As under any earlier and simpler industrial régime, so in this early-advanced phase of the handicraft system the workman must also have command of that immaterial equipment of technological information at large that is current in the community, in so far as it affects his particular occupation; and he must in addition acquire the special trained skill necessary in his own branch of craft. The former he will, at that stage of technological growth, still come by without particular deliberate application, in the ordinary routine of life; it is made up of general information and familiarity with current ways of doing, simply, and on the level of general information which then prevailed no special training or schooling seems to have been needed to place the young man abreast of his time. In other words, the common stock of technological knowledge had not by that time grown so unwieldy as to require special pains to assimilate it. As for the latter, the special skill which would make him a craftsman, that was also accessible at the cost of some application; but under the rules of handicraft the early apprentice gained this trained skill at no cost beyond application to the work in hand. But the like does not continue to hold true of the material equipment; which presently was no longer to be compassed as a matter of course and of routine application to the work in hand. It was becoming increasingly important and increasingly difficult to be provided with these means with which to go to work, and the ownership of such means gave an increasingly decisive advantage to their owner.