Paste your essay in here…How and why were the limits of the organic economy transcended?
Before the nineteenth century the majority of people in Britain, and the world, were haunted by the spectre of cyclical economic growth and decline. As late as 1817, David Ricardo took it to be a truism that economic decline ‘will necessarily be rendered permanent by the laws of nature, which have limited the productive powers of the land.’ (Wrigley, Energy and the Industrial Revolution, 2010). At the heart of Ricardo’s pessimism, echoed by Adam Smith an Thomas Malthus, was an analysis of the limitations of an economy organised around organic resources; and yet even as he wrote these limitations were being burst asunder in a process by which the organic economy became replaced by one founded upon mineral, or ‘inorganic’, resources (Wrigely, 2010). Indeed, by shifting the historiographical questions towards an understanding of how demographic disaster was avoided, a number of crucial factors in this process begin to emerge (Hilton, A Mad Bad and Dangerous People?, 2005). Changes to the agricultural base and fuel upon which economic growth was founded must be accompanied by a discussion of profound changes to the structure of employment (Wrigley, 2004; Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, 2009; Shaw-Taylor and Wrigley, Occupational Structure and Population Change 2014). Furthermore, material changes must be understood within the framework of technological macro- and microinventions as well as intellectual dispositions and cultural practices. The complex interaction between what contemporaries thought and outcomes must be explored (Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy, 2009). All of these factors operated within a unique social, economic, political, cultural and intellectual milieu which saw Britain emerge as the first region of he globe to escape the hard ceilings endemic to the dynamics of organic economies.
In terms of demonstrating how the limits of the inorganic economy were transcended, there are a few chief characteristics through which this process can be illustrated: the first, and arguably the most important, was a transition in energy resources (Wrigley, 2010). In 1600-09 coal had accounted for just 18.6% of annual energy consumption in England and Wales, but by the mid 18th century it had already come to account for 61%; and in 1850-9 it accounted for no less than 92% (Wrigley, 2010). Intimately linked to this transition in the chief source of energy were changes to the structures of employment and the allocation of resources, material and human, across the economy (Shaw-Taylor and Wrigley, 2014). For example, the structural regime of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries was radically altered: data from selected North Western in England reveals that at the beginning of the 18th century, the % of the male labour force occupied in primary labour stood at 50.5% while those in secondary labour accounted for 42.3%; and yet by 1871 these sectors represented 16% and 58% respectively (Shaw-Taylor and Wrigley, p12). Overall, when both sexes are taken into account, by 1871 the secondary and tertiary industries accounted for 43.5% and 35.2% of the workforce respectively (Shaw-Taylor and Wrigley, p14).
The crucial corollary of these changes was that the most important Malthusian ‘positive check’ of the organic economy – the tendency for real wages to fall behind population growth – was for the first time transcended. From 1761-1841, for the first time in human history, rapid population growth was matched by growing real wages (Wrigley, p141). From 1800-1850 Britain’s rate of population growth per thousand people per annum stood at 13.6, much of which took place in the new industrial towns; in the same period her closest rival, Sweden, stood at 7.9 (Shaw-Taylor and Wrigley, p20). Indeed, by 1871 it became possible to consistently sustain an economy in which 56.7% of the population lived in urban locations, no doubt largely aided by the fact that from 1840, 75% of the combined total capacity of stationary steam engines in Britain, France, Prussia and Belgium was in Britain alone (Shaw Taylor and Wrigley, p22; Wrigley, p27). Between 1560 and 1800, coal output in Britain increased sixty-six-fold (Allen, p82), and by the time of the Great Exhibition in 1851, Britain accounted for 64% of European pig iron production and 76% of coal output. Thus changes to inorganic energy enabled sustained changes to the structure of the economy, the allocation of human beings and material capital while driving up the population and real wages in tandem. Questions of living standards and the nature of urban growth complicate the picture, but this is the essential outline.
