To: Raymond Duray who wrote (31791 ) 4/18/2003 6:59:11 AM From: maceng2 Read Replies (1) | Respond to In the case of Black Plague in Europe we find that labor was a winner By 1500 total production and trade in Europe had both recovered the ground they lost in the decades after the Black Death and probably exceeded their previous peaks. Population itself was also rising again, though it did not return to its pre-plague level until the middle of the 16th century. In 1363, an observer lamented the changing times in tones that became all too familiar in post-World War II Europe: "Serving girls and unskilled women with no experience in service and stable boys want at least 12 florins per year, and the most arrogant among them 18 or 24 florins per year, and so also nurses and minor artisans working with their hands want three times or nearly the usual pay, and laborers on the land all want oxen and all seed, and want to work the best lands, and to abandon all others."
