488 ON THE PRICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS. 



modities. The inferior kinds, however, are considerably dearer, 

 and we never see the very low prices of the earlier part of the 

 period. But there is no great increase in the price of best 

 laths. These facts may, I think, be interpreted as indicating 

 that the value of the raw material had fallen, and that what- 

 ever rise was effected was due to the increased cost of labour. 

 It is clear that if there be two products of the same character, 

 and involving the same amount of labour in production, and 

 that in the course of events the cost of producing is consider- 

 ably enhanced, that this increase will be exhibited more fully 

 in the cheaper than in the dearer article. For instance, if 

 it cost id. to weave a yard of flannel or a yard of calico, 

 and the price of the former were is. 6d. and of the latter 6^., 

 a rise of fifty per cent in the cost of labour would be more 

 manifest in the latter case than in the former. And according 

 to the rule given above, if the inferior article were produced 

 by inferior labour, and, labour becoming scarce, the cheaper 

 kinds of labour sustained the largest rise, the difference be- 

 tween old and new prices would be even more notable. 



Again, the price is varied locally. At the conclusion of the 

 fourteenth century laths are much dearer at Southampton than 

 they ^were at the end of the thirteenth. But, on the other 

 hand, they are as dear at Oxford in 1389 as they were in 

 1279, a ^ ter t ^ ie interval of no years. They are on the whole 

 nearly as dear at Letherhead after the Plague as they were 

 before it, if we conclude that the same quality was purchased 

 in 1348 and in 1375. At Maldon they cost as much in 1380 

 as they do in 1313, that is sixpence the hundred. Nor are 

 the few London prices, occurring at the end of the fourteenth 

 century, excessive. 



Laths were used not only for plaster-walls, and on rare 

 occasions for ceilings, but for lattice-work in lieu of windows. 

 The diamond shape of the glass of old casements and church 

 windows was, it would seem, suggested by the ancient lattice, 

 in closing the apertures of which glass had its earliest uses. 



Board measured by the hundred square feet, the thickness 



