allen & weisdorf 2011

8/13/2019 Allen & Weisdorf 2011

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Was there an industrious revolution

before the industrial revolution? Anempirical exercise for England,

c. 130018301

By R. C. ALLEN and J. L. WEISDORF

It is conventionally assumed that the pre-modern working year was fixed and thatconsumption varied with changes in wages and prices.This is challenged by the twintheories of the industrious revolution and the consumer revolution,positing a longerworking year as people earned surplus money to buy novel goods. In this study, weturn the conventional view on its head, fixing consumption rather than labour input.Specifically, we use a basket of basic consumption goods and compute the workingyear of rural and urban day labourers required to achieve that. By comparing withindependent estimates of the actual working year, we find two industrious revolu-tions among rural workers; both, however, are attributable to economic hardship, andwe detect no signs of a consumer revolution. For urban labourers, by contrast, agrowing gap between their actual working year and the work required to buy thebasket provides great scope for a consumer revolution.ehr_566 715..729

The length of the working year touches many themes in early modern economichistory. One is the standard of living. This is often measured by dividing anannual time series of daily wage rates by a cost of living index.That quotient trackschanges in material consumption from year to year only if the number of daysworked per year remains the same, and that is the usual assumptionimplicitly orexplicitly. An invariant working year, however, is called into question by a secondthemethe twin theories of the industrious revolution and the consumer revo-lution. Together they posit an increase in the number of days worked per year aspeople earned surplus money to buy novel consumer goods like tea, sugar, books,and clocks. If the working year increased in this way, then labour inputs increasedmore rapidly than the population, leading this way to economic growth in pre-modern England.

There are scattered estimates of the length of the working year, which we willdiscuss shortly, but they do not provide enough information to pin down the

1 This article has benefited from comments and suggests made by the audience at the Final Conference of theResearch Training Network Unifying the European Experience, the Land and Labour Productivity in Pre-

Industrial AgricultureWorkshop, the Strasbourg FRESH Meeting, the XV World Economic History Congress,the 8th European Historical Economics Society Conference, as well as research seminars at the Universities of

Oxford, Perugia, andTubingen, and LUISS University in Rome.We greatly appreciate feedback from Joerg Baten,Steve Broadberry, Bruce Campbell, Giovanni Federico, Knick Harley, Jane Humphries, Carol Leonard, Karl

Gunnar Persson, Albrecht Ritschl, Paul Sharp, Jan de Vries, and Hans-Joachim Voth. We also acknowledge thehelp and criticism kindly offered by three anonymous referees.While conducting this research JacobWeisdorf has

received generous financial support from the Danish Social Science Research Council (grant no. 275-09-0084),

and from LUISS University through a junior visiting professorship.

Economic History Review, 64, 3 (2011), pp. 715729

Economic History Society 2010. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main

Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.


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matter on their own. In this article, we use existing time series of wages andprices, but turn the traditional view on its head. That is, in contrast to the usualapproach in the real wage literature, which assumes that the working year was

constant and then computes how much annual consumption changed as wagesand prices varied, we assume that workers acted to stabilize consumption overtime and compute how much the working year had to change in order to achievethat given changes in wages and prices. The assumption is unusual, but it turnsout to be consistent with many existing estimates of the length of the workingyear.

We conduct these calculations for an extensive period covering more than fivecenturiesthat is, between c.1300 and 1830for two groups of day labourers:farm workers in southern England and London building workers. For farm labour-ers, the work required to buy the basket agrees reasonably well with independent

estimates of the actual working year. Since the consumption basket we use con-tains no novelties (no sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee, and so on), but only dailyconsumption goods that were readily available in early modern England, the factthat we largely match the actual working year suggests that something like aconsumer revolution did not take place among pre-industrial farm workers.Instead, their labour supply curve appears to be largely backward-bending.2 ForLondon building workers, by contrast, a large and widening gap between theiractual working year and the working year required to buy the basket suggests thatthere was great scope for a consumer revolution in the run-up to the industrialrevolution, harmonious with the twin theories of the industrious revolution and

the consumer revolution.

