North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell
Gaskell (1810-1865) wrote a number of novels that examined social issues in England, and some were deeply critical of industrialization. But her novel North and South, originally serialized by Dickens, compared the rural and aristocratic south of England with the rapidly industrializing north. It is a great, great book. It was originally recommended to me by a friend as an antidote to the apparent anti-capitalism in Dickens' novels. Gaskell shows all sides sympathetically but makes clear that the higher productivity of manufacturing benefits the working class.
The businessman hero of North and South decides, after building a successful enterprise, to get the education he never could afford or have time for as a young man. He hires a tutor and learns though directed readings and evening discussions. He also becomes involved in discussions on social issues and economics with his new tutor's daughter. She is none too pleased to have had to move from her quiet rural life in the south of England to the rude, free-wheeling, seemingly chaotic world of the industrializing north of England.
Workers become less deferential to aristocrats as they become better fed and more independent. Aristocrats, naturally, don't much like this new age where contracts replace status. Former peasants look them right in the eye instead of gazing downward. The BBC miniseries of North and South, is less clear on economic benefits to workers from industrialization. There are some clues though. The family can't find a sub-servant for the house, for example, because wages and opportunities are higher in the manufacturing north. Potential household demands better wages and would be both less deferential and less dependent. Wealthy industrialists can still afford household help, but not the less-wealthy who had become accustomed to such help in the agricultural south of England. But this good news for workers is presented only as bad news for the family, as the daughter now has to do more work herself around the house.
In the novel, much more is presented on the benefits of manufacturing to the working class. Workers are better fed than in the south, Margaret Hale observes. Cotton clothes, which Thorton's spoiled sister despises as "common" are of course welcomed by the great majority who could not afford linen clothes along with servants to maintain it. The great majority of the day were of course impoverished by later standards and newly inexpensive machine-woven cotton immediately improved their lives.
Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her study The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age writes of North and South: The heroine, Margaret Hale "experiences that enlargement of sympathy and sensibility which permits her to appreciate the crude virtues of industrialism, the kindness and candor that lie behind the brusque manners of rich and poor alike, the absence of social pretensions among the manufacturers in spite of their ostentatious display of wealth, and the independence of the workers in spite of their misery and discontent. Rural society appears to her more genteel and gracious but also less energetic and vital, more amiable in social relations but less democratic and less free." And, Himmelfarb notes, "The servants in the north, Margaret Hale finds, are less accommodating, more impertinent than those in the south; but they are also less servile and more natural--better human beings if worse servants. And the factory workers, rough and bold by southern standards, have an "open, fearless manner" she can only admire." (p. 511)
Victorianweb.org has a brief article here that discusses an article in the Illustrated London News reporting on the widely appreciated economic progress enjoyed by manufacturing workers. Their incomes were higher, reflecting their higher productivity as workers, and prices of many goods were falling as new manufacturing increased output and costs. An observation of Mr. Hale is included in the Victorianweb post: "compare one of these houses with our Helstone cottages [in the south]. I see furniture here which our laborers would never have thought of buying, and food commonly used which they would consider luxuries. (p. 212)
North and South gives us a sense of the spirit of enterprise as cities like Manchester were industrializing. Lots of pollution, but pollution was a by-product of expanding manufacturing output. New technologies reduced pollution not so much to clear the air, but to reduce fuel costs. The price of cloth and clothing fell, as new machines could make in hours what past hand looms took days and weeks to produce. (And with the repeal of the Corn Laws, taxes on imported grain, food prices fell too.)
Both the book and the miniseries of North and South are recommended to anyone for pure entertainment, but also to glimpse the world-changing gains and trade-offs of the industrial revolution, whether in England of the 1800s or in India or China today.
These articles from The Freeman discusses working conditions during the Industrial Revolution:
• The Industrial Revolution: Working Class Poverty or Prosperity? and
• Child Labor and the British Industrial Revolution by Lawrence Reed (1991)
• Book Review: Child Labor And The Industrial Revolution by Clark Nardinelli (1991)
• Facts about the Industrial Revolution by Ludwig von Mises (1956)
At a seminar in Houston some years ago, I remember a top student from a leading Houston prep school comment, after a presentation on the benefits of the Industrial Revolution, that he had never before heard anyone praise it. Understanding what happened, and why, as England's textile industry industrialized a century and a half ago influences our views today.
Here is a recent and shorter article with an overview of recent scholarship:
