ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 277 



Slatter, or Slater, descended from this occupation, is common in 

 the neighbourhood. Now though sufficient evidence has been 

 found to give a valid inference as to the rate of the wages of 

 the slater during the second period, and though the effects of the 

 Plague can be traced with tolerable accuracy in the rise of 60 

 per cent, on this kind of labour ; yet it seems that the rise is 

 overstated in the second average, because no evidence is found 

 for the twenty years between 1311 and 1330, or for the ten 

 years between 1340 and 1350. It is likely that the rise was 

 not so large as appears, and that the slater's wages did not 

 stand really higher than those of the carpenter. 



But, on the other hand, the rise in the joint wages of slater 

 and man is, no doubt, underrated. There is no evidence for 

 the joint payment during the forty years between 1351 and 

 1390, but only for the last decade of the fourteenth century. 

 In this last-named decennial period the price of labour, as a 

 rule, fell, and it is all but certain, had the accounts sup- 

 plied us with evidence during these forty years, that the per- 

 centage of the rise would have closely resembled that which 

 is discoverable in the case of the tiler and man. 



Evidence as to the rate of payment for sawing by the day is 

 more full. Here, indeed, we do not find that the effect of the 

 famines is so marked upon the rate of wages, though a slight 

 rise is seen in the years 1301-1340, to be followed by a 

 depression in the decade 1341-1350. But after the Plague, 

 the effect on wages of sawing is fully as considerable as it is on 

 those of any other kind of labour, the rise being 70 per cent.; 

 and as sawing may be looked on as one of the inferior kinds 

 of mechanical labour, the rise is not disproportionate to that 

 which characterised the increase of wages in other and similar 

 employments. 



More dubious is the evidence supplied for sawing by the 

 hundred feet (i.e. the great hundred of 120). Here should 

 perhaps be stated, no such information being given, what was 

 the kind of wood sawn. It can hardly be doubted that harder 

 wood was worked at higher rates than soft, oak, for instance, 



