=37. Evils resulting from the lack of commerce.=—Before we proceed to describe the growth of European commerce from such origins it will be well to stop and consider the results of a system which was based on the lack of commerce. With regard to the main product, food staples, the result was an alternation of _waste_ and _want_. A good year brought a surplus for which there was no market outside the village, and which could not be worked up inside for lack of manufacturing skill and implements. A bad harvest, on the other hand, meant serious suffering, because there was no opportunity to buy food supplies outside the manor and bring them to it. Nearly every year was marked by a famine in one part or another of a country, and famine was often followed by pestilence. Diseases now almost unknown in the civilized world, like leprosy and ergotism or St. Anthony’s fire, were not infrequent. The food at best was coarse and monotonous; the houses were mere hovels of boughs and mud; the clothes were a few garments of rude stuff. Nothing better could be procured so long as everything had to be produced on the spot and made ready for use by the people themselves. Finally, these people were coarse and ignorant, with little regard for personal cleanliness or for moral laws, and with practically no interests outside the narrow bounds of the little village in which they lived. =38. Exceptional instances of higher organization of industry.=—These conditions existed all over western Europe, and may be taken as typical of the period about the year 1000. Though they determined the commerce, or better the lack of commerce, at this time, they were not absolutely universal. Great feudal princes and great monasteries owned each a considerable number of villages or manors, and tried to introduce a more advanced economic system among them. A great lord would have his shoemaker and tailor, his saddler, swordsmith, etc.; and would have a considerable number of women gathered in a sort of factory making clothes. It is noteworthy, however, that the difficulties of transportation were so great that for a long time to come it was not practicable to concentrate the food supplies of a large group of manors in one place, and the owner would have to go to the food instead of having it brought to him. So we read of the kings and princes being always on the road, traveling with court and retinue from one manor to another, eating up the surplus that had accumulated and then moving on.