Historical Interpretation of Economic-Social Change

KAREN BROADBENT 10/05/2007

ASSIGNMENT 3

Historical Interpretation of Economic-Social Change

The problem when looking at historical interpretations of economic-social change is that it is very difficult for the historian to comment without any of his or her personal political bias, it is for this reason that both sides of the standard of living debate must be looked at side by side. Historians commenting on the standard of living debate can be classified into two categories, the ‘pessimists’ who believe that the conditions for the working classes deteriorated, and the ‘optimists’ who hold the view that conditions improved with industrialisation. Historians when writing about the standard of living debate, attempt to explain the winners and losers of industrialisation by their own interpretation of evidence, as the study of the English working class has always been a politically biased subject.

A pessimistic observer of Industrial Manchester was Friedrich Engels who wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. This primary source is valuable, as Engels’ father owned the factory in Manchester, which Engels had been sent to manage. Engels therefore had real experience of life in the city and his father’s factory, and wrote with a social conscience. In describing Manchester following industrialisation Engels comments on the segregation in housing of the working class and middle class and identifies the distinct areas. The south bank of the Irk housing working class families “contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I have yet beheld…..there stands ,a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement.” (F.Engels (1844) The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844) Engels also notes “the Workhouse, looks threateningly down from behind its high walls and parapets on the hilltop, upon the working people’s quarter below”. Engels’ writing is a very descriptive account of Industrial Manchester and does not compare the housing of the working classes with housing of pre-industrialisation but it describes the horror he felt when seeing the conditions of the people. The description of the workhouse poignantly emphasises the hopelessness of the working classes and the only alternative open to them.

Friedrich Engels directed Karl Marx’s attention to the working class, and together they produced one of the most well known primary sources we can look at commenting on capitalism and industrialisation. The Communist Manifesto first published on 21st February 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was written from a pessimistic viewpoint. The work was commissioned by the Communist League and laid out the purposes of the League and also suggested a course of action to overthrow capitalism and bring about a classless society. The policies of the Communists at the time included the abolition of land ownership and the nationalisation of the means of production. The Manifesto was addressed to the common workers and it gives an understanding of the motives and policies of the Communists at the beginning of their movement, but is therefore politically biased. Marx and Engels see the changes in society during the industrial revolution as creating the huge class divide. “Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possess however, one distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” (F. Engels and K. Marx (1848) Manifesto of the Communist Party). They also comment on the effect of industrialisation on the family, “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.” They see that the new society has taken away the emotional comfort a family brought to its members, as now each member has a monetary value, which has to be used in order to survive. As the Manifesto was commissioned by a political league its political bias must be taken into account but it also comments on the changes in the family structure due to industrialisation.

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Another example of a historian from the pessimist camp is Arnold Toynbee 1852 – 1918. Toynbee was interested in social reform and was one of the first to use the term Industrial Revolution. He was not a member of any political party and stressed the importance of the Industrial Revolution as a break with the past. Toynbee commented on the misery of the working people in the factories and the disappearance of the relationship between masters and men in the old paternalistic system and the emergence of a “cash-nexus”. The factory owners no longer knew or cared for their workers and notes Toynbee “The effects of the Industrial Revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth with well-being. We all know the horrors that ensued in England before it was restrained by legislation and combination.” (A. Toynbee (1884) Lectures of the Industrial Revolution) Toynbee is writing later than Engels and takes into account the benefits from the reforms in the middle of the nineteenth century. Toynbee although also writing from the pessimist camp, objected to Marxism. He was interested in applying historical method to the study of economics and wanted to develop a system that would improve the condition of the working classes. He therefore differed from Marx, as Toynbee believed that the best interests of labour and capital lay in cooperation.

