In the small beginnings of the handicraft industry the craftsman typically passed by a simple routine from the status of apprentice to that of master, picking up the slight necessary outfit as he went along; in the closing phases of the era handicraft methods had reached a high degree of specialisation and made use of extensive processes and appliances, and it was then only by exception that any craftsman could pass from apprenticeship through the intervening stages to the position of a working master, without the help of inherited means or special favour. Toward the close of the era the masters were, typically, employers of skilled labour and foremen in their own shop, except in the frequent case where they altogether ceased to work at the trade and gave their whole attention to the business side of the industry. Many of these nominal master craftsmen were in fact mere traders, captains of industry, businessmen, who never came in manual contact with the work.[134] So capitalism emerged from the working of the handicraft system, through the increasing scale and efficiency of technology. And on the ground afforded by this capitalistic phase of the system arose that era of business enterprise that ruled the economic fortunes of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with its captains of industry and great financial houses. Whether the large means with which these captains of industry operated were primarily drawn from the gains of the petty trade that had gone before, or were drawn into this field of business from outside, is a debated question which need not detain the present inquiry. The fact remains that, by whatever means, this development of the situation comes out of that growth of handicraft whereby the ownership and control of the industrial plant passed out of the hands of the body of working craftsmen.