3

The empirical exercise carried out in this study also provides other insights intothe work patterns of pre-industrial day labourers. For farm workers, we detect twoepisodes of steep increase in work requirements: one between 1540 and 1616, andanother between 1750 and 1818.The initial upsurge in labour input coincides withthe removal of 49 holy days in England, conducted in 1536 as part of theProtestant Reformation. If this abolition of holy days was intended to help the poorin maintaining their consumption by allowing them to work more days throughoutthe year, then it might also have helped more affluent groups of workers, such asurban labourers, to realize a higher desired consumption level, which in turn couldhave been a stimulus to the manufacturing sector. As regards the second upsurgein labour input among farm workersthat starting at the eve of the industrialrevolutionthis closely matchesVoths identification of a profound increase in theworking year between 1750 and 1800, as well as a subsequent decrease in 1830. 4

This industrious revolution among rural farm labourers at the height of theindustrial revolution came out of economic hardship with no signs of a consumerrevolution. In fact, our analysis shows, consistent with estimates by Horrell andHumphries, that the increased dependency burden from 1750 onwards meant that

2 The backward bending supply curve of labour is a thesis that claims that as wages increase, people will

substitute leisure for working.3 See, particularly, deVries, Industrial revolution, and idem,Industrious revolution; but also M. Koyama, The

price of time and labour supply: from the Black Death to the industrious revolution, Univ. of Oxford discussionpaper in economic and social history, 78 (2009).

4 Voth,Time and work; idem, Longest years. M. Bell, Working hours in East Anglia during the first industrial

revolution, Univ. of Oxford manuscript (2009), repeats Voths findings for East Anglia.

716 R. C. ALLEN AND J. L. WEISDORF

Economic History Society 2010 Economic History Review, 64, 3 (2011)


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by 1800 women and children had to supply nearly 20 per cent of low-incomeagricultural household earnings to maintain basic consumption.5

IThe fundamental idea of this study is to calculate the number of days of worknecessary per year to buy a fixed consumption basket, and then compare it toindependent estimates of the actual working year found in the existing literature.To account for the fact that workers would typically provide not just for themselvesbut for an entire family, we compute the annual days of work required to supporta representative household. For this, we need two components: annual consump-tion expenditures of a typical household and day wages of workers. Since we focuson two different groups of workersfarm labourers and urban builderswe needthe wage rates of each group. In the case of farm labourers, we use southern

England day wages for the period c.13001830. For c.13001450, the wages arethe day wages of farm labourers outside the harvest period paid on the estates ofthe Bishop of Winchester as recorded by Beveridge.6 Labourers were paid exclu-sively in cash. Beveridge studied the wages of eight manors and concluded therates were similar across southern England. For 14501650, following Bowden,the wages were paid by Oxford and Cambridge colleges and Eton College.7 Theirestates were in southern England, the character of the work and terms of paymentare the same as those on the Winchester estates, and the series before and after1450 agree very closely at that date. The series was extended to 1750 usingBowdens agricultural wages for southern English counties.8 Finally, the wages

were extended to 1830 using Bowleys wages for Oxfordshire.9

Bowleys wagesapplied to men paid by the day outside the harvest and included the value of anypayments in kind. Our wage series agree closely with the farm wages reported byClark for south-eastern and south-western England for 16701830.10 For urbanbuilders, we use London day wages for the period 14571830. These come fromBoulton, Rappaport, and Schwartz.11 For c.13101456, London building wagesare estimated by increasing by 25 per cent the Phelps Brown and Hopkins series,which is based mainly on wages paid by Oxford and Cambridge colleges.12 The25 per cent is the differential between the London and Oxbridge series for thecentury after 1457.13

In order to compute annual consumption expenditures, we rely on a pre-modern consumption basket comprising daily consumption goods, such as foods,clothing, housing, and heating. We would like to know if workers expand theirworking year (show industrious behaviour) with the intention of obtaining novelcommodities (consumer revolution behaviour). Therefore, no novelties or luxu-ries (like sugar, tobacco, potatoes, tea, coffee, books, clocks, and so on) are

5 Horrell and Humphries, Womens labour force participation.6 Beveridge, Wages, p. 41.7 Bowden, Statistical appendix, p. 864.8 Bowden, Statistics, p. 877.9 Bowley, Statistics of wages, pp. 7047.

