Florence Kelley (1859 1932) was a committed socialist and political reformer who campaigned against child labour in the United States. In 1899 she became the leader of the National Consumers' League, an anti-sweatshop and pro-minimum wage pressure group which she supported until her death. This volume, first published in 1914, describes her views on the problems facing American society due to the expansion of industry. Kelley discusses the negative effects of rapid industrialisation on the American urban working class, in terms of the effects on the family, on the health of workers, on the education of the working class; and discusses the economic 'morality' of controlling the means of production. She also suggests possible legislation to mitigate these problems, some of which later passed into federal law. This volume provides a vivid description of the lives of America's urban working class and illustrates the extent of contemporary industrialisation in America.

A major 2008 study of the role of women in the labour market of Industrial Revolution Britain. It is well known that men and women usually worked in different occupations, and that women earned lower wages than men. These differences are usually attributed to custom but Joyce Burnette here demonstrates instead that gender differences in occupations and wages were instead largely driven by market forces. Her findings reveal that rather than harming women competition actually helped them by eroding the power that male workers needed to restrict female employment and minimising the gender wage gap by sorting women into the least strength-intensive occupations. Where the strength requirements of an occupation made women less productive than men, occupational segregation maximised both economic efficiency and female incomes. She shows that women's wages were then market wages rather than customary and the gender wage gap resulted from actual differences in productivity.

American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents documents the first sixty years of Ford Motor Company's international expansion. Ford Motor Company introduced Americans to the first affordable car. Based on Ford's extraordinary company archives, this book traces the company's rise as a multinational enterprise. Following the export of the sixth car produced by the company, Ford opened its first plant abroad in its second year of business and quickly expanded around the world, building a business that by the mid 1920s spanned six continents. It faced wars, nationalism, numerous government restrictions and all the perils of operating across borders. First published in 1964, this book has lasting value in reminding readers of the long and uneven path of globalization. This new edition includes a new introduction by the author examining the impact and legacy of the study. It remains a major contribution to global economic history. In addition, Ford's history offers useful lessons today for both participants in the global economy and students of international business.

In May 1851, the doors opened on the Great Exhibition, a celebration of British industry and international trade that spawned numerous imitations across the globe. The scale of the exhibition was immense and publishers responded quickly to the demand for catalogues, guidebooks and souvenir volumes. In a marketplace swamped with exhibition literature, Tallis' three-volume History and Description of the Crystal Palace, originally published in 1852 and reproduced here in the 1854 edition, quickly established itself as the definitive history for middle-class readers. Illustrated with high-quality steel-engraved plates of the most popular and eye-catching exhibits, Tallis' book provides a fascinating contemporary account of this cultural and commercial highlight of the Victorian age, and reveals the mind-set of a society at the peak of its imperial power. Volume 1 describes the preparations for the exhibition and focuses particularly on the 'foreign and colonial' departments and the decorative arts.

In May 1851, the doors opened on the Great Exhibition, a celebration of British industry and international trade that spawned numerous imitations across the globe. The scale of the exhibition was immense and publishers responded quickly to the demand for catalogues, guidebooks and souvenir volumes. In a marketplace swamped with exhibition literature, Tallis' three-volume History and Description of the Crystal Palace, originally published in 1852 and reproduced here in the 1854 edition, quickly established itself as the definitive history for middle-class readers. Illustrated with high-quality steel-engraved plates of the most popular and eye-catching exhibits, Tallis' book provides a fascinating contemporary account of this cultural and commercial highlight of the Victorian age, and reveals the mind-set of a society at the peak of its imperial power. Volume 2 describes exhibits including toys, fabrics and printing for the blind, and assesses the influence of the Great Exhibition on art and science.

In May 1851, the doors opened on the Great Exhibition, a celebration of British industry and international trade that spawned numerous imitations across the globe. The scale of the exhibition was immense and publishers responded quickly to the demand for catalogues, guidebooks and souvenir volumes. In a marketplace swamped with exhibition literature, Tallis' three-volume History and Description of the Crystal Palace, originally published in 1852 and reproduced here in the 1854 edition, quickly established itself as the definitive history for middle-class readers. Illustrated with high-quality steel-engraved plates of the most popular and eye-catching exhibits, Tallis' book provides a fascinating contemporary account of this cultural and commercial highlight of the Victorian age, and reveals the mind-set of a society at the peak of its imperial power. Volume 3 describes displays of machinery and the 'Ladies' Department', the close of the exhibition, and the Palace's new site in Sydenham.

