e
cities of the world would hold four centuries ago.

[Sidenote: Poverty of the Middle Ages]

In fact, there was hardly wealth at all in the Middle Ages, only
degrees of poverty, and the sixteenth century first began to see the
accumulation of fortunes worthy of the name. In 1909 there were 1100
persons in France with an income of more than $40,000 per annum; among
them were 150 with an income of more than $200,000. In England in 1916
seventy-nine persons paid income taxes on estates of more than
$125,000,000. On the other hand the richest man in France, Jacques
Coeur, whose fortune was proverbial like that of Rockefeller today, had
in 1503 a capital of only {461} $5,400,000. The total wealth of the
house of Fugger about 1550 has been estimated at $32,000,000, though
the capital of their bank was never anything like that. The contrast
was greatest among the very richest class, but it was sufficiently
striking in the middle classes. Such a condition as comfort hardly
existed.

The same impression will be given to the student of public finance. As
more will be said in another paragraph on the revenues of the principal
states, only one example need be given here for the sake of contrast.
The total revenue of Francis I was $256,000 per annum, that of Henry II
even less, $228,000. The revenue of France in 1905 was $750,000,000.
Henry VIII often had more difficulty in raising a loan of L50,000 than
the English government had recently in borrowing six billions.

[Sidenote: Value of money]

It is impossible to say which is the harder task, to compare the total
wealth of the world at two given periods, or to compare the value of
money at different times. Even the mechanical difficulties in the
comparison of prices are enormous. When we read that wheat at
Wittenberg sold at one gulden the scheffel, it is necessary to
determine in the first place how much a gulden and how much a scheffel
represented in terms of dollars and bushels. When we discover that
there were half a dozen different guldens, and half a dozen separate
measures known as scheffels, varying from province to province and from
time to time, and varying widely, it is evident that great caution is
necessary in ascertaining exactly which gulden and exactly which
scheffel is meant.

When coin and measure have been reduced to known quantities, there
remains the problem of fixing the quality. Cloth is quoted in the
sixteenth century as of standard size