Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T05:43:58.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Industrialization and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

E. H. Hunt
E. H. Hunt
Affiliation:
The author is a member of the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics, Houghton St., London, WC2A 2AE.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper describes the geographical pattern of wages in Britain between 1760 and 1914. It then draws out some of the implications of the wages pattern and considers, in particular, the implications for the “growth pole” debate on the likely effect of industrialization upon regional income inequalities. The market forces responsible for creating and maintaining these differentials are then described, followed by a final section which discsusses the significance of changing regional wage differentials to the standar-of-living debate. It concludes that from a regional perspective the overall effects of industrialization upon living standards are indisputably favorable.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 935 - 966
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bowley, A. L., “The Statistics of Wages in the United Kingdom in the last Hundred Years: Part 1, Agricultural Wages,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society [hereafter J.R.S.S.], 61 (12 1898), p. 706.Google Scholar

2 Morgan, V., “Agricultural Wage Rates in late Eighteenth-Century Scotland,” Economic History Review, 24 (05 1971), 190–1;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHamilton, H., Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1963), pp. 343, 353–4;Google ScholarBowley, A. L., “The Statistics of Wages in the United Kingdom in the last Hundred Years: Part 2, Agricultural Wages in Scotland,” J.R.S.S., 62 (1899), p. 562;Google ScholarSmout, T. C., A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830 (London, 1969), pp. 317–8, 399.Google Scholar

3 No figures for Welsh counties are available for 1794–1795. One or two Welsh counties may have qualified for inclusion in the “lowest-wage” category, but Bowley shows average farm wages for the whole of Wales at this date as 6s.8d.–7s.61.Google Scholar (Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century [Cambridge, 1900, endtable]; J.R.S.S. [12 1898], p. 706), so the majority of Welsh counties probably had wages that were low by English standards but above the level in most of Scotland.Google Scholar

4 Purdy, F., Bowley, A. L., Wood, G. H., and contributors to official inquiries all noticed this mid-century relative improvement in Scottish wages.Google ScholarHunt, E. H., Regional Wage Variations in Britain, 1850–1914 (Oxford, 1973), p. 48.Google Scholar

5 Bowley, , “The Statistics of Wages in the United Kingdom: Part 6, Wages in the Building Trades in English Towns,” J.R.S.S. (06 1900), p. 302–8; Appendix, Table 5.Google Scholar

6 For 1833–1845 there are again no worthwhile figures of farm wages in separate Welsh counties, although some rural Welsh counties were almost certainly among the lowest-paid British counties (Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, pp. 21–2, 25). Bowley (J.R.S.S., Dec. 1898) estimated average farm wages in Wales as a whole at 8s.2d. to 8s.8d. in 1833 and 7s.6d. in 1837. Welsh figures are available for 1867–1870, when four Welsh counties appear among the 18 counties where wages were lowest (Figure 8).Google Scholar

7 Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, pp. 15, 39–40, 45–46.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., pp. 68–9.

9 Graham, P. A., The Rural Exodus, (London, 1892), p. 7;Google ScholarBritish and Foreign Trade and Industrial Conditions, Parliamentary Papers, 1903, 67, p. 211.Google Scholar

10 On rising relative wages in other occupations in South Wales, see Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, pp. 21–24.Google Scholar

11 Migration was age-selective and therefore conductive to higher (non-age-standardized) fertility in the receiving areas.Google Scholar

12 The “revisionist” interpretation is associated particularly with the work of Myrdal, Gunnar, Economic Theory and Under-developed Regions, (London, 1957).Google Scholar On the debate generally, see Richardson, H. W., Regional Economics: Location Theory, Urban Structure and Regional Change, (London, 1969), chap. 13;Google ScholarWilliamson, Jeffrey G., “Regional Inequality and the Process of National Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 13 (07 1965, part 2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On attempts to test the theories, see Bairoch, P. and Lévy-Leboyer, M., eds., Disparities in Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution (London, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 There is insufficient evidence of wages in Welsh and Scottish countries at the earlier dates for these calculations to be applied to Britain as a whole.Google Scholar

14 According to Bowley's evidence, among the counties where wages moved from within 5 percent of average in 1794–1795 to more than 5 percent below average in 1833–1845 were Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire, and Oxfordshire. Among those that moved from within 5 percent of the average to above 5 percent of the average were Lincolnshire, Rutland, Cheshire, Cumberland, and Durham.Google Scholar

