This led to a greater gap between the rich and the poor and an increase in the population living below the poverty line. We can see this as European master craftsmen who produced either goods for local markets or luxury goods with stable markets managed to weather economic storms reasonably well. However, those engaged in non-luxury crafts in cities involved in long-distance trade might fall foul of merchant-entrepreneurs. For example, Frankfurt's lacemakers worked on this putting-out basis for a few rich silk merchants by 1587; the same thing happened in Antwerp's silk and construction industries, Lyons's silk industry, Nuremberg's weapons and metalworking industry. Furthermore European townspeople were particularly disadvantaged by the price of grain between 1450 and 1600 because it rose more rapidly than the price of the commodities which they made and sold and the wages, 'By the second half of the sixteenth century only the most highly skilled, independent craftsmen who were assured of regular employment could manage adequately to feed their families' (Cameron 60). In Lyons, for example, the wages of casual laborers fell below the poverty line (reached when at least 70 per cent of income had to be spent on bread, leaving virtually nothing to spend on other staples, rent, or fuel) almost every year from 1550 to 1600. This led to a huge change and thus decrease in the standard of living in urban cities across early modern europe. The problem of urban poverty was exacerbated, particularly in years of dearth, by the great multitude of itinerant and often rural poor who flocked to towns in search of any means of eking out a living. .
Overall the from 15th century to the early 17th many historians see the development of towns and cities in early modern Europe as an age of progress due to the increase in capitalism and commerce which brought cities closer to modernity. However for the poor and the increasing migration to urban areas increased the population under the poverty line and as a result earning a living for these people became a fantasy.