10 Clark, Farm wages, p. 485.11 Boulton, Wage labour; Rappaport, Worlds within worlds; Schwartz, Standard of living.12 Phelps Brown and Hopkins, Seven centuries of building wages.13 Ibid.

INDUSTRIOUS REVOLUTION 717



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included in the basket. Items of the basket, as well as their amounts consumed peradult, are detailed in table 1.14 Thus, an industrious revolution intended to expandconsumption ought to materialize itself by a growing gap between the actualworking year and the working year required to buy the basket.

The consumption expenditures on the basic consumption basket of a represen-tative household are obtained by multiplying the quantities of table 1 by the unitprice of each item. To account for the cost of housing, 5 per cent is added to total

consumption expenses. Further, there is an urban premium in that we assume thatthe basket is 20 per cent more expensive in London compared to southernEngland. Prices come from three sources: Beveridge, Mitchell and Deane, andRogers.15 The prices are derived from the accounts of institutions in London andits vicinity or Oxford and Cambridge. Allen discusses the interpretation of theprices in detail.16

In the main analysis, it is assumed that a household consists of two adults andtwo-and-a-half children, and that children consume half as much as adults. Thatmeans a household contains the equivalent of 3.25 adults. In the robustnessanalysis conducted further below, we will attempt to vary the family size over time,

in line with what we know about increased fertility and demographic expansion, tosee how this affects the results.As will become apparent later on, the reason we donot vary family size in the main analysis is that the demographic data used for thatpurpose do not exist before 1541.

The annual number of days of work per household (the impliedworking year)necessary to obtain the basket specified above is then calculated using the follow-ing formula:

days per year annual costs of baskets of household day wage=

14 For a discussion of the design of the basket, see Allen, Great divergence.15 Beveridge, Wages; Mitchell and Deane,Abstracts; Rogers, History of agriculture. Data used to obtaindays per

yearare available at http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/allen/studer/london.xls. Sources for the data are detailed there

too.16 Allen, Great divergence.

Table 1. Basket of goods

Items Quantity/person/year

Bread 182 kgBeans/peas 52 litres

Meat 26 kg

Butter 5.2 kgCheese 5.2 kg

Eggs 52 piecesBeer 182 litres

Soap 2.6 kgLinen 5.0 metres

Candles 2.6 kgLamp oil 2.6 litres

Fuel 5.0 million BTUa

Note: a One BTU (BritishThermal Unit) is the amount of energy required to raise

the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.Source: Allen, Great divergence, p. 421.




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Figure 1 shows the annual number of days of work required by a southern Englandmale farm labourer over the period 13101830 to provide for his family. Figure 2reports comparable estimates for London builders for the period 13101830. The

dashed lines in the figures show the number of working days required per year inorder to buy the basket, while the solid line is the 10-year moving average.Whilethe implied working year illustrated in figures 1 and 2 assumes that the maleworker provides for the entire household on his own, the role of women andchildrens contribution to household earnings will be discussed further below.

365 days

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Figure 1. Number of working days per year of rural farm workers, 13101830Notes: Dashed line =implied working year; solid line =implied working year 10-year moving average.

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Also added to the figures are the scattered, independent estimates of days ofwork per year found in the literature.These come from three sources: Blanchard,Clark and van der Werf, and Voth.17 Blanchards detailed study of farming miners

of Mendip in Somerset offers five observations concerning the years 1433, 1538,1578, 1584, and 1598.The length of the working year, which is computable fromrows 3b and 3c in Blanchards table C2, is the sum of the number of days per yearspent in agriculture (135 days) plus the share of remaining labour time (265135days) spent in mining activities. In figures 1 and 2, Blanchards estimates aremarked by white squares.

