just as had happened periodically for centuries, a poor harvest pushed up the price of grain, so that people in the countryside as well as in the towns had to use a greater part of their income to pay for bread and other foodstuffs, reducing demand for clothes, utensils and other manufactured goods. This caused a crisis in urban factories and workshops, which therefore had to lay off their workers, throwing them into destitution just at the moment when they most needed an income to survive.
