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Fluctuations in House-Building in Britain and the United States in the Nineteenth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

H. J. Habakkuk
H. J. Habakkuk
Affiliation:
All Souls College, Oxford
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Extract

The notion that an “Atlantic Economy” developed in the nineteenth century does not depend simply on the large movements of capital and labor from Britain to the United States. For there were movements of comparable magnitude to other areas. If the economic relations of Britain and North America are to be regarded as distinctive, it is principally because of the reciprocal movement of investment and growth in the two areas. The argument is that the periods of most rapid growth and intensive use of resources in the two economies were inversely related to each other, and that this alternation was established because there existed a common stock of resources, so that when one area drew rapidly on this stock it was at the expense of the other. At one time, investment in buildings and equipment in the United States was particularly rapid, and there was a heavy movement of migrants to America; in Britain the stream of migrants from the countryside was diverted from the industrial districts, and building and home investment were relatively depressed, but the vigorous demand for exports facilitated the flow of funds abroad. In the next period, the position was reversed; development slackened in the United States, and there was a revival of domestic investment in Britain. This, as Phelps-Brown has said, “is the pattern of the Atlantic Economy, dividing a common fund of incremental energies between its regions in varying proportions from time to time. Whether a house is built in Oldham depends on and is decided by whether a house goes up in Oklahoma.”

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1962 , pp. 198 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1962

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References

1 This relationship has been identified and discussed by Cooney, E. W., “Capital Exports and Investment in Building in Britain and the U. S. A.,” Economica, New Series, XVI (Nov. 1949), 347–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; by Cairncross, A. K., Home and Foreign Investment, 1870–1913 (Cambridge University Press, 1953)Google Scholar; and by Thomas, B., Migration and Economic Growth (Cambridge University Press, 1954)Google Scholar, and a number of later studies.

2 In a review of Thomas, , Migration and Economic Growth in Economic Journal, LXIV, No. 256 (Dec. 1954), 820Google Scholar.

3 Grebler, L., Blank, D. M. and Winnick, L., Capital Formation in Residential Real Estate (National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Capital Formation and Financing, I) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 428Google Scholar.

4 See Cairncross, Home and Foreign Investment, pp. 157, 169, 203.

5 Lewis, W. A. and O'Leary, P. I., “Secular Swings in Production and Trade, 1870–1913,” Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, XXIII, No. 2 (May 1955), 113–52Google Scholar, believe that alternation can be discerned from the 1820's. Thomas dates the beginning of the inverse relation in 1847 (Migration and Economic Growth, p. 188).

6 For the American figures see Thomas, Migration and Economic Growth, Appendix 4, Tables 108, 109. The data before 1860 are estimates made by Riggleman based on, at most, three cities. These are based for most years on permits for building (not house-building alone), but also take into account Riggleman's judgments based on information about mortgage activity, etc.

7 For the British evidence see, besides Cairncross, and Thomas, , Cairncross, A. K. and Weber, B., “Fluctuations in Building in Great Britain, 1785–1849,” Economic History Review, Second Series, IX, No. 2 (Dec. 1956), 283–97Google Scholar; Weber, B., “A New Index of Residential Construction and Long Cycles in House-Building in Great Britain, 1838–1950,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy, II, No. 2 (June 1955)Google Scholar; and Richards, J. H. and Lewis, J. Parry, “House Building in the South Wales Coalfield, 1851–1913,” The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, XXIV, No. 3 (Sept. 1956), 289–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, Herbert W., The Economics of Building (London: King, 1939), p. 100Google Scholar, gives the census figures of stocks of houses. The small increase in the stock of houses between 1841 and 1851 shown in the census figures is curious, since the railway building of this decade seems, as would be expected, to have stimulated internal migration. (Cairncross, Home and Foreign Investment, pp. 70, 80.) It is possible that the census figures understate the number of houses built, since (a) before 1851 the interpretation of “house” was left to the individual enumerator, and (b) there was some demolition of old houses as a result of railway building. Shannon's brick index shows an output in 1840/49 greater than in 1830/39 by nearly 25 per cent; but a large part of the output in the 1840's must have been absorbed by nonresidential uses, particularly railway construction itself. If the small increase is genuine, the most likely explanation is that a very large amount of building had been done in the 1830's—the proportion of uninhabited houses per thousand in 1841 was higher than in 1811, 1821 and 1831 and than in 1851 and 1861. But the possibility cannot be ruled out that there were difficulties in obtaining finance in the two severe cyclical depressions of 1842 and 1847, and in the intervening railway boom which drew upon the type of savings most likely to be available for building.

