Introduction
The debate on the impacts of early industrialization and capitalism on the British working class’s standards of living has been going on for an unusually long time.
Historians do not seem to agree whether in exchange for long working hours, in the factories, British workers living standards improved or worsened with some saying that gains were realized in real wages, improved life expectancy and better living conditions in the cities. What the historians find difficult to connect is the economic development realized during this period to improved living conditions for the common people.
Economic and social historians have brought to focus issues that have elicited vigorous debate and calls for a complete understanding of economic and philosophical concepts and greater originality in search of new information on the issues. Historians have used different approaches to determine the impacts of the industrial revolution on the living standards of common people.
They have used qualitative evidence and quantitative series including economic, demographic, and anthropometric indicators which have been studied at the local, regional and national levels. Some have given attention to the material aspects of well being while others have studied and attached more significance to the quality of life. This as expected has yielded different verdicts, which have left the debate still raging, with no sign of consensus (Allen 21).
Body
Charles Feinstein is one such historian who has recently attempted to solve the riddle of impacts of the industrial revolution on the lives of British commoners and compiled his findings in the Journal of Economic History.
He compiled the estimates of wages and the costs of living during and after the industrial revolution in order to get a fresh picture of the trends in real earnings during this time. In his study, Heinstein used a new index of average annual earnings created for a larger project on economic growth during this period covering all workers, both male and female, on the period between 1770 to 1880.
Most of these estimates are extracted from well known compiled information series by writers most especially A. L. Bowley and G. H. Wood who had relatively secure foundations. At the first phase, (Feinstein 628) constructed a separate estimates of the male and female in Great Britain at decennial periods from 1771 to 1881. The totals were then classified by sectors or occupations and then classified into three categories of income earners: employers, self employed, salaried people and manual wage earners.
This were used to calculate the element for weighing component wage series. Next, the author needed the absolute value of mean annual earnings in each sector per year which was taken from 1881 estimates from an earlier study. Annual estimates of the movement of earnings for more than 20 different industries representing 80% of all wage earners in the country in 1851 were compiled.
Existing indices from Bowley and Wood studies were extended to 1770 and additional ones compiled for other sectors. These were compiled to calculate weekly earnings with an assumption of full employment. Then the annual index of nominal full-employment earnings for all wage earners was compiled and showed the changes in full-employment nominal wages for each sector and groups of workers and the movements between them.
Feinstein, (635) constructed a new cost-of-living index to measure the changes in the prices of 12 kinds of foods together with prices for beer, coal, candles, clothing, footwear and rent. This new index used different expenditure shares, and different base years to weight it. It also has improved price indicators for food, clothing, and rent which started a decade earlier in 1770.
This index is again compared and contrasted with LW index, which is different from Feinstain’s in that they both use different procedures for weighing the indices and in expenditure shares from where the weights are obtained. (Feinstein 636) index also includes potatoes and oatmeal among other items, which are not included in the LW index which slow down the pace of decline in prices.
In deriving the trend in real wages for manual workers in Great Britain, Feinstein, (640) brings together indices of full employment nominal earnings and the cost of living index. From the resulting graph, moderate rate of improvement in full-employment real earnings is shown. From this graph, the period of between 1780s and the end of Napoleonic Wars saw no increase in average real earnings and the nominal earnings were at par with the cost of living.
From 1815 to late 1850s there was slow improvement in both the indices, but after this period, the average worker started to experience substantial and sustained increase in real wages. Feinstein concludes that there was a less than 30% of increase in real weekly earnings all factors considered for the 75 year period of the industrial revolution in Great Britain.
Lindert and Williamson, (5) in their article further discusses this debate. They use nominal full-time wage series and the use of the living index to calculate the wage trends of the average, Great britain workers. They argue that real wages experienced a period of stagnation between 1770 to 1820.
During the period between 1820 and 1850, they continue to say that real wages nearly doubled which produced a large estimates of increase than any previous pessimistic studies. The authors also outline other more optimistic views of the standards of living for the workers between the period of 1780 and 1850, for example, discounting the claims that unemployment rates at the 1840s led to deteriorating standards of living for the working class.
They argue that unemployment rates during this period that is commonly known as the ‘hungry forties’ was probably less than 9.4% in most difficult two years of the decade. On the employment of women and children, the claim that though they lack wide-ranging data on them, available evidence show that their wages were roughly in the same range with those of unskilled labouring men which they competed against as substitutes.
They also attribute some of the increase in earnings for workers may be as a result of migration from the countryside to towns and from slow growing regions to faster growing regions. Their calculations of contribution of migration factors to increase in earnings showed a less than 3.6% was realised between the period of 1781 and 1851.
The pessimists had argued that the industrial revolution led to a decline in life expectancy in the first half of the 19th century especially in cities where most of the industries were located. The authors agree with these claims, but say this could be true in Manchester and Liverpool and other industrial centres, but these are offset or more than offset by gains in life lengthening, in other cities and countryside.
The pessimists had also claimed that quality of life of workers was ruined during this period by long, tedious working hours in the factories, changes in the traditional family roles, environmental pollution such as noise, filth, crime and crowding of urban slums.
The authors contend that they could not find a measure to weigh the negative effects of industrialisation against the substantial gains in real wages they propagated. They, however, say that unskilled metal and cotton workers in the industrial center Manchester, earned an average of 41.4 pounds per week while a common labourer in agricultural East Anglia, a “healthy” place, earned an estimated 25.1 pounds a week.
