Poverty

Why didn't they eat cake?

Sudha Shenoy

What do they know of poverty, who onl; twentieth-century British poverty knoWi From the viewpoint of an Indian developmell, economist, and of the genuine poverty founu in the underdeveloped areas, discussions 'poverty' in Britain — whether historical 0,r contemporary — appear uninformed, trivial; and small-scale. To hear the small minority 01 the less affluent described as 'poor' demons" trates that the very meaning of true, mass, poverty has now been forgotten. Substantial mass prosperity has now become so all-Per: vasive in the western developed countries that the peoples of these areas are not even aware of their riches.

Some perspective may be obtained bY 3 comparison with the underdeveloped area Diet provides perhaps the most basic standar° of reference. According to UN figures, the average Briton, in the crudest quantitative terms, eats almost 2.3 times as much per clald; as the average Indian. But such a ba1 measure says nothing about the vast qualit° tive differences in diet, that make the average, British worker's daily fare so incomparablY; superior.

Nearly 60 per cent of the average Indiall's1

daily meal (or two) consists of foodgrair15: almost entirely poor quality rice or coarse millets. (Even at the highest income levels' cereals form the major part of the meal.) 13?" contrast, only 14 per cent of the total in Br thin is made up of foodgrains: but that minor part consists almost entirely of wheat — luxury cereal, as everyone from a po°' country knows.

Comparisons among other items are equallY

striking: a Briton eats 7 times as many Poo: toes (or starchy vegetables), 3 times as mai' sugar, 51 times as much meat, 5 times aS much milk, and 7 times as much butter (01 fats) as the average Indian. And an ordinarY Indian's food os of a quality which would he indignantly rejected by the working-class British housewife as unfit for human con' sumption.

The controversy following on the public°. tion of a recent collection of essays on solve aspects of early British industrialisation (The Long Debate on Poverty IEA, 1973) illustrate this thesis: that the peoples of the develop areas unwittingly view all other nations an eras in the light of standards drawn from their own historically-unprecedented moss prosperity. It is as if a nation of Rockefellers were to peer back into the dim past of their 'poor' ancestors, and try to understand this strange and unaccustomed phenomenon, 'poverty.'

The reactions of the reviewers of the boa,

both favourable and unfavourable, offer a , good demonstration. Mr David Rubinstein, Lecturer in Economic History at the Univer, sity of Hull (in Tribune), Mr Michae' Harrington (Daily Telegraph) and the Economist's reviewer, found to their dismaY' that living standards in earlier times were, abysmally lower than today's'

'tolerable,' acceptable' levels. And no doubt l7

some far distant future, when the stock 0„ resources had grown so enormously that al' the amenities now available only to the Astors had become commonplace, the Rubinstein the Harringtons, and the Economist reviewers of the time would be found lamenting over the deplorable living standards of the average twentieth-century Briton.

Three historians, Mr Rubinstein, Mr Gareth Stedman Jones and Professor E. J. Hobsbawlm discovered to their horror that, according to a contemporary survey, a substantial part of the Population of a provincial town at the end of the nineteenth century lived below the workhouse level. Professor Hobsbawm draws out the implications of this dire situation: "Absurd though it seems, this represented some genuine progress over the century. It also represents a semi-human existence, stoically borne by many millions of men and women whose highest ambition was not actually to be buried like a pauper . . It is not a record to brag about."

These same three reviewers were distressed to discover the lack of a twentieth-century social security system in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Thus, Mr Stedman Jones was appalled that many of the privately insured were "only insured against burial expenses — a form of insurance traditional even among the poorest classes." Mr Rubinstein was even more comprehensively horrified by nineteenth-century conditions: "The working classes lived, very often, in overcrowded, insanitary homes. Their employment was often sPasmodic, and when regular, tended to be Characterised by long hours, low wages and dangerous conditions. They had no paid holidays and few luxuries."

Professor Hobsbawm's strictures are too Wide. Let us once more leap forward to our twenty-fifth-century Land of Abundance. We can imagine a future Professor Hobsbawm, gazing down from his pinnacle of prosperity, deploring the absurdity of the semi-human existence stoically borne by the many millions of poverty-stricken twentieth-century Britons. Why were these suffering masses not already supplied with the standards of a Vanderbilt? Where everyone has cake for tea, every day, the difference between half a loaf and no bread becomes difficult to appreciate.

Mr Rubinstein's sweeping indictment is even truer today — in comparison with a (hypothetical) twenty-fifth-century superabundance in which everyone enjoyed the 'luxuries' today obtained only by the John Paul Gettys. It simply is not possible to have, at lower output levels and with a smaller stock of resources, all those advantages and all that varied range of goods and services that are obtainable only at higher output levels and with a larger stock of resources.

