The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-05-17

@AAND NAA| boA S~AAA' 4 ooa VI oC abundant and cheap that it was no great matter to throw 1t In with wages"
 Wheat in those times at it's high est price cost about fourteen cents a bushel although it was much more frequently lower than highe. than this. Compare this price, with May wheat last quoted at 317 l-2 celts a bushel.
 Whole beeyes by the carcass sclG for $3.75 in the cities but were sell dom more than $3.O0 in the coun- try. There was during all of the fifteenth century general rising tendency in wages for all classes ot labor.
 Apart from the very evident ef- forts of Professor Garrett to prove what is far from being the :act. that after the days wages haG been expended in the costs of living there remained nothing for the workers in those bygone days. the perioa referred to is most interesting and for this reason that the great plague or Black Death had been as destructive fully in human life as has been the great war.
 The Plague it was which liber- ated the serfs in England, and al though the feudal laws remain in some mild aspect until today, the condition of the English worker never became after the fourteenth century what the French peasants condition remained until the French revolution.
 What Wat Tyler, about the period mentioned by Garrett, failed to achieve when he delivered that un- answered question:
 When Adam delved and Eve
 span
 Who was then the gentleman" the Black Death recurring, easily accomplished.
 It is computed that not less than a third of the stricken countries perished, and such mortality today even in the bloodiest of wars would be inconceivable. The shortage oi labor was the first thing that made itself felt, but it worked great and complete change in conditions throughout every country. In some it caused religious revivals and great bands of fiagellants went around logging themselves in penance and under cover of their religious fer vor committing such outrages upon morality that the higher religious became scandalized and suppressed them.
 In England the most noticeable result was the great improvement in labor conditions. Food became cheap and labor was at a premium. Men could make enough in three months to live in luxury for the rest of the year. and because the lords of the manor conceived that they were being supported by aims from charitable people who were imposed upon. aims giving by parli- enactment became against the law. Indeed the King in pro- clamation addressed to William the Primate forbade any person offer ing "higher wages than was custom ed from working for such wages with the result that the mandate became ignored after the crops had rotten a season or so in the field. This proclamation was passed into law and known as the Statute of Laborers. But in spite of this en- actment, the wages steadily in- creased until in the sixteenth cent ury the discovery of America pro- duced such a flood of silver that the coinage became debased and it was impossible to buy anything q, the former prices.
 Another thing in connection witt this period that is never fairly explained is the enormous ability of the population to replenish itself.
 Many economists have expressed at what they regard in the nature of psycbo- phenomena. One his 4.Il eoa..ndit1. ct