Privateering was a form of legal private warfare at sea in which individuals who possessed suitable ships took the opportunity offered by a war to plunder enemy commerce. In this study of privateering during the Elizabethan war with Spain, which was originally published in 1966, Dr Andrews shows that it was closely connected with trade, in particular having a stimulating effect on oceanic commerce and that it was at the time the main form of English maritime warfare. Dr Andrews begins with an account of how privateering became legal and how it was organised. He then examines the various types of venture, describing the sort of people who took part and showing how profitable it was for some, particularly the bigger merchants and the professional seamen. Two contemporary narratives are included. Finally, Dr Andrews studies the role privateering played in overseas expansion.

This book was originally published in 1954. Robert Estienne was born in Paris in the early years of the sixteenth century, the son of a successful printer-bookseller. He became a printer himself, and one distinguished not only for the quality of his printing, but also for his scholarship. He was the most outstanding figure of the Parisian booktrade at the moment when that trade was one of the most important agencies of the various intellectual movements which we summarise as 'The Renaissance'. Estienne was not only a classical but also a biblical scholar and editor (he is remembered as much for his editions of the Bible as for the beauty of his Cicero or for his use of the Garamond Greek types). Mrs Armstrong gives a full-length historical study of an important and admirable figure.

In 1925, the three leading chemical firms in Germany - BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst - merged, together with some smaller firms, to become IG Farben. IG Farben became, like no other firm, synonymous with the participation of German industry in the most heinous crimes of the Nazi regime. This book deals in depth with one of IG Farben s leading factories, Hoechst, during the Third Reich. On the basis of long and meticulous archival research, including previously inaccessible company records, the author tries to describe and analyze the relationship between management and employees and the Nazi party and its organizations. The author shows the exclusion and persecution of employees, particularly Jewish employees. He traces the extent of Hoechst s involvement in the exploitation of forced labor, and its active participation in human experiments in several concentration camps. Throughout, he tries to shed light on the motivations of those responsible for this conduct.

For as long as anyone can remember, coal has been the lifeblood of the communities of County Durham. In its heyday, in 1913, the region boasted 304 pits employing 165,246 people. Coalmining in Durham was recorded as early as the twelfth century and medieval collieries flourished along the Wear Valley. A dramatic increase in coal production following the Industrial Revolution saw the county become one of the country's major sources of fuel, as it remained well into the twentieth century. The anonymous individuals, and their families, behind the story of coalmining in the area are the subject of this book, which is both an authoritative history and a fascinating portrayal of Durham life. A wide range of material is covered, from clear, illustrated explanations of the technicalities and terminology of coal extraction and coke-making, to the story of the Durham Miners' Association and its struggle for improvements in living and working conditions. The hardships and dangers of the miner's life are recalled in the pictures of the great pit disasters and the words of the survivors and rescuers, but the comradeship and community are never lost sight of and come into their own in the accounts of pit village life and of the famous Durham Miners' Gala.

The wool market was extremely important to the English medieval economy and wool dominated the English export trade from the late thirteenth century to its decline in the late fifteenth century. Wool was at the forefront of the establishment of England as a European political and economic power and this 2007 volume was the first study of the medieval wool market in over 20 years. It investigates in detail the scale and scope of advance contracts for the sale of wool; the majority of these agreements were formed between English monasteries and Italian merchants, and the book focuses on the data contained within them. The pricing structures and market efficiency of the agreements are examined, employing practices from modern finance. A detailed case study of the impact of entering into such agreements on medieval English monasteries is also presented, using the example of Pipewell Abbey in Northamptonshire.

Militant Minority tells the compelling story of British Columbia workers who sustained a left tradition during the bleakest days of the Cold War. Through their continuing activism on issues from the politics of timber licenses to global questions of war and peace, these workers bridged the transition from an Old to a New Left.