What strikes the observer from an underdeveloped country like India is that in nineteenth-century Britain output was rising so fast that the growing prosperity of the majority was being taken for granted and questions were being asked about the 'poverty' of the diminishing remainder. Moreover, output was now rising to the point Where it became possible for working class people to provide not only for their burial expenses, but also, in many cases, against loss of income. This provision, let us note, was being made at income levels far below today's 'acceptable' level. (For the first time in history, it becomes possible for the majority to save so as not to be buried like paupers. And what is the historians' lament? Why was only this possible? — And why didn't they eat cake? Yes, and oysters and caviar too?) . Several historians complained that this rise in output was slow. Professors John Burnett of Brunel and Harold Perkin of Lancaster, Professor Hobsbawm and, Mr Rubinstein all conceded, in passing, that industrialisation had raised average living standards, but complained that it had taken far too long.

Now this same complaint could be made about living standards today: why isn't the average worker already surrounded by all the Sybaritic trappings of a John Hay Whitney? Why has growth been so slow? And the answer is, that at the beginning of any Process of growth, the stock of resources — and hence output and living standards — must be lower than during and at the end of a period of growth, however rapid it might be.

Many of the historians objected to the inequality of incomes in the nineteenth century. Mr Rubinstein growled that indus trialisation "did little to abate economic inequality" and that "It was only those who did best out of the system who praised it most highly. And this remains true today." Professor Harold Perkin pontificated, ". . . industrial revolutions are made by entrepreneurs and enterprising landlords, who are naturally the first to enjoy the benefits, followed with varying lags by the rest of the middle class, the skilled workers in the new industries, the semi-skilled and the unskilled, and the farm labourers last of all." New Society querulously queried: "The industrial revolution may have meant more wealth overall, but did it also create a powerful engine of inequality?" Professor Asa Briggs of Sussex summed it all up: ". . . a great human transformation in which people not only moved into different classes but actually invented the word 'class' to justify inequalities in circumstances." The picture conjured up is peculiar. Apparently the hallmark of the industrial revolution was the massive expansion of luxury goods production for entrepreneurs and landlords. The most rapidly growing industries were those luxury goods industries catering for the enterprising few. And even today, it seems, the highly industrialised economies of the west are characterised by the substantial investment found in the production of luxuries for the wealthy minority — as though Harrods and Chanel and Yves St Laurent, for example, were the largest industries, and the output of caviar and champagne offered the greatest employment opportunities.

In truth, of course, entrepreneurial profits in the industrial revolution were obtained in the course of expanding mass-consumption output. The cheap cottons produced in the first factories were hardly bought by the aristocracy or even by the entrepreneurs themselves.

In the underdeveloped areas of Asia and Africa, too, the bulk of the employment and investment — such as it is — is in that paftnf the economy producing output for mass consumption. But in a poor country this means subsistence and poor agriculture, producing . very little other than poor-quality foodgrains and rural handicrafts. Output in a poor country just suffices to maintain the population at subsistence level: one or two meals a day,. consisting very largely of these lowquality foodgrains. Other, familiar corollaries of, mass poverty include walking a couple of miles for a pot of drinking water (and not from a, tap), chronic, debilitating disease, a short life expectancy, etc, etc. On moving from such an environment to a prosperous country, such as the UK, one spends some time searching for the 'poor' — i.e., the bulk of the population who obviously could not afford to live and work in these brick buildings, and who could not possibly afford the abundance and the quality of Tesco, Woolworth, Marks and Spencer, Lyons' . . . Then comes the shock: it is the masses who live

i here, n brick houses, who patronise these establishments! There is such a phenomenon as mass prosperity! But if such high levels of mass prosperity are taken as the criterion, even substantial progress from lower levels becomes difficult to detect.

A contemporary example of rising mass living standards resulting from industrialisation is Hong Kong. Hong Kong's exports are almost entirely locally-manufactured, and have been consistently hampered over the years by the tariffs, quotas and other restrictions imposed by the governments of other countries, especially the developed ones. Nevertheless Hong Kong's exports rose by 590 per cent between 1953 and 1971. Registered industrial employment and take-home pay both doubled over the 1960s. The lowest daily wage-rates rose by nearly one-half. These increases in real income were reflected

at a basic level by changes in diet: less rice was consumed, but local rice was replaced by best-quality Thai rice (a luxury elsewhere in Asia); more meat and vegetables, and frozen chicken from Denmark and the -US became part of the local menu. Little enough, from the heights achieved in the developed areas, where live Professors Briggs, Hobsbawm, and Perkin. But a dramatic advance from the depths of the average Asian's daily hungry grind.

Dr Sudha Shenoy is an Indian economist who lectures at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales.