Thus there is found with medieval craftsmen an interest in their special work and in proficiency in it, which was capable of rising to a narrow artistic sense. The limited commerce and the scanty communication between the individual towns, the lack of population and the narrow needs did not allow of a higher division of labour, and therefore every man who wished to become a master had to be proficient in the whole of his craft.

Every workman had to be versed in a whole round of tasks, had to be able to make everything that was to be made with his tools. In the towns, the division of labour between the individual guilds was as yet and, in the guilds themselves, not at all developed between the individual workers.

The great risings of the Middle Ages all radiated from the country, but equally remained totally ineffective because of the isolation and consequent crudity of the peasants. While, therefore, the rabble at least carried out revolts against the whole municipal order, revolts which remained completely ineffective because of their powerlessness, the journeymen never got further than small acts of insubordination within separate guilds, such as belong to the very nature of the guild-system. And finally, the journeymen were bound to the existing order by their simple interest in becoming masters themselves. The patriarchal relationship existing between them and their masters gave the latter a double power - on the one hand because of their influence on the whole life of the journeymen, and on the other because, for the journeymen who worked with the same master, it was a real bond which held them together against the journeymen of other masters and separated them from these. The journeymen and apprentices were organised in each craft as it best suited the interest of the masters.

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