=290. Development of the economic organization.=—There was a contrast, it was said, between the political and the economic development. The very lack of a central power had enabled some of the sections and classes to advance rapidly by freeing them from control. In the fifteenth century the agricultural classes, who had been serfs in the Middle Ages and who were to be reduced again to serfdom later by the political oppression to which constant wars gave rise, were free and prosperous. The cities were more rich and populous than those of any other country north of Italy. Not only had manufacturing and mining made rapid progress, but banking and commerce too. The Fuggers and the Welsers of southern Germany were great promoters and financiers, with interests extending over all Europe, from which they drew enormous wealth. German merchants showed the most enterprise and energy of any north of the Alps; they distributed among other countries of the Continent the Levant wares which they secured from Venice, and they controlled the commerce of the West of Europe with the North and East. We shall begin our sketch of the decline of German commerce by returning now to the history of the Hanseatic League, which we left in full control of this last branch of trade. =291. Condition of the Baltic trade.=—The Baltic trade suffered in the period about 1500 from influences over which merchants had no control. The Protestant Reformation caused a decline in the demand for some of its staple wares: wax, which had been largely used for candles in church services, and fish, of which the consumption had been greatly furthered by the Catholic periods of fasting. The most valuable fish, moreover, the herring, ceased to enter the Baltic Sea, and by limiting their feeding ground to the North Sea enabled the Dutch to become leaders in the fishing industry. Imitation of Italian fashions in dress, with which the French became acquainted about 1500, caused less demand for furs. All these changes hurt the Baltic trade, but they were far from destroying it. This trade grew, in fact, throughout the period; it could afford to dispense with the luxuries of commerce for it controlled the necessaries, grain and meat, lumber and naval stores. The reasons for the decline of the Hanseatic League are to be sought not in the character of the trade but in the character of the League itself.