with the necessaries of
life.[7]

[Footnote 1: _Op. cit._, p. 103.]

[Footnote 2: An excellent bibliography of books dealing with the
history of the working classes in the Middle Ages is to be found in
Brants, _op. cit._, p. 105. The need for examining concrete economic
phenomena is insisted on in Ryan's _Living Wage_, p. 28.]

[Footnote 3: _De Cont._ We have here a recognition of the principle
that the value of labour is not to be measured by anything extrinsic
to itself, _e.g._ by the value of the product, but by its own natural
function and end, and this function and end is the supplying of the
requirements of human life. The wage must, therefore, be capable of
supplying the same needs that the expenditure of a labourer's energy
is meant to supply. (See Cronin, _Ethics_, vol. ii. p. 390.)]

[Footnote 4: Brants, _op. cit._, p. 118.]

[Footnote 5: The passages from the _Summa_ of Antoninus bearing on the
subject are reprinted in Brants, _op. cit._, p. 120.]

[Footnote 6: _Op. cit._, p. 125.]

[Footnote 7: Brants, _op. cit._, p. 116, quoting _Le Lime du Tresor_
of Brunetto Latini.]

Sec. 5. _Value of the Conception of the Just Price_.

It is probably correct to say that the canonical teaching on just
price was negative rather than positive; in other words, that it did
not so much aim at positively fixing the price at which goods should
be sold, as negatively at indicating the practices in buying and
selling which were unjust. 'The doctrine of just price,' according to
Dr. Ryan, 'may sometimes have been associated with incorrect views
of industrial life, but all competent authorities agree that it was a
fairly sound attempt to define the equities of mediaeval exchanges,
and that it was tolerably successful in practice.'[1] The condition
of mediaeval markets was frequently such that the competition was not
really fair competition, and consequently the price arrived at
by competition would be unfair either to buyer or seller. 'This,'
according to Dr. Cunningham, 'was the very thing which mediaeval
regulation had been intended to prevent, as any attempt to make gain
out of the necessities of others, or to reap profit from unlooked-for
occurrences would have been condemned as extortion. It is by taking
advantage of such fluctuations that money is most frequently made in
modern times; but the whole scheme of commercial life in the
Middle Ages was supposed to allow of a regular profit on each
transaction.'[2] The