THE SEARCH FOR WEALTH AND STABILITY

THE SEARCH FOR WEALTH AND STABILITY Essays in Economic and Social History presented to M. W. Flinn

Edited by T. C. SMOUT

M © Ailsa Maxwell, J. R. Ward, Alan Milward, Michael Palairet, George Hammersley, R. J. Morris, S. B. Saul, Wray Vamplew, Michael Cullen, Roger Davidson, Rosalind Mitchison, T. C. Smout, Stephanie Blackden, Ian Levitt 1979 Softcover reprint of the hardcover ISt edition 1979 978-0-333-23358-0

First published 1979 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD LontiiJII and Basingstokl AssociiJttJ ctmfXJt1ies in De/Jri Dublin Hong Kong Johatrneshurg Lagos Melboume }{fnJ York Singapore and Tokyo

Typeset by Santype International Ltd., Salisbury, Wilts

The Search for Wealth and stability 1. Great Britain -Social conditions -Addresses, essays, lectures I. Smout, Thomas Christopher II. Flinn, Michael Walter lectures lectures ISBN 978-1-349-03627-1 ISBN 978-1-349-03625-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-03625-7

T1rir book is sold JUbject to the standanJ Cf1lllijtions of the Nn &ole Agretmmt. Contents

~~~~ ~ List ~ Figures VIll List ~ Contributors IX List ~Abbreviations xi Introduction Xlll Publications~ Pr~essor M. W. Flinn, BA, Dip Ed., MA, D. Litt. XVII

PART I THE WIDER WORLD 21 21 A Planter and His Slaves in Eighteenth-century Jamaica ]. R. Ward 21

2 Strategies for Development in Agriculture: The Nine• teenth-century European Experience Alan Milward 21 3 The 'New' Immigration' and the Newest: Slavic Mi• grations from the Balkans to America and Industrial Europe since the Late Nineteenth Century Michael Palairet 43

PART II BRITAIN 67 4 Did It Fall or Was It Pushed? The Foleys and the End of the Charcoal Iron Industry in the Eighteenth Century George Hammersley 67 5 The Middle-Class and the Property Cycle during the Industrial Revolution R. ]. Morris 91 VI CONTENTS

6 Research and Development in British Industry from the End of the Nineteenth Century to the I 96os S. B. Saul I I4 7 Ungentlemanly Conduct: The Control of Soccer-crowd Behaviour in England, I888-I9I4 Wray Vamplew I 39 8 Charles Booth's Poverty Survey: Some New Approaches Michael Cullen I 55 9 Social Conflict and Social Administration: The Conci- liation Act in British Industrial Relations Roger Davidson I75

PART III SCOTLAND I99 ro The Creation of the Disablement Rule in the Scottish Poor Law Rosalind Mitchison I99 I I The Strange Intervention of Edward Twistleton: Paisley in Depression, I84I-3 T. C. Smout 2I8 I2 The Poor Law and Wealth: A Survey of Parochial Medical Aid in Glasgow, I845-I900 Stephanie Blackden 243 I3 The Scottish Poor Law and Unemployment, I890-I929 Ian Levitt 263 Index 283 List of Tables

21 Income and expenditure at some Dean ironworks 75 2 Payments for woodcutting, cording and charcoal-burn- ing for ironworks, I 62os to I 740s 82 3 The debts of the Jowitt firm to the executors of John Jowitt, I8I6-42 94 4 Robert Jowitt: income, consumption and saVIngs, I8o6-62 96 5 Robert Jowitt: acquisition of assets, I810-6o IOO 6 Robert J owi tt: sources of income I 806-62, annual aver- ages IOI 7 John Atkinson: rental and finance, I8I5-32 I05 8 John Jowitt junior: loans and mortgages, I796--I8I4 I07 9 Age structure of solicitors, merchants and house proprie- tors, Great Britain I85I 109 IO Total capital investment in Great Britain, gas and rail- ways, I826-46 I I2 I I Percentage distribution of industrial R & D, I962 I26 I 2 Indicators of post-war advanced-technology achieve- ments I28 I3 R & D in pharmaceuticals, I950-67 I3I I4 R & D compared with net output, I96I I32 I5 Football clubs punished for crowd Inisbehaviour, I895-I9I2 I5I I 6 Classification of London children by teachers in elemen- tary schools I 64 I 7 Accommodation conditions in London, I89I I67 I 8 The poverty index and associated indices in London, I89I I6g Vlll LIST OF TABLES

'9 Correlation coefficients between the poverty index and associated indices 170 20 Correlation coefficients between various social indices in registration districts with a location index of 1 172 21 Correlation coefficients between various social indices in registration districts with location indices of 2 and 3 172 22 Breakdown of State and private arbitrators by occupa- tion J86 23 Source of charitable funds for Paisley relief, June 1841 to February 1843 227 24 Scales of poor relief in Scotland, 1920s 273

List of Figures

21 Robert Jowitt: consumption, household spending and prices, 1810-61 g8 2 Numbers dependent on the Paisley Relief Fund, July 1841 to February 1843 227 3 Relief scales at Paisley, November 1841 to February 18~ 2~ List of Contributors

STEPHANIE BLACKDEN teaches history and economic history at George Heriot's School, .

