Critically assessing examples of some historians individual contributions to the standard of living debate.

As many historians would agree the Industrial Revolution was one of the most important historical events in the history of the world and some would argue it was the pivotal factor of how the world that we know has been shaped by the rapid transition into the modern age, but there are a series of aspects that historians of been debating over for the past 70 years in regards to how the Industrial Revolution affected the lives of the general population or more importantly the working classes. There are two camps that have an opinion on this and they are the 'pessimists' which believe that the standard of living for the ordinary or working class citizen fell and the 'optimists' which believed that the standard of living increased during the Industrial Revolution. The pessimists generally saw this period as a new age of slavery, which had hundreds of people crammed into work houses and smoke filled factories almost resembling a William Blake poem. The 'optimists' saw this time as a boom in consumerism as there were far more products available to buy due to the colossal increase in the volume and quality of the goods that were made by the workers with steady pay checks and thus the hum-drum existence of the over worked employee improved. Nevertheless, recent research into the field has shown that maybe both historians that this essay will be assessing were very narrow in their view; and to improve our understanding of this period of time with other quantitative data needs to be considered. Hobsbawm himself has indicated that the information that he use to write his paper using national income and consumption figures had its limitations; this is due to not knowing how wages and increasing consumption were distributed, so therefore there is no way he could possibly known how much went to the lower 50% of workers which his report focuses on. To fully grasp the conditions of the working class a more recent research data on real wages will be used and then it will be contrasted against newer quantitative evidence of peoples heights which has been shown to be far more effective at determining nutritional health. Adding to this there will also be a discussion on more recent infant mortality data which is interesting as it has pulled the debate into the centre as it shows that conditions remained static during the early 19th century, with a definite improvement only occurring after the mid 19th century. And lastly comparing data from a wider context, particularly data from the European continent which will show how other countries who at the time were experiencing very similar population growth, but not speedy industrialisation that will generally support the pessimistic historian conclusions. In short, the conclusion would be that an absolute improvement in the standard of living was never fully achieved until government acts were put into place to improve such things as overcrowding and sanitation. There was of a massive public investment during the 1800-1850 and thus further investment would without doubt improved the working conditions of the lower classes and at the same time would of increased economic action. The very well respected historian Dr Kenneth Morgan believed that historians have:"long been influenced by their political predilections" (Morgan,2004,p 21) and this case the left 1|Page

wing view historian Hobsbawn (1963) who believed that the findings or arguments that were maintained by the 'optimist' corner which believed that real wages were increasing was based on shallow data. And so through examining a few key points such as selective examples of consumption figures and the effects of unemployment clearly show that there was not a rise of real wages during the early part of the 19th century and therefore supporting contemporary qualitative evidence such as German academic Fredrich Engels, which he believed that the working class quality of life didn't improve until the late 1840s at the earliest. This type of view was rigorously debated by the right ring historian Hartwell (1963) who believed there was still enough evidence to support his theory of the rise of real wages during the 19th century therefore supporting the optimist point of view and thus should still stand. These two arguments are key in the understanding of proper government roles as Lindert points out:

" Support for central control and the welfare state still draws on the belief that workers are often impoverished if the government does not intervene. Support for privatisation and the market place rests on the opposite belief that the invisible hand...[raises] their absolute standards and perhaps even reducing inequality between rich and poor." (Lindert,1994,p.357)
Hobsbawn and Hartwell can both have the finger pointed at them for being selective in terms of their use of quantitative data to strengthen their point of view. Hobsbawn (1963) has been very vocal on his criticisms of Hartwell's (1963) view of a rise in national income levels that would be equally distributed through the working population but Hartwell did counteract Hobsbawn criticisms by highlighting increasing tax returns during this period. But Hartwell could only make presumptions based on already known economic theory's such as capital accumulation and productivity outstripped population growth: "it is reasonable to assume that the standard of living of the workers was rising." (Hartwell,1963, p.141). Hobsbawn himself is also guilty of making general assumptions that are primaly based on national statistics, and even his own research into consumption figures fall into the same problem as Hartwell in regards of being too insufficient in detail to determine how the changes were spread out over the different social classes (Hobsbawm, 1963). If the detail of the national consumption and income levels are of a unsatisfactory standard of seeing how the increases were dispersed then other quantitative data needs to be discussed. This can be achieved by researching such factors as real wage levels for that period of time but there are unfortunately gaps in the statistics such as unemployment figures which can misrepresent the final data. The argument which has been raging between these two historians can now be addressed by some newer research raised some interesting points. Hobasbawm (1963) rightly pointed out that all the previous research on real wages failed to take into account of the unemployment figures which would have shrunk the figure of the 40% increase in real wages which was popular among many economic historians. There were some agreements between the two historians as Hartwell (1963) concurred with Hobsawm on the issue of unemployment figures were poorly researched, but he did have a solid counter argument that there was no increases in real wages before 1845:

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"and if the standard of living in the early fifties was substantially above that of 1800 , then the whole of the improvement must have come in five, or at most ten years."(Hartwell,1963,p.139)
Both Hartwell and Hobsbawm make clear and concise arguments. So if the unemployment figures hit the highs during 1800-45 this could of effected any average real wage gains numbers and therefore supporting Hobsbawm or the pessimists argument. Unfortunately if the evidence that would show a large increase in real wages from 1845-1855 then there would be significant argument for a rise in living standards from 1800, but could more up to date research data answer these questions? The unemployment data for this time frame is still not available before 1856 (Lindert,1994), but historians have still unearthed potential unemployment data that will be adjusted to make an educated guess so therefore it will be a rough estimate at best, but any guess would still give a better idea of what was happening rather than assuming full employment during that time frame. Feinstein (1998) wrote a paper that completely analysed wage levels and also included unemployment data which brought about some interesting results. Feinstein isn't completely in the corner of Hobsbawm, but he does argue that only a small increase in real wages until 1857 and then bigger increases began to happen around the mid 1850's. From what has been discussed above it shows how the debate has gone from one extreme to another such as substantial improvements of life to a decline of life in 1800-1850, to a more slight improvement up to 1850 and then after 1850 the standard of living can seen to have improved absolutely. Research into heights of this period tends to validate this analysis. There have been other studies that have broaden our understanding of the effects that early industrialisation had on the working class and that was the study of prisoner heights from 1770 and 1870 (Floud,1983). The results of this study reinforce case for the optimist up to 1850; Nicolas & Steckel found in their extensive research that there was a decline in height but Floud (1983) found that although there was an increase of height from 1800, then a slight stagnation and then again the average height increased after 1850. Hartwell (1963) does concur with this analysis and it also adds weight to the claim that Marxist historians were romanticising the working classes life's for political reasons. Bythell (1973) has suggested that comparing to types of irrelevant comparisons from two separate time periods fail to any sort of conviction to a argument; arguing for further research into other avenues of research such as how infant mortality rates compared with other countries on the continaunt. The social historian Crafts (1997) went down this path of research and he concluded the same as the other historians mentioned that there was little positive effect on the working class before the mid 19th century and with Britain showing higher mortality rates in infants than contential Europe. This can be explained by the immense pollution that Britain was covered in during the Industrial Revolution such as overcrowding and terrible sanitation because the early industrial cities had sprung up quickly and therefore the was little time for correct planning of the city and so the data completely reflects little improvements until after the 1850's. Why did it happen this way? The clear explanation as to why the health of the lower classes started to improve can be laid at the feet of the government and how it was creating new polices that would bring around a cleaner 3|Page

environment in the filth ridden cities. Szreter & Mooney (1998) conducted research into the decline mortality from diseases that were infectious and which pointed to the public health programs that the government were rolling out across the country which were increased monetary amounts spent on educating the public on ways to improve personal hygiene and building new sewers in all the major population areas. These initiatives that the government pushed forward caused almost a reduction of 75% decline in morality; the most important being the 1875 Public health Act (Szreter & Mooney,1998). What is surprising about these improvements that were making a huge difference to people's lives was how little it was impacting the GDP. Crafts (1997) concluded that the cost of these government initiatives was around 3% of GDP:

"Putting these pieces of information together, it seems plausible to argue that, with appropriate intervention, expenditure equivalent to less than 3 per cent GDP per year during the second quarter of the nineteenth century could have raised life expectancy to about 44.5 years and reduced infant mortality to around 129 in 1850" (Crafts,1997,p.633)
To conclude, the research that has recently been conducted since Hobsbawm (1963) decided to re-open the age old debate of the standard of living during the Industrial Revolution has shown to support his original ideas, but as this paper has highlighted throughout it is very easy to pick the positive changes that happened to the standard of living in the later period of the 19th century and to add Howsbawm admits that there were improvements from 1845 onwards which didn't happed because of personal monetary gains but rather than government programs. The modern research on this subject generally supports this subject and thus has stopped being based on political ideals which can be pointed at both the pessimist and optimist corners which pushed the idea that capitalism was wrong or that it was to be praised as it would improve standards of living throughout society, instead the findings from the heights, infant mortality and real wages reflect a more conservative point of view. It doesn't support either of the traditional views but it does show that although the working class had a moderate amount of wage increases right up to 1850 it was the policy of the governments sanitation and city planning reform that were the key factors in the rise of the standard of living.

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Reference List Bythell, D. (1974). The history of the poor. The English Historical Review, Vol. 89, No. 351. , 365-377. Crafts, N. F. (1997). Some Dimensions of the 'Quality of Life' during the British Industrial Revolution. The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 50, No. 4 , 617-639. Feinstein, C. H. (1998). Pessimism Perpetuated: Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Britain during and after the Industrial Revolution. The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 58, No. 3 , 625-658. Floud, R. (1983). A tall story? The standard of living debate. History Today , http://www.historytoday.com/roderick-floud/tall-story-standard-living-debate. Hartwell, R. M. (1963). The Standard of Living. The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 16, No. 1. , 135-146. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1963). The Standard of Living during the Industrial Revolution: A Discussion. The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 16, No. 1. , 119-134. Lindert, P. H. (1994). Unequal living standards. In R. Floud, & D. N. McCloskey, The Economic History of Britain Since 1700: Volume 1: 1700-1860 (pp. 356-176). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, K. (2004). The birth of industrial Britain: Social Change, 1750-1850. London: Longmans. Nicholas, S., & Steckel, R. H. (1991). Heights and Living Standards of English Workers During the Early Years of Industrialization, 1770-1815. The Journal of Economic History Vol. 51, No. 4 , 937-957 . Szreter, S. (1988). The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain's Mortality Decline c.1850-1914: a Re-interpretation of the Role of Public Health. The Society for the Social History of Medicine , 1-38. Szreter, S., & Mooney, G. (1998). Urbanization, Mortality, and the Standard of Living Debate: New Estimates of the Expectation. The Economic History Review, New Series

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