ABSTRACT
In the author's two articles on the standard of living during the industrial revolution, which Dr Hobsbawm now criticizes, the author was concerned both with surveying the literature of the controversy, and also with analysing the available evidence to see if conclusions could be made. Dr Hobsbawm claims that we cannot at present derive a satisfactory and representative real wage index for our period, and that the lack of such an index makes the use of wage-price data not now reliable for generalizations about the course of real wages. Dr Hobsbawm claims that the optimist case rests in the main on certain global calculations such as those of the general trend of the national income, which he cannot accept. Dr Hobsbawm argues that the study of actual consumption is the least likely to lead to contestable results and concludes that the evidence is compatible with a slight decrease, possibly a slight increase, but not before the middle of the 1840s.
