Hi Mike,
At 10:13 27/12/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Keith,
>
>Real wages fell until the 1840s, then began to rise. The latter
>was coincident with the rise of craft unions and the broadening of
>industrialism beyond cotton textiles.
Surely you mean nominal wages were falling. Real wages were rising pretty
well all through 1800-1900 because of steady increases in productivity in
all consumer product areas, including food. At the extreme, the price of
cotton cloth fell from 80 shillings in 1780 to 5 shillings in 1860. Average
annual increase in GNP was 2.42%; average annual increase in population was
1.25%. ("The Industrial Revolution 1780-1860" in "The Economic History of
Britain", Floud & McCloskey, CUP 1981) Life expectancy in England rose from
about 35 years in 1800 to about 48 years in 1900 (and still rising
swiftly). ("The Population History of England", Wrigley & Schofield. Arnold
1981)
(MH)
>There were many church schools and I am not aware that
>they charged fees.
>
>I find it hard to believe that during the great depression of the
>1880s and 1890s that 95 per cent of workers could afford to
>pay even low school fees. Where did you get this number from?
Church schools in 1891 were charging 10 shillings a year -- about �30 a
year in today's pound. A poor working man would have been earning about
�1500 a year in today's pound. �30 a year was not sufficient for all the
cost of schooling per child but there were also substantial voluntary
injections. From 1800 school attendance rose from about 80% to 99-100% by
1850.
(MH)
>My own family had a terrible time - my father's grandparents
>on his father's side died in the workhouse along with two of their
>sons. My father's mother suffered several miscarriages and infant
>mortalities at that time which tells a great deal about nutrition
>and working conditions.
Yes, my family's background was very similar. One of my great-grandfathers
died in his 30s (falling off a roof) leaving his wife with a family of
three. But let me mention again, life expectancy was steadily rising all
through this period.
(MH)
>After that period she carried three
>children to term and adulthood. My father and his siblings
>attended a Church of England school (where my first wife taught
>fifty years later) - no fees. These conditions were general in
>the cities and industrial towns at that time.
They were not general. As already said, most poor working parents could
afford school fees (most of the time anyway) all through the 19th century.
(MH)
>No Friendly Society could survive the impact of a great depression
>in industrial cities and towns.
But they did! And this was the very reason they were formed -- to get
members through the bad times when there was a strike or a lock-out or a
trade recession. (The last were always brief compared with the
government-induced Great Depression.) From their inception, the Friendly
Societies grew steadily all through the period. Their numbers of members
were not finally exceeded by those of trade unions until 1945.
(MH)
>It took the taxing power of the state,
>which is why the state schemes were introduced by Lloyd George
>and Winston Churchill in the great Liberal budget of 1907.
I think present-day historians (such as Cannadine) would now attribute the
growth of the welfare state at that period more to do with the imperial
culture of the times growing both outwards (to the British Empire) and
inwards. It wasn't to do with altruism to the ordinary person (though
dressed up as that by Oxbridge types in the civil service). England was
really in a state of panic in those times -- mainly because of the fast
catching up of an industrialising Germany. In some respects, Bismark's
Hochschulen and Poltekniks, state welfare systems, militarism and so on had
already overtaken England's by the turn of the century.
Keith Hudson
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�Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in
order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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