There were other things fueling the furnaces of change. The economy was a prosperous one at the beginning of the century, with even the average peasant able to afford a bit of meat in the stew pot. People were optimistic about the future, they were having larger families and the population was growing. The combination of population pressure and inflation exacerbated by the flow of gold and silver from the New World saw a price rise that cut effective wages in half by about mid-century. Changing economic conditions saw many peasants lose their land as the terms of their tenancy become much less favorable, while land was becoming concentrated in the hands of the elites, especially the rising bourgeousie. Homelessness and vagrancy were on the rise, and towns experienced a sense of crisis trying to deal with the poor. By the end of the century, a peasant almost never saw meat, and many of them had reached such a state of despair about the future that they engaged in widespread revolts. Tensions between the social orders were high on many levels.