Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/350

 338 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE forbidding the running of pigs in the street. At Liibeck, Bremen, Magdeburg, Spires, and Worms, farm- ing and cattle-breeding formed an important item of profit during the early ages ; in Munich agriculture was one of the principal resources of the citizens. In Basle, Bibrach, Frankfort, Landau, Eeutlingen, Spires, Ulm, Worms, and other cities, the agriculturists, as well as the vine-growers and gardeners, formed a special guild. Agriculture was so popular a pursuit, even in the towns, that it has been asserted that, considering the difference of population, a larger proportion followed that avocation in the Middle Ages than in our time. As a consequence vegetables and animal food were more plentiful, and generally speaking cheaper, and consequently more generally eaten by the poorer classes, than is the case in Europe to-day. 1 It must be remem- bered, however, that as the cities, notwithstanding their great prosperity, did not suffer from being over-popu- lated, 2 the prices for the things necessary for subsist- 1 According to Kloden, in the Jahrbuch fur Nationalokonomie of Hildebrand, i. 218, in the commencement of the fourteenth century not less than 30,854 head of cattle were slaughtered for the consumption of from six to twelve thousand inhabitants per year ; more than twelve times as many as in 1802-1803. Conrad Celtes asserts that in Nuremberg 100 head of cattle were slaughtered each week, besides large quantities of pork, mutton and poultry. Schmoller, FleiscJiconsum., p. 291 ; Kriegh, Biirger- thum, p. 382. 2 From statistics we find that the average population of Strasburg in the fourteenth century was 50,000. Constance never had a population of more than 10,000. (Schmoller, FleiscJiconsum., p. 296 ; Schanz, Gesel- lenverband, p. 8.) The population of Nuremberg increasedjvery much in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The number of births in 1482 was 2,300, or at the rate of six per day. (Chroniken der deutschen Stddte, x. -370.) Froissard estimates the population of Rheingau in 1497 at 30,000. Some passages in Mone's letters from Hanover would imply that the villages were not as thickly populated in the Middle Ages as now, but we