The final emergence of the capitalist system during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed the conditions of employment for children in the manufacturing sector. The critical change for children was the separation of enterprise from the family. This originated in the unprecedented scale of production and distribution required by capitalism. Obstacles to trade such as guilds and privileges were swept away by the State, and, after 1789 in particular, free competition became the order of the day. Commercial networks became increasingly elaborate, as roads, canals and eventually railways revolutionized communications, and as a merchant class grew to maturity around the great fairs and maritime ports. Industry responded to the challenge of wider markets by adopting new technologies and new forms of organization. Domestic workshops in trades as diverse as textiles, leather and metalworking first became drawn into the national and international circuits of commercial capitalism, and subsequently yielded ground in the nineteenth century to the factory system. In these circumstances, the independence of the artisan household was whittled away by mercantile and industrial interests. Sooner or later, in the majority of handicraft trades, it lost its capacity to trade in local markets, to transmit skills to its young and, most fundamentally, to own the tools of its trade. Labour, including child labour, now had to go on to the open market for work. This development aroused a good deal of comment by contemporaries, much of it overtly hostile.