a little history

[Dennis Johnson]

        I don't know how many of you are addicted to history, but I happen
to be rereading of my most favorite books, B. Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror",
about the 14th century and came onto this passage:

        "..a craft should supply each man a liveihood and a fair return,
but no more. Prices [were] set at a "just" level, meaning the value of the
labor added to the value of the raw materials and no more. To ensure that
no one gained an advantage over anyone else, commercial law prohibited
innovation in tools or techniques, underselling below a fixed price,
working late by artifical light, employing extra apprentices or wife and
under-age children, and advertising of wares or praising them to the
detriment of others."

        aah..those were the simpler days of early socialism, when the world
was flat, knights squandered in one hour the yearly earnings of a peasant,
and heretics were burned at the stake.     Right.


Dennis Johnson
johnsond@stolaf.edu