Spinning the industrial revolution
The prevailing explanation for why the Industrial Revolution occurred first in Britain during the last quarter of the eighteenth century is Robert Allen’s (2009) ‘high-wage economy’ view, which claims that the high cost of labour relative to capital and fuel incentivized innovation and the adoption...
| Главные авторы: | , |
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| Формат: | Journal article |
| Язык: | English |
| Опубликовано: |
Wiley
2018
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| _version_ | 1826271828702658560 |
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| author | Humphries, K Schneider, B |
| author_facet | Humphries, K Schneider, B |
| author_sort | Humphries, K |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | The prevailing explanation for why the Industrial Revolution occurred first in Britain during the last quarter of the eighteenth century is Robert Allen’s (2009) ‘high-wage economy’ view, which claims that the high cost of labour relative to capital and fuel incentivized innovation and the adoption of new techniques. This paper presents new empirical evidence on hand spinning before the Industrial Revolution and demonstrates that there was no such ‘high-wage economy’ in spinning, a leading sector of industrialization. We quantify the working lives of frequently ignored female and child spinners who were crucial to the British textile industry with evidence of productivity and wages from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Spinning emerges as a widespread, low-productivity, low-wage employment, in which wages did not rise substantially in advance of the jenny and water frame. The motivation for mechanization must be sought elsewhere. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T22:02:53Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:4f321519-a0b7-4879-a521-139cbca81b25 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T22:02:53Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:4f321519-a0b7-4879-a521-139cbca81b252022-03-26T16:05:40ZSpinning the industrial revolutionJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:4f321519-a0b7-4879-a521-139cbca81b25EnglishSymplectic Elements at OxfordWiley2018Humphries, KSchneider, BThe prevailing explanation for why the Industrial Revolution occurred first in Britain during the last quarter of the eighteenth century is Robert Allen’s (2009) ‘high-wage economy’ view, which claims that the high cost of labour relative to capital and fuel incentivized innovation and the adoption of new techniques. This paper presents new empirical evidence on hand spinning before the Industrial Revolution and demonstrates that there was no such ‘high-wage economy’ in spinning, a leading sector of industrialization. We quantify the working lives of frequently ignored female and child spinners who were crucial to the British textile industry with evidence of productivity and wages from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Spinning emerges as a widespread, low-productivity, low-wage employment, in which wages did not rise substantially in advance of the jenny and water frame. The motivation for mechanization must be sought elsewhere. |
| spellingShingle | Humphries, K Schneider, B Spinning the industrial revolution |
| title | Spinning the industrial revolution |
| title_full | Spinning the industrial revolution |
| title_fullStr | Spinning the industrial revolution |
| title_full_unstemmed | Spinning the industrial revolution |
| title_short | Spinning the industrial revolution |
| title_sort | spinning the industrial revolution |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT humphriesk spinningtheindustrialrevolution AT schneiderb spinningtheindustrialrevolution |