Note 21 — Chapter I

Dr. Brentano’s essay was originally prefixed to Toulmin Smith’s English Gilds, published by the Early English Text Society in 1870. It was republished separately as The History and Development of Gilds and the Origin of Trades Unions (135 pp., 1870), and it is to this edition that we refer. Dr. Brentano’s larger work, Die Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 2 vols., 1871-72), includes this essay, and also his article in the North British Review for October 1870 on “The Growth of a Trades Union.” It is only fair to say that in this, the ablest study of English Trade Union history down to that time, Dr. Brentano lent no support to the popular idea of any actual descent of the Trade Unions from the gilds. The Cobden Club Essays (1872) contain a good article on Trade Unions, by Joseph Gostick, in which it is argued that these associations were, in England, unknown before the eighteenth century, and had no connection with the gilds.