----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 10:12
PM
Subject: Re: [socialcredit] Thorold
Rogers
It's puzzling. 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 1883-4] 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 contrasted 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), Rogers looked for evidence of wages paid in money
and compared them with what he could find of prices for the things that
laborers had to buy. 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
[died] 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
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Some introductory materials to the discussion topic of this list are at
http://www.geocities.com/socredus/compendium
You're subscribed to this list with the email keithwilde@sympatico.ca
For more information, visit http://www.eListas.com/list/socialcredit
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Some introductory materials to the discussion topic of this list are at
http://www.geocities.com/socredus/compendium
You're subscribed to this list with the email keithwilde@sympatico.ca
For more information, visit http://www.eListas.com/list/socialcredit
Re: [socialcredit]
Reply to this message
