industrial groups were united in their determination to 
     enforce to the utmost the monopoly which each enjoyed 
     and to crush all scope for individual initiative and all 
     possibility of competition. Henceforth the consumer was 
     completely sacrificed to the producer. The great aim of 
     workers in export industries was to raise wages, that of 
     those engaged in supplying the local market to raise, or 
     at least to stabilize, prices. Their vision was bounded by 
     the town walls, and all were convinced that their 
     prosperity could be secured by the simple expedient of 
     shutting out all competition from outside. Their 
     particularism became more and more rabid; never has the 
     conception that each profession is the exclusive 
     possession of a privileged body been pressed to such 
     extremes as it was in these medieval crafts. (pp. 206­7)