However, it is in discussing why these features of the inorganic economy were possible that the historian is forced to look more closely at causation; it is easy to describe, but far more difficult to explain. Transition from the organic economy was enabled by great gains in agricultural productivity throughout the early modern period (Wrigley, p29). Gross central output per acre doubled between the 16th and 19th centuries, and net yield increased by 125%; at the same time the effective arable area of land was increased by 20%. These two developments combined to produce an increase by 170% the output of wheat per acre across the two centuries (Wrigley, ibid). Furthermore, oats outstripped other grains both in the percentage rise in total production an in the percentage rise in output per acre a significant factor when one considers the increasing demand placed upon oats for the increasing number of horses adding to traffic on transport systems (Wrigley, p31). Pasture witnessed similar successes, with both the volume and weights of slaughters increasing dramatically. Such productivity gains are crucial when one considers the wider demographic trends of the period: between 1600-1800, there was a doubling in population from 4.2m to 8.7m accompanied by a doubling of percentage of the workforce engaged outside agriculture (Wrigley, p33). Thus rural England had to provide for a growing non-agricultural labour force and compensate for its own relative demographic losses while raising output sufficiently to cover the food needs of town and country. That it was able to do so, and that urbanisation and the restructuring of the occupational regime of the British economy was able to take place, was ultimately down to these productivity gains. They ensured that despite a decrease in the relative size of agriculture, output per head continued to keep pace with the increase in population (Wrigley, ibid). It was in this regard that the English economy succeeded in providing the stability for the transition from the organic economy to an inorganic one that was impossible in Belgium where, despite similar agricultural improvements, output per head failed to keep pace and conformed to the Ricardian paradigm.
While increases to agricultural productivity were essential in stabilising and underpinning demographic and economic change, the availability and manipulation of reservoirs of cheap coal were also crucial to sustaining the process of industrial growth. In 1738 Monsieur Ticquet remarked that ‘coal is one of the greatest sources of English wealth and plenty (and) the soul of English manufacturers.’ (Allen, p80). Already by 1700, c.50% of the total annual energy consumption of England came from coal (Wrigley, p38). By the end of the 17th century, the switch to coal in order to provide heat energy was already largely complete in a wide range of secondary sector activities such as brick and tile making, glassmaking and metal processing. In this capacity, coal provided ‘ghost acres’ on a vast scale by acting as a source of heat and eventually mechanical energy that the organic economy simply could not have sustained (Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, 2000). Even at the end of the 17th century the fuel requirements of London would have required 2m cartloads of firewood each year to cover its heating needs; this in turn would have occupied at least 3,500km of land, an utterly unsustainable feat in an organic economy (Wrigley, p40). By 1800, on the same calculations, 11m of woodland have been required, or one-third of the land surface of Britain, to provide the quantity of energy provided by annual coal output (Wrigley, Continuity, chance, and change, p54-5). The essential feature of coal here was that its mining took up a very small surface area compared to agriculture, which must be maintained over acres of arable land and is only available in seasonal cycles; it is punctiform rather than areal (Wrigley, 2010). Therefore, because coal made only a limited claim on the land for its production and simultaneously provided vast quantities of heat energy it enabled both urban growth and general population growth beyond the limitations of the organic economy without initiating Malthusian mechanisms. In 1800, London sustained a population of 950,000 on imports of 1.2m tons of coal annually: the role of coal was essential in enabling the city more populous than it ever could have been had its fuel and mechanical energy resource been tied to an organic system (Wrigley, p107).