Clark and van der Werf provide observations for five time-intervals, whichtogether cover the period 15601732, as well as the year 1771.Their numbers arebased on estate records and household accounts from various places in England,including Bedford, Cambridge, Derbyshire, Deptford, Norfolk, and Northamp-

ton. Numbers are taken directly from Clark and van der Werfs table 1, and arerepresented in figures 1 and 2 by large-dotted, horizontal lines.Finally, based on court records and witnesses accounts, Voth offers three

estimates for the years 1750, 1800, and 1830 for London and northern England.Voths numbers, which are taken from his table 7, come in the form of hoursworked per year, but can be transformed into days of work per year under theconventional assumption that workers toiled for around 10 hours per day duringthe industrial revolution. Moreover, since Voth provides separate estimates foragriculture as well as manufacturing and trade including services, we assume thaturban builders compare with non-agricultural workers in terms of labour input;

this explains why the grey squares in figures 1 and 2, representingVoths estimates,are not identical in the two figures. Finally, Voths standard errors are used togenerate upper and lower bounds for each year. Marked in figures 1 and 2 by thesymbol +, the bounds are one standard deviation away from the mean. Estimatesfrom all three independent sources are listed in table 2.

II

In the following, four observations will be made with regard to days of work peryear required by farm labourers (figure 1). The first thing to note is that our

implied working year agrees reasonably well with the scattered, independentestimates of days worked per year presented in the existing literature. To beginwith, this suggests that the working year of farm labourers during the industrialrevolution was extraordinarily long by pre-industrial standards,18 a conclusionalso reached by Voth in his detailed study of English work habits between 1750and 1830.19 Moreover, between the Great Famine of the fourteenth century(c.131517) and the end of the early modern era (c.1750), a workload of morethan 300 days per year to support a family was rarely required, except for a briefperiod around 1600 and during years of severe misery (the spikes in the dashedline of figure 1). In fact, the work requirements of late medieval farm labourers

17 Blanchard, Labour productivity; Clark and van der Werf, Work in progress; Voth, Longest years.18 Note that a working year of more than 365 days per household is perfectly possible.This would simply imply

that the household would either cut its consumption, or that women and children would have contributed to the

households income (see the robustness section below).19 Voth,Time and work.




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were fairly modest, even by modern standards, involving less than 200 days of work

per year to provide for an entire family. Putting the matter this way is the flip sideof the usual interpretation in real wage studies, which find that the fifteenthcentury was the golden age of labour.20 For instance, Phelps Brown and Hopkinsconcluded that the high real wages prevalent between the end of the Black Death(c.1350) and the beginning of the early modern era (c.1500) were not regaineduntil the nineteenth century.21 Subsequent studies have confirmed that view.

The second observation to be made relates to a long-standing debate about theexistence of agrarian labour surplus in pre-industrial England. The estimates offigure 1 show that the main component of Lewiss labour surplus theory(that is,surplus labour) was certainly presentparticularly by the beginning of the earlymodern era.22 Indeed, by the middle of the fifteenth century, it needed less thanhalf a labourers full capacity, or around 150 working days per year, to provide fora representative household. If at this point farm labourers were somehow inducedto double their labour input, then this would release 50 per cent of all farm workersfor non-agricultural (for example, industrial) purposes.

This conclusion is different from that usually found in medieval economichistories, which see the pre-plague period as one of overpopulation and surpluslabour, while the fifteenth century is regarded as an era of full employment in viewof the lower population. Another interpretation, however, is summarized in Dyersobservation that a plausible reconstruction of workers attitudes in the period13491520 is that they set themselves goals in cash or consumption needs, and

20 See, for example,Postan,Medieval economy; Hatcher, Plague, pp. 4754; Dyer, Standards of living, pp. 21133;Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the middle ages, pp. 479.

