The industrial revolution: Redefining standard of living in industrialized Britain - Research Paper Example

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: REDEFINING ‘STANDARD OF LIVING’ IN INDUSTRIALIZED BRITAIN DEPARTMENT MONTH, YEAR TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………….1 2. Transformation………………………………………………………………………2 3. Re-assessing Generalizations………………………………………………………...3 4. The Price of Progress....................................................................................................5 5. ’Top-Heaviness’……………………………………………………………………..6 6. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In his article “Workers’ Living Standards: A Modern Revision,” Professor Thomas S. Ashton wonders at the selective memory of historians (and their students) who make of Britain’s industrial revolution an irredeemably bleak and exploitative time of Dickensian drudgery, back-breaking toil and grinding poverty. Ashton’s point is well-made: there is a tendency among many to adopt a melancholic interpretation of history which, though not devoid of merit, leans rather too heavily on the ideological and insubstantially on the examination of facts and the evidence at hand. Ashton cites the contrasting examples of countries, such as Ireland, that never passed through the modernizing crucible of an industrial awakening and clearly suffered terribly for the utter want of economic vitality and technological advancement that the phenomenon brought to England.1 Ashton goes so far as to contend that without its own industrial revolution, an exclusively agrarian England would no doubt have experienced the horrors that cost Ireland nearly a fifth of its population in the 19th century. There is no question that the masses whose labor greased the gears of technological progress were victims of a merciless system. Indeed, Ashton mentions that a prominent post-war 2 British politician spoke often of the “mechanized horrors of the industrial revolution,” and Ashton readily concedes that death and mutilation among the labor force went hand-in-hand with profit and affluence among the industrial elite. However, the evidence of history reveals that the development of time- and labor-saving mechanization that likewise characterized the industrial age established an important trend which remains a cornerstone of modern civilization. Modernization bestowed a number of important economic effects that gradually improved the lot of the general population. Increased productivity brought a gradual increase in pay and the means for a better, and easier, life. Thus, the sacrifice of 19th-century laborers enabled the economic prosperity reaped by later generations and, seen in the greater context of history, made a triumph of Britain’s industrial revolution. CHAPTER 2 TRANSFORMATION The prevailing theme among those who contend that the industrial revolution produced unrelieved misery for millions is that working, and living, conditions and key economic factors were undeniably the product of industrialization and urbanization. Yet in each country that experienced an industrial transformation, it is equally as likely that circumstances of “time and place” had as much to do with social ills and economic volatility as the rapid growth of factories and assembly plants. “Many of the social discomforts that have been attributed to the industrial revolution in Britain were…the result of forces which (for all we know) would still have operated if manufacture had remained undeveloped and there had been no change of economic form.”2 3 Chief among these was price fluctuation. Ashton notes that in Britain, it is easy to assume that the rapid emergence of new technologies would have translated into unprecedented production levels and a consequent reduction in prices.3 However, other variables were in play. The political adventurism that characterized the spread of Britain’s colonial empire slowed the development of economic processes, and the rapid introduction of paper money after 1797 caused a period of inflation that lasted nearly 20 years.4 It would be another 15 years before price levels more or less settled into some semblance of stability. As well, the transition from a predominantly agricultural economy to an industrialized economic base was far from a smooth process. To make matters worse, a series of bad winters resulted in poor harvests and elevated bread prices. Circumstance and the vagaries of fate clearly were as much to blame as the changes that industrialization brought to the underclass. CHAPTER 3 REASSESSING GENERALIZATIONS Ashton points out that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and other economic theorists have been too ready to resort to comfortable generalizations that make of the industrial revolution a scapegoat for the woes, both real and perceived, of the laboring class. This, he explains, is the result of a too-narrow view of the economic factors upon which history turns. One such example is Engels’ characterization of the basic conditions in which the poor lived during the industrial era. “The clothing of the working-people in a majority of cases is in a very bad condition. The 4 material used for it is not of the best adapted.”5 Ashton counters that the new materials used by the poor for clothing were actually available in greater abundance than ever before, and were in many cases more durable (Ibid). The same dynamic is in evidence concerning foodstuffs. The increasing consumption of tea and potatoes has been seen by some as evidence of a decline in the variety of food and drink available to the poor rather than an example of increased agricultural productivity and the economic benefits of a burgeoning foreign trade. The significance of the British government’s policies on foreign trade is also sometimes overlooked when assessing the economic conditions under which Britain’s poor lived during the industrial revolution. By the end of the 19th century, India was the source of almost one-fifth of Britain’s entire import/export trade, with the important cotton textile and metallurgical industries comprising the majority of this trade.6 Though India was the “jewel” of Britain’s overseas possessions, the economic relationship between India and Britain was carefully manipulated by the British government so as to decidedly favor British markets and protect the economic affluence of the mother country. To that end, India was purposely de-industrialized, and remained that way, in order to prevent the subcontinent competing with, for instance, with Britain’s great textile manufacturing complex at Lancashire.7 This artificially constructed and maintained situation had the effect of securing the profitability of Britain’s textile factories and, significantly for the country’s working class, of maintaining healthy employment rates through much of the 19th century. 