English Workers' Real Wages During the Industrial Revolution: Some Remaining Problems

The Journal of Economic History

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 1985, Pages 139-144

  Crafts, N F R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84974269812     PISSN: 00220507     EISSN: 14716372     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022050700033647     Document Type: Note

References (26)

1. See, for example, M. W. Flinn, “Trends in Real Wages, 1750–1850,” Economic History Review, 27 (Aug. 1974), pp. 395–413;
2. P. H. Lindert and J. G. Williamson, “English Workers' Living Standards during the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review, 36 (Feb. 1983), pp. 1–25
3. G. N. von Tunzelmann, “Trends in Real Wages, 1750–1850, Revisited,” Economic History Review, 32 (Feb. 1979), pp. 33–49
4. N. F. R. Crafts “Regional Price Variations in England in 1843: An Aspect of the Standard of Living Debate,” Explorations in Economic History, 19 (Jan. 1982), pp. 51–70.
5. Lindert and Williamson, “Living Standards,” pp. 11–12.
6. For unskilled workers the Lindert and Williamson money wage indices are very similar indeed to those in A. L. Bowley, Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1900)
7. E. H. Phelps Brown and S. V. Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of Building Wages,” Economica, 22 (Aug. 1955), pp. 195–206.
8. Flinn, “Real Wages,” pp. 397–402.
9. A comparison of columns (1) and (2) of Table 3 below shows that using the prices paid by institutions like Greenwich Hospital instead of the wholesale prices collected by Lindert and Williamson makes little difference. Also an examination of Poor Law evidence for 1843 suggests that the cost of provisions in that year varied by only about 10 percent from the most expensive to the cheapest region, a pattern which had probably existed for some time. This conclusion would not apply to rents, however; see Crafts, “Regional Variations,” pp. 56–60.
10. Lindert and Williamson, “Living Standards,” p. 9.
11. P. Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth, 1688–1959 (Cambridge, 1962), p. 166
12. C. H. Feinstein, “Capital Formation in Great Britain,” in P. Mathias and M. M. Postan, eds., Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 7, part 1 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 42.
13. W. A. MacKenzie, “Changes in the Standard of Living in the United Kingdom, 1860–1914,” Economica, 1 (Oct. 1921), p. 227.
14. P. H. Lindert and J. G. Williamson, “English Workers' Living Standards during the Industrial Revolution: A New Look” (Discussion Paper, University of Wisconsin, 1980), p. B-5.
15. D. Davies, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry (Bath, 1795), p. 15.
16. Calculated from Deane and Cole, British Economic Growth, pp. 187, 196, 204, and in the case of linens adjusting for exports using R. Davis, The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade (Leicester, 1979), pp. 99, 101.
17. Sandberg, “Cotton Textile Exports,” this journal, 28 (March 1968), p. 20
18. comments that this is the “only one continuous and authoritative series for a closely specified type of cloth.”
19. Phelps Brown and Hopkins, Perspective, p. 39.
20. Lindert and Williamson, “English Workers',” pp. B3-5.
21. Calculated from the evidence collected by Dr. E. Smith and contained in the Appendix of the Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, British Parliamentary Papers (1864), vol. 28.
22. Wages and salaries were 45.6 percent of national income in 1821 and 44.9 percent in 1801, based on Deane and Cole, British Economic Growth, pp. 152, 166; and the investment figures come from Crafts, “British Economic Growth,” p. 195.
23. G. N. von Tunzelmann, “The Standard of Living, Investment and Economic Growth in England and Wales, 1760–1850” (paper presented to the Eighth International Congress of Economic History, Budapest, 1982), p. 5.
24. Lindert and Williamson, “Living Standards,” pp. 15–16 for 1780
25. T. S. Ashton, Economic Fluctuations in England, 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1959).
26. In particular, H. Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society (London, 1969), p. 138.