THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 775
forces of all kinds. It was a time of revolution in the methods of trade and the comforts and prices of living. The world could never be again just what it had been before. There was marked restlessness among the artisan and peasant classes. This industrial unrest was adapted to encourage and to beget unrest in things ecclesiastical and to accustom the mind to the thought of change there.
From Italy, whose harbors were the outfitting points for fleets during the Crusades, the centre of trade had shifted to the cities north of the Alps and to the Portuguese coast. Niirnberg, Ulm, Augsburg and Constance in Southern Germany ; Bruges, Antwerp and other cities along the lower Rhine and in Flanders ; and the cities of the Hanseatic League were bustling marts, turning out new and wonderful products of manufacture and drawing the products of the outside world through London, Lisbon, Lyons and Venice. Energy and enterprise were making Germany rich and her mercantile houses had their representatives and depots in Venice, Antwerp and other ports. ^
Methods of business, such as to-day are suggesting grave problems to the political economist and moralist, were introduced and flourished. Trading companies and monopolies came upon the stage and startled the advocates of the old feudal ways by the extent and boldness of their operations. Trusts flourished in Augsburg and other German cities. ^ In-
1 For the transfer of the centre of the Levantine trade from Venice to Lisbon at the beginning of tlie 16th century, see Heyd, II. 505-510. Heyd says tliat the discovery of tlie route to India around the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese hatte wis ein Donnerschlag am hpiteren Himmel die Gem'tUher der Venetianer beruhrt. To counteract the stream of trade in the direction of Lisbon, the Venetians proposed a scheme for cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Suez in 1500 and, in the same interest, the Turks actually began tliat enterprise in 1529. Manuel, king of Portugal, in 1505 stationed a fleet at Calicut to prevent the Venetians from interfering with the export of Indian goods to Portugal. For the German Board of Trade at Venice, the fondaco del Tedeschi, see Heyd, II. 520, etc.
2 Writing in 1458, -35neas Sylvius said, "The German nation takes the lead of all others in wealth and power." He spoke of Cologne as unexcelled in magnificence among the cities of Europe. At Niirnberg he found simple burghers living in houses, the like of which the kings of Scotland would have been glad to house in.
77G THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1204-1517.
dividuals and corporations cornered the import trade, the grain crop, the wine harvest, the silver, copper and iron product, sugar, linen, leather, pepper, even soap, for they used soap also in those days. The Hochstetters, the Ebners and the Fuggers were among the great speculative and trading firms of the age. They carried things with a high hand. Ambrose ILichstetter of Augsburg, for example, one season bought up all the ash wood, another all the grain and another all the wine. Nor was the art of adulteration left for these later, and often discredited, times to practice. They condescended to small things, even to the mixing of brick-dust with pepper. Commodities rose suddenly in price. In Germany, wine rose, in 1510, 49 per cent and grain 32 per cent. Imperial diets took cognizance of these conditions and tried to correct the evils complained of by regulating the prices of goods.^ Municipalities did the same. Preachers, like Geiler of Strassburg, charged the monopolists with fearing neither God nor man and called upon the cities to banish them. Professors of jurisprudence, for there was at that time no department of social science, inveighed against monopolies as spiders' webs to ensnare the innocent.^ It was a fast age. There was no precedent for what was going on. Men sighed for the good old times. Speculation was rampant and the prospect of quick gains easily captivated the people. They took shares in the investment companies and often lost everything. It was noticed that the directors of the companies were able to avoid
1 So the Diet of Cologne, 1512. At the same time, however, it declaimed that its acts were not designed to prevent the association of merchants in trading companies. The Diet of Innsbruck, 1518, did the same, and complained of the trading companies for driving out the small dealers and fixing prices arbitrarily. Trithemius argued for laws protecting the people from the overreachings of avarice and declared that whosoever bought up meat, grain and other articles of diet to force up prices is no better than a common criminal. See Janssen, II. 102, sq.
^ So Christopher Kuppner of Leipzig, in his tract on usury, 1508. He insists that magistrates should proceed against trading companies and rich merchants who, through agents in other lands, bought up saffron, pepper, corn and what not and sold them at whatsoever price they chose. According to the secretary of the firm, Conrad Meyer, the capital of the I'uggers increased in 7 years 13,000,000 florins.