[25] _Macmillan’s Magazine_ (February 1861), relying on the Social Science _Report on Trade Societies and Strikes_ (1860), p. 521. [26] See Appendix _On the Assumed Connection between the Trade Unions and the Gilds in Dublin_. [27] _Gilds and Trade Unions_ (1870), p. 54. [28] _History of Industry and Commerce_, vol. i. p. 310. Dr. Gross, in his _Gild Merchant_, apparently takes a similar view. [29] See his _Introduction to Economic History and Theory_, vol. i. (1891); vol. ii. (1893); see also his _Surveys: Historic and Economic_ (1900). [30] Dr. Brentano himself makes this clear. “We must not forget that these gilds were not unions of labourers in the present sense of the word, but of persons who, with the help of some stock, carried on their craft on their own account. The gild contests were, consequently, not contests for acquiring political equality for labour and property, but for the recognition of political equality of trade stock and real property in the towns” (_Gilds and Trade Unions_, p. 73). [31] Jupp’s _History of the Carpenters’ Company_, p. 313, second edition, 1848. In certain cases we see the workmen seeking incorporation as a gild or company, in order that they might themselves lawfully regulate their trades. Thus, in 1670 the wage-earning woodsawyers of the City of London, who were employed by the members of the Carpenters’, Joiners’ and Shipwrights’ Companies, formally applied to the Corporation to be made a Company. Their employers strongly objected, alleging that they had already by combination raised their wages during the past quarter of a century from 5s. to nearly 10s. per load; that they were only day labourers who worked on material provided by their employers, and consequently not entitled to rank as masters; and that if their combination were recognised by incorporation they would be able to bring the whole building trade to a standstill, as experience had already demonstrated even without incorporation. Moreover, their main object, it was alleged, was to exclude from employment “all that sort of labourers who daily resort to the City of London and parts adjacent, and by that means keep the wages and prices of these sorts of labourers at an equal and indifferent rate; and then success would be an evil precedent, all other labourers, the masons, bricklayers, plasterers, etc., having the same reason to allege for incorporation” (_Ibid._ p. 307). The London coal-porters in 1699 unsuccessfully petitioned the House of Commons that a Bill might be passed to establish them as “a Fellowship in such government and rules as shall be thought meet” (House of Commons Journals, vol. xiii. p. 69). Professor Unwin suggests that it was “by its failure along these traditional lines” that “the wage-earning class was driven into secret combinations, from the obscurity of which the Trade Union did not emerge till the 19th century” (_Industrial Organisation in the 16th and 17th Centuries_, 1904).