I thought this excerpt from Marx might be of interest to this sub:
“…the great plague…decimated the people, so that, as a Tory writer says, “The difficulty of getting men to work on reasonable terms (i.e., at a price that left their employers a reasonable quantity of surplus-labour) grew to such a height as to be quite intolerable.” ”
This is Marx, writing in the late 1800s quoting a right wing politician from the same time. (In the UK Tory is slang for the right wing political party). And they're discussing a piece of legislation introduced in the 1300s!
Link to the full text here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#85