31. On the Whig coalition, see D. Stasavage, 2003, Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain 1688–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
32. Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, 243.
33. On diversified wealth, see D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson, 2006, “Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective,” American Political Science Review 100 (1): 115–31.
34. For a detailed account of how political elites might block technological progress out of fear of political replacement, see ibid.
35. Quoted in Mokyr, 2011, The Enlightened Economy, chap. 3.
36. Quoted in ibid.
37. Quoted in P. Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England, trans. M. Vernon (London: Routledge), 135.
38. Quoted in ibid., 134.
39. Ibid., 30–31.
40. Quoted in D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson, 2012, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (New York: Crown Business), 219.
41. Ibid., 221.
42. “Machinery Causes a Riot,” 1895, New York Times, November 25.
43. Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 197.
44. A. Randall, 1991, Before the Luddites: Custom, Community and Machinery in the English Woollen Industry, 1776–1809 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
45. According to Francis Aiden Hibbert, new industries did not fall under the Apprenticeship Act of the Statute of Artificers, meaning that their existence weakened the guilds (1891, The Influence and Development of English Guilds [New York: Sentry], 129).
46. K. Desmet, A. Greif, and S. Parente, 2018, “Spatial Competition, Innovation and Institutions: The Industrial Revolution and the Great Divergence” (Working Paper 24727, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
47. C. MacLeod, 1998. Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System, 1660–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 160.
48. H. B. Morse, 1909, The Guilds of China (London: Longmans, Green and Co.), 1.
49. Quoted in Desmet, Greif, and Parente, “Spatial Competition, Innovation and Institutions,” 37–38.
50. Quoted in ibid., 38.
51. Ibid., 39.
52. Mokyr, 1992a, The Lever of Riches, 257.
53. Quoted in Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 403.
54. J. Horn, 2008, The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750–1839 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) chapter 4, Kindle.
55. See E. P. Thompson, 1963, The Making Of The English Working Class (London: Gollancz, Vintage Books).
56. On the French machinery riots, see J. Horn, 2008, The Path Not Taken, chap. 4.
57. Ibid., 8.
58. F. Machlup, 1962, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 166.
59. Desmet, Greif, and Parente, 2018, “Spatial Competition, Innovation and Institutions,” 15–16.
Part 2
1. Marx’s chapter “The Division of Labour and Manufacture” in Das Kapital well captures the extreme divisions of labor that existed, and it is followed by a chapter titled “Machinery and the Factory System” ([1867] 1999, Das Kapital, trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling [New York: Gateway], chapter 15, Kindle).
2. W. W. Rostow, 1960, The Stages of Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
3. D. Phyllis and W. A. Cole, 1962, British Economic Growth, 1688–1959: Trends and Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); N. F. Crafts, 1985, British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press); N. F. Crafts and C. K. Harley, 1992, “Output Growth and the British Industrial Revolution: A Restatement of the Crafts-Harley View,” Economic History Review 45 (4): 703–30.
4. B. Mitchell, 1975, European Historical Statistics, 1750–1970 (London: Macmillan), 438.
5. T. S. Ashton, 1948, An Economic History of England: The Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge), 58.
6. M. W. Flinn, 1966, The Origins of the Industrial Revolution (London: Longmans), 15.
Chapter 4
1. D. Cardwell, 1972, Turning Points in Western Technology: A Study of Technology, Science and History (New York: Science History Publications).
2. A. Ure, 1835, The Philosophy of Manufactures (London: Charles Knight), 14.
3. Quoted in P. Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England, trans. M. Vernon (London: Routledge [first published in 1928]), 39.
4. On the domestic system, see ibid., 54–61.
5. For a detailed account suggesting that the rise of the factory was a technological event, see J. Mokyr, 2001, “The Rise and Fall of the Factory System: Technology, Firms, and Households since the Industrial Revolution,” Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, 55(1): 1–45.
