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Chapel Members in the Workplace: Tension and Teamwork in the Printing Trades in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2009
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The process by which journeymen became masters and came to run printing houses of their own was seriously undermined in Europe from the sixteenth century on. As a rule, there was a concentration of a few printing presses in a handful of urban workshops. These were dominated by several fairly well-known families which encouraged the development of state control. This was a period of religious and political turmoil, particularly in England and France. Few studies on the early history of the printing industry are as thorough and illuminating as Natalie Zemon Davis's work on Lyons. In this large and prosperous French city, the rapidly expanding sixteenth-century printing industry employed many male immigrants who often spent all their adult lives as wage earners working as pressmen or compositors in a trade that was very different from that of their fathers. Both government and guild intervention contributed extensively and almost continuously to the expansion of this urban body of permanent journeymen in the capital-intensive Printing trade before the Industrial Revolution. Looking back on his career as a journeyman and foreman in the mid eighteenth-century Parisian world of printing, Restif de la Bretonne presumably articulated a widespread opinion when he wrote in his autobiographical writings that among printers “un ouvrier ne devient jamais maitre […] les maîtres engendrent des maîtres, et les compagnons des compagnons et ainsi de génération en génération.” In fact, the position of foreman in a printing establishment was the pinnacle of a lifetime of waged labour. The Dutch journeyman and overseer David Wardenaar in his manual Beschrijving der Boekdrukkunst (1801) described the journeymen (knechts) together with other wage earners as being without alternative prospects (“arbeiders […] bedongen loon […] om dat hij geen ander uitzicht heeft”) and as the workers of an unpayable craft (“gezellen de beärbeiders zijn van het nut […] door deze onbetaalbare kunst”).
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- Research Article
- Information
- International Review of Social History , Volume 39 , supplement S2: Before the Unions. Wage earners and collective action in Europe, 1300–1850 , August 1994 , pp. 53 - 82
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- Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1994
References
1 See Figures 1 and 2. Conclusions and calculations have been based in particular upon English and French data given by Chartier, Roger, “L'imprimerie en France à la fin de l'Ancien Régime: l'état géneéral des imprimeurs de 1777”, Revue française d'histoire du livre, 3 (1973), pp. 273–279Google Scholar; Minard, Philippe, Typographes des lumières, suivi des “Anecdotes typographiques” de Nicolas Contat (1762) (Champ Vallon, 1989), pp. 124–126Google Scholar; Martin, Henri-Jean, “Une croissance séculaire”, in Chartier, Roger and Martin, Henri-Jean (eds), Histoire de l'édition française: le liver triomphant 1660–1830 (Paris, 1990), p. 118Google Scholar; Roubert, Jacqueline, “La situation de l'imprimerie lyonnaise à la fin du XVIIe siècle”, in Cinq études lyonnaises (Geneva, 1966), pp. 96–97Google Scholar and McKenzie, Donald F., “The Economies of Print, 1550–1750: Scales of Production and Conditions of Constraint”, in Cavadocchi, Simonetta (ed.), Produzione e commercio delta carta e del libro (secc. XIII–XVIII) (Florence, 1992), p. 414: appendix AGoogle Scholar.
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5 “[W]orkers never become masters […] masters create masters, as journeymen do journeymen from generation to generation”. His Monsieur Nicolas ou le coeur humain dévoilé (1794–1797) and the eighteenth-century Parisian world of apprentices, alloués and masters have been discussed extensively in Minard, Typographes des lumières, pp. 74–100.
6 Fahy, Conor, “Le ‘Istruzioni pratiche ad un novello capo stampa’ di Zefirino Campanini (1789)”, Quaderni Storici, 72 (1989), pp. 699–722Google Scholar.
7 Janssen, David Wardenaar's beschrijving, pp. 227–228.
8 Davis, Natalie Zemon, “A Trade Union in Sixteenth-Century France”, The Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 19 (1966), pp. 48–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also her contribution “Le monde de l'imprimerie humaniste”, pp. 321–327; Minard, Philippe, “Agitation in the Work Force”, in Darnton, Robert and Roche, Daniel (eds), Revolution in Print. The Press in France, 1775–1800 (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 107–123Google Scholar.
9 Journeymen's petitions against unemployment, low wages, excessive entry to the trade, etc., presented to the Stationers' Court, may have been a part of the small role of the London journeymen in the Company itself, see Musson, Typographical Association, pp. 7–9.
10 Chauvet, Paul, Les ouvriers du livre en France des origines à la Révolution de 1789 (Paris, 1959), pp. 3–204Google Scholar; Minard, Typography des Lumières, pp. 159–169.
11 In 1876 the entire property, including the building and almost everything inside, was sold by Edward Moretus to the City of Antwerp. On the early history of the archives and the inventory of Denucé, Jan, Museum Plantin-Moretus. Inventaris op het Plantijnsch Archief. Inventaire des Archives Plantiniennes (Antwerp, 1926)Google Scholar, see Materné, Jan, “Archivering rond de eeuwwisseling: de vroegste inventarisatie van het Plantijns Archief (1876–1926)”, De Gulden Passer, 69 (1991), pp. 181–199Google Scholar. The issues raised in this paper will be discussed at length in my Ph.D. dissertation in progress: “Church Print and Capitalism. The Officina Plantiniana and the Moretuses in the Age of the Counter-Reformation”.
12 Darnton, Robert, “Work and Culture in an Eighteenth-Century Printing Shop”, Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 39 (1982), pp. 34–47Google Scholar; Minard, Typographes des lumières, passim; Jacques Rychner, “Le travail de l'atelier”, in Chartier and Martin, Le livre triomphant pp. 46–70. Sonenscher, Michael, Work and Wages. Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Cambridge, 1989), esp. pp. 10–22Google Scholar.
13 Moxon, Joseph, Mechanick Exercices on the Whole Art of Printing (1683–4), ed. Davis, Herbert and Carter, Harry (New York, 1978), p. 323Google Scholar.
14 See also Brun, Nicolas Contat dit Le, Anecdotes typographiques où l'on voit la description des coutumes, moeurs et usages singuliers des compagnons imprimeurs, ed. Barber, Giles (Oxford, 1980), esp. pp. 38, 66–67Google Scholar; Minard, Typographes des lumiirès, pp. 150, 157–158.
15 Momoro, Antoine-Francois, Traité élémtaire de l'imprimerie ou le manuel de l'imprimeur (Paris, 1793), p. 91Google Scholar.
16 Avis, Frederick C., The Early Printers' Chapel in England (London, 1971), pp 13–19Google Scholar; Howe, Ellic and Waite, Harold E., The London Society of Compositors (Re-established 1848). A Centenary History (London, 1948), pp. 31–32Google Scholar; Musson, Typographical Association p. 11.
17 Museum Plantin Moretus, Plantinian Archives, Antwerp [hereafter PA], ordinance G (1555–1556), according to the terminology and the dating of the former curator sabbe, Maurirs, “De Plantijnsche werkstede: arbeidsregeling, tucht en maatschappehjke vooraorg in de oude Antwerpsche drukkcrij, Verslagen en Mededelingen van de Kominklijke Vlaamsche Academic voor Tool – en Letterkunde (07 1935), pp. 633–636Google Scholar and Voet, Léon, The Golden Compasses, A History and Evaluation of the Printing and Publishing Activities of the Officina Plantiniana at Antwerp, vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1972), pp. 310–311Google Scholar.
18 Clair, Colin, A History of Printing in Britain (London, 1965), p. 105Google Scholar; Bennet, H. S., English Books & Readers, 1475 to 1557, Being a Study in the History of the Book Trade Front Caxton to the Incorporation of the Stationers' Company (Cambridge, 1989), p. 31Google Scholar and for Antwerp in a wider context: Avis, Frederick C., “England's Use of Antwerp Printers, 1500–1540”, Gutenberg Jahrbuch, 45 (1973), pp. 234–240Google Scholar. On these grounds I would rather invert Natalie Davis's suggestion that “Plantin was imitating an institutional form which the English masters had pioneered” (“A Trade Union”, p. 69).
