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Example research essay topic: British Industrialism 1780 1850 10 4 Part 2 - 1,898 words

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... the growth of output per worker (labour productivity) in different parts of the economy. A tentative classification suggests the following. 1. The growth of productivity in agriculture (labor intensive) was somewhat faster than that in industry (hi tech). 2. Within industry were to be found the few sectors where productivity growth was really fast; most notably in textiles, with its radical changes in technology. But alongside these famous industries were a large set of traditional activities, including building, and the food, brewing and leather industries, where there was virtually no advance in productivity.

I should note that the 'European norms' with respect to the class formation / alteration can be thought of as a measure of the average experience of Western European countries at the point in time when they eventually reached the level of income per head which Britain had attained in the year stated. Take, for example, in Britain had 47. 3 % of its male labour force in industry while the other European countries enjoyed only 25. 3 %. There certainly occurred enormous change in economic structure in Britain between 1760 and 1840: the expansion of the share of labour and output devoted to industry and the decline of the share of agriculture. It is no wonder now why, instead of having the nation of farmers, Britain had a working class.

I should mention the fact that the British economy in 1840 had a much lower proportion of its labour force in agriculture than the European countries at the corresponding stage in their development (28. 6 % against 54. 9 %), but a much higher degree of industrialisation and of urbanisation. As a result, Britain had a much better developed class stratification than any other country. Speaking about the key implications of the British industrialization for the class formation in Great Britain, I should note that the term 'industrial revolution' is, of course, a metaphor and, as has long been recognised, it is in some ways a misleading one. The notion can now be more fully clarified in the light of the information summarised above.

There was a revolutionary change in the structure of employment and class formation. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the proportion of the labour force employed in industry increased, and the proportion employed in agriculture fell very rapidly. Much of the employment in industry continued to be in small-scale, handicraft activities producing for local markets and that employment would not create the new class in Great Britain. These traditional industries were barely affected by technological advance, and so experienced little or no increase in output per worker. The acceleration in the overall pace of economic growth was perceptible, but relatively modest.

There was no great leap forward for the economy as a whole, or even for the whole of industry, despite the spectacular growth of cotton textile production. The rate of economic growth increased as more was invested in fixed capital, and productivity growth quickened. There were deservedly famous technological advances such as Crompton's mule and Watt's steam engine. These developments aided Britain's exports of manufactures. However, in most of the economy, productivity growth remained painfully slow in the first half of the nineteenth century.

I will also present an interesting fact here that the mid-nineteenth century Britain is often labeled the 'workshop of the world', and the advance of productivity in a few industries did indeed enable Britain to sell around half of all world trade in manufactures. However, this should not blind one to the key implication of industrialization: the main feature of British industrialisation involved getting a lot of workers into the industrial sector, not getting a high level of output per worker from them once they were there. One should also not forget that co-existing with the cotton and the other famous export sectors in the British Economy during industrialization were many low productivity, low-paid and non-exporting industries. Yet these were the industries from which the workers fled to join bigger companies and thus form the working class.

Speaking about the role of agriculture I should certainly note that the unusually low share of employment in agriculture in Britain (as compared to Europe) by the early nineteenth century prompts the question: how did this happen? At one level it is quite easy to explain. By international standards labour productivity in British agriculture was very high (in 1840, for example, output per worker in French agriculture was only about 60 % of the British level), and it had grown till the beginning of the XX century. Agricultural workers, lower the proportion of industry workers, and, therefore lower the number of people in the working class. I should also note that productivity is the term used for the relationship between output and one or more of the factors of production (land, labour, capital) and certainly was the reason for the working class formation. Changes over time tell us about changes in the efficiency with which the factors are used to produce goods and services.

The most common use of the term is in relation to labour productivity, which measures the change in output per worker. Without the increased productivity, there would not be working class and the majority of people would sit at home and take care of their farms. Another familiar measure is the productivity of land, for example of farm output per acre. Both of these measure efficiency in relation to a single factor. In the case of labour productivity this means that we have no way of judging how much of any increase is the result of, say, harder work on the part of the labour force, and how much is the result of more capital equipment, To get round this problem it is necessary to find a way to measure the growth of e combined inputs of land, labour and capital, and when this is done we can measure changes in the efficiency of all inputs taken together. This is called total factor productivity.

