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It's very strange. I cannot find a statement
quite like the one cited below by Michael. I already quoted the one that
says there were only five holidays besides Sundays. That was on p.
181. I have read entire chapters surrounding the pages cited by Michael
without encountering the "forty days plus Sundays". What I do find, on p.
539 is this:
"The workman of the fifteenth century only missed
eighteen days of the year, of which a fortnight was at Christmas, three days at
Easter, three at Whitsuntide, and six on other days scattered over the
year."
In the following paragraph Rogers says that he has
taken the best prices of artizan labour in the best English market for such
labour in order to contrast them, improved as they are by trade unions, to the
prices paid spontaneously for such labor in England of the 1450s. As of
1884 they were only just barely catching up. These improved circumstances
are compared, on page 398, with the miseries of English labour after Henry VIII.
"I repeat for the last time, what a husbandman earned with fifteen weeks' work,
and an artizan with ten weeks' work in 1495, a whole years' labor would not
supply artizan or labourer with in the year 1725, throughout Lancashire."
On page 391 he had already said, "The work of a whole year would not supply the
labourer with the quantity which in 1495 the labourer earned with fifteen weeks
labour. The artizan could procure it with forty weeks labour. [As
contraste to a year.]
The theme of this chapter (surrounding p. 389) is
an analysis of what we call today "inflation". That is, after there was a
general rise in prices in the fifteenth century (which some 20th century
economic historians have attributed to the gold stolen by Spanish
conquistadores), what happened to wages and how effectively did they keep up
with prices. The data he provides are therefore all about comparing prices
versus what they would buy in various years after 1495 with what they bought in
that year and before.
Jumping back even further into the previous
chapter, Rogers addresses the conditions that he believes account for at least
part of the changes that worsened the conditions of the working classes.
That is, the scandals of the 3-popes era in the church and
parallel corruptions in the courts and aristocracy. On pp. 367-8 he
says:
"I have stated frequently that the fifteenth
century was an epoch of peculiar prosperity, that the means of life were cheap,
that wages were high, that the price of land went rapidly up, that English
commerce increased, that enterprise...was general, that the yeomanry and small
gentry were firmly planted, and that remarkable opulence was attained by many."
A little later he mentions that "Lollardy...infected all those who prospered and
grew rich...[and] was hardy and vigorous." [The influence of Wycliffe in the
14th century.] I am far from well read in English history, but I do recall
the observation of economic historians that following the Great Plague or Black
Death, so many workers were killed that those who survived did enjoy the benefit
of a supply-demand imbalance in their favor. The cognizance of this
opportunity combined with repressive regimes above them is said to have sparked
the Peasants' Revolt of the 14th century and its brutal suppression.
Rogers seems to affirm that the underlying circumstances continued to operate in
favor of workers right through to the end of the 15th century.
Keith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 7:53
AM
Subject: [socialcredit] Thorold
Rogers
In Triumph of the Past for June 1997 I made the following
statement and citation:
"The English artisan of 1495 worked an
eight-hour day, could pay his family's grocery bill for a year with ten weeks'
work, and enjoyed forty holidays besides Sundays." (Rogers, Six
Centuries of Work and Wages, pp. 389, 542)
I didn't note the
edition, but I expect Keith can locate the quotes.
Michael
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