Worksheet

After the Plague: Who Set the Price of Work?

Grade 7 economics: use supply and demand to explain wages after the Black Death and spice prices, corroborating two adapted accounts with wage data.

Grade 7Social StudiesInteractive · Printable

Aligned toECO.7.3

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1 C3 Framework standard
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11 questions
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Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 7
Subject: Social Studies
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use supply and demand to predict whether a price or wage rises or falls.
Students explain why wages rose in England after the Black Death.
Students corroborate two accounts that disagree using wage data.

How to use

Read the passage together and practice the sort as a class. Then have partners compare the two accounts with the graph before writing the final argument alone.

Curriculum

C3 Framework standard covered

ECO.7.3

Use supply and demand to explain historical price and wage changes, such as in the spice trade and after the Black Death.

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After the Plague: Who Set the Price of Work?

Compare a royal order and a chronicle about wages after the Black Death, and test them against wage data.

Supply, demand and the plague

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

Scarce Hands, Rising Pay

1Prices in a market depend on supply, how much of something is available, and demand, how much of it people want and can pay for. When something becomes scarce while people still want it, its price tends to rise. When there is more of it than buyers want, its price tends to fall. If a village has one baker and many hungry families, for example, the baker can usually charge more for bread than if three bakers compete for the same customers. Work has a price too: a wage is the price an employer pays for someone's labor.

2The Black Death reached England in 1348. Within about two years it had killed perhaps a third to a half of the people, though historians' estimates vary. The fields that survived the plague still had to be plowed, sown and harvested, and the lords who owned them still wanted their crops brought in. In some villages so many people died that houses stood empty and only a few hands were left for land that had once needed a crowd. There were far fewer workers to do the job.

3The king and many landowners did not welcome what followed. In 1349 King Edward III issued the Ordinance of Labourers, and in 1351 Parliament passed a similar law. Workers who asked for more than the old wages, and employers who paid more, could be fined or jailed. Some lords obeyed. Many others quietly offered higher pay rather than watch their crops rot, and some workers left their home villages to find better wages elsewhere.

4The same forces affected goods from far away. In the 1300s, pepper and other spices from Asia reached Europe after a long journey through many traders' hands, and only a limited amount arrived each year. Merchants from Venice, who bought spices in ports such as Alexandria in Egypt, controlled much of the supply that reached western Europe. Wealthy Europeans prized spices for cooking and medicine and paid high prices for them.

Based on paragraph 1, which change would most likely push up the wages paid to reapers at harvest time?

A. Fewer workers while the same fields need harvesting
B. More workers arriving in a village to look for jobs
C. A law that lets employers pay any wage they choose
D. Lords deciding to plant much smaller fields

Use supply and demand. Would each change most likely push the price up or down?

A disease kills many sheep while weavers still want woolA huge harvest fills every barn with grainWar closes a spice route while nobles still want pepperShips bring twice as much salt to a port as buyers needA new mill makes far more cloth than shoppers wantA town's only blacksmith dies and plows still need repair

Price likely rises	Price likely falls

In the 1500s, Portuguese ships began bringing pepper straight from India by sea, so more pepper reached Europe each year. If demand stayed about the same, what would supply and demand predict?

A. Pepper would stop being sold in European markets.
B. Pepper prices in Europe would tend to fall.
C. Pepper prices would rise because the trip was longer.
D. Pepper prices would stay the same because demand did not change.

Two accounts and the data

Read both accounts and look at the graph. Then answer the questions.

Account A: adapted from the Ordinance of Labourers, issued by King Edward III in 1349, during the plague.
"A great part of the people, and especially of workers and servants, has now died in this plague. Some, seeing that masters need them and that servants are very scarce, will not work unless they receive excessive wages, and some would rather beg in idleness than earn their living by labor. Therefore every able man and woman shall serve whoever asks, and shall take only the wages that were usual before the plague."

Account B: adapted from the chronicle of Henry Knighton, a churchman at Leicester Abbey, a large landowner. He wrote about 40 years after the plague.
"That autumn no one could hire a reaper for less than 8 pence a day with his food. Much grain rotted in the fields for lack of anyone to gather it. The king ordered that workers take no more than the old wages, but the workers were so proud and stubborn that they ignored his command. Anyone who wanted to hire them had to pay what they asked, or lose his crops. Earlier, while the plague raged, a horse that was once worth 40 shillings could be bought for half a mark."
(Half a mark was 6 shillings and 8 pence.)

The graph shows an ordinary day's pay for a farm laborer in southern England, not counting harvest work, which paid more. Wages are rounded estimates based on manor records; real wages varied by place and job.

Account A mentions the shortage of servants. What does it mainly blame for the high wages?

A. Lords who paid their workers too little
B. Workers who refused to work for the usual pay
C. Poor harvests caused by bad weather
D. Parliament's new law about wages

Circle the sentence from Account B that best shows the king's order was not working.

That autumn no one could hire a reaper for less than 8 pence a day with his food.Much grain rotted in the fields for lack of anyone to gather it.Anyone who wanted to hire them had to pay what they asked, or lose his crops.Earlier, while the plague raged, a horse that was once worth 40 shillings could be bought for half a mark.

On which point do the two accounts disagree most?

A. Whether workers were asking for higher pay
B. Whether many workers had died in the plague
C. Whether wages could be held at the old level
D. Whether lords needed workers for their fields

Use the graph.

By the 1390s, the estimated daily wage was times the wage of the 1340s.

How does the graph help a historian corroborate the accounts?

A. It supports Account B: wages stayed above the old level for decades.
B. It supports Account A: wages went back to the old level after 1349.
C. It supports neither: wages did not change after the plague.
D. It supports both: wages fell in each decade after the plague.

Knighton's abbey owned land and hired workers, and he disliked the workers' demands. Why might a historian still trust his report that wages rose?

A. He wrote on the same day as the king.
B. He worked as a reaper for 8 pence a day.
C. He wrote the king's law himself.
D. He admits a fact that hurt landowners like his abbey.

10.

Which explanation of Knighton's horse prices uses supply and demand correctly?

A. Many owners had died, so more horses were for sale than buyers wanted.
B. Lords needed more horses than ever for plowing, so the price fell.
C. A royal law set a lower price for horses after the plague.
D. Horses became scarce after the plague, so buyers paid less.

11.

Claim: The Ordinance of Labourers failed because it fought against supply and demand. Do you agree? Use evidence from both accounts and the graph, and explain your reasoning.