The Birth of Industrial Britain

1750-1850

Kenneth Morgan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138835184
• eBook ISBN: 9781317862093
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

The Industrial Revolution had a profound and lasting effect on socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Britain.

The Birth of Industrial Britain examines the impact of early industrialisation on British society in the century before 1850, coinciding with Britains transition from a late pre-industrial economy to one based on industrialisation and urbanisation.

This fully revised and updated second edition provides a comprehensive range of pedagogical material to support the text, including a Glossary of terms, people and parliamentary acts, new primary source documents and a brand new Chronology and Whos Who section. The Birth of Industrial Britain provides an essential up-to-date synthesis of the impact of the Industrial Revolution on British society for students at all levels.

Part 1
Introduction

1
The Birth of Industrial Britain

This book serves as a companion to The Birth of Industrial Britain: Economic Change 1750–1850 (1999). In that volume the main contours of Britain’s economic development were charted during the century that witnessed the most significant structural economic changes in modern times. After c. 1760 Britain gradually achieved rates of economic and industrial growth that reached a 2–3 per cent annual increase by the early nineteenth century. These growth rates point to a slower transition to a capitalist industrial economy than the metaphor of a ‘take-off’ into self-sustained growth once implied, yet they were still sufficient, according to economists’ criteria, for an industrial revolution to be under way. During the century after 1750 the nation was also transformed from a country where most people lived in rural areas and worked on the land to one where increased work in towns and cities became the norm. High wages in England and abundant supplies of capital and cheap energy stimulated the demand for new technology. A wave of macro-inventions – notably the steam engine, cotton spinning machinery, and iron smelting by coke – resulted from this mix of factors. Britain’s success in global trade in the early modern period directly affected the wage and price structure in the English economy, and this created the demand for new technology (Allen, 2009). Though British industrialisation was incomplete by 1850, the main sectors of the economy had experienced significant structural growth and change since the mid-eighteenth century.

The Birth of Industrial Britain: Economic Change 1750–1850 analysed changes in population growth, agriculture, industry, finance and capital, foreign trade and internal transport. It concluded that the dynamics of change in the economy outweighed evidence of continuity. There was still much traditional rural labour and domestic industry in the mid-Victorian era, and margins of the nation where time had stood still. There were areas of deindustrialisation, labour immobility and poverty. Representative political participation lagged behind economic improvements and social change. Yet by 1850, compared with the situation a century before, important changes in the economy outstripped signs of stasis: Britain had several large industrial cities with flourishing hinterlands, a vastly improved internal communications network, more efficiently organised agriculture, more sophisticated business techniques in overseas trade, developing financial institutions, continuing evidence of inventiveness and technological ingenuity, more intensive economic development in regions with good fuel resources and raw materials, and a reputation for producing quality manufactured goods at prices cheaper than most of its competitors. Small wonder that Britain was hailed as ‘the workshop of the world’ at the Great Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, in 1851: economic improvements had led to important changes in the social fabric of the nation.

The current book looks at the social consequences of these economic changes. Though it discusses areas of continuity, it is particularly concerned with the impact of social change on the mass of the population affected by rising industrial and economic growth. A fair amount of attention is given to the role of Parliament and the middle classes in promoting legislation concerning changes in social policy. The ideas of major reformers who had a significant impact on social change are examined. The institutional contexts of British society are dovetailed into the analysis. But the main focus is on the mass of working-class people who experienced changes in agricultural and industrial work, alterations in patterns of leisure, shifts in living and health standards, improvements in educational provision, wider choice in religious worship, amendments in poor law policy, and changes in crime and the law. That these changes in British society were accompanied by discontent in some regional areas and opposition among certain occupational groups is traced through patterns of popular protest. Some themes that would form an essential part of a general account of British history in the Georgian and Victorian periods are omitted because they throw little light on the experiences of the working population. Thus the book has virtually nothing to say on the growth of Tractarianism or nineteenth-century public schools, on genteel leisure pursuits and aristocratic lifestyles. Consideration is given, however, to themes where the behaviour, ideas and power of the middle and upper classes did impinge on workers’ lives.

Our study begins with a consideration of the variety of working practices in early industrial Britain, focusing on changes in agricultural and industrial work, notably in relation to the rise of factories and trends in female and juvenile labour. These themes take up the first half of Chapter 2. The remainder of that chapter charts the time and space constraints on working-class recreational pursuits during the century after 1750. Chapter 3 examines different ways of gauging changes in working-class living and health standards, concentrating on problems associated with evidence on housing and environmental conditions, wages and prices, family incomes, and height and nutrition. Chapter 4 underscores the importance of Christianity to people’s lives in the period of early industrialisation, examining the position of the Anglican church and the growth of Protestant nonconformity. Evangelical religion is accorded its place in the spectrum of religious change that occurred in Britain in the century after 1750. Chapter 5 traces the slow growth of popular education for the masses, showing the spread of monitorial education and explaining the cautious entry of the state into educational provision for working-class people. Chapter 6 discusses the provision of poor relief and shows that a moral and economic critique of the Old Poor Law led to the implementation of a harsher New Poor Law in the 1830s. Chapter 7 shifts the focus of the study towards patterns of popular protest. It documents the range of demonstrations that broke out in Georgian and early Victorian Britain and assesses the causation and consequences of breaches to the peace. Chapter 8 concludes the book with an account of changing patterns of crime and the main changes in justice and punishment in early industrial Britain.