21 Phelps Brown and Hopkins, Seven centuries of prices.22 Lewis, Economic development.

Table 2. Independent estimates of days of work

Places/years Days/year

Mendipa

1433 165

1536 180

1578 2601584 210

1598 259Englandb

156099 257160049 266

165099 276170032 286

1771 280

Londonc

1750 231 (277/186)306 (333/280)

1800 343 (367/319)320 (338/302)1830 276 (308/244)343 (367/310)

Notes and sources: a Estimates computed are based on Blanchard, Labour produc-

tivity, tab. C2, p. 21.b Estimates from Clark and van der Werf, Work in progress,

tab. 1, p. 838. c Estimates from Voth, Longest years, tab. 7, p. 1076, assuming a

10-hour working day; numbers to the left of the hyphen are days per year of farmers;

numbers to the right are average days per year for non-farmers; in both cases,

numbers in parentheses are upper and lower bounds, one standard deviation away

from the mean.




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worked until they had achieved their aims. Then they ceased to work.23 Thisobservation is not consistent with full-time, full-year work. Our calculations givenumerical expression to Dyers observation and show that it implies idle labour in

the countryside in the fifteenth century.The third observation concerns developments in standards of living. It has long

been recognized that well into the industrial revolution, wage rates, particularlythose of farm labourers, barely changed.24 Voths account of rising labour inputbetween 1750 and 1800 reinforces the pessimistic interpretation of standards ofliving, since leisure declined while material standards of living hardly rose.25 Thepresent estimates for farm labourers are very supportive of Voths findings. Sinceour estimates of labour input agree reasonably well with existing ones, also in thecenturies leading up to the industrial revolution,Voths gloomy conclusion appearsto extend all the way back to the beginning of the early modern era (c.1500) from

when the required working year of farm labourers began to expand.This inference,however, does not apply to the London builders, which will be discussed shortly.The fourth observation concerns de Vriess concept of an industrious revolu-

tion, according to which a broad range of households made decisions thatincreased both the supply of marketed commodities and labour and the demandfor goods offered in the marketplace.26 The apparent industriousness among farmlabourers in the present study, though supporting the idea of households supplyingmore labour over time, does not seem consistent with a consumer revolutionmarked by more and new goods entering the consumption basket. Rather, addi-tional labour input of farm workers stems from the fact that daily consumption

goods became harder to obtain economically. If the household did indeed increaseits demand for luxuries and novelties, as hypothesized by de Vries, then theincrease in labour supply among farm workers would have to have been evengreater than that suggested by figure 1. That, of course, could have materialized ifwomen and children increased their supply of marketed commodities and labour.However, as the robustness analysis below will attempt to demonstrate, womenand childrens contribution to rural household earnings after 1750 is attributableentirely to a growing dependency burden rather than a consumer revolution.

The rise in implied workloads observed among farm labourers took place overtwo distinct periods, 15001616 and 17501818. Between 1500 and 1616, days ofwork required per year increased from around 160 to slightly more than 300.27

Most of the rise in labour requirements occurred between 1536 and 1616. Overthis period, the number of working days per year increased from close to 180 upto 305a 70 per cent expansion in just 80 years. Remarkably, this upsurge in daysof work required coincides with the removal of 49 holy days in England, carriedout in 1536 as part of the Protestant Reformation.28 If the abolition of holy dayswas intended to help the poor maintain their consumption by allowing them to

23 Dyer, Standards of living, p. 224.24 See, for example, Hatcher, Plague, p. 49; Clark, Farm wages.25 Voth, Living standards.26 de Vries, Industrious revolution, p. 249.27 The numbers reported in this and subsequent paragraphs are taken from the 10-year moving average

estimates, so as to avoid confusing them with year-by-year variation in prices and wages.28 de Vries, Industrious revolution, p. 87. This practice was later followed by other countries, such as the

Netherlands in 1574, France in 1666, and Austria in 1754 (ibid.).




