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Wages, Earnings and Real Earnings in Teesside

A Re-assessment of the Ameliorist Interpretation of Living Standards in Britain, 1870–1914*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

A. A. Hall
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The following article attempts to trace the course of working-class living standards in Britain in the comparatively neglected period between 1870 and the First World War. A considerable body of historical opinion sees this period as a time of marked improvement in standards of life, an improvement based essentially on rising real wages. Studies of this period have owed a considerable debt to the pioneering work of A. L. Bowley and G. H. Wood, which produced an invaluable collection of indices for wages and real wages, upon which most general accounts of living standards in the later nineteenth century have drawn. Wood's contention that real wages, in the years roughly between 1874 and 1900, rose by 36 per cent lies at the heart of an interpretation which sees the late-Victorian period as a time of crucial economic and social amelioration. The data are sufficiently comprehensive to show these improvements to be common to all occupations and to lead to the inescapable conclusion that “industrialization paid off generally in higher real wages for all groups in society in the second half of the nineteenth century”.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , August 1981 , pp. 202 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1981

Footnotes

*

I should like to thank Dr David Taylor of Teesside Polytechnic for his comments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

1 Wood, G. H., “Real Wages and the Standard of Comfort Since 1850”. in: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXXII (1909), p. 99.Google Scholar This is echoed in Deane, Ph. and Cole, W. A., British Economic Growth. 1688–1959. 2nd ed. (Cambridge. 1967), p. 26.Google Scholar

2 Mathias, P., The First Industrial Nation (London. 1969). p. 375.Google Scholar

3 Ashworth, W., An Economic History of England, 1870–1939 (London, 1960). p. 249.Google Scholar

4 Pollard, S., “Real Earnings in Sheffield, 1851–1914”. in: Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research. IX (1957), pp. 54–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also id., “Wages and Earnings in the Sheffield Trades. 1851–1914”. ibid., VI (1954). pp. 49–64.

5 Slaven, A.. “Earnings and Productivity in the Scottish Coal-Mining Industry during the Nineteenth Century: The Dixon Enterprises”, in: Studies in Scottish Business History, ed. by Payne, P. (London, 1967). pp. 217–49.Google Scholar

6 Barnsby, G. J.. “:The Standard of Living in the Black Country during the Nineteenth Century”. in: Economic History Review. Second Series, XXIV (1971), pp. 220 and 233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Three towns, Middlesbrough. Stockton-on-Tees and Darlington. form the basis for the study. Four main industries — iron and steel manufacture, heavy engineering, shipbuilding and residential construction — together accounted for some 50 per cent of total male employment.

8 A full list of the sources used to compile Figure 1 would be too lengthy to reproduce here. The main ones were, Board of Trade. Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour in Various Industries in the United Kingdom (unpublished returns kept at the Library of the Department of Employment. London). pp. 2–61. 89, 92–93, 96–109, 160–83: id., Annual Reports on Changes in Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour. 1893–1914: Returns of Wages Published between 1830 and 1886 [C. 5172] (1887): Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence, Group A. Vol. II [C. 6795 IV], Appendix XXIII: Labour Gazette, 1893–1914.

9 See Jeans, J. S., Conciliation and Arbitration in Labour Disputes (London. 1894), pp. 77–78,Google Scholar and Porter, J. H., “David Dale and Conciliation in the Northern Manufactured Iron Trade. 1869–1914”, in: Northern History, V (1970). pp. 157–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 In addition, steel workers' wages were higher during the boom of 1890 than at any other subsequent peak, whereas for puddlers the 1890 rates of pay were surpassed in 1900. 1907 and 1913.

11 G. H. Wood's index of puddlers' wages records levels in 1866 which (apart from the boom of the early 'seventies) were not reached again until 1900. See Wood, . “Real Wages”. loc. cit.. p.93.Google Scholar A series representing puddlers' wages in the Midlands shows wage rates between 1863 and 1870 to beat average levels above those of 1876–88 and 1892–98. See Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour. op. cit., pp. 94–95.Google Scholar

12 Board of Trade. Seventeenth Abstract of Labour Statistics (1915). p. 3. The same source includes a series for workers in heavy industry which suffers from the contrasting drawback of being too broad in its application.Google Scholar

13 In both Barnsby, , “The Standard of Living in the Black Country”. loc. cit.. pp. 220–22,Google Scholar and Hopkins, E.. “Small Town Aristocrats of Labour and Their Standard of Living, 1840–1914”. in: Economic History Review, Second Series. XXVIII (1975). p. 223.Google Scholar such a method is employed, though Hopkins was rather careful to point out its limitations. Barnsby's approach. which may have led to some exaggeration of cyclical fluctuations in levels of employment, was heavily criticised in Griffin, C. P., “The Standard of Living in the Black Country in the Nineteenth Century: A Comment”.Google Scholar ibid., XXVI (1973). pp. 510–13.

