Engels' pause facts for kids
Engels' pause is a special time in history, from about 1790 to 1840, in Great Britain. During this period, the country's economy grew very fast, and new technologies were invented. However, the wages (money earned) for regular workers didn't really go up.
An economic historian named Robert C. Allen created the term "Engels' pause." He named it after a German thinker, Friedrich Engels. Engels wrote a book called The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845. In his book, he described how tough life was for workers during this time. Today, some people see similarities between Engels' pause and what's happening with technology and wages now.
Contents
What Was Happening?
The Industrial Revolution was a huge change that happened in Britain from the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s. It brought new machines and factories, making cities grow quickly. The country's economy (its gross domestic product or GDP) got much bigger. But even though the country was getting richer, the wages for working-class people stayed pretty much the same.
The people who owned the new factories and businesses, called capitalists, made a lot of money. They used these profits to build even more factories and expand their industries.
Historians have studied this period closely. For example, in 1980, Charles Harley and Nicholas Crafts found that Britain's economy grew by about 46% between 1780 and 1840. But another historian, Charles Feinstein, discovered in 1990 that workers' wages only went up by 12% in the same time. This shows a big difference between how much the country earned and how much its workers earned.
Friedrich Engels wrote about this unfairness in his book. Later, Robert C. Allen studied Engels' writings and confirmed that this "pause" in wage growth really happened.
After 1840, things started to change. Workers' wages began to rise along with the economy. Between 1840 and 1900, the amount of goods produced per worker went up by 90%, and real wages increased by 123%. This meant that workers were finally getting a fairer share of the wealth they helped create.
Why Did Wages Stop Growing?
There are several ideas about why Engels' pause happened. The British economy was changing very fast during the Industrial Revolution, so many factors were at play.
More Workers Than Jobs
One main idea uses a model by economist W. Arthur Lewis. Imagine the British economy had two parts:
- The farming part: Many people lived in the countryside, and there were more workers than needed for farming.
- The modern part: This was the new factory and technology sector in cities.
As factories grew, they needed more workers. So, many people moved from farms to cities, looking for jobs. This meant there was a huge supply of workers. When there are many people looking for jobs, companies don't have to pay high wages because they can always find someone else to do the work cheaply.
The factory owners, or capitalists, made a lot of money. They saved and reinvested this money into their businesses, making them even bigger. This cycle continued: more factories, more demand for workers, but also more people moving to cities, keeping wages low. This "pause" in wages only ended when the factories finally absorbed all the extra workers from the countryside.
Other Reasons for Low Wages
Other things also affected wages:
- Wars and Food Prices: At the start of the 1800s, the Napoleonic Wars made food, especially wheat, very expensive. This meant workers' money didn't go as far.
- Corn Laws: These were special laws that put taxes on imported grain. They were designed to keep food prices high in Britain, which also kept workers' real wages low. These laws were eventually removed, which helped wages rise later.
Machines Replacing People
Another idea, from Carl Benedikt Frey, is that the early machines of the Industrial Revolution mostly replaced human workers.
- If a machine can do what a person used to do, then fewer people are needed for that job. This can make wages go down.
- For example, machines replaced skilled artisans who worked from home. Often, children were hired to work these new machines because they were cheaper and had less power to ask for better pay.
- The money made from these new technologies mostly went to the factory owners, who then put it back into more machines, not into higher wages for workers.
However, this started to change later in the 1800s. Laws like the Factory Acts of the 1830s made working conditions better for children. Also, as machines became bigger and more complex, they needed more skilled workers to operate them. This meant that workers with special skills became more valuable, and their wages started to increase.
How Did It Change Society?
Economic Changes
Before the Industrial Revolution, most businesses in Britain were small. For example, making clothes involved many people working from their homes. But new steam technology changed everything. Large factories were built, allowing many people to work together and produce goods much faster.
Engels' pause allowed factory owners to keep a lot of their profits. They used this money to build more factories and develop even newer technologies. Britain's overall wealth (GDP) grew steadily. The share of income that went to workers actually dropped from 50% in 1801 to 45% in 1845. This meant that the owners were getting a bigger piece of the economic pie.
Social Changes
Life for many working-class people during Engels' pause was very hard. As people moved to cities for work, the cities became very crowded.
- Unemployment: There were often more people than jobs, leading to high unemployment. Over 1.5 million people were unemployed in Britain during the early Industrial Revolution.
- Poor Conditions: Factory owners often paid low wages and made workers work long hours in harsh conditions. Skilled workers, like weavers, found their jobs taken over by machines.
- Child Labor: Children often had to work in factories to help their families earn enough money to survive.
- Crowded Cities: The rapid growth of cities led to poor sanitation. Many people lived in cramped, unhealthy homes.
- Disease: With poor diets and bad living conditions, diseases like cholera and tuberculosis spread easily.
Is It Happening Again?
The Industrial Revolution changed society completely, from technology to how people lived and worked. Some people believe that a similar big change is happening today in many Western countries. This new change is driven by digital technology and robotics.
Experts like the Demos Helsinki group suggest that society and the economy are changing in a way similar to the Industrial Revolution. Back then, new ways of working led to a period of great wealth. It also led to the creation of the working class and the middle class. Many political changes happened to improve the lives of these new social groups.
Today, with more and more jobs being done by computers and robots, some worry that we might be entering a new "Engels' pause."
- Mark Carney, who used to be the head of the Bank of England, has talked about how technology could lead to low wage growth and fewer jobs for people, while machine owners get richer.
- Economists like Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have written about this in their book, The Second Machine Age.
- Carl Benedikt Frey also argues that advanced economies are in a new Engels' pause, comparing the Industrial Revolution to today's computer revolution.
These thinkers suggest that just like in the 1800s, new technology might be replacing human jobs, leading to a period where the economy grows, but many workers don't see their wages increase.
