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Regional wage variations in Britain 1850–1914
306
REVIEWS
open-field basis. That the original estates in England were normally of British origin is revealed by the inclusion among their dues of Welsh ale. Although, like sherry today, Welsh ale had come to designate a particular kind of drink, its inclusion indicates that the early Britons were competent cultivators and not merely footloose herders. Nevertheless, the interpretation of settlement history which has persisted, even over the past two decades, is that adopted with not a little ethnic nostalgia by English historians from their Teutonic colleagues. According to this view, the starting point of English social history was not the manor but the community of immigrant warrior-peasants, free and equal. In origin, and in essential features discernible to the end, Anglo-Saxon England was deemed to have been a land of village communities whose Germanic institutions drew nothing of significance from either British or Roman antecedents. From the outset the peasant, with a holding large enough to support him in independence, was envisaged as a member of a rustic democracy, and, among other activities, he was assumed to associate with his fellows in the regulation of the common fields of his village. Historical geographers, with rare exceptions, were content to emulate the German surveyor Meitzen and did little more than provide illustration for this ethnic model. Even the “new geographers” envisage their Thiinian models of settlement and land-use simplistically in terms of unitary English villages from which colonisation expanded outwards. Yet, by virtue of their training, geographers were better placed than other scholars to question those critics of Finberg who asserted that the continuity he had postulated for Withington was due solely to the lie of the land. Compared with the Germanist view, the reinterpretations presented in this volume are, paradoxically, in much closer harmony with recent and current trends in geography, whether concerned with systems analysis, resource management or the growing preoccupation with the under-privileged. This masterly survey provides essential reading for all forward-looking historical geographers. University of Leeds
GLANVILLEJONES
E. H. HUNT, Regional Wage Variations in Britain 1850-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. Pp. xii+388. E8.25) The discussion over standards of living during the industrial revolution in Britain continues; very recently M. W. Flinn in the Economic History Review has brought together much of the evidence on temporal indices of wages and prices for 1750-1850. But in the discussion to date, emphasis has been on these temporal changes or on differences between one sector of society and another; the spatial variations have been largely neglected. In Regional wage variations in Britain 1850-1914, Dr Hunt focusses attention on this gap and the light that he sheds on it also illuminates a wider field of nineteenth-century economic affairs. Dr Hunt has drawn on a wide range of sources starting with such classics as A. L. Bowley’s sets of statistics. He marshalls this information within a clearly structured argument to present his case for marked and persistent regional wage variations. The discussion is set within a framework of thirteen regions, chosen on compromise criteria of similarity of wages, general economic criteria and considerations of scale; but this framework is rarely constricting and Dr Hunt ably portrays his variations at all scales from national to very local. The argument is based on an opening discussion of variations in the money wages paid to males, adjusted for payment in kind, during the period. By considering rents, prices, the participation of women and children in the labour force and their wages, Dr Hunt then assesses how far variations in wages of males were compensated by differences in prices and family earnings. Obviously, Dr Hunt has not been able to consider all occupational groups; he directs his main attention to agricultural wagesimportant not only because of the numbers involved but because they formed a standard
REVIEWS
307
by which other wages were set-and to the wages of building workers, coalminers and the police. These are supplemented, however, by a less systematic though effective use of information on wages from a far wider field. The discussion shows that in 1850 there were two main high wage areas : first London, and second the northern English counties and parts of the Midlands as far south as Birmingham. During the following 64 years this pattern persisted except that South Wales joined the high wage area that now extended into Scotland. But by 1914 the differences in wages were no longer so marked. Superimposed on this main pattern were other variations including one related to city size. Having established the nature and persistence of these wage variations, Dr Hunt considers their causes. He examines first the demand for labour, as shown by shifts in occupational figures, and the way this demand was influenced by varying productivity levels. He then turns to consider supply aspects in terms of the natural increase of the population, internal migration and the effects of Irish and Jewish immigration. Finally there is a chapter on the effects of trade-unionism and employers’ associations. Throughout this discussion the underlying argument is that of regional inequality models. Dr Hunt