8 S. C. on Manufactures, Commerce and Shipping (1833), Qu. 1719, 4787, 2887, 2888. The year 1816 was also one of distress in building (Qu. 1777).

9 Matthews, R. C. O., A Study in Trade-Cycle History: Economic Fluctuations in Great Britain, 1833–1842 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1954), pp. 116–17Google Scholar. The 1836 Act for the Regulation of Benefit Building Societies, passed because of the rapid increase in their number since the passing of the Friendly Society Act of 1834, suggests vigorous house-building.

10 Hughes, J. R. T., Fluctuations in Trade, Industry and Finance: A Study of British Economic Development, 1850–1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 225–27Google Scholar. It would be worth investigating the local press for evidence of building activity. See the Hampshire Independent for September 6, 1856. “The progress made by Southampton during the past few years is strikingly apparent on all sides … whether we look at the new streets … or the erection of public buildings in every part of the town. We are astonished when passing through the new parts of the town to find the houses occupied before they are completed … proving incontestably the great demand for houses.”

11 Matthews, A Study in Trade-Cycle History, p. 117.

12 Cairncross and Weber, “Fluctuations in Buildings,” pp. 292–93.

13 Though the small increase in the stock of houses between 1841 and 1851 may be due to the fact that railway building competed with building for finance and labor more directly than did the dominant forms of investment in other cycles.

14 Possibly, also, to a greater extent than later in the century, house-building was financed by industrialists out of profits.

15 Hansard (3rd Series), LXLV, 118, 1248. Tooke attributed the depressed state of agricultural workers in 1844 “to the accumulating results of the interruption of the customary migration from the agricultural to the manufacturing districts, during the long and severe depression of the latter.” (Tooke, Thomas and Newmarch, William, A History of Prices, 6 vols. in 4 (reproduced from the original and published New York: Adelphi, 1928), IV, 56–57Google Scholar.)

16 There seems to be no evidence for the view of Lewis and O'Leary (“Secular Swings in Production,” p. 176) that alternation was evident from the 1820's. Thomas's view that the alternation started as early as 1847, and that English building was low in the 1850's when American building was high, is based on the assumption that railway miles added in England are an index of building. His conclusions, so far as residential building in the 1850's is concerned, are difficult to reconcile with the census figures for housing in 1851 and 1861.

17 There was also some alternation in the 1920's and 1930's, with English building relatively low in the first decade and high in the second; but this period falls outside the scope of this essay.

18 Discussion on Williams, R. Price, “On the Increase of Population in England and Wales,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, XLIII, Part III (Sept 1880), 500–1Google Scholar; Welton, T. A., England's Recent Progress (London: Chapman & Hall, 1911), pp. 564–69Google Scholar.

19 A letter in The Builder of January 1857, quoted by Tooke and Newmarch, History oj Prices, VI, 175–76.

20 S. C. of 1857, Qu. 5414.

21 This is the main explanation of the change in the behavior of consols over the trade cycle noted by Beveridge, Sir William, “The Trade Cycle in Britain Before 1850,” Oxford Economic Papers, No. 3 (Feb. 1940)Google Scholar, 91.

22 Matthews, A Study in Trade-Cycle History.

23 Any alternation in the 1860's was due to the American Civil War, which was fortuitous in this context.

24 Cairncross, Home and Foreign Investment, pp. 68, 74; Thomas, Migration and Economic Growth, p. 173.

25 Thomas, B., “Wales and the Atlantic Economy,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy, VI, No. 3 (Nov. 1959), 169–71Google Scholar.

26 Bowley, A. L., “Rural Population in England and Wales,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXXVII, Pt. VI (May 1914). 605–6Google Scholar.

