ABSTRACT
In Chapters 4 and 5 you learnt how to use a worksheet (the term for a spreadsheet used in the Excel program), and you are now going to apply your skills to investigate a historical theme: the debate over the material conditions of the working class in Britain between 1850 and 1914. Using spreadsheets and graphs you will explore the question: did the working class gain from the process of industrialisation and reap the benefits of higher wages and earnings after 1850? Section 6.2 sets the historical context for the investigation and defines the indicators used by historians to measure changes in working-class conditions: wages, earnings, and the cost of living. Historians often organise this data as a series of index numbers, and this technique is also discussed. Section 6.3 outlines the main historical sources which will be used in the workshop exercises in this chapter, and examines some of the historical problems in using this information. The final section, 6.4, is organised as a series of workshops which examine the historical evidence by using spreadsheets and graphs. You start by building a spreadsheet from local data on earnings and the cost of living for workers in the ‘steel city’ of Sheffield for 1851–1911. As the workshops progress additional data sets are introduced which allow you to expand the analysis and make comparisons between the data sets. By progressing through the workshops you will learn:
To expand your skills in designing spreadsheets and graphs using a range of historical data
To organise the data to your requirements
To perform basic calculations from the data
To interrogate and critically analyse the trends in the data
To extend your understanding of working-class earnings and the cost of living.
