Abstract
At the aggregate level there appears to be little doubt about Britain’s continuing progress in the Edwardian age. Recent calculations indicate a steady rise in the principal indicators — Gross National Product, consumers’ expenditure, and income from employment. In percapita terms, net national income (at current prices) increased from £36 in 1890 to £43 in 1900 and £51 in 1914, while consumers’ expenditure (at 1913 prices), £37 in 1890, was £43 in 1900 and £45 in 1914.1 But the distribution of this increased wealth, which had obsessed the late Victorians, continued to haunt Edwardians. The existence of wide spread poverty in the midst of plenty, revealed in the path-breaking investigations of Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree in London and York, was reaffirmed in studies of a number of towns, including Middlesbrough, Northampton and Warrington.2 There was also a veritable explosion of popular publications, notably Chiozza Money’s Riches and Poverty, Masterman’s The Condition of England, Reeves’s Round About a Pound a Week, and Ponsonby’s The Camel and the Needle’s Eye.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliographical Notes
At the national level, the reports of the Board of Trade provide a great deal of the necessary statistical material. Of particular interest are Changes in Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour and Standard Time Rates of Wages. The major findings are summarised in the Annual Abstract of Labour Statistics. Equally indispensable are the reports on working-class conditions Memorandum on the Consumption of Food and the Cost-of-Living of the Working Classes in Urban Districts, 1903 (PP ,1903, LXVII), and 1904 (PP, 1905, LXXXIV), and the Board of Trade Inquiry into Working-Class Rents, Housing, and Retail Prices, 1905 (PP, 1908, cvII) and 1912 (PP, 1913, LXVI). Some of the most important series have also been assembled in B. R. Mitchell and P. Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962); and C. H. Feinstein, National Income, Expenditure, and Output of the United Kingdom, 1855–1965 (Cambridge, 1972). The ‘received view’ of the period is derived from those who have used and added to the following material: G. H. wood, ‘Real Wages and the Standard of Comfort Since 1850’, JRSS, LxxIII (1909), repr. in E. M. Carus-Wilson (ed.), Essays in Economic History, vol. in (1962); A. L. Bowley, Wages and Income in the United Kingdom since 1860 (Cambridge, 1937); and, more recently, E. H. Phelps Brown and M. Browne, A Century of Pay (1968). A further variant is offered by J: Kuczynski, in A Short History of Labour Conditions Under Industrial Capitalism, vol. 1 (1942). A brief but useful summary of the economic explanation of the check to real wages can be found in W. A. Lewis, Growth and Fluctuations, 1870–1913 (1978). The regional and local evidence is frustratingly thin, but E. H. Hunt, Regional Wage Variations in Britain, 1850–1914 (Oxford, 1973) is essential reading. For London there is Frances Wood, ‘The Course of Real Wages in London, 1900–12’, JRSS, LXXVII (1913); and, for Sheffield, S. Pollard, ‘Wages and Earnings in the Sheffield Trades, 1851–1914’, γBESR, vI (1954). At the industrial level, J. W. F. Rowe, Wages in Practice and Theory (1928), contains valuable information on five industries as well as important caveats for would-be users of the data. There is also much useful material in K. Burgess, The Origins of British Industrial Relations (1975). Further reading on coal should include A. Slaven, ‘Earnings and Productivity in the Scottish Coal-mining Industry during the Nineteenth-Century: The Dixon Enterprises’, in P. L. Payne (ed.), Studies in Scottish Business History (1967); and R. Walters, ‘Labour Productivity in the South Wales Steam-coal Industry, 1870–1914’, EcHR, xxvIII (1975). Finally, for a more general introduction to the subject, with a broader perspective, there is little to beat A. J. P. Taylor’s chapter ‘The Economy’ in S. Nowell-Smith (ed.), Edwardian England, 1901–1914 (1964). E. H. Phelps Brown, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (1959) remains a useful source, and W. Ashworth, An Economic History of England, 1870–1939 (1960), and S. Pollard and D. W. Crossley, The Wealth of Britain 1085–1966 (1968) may also be consulted, although the latter’s use of Kuczynski is sometimes confusing. Of the wealth of writing on the working class during the period, the following appear to offer the most important insights: G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London (Oxford, 1971) — although the analysis is really confined to the nineteenth century; P. N. Stearns, Lives of Labour: Work in a Maturing Industrial Society (1975); P. Thompson, The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (1975) — although the remarks on the standard of living are rather bland; and S. Meacham, A Life Apart: The English Working Class 1890–1914 (1977).
Editor information
Copyright information
© 1979 Walter L. Arnstein, Suzann Buckley, Peter Cain, Dennis Dean, T. R. Gourvish, Colin Nicolson, Alan O’Day, G. R. Searle
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gourvish, T.R. (1979). The Standard of Living, 1890–1914. In: O’Day, A. (eds) The Edwardian Age: Conflict and Stability 1900–1914. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15854-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15854-6_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-26579-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-15854-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)