In Europe between 1348 and 49 about one third of the population died from the Plague. There were all kinds of stories of why it was happening although the true story was disease from black rats which jumped into humans. It is now thought there were other diseases due to logistical reasons of rats tended to be in urban port areas, while people died all in both rural and urban areas. Losing a third of the population changes the countries and in a book called In the Wake of The Plague by Norman Cantor published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001, the author outlines some of the changes.

Whenever a disease is in the headlines, people consult the medical profession in order to figure out what to do to try to minimize the effects. The doctors did not know about the rats and believed the disease was transmitted by airborne. This was part of the solution because some of the disease is transmitted by saliva. One of the effects of believing the disease was airborne was doctors suggested windows to be closed. The closing of windows led to tapestries being made. Similar to all things some tapestries were more elaborate than others. The weaver guilds increased their production.

For most people today, a bath or shower is part of their daily routine. In the time of the black plaque and years afterwards, baths were not prescribed because it opens the pores in the skin and the theory was bathing made you more likely you would get the disease. This no bath idea lasted for 400 years. In countries in Asia where bathing is expected, the disease was not an aspect of daily life.

In terms of labor, with a third of the population dying, a labor shortage emerged in the 1370s. The peasants demanded higher wages and the aristocracy and gentry used Parliament to hold down workers’ wages against the inflationary wage market.

In 1340, 60% of Western Europe’s wealth and nearly all its political power were in the hands of some 300 families of higher nobility, of which 4 dozen lived in England. Their wealth is estimated to be a billion dollars in today’s money. The head of the families plus some 30 bishops sat in Parliament’s House of Lords upper chamber

The pace of life the nobility set and the luxury goods they cultivated kept many trades working and pressured the less noble to imitate them. Living on credit is not new.

Serfdom had originally meant to ensure a steady supply of labor by tying generations of men to the land (if your father was a serf, you were one too). Serfdom exists where land is cheap and easily available but peasant labor to work the land is in short supply. English serfs were not slaves, they had legal rights – they could work a piece of land as their own for their own gardens; the lord had to provide a mill to grind the peasant’s grain; and they needed a local church. When the number of serfs increased so there was a excess supply of labor; the lords figured out it was less expensive to hire labor than to have labor live on their lands. The serfs were turned to free men to make their ways the best way they know how.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, we often believe or think this time it is different, we live in a different time. It turns out many of the rules were set long time ago and often still work. One tried and true method to become wealthy is to collect rents or collect dividends.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.