MICHAEL CULLEN is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Otago, New Zealand.

ROGER DA vmsoN IS Lecturer m Economic History at Edinburgh University.

G. HAMMERSLEY is Senior Lecturer in History at Edinburgh Univer• sity.

IAN LEVITT is Lecturer in Sociology, Plymouth Polytechnic.

AILSA MAXWELL was formerly Research Associate in the Department of Economic History at Edinburgh University.

ALAN MILWARD is Professor of European Studies at the University of Institute of Science and Technology.

ROSALIND MITCHISON is Reader in Economic History at Edinburgh University.

R. J· MORRIS is Lecturer in Economic History at Edinburgh Univer• sity.

MICHAEL PALAIRET is Lecturer in Economic History at Edinburgh University. X LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS s. B. SAUL is Vice-chancellor of the University of York.

T. c. SMOUT is Professor of Economic History at Edinburgh Univer• sity.

WRAY VAMPLEW is Senior Lecturer in Economic History at the Flinders University of South Australia.

J. R. WARD is Lecturer in Economic History at Edinburgh University. List of Abbreviations

(for Notes to Chapters)

AICP Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor APS Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland BAJ Business Archives Jowitt (Brotherston Library Leeds) BL British Library East. Easter EHR Economic History Review FA Football Association minute books FL Football League minute books Glos. RO Gloucestershire Record Office HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission Hil. Hilary Here. RO Herefordshire Record Office ]RSS Journal of Royal Statistical Society JSSL journal of the Statistical Society of London Mich. Michaelmas MRC Medical Research Council Mon. RO Monmouthshire Record Office NLS National Library of Scotland OECD Organisation for European Co-operation and Develop• ment PP Parliamentary Papers PRO Public Record Office R&D Research and Development SRO Scottish Record Office Trin. Trinity Introduction T. C. SMOUT

Michael Flinn arrived as a lecturer at Edinburgh University in the autumn of 1959, from holding a teaching position at Isleworth Grammar School, Middlesex: he was appointed by Professor A. J. Youngson, who had himself recently become the first holder of a chair of economic history in the university. Mr Flinn (as he then was) came, however, with an established reputation as a scholar of the iron industry whose revision article in the Economic History Review for 1958 (24)* was in many respects the starting point for our modern understanding of the industry in the eighteenth century. Three years later he published his monograph on the north-eastern iron-masters the Crowley family; this remains a remarkable illustration of what can be done in business history in the absence of a central set of business records. With the publication in 1961 of an introductory school textbook which continues to be widely used (1}, he had already accepted the challenge of reaching a wide audience. Perhaps, however, it was expounding to a large Scottish first-year class the historical mechanisms of economic growth and social change which brought him to develop on a broad front the two other main research interests which he has pursued throughout his academic career: population and public health on the one hand, and the Industrial Revolution on the other. His interest in population and public health led successively to the classic edition of Chadwick's 1842

• The figures in parenthesis refer to items in Ailsa Maxwell's bibliography of Professor Flinn's works (see following this Introduction). XlV THE SEARCH FOR WEALTH AND STABILITY

Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population (I o) - the Introduction is unsurpassed as a model of how to place a great Parliamentary Paper in context; to the Economic History Society pamphlet British Population Growth, I7oo-185o (6); to two important articles on famine and plague for the Journal of European Economic History (4I and 48); and, finally, to the planning and execution, with the help of Social Sciences Research Council funds and the labour of five colleagues, of a pioneer study of Scottish historical demography, culminating after seven years in the publication of Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s ( 7), described as 'the greatest single