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The little building just across the way was the Guild House of the Arte della Lana, or Wool-combers, and is now the head-quarters of the Italian Dante Society, who hold a conference every Thursday in the large room over Or San Michele, gained by the flying buttress-bridge.
"This reasoning, coupled with similar arguments from Lorenzo, seemed so conclusive that our auditors agreed to our suggestions, and Michael di Lando was chosen to command our organization. He was already head of the wool-combers union, the largest and most powerful in the city, supporting the plebs and the low class people.
But with suddenness, that was of truth no suddenness, Margarite had with him three out of four of our hidalgos, and more than that, our Apostolic Vicar of the Indies! Don Diego must bend aside, speak him fair, remonstrate, not command. The Viceroy of the Indies and Admiral of Ocean-Sea? Dead probably! and what were these Colombos? Italian wool-combers! But here stood hidalgos of Spain!
In one of his caustic epigrams Dean Duport does indeed speak of the wool-combers as if there were a recognised calling that employed some numbers of men; but he is not complimentary to those employed, for he says that the men that comb the wool, and the sheep that bear it, are on a par as regards intelligence: "At vos simplicitate pares et moribus estis, Lanificique homines, lanigerique greges."
"A part of the trade unions, particularly the members of the wool-combers, joined the mob to avenge themselves upon the Guelphs. Led by Michael di Lando, Lorenzo and myself, they broke into, looted and burned the house of Lapo, but he escaped, disguised as a monk, into the Casentino. Piero and Carlo, two other of their leaders, hid themselves and so well we could not find them.
The trades which employ but a small number of hands, run most easily into such combinations. Half-a-dozen wool-combers, perhaps, are necessary to keep a thousand spinners and weavers at work.
It would seem, however, that the natives have made instruments for dressing this flax not very dissimilar from the tools of our own wool-combers. The outside they throw away, and the rest they spread out for several days in the sun to dry, which makes it as white as snow. In this prepared state it is, he says, called "mooka."
"The plebs, led by Benedetto degli Alberti and Lorenzo, who some time before had joined the wool-combers' union, and was an intimate friend and trusted lieutenant of Michael di Lando, the head of the strongest trade union or order in the city, were soon so wrought up as to be past restraint and were ready for any acts of violence.
Many of the men, on leaving England, had renounced their more leisurely occupations and professions to practise trades in Leyden, Brewster and Winslow as printers, Allerton as tailor, Dr. Samuel Fuller as say-weaver and others as carpenters, wool-combers, masons, cobblers, pewterers and in other crafts.
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