It is quite clear that Geneva was out for quality in watches, and, indeed the name of the Swiss city has always been associated with quality. Nevertheless, they were no angels—those old Swiss craftsmen; they were in fact quite preponderatingly human. Thus it was not long before they began to make a tight little monopoly of their business. They restricted the number of workmen who might be admitted to the guild, and they secured special ordinances by means of which all other watchmakers were forbidden to establish themselves within a certain distance of the city. In other words, they did not purpose allowing the new and promising industry to grow beyond their control. There were, however, other independent people in those days who hadn't the slightest intention of being bound by such restrictions. Here and there, a watchmaker left Geneva to carry on his work in some foreign city, as, for example, in Besancon, France. Thus began a competition which grew and spread as time went on. This competition developed some interesting features. For example, the guild in Geneva obtained the passage of laws forbidding anyone from bringing into the city, in a finished state, a watch constructed within a certain distance. "Schemes" for watches and certain parts might be made at will, but only members of the citizen guild were permitted to complete these schemes. Such restrictions naturally did not tend toward low-priced watches; but all watches in those days were necessarily high-priced, and a man wealthy enough to afford one was apt to seek the best that could be bought. Geneva's strictness gave it so great a reputation that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries foreign watchmakers flocked to the Swiss city very much as art students later journeyed to Paris, and it became the acknowledged center of the European industry. As time went on the demand for time-pieces became more widespread and many Genevans moved to other cities where they became dealers in Geneva watches. It is said that, in 1725, the city of Constantinople contained as many as eighty-eight mercantile agents who had become established in this way. One hundred years after the founding of the guild, Geneva was producing five thousand watches a year, having one hundred masters of the guild and three hundred journeymen. Now five thousand watches is no small output when it is considered that each one must be constructed entirely by hand and occupied a matter of weeks in the making; yet, by 1799, the city contained nearly six thousand watchmakers and jewelers and was producing fifty thousand timepieces a year.