The point should be kept in mind in any consideration of the era of handicraft that its beginnings are made by these “masterless men,” who broke away (or were broken out) from the bonds of that organisation in which the arbitrary power of the landed interest held dominion. By tenacious assertion of the personal rights which they so arrogated to themselves, and at great cost and risk, they made good in time their claim to stand as a class apart, a class of ungraded free men among whom self-help and individual workmanlike efficiency were the accepted grounds of repute and of livelihood. This tradition never dies out among the organised craftsmen until the industrial system which had so been inaugurated went under in the turmoil of politics and finance or was supplanted by the machine era that grew out of it. With this class-tradition of initiative and democratic autonomy is associated, as an integral fact in the system, the concomitant tradition that work is a means of livelihood. In these early phases of the system the individual workman is (typically) competent to work out his livelihood with the use of such a slight equipment of tools as could readily be acquired in the course of his employment. In great part, indeed, the craftsman of the early days made his tools and appliances as he went along. But it follows necessarily that further training in the skilled manipulations of the crafts led to the use of improved and specialised tools as well as to the use of larger appliances useful in the technological processes employed, such as could scarcely be called tools in the simpler sense of the word but would rather be classed as industrial plant. With the advance of technology the material equipment so requisite to the pursuit of industry in the crafts increases in volume, cost and elaboration, and the processes of industry grow extensive and complex; until it presently becomes a matter of serious difficulty for any workman single-handed to supply the complement of tools, appliances and materials with which his work is to be done. It then also becomes a matter of some moment to own such wealth.