In my last column, “A Blot on the Poor Law,” I noted an unintended consequence of England’s poor law: It made possible “pauper apprentices.” Had the poor law not been in existence, parishes would not have sent large numbers of children to the textile mills, where they worked long hours and were sometimes cruelly treated.
In this post, however, I want to offer a more favorable picture of the poor laws.
As a reminder, the law (often called the “poor laws”) set up the first public welfare system in Europe (probably the world). It required landowners and tenants who could afford it to pay “rates” or taxes to provide relief for the local poor. Elsewhere in Europe the poor had to rely primarily on charity, especially the churches.[1]
Historians generally admire England for having started this tax-based system of welfare in Elizabethan times. Historian Steve Hindle calls the law a “watershed in the history of welfare provision, beyond which perceptions of social obligation were decisively transformed.”[2]
So what did the law do that was so good? It may have ensured that the British had enough food. As three economists wrote in 2014, “The Poor Law helped create a higher-quality labor force by making food more accessible to those who needed it most.”[3]
Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that, in spite of economic turmoil, poverty, and fluctuations in food production, eighteenth-century British workers were, on average, healthier than other European workers. For example, John Thomas Desaguliers said in 1734 that it would take seven Dutchmen or Frenchmen to equal the strength of a horse, while it would require only five Englishmen.[4]
And Daniel Defoe wrote in 1728 that “the English Man shall do as much Business in the fewer hours as the Foreigner who sits longer at it.”[5]
British workers were also paid more than Europeans. One study said that workers in London were paid 83 percent or more than similar workers in Paris, [6] and the same historian reported that one reason the spinning jenny was not adopted in France was that in terms of wages a jenny would cost three times what it would have cost in England. [7]
And British workers ate more. Kelly et al. cite a study by Robert Fogel finding that the median French worker had a daily intake of 2,200 kcals while the median English worker obtained 2,600 kcals. They ate more meat, too. “Anecdotal evidence is abundant: many travelers visiting Britain commented on British carnivorous habits,” say Kelly et al. They quote a Swiss visitor in 1726: “[T]he pleasures of the table in this happy nation contained much roast beef which is a favorite dish as well at the King’s table as at Tradesman.”[8]
This doesn’t prove that the poor law made Brits healthier and stronger, but it is good evidence.
And there’s another, somewhat more speculative, benefit of the poor law, says Peter Solar, a historian writing in 1995. It didn’t just make sure people could stay alive, it got them off the farm.
Owning or operating farmland is insurance—however poor you are, it can provide last-ditch subsistence when you are hit by war-caused inflation (and Britain was almost continually at war with France from 1793 to 1815) or unemployment. With farmland, you can grow your own food if necessary and you have a home.
However, if you are sure that you and your family will be protected from starvation, it might be possible to venture out and seek opportunities that aren’t available with a tiny plot of land.
“The English poor law, by providing protection from destitution, made obtaining access to land less urgent. English men and women did want land, but, other things being equal, the existence of poor relief meant that they were not willing to pay so much simply to ensure their own food supply.” [9]
Thus, there came to be a pool of workers who, protected by the availability of relief, were willing to work for wages. And they were the workers who operated the new machines of the Industrial Revolution. Or, in any case, that is an argument worth paying attention to.
[1] We shouldn’t forget that Henry VIII had confiscated most of the monasteries and thus drastically reduced the ability of the Church to relieve the poor.
[2] Steve Hindle, On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England, c. 1550-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
[3] Kelly Morgan, Joel Mokyr, and Cormac Ó Gráda. “Precocious Albion: A New Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution,” Annual Review of Economics 6 (2014): 363-389, at 369.
[4] Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1850 (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), 271.
[5] Mokyr, 271.
[6] Morgan et al., 369, quoting Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009), chapter 2.
[7] Robert C. Allen, “The Industrial Revolution in Miniature: The Spinning Jenny in Britain, France, and India,” Journal of Economic History 69, no. 4 (2009): 901-27.
[8] Morgan et al., 371.
[9] Pete M. Solar, “Poor Relief and English Economic Development before the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review New Series 48, no. 1 (February 1995), 1-22, at 9.
I’m not so sure on this one. The high caloric intake by workers may have been due to a rising general level of prosperity. During the 17th and 18th centuries, England was not only rapidly increasing the size of its empire, but it took a mercantilist approach to its colonies. That meant a big favorable balance of trade and an increased demand for labor to make products to sell in the colonies. In other words, they had growing captive markets to which they could sell increasingly more goods, lots of returning capital to invest in expansion, and rising wages due to the higher demand for labor. Let the good times roll.
Fascinating, Jane. The importance of food to production was noted,not as a major point, by Orwell in his “Down & Out in Pair & London.” In my terms, if the body does not have sufficient fuel, it cannot perform well.