Speculative Builders and the Structure of the Scottish Building Industry, 1860–1914

Rodger, Richard

doi:10.1080/00076797900000029

Cited by 22 publications

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“…Aspinall has shown that in all the regional subdivisions of England between 70-90% of firms employed fewer than 10 operatives, and 50% employed fewer than 5 men, 60 a conclusion also applicable in Scotland. 61 Such structural conditions encouraged speculation, usually over-optimistic, or at least a construction level which imperfectly recognized changing local prosperity levels. Even where structural changes in demand were perceived, reverse gear was, for the building industry, difficult to engage.…”

Section: Illmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Economy, Ideology and the Persistence of Working-Class Housing Problems in Britain, 1850–1914

Rodger¹

1987

Int Rev of Soc His

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Nineteenth-century housing was not all gloom and doom. For significant elements of the nation the standard of comfort and material welfare improved substantially.1 Suburbanization of the middle classes in the second half of the century appreciably improved environmental conditions, the family in particular benefitting from a semi-rural existence with only the commuting breadwinner subject to the hostility of urban conditions. 2 In the last third of the nineteenth century rising real incomes were especially beneficial to artisans and the more regularly employed labouring class. Linoleum, curtains, parlour furniture, even pianos transformed the immediate appearance of the home; shoes, a change of clothes and running water that of the people; and the kitchen range, water closets and gas mantles re-arranged the domestic patterns in other respects. 4 The possibility of an So fundamental and widespread were these improvements, it has been suggested, that the internal physical space of the working-class home was re-arranged. 7 The separation of kitchen and living room effectively added another room, for example, taking smells of cooking out of the main socializing area in the home, and physically segregating women to a separate rather than an integrated existence in the home. While the catalogues of kitchen ranges, the production of baths, furniture and other domestic equipment reflect growing consumerism, this was by no means universal. 8Indeed for the unskilled, irregularly employed or sweated piece-rate worker, the segregation within the grades of manual workers and the increasing gap between rising expectations and actual living conditions may well have been more acutely felt. Trade-union organization and the extension of the franchise, for example, drove divisions between different components of the working class, 9 and housing conditions served to reinforce this. Recent research has stressed improvements in working-class dwellings through four channels: first, rising real incomes and consumption levels in the last third of the nineteenth century; 10 second, philanthropic housing 5

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Section: Illmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Economy, Ideology and the Persistence of Working-Class Housing Problems in Britain, 1850–1914

Rodger¹

1987

Int Rev of Soc His

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“…14 Frequently in Scottish burghs more than half of the houses were built by firms that undertook only one or two housebuilding projects each year. 15 Because capital requirements were limited, credit was easily available, and builders were not required to prove their skills or offer other credentials, a bandwagon effect was created in the initial phases of a boom. Only a crude code of municipal building bylaws, often poorly enforced, regulated the quality, type, safety, or number of houses put up at such time.…”

Section: The Building Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Control by Coercion: Employers' Associations and the Establishment of Industrial Order in the Building Industry of England and Wales, 1860–1914

McKenna¹,

Rodger

1985

Bus. Hist. Rev.

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The history of management-labor relations has in recent years become a central concern for business historians. In this article, Dr, Rodger and Mr. McKenna consider management-labor relations in the British building industry in the years preceding the First World War. They demonstrate that a variety of factors—not the least of which being the industry's notorious volatility—constrained management's ability to discipline the work force, and conclude that whatever success it attained proved transitory, accompanied as it was by the advent of government-financed municipal housing.

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Building enterprise in late nineteenth-century Baltimore

Vill¹

1986

Journal of Historical Geography

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Speculative Builders and the Structure of the Scottish Building Industry, 1860–1914

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

Political Economy, Ideology and the Persistence of Working-Class Housing Problems in Britain, 1850–1914

Political Economy, Ideology and the Persistence of Working-Class Housing Problems in Britain, 1850–1914

Control by Coercion: Employers' Associations and the Establishment of Industrial Order in the Building Industry of England and Wales, 1860–1914

Building enterprise in late nineteenth-century Baltimore

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