394 employment and labor: Europe also would have to collect payment for his own work With no exact measure of time, payment was made for a day’s work; the term day laborer was commonly used to describe people who were hired for such work These were probably some of the first people to be paid a “wage,” but there were other ways to calculate payment Most artisans charged for individual items, for example, and lawyers drafting documents charged by the word From the 1300s on trade brought considerable wealth to much of Europe, with craftsmen and artisans working in towns and cities, which they had done since Roman times To try to regulate these craft workers, from the early Middle Ages specialized guilds emerged and flourished in such cities as London, Florence, and Genoa Often known as “liveried guilds” because of the distinctive clothes (liveries) worn by practitioners of various trades, these associations were able to restrict the number of people entering a particular field of business, with the dual aims of ensuring the quality of the product or service and keeping prices high In order to join a guild, a boy typically would have to serve a fixed period as an apprentice, after which he would become a full member of Corbel in the form of an angel holding a shield with the arms of the Grocers’ Company, London, 1466 (© Museum of London) the guild During the period of apprenticeship the master had the responsibility for caring for the youth, feeding him and providing him lodgings, educating him, and also teaching him the particular craft Although there were cases of masters who took advantage of their apprentices, most masters established good working relationships; there are instances of masters, on retirement, handing over or selling their businesses to their former apprentices Extensive apprenticeship records are available for England, parts of Italy, and Germany, showing that similar patterns tended to emerge Most records indicate that a large number of boys from villages in the countryside became apprenticed at local towns There were also a number who were apprenticed in distant cities—often the master having had some connection with the village from which the apprentice came or sometimes being a distant relative Some guilds even imposed strict rules on who could be an apprentice In Paris no boy could be apprenticed as a weaver unless he was the son of a weaver For the making of food there were guilds for bakers, butchers, and fishmongers Although bakers tended to be found throughout a town or city, butchers and fishmongers often congregated in particular places Butchers had to be near the location where animals were slaughtered, since it was done soon before sale; fishmongers needed to be close to the wharfs where the catch would be landed The skinners, tanners, and curriers (who dressed leather), as well as other people involved in leatherwork, usually worked close to the location of the butchers Girdlers and saddlers had their businesses near the horse markets Butchers and cooks existed throughout Europe from ancient times, but their guilds did not emerge until the late 12th century The earliest reference to the Butchers’ Guild in London dates to 1179, and the first cook’s shop, in Cookes Row, London, is mentioned in a roll from nine years earlier Most of the guilds, however, started at a later date Their emergence was connected with particular crafts, among them, chandlers (makers of candles and soap), cobblers (shoemakers and shoe menders), and drapers (dealers in cloth and dry goods) Competition could arise between members of different guilds To circumvent this, directives in some cities such as Paris regulated the guilds not by what they produced but by the material with which it was made, thus, for example, separating robe makers using cloth from those who made robes from fur Traditionally regulations were placed on the sale of alcohol, often because of the collection of taxes; for this reason, inns and taverns had to be registered Some of these establishments were tied to particular brewers Coopers (who made and repaired wooden casks in which the beer was stored) typically were located close to breweries Vintners in many