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Anglo-American Wage Differences in the 1820's

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Nathan Rosenberg
Nathan Rosenberg
Affiliation:
Purdue University
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Extract

In 1829 Zachariah Allen, a lifelong resident of Providence, Rhode Island, published his book, The Science of Mechanics. Neither the title nor a casual glance at the contents of the book suggests that it contains material of major interest to economists or economic historians. Allen's book was intended as a manual for American mechanics and manufacturers. It summarized that portion of the industrial arts of its day which the author considered most useful and relevant for the edification of his American readers. The book contains elementary tables of conversion, arithmetic and geometric rules and formulas, a good deal of simple physics, and extensive descriptions of the workings of machinery—especially water wheels, steam engines, and millwork generally. In particular, Allen attempted to summarize much of what he had learned during a recent tour of the major manufacturing districts of England and France, so as to bring Americans up to date on the “latest improvements in mechanical invention in those countries.’ Unobtrusively placed in the back of this book, however, is a chapter, “Comparative View of the Relative Advantages Possessed by England, France and the United States of America as Manufacturing Nations,’ which records his more strictly economic impressions of his tour, taken in 1825. His observations in this short chapter, often trenchant and occasionally pungent, invite comparison with some of the better known European travelers to the United States. Anyone who can write, as Allen does (p. 355), that “An industrious New-England mechanic commonly appears to take pleasure in his business; but the French mechanic is rather inclined to make a business of his pleasures,’ is obviously entitled to a sympathetic hearing.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , June 1967 , pp. 221 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1967

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References

1 Allen, Zachariah, The Science of Mechanics (Providence, R.I.: Hutchens and Cory, 1829), p. iv.Google Scholar

2 Of the decade of the 1820's in Britain, Clapham commented: “… by 1820-30 the professional purveyor of machines made with the help of other machines, the true mechanical engineer of the modern world, was just coming into existence–in Lancashire and London where the demand was at its maximum.” Clapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain: The Early Railway Age, 1820–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. 152Google Scholar.

3 Clark, Victor, History of Manufactures in the United States (Washington: Mc-Graw-Hill Book Company, 1929), I, 392.Google Scholar

4 Habakkuk, H. J., American and British Technology in the 19th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), especially pp. 21–22Google Scholar. See also pp. 151-56. Habakkuk cites the passage in Victor Clark's book which in turn relies on Allen's figures: “Was the differential for skill smaller in America than in England? V. S. Clark, referring apparently to the 1820's, considered that differences in wages between England and America were greater in unskilled than in skilled occupations.” Ibid., p. 22.

5 Allen's inability to provide an estimate for this class of French labor is particularly regrettable.

6 See Report from the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery, Parliamentary Papers, 1824, Vol. V, especially columns 299-302, where spinner and power loom manufacturers complain of the inability to employ mechanics for the production of textile machinery, or the repair of old machinery. See also column 566, William Fairbairn's comments on the scarcity of competent millwrights.

7 Habakkuk, H. J., International Social Science Bulletin, Vol. VI, No. 2,1954, p. 196.Google Scholar

8 Some interesting material on regional differentials for this period may be found in Lebergott, Stanley, Manpower in Economic Growth (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964), especially pp. 539, 541, 546, and 547.Google Scholar

9 It is estimated that cotton textile wage earners increased from 12,000 to 55,000 during the 1820's and that domestics increased from 110,000 to 160,000 during this period. Even so, these two groups constituted barely 5 per cent of the total labor force in 1830, when 70 per cent of the labor force was in agriculture. It is estimated that there were 610,000 free (i.e., nonslave) farm laborers in 1830. There are no estimates of nonfarm common labor, but the number of farm laborers alone was almost three times the total of cotton textile workers and domestics in 1830. See Lebergott, Manpower in Economic Growth, pp. 510–11.

10 , Habakkuk, American and British Technology, pp. 151–52.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., p. 154.

12 Ibid., p. 156.

13 ibid., p. 8.

14 In Manchester in 1824 the wages of mechanics and engineers engaged in millwork was 28 shillings per week, which corresponds very closely to Allen's figure for 1825 of four shillings six pence per day for ordinary machine makers. Whitesmiths earned 27 shillings per week, and fitters, turners, and ironmolders earned 30 shillings per week. Bowley, Arthur L., Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), table opposite p. 123.Google Scholar Unfortunately, wages for other engineering skill classifications are not available.