Part 2
Analysis

2
Work and Leisure

Changing patterns of work are an essential component of social change in early industrial Britain because agricultural, industrial and economic growth rates were sustained through labour productivity during the transition to industrialisation. For the mass of the population – men, women and children aged over six – long hours of work were common on six days of the week: only the Sabbath was sacrosanct and free from toil. Most work consisted of manual labour in which stamina and dexterity were necessary: small wonder that the early industrial workforce provided an ‘industrious revolution’ (De Vries, 1994). Over time, work practices were subject to increased specialisation, regularity, time discipline and wage labour, all characteristics of a burgeoning capitalist society. Family cooperation and family earnings were necessary for ordinary folk to live at anything better than a relatively poor subsistence level. Yet there were opportunities, with the diversification of industrial and urban work, for manual workers to acquire skills that led to better wages, a higher artisanal status, and possibly social and geographical mobility. Leisure time was at a premium for most people in early industrial Britain, more so as the factory system spread and regular working hours increased. Recreational activities altered as much from the control exercised by the middle and upper classes as from the initiatives of workers. By 1850 work and leisure had changed significantly from the patterns characteristic of a century earlier. The main features of that transformation are outlined below.

Until c. 1820 most work in Britain was undertaken in the agricultural sector, on farms growing cereals or tending livestock, in market gardens, and in seasonal fruit and hop picking. But since Britain had a relatively large industrial sector before it underwent the structural transformation to an industrialised economy, dual occupations in industrial and agricultural work commonly existed on a seasonal basis. No national breakdown of the proportion of people engaged in particular occupations is possible for the eighteenth century. Data become available with the arrival of national censuses from 1801 onwards. According to the 1811 census, 33 per cent of full-time employees in Britain were engaged in agriculture, forestry and fishing; 30 per cent in manufacturing and mining; almost 12 per cent in trade and transport; a further 12 per cent in domestic and personal employment; and 13 per cent in public, professional and other jobs. Over the next 40 years this distribution altered: the manufacturing and mining sector became more prominent, agricultural work declined, and public and professional workers also experienced relative decline. The 1851 census showed that manufacturing and mining was the largest employment category, accounting for 43 per cent of the fulltime workforce, followed by agriculture, forestry and fishing with 22 per cent, trade and transport with 16 per cent, domestic and personal employment with 13 per cent, and public, professional and other jobs with 6 per cent.

Agriculture

There was little long-term change in absolute employment in English and Welsh agriculture in the period of early industrialisation: the total size of the agricultural labour force comprised c. 1,553,000 workers in 1700, 1,405,000 in 1800 and 1,524,000 in 1851. Yet this decline over time in agricultural work was relative to a rising national population. Agriculture remained an important sector of the economy in Georgian and early Victorian Britain, though it declined in relative terms vis-à-vis industry and as a proportion of total employment. There was also a clear shift in the composition of the rural labour force. Between 1700 and 1850 the share of adult males increased from 38 per cent to 64 per cent; the proportion of adult male labourers employed continuously over the year declined; and, correspondingly, the number of day labourers in agriculture increased significantly. Thus agricultural work during early industrialisation became more geared to adult male labour but also became more precarious as a source of regular income.

Agricultural work varied by region and function but many common tasks were found on farms. Arable land needed to be ploughed, harrowed and planted. Weeds and stones had to be dug up. Manure was spread to improve soil fertility. Reaping, mowing, threshing and gleaning were part of the annual cycle in cereal agriculture. Draught animals had to be tended. Dairying required the production of milk, butter and cheese and the marketing of those goods. And there were more specialised aspects of agricultural work such as hedging and ditching, market gardening and fruit picking. These tasks had been carried out for centuries, of course, but in early industrial Britain many of them experienced significant modifications. The nature of agricultural work changed even though labour on the land by 1850 was still largely carried out by muscle and draught animal power, simple hand tools and limited use of technology.

Already in the eighteenth century England had achieved a considerable comparative advantage in agricultural labour productivity. This is best illustrated by comparison with France. By 1750 England had experienced a 20 per cent gain in agricultural labour activity compared with the level for 1700, whereas France had only a 3 per cent increase in the same half-century. This trend continued. In 1800 England’s gain in labour agricultural productivity was 26 per cent above the 1750 figure; in France the rise was only 4 per cent. By 1850, as noted above, agriculture provided just over one-fifth of England’s labour force whereas one-half of labourers in France and over a half in Germany and the USA still worked on the land. The release of agriculture to industry and the towns was therefore an important feature of the working patterns experienced by labouring people in early industrial Britain. After the mid-nineteenth century, further contraction of the agricultural sector of the British economy was counterpoised by the growth of workers in the service or tertiary sector.

