Occupation and wage profiles of British cotton workers

Description

Numbers are given in different categories of worker, in each of two investigations. The first source of information is the Board of Trade Census that was conducted on 1886. The second is a relatively informal survey conducted by US Bureau of Labor representatives in 1889, for use in official reports.

Usage

data(cottonworkers)

Format

A data frame with 14 observations on the following 3 variables.

census1886

Numbers of workers in each of 14 different categories, according to the Board of Trade wage census that was conducted in 1886

survey1889

Numbers of workers in each of 14 different categories, according to data collected in 1889 by the US Bureau of Labor, for use in a report to the US Congress and House of Representatives

avwage

Average wage, in pence, as estimated in the US Bureau of Labor survey

Details

The data in survey1889 were collected in a relatively informal manner, by approaching individuals on the street. Biases might therefore be expected.

Source

United States congress, House of Representatives, Sixth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1890, Part III, Cost of Living (Washington D.C. 1891); idem., Seventh Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1891, Part III, Cost of Living (Washington D.C. 1892)

Return of wages in the principal textile trades of the United Kingdom, with report therein. (P.P. 1889, LXX). United Kingdom Official Publication.

References

Boot, H. M. and Maindonald, J. H. 2007. New estimates of age- and sex- specific earnings and the male-female earnings gap in the British cotton industry, 1833-1906. Economic History Review. Published online 28-Aug-2007 doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00398.x

Examples

data(cottonworkers)
str(cottonworkers)
plot(survey1889 ~ census1886, data=cottonworkers)
plot(I(avwage*survey1889) ~ I(avwage*census1886), data=cottonworkers)