contribution to Scottish social history in this decade'. His approach to the question of population was different from that in the schools of Cambridge and Paris, in so far as it laid less emphasis on pure methodology than on solidly relating change to the economic history of the societies under study. In the case of Chadwick, he was a firm believer in the influence of personality in history: as he was wont to say to tutorial classes studying the McDonagh thesis, 'But somebody had to make it all happen.' His second major interest, in the dynamics of the Industrial Revolution, issued in The Origins of the Industrial Revolution (4), a paperback widely used in universities throughout Britain. This interest itself diverged in various particular directions. In I 967 he contributed a remarkable paper to an Edinburgh social-science seminar on the psychological roots of the Industrial Revolution (37), which has perhaps not had the follow-up it deserved. In I966 he published a criticism of the John-Jones thesis on cheap grain as a factor in the demand for industrial goods (34), a comment that has been brushed aside more often than met. In I974 his analysis of the statistical series measuring trends in real wages in the I 75o-I85o period (40) was an attempt to put the standard-of• living debate on a more rigorous plane than had been evident in the Hobsbawm-Hartwell exchanges. If Michael Flinn did not, then, shun controversy in the search for more satisfactory historical explanations, neither did he lose the trust and respect of the profession. He served the Economic History Society as editor of twenty-four pamphlets (I 968-77) in the series 'Studies in Economic and Social History' (I4), which he built up from scratch to become a major teaching tool in the discipline, and in I978 he headed the local organising committee of the INTRODUCTION XV

Seventh International Economic History Congress, held at Edin• burgh, with exemplary good nature and efficiency. His own univer• sity awarded him the degree of D. Litt. in I965 and appointed him to a personal chair of Social History in I g67. He also had a notable career as chairman of his department, principal warden of the halls of residence and dean of his faculty. It is a measure of the breadth of his interests that he served a term as chairman of the music committee of the Scottish Arts Council. His colleagues miss him most, however, not for his administrative skills but for his academic ability. He commenced his university career at the same time as Edinburgh got under way as an effective teaching department, and over two decades under his benign influ• ence, his standards as a teacher and a scholar percolated down to us all. Perhaps above all we miss his enormous intellectual appetite, his satisfaction with good scholarship and indignation over bad, and his enthusiasm for economic history (as for life), which made him such fun as a friend. He has now moved to retirement and to further research in his house in Gloucestershire. It is to honour this most distinguished economic and social his• torian, therefore, that we present these essays by past colleagues and former students at Edinburgh. Some of the chapters connect closely with themes he followed himself (the charcoal iron industry, the problems of public health under urbanisation); others (the control of English football crowds, Slav emigration) are in very different fields from those in which he made his own reputation. The editor imposed only one condition on his contributors: that they should write something exciting and important to themselves, for only such work would really please the recipient. Nevertheless, when the thirteen chapters were assembled, it turned out that the book did indeed have a kind of coherence. We have called it The Search for Wealth and Stability, because that is what so much of economic and social history is about. The search for wealth is both the social quest for a growing GNP and the private hunt for enrichment- which in this book comprehends, for example, both Milward's essay on European paths to agricultural modernis• ation and Saul's study of technological factors in British growth, on the one hand, and Palairet's Slav migrants, on the other. The search for stability is less often acknowledged as a central topic of social history, but