Furthermore, in Britain coal was incredibly cheap and its transport aided by an economy that was far more unified than regions of comparative size in Europe which were riven with rival polities; in the early 1700s, for example, the pithead price of coal at Newcastle was c.0.75 grams of silver per million BTUs while in Amsterdam, whose energy source was based on peat, the cost of energy stood at an average of 5g per million BTUs (Allen, p83). Moreover, the cost of coal in London was still relatively cheap because it was not the coal per se that was being paid for, but its transportation from Tyneside. In London the real cost of energy also steadily declined despite increased demand from 3.93 in 1700 to 3.84 in 1800; in Amsterdam the price of peat rose with increasing scarcity and demand from just 15.31 in 1650 to 23.15 in 1750 before declining again up to 1800 (Allen, p86). added to this was the relative expensiveness of labour which created an further incentive to develop coal as a source of mechanical energy rather than investing in a larger workforce (Allen, 2009). For example, from 1625 English workers consistently earned more in grams of silver per day than any of their contemporaries in the world, and in 1750 this had reached as much as 11g per day at a time when the next highest wage levels in Amsterdam were still under 10g (Allen, p28). Such a picture is confirmed by the qualitative evidence, such as Daniel Defoe’s The Complete English Tradesman (1726) remarked upon the comparative comfort of the English labourer (Allen, p27). Through a combination of low energy costs, energy abundance and the incentive to find alternatives to high wages, British manufacturers could find an alternative to high wages. Meanwhile, the economy as a whole could escape demographic pressures invoked by the demand for heat energy. While in Amsterdam source of energy was incapable of providing a safety valve that could empower the economy to transcend its organic limitations, England’s stable mineral base drove three centuries of industrial and urban growth. Britain was able to move beyond the advances founded upon optimisation, specialisation and the efficient division of labour.
However, an explanation of the transition from the organic economy that rests entirely upon the importance of coal cannot be justified. In the first instance a number of industries remained without the use of coal until well into the 19th century. Furthermore, an abundances of coal stimulated technological and transport improvements; at the same time, the presence of coal carried no guarantee that it would be exploited and mobilised in a way to enable Britain to transcend the limitations of the organic economy (Wrigley, 2010). The Newcomen engine, first pioneered at a mine in Dudley in 1712 was woefully inefficient, burning coal at approximately 45 pounds per horsepower-hour; but it was crucial in providing a breakthrough which enabled drainage to mines at depths unthinkable employing organic mechanical energy such as horses. If drainage technology had remained at the point reached just before Newcomen’s engine then mining in Britain would have had limited scope for further expansion: at depths of between 90 and 150 feet the influx of water created problems insoluble by the technology of the day (Flinn, British coal industry, II, p. 114; Wrigley, p44). By 1800, the total had grown to 2,500 in Britain, of which 60-70% were Newcomen engines. In contrast, Belgium, with the largest coal mining industry on the continent, was second, with perhaps 100 engines in 1800 (Allen, 162). It is true that in terms of productivity, little progress was made beyond the crucial application of steam power to the drainage of mines (von Tutzelmann, 1978). However, this is to miss the point: the crucial gain made was one which enabled overall access to a resource whose full potential could not have been unleashed had it not been for Newcomen’s important ‘macroinvention’ (Mokyr, 2009). Technological improvements went had in hand with investments in transport infrastructure: in 1770, there were already 15,000 miles of turnpike roads, accompanied by corresponding improvements to canals and inland waterways; between 1760 and 1830 journey times fell on average by four-fifths (Wrigley, p108). From 1690-1840 this was accompanied by a three-fold increase in long-distance carrying as well as a great increase in the average size of the cargo: whereas in the mid-18th century the manning ratio on colliers was 18 tons per man, a century later this lay in the range of 15-50 tons (Wrigley, p107; Gerhold, p511). Improvements in access and supply combined with the marriage of heat and mechanical energy through steam engine technology were essential conditions if the primary mineral resource providing an escape from the organic economy was to be fully utilised.