19 The early history of the Plantinian chapel and its historiography have been largely discussed by Voet, Léon, “The Printers' Chapel in the Plantinian House”, The Library, 5th ser., 16 (1961), pp. 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Davis, Natalie Zemon, “Strikes and Salvation at Lyon”, in Davis, Natalie Zemon (ed.), Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 1987), p. 4Google Scholar.
21 PA, ordinance D (1570–1572): the master did not allow all kinds of workers' meetings and he became a central figure in the settling of quarrels: “dat de ghesellen hier werckende […] hen gheensins […] maecken oft te hebben eenighe woorden vergaderinghen oft nandelinghen alhier met eenighe ghesellen; alle gheschillen ende twisten […] sullen overgebracht worden aen den meester […] die de selve zal hooren informatie daer op nemen ende alleen ordeelen.” For a general description of the situation throughout these years, see Voet, “Printers' Chapel”, pp. 9–10.
22 PA, nos 334, 478: see especially Aenwysinghe van Artikelen […] until Cort begrijp […]; ordinance L (1609 to 1700). In 1715 (ordinance I, art. 3) it was stated that the master would only interfere in serious problems (alle merckelijcke oft swaere gheschillen).
23 Materné, Jan, “Restructuring the Plantinian Office. The Moretuses and the Antwerp Economy in a Time of Transition (Seventeenth Century)”, in Aerts, Erik et al. , (eds). Seudia Historica Oeconomica. Liber Alumnorum Herman Van der Wee (Leuven, 1993), pp. 283–301Google Scholar.
24 This function of the chapel is stressed in the definition given by David Wardenaar stating that “chapel […] is een woord dat betrekkelijk gemaakt word als alle de personen, die op een drukkerij werken bijeenkomen om over een of andere onbetaamlijkheid te oordelen welke men zijn medgezel zoo in woorden als daden […] mogt hebben aangedaan”, see Janssen, David Wardenaar's beschrijving, pp. 158–159.
25 These problems are listed and registered in pre-industrial printing offices all over Europe. See e.g. Coppens, Christian, “Un règlement de l'imprimerie de Jean-Louis de Boubers en 1781”, Quaerendo, 19 (1989), pp. 83–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fahy, Conor, “A Printers' Manual from Bodoni's Parma: the “Istruzioni pratiche' of Zefirino Campanini (1789)”, The Library, 6th ser., 13 (1991), pp. 104–105Google Scholar; Rychner, Jacques, “A 1'ombre des Lumières: coup d'oeil sur la main-d'oeuvre de quelques imprimeries du XVIIIe siècle”, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 155 (1976), pp. 1925–1955Google Scholar; Rules and Directions to be Observed printing-houses ed. Wyn Evans, D. (Greenock, 1988)Google Scholar.
26 Many examples can be found in PA, ordinances A-L and nos 264, 334, 340, 478, 697. See also Sabbe, “Plantijnsche werkstede”, pp. 595–694 and Sabbe, Maurits, “In de Plantijnsche Werkstede. Ordonnantie op het gebruik van vuur en licht”, De Gulden Passer, 14 (1936), PP. 145–151Google Scholar.
27 Riley, James C., “Sickness in an Early Modern Workplace”, Continuity and Change 2 (1987), 363–385CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sabbe, “Plantijnsche werkstede”, pp. 611, 688–694; Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, pp. 372–375.
28 PA, nos 334, 432, 772.
29 Several examples of financial activities can be found in PA, e.g. no. 772.
30 Of course, the financial health of the fund was another incentive. Later on, several measures were taken to keep it going on (e.g. loans from the master, financial transfers, etc.).
31 Janssen, David Wardenaar's beschrijving, esp. pp. 267–271.
32 Voet, Léon, “Boeken en drukkers”, in Antwerpen in de XVIIIde eeuw: instellingen, economie, cultuur (Antwerp, 1952), pp. 331–340Google Scholar.
33 Blagden, Cyprian, The Stationers' Company. A History 1403–1959 (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Johnson, Gerald D., “The Stationers Versus the Drapers: Control of the Press in the Late Sixteenth Century”, The Library, 6th ser., 10 (1988), pp. 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Martin, Henri-Jean, Livre, pouvoirs et société a Paris au XVIIe siècle (1598–1701) (Geneva, 1969)Google Scholar; Pottinger, David T., The French Book Trade in the Ancien Regime, 1500–1791 (Cambridge, 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 PA, no. 772, folio 312.
36 PA, nos 432, 772.
37 Riley, “Sickness”, p. 384.
38 Janssen, David Wardenaar's beschrijving, pp. 228–231. Wardenaar's proposal went beyond the workshop and referred to practices in France. For these practices, see Minard, “Agitation in the Work Force”, p. 120.
39 Materné, Jan, “Social Emancipation in European Printing Workshops before the Industrial Revolution”, in Safley, Thomas M. and Rosenband, Leonard N. (eds), The Workplace Hore the Factory. Artisans and Proletarians, 1500–1800 (Ithaca, 1993), pp. 204–224Google Scholar.
40 General State Archives, Brussels, Officie Fiscaal, nos. 392–405.
41 Maslen, Keith, “Masters and Men”, The Library, 5th ser., 30 (1975), pp. 82–83Google Scholar; Rychner, , “Running a Printing House in XVIIIth-Century Switzerland: the Workshop of the S.T.N.”, The Library, 6th ser., 1 (1979), p. 13Google Scholar.
42 Darnton, Robert, “L'imprimerie de Panckoucke en l'an II”, Revue française d'histoire du livre 33 (1979), pp. 359–369Google Scholar.
43 PA, no. 793, folio 169 recto. Voet, “Boeken en drukkers”, pp. 338–339: 16 master printers employed 59 journeymen (gezellen) and 12 apprentices (leerjongens).
44 PA, e.g. nos 264, folio 21 recto and 793. Plantinian journeymen only occasionally referred to the other shops in the town such as the larger shop of the Verdussen family. The eighteenth-century foreign workers in the Plantinian Office seem to have come from outside the city (particularly the Rhineland) and left the city afterwards. The involvement of Antwerp in the famous “tour de France” and beyond has been indicated by Lannette-Claverie, Claude, “Les tours de France des imprimeurs et libraires à la fin du XVIIe siècle”, Revue frangaise d'histoire du livre, 3 (1973), pp. 215, 225Google Scholar.
45 A quotation from Avis, Printers' Chapel, p. 24.
46 Darnton, Robert, The Business of Enlightenment. A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775–1800 (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 206, 244–245Google Scholar.
47 This was also true when, for example, the Moretuses acted on behalf of the sick fund before the public authorities, see PA, no. 432.
48 Darnton, Robert, “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Seéverin”, in Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984), pp. 75–104Google Scholar. The article has been discussed largely between 1985 and 1988 in the Journal of Modern History.
49 Avis, Printers' Chapel, pp. 28–29.
50 Rychner, Jacques, “Fonctions et tribulations d'un prote au XVIIIe siècle: Jacques-Barthélemy Spineux, 1738–1806”, in Rychner, and Schlup, Michel (eds), Aspects du livre neuchâtelois. Études réunies à l'occasion du 450e anniversaire de l'imprimerie neuchâteloise (Neuchâtel, 1986), pp. 187–269Google Scholar.