Challenging the pessimists is J.H.Clapham 1873-1946. In his book, An Economic History of Modern Britain, published between 1926 and 1938 Clapham disputes the idea that during the industrial revolution everything was getting worse for the working classes, and that the statistical information used in the standard of living debate was inadequate. Clapham argues that welfare estimates are based on the earning of the principal breadwinner and that the Industrial revolution “provided opportunities for relatively considerable family earnings” (J.H. Clapham (1938) An Economic History of Britain). There is little reliable data that can be used to in evidence in the standard of living debate; birth and death rates are inaccurate as not all were registered. When using food consumption and diet statistics to debate the standard of living, R.M.Hartwell another optimistic historian uses wheat and bread prices as an argument for optimism as the prices fell after 1815 and were then relatively stable, he says that this suggests no long term shortage of wheat and flour. On the other hand though E.J.Hobsbawn a pessimist believes that wheat production and imports did not keep pace with population growth, illustrating the lack of firm evidence when debating the standard of living. Hartwell states that the wealth and opportunities created by industrialisation should not be ignored, and that there are misconceptions about agricultural life before the industrial revolution. He also notes that child labour was not a new concept and warns about “the myth of the golden age”, when looking at the standard of living debate. Hartwell and Clapham, both optimists recognises that there is little reliable statistical evidence to support the pessimistic viewpoint. T.S.Ashton by the late 1940’s used additional evidence on population, import and export prices, housing and diets to support the optimistic view that welfare of the working class had improved. He felt that any deterioration in conditions was far outweighed by the benefits of industrialisation. A liberalist economist F.A.Hayek argued that whilst there is evidence that there was great misery there is no evidence to show that the misery was greater than before industrialisation. The problem with looking at the debate from the statistics of population and prices is that this shows only part of the picture. Loss of working class culture and custom cannot be evidenced by statistics.

Another interpretation of the social change is from a feminist viewpoint. The role of working class women changed during the industrial age from working in the home in the cottage industry, to being expected to go out to work to support the family in the new factories and mines. The changing role of women was in part was fuelled by the economic need of many women, single and married, to find waged work outside their home. Women were mostly employed in domestic service, textile factories, and coalmines. For some women the Industrial Revolution provided independent wages and a better standard of living, but for the majority factory work resulted in a life of hardship. On returning home from the factories women had then to attend to the household’s domestic needs. When textile work moved into the factories, the factory owner employed whole families and the money earned by the family, called the ‘family wage’ was paid to the father. The father therefore was the one who controlled the finances of the family and ‘owned the labour of his wife and children. Women’s rights were generally overlooked at the time of the Industrial Revolution but were pioneered by Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 – 1797 one of the founding women of the British feminist movement. Included in Mary Wollstonecraft’s demands were the right of women to universal co-education and the right to work in trades and professions and political representation. The new middle classes had created the notion of the male breadwinner out at work and the woman’s position in the home, although working class women were increasingly found in industrial labour on poverty wages. In 1792 Mary published ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’, which has become the foundation stone for modern day feminism. In this book she shows that women have been left powerless to fight for equal rights due to ‘domestic tyranny’, which meant that they were uneducated, had no political rights and were dependent on men. Mary described marriage as “legal prostitution” and that women were “convenient slaves”. Three years earlier she had commented on other wrongs in society in a pamphlet entitled ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’ in which she condemned the slave trade, game laws and the way the poor were treated. I think Mary Wollstonecraft felt that women were treated as slaves. Their role had changed with industrialisation but as workingwomen’s wages were paid to their husbands they had gained no independence.

Literature can be used as a secondary source of evidence in the interpretation of economic social change and gives the authors view on industrialisation. George Elliot wrote Silas Marner in 1861 after many of the changes brought about by industrialisation had occurred, but was set in the period 1790 – 1820. In this novel Elliot contrasts the village of Raveloe before the Industrial Revolution with the changes in a town thirty years later when “the old place is all swep’ away” (P215). The “great manufacturing town” (P213) is described as “a dark ugly place”(P213), and a villager can hardly believe “any folks lived i’ this way, so close together” (P214). Elliot contrasts attitudes of the paternal village system with the industrialised town where no one has heard of the people who lived there before the factory arrived. She paints a picture of idyllic village life before the Industrial Revolution, the Golden Age. Charles Dickens however, focuses attention on the plight of the poor and attempts to awaken the conscience of the reader. He published Hard Times in 1854 and in this novel, comments on the conditions of the working class in an industrialised town. He illustrates the unfairness of the factory system, the hard working labourers who are little rewarded for their efforts whilst the factory manager lives in the lap of luxury. Whilst Elliot looks back at an earlier time of close knit village life contrasted with the new industrial town, Dickens uses his writing for a moral and social purpose. Elizabeth Gaskell published North and South, which is set in Industrial Manchester shortly after the publication of Hard Times. Unlike Elliot Gaskell recognises the ugliness of industrialisation but also recognises that in the agricultural village of Helstone, the inevitable changes that time has brought to the village force the reader to recognise that the unchanging idyllic memory of the village is reminiscence and not a reality in which people live.

As with the novels written around the time of the Industrial Revolution, historical interpretations cannot be separated from the political viewpoint of the writer. Both sides of the debate, for their own cause, can interpret statistics used as evidence with a different approach. It is impossible for a writer to comment without his or her personal bias, experience or social background influencing their work.