E. Halévy, England in 1815, London: Ernest Benn, 1960, p.290.
4 Hammonds, op. cit., p. 72.
5 Although they were aware of this astonishingly slow rate of growth, the Hammonds subscribed to the thesis that wages were forced down by competition from the machines. Ibid., p. 71. In fact, the share of industry using power looms was too small before the 1820s to influence the level of wages.
6 F. Collier, The Family Economy of the Working Class in the Cotton Industry 1784-1833, Manchester University Press, p.43.
7 ‘The evidence suggests, therefore, that as the English and Scots handloom weavers left the trade, or died, their places were taken by low-grade Irish labour at starvation rates of wages.’ A. Redford, Labour Migration in England, Manchester University Press, 1964, p.42.
8 Halévy, op. cit., p. 292. For evidence of a drop in the price of cotton, see testimony of James Kay, a Bury cotton manufacturer, in a House of Commons committee report, cited in English Economic History, eds.: A. E. Bland, P. A. Brown and R.H. Tawney, London: G. Bell, 1933, p.501.
9 Halévy, op. cit., p.289.
10 Ibid., p. 290
11 Ibid., p.289, n.2.
12 Ibid., p.293
13 W. Radcliffe, Letters on the Evils of the Exportation of Cotton Yarns, Stockport, 1811.
14 W. Radcliffe, Origins of the New System of manufacture commonly called power- loom weaving, Stockport, 1828, p. 17.
15 Ibid., pp. 16, 106-7.
16 Hammonds, The Skilled Labourer, op. cit., pp. 278-9.
17 Op. cit., pp.54, 62, 66.
18 Ibid., p. 49.
19 The Speenhamland system of wage subsidies was introduced in 1795 to try and deal with this problem. ‘These allowances out of local rates were meant to keep labour above the starvation level at least. The system of outdoor relief, designed as a local expedient, spread rapidly throughout the country. Although they probably prevented much actual starvation, the wage subsidies did not keep real wages from falling.’ A. D. Gayer, W. W. Rostow, and A. J. Schwarts, The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy 1790-1850, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953, p. 56.
20 Op. cit., pp.48, 15-16.
21 Ibid., p.92.
22 Ibid., p.63.
23 Ibid., p. 92.
24 F.M.L. Thompson, ‘The Land Market’, op. cit., and R.J. Thompson, ‘An Enquiry into the Rent of Agricultural Land in England and Wales during the Nineteenth Century’, in Essays in Agrarian History, op. cit.
25 J. E. T. Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1903, p.486. Our emphases.
26 Op. cit., p. 59.
27 Op. cit., p. 283.
28 Rogers, op. cit., p.426. Aston, in his Picture of Manchester (1810), observed that attention in the city had been ‘too minutely directed to the value of land to sacrifice much to public convenience or the conservation of health’. Cited by Hammonds, The Town Labourer 1760-1832, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1919, p.45.
29 Op. cit., pp.58 and 65 ff.
30 Ibid., pp.48, 69, 70n.
31 Ibid., p. 56: our emphasis.
32 See, e.g., the account of the weavers’ strike of 1818, and the masters’ plan for a minimum wage, in Hammonds, The Skilled Labourer, pp. 109-126; on Sidmouth, ibid., pp. 86-7, 90-1 and 315.
33 Op. cit., pp. 66-7.
34 ibid., p. 176 ff.
35 P.J. Proudhon, What is Property? New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1970, translated by B.J. Tucker, pp. 183-184. Proudhon recognised the cathartic role of recessions when, having described how the idle land monopolist exploited labour and capital, he added: ‘Here, then, we have a society which is continually decimating itself, and which would destroy itself, did not the periodical occurrence of failures, bankruptcies, and political and economical catastrophes re-establish equilibrium, and distract attention from the real causes of the universal distress’ (ibid., p. 185).
36 W. G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1970, p. 226.
37 The Town Labourer, 1760-1832, op. cit., p. 44.
38 Ibid., p. 214.
A THEORY OF RECESSIONS
5 Speculation: a US Hypothesis
Pre-industrial modes of production were coherent. They functioned as stable systems over very
