To be sure there were some things which partially neutralized this antagonism, such as better facility in communication, the increase of production, the activity of exchange, the invention of new industrial processes, and the opening of new industries, notably printing and silk manufacture.[780] But nothing compensated the workman for the rise in the price of necessities of life due to the influx of gold and silver from America, for his wages did not rise in proportion. In consequence the cleavage grew more and more sharp. The result of this tendency was that poor workmen, despairing of getting economic justice from the guilds, took to working in their own quarters. So common was this practice in the sixteenth century that a new word was coined to define this unapprenticed class—- _chambrelons_. These plied their trades in their own houses and sold the product of their handicraft anywhere. As early as 1457, and again in 1467, the masters complain of this practice.[781] It is easy to understand the disastrous influence of this new form of industry upon guild labor, since the new class of workmen was not subject either to the same money charges or to the same restrictive regulations. It was “unfair” competition for the old order of things which reposed upon the maintenance of an economic equilibrium between demand and supply, between labor and capital, was upset by the new tendencies. To the toiling masses trodden down by the masters and economically tyrannized over, the Reformation came as the first _organized_ movement of discontent, and hosts of dissatisfied workmen throughout Germany and France hastened to identify themselves with Protestantism, not for religious reasons, but because the Reformation constituted exactly that for which they were seeking—a protest. The situation was further aggravated by the influx of foreign workmen, chiefly from Germany, where this economic revolution was earlier and more fully developed than elsewhere in Europe, in great industrial centers like Nürnberg, and where small German workmen were more completely shut out than was the case in France or England. These men—such as cobblers, shoemakers, carpenters, wool-carders, and other simple artisans—wandered over the country from one province to another, carrying the economic gospel of free labor and the religion of Lutheranism with them. Naturally they imbued their French fellow-workmen with their sentiments—and to such an extent that for years, during the early course of the civil wars, the Huguenots were commonly called “Lutherans.” Before 1560, the greater portion of the Protestant party was made up of woolcombers, fullers, drapers, weavers, shoemakers, hosiers, dyers, tailors, hatters, joiners, glaziers, bookbinders, locksmiths, cutlers, pewterers, coopers, etc.[782] Even as late as 1572, when the Huguenot movement had for twelve years been led by noblemen like the Châtillons and the Rohans, the Venetian ambassador still characterized the