These important changes can be considered within the framework of the wider influences of intellectual and ‘Enlightened industrial’ (Mokyr, 2009). It is very well to argue with hindsight that industrial technologies were waiting to be invented, but in many ways these inventions would have been inconceivable without the right type of vibrant intellectual and industrial culture. Annual atents in Britain show unmistakeable breakpoint in 1757 with the average number soaring from just 8.5 in the 1740s to 51.2 in the 1780s. This indicates a flurry of invention and innovation, but it is also important to remember the ineffectuality of patents in actually preventing the spread of knowledge beyond those copyrighted to invent the specified designs (Mokyr, p91-92). In addition, there was remarkable crossover between intellectual science and practical industry in figures such as Josiah Wedgewood’s parner Thomas Bentley, the Manchester cotton spinner George A. Lee, and the Derby Cotton master Jedediah Strutt. Thomas Watt found patronage first from Joseph Black, a professional applied scientist and consultant at the University of Glasgow. John Roebuck, Watt’s first business partner, and James Boulton, his second, were both gentlemanly venture capitalists seeking to invest capital for the potential capital, material and social, to be reaped from success. Richard Trevithick’s motivation was apparently the recognition of his most illustrious peers: hence why he declined to patent his high-pressure engine. Just as philosophical enlightenment had its encyclopaedists, so did technological enlightenment: William Nicholson slaved over his Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts which commenced publication in 1797 (Mokyr, ibid). The organic economy could not have been transcended without vibrant competitive and cooperative systems of dynamic knowledge peculiar to Western Europe with the expansions to the public domain of the 18th century. This, combined with an entrepreneurial elite culture, made a potent combination which made the harnessing of technological capacities commensurate to inorganic economic expansion possible.
Furthermore, this culture of enlightened industry can be combined with important ‘industrious’ cultural and socio-economic activities which permeated the economy during the 18th century (Berg, Small Producer Capitalism in Eighteenth Century England, 1993; De Vries, The Industrial Revolution and Industrious Revolution, 1994). While the evidence for De Vries’s ‘Industrious revolution’ appears largely to be founded upon economic theory and anecdotal evidence, that does not mean that the concept can be dismissed out of hand. The increasing specialisation and productivity gains in the division of households and industries certainly complemented even if it did not cause the transition from an organic to an inorganic economy. In the 18th century only one third of the 900 cotton spinning factories employed over fifty workers; the remainder were in reality highly speicalised workshops or sheds employing dozens of full-time or part-time workers (Berg, p20). There is evidence of this in the textile industries of Birmingham and Sheffield where reports to the 1812 Select Committee in the House of Commons reported a relatively large number of manufacturers who employed perhaps between 40 and 150 individuals in several different, and often domestic, locations; in other words, small and geographically diffuse establishments combined with large industry to optimise productivity and industriousness (Berg, 1993).
In the latter end of the 18th century Thomas Malthus wrote his influential Essay on population (1798) of a system of natural advance and retribution, in which humanity was tied to the fate of maximising productive mechanisms within capricious cycles of growth and chastening demographic catastrophe. Almost a century later when Arnold Toynbee delivered his 1884 Lectures on the industrial revolution the tone of opinion concerning economic change was markedly less fatalistic: it had become clear that the ‘essence of the Industrial Revolution’ had empowered man through unleashing ‘a great physical force which’ could be both ‘controlled and modified.’ (Allen, p49). The limitations of the organic economy were transcended because of a confluence of particular situations peculiar to Britain, the most important of which were the abundance of coal, and a comparatively unified economic market and the existence of a vibrant intellectual culture of Enlightened industrialism, all of which were underpinned by agricultural productivity. All of these factors were crucial segments to the overall tapestry of economic change; it is difficult to say whether if one of these were subtracted how the organic economy could not only have been transcended, but also how the inorganic economy could have been sustained. If coal and productive agriculture were required to open ‘Pandora’s jar’ (Wrigley, 2010), then industriousness, technological progress, enlightenment and dynamic knowledge were required to keep it prised open. In regions where the parts of this equation were missing, industrialisation foundered; in Britain they were present and, for better or worse, it succeeded.
the English Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.