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Population
as a spur to economic growth
Population
growth was crucially important to industrialisation: it provided an expanding
supply of cheap labour especially juvenile labour. Because the population
was growing rapidly, family size and the number of dependants in families
grew. Children aged between 5 and 14 accounted for almost a quarter of the
population (compared with around 5% today) and these children could not be
supported by adults of working age, hence the extensive employment of juveniles
and children at this time. Surplus population in rural areas gradually migrated,
mostly into nearby villages and towns, and provided a labour force for urban
and industrial expansion.
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Alongside
proletarianisation and growing wage dependency, population growth was also the
foundation for expansion of the domestic market for manufactured goods and services.
As population grew and more families turned away from rural subsistence and
self sufficiency to wage earning, a dynamic home market was created which underpinned
the transformation of the economy. Families bought pottery plates instead of
making their own with wood or rushes, they bought wax candles instead of spending
long hours melting tallow, they bought more of their cloth and clothing, furniture
and household linens and they spent money on butter, cheese, milk, eggs and
other everyday food needs all of which had earlier been largely a product of
self provisioning. |
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"Since
the steam engine has concentrated men into particular localities - has drawn
together the population into dense masses - and since an imperfect education
has enlarged and to some degree distorted their views, union is become easy
and from being so closely packed, simultaneous action is readily excited.
The organisation of these working class societies is now so complete that
they form an empire within an empire of the most obnoxious description. Labour
and capital are coming into collision - the operative and the master are at
issue, and the peace and well being of the kingdom are at stake."
Peter
Gaskell, letter to Lord Melbourne, 1834
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Living
standards and poverty
One
of the liveliest debates amongst historians of the industrial revolution concerns
what happened to living standards. Our popular image of the period is dominated
by
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long
hours of factory work in poor conditions coupled with ill health, high mortality
and overcrowding in the rapidly growing towns. Certainly there was suffering
as a result of the changes in industry and employment and because urban development
and improvement failed to keep up with population growth and migration. Technological
changes, and economic instability resulted in high unemployment and low wages
for many, particularly amongst agricultural workers whose opportunities for
work on the land . |
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were
declining, and those in trades, such as handloom weaving, which were becoming
mechanised. The numbers dependent upon poor relief rose markedly. Rents and
food prices rocketed and the quality of food supplies in towns was aggravated
by the difficulties of supplying adequate amounts of milk, fish and fresh fruit
before the railway age, and by uncontrolled adulteration and profiteering. The
war years aggravated the situation as taxes on everyday essentials were increased.
Studies of heights and weights in the period suggest that the generations raised
during the early decades of the industrial revolution may have had weak stature,
caused by poor nutrition. The industrial revolution was thus achieved at considerable
human cost and there was a great deal of social protest from the Luddite riots
during the Napoleonic War years to the massive Chartist demonstrations of the
1830s and 1840s. Historians have identified this as a period which saw the birth
of a new class-divided society analysed in the E.
P. Thompson classic, The making of the English working class (1963) |
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Note
giving information about alleged Chartist activities in Halifax 1839
Source: West Yorkshire Archive Service, Halifax HAS: 1388/15
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Tension
was aggravated because the entrepreneurial
middle classes generally did very well. But many skilled workers also found
themselves in great demand whilst others with old and redundant skills sunk
into poverty. In some areas of the country family incomes were boosted by the
earnings of women and children and factory wages were usually higher than wages
in domestic industry. Despite some very bad epidemics of cholera and typhoid
in the cities, mortality was generally on the decline. Thus experiences were
mixed but food prices were very high and on average it appears that living standards
before the 1830s and 1840s were declining for the working classes. In the longer
run things slowly improved. The economy and job opportunities expanded, urban
conditions and food supplies began to improve and average wages were increasing
in real terms by the mid
nineteenth century. |
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The
burden of increasing poor relief payments was much discussed by contemporaries.
The Old poor law had been established in Elizabethan times enabling parishes
to raise rates and to address the problems of their own poor by being flexible
to local needs. As the problems of poverty rose in the later eighteenth and
early nineteenth century this system of relief came to be seen as part of the
problem itself: encouraging both claimants and population growth amongst the
poor. The Revd.Thomas
Malthus (who wrote the influential An Essay on the principle of population
in 1798) argued that wage subsidies to the able bodied poor encouraged people
to lack self reliance and to marry and have children when they could not afford
to do so. It was argued that poor relief needed to be less generous and to be
more strictly rationed to the deserving poor: those |
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Women's
Wage Rates, 1760s (compared to local male wage rates in agriculture).
Adapted from: Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures 1700-1820,
p. 143.
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to work through old age or ill health. This philosophy became enshrined in the
New Poor Law passed in 1834. This law demanded that Parish unions built workhouses
for the poor in which conditions were bad enough to act as a disincentive for
claiming assistance. Relief paid in the form of doles was to cease. In practice
the new system took time to introduce and it was resisted in those parts of
the country, such as Lancashire, where it was obvious that the able bodied often
found themselves destitute for reasons beyond their control, such as cyclical
unemployment. Supporters of the new law saw it as a great success because
poor relief spending was falling by the 1840s. However, by this time the economy
was becoming more stable and internationally successful so that there was lower
unemployment and higher wages. This was the real reason why the crisis of poor
relief was averted. |
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