Note 80 — Appendices

The object avowedly pursued by Campomanes was not, however, the absolute suppression of the Spanish trade-guilds, but merely their reconstruction upon a sounder basis. He still believed that admission to a guild should be preceded by a formal period of apprenticeship, as well as that the title and the privileges of the master of a trade should be hereditary. An instance of the grossly fraudulent methods employed by the gremios in order to retain the privilege of manufacture in a certain family, is quoted by Larruga (Memorias, Vol. II., p. 201), who states that the silk-cord makers of Madrid conferred the title of master-craftsman on a babe only twenty-two months old.