, or carry elsewhere their tools and skill, under penalty of confiscation of goods and other pains. Some illustrious men were enrolled and matriculated in the art of silk, among them Doge Paolo da Novi; and Gianettino Doria himself, when his father Tomaso fell into poverty, spent his youth among the silk-weavers of our city. The silk operatives venerated the _Volto Santo_ of San Cipriano, a circumstance which explains the extraordinary number of these images which are to be found in Genoa and along the eastern Riviera.