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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2009
What was the relationship between institutionalized poverty and protoindustrial activity in Bunzlau County of Bohemia at the end of the 1820s? The agriculturally weaker estates developed protoindustries and were therefore the first to institutionalize the care of the poor. Yet protoindustrial development decreased the vulnerability of those at the low end of the income distribution, although industrial activity attracted immigrants from agricultural estates. The immigrants competed for resources with the economically weak, thereby increasing the need for poor relief. On balance, however, protoindustrial activity ameliorated the lot of the destitute peasantry living in this mountainous region of northern Bohemia.
1 For an overview see Taylor, Arthur J., ed., The Standard of Living in Britain in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1975).Google Scholar
2 Layard, P. R. G. and Walters, A. A., Microeconomic Theory (New York, 1975), p. 146.Google Scholar
3 Industrial data from Státní Oblastní archiv v. Praze. Kreis archiv Mladá Boleslav, Commerz 1825–1826, 1819, Box 1102, and Státni archiv Zámrsk, Kreisarchiv Čáslau, Box 2163, 2164. Other data from Sommer, Johann Gottfried, Das Königreich Bōhmen; statistisch-topographisch dargestellt (Prague, 1834), vols. 2 and 11.Google Scholar
4 Komlos, John, “Thoughts on the Transition from Proto-Industrialization to Modern Industrialization in Bohemia, 1795–1830,” East Central Europe, 7, no. 2 (1980), 199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 For an eyewitness account of the destitution of the famine years of the early 1770s, see Mayer, Franz, “Die volkswirtschaftliche Zustände Böhmens um den Jahren 1770,” Mitiheilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen (1876), pp. 125–49.Google Scholar
6 Enterprising beggars even plied their trade on the Danube. They approached the ships with a small boat, securing themselves to the ship with a hook and raising “a little begging box, in which was exhibited a kneeling saint.” According to one traveler, almost everyone on board gave something for safe navigation. Trollope, Francis, Vienna and the Austrians, etc., vol. 1 (London, 1838), p. 274.Google Scholar
7 Státní Ustredni Archiv v. Praze, Č.G. Comm. 7, Fasc. l, 1796–1805; folio 2–6. “The government of Austria,” the same English observer asserted, “is more favorable to the laboring classes than any other.” Trollope, Vienna, vol. 2, pp. 146, 267.Google Scholar
8 In 1803 the use of roving machines for flax was prohibited until it could be proved that the poverty-stricken would not suffer as a consequence. Státní Oblastni Archiv v. Praze. Pracoviste Benesov. R.A. Chotek, 77, L.G.Google Scholar
9 In the present-day Austrian Republic this same cooperation between government, industry, and trade unions prevails with regard to the microelectronic revolution; the purpose of such cooperation is to “reap the benefit of the new technology while mitigating its disruptive effects.” Leontief, Wassily, “What Hope for the Economy?” New York Review of Books, 29, no. 13 (1982), 34.Google Scholar
10 Goehlert, J. Vincenz, “Die Ergebnisse der im vorigem Jahrhundert ausgeführten Volkszählungen im Vergleiche mit jenen der neuern Zeit,” Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen classe der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 14, no. 1 (1854), 62.Google Scholar
11 d' Elvert, Christian, “Geschichte der Heil- und Humanitäts-Anstalten in Mähren und Schlesien,” Schrjften der historisch-statistischen Sektion der mährisch-schlesischen Gesellschaft zur Beförderung des Ackerbaues, 11 (1858), 254.Google Scholar
12 The local priest was authorized to take part, together with the local political authorities, in determining the needs of the poor and in managing the poorhouse. The concept of poverty itself, however, was never fully articulated beyond the tautological definition of being needy. According to the decrees of 1786 and 1789 the poorhouses themselves were intended for those either too old or too sick to work, and thus incapable of earning a living. A residency requirement of ten years also limited eligibility. Ibid., pp. 253–57.
Some abbeys were converted into poorhouses. The one on the estate of Lissa, which had been vacated by the Brotherhood of the Heart of Jesus in 1784, became a poorhouse in 1795. Sommer, Das Königreich Böhmen, 2:98.Google Scholar
13 D'Elvert, “Geschichte der Heil- und Humanitäts-Anstalten,” p. 352.Google Scholar
14 In 1831 the peasants of the estate Brezno in Bunzlau County assumed a 400 florin annual tax obligation in order to support the poor. Sommer, , Das Königreich Böhmen, 2:81.Google Scholar
15 In the 1840s, for instance, the estate of Zleb and Tupadl in Czaslau County contributed to the poorhouse 620 florins annually from its own revenues. Ibid., 11:29. On other estates in the same county a certain amount of grain and potatoes was given away to the poor annually. Ibid., 11:234, 279. The following figures give a more comprehensive account of the help provided to the needy subjects of Bohemia in 1791 (values are in florin):
16 D'Elvert, “Geschichte der Heil- und Humanitäts-Anstalten,” p. 257.Google Scholar
17 In addition to the poorhouses, there were various other organizations that were intended to serve as a safety net: organizations for helping orphans and widows; a pension fund for schoolteachers; a disability fund initiated by Ignaz Leitenberger; a fund to provide shoes for poor schoolchildren; mutual aid associations to pay for burial costs of members; and the Spitale, which had been founded much earlier, some as early as the twelfth century, to care for the infirm. Ibid., pp. 277–80, 316; Sommer, II, p. 261, XI, 167.
18 Kárniková, Ludmilla, Vývoj obyvatesta v českýrh zemích 1754–1914 (Prague, 1965), p. 378.Google Scholar
19 The spinner category includes both full-time and part-time spinners. (The data on poor, on population, and on income refer to 1830, the others to 1825.) The regression explains 77 percent of the variance in the number of poor; this is a good result for a cross-sectional regression. All coefficients were significant at the 5 percent level except the constant; the number of observations equaled 31. A similar regression for Czaslau County confirmed the pattern found for Bunzlau: Number of poor = 5.0 −. 66(Number of Masters) + 0.06(Income) + 0.44(Number of Workers) + 0.006(Population) The absence of data on the number of spinners, and the fact that the industrial census refers to 1815 whereas the number of poor refers to 1840, render this regression less robust than the one for Bunzlau. The regression accounts for only half of the variation in the number of poor across estates. Moreover, the income variable here entered positively rather than negatively as in Bunzlau. This finding might, with some caution, be interpreted as an indication that the availability of relief induced families to be less concerned about the indigent, or that the knowledge that a safety net was available made people generally less careful about planning their lifetime consumption.Google Scholar
20 Mayer, “Die volkswirtschaftliche Zustände Böhmens,” p. 144.Google Scholar
