The_Future_of_Employment

the Glorious Revolution of 1688, declined and lost most of its political clout
(Nef, 1957, pp. 26 and 32). With Parliamentary supremacy established over
the Crown, legislation was passed in 1769 making the destruction of machinery
punishable by death (Mokyr, 1990, p. 257). To be sure, there was still resistance
to mechanisation. The “Luddite” riots between 1811 and 1816 were partly a
manifestation of the fear of technological change among workers as Parliament
revoked a 1551 law prohibiting the use of gig mills in the wool-finishing trade.
The British government however took an increasingly stern view on groups
attempting to halt technological progress and deployed 12,000 men against the
rioters (Mantoux, 2006, p. 403-8). The sentiment of the government towards
the destruction of machinery was explained by a resolution passed after the
Lancashire riots of 1779, stating that: “The sole cause of great riots was the
new machines employed in cotton manufacture; the country notwithstanding
has greatly benefited from their erection [and] destroying them in this country
would only be the means of transferring them to another [. . . ] to the detriment
of the trade of Britain” (cited in Mantoux, 2006, p. 403).
There are at least two possible explanations for the shift in attitudes towards
technological progress. First, after Parliamentary supremacy was established
over the Crown, the property owning classes became politically dominant in
Britain (North and Weingast, 1989). Because the diffusion of various manufacturing
technologies did not impose a risk to the value of their assets, and some
property owners stood to benefit from the export of manufactured goods, the
artisans simply did not have the political power to repress them. Second, inventors,
consumers and unskilled factory workers largely benefited from mechanisation
(Mokyr, 1990, p. 256 and 258). It has even been argued that, despite
the employment concerns over mechanisation, unskilled workers have been the
greatest beneficiaries of the Industrial Revolution (Clark, 2008). 7 While there
7 Various estimations of the living standards of workers in Britain during the industrialisation
exist in the literature. For example, Clark (2008) finds that real wages over the period 1760 to
1860 rose faster than GDP per capita. Further evidence provided by Lindert and Williamson
(1983) even suggests that real wages nearly doubled between 1820 and 1850. Feinstein (1998),
on the other hand, finds a much more moderate increase, with average working-class living
standards improving by less than 15 percent between 1770 and 1870. Finally, Allen (2009a)
finds that over the first half of the nineteenth century, the real wage stagnated while output per
worker expanded. After the mid nineteenth century, however, real wages began to grow in line
with productivity. While this implies that capital owners were the greatest beneficiaries of the
Industrial Revolution, there is at the same time consensus that average living standards largely
improved.
7