Also, they say that despite the claim that despite the higher costs of living in industrial centers, and the low quality of life therecompared to the agricultural regions, workers still continued to migrate to the growing cities. They conclude by saying that remarkable gains in standards of living were realized by the workers between 1781 and 1851.
When factors such as occupational change, regional migration, a fairly small increase in unemployment, move to higher costs of living in industrial cities and industrial disamenities are taken into consideration there were substantial gains in living standards during the period. They say that this gains were 60% for farm labourers, over 80% for manual workers and more than 140% for all workers with the majority of them coming after 1820 (Allen 48).
Economist Crafts, (141) has also contributed to the debate on the living standards of Britain’s working class during the industrial revolution. He estimates that British income per person based on the 1970 U. S. dollars increased from $400 in 1760 to 430 in 1800 and then rose to $500 in 1830 then a mega increase by $300 was experienced by1860. This followed centuries of rising and falling income levels.
Slow growth according to Craft was reported between 1760 to 1830 after which the income levels rose substantially up to 1860 doubling the increase of real income per person during the period between 1760 and 1860. If this did not result to the lowest-income group of people being better off after the growth, then the share of income going to the lowest 65% of the population would have to had to fall by half which did not happen according to (Crafts 140).
He says that 29% of the country’s total income went to the lowest 65% of the population in 1760 and in 1860 this share of percentage of the total income was at 25% meaning the lowest 65% of the population was relatively better off. The increase in average real income for the country for this group during this period was approximately 70%.
Considering the increase in estimates for the real income, a mildly optimistic view is justified for the living standards of the working class for the century after 1760 according to (Crafts 143). His pessimist critics though cite the slow growth in a long time as a pessimistic conclusion.
They give an example of the early years of industrialization in the country between 1760 to 1830, and what it meant to the working class, did it make them worse off during this period. The growth of 0.3% annual y on real income per person is likely to have resulted into deteriorating conditions for workers.
Craft, however, continues to say that real wage figures are for real wage rates not earnings. During the period around 1820, historians should remember that unemployment was especially high due to factors such as demobilization, agricultural dislocation and unpredicted drops in price levels, which according to Lindert and Williamson, (13) study rendered approximately 10% of the labor force out of work.
Other years such as 1780 saw unprecedented high employment levels which together with the high unemployment years are enough to reduce the calculated rates of growth in real earnings to around 0.55 % per year for the period of 1780 to 1820, when the real increase had been 0.80% annually. These figures are consistent with consumption.
In the period between 1820 and 1850, wages were shares of national income and as an allocate of consumption in national output were relatively consistent. Crafts, (139) says that this meant real wages growth was rather similar to consumption growth. It is during the 1851 period that the economy gained a “normal” level of unemployment.
If the real wage growth was added to this, then an estimate of about 1.2% annually that is close to the rate of consumption a real wage increase would have been realized. The comparison of national output growth and real wages growth Crafts, (142) say supports (Lindert and Williamson 18) procedure is that results in overestimates, in real wage growth, for the years between 1820 and 1850.
In conclusion, (Crafts 144) say that the argument that overall wage growth was significantly less than the national output per head propagated by the pessimists is not the case. The slow growth of consumption by workers during the early industrialization era was as a result of slow growth and not as a result of prolonged interval of stagnation in real wages behind the national output.
Conclusion
The period between 1760 and 1860 marked a transformation of England into a workshop of the world. There was technological progress, education and rising capital stock marked this period refered to as the Industrial revolution which historians say is the most critical period in history. However, historians do not seem to agree on whether this revolution resulted into improved standards of living for the British working class.
Some argue that the conditions for these workers got worse due to things such as prolonged working hours and environmental pollution among others. Others, however, say that gains realized such increased real wages and improved life expectancy among others led to improved standards of living. Charles Feinstein is a representation of the pessimist writer who compiled the estimates for this period.
Further, he drew a new index of average annual earnings of the period using earlier information especially from A. L. Bowley and G. H. Wood. He concludes that there was a less than 30% of increase in real weekly earnings all factors considered for the 75 year period of the industrial revolution in Great Britain. Lindert and Williamson use nominal full-time wage series and the use of the living index to calculate the wage trends of the average, Great Britain workers.
They represent optimists as their conclusions are that all factors put into consideration, there was a substantial increase in gains, in standards of living after 1820.
Crafts are another optimist who suggests that significant gains were made in living standards putting in mind the substantial increase in real wage rates in the lowest 65% of the income who by 1860 had a share of 25% of the total national income. Economic historians are expanding the debate to look at the effects of the industrial revolution which could have had negative or positive impacts on the living standards of the people thereby offsetting the gains made.
Works Cited
Allen, Robert. Pessimism Preserved: Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution. UK: Oxford University, 2007. Print.
Crafts, N. F. R. English workers’ real wages during the industrial revolution: some remaining problems. The journal of economic history, 5.2 (1985), pp.139-144. Print.
Feinstein, Charles. Pessimism perpetuated real wages and the standard of living in Britain during and after the industrial revolution. The journal of economic history, 13.7 (1998), pp.625-658. Print.
Lindert, Peter and Jeffrey Williamson. English worker’s living standards during the industrial revolution: A new look. The economic history review, 8.5 (1983), pp.1- 25. Print.