In the late 1950s, half of B.C.'s workers belonged to unions, but the promise of postwar collective bargaining spawned disillusionment tied to inflation and automation. A new working class that was educated, white collar, and increasingly rebellious shifted the locus of activism from the Communist Party and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation to the newly formed New Democratic Party, which was elected in 1972. Grounded in archival research and oral history, Militant Minority provides a valuable case study of one of the most organized and independent working classes in North America, during a period of ideological tension and unprecedented material advance.

The industrial revolution transformed the productive power of societies. It did so by vastly increasing the individual productivity, thus delivering whole populations from poverty. In this new account by one of the world's acknowledged authorities the central issue is not simply how the revolution began but still more why it did not quickly end. The answer lay in the use of a new source of energy. Pre-industrial societies had access only to very limited energy supplies. As long as mechanical energy came principally from human or animal muscle and heat energy from wood, the maximum attainable level of productivity was bound to be low. Exploitation of a new source of energy in the form of coal provided an escape route from the constraints of an organic economy but also brought novel dangers. Since this happened first in England, its experience has a special fascination, though other countries rapidly followed suit.

The industrial revolution transformed the productive power of societies. It did so by vastly increasing the individual productivity, thus delivering whole populations from poverty. In this new account by one of the world's acknowledged authorities the central issue is not simply how the revolution began but still more why it did not quickly end. The answer lay in the use of a new source of energy. Pre-industrial societies had access only to very limited energy supplies. As long as mechanical energy came principally from human or animal muscle and heat energy from wood, the maximum attainable level of productivity was bound to be low. Exploitation of a new source of energy in the form of coal provided an escape route from the constraints of an organic economy but also brought novel dangers. Since this happened first in England, its experience has a special fascination, though other countries rapidly followed suit.

This innovative study adopts a distinct perspective on both the industrial revolution and nineteenth-century British culture. It investigates why inventors rose to heroic stature and popular acclaim in Victorian Britain, attested by numerous monuments, biographies and honours, and contends there was no decline in the industrial nation's self-esteem before 1914. In a period notorious for hero-worship, the veneration of inventors might seem unremarkable, were it not for their previous disparagement and the relative neglect suffered by their twentieth-century successors. Christine MacLeod argues that inventors became figureheads of various nineteenth-century factions, from economic and political liberals to impoverished scientists and radical artisans, who deployed their heroic reputation, not least to challenge the aristocracy's hold on power and the militaristic national identity that bolstered it. Although this was a challenge that ultimately failed, its legacy of ideas about invention, inventors, and the history of the industrial revolution remains highly influential.

To say that history's greatest economic experiment--Soviet communism--was also its greatest economic failure is to say what many consider obvious. Here, in a startling reinterpretation, Robert Allen argues that the USSR was one of the most successful developing economies of the twentieth century. He reaches this provocative conclusion by recalculating national consumption and using economic, demographic, and computer simulation models to address the "what if" questions central to Soviet history. Moreover, by comparing Soviet performance not only with advanced but with less developed countries, he provides a meaningful context for its evaluation.

Although the Russian economy began to develop in the late nineteenth century based on wheat exports, modern economic growth proved elusive. But growth was rapid from 1928 to the 1970s--due to successful Five Year Plans. Notwithstanding the horrors of Stalinism, the building of heavy industry accelerated growth during the 1930s and raised living standards, especially for the many peasants who moved to cities. A sudden drop in fertility due to the education of women and their employment outside the home also facilitated growth.

While highlighting the previously underemphasized achievements of Soviet planning, "Farm to Factory" also shows, through methodical analysis set in fluid prose, that Stalin's worst excesses--such as the bloody collectivization of agriculture--did little to spur growth. Economic development stagnated after 1970, as vital resources were diverted to the military and as a Soviet leadership lacking in original thought pursued wasteful investments.