the search for wealth was a disequilibriating, nervy business, both privately and publicly. Ward's planter discip- XVI THE SEARCH FOR WEALTH AND STABILITY lining his slaves yet ruling with their help was seeking private stability; so was Morris's middle class, with their rhythms of borrow• ing and lending designed to conserve and hand on wealth. A concern for stability pro bono publico was clearly behind Charles Booth's anxiety over London (studied here by Cullen) and David• son's civil servants intervening in industrial disputes; even more obviously it was the concern of those who (in Vamplew's paper) were attempting to control the crowds in England's great new mass-spectator sport, Association football. The book ends with four essays on the Scots' attempts to provide for those who had lost in the search for wealth and whose failure endangered stability: studies of the highly distinctive nineteenth- and twentieth-century Scottish poor relief have been very neglected, and it is appropriate to include them in a volume for a scholar who contributed much to the study of Scottish as well as British history. In a way, a division between wealth and stability is artificial, for several of the essays can be said to deal with both: there is a sense in which the ruling classes in all European countries over the last 300 years have assumed 'No wealth, no stability; no stability, no wealth' as a motto to justify and explain their direction of affairs. Ailsa Maxwell has prefaced the book with a bibliography of Professor Flinn's works, exclusive only of reviews, because there were too many to enumerate or even to trace, and completed it with an index. We must acknowledge the surreptitious help of Grace Flinn, who knew what we were up to before he did. To both Michael and Grace, therefore, we offer this book with our admiration and love, and our wishes for a very happy retirement and many learned works to come. Publications of Professor M. W. Flinn, BA, Dip. Ed., MA, D. Litt. AILSA MAXWELL (compiler)

BOOKS

21 I96I An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1066-1939 (Lon• don: Macmillan). 2 I962 Men of Iron: The Crowleys in the Early Iron Industry (Edin• burgh: Edinburgh University Press). 3 I 963 An Economic and Social History of Britain since qoo (London: Macmillan, 2nd edn I975)· 4 I 966 The Origins of the Industrial Revolution (London: Longmans). Translated into Spanish as Origenes de la Revoluci6n Industrial (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Politicos, I970). 5 I968 Public Health Reform in Britain (London: Macmillan). 6 I970 British Population Growth, 1Joo-185o (London: Macmillan, for the Economic History Society). 7 I977 (Editor, and co-author with Judith Gillespie, Nancy Hill, Ailsa Maxwell, Rosalind Mitchison and ) Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

SOURCE MATERIAL EDITED WITH INTRODUCTIONS 8 I957 The Law Book of the Crowley Ironworks, Surtees Society vol. cLxvu (Durham and London). xviii THE SEARCH FOR WEALTH AND STABILITY

9 I964 Readings in Economic and Social History (London: Macmil• lan). Io I965 Edwin Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, I842 (Edinburgh: Edin• burgh University Press). I I I969 A. P. Stewart and E. Jenkins, The Medical and Legal Aspects of Sanitary Reform, I867 (Leicester: Leicester University Press). I2 1973 E. T. Svedenstierna, Tour of Great Britain, r8o2-3 (Newton Abbot: David and Charles).

ESSAYS AND OTHER CONTEMPORARY WORK EDITED I3 I974 (With T. C. Smout) Essays in Social History (Oxford: Clarendon Press for the Economic History Society). I4 1968-77 'Studies in Economic and Social History', 24 vols (London: Macmillan for the Economic History Society). I 5 r 978 Proceedings of the Seventh International Economic History Con• gress, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

