Industrial poverty
Sir: R. M. Hartwell's review of Brian Inglis's Poverty and the In- dustrial Revolution (27 February) is the first critical appraisal I have read. It is surely no accident that Mr Hartwell is the most distin- guished and learned economic his- torian to have reviewed the book.
Mr Inglis has managed to create a lengthy bibliography (Part 2) which lists many works debunking the Marxist interpretation of his- tory, without exhibiting any evi- dence in the main text that he has read them. On the rise in the stan- dard of living during the first half of the nineteenth century, which Mr Inglis disputes, there is no evi- dence of his having read the works of such reputable academics as Mr Hartwell. These are crushing indictments of Mr Inglis's method- ology and theme.
But Mr Hartwell explicitly re- frains from debating the individual facts of -Mr Inglis's book, since 'almost every generalisation [is] misleading or incorrect'. Yet Mr Inglis devotes some thirty pages of his book to the 'climbing boys' without listing the main work on .
the subject (George L. Phillips's England's Climbing Boys) in his lengthy bibliography; without any attempt to assess the numbers of climbing boys in total, or the inci- dence of cruelty (estimates are available from contemporary sources); and without asking the fundamental question of how the plight of the climbing boys relates to the Industrial Revolution at all (although that Revolution did hilp to produce the mechanical devices which provided an alternative to the use of ' climbing boys). Mr Inglis, in short, takes us no further than the Revd Sydney Smith did in a brief article in the Edinburgh Review of October 1819. Such are the standards of those who `so lov- ingly embrace the Marxist, inter, pretation of the Industrial Revolu- tion'.
J. M. Jefferson 32 Kings Road, Windsor, Berkshire
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