The following quote is from the Twin Groves Jr. Highschool District 96, Illinois, website. Unfortunately, the site no longer exists.
"As time went on however, there was a natural inclination on the part of the masters who were the members of the guild to keep their numbers down, have more workmen under them, and thus increase their profits and keep the competition down. This resulted in apprentices having to work for a certain number of years past their initial training period as a journeyman or hired day laborer. This allowed the masters to have fairly large shops in which apprentices and journeymen worked for them.The masters preferred to take on more apprentices rather than promote journeymen into master status in order to keep their numbers down and therefore secure their share of the available market. Eventually it became almost impossible to become a master unless you were the son of a master or married a master's daughter. This left the majority of men working in the craft without hope of rising beyond journeyman status.
"Unfortunately, the journeymen were almost completely at the mercy of the masters who ran the guild. The guild did guarantee every journeyman work. In Paris the journeymen of a guild gathered each morning at a certain place where the masters came and chose the men they wanted. If any journeymen were left over, the guild officers assigned them to masters. Through the guild, the masters set the journeyman's wages and regulated the hours and conditions of his work. In some towns, those journeymen brave enough, tried to form organizations of their own in order to fight the masters' rule. However the masters always had the support of the town government and the journeymen were rarely successful."
Although this has to do with a much earlier period than when my ancestors practiced the trade, guild practices probably hadn't changed much by the 19th century. What strikes us about this is that "journeyman" didn't necessarily mean that men traveled extensively - it meant that they were employed in various places, by various Master craftsmen. They could have remained in the same general area, and still have been "journeymen".
Also, it seems that the very fact that Henry and James gave their occupations as "journeymen" means that they were in a guild - and that they needed a Master to get work. We haven't come up with much on Shoemakers' (or Cordwainers, as they were called) Guilds yet. It will be necessary to know where James and Henry began their careers to find out what Guild they would have been in.
My son did find an interesting image, however, of the coat of arms for the Shoemakers' Guild in Angus, Scotland: Arms of the Montrose Shoemakers Guild. It's rather impressive, and suggests that the old Cordwainers were very well thought of, and pretty important too. It is a painting by the Scottish artist Robert Munro.