27 “The general complaint all over the country with regard to rural matters and the agricultural industry is the want of accommodation; old dwellings are condemned on account of their condition, and it does not pay to build new ones.” (Cd. 2751 of 1905, Qu. 21698.)

28 Tooke and Newmarch, History of Prices, V, 315.

29 Bailey, J. D., “Australian Borrowing in Scotland in the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, Second Series, XII, No. 2 (Dec. 1959), 268–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Cooney, E. W., “Long Waves in Building in the British Economy of the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, Second Series, XIII, No. 2 (Dec. 1960), 264–66Google Scholar.

31 Detailed comparison with German building fluctuations might shed light on the relative importance of migrants and funds. German foreign investment and exports went principally to Europe, and German emigrants went principally to America, and went during American booms; if the German building cycle had been determined by migration it ought, Lewis and O'Leary have argued, to have synchronized with the British. Instead, they believe it virtually coincided with the U. S. building cycle, with peaks in 1873 and 1890 (“Secular Swings in Production,” p. 130), and with periods of heavy German capital exports (p. 142). But this does not shed much light on the problem because (a) German emigration was very much smaller in relation to total German population and did not necessarily bear the same relation to migration widiin Germany; (b) the evidence is, in fact, too slight to assert that the German building cycle coincided with the British.

32 Bellman, Sir Harold, Bricks and Mortals (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1949), pp. 66–67Google Scholar. The accounts of building societies are difficult to interpret because (a) each society was subject to individual influences; (b) the movement as a whole was affected by the failure of the Liberator Society (1892) and the Birkbeck (1911). Such as it is, the experience of the Abbey Road and the Co-operative Permanent suggests that the fluctuations in demand were much more important than those in funds. Certainly in periods of trade depression, for example 1885–86 and 1893–95, advances fell while receipts often rose. (Mansbridge, A., Brick, upon Brick. (London: Dent & Sons, 1934), pp. 62–68Google Scholar.)

33 R. C. on London Transport (Cd. 2751 of 1906, Qu. 19104, evidence given in March 1904).

34 S. B. Saul, “English Building Fluctuations in the 1890's,” to appear in a forthcoming issue of Economic History Review.

35 For evidence of a shift from housing to foreign investment in the 1910's see Report of the Land Enquiry Committee, II (London, 1914). It was, of course, not only foreign investment which competed with housing but, for example, small joint-stock companies in textiles. (Ibid., pp. 89–91.)

36 Between 1901–11, there was a net emigration from the Greater London area of 228,733. Spensley, J. C., “Urban Housing Problems,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXXXI, Pt. II (March 1918), 173Google Scholar.

37 R. C. on London Traffic, Cd. 2597 of 1905, Qu. 21651 ft., 21678.

38 R. C. on Housing of the Working Classes, P. P. 1881, VI, Qu. 3987.

39 Ibid., P. P. 1881, VII, Qu. 1444.

40 There was probably also a long-standing tendency for London building to be out of phase with that of industrial areas. Thus the 1830's seem to have seen less building in London than in the rest of the country—between 1831 and 1841 the number of inhabited houses per hundred of population rose over the country as a whole, but fell in Middlesex. (Matthews, A Study in Trade-Cycle History, p. 118.) This disparity of experience may have had some echo effect in later decades. It also suggests the possibility that migration into London tended to vary inversely with the prosperity of the industrial districts.

41 Cd. 2597 of 1905, Qu. 2751, 3799.

42 Ibid., Qu. 5058.

43 R. C. on London Traffic, Cd. 2751 of 1906, Qu. 5799, 5908. This is also related to thesocial structure of London. A very large proportion of London's industrial labor was employedin domestic industry—in the small workshop. There was, therefore, more residence near place of work than in factory towns. Morever, though there was a class of prosperous artisans, the mass of London's domestic workers enjoyed lower earnings than factory workers. They couldless easily afford the economic cost of travel from the suburbs.

44 Buckley, K. A. H., Capital Formation in Canada, 1896–1930 (Toronto University of Toronto Press, 1955)Google Scholar.