This dissertation is a comparative study of guilds at a time when the guild system was supposedly in decline. It is not a study of decaying institutions, however, but of successful ones. It compares the structure and function of four guilds--shoemakers, joiners, barbers and millers--in the early decades of the seventeenth century. These guilds represent a cross-section of the small businessmen and artisans of Augsburg and reflect the variety of form and activity that existed in the city. The dissertation is based on archival sources that are largely unknown and untouched. Most important of these are the petitions to the City Council written by or about guildsmen and guilds. These sources allow us to go beyond the tax books and guild regulations that form the principal sources for most guild histories. This study also utilizes these traditional sources, but expands upon them with the petitions to examine how the guilds actually functioned on a daily basis (the four guilds produced fifteen to twenty petitions a month). The petitions are invaluable to the social historian, for they are among the few collections of documents in the pre-modern era that speak with the voice of the common man. The guild system in the seventeenth century was not dead; it was not even ill. Contrary to nearly every pronouncement on early modern guilds, the evidence shows that city, guild and guildsmen generally understood one another and worked well together. The system did not work flawlessly or without friction, but it did function successfully. The success came from the ability of the guilds to adapt to changing circumstances, the ability of the city to concern itself with the minutiae of its business life, and the willingness of the guildsmen to communicate their problems and desires to the government. The guilds were a vital part of the city; they were not excessively conservative, they were not backward, they were not behind the times; rather, they were in close harmony with the urban environment that sustained them.

This dissertation postulates that as effect of the model of development adopted by Puerto Rican authorities since the late forties, Puerto Rico became a "Regional Armature" of U.S. intensive accumulation and monopolist regulation over the 1950-1980 period. The asymmetrical insertion of the island into U.S. intensive accumulation circuits, is documented through an account of the shares of local manufacturing assets, value added and employment represented by U.S. corporations, as well as by an approximation to the industrial linkages between Puerto Rico and the United States. The linkage with U.S. monopolist regulation is presented through the historical account of the gradual partial extension to the island of mainland regulation institutions such as; collective bargaining practices, welfare programs, the Federal Reserve, the consumer credit network and the oligopolistic structures in the final goods market. The asymmetry of the island's integration into U.S. accumulation and regulation networks is marked by the location of only certain phases of U.S. manufacturing activity, much higher unemployment levels, lower wages and less per capita federal aid in Puerto Rico as compared to other economic regions of the United States. It is argued that the island's participation in mainland mass production activities and Keynesian mainland macro-economic policies to stimulate aggregate demand during the 1950-1973 growth period, led to economies of scale in the production of consumer durables and to increases in real and social wages making possible the local adoption of mainland mass consumption patterns. It is also argued that these consumption patterns were partially maintained during the 1974-1989 crisis period through the direct income enhancement effect and the indirect credit enhancement effect of U.S. food stamps and the credit multiplier effect of corporate CD's in local banks. Stability tests for the intercept of the consumption function for durable goods were performed to back up the latter hypothesis. Finally, the generalization of low wage, low productive Neo-taylorist service jobs among small pockets of higher wage jobs in manufacturing and services, is presented as evidence of Puerto Rico's insertion into the new extensive accumulation patterns prevalent in the United States.