The Social Dimension

Abstract

The economic rationale of proto-industry was cheap labour. In the previous chapter we identified a number of conditions producing cheap labour in the countryside. The first was where the growth of population had created a supply of labour surplus to the requirements of agriculture. Farms were too small to provide a livelihood for the whole family, there was much underemployment and manufacturers, consequently, were able to recruit labour at very low wages (alternatively, farming families could diversify their activities into part-time industry with little or no loss of agricultural earnings). Second, there was often a good deal of underemployed labour in areas of barren soils. Third, by the eighteenth century there were tillage regions in Europe possessing large numbers of landless labourers who were eager to supplement agricultural earnings by industrial work. The immediate link between proto-industry and social conditions, therefore, was a passive one: where labour was abundant rural industries were likely to develop — as long, of course, as entrepreneurship, capital and markets were also available.