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work more days throughout the year, then the industrial revolution might also havebeen encouraged by allowing more affluent workersurban building workersamong themto realize a higher level of consumption along the lines proposed by

de Vries.In the century after c. 1616, there was a modest decrease in working days

required for farm workers to purchase the consumption basket. However, thattrend turned again in the eighteenth century. From 1750 onwards, the impliedworking year grew by 56 per cent, from around 250 working days per year to astaggering 391 in 1818.29 By that time, a male worker was no longer able tosupport an entire family on his own, not even toiling every day of the year. As wewill discuss in more detail below, that could well explain why women and chil-drens labour appears to have increased during the industrial revolution30theywere forced to in order to maintain the households basic consumption. However,

from 1818 onwards, and over little more than a decade, work requirements felldramatically, from around 391 days of work per year to a manageable 285.The factthat the drop in days of work required closely matches Voths estimates of labourinput for farm labourers during the industrial revolution (see figure 1) stronglysuggests that the labour supply curve among this group of workers could have beenalmost perfectly backward-bending.31

Turning now to the labour requirements of London building workers, as illus-trated in figure 2, this provides a picture quite different from that of farm labour-ers, at least from 1600 on.That is, from the end of the fourteenth century and upuntil the beginning of the seventeenth century, the implied working year of rural

and urban labourers is more or less the same, but then the two start to diverge.While the work requirements of farm labourers continue to rise well into theseventeenth century, the labour input required by London builders drops quitesubstantially, from around 275 days per year to a mere 140 annual days of work,between 1600 and 1750. Remarkably, the independent estimates suggest theopposite, namely a steady growth of labour input between 1600 and 1750 up to apoint where urban labourers toiled for more than 300 days per year (table 2). If wetake the independent estimates to be a good proxy for the actual working year, andsince this rises steadily between 1600 and 1750, figure 2 offers great support to theidea that an industrious revolution instrumented a consumer revolution. Indeed,a large and widening gap in the run up to the industrial revolution between theactual working year and the working year required to buy the basket suggests awork-year far in excess of what was required for basic subsistence. In fact, at thedoorstep into the industrial revolution, urban builders worked twice as hard as wasrequired in order to uphold a decent standard of living.

III

The analysis above assumes that the dependency structure of the family is constant(two adults and two-and-a-half children), and that mens earnings alone have to

29 By comparison, Voth, Longest years, observes a 48% increase of annual hours worked between 1750 and1800.

30 For example, Horrell and Humphries, Exploitation ; idem, Womens labour force participation.31 Voth, Longest years.




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provide for this. In the following, we will attempt to vary family requirements overtime, in line with what we know about increased fertility and demographic expan-sion, to see how this affects the results. We will also discuss the extent to which

women and children contributed to household earnings to see whether that hasimplications for the findings above.

We will use two different measures of dependency burden in the robustnessanalysis below: thedependency ratioand thenet reproduction rate. Numbers for bothare provided byWrigley et al.,but unlike the data used in the previous section,whichgoes back to the beginning of the fourteenth century, neither of the two data seriesused here are available before 1541.32 The reproduction rate is the average numberof daughters that would be born to a female if she passed through her lifetimeconforming to the age-specific fertility rates of a given year. By contrast to thegrossreproduction rate, the netreproduction rate, which we will use here, takes into

account that some females die before completing their childbearing years. Bycomparison to the flat dependency structure, which was used above, the netreproduction rate thus provides a more accurate picture of how many children anaverage family had to support at a certain point in time. Since we are assuming thatchildren consume half of what adults do, the household size used below whencomputing the implied working year is therefore two plus the net reproductionrate.

The other measure used for robustness analysisthe dependency ratioisdefined by Wrigley et al. as 1,000 times the number of people aged 014 and 60plus, divided by the number of people between 15 and 59 years of age.33 This

number, which for most years analysed falls between 700 and 800, needs to betransformed into something that relates to family size. In the year 1756, two plusthe net reproduction rate was 3.26or very close to the flat 3.25 assumed above.Below, we therefore construct a dependency ratio index, where we normalize thedependence ratio, so that the year 1756 =3.25.

