Nineteenth-century Dundee's population was overwhelmingly dominated by the industrial working class. Across Britain in the late nineteenth century working-class life was subject to profound insecurities, given the very limited access to resources beyond the daily or weekly wage for the vast bulk of workers, a wage which for many was subject to frequent fluctuation and interruption. But in Dundee this normal, ‘structural’ uncertainty was exacerbated by two factors. First, money wages were lower on average than in most other parts of industrial Britain (above all because of the predominance of employment in jute), and this money wage bought less than in many places because of high rents and food prices. Secondly, while much of Britain's industrial economy was highly globalised at this time, Dundee was exceptional in its degree of exposure to international forces, largely because of its extraordinary degree of reliance on jute.

The international forces impinging on Dundee were in part the same as in the rest of Britain. There was a trade cycle which brought sharp fluctuations in activity, especially to the more export-oriented parts of the economy. The precise cause of this regular pattern is much debated, but it was accompanied by a variety of specific incidents, such as bank failures or stock market crashes, which prevented any likelihood of ‘smooth’, even cycles. In addition, though to greatly varying degrees, industrial Britain was subject to growing competition in many product lines, as its near monopoly in many industries at mid-century was increasingly challenged in the decades before 1914.

However, in both aspects Dundee's exposure to external forces was extreme. First, while the trade cycle was very directly transmitted to Dundee via fluctuating demand for jute goods used predominantly to package many of the major staples of international trade, the industry also had to contend with the impact of sharply fluctuating raw jute prices (for example, because of varying monsoon conditions). Raw material prices were especially important in jute because its cost typically made up around half of the total production costs of the finished goods, so these prices were usually the key factor in determining whether production would expand or contract, yield profits or losses.