Incomes

Abstract

The pressure of population on limited land resources and shrinking employment opportunities in rural areas were certainly important in pushing people into the towns and cities. But ‘pull’ was probably always more important than ‘push’ in migration and undoubtedly the city had its attractions. The city meant ‘life’, excitement, thrills for the young. It could mean independence from the restraints of the family. Even in Engels’s Manchester many single people were setting up homes with friends of their own age before they got married: asserting their independence from their parents. For the single girl the city offered a greater chance of marriage than she was ever likely to get in a village. But, most important of all, it offered higher earnings. The young male migrant to the city could expect to earn roughly 50 per cent more than he could as an agricultural labourer. This was true throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, and probably the gap between town and country widened fractionally in the first decade of the twentieth century.¹ Also, in the towns, there were many opportunities for jobs other than labouring. With some experience of rural crafts, a man could hope to move to a skilled position in the building trades or in engineering. Money could be made in the towns and earnings were rising.

The general conclusion from all the facts is, that what has happened to the working classes in the last fifty years is not so much what may properly be called an improvement, as a revolution of the most remarkable description…. From being a dependent class without future and hope, the masses of working men have in fact got into a position from which they may effectually advance to almost any degree of civilisation.

Robert Giffen, Essays in Finance (1887), p. 473.