Figure 3 shows the evolution of the dependency ratio and two plus the netreproduction rate (2+NRR), as well as the flat dependency structure of 3.25adults. The illustration demonstrates that the two time-seriesthe dependencyratio and two plus the net reproduction ratetend to follow each other quiteclosely, and that the constant dependency structure usually underestimates thetwo before 1600 and after 1750, but overestimates them in the intermediate years.

Does the variation over time in the dependency burden undermine the conclu-sions reached in the previous section? Figure 4 plots the annual working daysrequired by each of the two groupsrural farm workers (left) and urban buildingworkers (right)to buy the basket when family size is estimated by the depen-dency ratio.The dashed line shows the year-by-year requirement, and the solid linethe 10-year moving average. For comparative purposes, the 10-year movingaverage of the days required assuming a constant dependency structure is alsoadded (the small-dotted line). Figure 5 illustrates the same, but with two plus thenet reproduction rate instead of the dependency ratio. As is evident from thefigures, rural farm workers still work largely as much as it takes to buy the basket,although they underperform somewhat after 1750 compared to figure 1. Similarly,

32 Wrigley et al., English population history, tab. A9, pp. 61415.33 Ibid.




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urban workers still experience a rising gap between actual and implied workingyear between 1600 and 1750, even if the contraction of the gap after 1750 is morepronounced than is the case in figure 2.

On the whole, the conclusions from the previous section thus still remain, butwith a twist: the increased dependency burden after 1750 (see figure 3) absorbssome of the surplus purchasing power of urban workers (although the gap is still

large). For farm workers, it appears that the increased family burden made itimpossible to maintain household consumption at the levels dictated by the basketif the family was relying on the husbands income only. As mentioned earlier, thiscould have been compensated for by women and children contributing to thefamilys incomebut how much would have been required?

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Figure 4. Number of working days per year of r ural farm workers (left) and urban

building workers (right) using dependency ratio, 15511830Notes: Dashed line =days required; solid line=days required 10-year moving average; small dots =days required 10-year movingaverage with 3.25 flat.




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In order to find out, we need to look at the difference between the incomeearned by a male labourer and the costs of the basket. By 1800, a male farm workerwould work for 343 days per year (table 2), but was required, according to ourestimates, to work for 425 days in order to support the household. So, in order to

make ends meet, women and children would have been required to take home 19.3per cent of the households total income.34 That percentage is not completelyarbitrary. In fact, it is almost identical to the number provided by Horrell andHumphries.35 They report that between 1787 and 1815 the contribution of womenand children to family earnings in low-income agricultural families was 18.4 percent.36 Evidently, the increased family burden after 1750 meant that by 1800women and children had to supply nearly 20 per cent of rural household earningsto maintain basic consumption.

This brings us to the second issue with potential implications for the conclusionsof the previous section: do women and childrens contribution to the households

earnings modify our general findings above? Two main matters deserve attention.First, was the apparent industriousness of urban male workers a way of compen-sating for lack of job opportunities for other family members rather than toincrease consumption? Second, could there have been an invisible consumerrevolution going on in the countryside, made possible by supplementary incomegenerated by women and children? The main analysis above offers no directinsights in this regardbut what can be deduced if we try to read a bit into thedata?

Turning to the first questionwhether urban industriousness was a response todeclining job opportunities for women and childrenwe need a couple of refer-

ence points. In accordance with de Vriess hypothesis, industriousness begins

34 Since (425343)*100/425 =19.3%.35 Horrell and Humphries, Womens labour force participation.36 Ibid., tab. 2, pp. 1023.

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Figure 5. Number of working days per year of rural farm workers (left) and urbanbuilding workers (right) using 2+NRR, 15511830

Notes: Dashed line =days required;solid line =days required 10-year moving average; small dots =days required 10-year moving

average with 3.25 flat.




