tagnant. Obviously, since there was a decrease in the population this initially affected the number in the workforce. The plague caused a shortage of labor. This shock in the economy allowed many peasants to demand a restructuring of society. The biggest problem was that valuable artisan skills disappeared when large number of the working class died. Those who had skills soon became more valuable than the rich people, restructuring society giving poor laborers more value and power. This value and power allowed the peasants, the poor, to demand for higher wages. These higher wages allowed people to have more money to spend on luxuries. This demand of luxuries resulted in the formulation and development of new industries to meet the demand. English manufacturers created a new, and more profitable cloth-manufacturing industry based on the power of water mills, rather than cheap labor that was no longer available. Higher wages eventually created high inflation. High inflation means that a person could buy less with money. This fundamentally means that the money value decreased. This not only affected individual consumers, but small manufacturing industries as well. High inflation motivated competition. New industries arose producing similar products that competed with those industries producing the original product. Industries that felt threatened attempted to maintain their position by getting laws passed regulating who could ether their industry. This was successfully achieved through the Ordinance of Laborers in 1349 and the Statute of Laborer in 1351.In 1349 the Ordinance of Laborers, a law, was passed regulating wage levels. During all this confusion the churchs leadership in the lives of people weakened. Before the arrival of the Black Death the church was seen as on of the wealthiest and most powerful landlords in all of Europe. Unsurprisingly, monasteries, converts, prisons and other closed communities were doom...
