ABSTRACT
The recent spate of work reassessing real wage trends during the Industrial Revolution (e.g., Lindert and Williamson, essay 9 in this volume; Flinn, 1974; von Tunzelmann, 1979) has produced a substantial consensus. Roughly speaking, the period from around 1790 to 1850 can be divided into two parts, with real wages fairly constant for the working class as a whole between 1790 and 1820, then rising in a sustained fashion after about 1820. There are minor disagreements over the dating of the turning point(s)2 and rather more significant ones over the scale of improvement between 1820 and 1850, but the general story holds good. Moreover, the result accords in both degree and timing with what has emerged from the alternative “macro” approach, attempting to derive average per capita consumption from national income data, especially in view of recent suggestions that the existing estimates of the latter overstate the rate of economic growth (Crafts, 1980, 1983; Harley, 1982).3 I shall argue below that most of the serious participants in the debate, whether optimists or pessimi s t s have accepted this general pattern. Then why should the debate have been so bitter and so protracted?
