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The Standard of Life of the Workers in England. 1790–1830

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

T. S. Ashton
T. S. Ashton
Affiliation:
London School of Economics
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Extract

What happened to the standard of life of the British working classes in the late decades of the eighteenth and the early decades of the nineteenth centuries ? Was the introduction of the factory system beneficial or harmful in its effect on the workers? These, though related, are distinct questions. For it is possible that employment in factories conduced to an increase of real wages but that the tendency was more than offset by other influences, such as the rapid increase of population, the immigration of Irishmen, the destruction of wealth by long years of warfare, ill-devised tariffs, and misconceived measures for the relief of distress. Both questions have a bearing on some political and economic disputes of our own day, and this makes it difficult to consider them with complete objectivity. An American scholar (so it is said) once produced a book entitled An Impartial History of the Civil War: From the Southern Point of View. If I seek to emulate his impartiality I ought also to strive to equal his candor. Let me confess, therefore, at the start that I am of those who believe that, all in all, conditions of labor were becoming better, at least after 1820, and that the spread of the factory played a not inconsiderable part in the improvement.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 9 , Supplement S1 , 1949 , pp. 19 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1949

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References

1 Referred to in Jones, Thomas, Rhymney Memories (N.p: Welsh Outlook, 1939), p. 142Google Scholar.

2 Malthus, Thomas, First Essay on Population, 1798 (London: Macmillan & Co., 1926), pp. 312–13Google Scholar.

3 McCulloch, J. R., Treatises and Essays on Money, Exchange, Interest, the Letting of Land, Absenteeism, the History of Commerce, Manufactures, etc. (Edinburgh, 1859) pp. 454–55Google Scholar.

4 Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy, ed. Ashley, W. J. (London and New York, Longmans, Green & Co., 1909), p. 751Google Scholar.

5 Chadwick, Edwin, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (London, 1843), p. 188Google Scholar.

6 Quoted by George, M. Dorothy, England in Transition (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1931). P. 101Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. 137.

8 Ibid., pp. 104-5.

9 Davies, David, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry (Bath, 1795), pp. 23–27Google Scholar.

10 Between 1809 and 1815 rents in the eastern counties and North Wales increased by 40 per cent. Thompson, R. J., “An Inquiry into the Rents of Agricultural Land in England and Wales during the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXX (1907), 587–616CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Hamilton, Earl, “Prices, Wages and the Industrial Revolution,” in Mitchell, Wesley C. and Others, Studies in Economics and Industrial Relations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1941)Google Scholar.

12 The yield on Consols was 4.9 per cent in 1814 and 4.5 in 1815. In 1820 it still stood as high as 4.4.

13 Schlote, Werner, “Entwicklung und Scrukturwandlungen des englischen Ausscnhandcls von 1700 bis zur Gegenwart,” Problcme der Weltwirttchaft (Jena: n.p., 1938)Google Scholar. See in particular Appendix Table 17. Also Imlah, Albert H., “Real Values in British Foreign Trade,” The Journal of Economic History, VIII (Nov. 1948), 133–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 The index numbers of prices have been obtained by dividing the index of declared or computed values by that of official values in the case of both exports and imports. The method is open to criticism, for the weighting is curious. The degree of importance assigned to each commodity depends on the rate at which a unit of it was assessed by die inspector general at a time long before that to which the index relates. It depends also on the amount of the commodity imported or exported, and this means that the weighting changes from year to year. My nonmathematical mind is encouraged, however, to believe that this peculiarity does not completely destroy the value of the figures. For Mr. Schlote's index of the terms of trade from 1814 (obtained by dividing a price index of manufactured export by a price index of imports as a whole) is constructed by similar, but more refined, methods, and when adjusted to the same base year it shows, at least until 1832, movements in striking conformity with those of the series offered here.

15 The prices have been obtained by dividing the value of the export of each commodity by the quantity exported as recorded by Porter.

16 Dorraocc, G. S., “The Income Terms of Trade,” Review of Economic: Studies, XVI, No. 39 (1948–1949), 50–56Google Scholar.

17 Gilboy, Elizabeth W., “The Cost of Living and Real Wages in Eighteenth Century England,” Review of Economic Statistics, XVIII (1936), 134–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Boys attending a charity school, at which they wear long blue coats or gowns.

19 See Fay, R., The Corn Laws and Social England (Cambridge: The University Press, 1932). P. 4Google Scholar.

20 , Malthus, Essay on Population, p. 317Google Scholar.

21 A point made in an unpublished thesis by Lazenby, Walter, “The Social and Industrial History of Styal, 1750-1850,” University of Manchester, 1949Google Scholar.

22 This is a view taken by a distinguished statistician. “I do not believe that index numbers can serve over very long periods. If the same form is used throughout the difficulty of shifts in the ‘preference map’ cannot be overcome. If the index is obtained by drawing together different forms, than a bias is to be expected, a bias which tends to be amplified over time. In general, index numbers are to be limited to short-run comparisons.” Allen, R. G. D., “The Economic Theory of Index Numbers,” Economica, XVT(N.S.), No. 63 (August, 1949), 197–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Transcript by Giles Shaw now in the Manchester Public Reference Library.

24 Published at Manchester by the Manchester University Press, 1934.

25 The first of each of the following figures is the price at Oldham in 1791, the second that at Manchester in 1831: meal (per peck) igd., lid.; flour (per peck) 24d., 30d.; potatoes (per load) it. id., is. 3d; beef (per pound) 5d., 5d; pork (per pound) 5d., 5d.; bacon (per pound) 6d., 3d; cheese (per pound) 5d., id. The cost of diet in 1810 was apparently about 5 per cent higher than in 1809 and 60 per cent higher than in 1791. For purposes of comparison with the figures in Table III the figures in Table IV should be increased by 60 per cent.

Between 1819 and 1821 there was a marked drop in the prices of most of the commodities in the index. Roughly the cost of diet in 1821 was the same as in 1791, and the figures in Table V are broadly on the same base as those in Table III. The sample basket of commodities cost about 15 per cent more in 1831 than in 1791.

26 In 1837 or 1838 Thomas Holmes, an old man of 87, born in 1760, gave to a member of the Liverpool Statistical Society his impressions of the changes that had taken place since his youth at Aldbrough (Holderness): “There has been a very great increase in the consumption of meat, wheaten bread, poultry, tea and sugar. But it has not reached the poorest, except tea, sugar, and wheaten bread. The poorest are not so well fed. But they are better clothed, lodged and provided with furniture, better taken care of in sickness and misfortune. So they are gainers. This, I think, is a plain statement of the whole case.”

Referring to mechanics and artificers, he says, “The wages of almost all have increased in a proportion faster than the rise in the expenses of living.” When asked, “Are the poorer classes more intelligent?,” he replied, “Beyond all comparison.”