The shedding of agricultural workers in early industrial Britain led to changes in the range and organisation of agricultural work. Farm servants and labourers comprised between 15 and 38 per cent of rural labourers in different parts of the country in the 1831 census, but their absolute numbers were declining as a result of greater specialisation in grain growing, the rising costs of feeding ‘living in’ servants and, in some areas, a cutback in poor relief for mobile workers without a parish settlement. The increased use of the scythe rather than the sickle at harvest time, the growth of enclosure and the presence of many draught animals aided the shedding of agricultural labour. The scythe speeded up the harvesting of grain, enabling fewer labourers to be employed than previously; it also contributed to a gender division in the allocation of work, as discussed below. The acceleration of parliamentary enclosure in George III’s reign provided more short-term employment for hedging and ditching the fields but contributed to the attrition of agricultural labour in the long term. The exceptionally large number of animals of burden, especially horses, when compared with most European countries, harnessed draught power as an energy input for ploughing and harrowing, increased the supply of manure to improve the soil, and released labour into industry and services. The consolidation of estates and creation of large tenanted farms, coupled with labour productivity, also helped to shed rural labour. These developments led to the creation of a large, landless rural proletariat, often working at very low wage levels. Most farm workers, once they received regular work, were reluctant to move to new forms of employment because this would mean losing their low-rent ‘tied’ cottages. Many agricultural labourers tolerated low earnings for this reason; but this meant that, as a group, they were less mobile than the landless rural proletariat that sought work in industry in towns and factories.

Domestic Industry and the Factory

Industrial work in the century after 1750 continued the rhythms and practices of domestic industry found in the pre-industrial economy, but also incorporated the new discipline of the factory. It is incorrect to see textile mills supplanting cottage industry before the middle of the nineteenth century. Both cottage industry and the factory coexisted in early industrial Britain; they complemented rather than competed with each other. Thus until the 1820s it was common for cotton spinning to occur in mills while weaving of fabrics still continued in cottages on an outwork basis. By 1850 factory work was prominent in Lancashire, Cheshire, parts of the West Midlands, parts of central and lowland Scotland, and the West Riding of Yorkshire. But in many other industrial districts, notably Birmingham and the Black Country, domestic industrial practices still prevailed and small workshops and outwork were common. A similar situation obtained among the cutlery trades in Sheffield.

Industrial work patterns outside the factory had certain common characteristics. Most domestic industrial work arose from seasonal underemployment in the British economy up to c.1830. Labouring people in rural areas and small towns had enough agricultural work to fill up only part of the working year, notably in sowing crops and harvesting. At other times, particularly during winter months, agricultural work was difficult to find on a permanent basis, a problem that intensified with the growth of parliamentary enclosure and the shedding of labour. To compensate for underemployment, workers acquired skills in domestic industry to enable them to meet year-round subsistence requirements. This was the most common form of employment for able-bodied people wishing to avoid claiming poor relief. In the textile industries, spinning and weaving served families as a prime source of domestic employment. This combination of agricultural and domestic industrial work was only partly based on wages: sometimes farm labour was rewarded by payment in kind, such as lodging or gifts of food and clothing, rather than by daily or weekly wages. And the work was usually carried out in family groups: mothers, fathers and children worked cooperatively to support family needs.

The pace of domestic industrial work was flexible, since people were usually working in their own cottages. The task orientation of work enabled workers to set their own pace to a large extent. Nevertheless, when production schedules had to be met, the work speeded up and fathers, as heads of families, could demand extra sweat and longer hours to ensure that tasks were completed on time. Although a time dimension operated in domestic industry, it was much more flexible than the tick of the clock in factories. Usually the pressure and intensity of domestic industrial work increased during the week for a deadline on Friday and then several days of leisure followed. In accordance with these rhythms of work, Monday was ‘sanctified’ as Saint Monday – an additional day for leisure before serious work began again on Tuesday morning. Domestic industrial workers used simple machinery and hand tools, sometimes supplied by employers and their agents: most work was done by hand and there was no need for elaborate machinery. The work was carried out in order to meet market demands from outside the home, as in the classic example of the putting-out system in the West Riding woollen industry. Whether labourers in domestic industry only did sufficient work to cover immediate needs or worked harder to acquire additional income and savings is still debated by historians, but the consensus is that cottage industry was mainly a non-acquisitive form of work.

Factory work had many features that differed from domestic industrial labour in the textile industries. Instead of working at times of slack agricultural employment, factory-based labour meant regular employment throughout the working year. It was of course entirely wage labour: workers toiled for their weekly wage packet, paid in coins or by truck methods. The family nature of do...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction to the Series
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Part One Introduction
• Part Two Analysis
• Part Three Assessment
• Part Four Documents
• Further Reading
• References
• Index