474 ON THE PRICE OF MATERIALS 



then to employ further labour in fashioning it into implements 

 and tools. 



The price of iron by the hundred, though scanty and in- 

 terrupted at first, becomes more copious and suggestive as we 

 proceed. The earliest quotation is in J277, when the price is 

 actually higher than that of piece iron. For some time, that is 

 nearly to the close of the thirteenth century, iron in mass does 

 not vary very much, and is not much below the price of bar iron. 

 But from this point a considerable change ensues, and foreign iron 

 is much cheaper than English bars or pieces, the former being 

 very often little more than half the price of the latter, and 

 sometimes even less than this. The price of iron by the hundred 

 rises steadily after the Great Plague. For eighty years before 

 this event the average price of this iron is 4*. id. During 

 the last forty years it is sold, according to the evidence 

 supplied in the accounts, at an average of 9*. 7^., a rise 

 which, when we consider the great consumption of this mate- 

 rial, must have seriously inconvenienced the farmer d . 



On the other hand, the price of steel exhibits few fluctua- 

 tions. The last ten years of the thirteenth century give high 

 prices, as also the forty years following the Great Plague and 

 up to the last decade. But the rise is not nearly so con- 

 siderable as in the case of iron, and suggests that while the 

 relative price of steel to iron was high, this form of the metal 

 was not, as might be expected from the general rule which we 

 have seen operate upon prices, so seriously affected by the 

 scarcity consequent on a dearth of hands as its commoner and 

 cheaper congener was, bar or slab iron. While the rise in the 

 latter case is fully 100 per cent., that in the former is not 

 more than 35. 



It was observed above that there are some difficulties in 



d We can trace the gravity of the crisis in an Act of 28 Edw. III. (1354), by which it 

 was provided that no iron should be exported, whether it had been manufactured in 

 England or had been imported, and power was given to make enquiries as to those 

 persons who sold iron at too high a price. It will be ?een, however, that the precaution 

 was in vain, for the price rises after the Act was passed. 