Speaking about the Standards of living of the working class during the British Industrialization of 1780 till 1860, I should note that the impact of early industrialisation on workers' living standards has, of course, long been controversial. The view of economic growth presented above offers some useful perspectives on this debate. The new, lower, estimates of growth in the economy as a whole suggest that the slow growth of real wages came from low productivity growth and very modest increases in the amount of capital equipment per worker, rather than from a massive increase in profits at the expense of wages. Over the period 1780 - 1850 real wages and real national income per head probably grew at the same rate. The finding that relatively little employment initially was in sectors experiencing rapid productivity growth also has important implications for the distribution of the gains from economic growth.

The modernised sectors were concentrated in the North of England, where wage rates became much higher than in the South. This differential was not eliminated by internal migration. It is possible that a majority of workers experienced no gain in real earnings before the 1830 s. In conclusion I should like to speak a little bit about the later economic performance of the British Economy that was initially boosted and fueled by the industrialization of 1780 - 1860.

The picture of economic growth during the industrial revolution as mentioned above can be elaborated to make greater sense of Britain's relative decline later on in the nineteenth century. It is certainly true that Britain in 1850 had the highest income level in the world, and accounted for perhaps a third of total world industrial production. Nevertheless, some aspects of the British Industrialized development to that point were not impressive and did not hold out promise of subsequent rapid growth. The British exports were dominated by textiles, and increasingly sold to the low income countries rather than to those already industrialized. Productivity advance in Great Britain during the industrialization years was not spectacular across the economy as a whole. One must not forget that the development of the British economy before end of the industrialization which happened in 1860 was based neither on very high levels of home investment, nor on modern financial institutions.

As a result, the capital market was ill-suited to ensuring an efficient use of invisible funds. Finally, by the mid-nineteenth century Britain's early start and considerable wealth led naturally to the development of a substantial stream of investment abroad, reaching around 5 % of national income by the end of the 1860 s. The profits from this foreign investment perhaps inhibited subsequent investment in home manufacturing through their effects on the balance of external payments. One must not forget that while it is useful to see how many of the roots of Britain's problems in the late nineteenth century reach back to the pattern of development in the earlier period, this does not detract from the importance of the first industrial revolution. Even if we now believe that it proceeded at a relatively modest pace, and that the really revolutionary changes were for long confined to a limited part of the whole economy, it remains true that Britain had brought about a remarkable transformation in the way a society provided itself with material goods. This will always be seen as an event of the greatest historical significance.

References: Bergmann, Barbara. 1971. "The Effect on White Incomes of Discrimination in Employment. " Journal of Political Economy, 79 (March/April): 294 - 313. Burnette, Joyce. 1999. "Labourers at the Oakes: Changes in the Demand for Female Day-Laborers at a Farm near Sheffield during the Agricultural Revolution. " Journal of Economic History, 59 (March): 41 - 67. Pinchbeck, Ivy. 1956 and 1957. "State and the Child in Sixteenth-Century England. " British Journal of Sociology, 7 (Dec. ): 273 - 285 and 8 (Mar. ): 59 - 74. Walker, Kenneth. 1949.

Review of The Early Factory Legislation: A Study in Legislative and Administrative Evolution, by Maurice Walton Thomas. Journal of Economic History, 9 (Nov. ): 247 - 248. OBrien, 2002, The Industrial Revolution and British Society, McGraw Hill, 78 - 89. Fleischman, Richard, 2001, What Is Past Is Prologue: Cost Accounting in the British Industrial Revolution, 1760 - 1850 (New Works in Accounting History), NY Random House, 23 - 37.

Motor, Joel, 2000, The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective, Penguin books, 77 - 92. Williamson, Jeffrey, 2002, Coping with City Growth during the British Industrial Revolution, Prentice Hall, 122 - 137. Lloyd-Jones, Roger, 2000, British Industrial Capitalism Since the Industrial Revolution, Penguin books, 231 - 244. Duffy, Ian, 1999, Bankruptcy and Insolvency in London During the Industrial Revolution (British Economic History), prentice Hall, 13 - 22. Davis, Ralph, 1998, Industrial Revolution and the British Overseas Trade, 67 - 85. Henderson, W.

O, 2002, Britain and industrial Europe, 1750 - 1870: studies in British influence on the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe, NY Random House, 90 - 112. Hartwell, R. M, 1967, The Causes of the Industrial Revolution in England (Debates in Economic History series, London Press, p. 13. Wrigley, E. A. 1989, Continuity, Chance and Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge UP, 22 - 25.

Poland, Karl, 1944, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, London. 34 - 36.


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Research essay sample on British Industrialism 1780 1850 10 4 Part 2

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