51 Sonenscher, Work and Wages, p. 19.
52 PA, ordinance D (1570–1572) and no. 334.
53 PA, no. 793.
54 PA, nos 334, 432.
55 PA, especially ordinance I (1715).
56 Minard, Typographes da lumières, pp. 127, 161.
57 PA, nos 264, 334.
58 The figure emphasizes the activities of the Plantinian printing house in the first half of the eighteenth century. The bookshop and the subcontracted work, which involved auxiliary activities such as book illustration in particular, are not included. Compared to the seventeenth-century business, these activities (e.g. copperplate printing) had been integrated into the eighteenth-century Plantinian office at a time when the local industry was in decline (see also Figures 8 and 9. One of the preparatory drawings by Jan van der straet (Stradanus, 1523–1605) for these two engravings, originally published as illustrations of new inventions in a book called Nova Reperta, bears the date of 1550. Whether inspired by Italian or Flemish workshops, the processes of printing they represent took place in a similar way in both locations. Although the plates are supposed to have been engraved by Hans Collaert (1566–1628), there were presumably several successive states signed by different members of the Galle family, whose workshop had very close connections with the Plantinian Office.) See in this respect also Thijs, Alfons K. L., Antwerpen internationaal uitgeverscentrum van devotieprenten, 17de–18de eeuw (Leuven, 1993), pp. 112–113Google Scholar.
59 PA, no. 334.
60 Moxon, Mechanick Exercices, p. 327.
61 PA, nos 334, 478.
62 There are no regular or complete entries for women at work to be found in the wages accounts. The employment of women in the Plantinian shop took the form of isolated cases. Compare with Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2. pp. 330–331.
63 Moxon, Mechanick Excercices, p. 323.
64 Materné, “Social Emancipation”, p. 224.
65 Avis, Printers' Chapel, p. 28.
66 Ibid., p. 83.
67 Moxon, Mechanick Exercices, p. 329.
68 PA, no. 793.
69 Yet, work-related issues arising between proofreaders and letterpress printing journeymen involved some negotiation and mutual complaints on the shop floor, see PA, ordinances A-L.
70 PA, no 329; Sabbe, “Plantijnsche werkstede”, pp. 631–632; Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2 pp. 175–193.
71 The following data upon PA, ordinances A-L; 334, 478; Sabbe, “Plantoijnsche werkstede”, pp. 559–694; Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2 pp. 309–375.
72 1 guilder = 20 st.
73 Calculations have been based upon the employment data of de Roover, Raymond, “The Business Organization of the Plantin Press in the Setting of Sixteenth-Century Antwerp”, Gedenkboek der Plantin-dagen, 1555–1955 (Antwerp, 1956), pp. 112–113Google Scholar.
74 Avis, Printers' Chapel, p. 37.
75 Moxon, Mechanick Exercices, p. 329.
76 Voet, Golden Compasses, vol. 2, pp. 351–352.
77 PA, nos 334, 432.
78 PA, ordinances A-L: smouters or apprentices could also work at the typecase. On the different meaning of smouting in English, see Avis, Printers' Chapel, pp. 34–35.
79 Avis, Printers' Chapel, p. 37.
80 Chauvet, Les owners du livre, p. 438.
81 PA, no. 117.
82 Cited in Howe, Ellic (ed.), The London Compositor, Documents Relating to Wages, Working Conditions and Customs of the London Printing Trade, 1785–1900 (London, 1947), p. 27Google Scholar.
83 Minard, Typographes des lumières, pp. 90–95.
84 Avis, Printers' Chapel, pp. 28–32.
85 In my research on membership of the chapels' governing body I have focused upon years 1671–1707 and 1712–1734, see PA, nos 334, 1168.
86 Moxon, Mechanick Exercices, p. 323.
87 One could object that this group was comparable to the later delegation of negotiators (the captain and the proctors) who spoke with the master. However, at that time, the real judges were the aldermenl See below.
88 Avis, Printers' Chapel, p. 29; Howe, London Compositor, p. 28.
89 This figure only takes into account the members at election time. Although the position of captains, proctors and treasurers of the large fund in particular can be checked in the accounts and the books recording complaints and breaches of the rules, some replacements might have been missed.
90 In practice, the annual control of the sick fund accounts was usually done by the master, the two proctors and the treasure of the large fund, see e.g PA, no. 432.
91 In the 1670s, the listings of the law did not always contain the treasurers of the large fund, although they were elected at that time.
92 For England and France, see Musson, Typographical Association, passim and Minard, “Agitation in the Workforce”, pp. 107–123.
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