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around 1600. By that time, the earnings of an urban building worker wouldamount to 3,108 pence per year (259 working days at a rate of 12 pence per day).By 1800, urban builders were earning 8,320 pence per year (320 working days at

a rate of 26 pence per day).37

If we follow Horrell and Humphries estimates,38

using a 20 per cent contribution by women and children to the householdsearnings, then by 1800 an urban familys total income would have reached 10,400pence per year.All of this means that if the industriousness of urban builders werea pure response to declining job opportunities for women and children, then by1600 the income contribution of women and children would have been10,4003,108 pence, or more than two-thirds of the familys earnings. Inlight of existing estimates, that sounds abnormally high. With the exceptionof factory families, where women and children took home an extraordinary47 per cent share of household earnings, Horrell and Humphries numbers

(although they concern mainly the nineteenth century) come nowhere near a70 per cent income contribution by women and children.What are the implications for the conclusions reached in the previous section?

Certainly, if by 1600 the income contribution of women and children were70 per cent or more, then that would completely eliminate the scope for aconsumer revolution among urban labourers in the run-up to the industrialrevolution. If by 1600 the contribution of women and children fell between 20 and70 per cent of households earnings, then some of the increased industriousness ofmale urban workers could well have been a response to lack of job opportunitiesfor other family members. In that case, there would still be scope for a consumer

revolution, but to a lesser extent than that suggested by figure 5. Last but not least,however, it is worth noting that deVries puts emphasis on theincreasedwork effortof women and children.Taking Horrell and Humphries number forc.1800 at facevalue, de Vriess hypothesis would then imply that by 1600 the income contribu-tion of women and children was lessthan 20 per cent. If this were true, then thatwould raise the scope of a consumer revolution among urban labourers beyondwhat our figures suggest.

Finally, if we take the latter point to the countryside, then would that not suggestthat an invisible consumer revolution went on among rural families, made possibleby supplementary income generated by women and children? It was indicatedabove that around 1800 Horrell and Humphries estimate of a near 20 per centincome contribution of women and children was indeed necessary for low-incomeagricultural families to obtain the basic basket. So, if we depart from a zeroearnings contribution of women and children by 1600, then, while up until 1750the supplementary income generated this way could well have led to increasedconsumption, after 1750 increased labour input by women and children wouldhave functioned exclusively as a means of maintaining basic consumption. By1800, therefore, there was no consumer revolution among rural farm workerhouseholds.

37 Wage rates in 1600 and 1800, as described above,are based on numbers from Bowden, Statistical appendix,

and Bowley, Statistics of wages, respectively, while working days are taken from tab. 2.38 Horrell and Humphries, Womens labour force participation, tab. 2, pp. 1023.




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IV

The contrasting experiences of farm workers and urban labourers show howimportant it is to distinguish between different groups of workers when analysinglabour inputs and patterns of consumption in pre-industrial times. By comparisonwith independent estimates, our numbers do indicate that industrious revolutionsdid indeed occur among farm labourers. However, these appear to have come outof economic hardship with no signs that they were associated with consumerrevolutions.This conclusion is maintained even when including estimates of earn-ings contributions by women and children, whose labour input appears to haveserved as a means of maintaining basic consumption when the dependency burdenincreased after 1750. The exercise also suggests that farm workers had a largelybackward-bending labour supply curve, which in turn would mean that ourestimates of the implied working year can be used as a proxy for the actual working

year among farming day labourers from the late middle ages through the industrialrevolution. Finally, by contrast to farm workers, more well-off workers, such asurban labourers, between 1600 and 1750 display strong signs of industriousbehaviour not related to economic hardship, hence providing great scope for aconsumer revolution in urban areas over this period.

University of Oxford; University of Copenhagen

Date submitted 20 August 2009

Revised version submitted 18 May 2010

Accepted 24 May 2010

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2010.00566.x

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