CONCLUSION 



It is now time to try to answer the questions suggested 

 in the introduction as to the legitimacy and effectiveness 

 of the statutes of labourers. In regard to the ethics of the 

 most familiar and obvious aspect of the legislation, — the 

 endeavor to keep wages and prices at the rates prevailing 

 before the plague, — authoritative statements will be war- 

 ranted only after an exhaustive study of the available sources 

 has resulted in statistics,' but the subject is so full of com- 

 plexities that even with statistics a decisive opinion will not 

 be easily formed. 



The case against the government rests chiefly on two 

 considerations. First ; the statutory rates of wages are too 

 low, recurring to standards already obsolete.^ Second ; the 

 apparent fairness in the regulation of prices as well as of 

 wages is misleading; the prices are for the most part of 

 goods sold directly by the makers and therefore constitute 

 really a labour wage, while the prices of victuals etc. not 

 coming under this head, are to be " reasonable " instead of 

 going back to an antiquated rate.* The case for the gov- 

 ernment is in my opinion even stronger. The scattered in- 

 stances noted in this monograph where a direct compari- 

 son between the old and new rates is possible reveal such 

 an enormous increase in both wages and prices, the demands 

 of both producers and labourers (whether combined in the 

 same individuals or not) went so far beyond what con- 

 sumers and employers could pay, the latter were also under 

 such unusual pressure of taxation, that the situation was 



'Pt. I, ch. ii, s. 6. "^Ibid., p. 87, note 4. 



■■' Professor Benjamin Terry writing to me in April, 1907, made a 



forcible presentation of this argument. 



219 



