The Manufacturing Economy

England was already a substantial manufacturing economy by 1714. True, the methods by which her growing output was achieved were as yet largely untouched by power technology and the factory system, but that would still be true of much of the manufacturing sector in the mid nineteenth century. Deane and Cole estimated that agriculture was contributing 43 per cent of national income in the eighteenth century and manufacturing and commerce together 30 per cent. That now seems an underestimate. It has been suggested that by 1750 agriculture’s contribution may have fallen to a quarter, while manufacturing and commerce had become responsible for a half. That may be an over-correction, but an appreciation of the fact that by 1700 manufacturing involvement already exceeded the level usually associated with economic underdevelopment is fundamental to understanding the eighteenth-century English economy. That there was only a very gradual improvement in income per head reflects the fact that early industrialisation was relatively labour intensive and ‘low tech’ in comparison with the heavy industry based spurts of later industrialising economies. The capital investment threshold was low and while productivity gains were cumulatively significant, only at the very end of the eighteenth century and then only in a few industries were they dramatic. ¹