6. M. W. Flinn, 1962, Men of Iron: The Crowleys in the Early Iron Industry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 252.
7. On cotton yarn manufacturing, see R. C. Allen, 2009a, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), chapter 8, Kindle.
8. Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 234.
9. It was in the same year that Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations that the industrial undertakings that would eventually make Britain a truly wealthy nation took off.
10. Quoted in Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 213.
11. Ibid., 14.
12. On the labor savings of Arkwright’s inventions, see Allen, 2009a, The British Industrial Revolution, chapter 8.
13. R. C. Allen, 2009d, “The Industrial Revolution in Miniature: The Spinning Jenny in Britain, France, and India,” Journal of Economic History 69 (4): 901–27.
14. J. Humphries, 2013, “The Lure of Aggregates and the Pitfalls of the Patriarchal Perspective: A Critique of the High Wage Economy Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review 66 (3): 709.
15. Ure, 1835, The Philosophy of Manufactures, 23.
16. On pauper apprentices, see J. Humphries, 2010, Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 246.
17. Humphries, 2013, “The Lure of Aggregates and the Pitfalls of the Patriarchal Perspective,” 710.
18. Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 241–44.
19. J. Bessen, 2015, Learning by Doing: The Real Connection between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 75. Though Bessen’s calculations are for American factories, the power loom likely had similar labor-saving effects in Britain.
20. K. Marx, [1867] 1999, Das Kapital, trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling (New York: Gateway), chapter 15, section 1, Kindle.
21. Like Savery, Watt conceived of numerous applications for his engine. The patent that he took out in 1784 makes clear that it was not an invention intended for a specific purpose. In the words of Marx, he thought of it as “an agent universally applicable in mechanical industry” (ibid). Some of the many applications he listed in his patent filing would have to wait, but eventually they were realized in practice. The steam hammer, for example, was introduced about half a century later. And other later applications even went beyond his envisioned uses. While in doubt about the use of steam in shipping, the Boulton & Watt company later displayed steam engines for ocean steamers at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, some three decades after Watt’s death.
22. G. N. Von Tunzelmann, 1978, Steam Power and British Industrialization to 1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
23. J. Kanefsky and J. Robey, 1980, “Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A Quantitative Assessment,” Technology and Culture 21 (2): 161–86.
24. N. F. Crafts, 2004
, “Steam as a General Purpose Technology: A Growth Accounting Perspective,” Economic Journal 114 (495): 338–51.
25. J. Hoppit, 2008, “Political Power and British Economic Life, 1650–1870,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, vol. 1, Industrialisation, 1700–1870, ed. R. Floud, J. Humphries, and P. Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 370–71.
26. J. Mokyr, 2011, The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1850 (London: Penguin), chapter 10, Kindle.
27. T. Leunig, 2006, “Time Is Money: A Re-Assessment of the Passenger Social Savings from Victorian British Railways,” Journal of Economic History 66 (3): 635–73.
28. For a history of the Darby family and the Coalbrookdale Iron Company, see Allen, 2009a, The British Industrial Revolution, chapter 9.
29. Ibid.
30. Quoted in J. Langton and R. J. Morris, 2002, Atlas of Industrializing Britain, 1780–1914 (London: Routledge), 88.
31. G. R. Hawke, 1970, Railways and Economic Growth in England and Wales, 1840–1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press).
32. Leunig, 2006, “Time Is Money.”
33. On the social savings of the turnpikes, see C. Bogart, 2005, “Turnpike Trusts and the Transportation Revolution in 18th Century England,” Explorations in Economic History 42 (4): 479–508.
