Spinning the industrial revolution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3554484 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jane Humphries (0009-0004-0797-3080, All Souls College, University of Oxford), Benjamin Schneider (0000-0002-4308-9581, Merton College, University of Oxford) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 72 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 126-155 |
| Publication date | 2019-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ehr.12693 |
| OpenAlex | W1492520948 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 45 |
| References cited | 36 |
The prevailing explanation for why the industrial revolution occurred first in Britain during the last quarter of the eighteenth century is Allen's '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 article presents new empirical evidence on hand spinning before the industrial revolution and demonstrates that there was no such 'high wage economy' in spinning, which was 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 introduction of the jenny and water frame. The motivation for mechanization must be sought elsewhere
Capital (architecture) · Economics · Economy · Empirical evidence · Industrial Revolution · Industrialisation · Labour economics · Macroeconomics · Market economy · Political science · Productivity · Quarter (Canadian coin) · Real wages · Textile industry · Wage · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law
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Rémunérer et compter le travail sur les chantiers Médicis (fin xvie siècle-début xviie siècle)
Pre-industrial ‘charity land’ and the dynamics of rural poverty in south-west England, 1656–1739
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Gender equality, growth, and how a technological trap destroyed female work
The Creation of a Gendered Division of Labor in Mule Spinning
No es oro todo lo que reluce
From Sellers to Spinners. Women’s Work and the Moral Economy in a Swedish Mining Town, 1710–1770
Temporal Deficit Ratio of Households
Global History with Chinese Characteristics
Class structure and inequality during the industrial revolution
Sweatshops at work? An exploration through bibliometric analysis
Women and Children in the Machine-Made Lace Industry in Britain and France (1810–60)
Structural change and economic development in the Islamic Middle East 700–1500
Colluding against Workers
The Mechanics of the Industrial Revolution
Instructing the Young and Comforting the Aged in the Norwich and Norfolk Institution for the Indigent Blind, ca. 1805–55
Losing the thread
The expansion of basic education during ‘deskilling’ technological change in England and Wales, c . 1780–1830
Mistaken wages
Spinning their wheels
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Two worlds of female labour
Egoism and cooperation in economic development - a historical approach
Agricultural Workers’ Standard of Living During Central Chile's Agrarian Expansion, 1870-1930
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Are some piece rates better than others? Cross-sectional variation in piece rates at a US cotton factory
Children’s work and wages in Britain, 1280–1860
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Rural Workers and the Role of the Rural in Eighteenth-Century English Food Rioting
Six Centuries of Real Wages in France from Louis IX to Napoleon III
Assessing female accountability in the long eighteenth century through debt imprisonment
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Women workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850
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The Fabric of Life
Before the Luddites
The Spinning Jenny
Woollen Manufacturing in Yorkshire
A Merseyside Town in the Industrial Revolution
The Assessment of Wages in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution
The Wages of Women in England, 1260-1850
The Industrial Revolution in Miniature
The Spinning Jenny and the Industrial Revolution
The First Industrial Woman
Th'ancient Distaff' and 'Whirling Spindle
The long march of history
An Innovation and Its Diffusion
Poverty in Early-Stuart Salisbury
Why the industrial revolution was British
The lure of aggregates and the pitfalls of the patriarchal perspective
An Essex Clothier of the Eighteenth Century
Documents Illustrating the Wiltshire Textile Trades in the Eighteenth Century
The Cloth Industry in the West of England from 1640 to 1880
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Gender and Skills
| Unique citing works | 45 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5,63 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 37 |