An engagingly written account of textile engineering in its key northern centres, rich with historical narrative and analysis. The engineers who built the first generations of modern textile machines, between 1770 and 1850, pushed at the boundaries of possibility. This book investigates these pioneering machine-makers, almost all working within textile communities in northern England, and the industry they created. It probes their origins and skills, the sources of their inspiration and impetus, and how it was possible to develop a high-tech, factory-centred, world-leading marketin textile machinery virtually from scratch. The story of textile engineering defies classical assumptions about the driving forces behind the Industrial Revolution. The circumstances of its birth, and the personal affiliationsat work during periods of exceptional creativity, suggest that the potential to accelerate economic growth could be found within social assets and craft skills. Appreciating textile engineering within its own time and context challenges views inherited from Victorian thinkers, who tended to ascribe to it features of the fully fledged industry they saw before them. The Age of Machinery is an engagingly written account of the trade in its key northern centres, devoid of jargon and yet tightly argued, equally rich with historical narrative and analysis. It will be invaluable not only to students and scholars of British economic history and the Industrial Revolution but also tosocial scientists looking at human agency and its contribution to economic growth and innovation. GILLIAN COOKSON holds a DPhil in economic history and has been employed since 1995 in academic research and consultancy,including as county editor, Victoria County History of Durham.

This book links the world of finance directly to the fate of the cotton and textile industry, long a metaphor for the rise and fall of Britain as a manufacturing economy, for the first time. The cotton and textile industry, at the centre of the industrial revolution, has long been a metaphor for the rise and fall of Britain as a manufacturing economy. This book links the world of finance directly to the fate of the cotton and textile industry for the first time. Using a unique underlying data-set drawn from financial business records of over 100 cotton and textile-manufacturing firms based in Lancashire, and ranging from the late eighteenth to the twenty-first century, Financing Cotton analyses the dynamics of industrial capitalism by uncovering the interaction between financial systems and technological development and innovation. It offers new perspectives on business practices and their evolution, as well as decisions taken by entrepreneurs, managers and employees. The book broadly investigates five questions: how and why were individual firms profitable and what happened to these profits; how did the firms' financial structure and performance influence their attitudes to employment regulation; what were the effects of financial networks and institutions on the characteristics of the first and second phase of industrialisation; how did the financial system enable or stifle entrepreneurship and investment in new technology and, finally, why did consolidation and industrial restructuring offer survival options for some firms, but not for others?

Now that services account for such a dominant part of economic activity, it has become apparent that achieving high levels of productivity in the economy requires high levels of productivity in services. This book, first published in 2006, offers a major reassessment of Britain's comparative productivity performance over the last 150 years. Whereas in the mid-nineteenth century Britain had higher productivity than the United States and Germany, by 1990 both countries had overtaken Britain. The key to achieving high productivity was the 'industrialisation' of market services, which involved both the serving of business and the provision of mass-market consumer services in a more business like fashion. Comparative productivity varied with the uneven spread of industrialised service sector provision across sectors. Stephen Broadberry provides a quantitative overview of these trends, together with a qualitative account of developments within individual sectors, including shipping, railways, road and air transport, telecommunications, wholesale and retail distribution, banking, and finance.

The British railway network was a monument to Victorian private enterprise. Its masterpieces of civil engineering were emulated around the world. But its performance was controversial: praised for promoting a high density of lines, it was also criticised for wasteful duplication of routes.
This is the first history of the British railway system written from a modern economic perspective. It uses conterfactual analysis to construct an alternaive network to represent the most efficient alternative rail network that could have been constructed given what was known at the time - the first time this has been done. It reveals how weaknesses in regulation and defects in government policy resulted in enormous inefficiency in the Victorian system that Britain lives with today.
British railway companies developed into powerful regional monopolies, which then contested each other's territories. When denied access to existing lines in rival territories, they built duplicate lines instead. Plans for an integrated national system, sponsored by William Gladstone, were blocked by Members of Parliament because of a perceived conflict with the local interests they represented. Each town wanted more railways than its neighbours, and so too many lines were built. The costs of these surplus lines led ultimately to higher fares and freight charges, which impaired the performance of the economy.
The book will be the definitive source of reference for those interested in the economic history of the British railway system. It makes use of a major new historical source, deposited railway plans, integrates transport and local history through its regional analysis of the railway system, and provides a comprehensive, classified bibliography.