34. Of course, none of these estimates capture the benefits of steam-powered transportation in full, as steam also transformed water travel. Even as early as 1821, there were 188 steamers operating in Britain. In their absence, goods would have had to have been hauled around, although for shorter routes canals were often more suitable than coasters. In addition, not long after the first railroad began operation, steam began to revolutionize ocean travel. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western—which in 1838 became the first ocean steamship to cross the Atlantic—was a landmark achievement on a par with the Rocket. Yet because longer journeys required ships to carry vast amounts of coal as cargo, it took almost half a century for steam to displace sail. It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that the coal requirements of steam engines had fallen enough for steamships to cover the distance between China and Britain.
35. E. Baines, 1835, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London: H. Fisher, R. Fisher, and P. Jackson), 5.
Chapter 5
1. B. Disraeli, 1844, Coningsby (a Public Domain Book), 187, Kindle.
2. F. Engels, [1844] 1943, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844. Reprint, London: Allen & Unwin, 100; 25–26.
3. See D. Defoe, [1724] 1971, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (London: Penguin), 432.
4. D. S. Landes, 1969, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 128.
5. “The Present Condition of British Workmen,” 1834, accessed December 15, 2018, https://deriv.nls.uk/dcn9/7489/74895330.9.htm.
6. On the urban wage premium, see J. G. Williamson, 1987, “Did English Factor Markets Fail during the Industrial Revolution?,” Oxford Economic Papers 39 (4): 641–78.
7. On the trends in output, see N. F. Crafts and C. K. Harley, 1992, “Output Growth and the British Industrial Revolution: A Restatement of the Crafts-Harley View,” Economic History Review 45 (4): 703–30.
8. C. H. Feinstein, 1998, “Pessimism Perpetuated: Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Britain during and after the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 58 (3): 625–58; R. C. Allen, 2009b, “Engels’ Pause: Technical Change, Capital Accumulation, and Inequality in the British Industrial Revolution,” Explorations in Economic History 46 (4): 418–35. The real wage series of Gregory Clark suggests that it was not till the 1820s that real wages advanced beyond their level in the middle of the eighteenth century (2005, “The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1209–2004,” Journal of Political Economy, 113 [6] 1307–40). After 1820, according to Clark, they rose more rapidly than estimated by Allen or Feinstein. However, this is hard to square with what we know from data on consumption and heights, as well as contemporary accounts.
9. On working hours, see H. Voth, 2000, Time and Work in England 1750–1830 (Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press).
10. On the rate of profit, see Allen, 2009b, “Engels’ Pause.”
11. On the top 5 percent income share, see P. H. Lindert, 2000b, “When Did Inequality Rise in Britain and America?,” Journal of Income Distribution 9 (1): 11–25.
12. G. Clark, M. Huberman, and P. H. Lindert, 1995, “A British Food Puzzle, 1770–1850,” Economic History Review 48 (2): 215–37. As noted, however, recent studies show that there is no puzzle, as real wages stagnated and fell among the lower ranks.
13. S. Horrell, 1996, “Home Demand and British Industrialisation,” Journal of Economic History 56 (September): 561–604.
14. R. H. Steckel, 2008, “Biological Measures of the Standard of Living,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 22 (1): 129–52. The idea that observed height data can be used to approximate the elusive standard of living was first proposed by Robert Fogel (1983, “Scientific History and Traditional History,” in Which Road to the Past?, ed. R. W. Fogel and G. R. Elton (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 5–70.
15. R. C. Floud, K. Wachter, and A. Gregory, 1990, Height, Health, and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), chapter 4; J. Komlos, 1998, “Shrinking in a Growing Economy? The Mystery of Physical Stature during the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 58 (3): 779–802.
16. On the environmental versus the poverty view, see J. Mokyr, 2011, The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1850 (London: Penguin), chapter 10, Kindle.
17. See, for example, J. G. Williamson, 2002, Coping with City Growth during the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
18. S. Szreter and G. Mooney, 1998, “Urbanization, Mortality, and the Standard of Living Debate: New Estimates of the Expectation of Life at Birth in Nineteenth-Century British Cities,” Economic History Review 51 (1): 84–112.