5 CHAPTER 4 THE PRICE OF PROGRESS It is to be remembered that these were gradual processes. The increased availability and greater affordability that the industrial revolution brought to the poorer classes came at the cost of labor depredations perpetrated by the nation’s great industrialists. In the early stages of the industrial revolution, the factory owners forced economic change at the expense of the workers, though conditions slowly improved, particularly when it became evident that worker abuse threatened long-term profitability. The worst employer transgression, and the image that still defines the industrial age for many, was child labor. Change came slowly at first, with the initial reforms aimed at the youngest children while neglecting teenagers.8 “Nevertheless, by the 1830s in Britain, the worst factory abuse of children was in fact easing. Laws, public scrutiny, some sense of conscience…and the increasing complexity of factory technology” combined to effect badly needed change in child labor.9 (Ibid). In A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution, Emma Griffin makes the point that once Britain overcame the social growing pains that accompanied the industrial revolution, Britain, a relatively small European nation, emerged from centuries of subsistence living.10 The industrial revolution freed Britain from the whims of fate and weather that kept the population tied to a precarious rural existence. In this sense, the industrial revolution can be said to have improved the quality of life for millions. Indeed, a key point in the debate over whether 6 the industrial revolution was a triumph or disaster comes down to quality of life, and to the health and overall well-being of the people who crowded into London, Manchester and Birmingham to work long hours in the nation’s factories. Historians are still finding ways to accurately assess the pros and cons of higher wages made possible by industrialization versus the often appalling working (and living) conditions, and comparing these to agricultural subsistence. At the peak of the industrial era, unskilled metal and cotton workers in Manchester made more than 41 a week compared to about 25 per week in predominantly rural East Anglia. The harsh realities of economic hardship encouraged people from the country’s rural regions to seek employment in the cities. This migration took place in substantial numbers between 1780 and 1850 despite the higher cost of living and the “supposed lower quality of life” in the urban areas.11 In a 1983 article in The Economic History Review, Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson write that after 1820 industrial workers realized substantial gains in their standard of living. “The real full-time earnings for workers during this period were: farm laborers 63.6%; (and) all blue-collar workers 99.2%...”12 CHAPTER 5 ‘TOP-HEAVINESS’ Jeff Horn takes a somewhat more measured view of the increased standard of living during the industrial revolution’s peak years. Horn argues that there was actually a “top-heaviness” to Britain’s industrial expansion. “Because few industries grew as fast as cotton textiles, metallurgy, or even woolens, Britain as a whole actually experienced relatively slow 7 growth, punctuated by periodic crises.”13 As a result, he contends that the standard of living of Britain’s laboring class did not exceed 30 percent.14 Real wages likewise increased, as much as 41 percent between 1820 and 1850 though, in a give-and-take scenario typical of this era, the increase in real wages, which many claim is the true measure of a population’s standard of living, was actually produced by a lengthened work week.15 Indeed, there can be little argument that the industrial revolution was propelled by menial laborers working long hours, often seven days a week. In a country but newly emerged from a largely agricultural hand-to-mouth subsistence, the very concept of a standard of living was vastly different from the five-day-a-week, two-to-four-weeks-of-vacation standard that most modern societies uphold. During the era of industrialization, improving one’s economic situation meant working more hours and earning more wages. Clearly, this could not have been accomplished without the technological advances that made industrialization possible. By 1760, the average British laborer’s work week was slightly more than 50 hours long. Approximately 100 years later, that figure had climbed to more than 60 hours per week. The surge in the urban labor pool that took place between 1760 and 1850 came about because people sought a higher standard of living, as they understood the term, and the factories provided the means of achieving that goal. One especially enduring image of the industrial revolution is that of the business-government partnership that engineered an environment in which massive profits could be turned by unscrupulous capitalists whose interests were repeatedly served by sympathetic M.P.s and 8 cabinet officials. The historian Arnold Toynbee wrote extensively of a business-friendly state in which the principles of laissez faire were broadly applied. In “The Industrial Revolution: A Reappraisal,” George N. Clark counters that, in fact, “Laissez faire was not a passport given by an indifferent state to ruthless enterprise…”16 It was a matter of creating an economic condition in which industry could thrive. What is more, the British government in this period was quite active in working on important social issues. The state, Clark notes, “overrode the rights of property in the social interest, when it imposed taxation or when it made laws for the building of roads, canals, railways, and docks.”17 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION This is different than the laws that specifically addressed matters like worker safety and child labor. But it does speak to a concern, which grew, albeit gradually, into an interest in achieving balance between the interests of capital and the needs of labor. Whether this balance was ever (or has ever been) achieved is a matter for debate. It is as true today as it was 200 years ago that the monitoring and regulation of “big business” is an absolute necessity. The excesses of British factory owners during the age of industrialization are indisputable and, slowly, became a source of concern for a nation that regarded itself as socially conscious. Widespread social and economic change is rarely painless. In Britain, the transformation from an agrarian to an industrialized economic system came at a cost for the poor who labored in the mills and 9 factories. But it also brought higher wages, the benefits of mechanization, a better standard of living and helped transform Britain into the world’s first “superpower.” BIBLIOGRAPHY Ashton, Thomas S. The Industrial Revolution. New York and London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968. Griffin, Emma. A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. Hindman, Hugh. The World of Child Labor: An Historical and Regional Survey. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2009. Horn, Jeff. The Industrial Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. Koot, Gerald M. The Standard of Living Debate During Britain’s Industrial Revolution.” Seminar. University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, 2006. Peter H. Lindert & Jeffrey G. Williamson, “English Workers’ Living Standards During the Industrial Revolution: A New Look.” The Economic History Review, 1983 Taylor, Phillip A.M. The Industrial Revolution in Britain: Triumph or Disaster? Boston, MA: D.C. Heath & Co., 1958. Read More