sees the prosperous North and Midlands as growth areas with expanding industrial sectors attracting capital and managerial capabilities and paying high wages to a productive labour force. By contrast, the rural South, with a high proportion of its labour force in declining activities, was trapped in the poverty cycle of an underdeveloped area. It even had the “mentality” of an overpopulated and underdeveloped area, maximising employment rather than labour productivity. Against the setting of high population growth rates throughout the country, the discussion of internal mobility reverts to more neo-classical economic models, but Dr Hunt sees the considerable internal migration as working against a widening of regional differentials rather than causing any convergence, while the Irish immigrants after the 1830s are thought to have exacerbated the problem. Although there seems to have been no increase in inequality after 1850 and, after 1890, some convergence, what is emphasised is the way in which the free market forces tended to maintain the disparities. It was an organisational change in the form of the growth of “new unionism” and employers’ associations after 1890, together with the development of national bargaining, that brought about convergence. Dr Hunt touches on so many aspects of nineteenth-century life and so many questions are raised by his analysis that there is a wealth of topics here all demanding fuller examination. One wishes that the statistical analysis of the demand for labour, which tends to be repetitive and a little clumsy, could have been condensed to allow room for discussion of at least some of these topics. But one cannot ask for everything. Dr Hunt has been entirely straightforward with his readers, he has brought together a wealth of information, he has built with this a clear and lucid argument, but more than all, he has raised a great number of important questions that will surely provoke vigorous and useful debate. New&am College, Cambridge
LUCY ADRIAN
J. G. POUNDS, An Economic History of Medieval Europe (London: Longman, 1974. Pp. xii+562. g4.95) Professor Pounds occupies a chair in Geography and History, a circumstance unusual enough in itself, and he has provoked more than a flutter of interest by the publication within a year of each other of this economic history of medieval Europe and also An historical geography of Europe 450 B.C.-A.D. 1330. Those who value an inter-disciplinary approach to history will be curious to know whether Professor Pounds has used his opportunity for “combined operations” in geography and history by asking new questions, by fishing in disputed waters and by innovating generally. Any such hopes are unfulfilled. Professor Pounds appears not to drive the horses of geography and history N.
113-x
REVIEWS
open-field basis. That the original estates in England were normally of British origin is revealed by the inclusion among their dues of Welsh ale. Although, like sherry today, Welsh ale had come to designate a particular kind of drink, its inclusion indicates that the early Britons were competent cultivators and not merely footloose herders. Nevertheless, the interpretation of settlement history which has persisted, even over the past two decades, is that adopted with not a little ethnic nostalgia by English historians from their Teutonic colleagues. According to this view, the starting point of English social history was not the manor but the community of immigrant warrior-peasants, free and equal. In origin, and in essential features discernible to the end, Anglo-Saxon England was deemed to have been a land of village communities whose Germanic institutions drew nothing of significance from either British or Roman antecedents. From the outset the peasant, with a holding large enough to support him in independence, was envisaged as a member of a rustic democracy, and, among other activities, he was assumed to associate with his fellows in the regulation of the common fields of his village. Historical geographers, with rare exceptions, were content to emulate the German surveyor Meitzen and did little more than provide illustration for this ethnic model. Even the “new geographers” envisage their Thiinian models of settlement and land-use simplistically in terms of unitary English villages from which colonisation expanded outwards. Yet, by virtue of their training, geographers were better placed than other scholars to question those critics of Finberg who asserted that the continuity he had postulated for Withington was due solely to the lie of the land. Compared with the Germanist view, the reinterpretations presented in this volume are, paradoxically, in much closer harmony with recent and current trends in geography, whether concerned with systems analysis, resource management or the growing preoccupation with the under-privileged. This masterly survey provides essential reading for all forward-looking historical geographers. University of Leeds
GLANVILLEJONES
