Programme

The paper consists of three sections: A, B & C. In section A my focus is on the years 1850-1900. As budget inquiries show, during that period Amsterdam working-class people really were poor. This meant that they had to keep away from the savings-bank. But it didn't mean that they refrained from every type of saving. We can observe a general tendency to contribute to funeral and sickness funds. Section B deals with the years 1900-1940. Evidence from budget inquiries demonstrates that there was an increase in saving capacity. Growing numbers of workers became bankdepositors. Part of this section is on the popularity of the 'moneybox system for savings' amongst the Amsterdam working-class. In section C it's back to poverty again: I'll devote my attention to those who were so unfortunate as to fall victim to usurers around the 1900s. For the greater part this concluding section is based on the writings of the Dutch author Israël Querido (1872-1932), who got very much worked up about women shylocks operating in an Amsterdam working-class quarter.

G.N. (GERARD) BORST
reseacher Financial Culture
GELDMUSEUM
Collections & Research Department
PO BOX 2407, 3500 GK UTRECHT – THE NETHERLANDS
t.: (+31)(0)30-2143362
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e.: g.borst@geldmuseum.nl
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Current quantative studies of the Finnish households start from the middle of 1960’s. The reason is that there are no easily useable micro sources available before this period. The first consumption survey in electronic format is from 1966. The few existing economic history analyses concerning the 1950’s Finnish households are based on the growth studies.
Additionally, saving is not very often researched topic in the economic history. One reason for the lack of the studies might be the difficulty of estimating saving. However, saving is an important topic as savings allow investing and thus, it is a criterion for the modern growth. Additionally, saving can be assumed to be some kind of indication welfare or excess income. This paper estimates savings for different types of employee households.
The paper focuses on the saving behaviour of the Finnish employee households but as it is not possible to analyse saving without income and consumption, it discusses also these issues. This paper presents first results of a broader study. As the households have to have the excess income before even considering saving, the paper discusses the development of welfare from the saving point of view.
As a tool for this analysis, the paper estimates unbalanced sector accounts and private consumption for 1950/51 and 1955/56 Finnish employee households by using old consumption surveys from these periods. As a method this is standard national accounting but it is not often applied to economic history.

Working-class saving in the late 19th and the early 20th century Sweden

Sweden had as many other European countries during the nineteenth century, a fast growing population. The number of inhabitants more than reduplicated between 1800 (2.4 million) and 1900 (5.1 million), but since more than one million inhabitants also emigrated during the same period of time, the increase was in fact even higher. Parallel with this population growth there were also other changes that deeply affected the economy. In the beginning of the 19th century, agriculture was still the dominating livelihood with 90 per cent of the Swedish population living on the countryside and the land was in main part owned by free holding peasants. As a result of the agrarian revolution that had started in the end of the 18th century production rose and a social differentiation started. The farming land area grew, but the number of peasants was almost unchanged and instead there was a fast growing proletarianization. The number of unpropertied persons in the countryside grew more than four-fold between 1750 and 1850.

The economic expansion that came with the agrarian revolution led, parallel with a mounting proto-industrialization, to expanding markets and conditions were set for the industrialization to come. In Sweden, the latter took off from the middle of the nineteenth century. Domestic raw materials were essential in the first wave of industrialization and hence factories were to a large extent founded on the countryside. As a consequence almost 70 per cent of the Swedish population still lived on the countryside in 1900.

The workers in those early factories frequently lived in hard economic and social circumstances. There were a profound lack of living space, bad sanitary conditions, illnesses were common and wages low. Despite this, there is a consensus among Swedish researchers that workers’ wages and living conditions were slowly improving already in the beginning of the industrialization period. This growing income could be used for consumption or/and for saving. The need for precautionary saving was in fact large, as the terms of employment were insecure and employment irregular. Making workers save money was seen as something most important not least from the authorities’ point of view. They (the authorities) thought savings could function as an important reserve in case of loss of income. Rising incomes during industrialization were, however, probably primarily used for immediate consumption as the incomes in reality were so low and the propensity to consume high for the average worker.

The Swedish real wages were low even in an European perspective. However, at the end of the 19th century they started to rise fastly and Sweden has been considered as an example of catch-up during the economic internationalization at the end of the nineteenth century. The Swedish wages were only 52 per cent of the British in 1870 but had surpassed the latter in 1910. The rise in wages occurred primarily during the second wave of industrialization in the 1890s when also the industrial production as well as the economic growth escalated. The growth in real wages resulted in growing consumption and the domestic market became more important. It is reasonable to presume that the conditions for workers to save greatly improved during this time.

Statistics with regard to deposits give us a brief view of savings in the financial sector. Total savings were only small in the middle of the 19th century but grew enormously until 1913. Growth was extremely fast during the boom years around 1870. The growth in total deposit was four-fold between 1868 and 1876. This development has been labelled “a deposit market revolution”. Deposits were fourteen times larger (constant prices) in 1913 than in 1870. In what extent had workers part in this large growth of deposits?

The aim of this paper is to depict the development of working-class saving in Sweden and to discuss when a more general breakthrough occurred.

Statistical data and previous research indicates that a breakthrough for a general working-class saving occurred in the decades around 1900. During the inter-war years a more mature phase was achieved as more family members saved and also saved larger amounts. Furthermore they more often than before used different forms of savings institutions.

Kristina Lilja
kristina.lilja@ekhist.uu.se
Department of Economic history
Uppsala University, Sweden

This paper examines the relative failure of community credit unions in Britain. Often put forward as mutual alternatives to high cost doorstep moneylenders, Britain's credit unions have failed to meet this challenge since their arrival in the 1960s. By comparing the success of credit unions in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the paper identifies the factors that were present in both those localities that assisted credit union growth, but which were absent in Britain.

In the beginning of 1914 the Ford Motor Company started impressive profit-sharing program called “Five Dollars Day”. Its purpose was paternalistic, aimed at cultivation of “good employees” among US-born and immigrant workers at the automobile plant in Detroit. The workforce consisted of 58 nationalities from all parts of the world. Sociological Department accumulated statistical data on their bank savings, personal debts, buying real estates, living conditions, habits, etc. About half of 40,903 workmen in January, 1917, were American-born and naturalized aliens. The most numerous groups of immigrants without US citizenship were Poles, Italians, Canadians, Romanians, Jews, Germans, Russians, and Englishmen. Russians looked superior, good or satisfactory in many points, especially in bank savings, in comparison to Americans, Canadians and West European immigrants. Meanwhile, Russians had shown another type of economic behavior – saving money rather than buying land and houses.