Last month I job on certain intellectual contributions of the economic and business historian Robert Hessen, who died on April 15. At the time, I did not have access to her contribution to Ayn Rand’s book Capitalism: the unknown ideal. But I got a copy from the library and found his essay. It’s called “The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children.”
My opinion now is that it’s pretty good. When I first read it, when I was 17, my opinion was that it was incredibly good. Why this change of point of view? Because I now know literature better and its reasoning and conclusions, which I still consider valid, do not surprise me. But back then it was. I wasn’t particularly a reader except in fits and starts, and much of my reading was fiction. So if you had asked me if the industrial revolution was good or bad for women and children, I would have answered what the people around me were saying: it was bad.
Bob Hessen’s calm reasoning hit me like a bolt from the blue. He patiently studied the effects of the Industrial Revolution on infant mortality (it fell), women’s opportunities and incomes (it rose), and women’s independence (it rose). He also responded to the main criticisms of the industrial revolution. Everything he said made sense: it’s just that I had never thought about these questions.
Here is an excerpt from the beginning of his essay.
One cannot assess the phenomenon of child labor in England during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries without realizing that the introduction of the factory system provided a means of subsistence, a means of survival, to tens of thousands of children who did not live to the age of youth in pre-capitalist times.
The industrial system led to an increase in general living standards, a rapid decline in urban mortality rates, and a decrease in infant mortality – and produced an unprecedented population explosion.
In 1750 the population of England was six million; it was nine million in 1800 and twelve million in 1820, a rate of increase unprecedented in any era. The age distribution of the population has changed enormously; the proportion of children and young people has increased significantly. “The proportion of people born in London dying before the age of five” fell from 74.5 percent in 1730-49 to 31.8 percent in 1810-29. (His quote is from Mabel C. Buer, Health, wealth and population in the early days of the industrial revolution1760-1815.)
PS Here Clark Nardinelli’s point of viewin David R. Henderson, ed., The Concise Encyclopedia of Economicson how quickly wages rose during the industrial revolution.
PPS In March 2020, I posted on the work of Robert Hessen revealing Charles Lindbergh’s heroic role in reporting on the German war effort in building aircraft before World War II.