ARTICLES IN BOOKS AND PERIODICALS I 6 I 95 I 'The Iron Industry in Sixteenth-century England', Edgar Allen News. I7 I953 'Sir Ambrose Crowley, Ironmonger, I685-I7I3', Explo• rations in Entrepreneurial History, v I 62-80. Reprinted in Explo• rations in Enterprise, ed. H. G. J. Aitken (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I965) pp. 24I-58. I8 I954 'Samuel Schroderstierna's "Notes on the English Iron Industry" (I749)', Edgar Allen News. I9 I954 (With A. Birch) 'The English Steel Industry before I856, with Special Reference to the Development of the Yorkshire Steel Industry', Yorkshire Bulletin of &onomic and Social Research, VI 163-77. 20 I 954 'Scandinavian Iron Ore Mining and the British Steel Industry, I87o-I914', Scandinavian Economic History Review, II 3I-46. 2I I955 'British Steel and Spanish Ore, I87I-I9I4', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., VIII 84-go. 22 I955 'The Marriage of Judith Crowley', Journal of the Friends' Historical Society, XLVII 7I-7. PUBLICATIONS OF PROFESSOR M. W. FLINN XIX

23 I958 'Industry and Technology in the Derwent Valley of Durham and Northumberland in the Sixteenth Century', Trans• actions qf the Newcomen Society, XXIX (I 953-5) 255-62. 24 I 958 'The Growth of the English Iron Industry, I 66(}-- I 76o', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XI I44-53· 25 I 959 'Abraham Darby and the Coke-smelting Process', Econo• mica, new ser., xxvi 54---9· 26 I 959 'Timber and the Advance of Technology: A Reconsider• ation', Annals of Science, xv, 109-20. 27 I 969 'The Lloyds in the Early Iron Industry', Business History, II 2I-31. 28 I96o 'Sir Ambrose Crowley and the South Sea Scheme of I 7 I I', Journal qf Economic History, xx 5 I -66. 29 I96I 'The Travel Diaries of Swedish Engineers of the Eight• eenth Century as Sources ofTechnological History', Transactions qf the Newcomen Society, XXXI (I957---9) 95-109. 30 I96I 'The Poor Employment Act of I8I7', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XIV 82---92. 3I I96I 'The Industrialists', in Silver Renaissance: Essays in Eight• eenth-century English History, ed. Alex Natan (London: Macmil• lan). 32 I 964 'William Wood and the Coke-smelting Process', Transac• tions qf the Newcomen Society, XXXIV (I96I-2) 55-71. 33 I 966 'The Overseas Trade of Scottish Ports, I 90(}--60', Scottish Journal qf Political Economy, XIII 22(}--37. 34 I966 'Agricultural Productivity and Economic Growth in Eng• land, I 70(}-- I 760: A Comment', Journal of Economic History, XXVI 93-8. 35 I 967 'Consommation du bois et developpement siderurgique en Angleterre', in Actes du colloque sur Ia foret, ed. C. Fohlen (Paris: Les Belles Lettres), pp. I 07-28. 36 I 967 'Population in History', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XX I4(}-4· 3 7 I 967 'Social Theory and the Industrial Revolution', in Social Theory and Economic Change, ed. T. Burns and S. B. Saul (Lon• don: Tavistock), pp. 9-34. 38 I97I 'A Policy of "Public Works"', New Socie!J, I8 Nov., pp. 977---9· 39 1972 'Friedrich Engels's Manchester', Listener, 3 Feb., pp. I4(}-2. XX THE SEARCH FOR WEALTH AND STABILITY

40 I974 'Trends in Real Wages, I75o-I85o', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., xxvn 395-4I3. 4I I974 'The Stabilisation of Mortality in Pre-industrial Western Europe', Journal of European Economic History, III 285-3 I 7. 42 I976 'Real Wage Trends in Britain, I75o-I85o: a reply', Econ• omic History Review, 2nd ser., XXIX I43-5· 43 I976 'Medical Services under the New Poor Law', in The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Derek Fraser (Lon• don: Macmillan), pp. 45-66. 44 I 976 'The English Population Scare of the I 93os', in Historisch• Demographische Mitteilungen, ed. J. Kovacsics (Budapest: Eotvos Lorand University) pp. 6o-76. 45 1977 'Malthus, Emigration and Potatoes in the Scottish North• west, I no- I 870'' in Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Economic and Social History, I6()(}-I900, ed. L. M. Cullen and T. C. Smout (Edinburgh: John Donald), pp. 47-64. 46 I977 'Exports and the Scottish Economy in the Depression of the I 93os', in Trade and Transport, Essays in Economic History in Honour of T. S. Willan, ed. W. H. Chaloner and B. M. Ratcliffe (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 2 79--93·

FORTHCOMING 47 'Public Support for the Arts in Scotland', in The Scottish Govern• ment Yearbook, 1979, ed. H. M. Drucker and M. G. Clarke (Edinburgh: Paul Harris). 48 'Plague in Europe and the Mediterranean Countries', Journal of European Economic History. 49 'Technological Change as an Escape: England, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', conference paper presented at Bella• gio, Italy, in I 977 to a seminar on 'Escapes from Resource Scarcity', due for publication under the editorship of W. N. Parker.