ratio between prices and wages. But, as a rule, prices increased much
faster than wages.

All these things--the increase of surplus hands, the high cost of
living, grievances about wages and interest--tended to make the farms
and workshops of England recruiting-grounds for the sea; and the young
men would strike out for themselves as freighters, traders, privateers,
or downright pirates, lured by the dazzling chance of great and sudden
wealth.

'The gamble of it' was as potent then as now, probably more potent
still. It was an age of wild speculation accompanied by all the usual
evils that follow frenzied ways. It was also an age of monopoly. Both
monopoly and speculation sent recruits into the sea-dog ranks. Elizabeth
would grant, say, to Sir Walter Raleigh, the monopoly of sweet wines.
Raleigh would naturally want as much sweet wine imported as England
could be induced to swallow. So, too, would Elizabeth, who got the duty.
Crews would be wanted for the monopolistic ships. They would also be
wanted for 'free-trading' vessels, that is, for the ships of the
smugglers who underbid, undersold, and tried to overreach the
monopolist, who represented law, though not quite justice. But
speculation ran to greater extremes than either monopoly or smuggling.
Shakespeare's 'Putter-out of five for one' was a typical Elizabethan
speculator exploiting the riskiest form of sea-dog trade for all--and
sometimes for more than all--that it was worth. A merchant-adventurer
would pay a capitalist, say, a thousand pounds as a premium to be
forfeited if his ship should be lost, but to be repaid by the capitalist
fivefold to the merchant if it returned. Incredible as it may seem to
us, there were shrewd money-lenders always ready for this sort of deal
in life--or life-and-death--insurance: an eloquent testimony to the