E. H. HUNT, Regional Wage Variations in Britain 1850-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. Pp. xii+388. E8.25) The discussion over standards of living during the industrial revolution in Britain continues; very recently M. W. Flinn in the Economic History Review has brought together much of the evidence on temporal indices of wages and prices for 1750-1850. But in the discussion to date, emphasis has been on these temporal changes or on differences between one sector of society and another; the spatial variations have been largely neglected. In Regional wage variations in Britain 1850-1914, Dr Hunt focusses attention on this gap and the light that he sheds on it also illuminates a wider field of nineteenth-century economic affairs. Dr Hunt has drawn on a wide range of sources starting with such classics as A. L. Bowley’s sets of statistics. He marshalls this information within a clearly structured argument to present his case for marked and persistent regional wage variations. The discussion is set within a framework of thirteen regions, chosen on compromise criteria of similarity of wages, general economic criteria and considerations of scale; but this framework is rarely constricting and Dr Hunt ably portrays his variations at all scales from national to very local. The argument is based on an opening discussion of variations in the money wages paid to males, adjusted for payment in kind, during the period. By considering rents, prices, the participation of women and children in the labour force and their wages, Dr Hunt then assesses how far variations in wages of males were compensated by differences in prices and family earnings. Obviously, Dr Hunt has not been able to consider all occupational groups; he directs his main attention to agricultural wagesimportant not only because of the numbers involved but because they formed a standard
REVIEWS
307
by which other wages were set-and to the wages of building workers, coalminers and the police. These are supplemented, however, by a less systematic though effective use of information on wages from a far wider field. The discussion shows that in 1850 there were two main high wage areas : first London, and second the northern English counties and parts of the Midlands as far south as Birmingham. During the following 64 years this pattern persisted except that South Wales joined the high wage area that now extended into Scotland. But by 1914 the differences in wages were no longer so marked. Superimposed on this main pattern were other variations including one related to city size. Having established the nature and persistence of these wage variations, Dr Hunt considers their causes. He examines first the demand for labour, as shown by shifts in occupational figures, and the way this demand was influenced by varying productivity levels. He then turns to consider supply aspects in terms of the natural increase of the population, internal migration and the effects of Irish and Jewish immigration. Finally there is a chapter on the effects of trade-unionism and employers’ associations. Throughout this discussion the underlying argument is that of regional inequality models. Dr Hunt sees the prosperous North and Midlands as growth areas with expanding industrial sectors attracting capital and managerial capabilities and paying high wages to a productive labour force. By contrast, the rural South, with a high proportion of its labour force in declining activities, was trapped in the poverty cycle of an underdeveloped area. It even had the “mentality” of an overpopulated and underdeveloped area, maximising employment rather than labour productivity. Against the setting of high population growth rates throughout the country, the discussion of internal mobility reverts to more neo-classical economic models, but Dr Hunt sees the considerable internal migration as working against a widening of regional differentials rather than causing any convergence, while the Irish immigrants after the 1830s are thought to have exacerbated the problem. Although there seems to have been no increase in inequality after 1850 and, after 1890, some convergence, what is emphasised is the way in which the free market forces tended to maintain the disparities. It was an organisational change in the form of the growth of “new unionism” and employers’ associations after 1890, together with the development of national bargaining, that brought about convergence. Dr Hunt touches on so many aspects of nineteenth-century life and so many questions are raised by his analysis that there is a wealth of topics here all demanding fuller examination. One wishes that the statistical analysis of the demand for labour, which tends to be repetitive and a little clumsy, could have been condensed to allow room for discussion of at least some of these topics. But one cannot ask for everything. Dr Hunt has been entirely straightforward with his readers, he has brought together a wealth of information, he has built with this a clear and lucid argument, but more than all, he has raised a great number of important questions that will surely provoke vigorous and useful debate. New&am College, Cambridge
LUCY ADRIAN
J. G. POUNDS, An Economic History of Medieval Europe (London: Longman, 1974. Pp. xii+562. g4.95) Professor Pounds occupies a chair in Geography and History, a circumstance unusual enough in itself, and he has provoked more than a flutter of interest by the publication within a year of each other of this economic history of medieval Europe and also An historical geography of Europe 450 B.C.-A.D. 1330. Those who value an inter-disciplinary approach to history will be curious to know whether Professor Pounds has used his opportunity for “combined operations” in geography and history by asking new questions, by fishing in disputed waters and by innovating generally. Any such hopes are unfulfilled. Professor Pounds appears not to drive the horses of geography and history N.
113-x