19. J. Komlos and B. A’Hearn, 2017, “Hidden Negative Aspects of Industrialization at the Onset of Modern Economic Growth in the US,” Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 41 (June): 43.
20. F. M. Eden, 1797, The State of the Poor; or, An History of the Labouring Classes in England (London: B. and J. White), 3:848.
21. D. Ricardo, [1817] 1911, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Repr., London: Dent).
22. Jean-Baptiste Say, for example, argued that cost reductions caused by labor-saving technology would result in price reductions and thus growing demand, implying that it was only a matter of time until displaced workers were reemployed elsewhere. Although Ricardo later revisited his model, he still did not believe—along with Malthus and Marx—that industrialization could improve real wages over the long run.
23. E. C. Gaskell, 1884, Mary Barton (London: Chapman and Hall), 104.
24. See K. Marx, [1867] 1999, Das Kapital, trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling (New York: Gateway), chapter 15, section 4, Kindle; C. Dickens, [1854] 2017, Hard Times (Amazon Classics), chapter 5, Kindle.
25. As Kay-Shuttleworth noted, “While the engine works, the people must work. Men, women and children are thus yokefellows with iron and steam.… The persevering labour of the operative must rival the mathematical precision, the incessant motion, and the exhaustless power of the machine” (1832, The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester Manchester: Harrisons & Crosfield).
26. On the factory and its discontents, see P. Gaskell, 1833, The Manufacturing Population of England, Its Moral, Social, and Physical Conditions (London: Baldwin and Cradock), 16.
27. Landes, 1969, The Unbound Prometheus, 2.
28. P. Gaskell, 1833, The Manufacturing Population of England, 12 and 341.
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br /> 29. Marx, [1867] 1999, Das Kapital , chapter 15, section 5.
30. C. Babbage, 1832, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (London: Charles Knight), 266–67.
31. A. Ure, 1835, The Philosophy of Manufactures (London: Charles Knight), 220.
32. E. Baines, 1835, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London: H. Fisher, R. Fisher, and P. Jackson), 452.
33. Ibid., 460.
34. Ibid., 435.
35. J. Humphries and B. Schneider, forthcoming, “Spinning the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review.
36. J. Humphries, 2010, Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 342.
37. R. C. Allen, forthcoming, “The Hand-Loom Weaver and the Power Loom: A Schumpeterian Perspective,” European Review of Economic History.
38. Humphries, 2010, Childhood and Child Labour.
39. Allen, forthcoming, “The Hand-Loom Weaver and the Power Loom.”
40. D. Bythell, 1969, The Handloom Weavers: A Study in the English Cotton Industry during the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 139.
41. C. Nardinelli, 1986, “Technology and Unemployment: The Case of the Handloom Weavers,” Southern Economic Journal 53 (1): 87–94.
42. On technological versus cyclical unemployment, see ibid.
43. J. Fielden, 2013, Curse of the Factory System (London: Routledge).
44. On urban migration, see J. Humphries and T. Leunig, 2009, “Was Dick Whittington Taller Than Those He Left Behind? Anthropometric Measures, Migration and the Quality of Life in Early Nineteenth-Century London,” Explorations in Economic History 46 (1): 120–31; J. Long, 2005, “Rural-Urban Migration and Socioeconomic Mobility in Victorian Britain,” Journal of Economic History 65 (1): 1–35; M. Anderson, 1990, “The Social Implications of Demographic Change,” in The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950, vol. 2: People and Their Environment, ed. F.M.L. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–70; H. R. Southall, 1991, “The Tramping Artisan Revisits: Labour Mobility and Economic Distress in Early Victorian England,” Economic History Review 44 (2): 272–96. For an overview of urban migration during the Industrial Revolution, see P. Wallis, 2014, “Labour Markets and Training,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, vol. 1, Industrialisation, 1700–1870, ed. R. Floud, J. Humphries, and P. Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 178–210.
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