15 Most of these movements were those which reduced both the advantages of the northern counties and the overall level of wage differentials, but not all. Some arose from southeastern counties replacing southwestern counties at the foot of the county wage-table.Google Scholar

16 Bowley, J.R.S.S. (Dec. 1898), pp. 704–7.Google Scholar

17 See p. 946; and Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, pp. 21–27.Google Scholar

18 Levitt, and Smout, C., The State of the Scottish Working-Class in 1843 (Edinburgh, 1979), p. 81.Google Scholar

19 Ibid. pp. 80, 262; Morgan, “Agricultural Wage Rates,” pp. 189–91.

20 Hunt, E. H., “Labour Productivity in English Agriculture, 1850–1914,” Economic History Review, 20 (08 1967).Google Scholar

21 See, for example, Coleman, D. C., “Growth and Decay During the Industrial Revolution: The Case of East Anglia,” Scandinavian Economic History Review, 10 (part 2, 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, chap. 4.Google Scholar

23 Defined here as all the counties of the southeast and East Anglia except those around London; ibid.

24 On the relationship between population growth and regional wage differentials generally, see Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, chap. 6.Google Scholar

25 The Webbs described English trade unionists in 1894 “aggregated in the thriving industrial districts of the north.” Webb, S. and Webb, B., The History of Trade Unionism, 1660–1920 (London, 1920), pp. 425–27, 741–43.Google Scholar

26 Hunt, E. H., British Labour History, 1815–1914 (London, 1981), pp. 206, 284, 292.Google Scholar

27 Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, pp. 251–65; and Hunt, British Labour History, pp. 145–48.Google Scholar

28 Argued in Hunt, British Labour History, pp. 171–76.Google Scholar

29 Engels, F., The Condition of the Working Class in England, in Henderson, W. O. and Chaloner, W. H., eds. (London, 1958 edn.), p. 107;Google ScholarHechter, M., “Regional Inequality and National Integration: The Case of the British Isles,” Journal of Social History, 5 (Fall 1971–1972), p. 100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1968 edn.), p. 473.Google Scholar

31 Expenditure per capita on poor relief in Buckinghamshire in 1850 was more than twice the level in Lancashire. Parliamentary Papers. Returns of the Amount of Money Expended for … Relief of the Poor, 1850, 50, p. 63; 1851, 49, p. 89.Google Scholar

32 Bowley, Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

33 Tables 1, 2, and 3 are calculated from data on English counties only: thus the problem of comparability does not arise in that part of the analysis.Google Scholar

34 Young, A., A Six Months Tour Through the North of England, (London, 1770), vol. 4, Letter 37.Google Scholar

35 Gilboy, E. W., Wages in Eighteenth Century England, (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), p. 219.Google Scholar

36 Young, in Gilboy, Wages in Eighteenth Century England, p. 40.Google Scholar

37 Gilboy, Wages, p. 70.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 224.

39 Lindert, Peter H. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “English Workers' Living Standards During the Industrial Revolution: A New Look,” Economic History Review, 36 (02 1983), p. 19.Google Scholar

40 Richardson, T. L., “The Standard of Living Controversy, 1790–1840,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Hull, 1977), pp. 445–50.Google Scholar

41 Crafts, N. F. R., “Regional Price Variations in England in 1843: An Aspect of the Standard of Living Debate,” Explorations in Economic History, 19 (01 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, chap. 2. For comparison with the markedly different situation in the United States,Google Scholar see Coelho, P. R. P. and Shepherd, J. F., “Regional Differences in Real Wages: The United States, 1851–1980,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (04 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, pp. 68, 102–3. Rent for two rooms was estimated at 2s. in Exeter and 4s.9d. in London (Hackney).Google Scholar

44 Ibid. pp. 39–40, 248.

45 Ibid. pp. 38, 121, 210–12.

46 See Saito, O., “Labour Supply Behaviour of the Poor in the English Industrial Revolution,” Journal of European Economic History, 10 (Winter 1981).Google Scholar

47 Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, chap. 3, “Family Earnings.”Google Scholar

48 Gilboy, Wages pp. 196–8, 209, 223; Levitt and Smout, State of the Scottish Working Class, pp. 79, 107; Morgan, “Agricultural Wage Rates,” pp. 193, 195–96.Google Scholar

50 Hunt, Regional Wage Variations, pp. 117–18; Levitt and Smout, State of the Scottish Working Class, pp. 79, 106.Google Scholar