Note 34 — TEXTILE FABRICS (continued 2)

A report presented by the Council of Commerce to the Marquis of la Ensenada, put forward, in 1744, the absurd pretence that the king of Spain maintained his factories “not for any State convenience or ad lucrum captandum, but in order to augment our own products, and diminish those which are imported from abroad.”—Larruga's Memorias, Vol. XV., pp. 70 and 247. Also see the conference delivered by the Count of Torreánaz in 1886, in the Royal Spanish Academy of Moral and Political Science; p. 27, note.

Several of the Spanish Crown factories were finally taken over by the association—immensely wealthy at one period—known as the Five Chief Gremios of Madrid (Los Cinco Gremios Mayores de la Villa de Madrid), and it is clear that the investment of a large amount of capital, subscribed by many shareholders, would of itself be calculated to destroy the narrow ideals and what I may term the individually greedy spirit which hitherto had ruled within the craftsman's private family. Private interests, in short, were superseded by the larger interests of a powerful company. That which I have mentioned was composed of the five gremios of the capital of Spain which subscribed the largest sums in taxes to the national exchequer; namely, the drapers, haberdashers, spicers and druggists, jewellers, cloth-merchants, and linen-drapers. For many years this association administered, on government's behalf, the alcabalas, tercias, and cientos of the town and district of Madrid, and subsequently (a.d. 1745) the millones tax, together with other important dues, and ultimately, as I have stated, took over, on a liberal scale of purchase, the royal cloth and silk factories of Talavera de la Reina (a.d. 1785), San Fernando, Guadalajara, Brihuega, Ezcaray, and Cuenca. The decay and downfall of the company was due to gross mismanagement, and indeed, the idiosyncrasies of the Spanish character render this people, even at the present day, but little fitted to embark upon commercial schemes requiring competent directors, heavy capital, and confident assistance, moral and material, from a large body of investors. Spaniards, as I have insisted elsewhere, do not pull well together; and so, early in the nineteenth century, the association of the five great gremios, which had possessed at one time many millions of pesetas, suspended payment of all dividends. It is fair to add, however, that this collapse was partly owing to the wars between France and Spain.