14 The statistics of furnaces in blast are taken from Jones, G. T.. Increasing Return (Cambridge. 1933), pp. 279–80.Google Scholar and Hunt, R.. Mineral Statistics of the United Kingdom for 1853 and 1854–1881 (London. 1855–1882). Changes over time in the size of, and numbers employed within, the average furnace will not distort the index in its task of expressing levels of employment or unemployment as a proportion of the total labour force.Google Scholar

15 A simple arithmetic weighting was employed. i.e. wage-rate index × employment index ―100

16 Wage-rate index in year × percentage employed ― Wage-rate index in base year × percentage employed × 100

17 Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour. pp. 172–82: Annual Reports on Changes, 1906–1914.Google Scholar

18 Unemployment amongst shipbuilders reached 40.5 and 30.1 per cent in 1908 and 1909 respectively, and exceeded 10 per cent for the whole of the period 1902–10. See Labour Gazette, 1902–1910.Google Scholar

19 See Seventeenth Abstract of Labour Statistics. op. cit., p. 7.

20 Cargo Fleet Iron Company. Steel Works' Wages Books, 1912–1914. British Steel Northern Regional Records Centre. Middlesbrough. I am indebted to the Corporation for permission to consult these records.

21 In the present context, documentary evidence is confined to iron and steel, though there is every reason for assuming short-run variations to be common in all metallurgical industries. In non-capital-sector industries these variations will have been less intense. However, seasonal variations in earnings in the building industry were of the order of some 13 per cent on Teesside in this period, whilst in other regions the difference between summer and winter earnings was evidently greater. See Annual Reports of the Operative Bricklayers Society, 1874–1914. The Modern Records Centre. University of Warwick. Coventry, and Gray, R. Q., The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976), p. 51.Google Scholar

22 Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour, pp. 146–49: Annual Reports on Changes, 1906–1914.Google Scholar

23 Board of Trade. Enquiry into Working-class Rents. Housing and Retail Prices (1908), Town Reports [Cd 3864], pp. 314, 436.

24 Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour, pp. 168–72: Annual Reports on Changes, 1906–1914.Google Scholar

25 Dougan, D., A History of North East Shipbuilding (London. 1968). p. 128.Google Scholar

26 Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour, pp. 2–48;Google Scholar Lawrence, F. W., Local Variations in Wages (London, 1899), pp. 111–13.Google Scholar

27 Jeans, , Conciliation and Arbitration, op. cit.. p. 99; Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence, Group A, Vol. II, qq. 15154–482.Google Scholar

28 Board of Trade, Report on Earnings and Hours of Labour in the Metallurgical Industries, Engineering and Shipbuilding for 1906 [Cd 5814].

29 Bell, F.. At the Works: A Study of a Manufacturing Town [Middlesbrough] (London, 1907), pp. 56–65. 72–75.Google Scholar The fragmentary evidence given by Lady Bell contrasts strongly with the varied diets customary in another iron-manufacturing district. See Roberts, E., “Working-Class Standards of Living in Barrow and Lancaster, 1890–1914” in: Economic History Review, Second Series, XXX (1977), pp. 306–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 See Oddy, D. J., “The Working-Class Diet, 1886–1914” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London. 1970), pp. 217, 236;Google Scholar id., “Working-Class Diets in Late Nineteenth Century Britain”, in: Economic History Review. Second Series, XXIII (1970). pp. 314–23.Google Scholar The years between 1886 and 1914 exhibit a remarkable uniformity in food consumption. Whilst diets were enriched in the late ‘seventies and early ’eighties by the addition of certain new foods, they remained relatively unchanged thereafter until the war. The main difference between the Victorian and Edwardian diets would appear to lie in a slightly higher consumption of protein and fats in the later priod. See Oddy, , “The Working-Class Diet”. pp. 258, 336. Any distortion which takes place as a result of the use of Edwardian diets as the norm will tend to occur largely in the early ’seventies.Google Scholar

31 Bread, potatoes, sugar, oatmeal, butter, lard, beef, mutton, bacon, milk and tea.

32 Five major income groups are used, representing weekly incomes of 25/ – and under. 25-–30/ –. 30–35/ –. 35–40/ – and 40/ – and over.

33 Naturally, contract prices understate retail ones by a considerable amount. The solution adopted here was to compare the value of retail and contract prices for those items for which both types of data were available. Contract prices were found to understate retail ones by some 20 per cent, a ratio fairly constant throughout the period. Wherever contract prices have been used, therefore, they have been adjusted in order to render them comparable with the retail data.

34 Rents in 1910 in Middlesbrough were 3/6. 4/ –. 5/ – and 6/6 for two-, three-, four-, and five-roomed houses respectively. These rental levels were allocated amongst the five different income groups according to income. Then, on the basis of the index of house rents constructed by Singer (Singer, H. W.. “An Index of Urban Land Rents and House Rents in England and Wales, 1845–1913”. in: Econometrica, IX (1941), p. 230).Google Scholar rents for the whole period were calculated. The consumption and costs of the remaining items were taken from budgets in Bell, F., At the Works, op. cit., pp. 56–60,Google Scholar and The Economic Club, Family Budgets, Being the Expenditure of Twenty-eight British Households, 1891–1894 (London, 1896).Google Scholar

35 Results concurring closely with Wood's index of rent and commodities for 1870–1902, “Real Wages”, pp. 102–03.Google Scholar and the Ministry of Labour's index of retail food prices for 1892–1914, given in Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, Ph., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962). p. 478. (Apart from the fact that in the case of the latter the steep rise in prices after 1906 is not emulated on Teesside.)Google Scholar

36 To this must be added the further uncertainty stemming from fluctuations in the life cycle.