An exploration of the social and environmental consequences of oil extraction in the tropical rainforest. Using northern Veracruz as a case study, the author argues that oil production generated major historical and environmental transformations in land tenure systems and uses, and social organisation. Such changes, furthermore, entailed effects, including the marginalisation of indigenes, environmental destruction, and tense labour relations. In the context of the Mexican Revolution (1910 1920), however, the results of oil development did not go unchallenged. Mexican oil workers responded to their experience by forging a politicised culture and a radical left militancy that turned 'oil country' into one of the most significant sites of class conflict in revolutionary Mexico. Ultimately, the book argues, Mexican oil workers deserve their share of credit for the 1938 decree nationalising the foreign oil industry - heretofore reserved for President Lazaro Cardenas - and thus changing the course of Mexican history.

This is a detailed account of the British and German steel industries' performances during three decades that were marked by radical changes in technology, in sources of raw materials and in product markets. Relying on governmental and corporate archives as well as on the contemporary trade literature, Professor Wengenroth has drawn a meticulous picture of how managements in the two countries met strategic problems raised by these changes. The author does not however, merely trace technological developments; rather he uses them as a backdrop for a contribution to the long-running debate on Britain's relative industrial decline in the late nineteenth century. Was this the result of massive entrepreneurial failure or was it merely the by-product of evolutionary changes that bestowed automatic competitive advantage on latecomers such as the Germans? The author argues a detailed case for the latter scenario and, in doing so, makes a major contribution to the debate on the 'Great Depression'.

At the periphery of the Chinese empire, a group of innovative entrepreneurs built companies that dominated the Chinese salt trade and created thousands of jobs in the Sichuan region. From its dramatic expansion in the early nineteenth century to its decline on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s, salt production in Zigong was one of the largest and one of the only indigenous large-scale industries in China. Madeleine Zelin recounts the history of the salt industry to reveal a fascinating chapter in China's history and provide new insight into the forces and institutions that shaped Chinese economic and social development independent of Western or Japanese influence. Her book challenges long-held beliefs that social structure, state extraction, the absence of modern banking, and cultural bias against business precluded industrial development in China. Zelin details the novel ways in which Zigong merchants mobilized capital through financial-industrial networks. She describes how entrepreneurs spurred growth by developing new technologies, capturing markets, and building integrated business organizations. Without the state establishing and enforcing rules, Zigong businessmen were free to regulate themselves, utilize contracts, and shape their industry. However, this freedom came at a price, and ultimately the merchants suffered from the underdevelopment of a transportation infrastructure, the political instability of early-twentieth-century China, and the absence of a legislative forum to develop and codify business practices. Zelin's analysis of the political and economic contexts that allowed for the rise and fall of the salt industry also considers why its success did not contribute to "industrial takeoff" during that period in China. Based on extensive research, Zelin's work offers a comprehensive study of the growth of a major Chinese industry and resituates the history of Chinese business within the larger story of worldwide industrial development.

This book is an abridgement and translation of Guillermo Lora's five-volume history. It deals with the strengthening and radicalisation of Bolivia's organised labour movement, which culminated in the drastic revolutionary changes of the 1950s. The first half offers a reinterpretation of Bolivian history in the century preceding the revolution, viewed from the perspective of the working class. The second half discusses in more detail the major political events and doctrinal issues of a period in which the author, as secretary of the Trotskyist Partido Obrero Revolucionario, himself frequently played an active part. Despite the radical upheaval that occurred in the fifties and the mobilisation of broad sectors of the population around such radical objectives as direct property seizures, union-nominated ministers and union, military and worker control, the labour movement was unable to maintain its conquests in the 1960s. The concluding chapters describe the period of renewed military repression and the continuing efforts of the labour movement to resist.

A pioneering study of the social aspects of industrialisation in a developing country in tropical Africa. Though industrial workers form a relatively small proportion of the Ghanaian population, they represent the 'modern' sector of the economy and industrial jobs are much sought after by school leavers. The occupational and migration histories, the work and home lives of these men and women are examined in the framework of current theories of modernity to demonstrate the effects of industrialisation in those countries where the process has not yet gone very far. This book surveys the field of industrialisation in Ghana and its effects through such other factors as migration. It provides a valuable comparison both with industrialisation elsewhere and with other aspects of African social life.