SOCIO-ECONOMIC HISTORY
Online ISSN : 2423-9283
Print ISSN : 0038-0113
ISSN-L : 0038-0113
Volume 41, Issue 5
Displaying 1-9 of 9 articles from this issue
  • OSAMU SAITO
    Article type: Article
    1976 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 449-466,542-54
    Published: March 05, 1976
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    There has long been a tacit but general agreement that real wages were rising from the early eighteenth century to the 1820s, when the wage curves began to move downwards. Moreover, a suggestion has been made that wage differentials observed between towns and rural areas were narrowing pari apssu with the rise in agricultural real wages. As for the trend from the 1820s we have fairly sufficient grounds for accepting it. On the other hand, the evidence for the tendencies before the 1820s is scanty and far from being indisputable. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the traditional view critically, based on our new estimates of wage series for builders (carpenters and thatchers) and agricultural day labourers in a Kinai village and the Kyoto series for carpenters and town labourers, and to give an interpretation on the facts observed from these sources. First, real wages rose up to the early 1760s, and then stagnated till 1820; and in the former phase farm labourers' wage-rate advanced faster than builders' and town labourers'. It is clear, therefore, that the traditional view is no longer tenable: from the 1760s to 1820 real wages showed no upward trend and there was no change in differentials. Secondly, the narrowing of rural-urban wage differentials in the first phase consisted of two types of change. One is geographical; the levelling of wages between farm and town labourers would belong to this type. The other is interindustrial; a case in point is the one observed between agricultural and the building trades. It should be noted, however, that not every aspect indicated a narrowing trend. The rural-urban difference of builders' wage-rate hardly changed throughout the first and second phases of the period, cxcept for a slight narrowing in the earlier years. Thirdly, it appears that the second phase of the period reflects an equilibrium situation of the Kinai labour market. One of the reasons is that the abovementioned rigidity in the wage differential structure of the building trades was not maintained by any institutional measures such as town guild restrictions. Moreover, the wage level of town labourers was kept, except for shortterm deviations, at the lowest level of agricultural day labourers; this would mean that there existed an equilibrium between towns and rural areas in terms of wage-rates for unkilled occupations.
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  • HIDEHARU MATSUDAIRA
    Article type: Article
    1976 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 467-488,541-54
    Published: March 05, 1976
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Owari house of Tokugawa not only held an important position as the first of the Three Branch Families of the House of Tokugawa in the Edo period, but also actively cooperated with the new Government in Meiji Restoration. This article is concerned with their economic response to the new age after the breakup of the feudalism, and an analysis is made of their household economy between 1869 and 1877. When Owari house voluntarily surrendered their fief to the Emperor in June 1869, abandoning their position of a feudal lord, they received in return from the new Government karoku (an annual stipend) of 26,907 koku of rice. The annual stipend was given for eight years between 1869 and 1876, and the revenue thereof amounted approximately to 670,000 yen, which was 55 percent of that whole revenue. Besides thcy had other income sources, namely (1) shohtenroku (hereditary stipends granted to distinguished services to the Meiji Restoration Government), (2) rentals from their own lands, (3) private properties inherited from their ancesters in Tokugawa period. They employed part of these revenues to purchase land, thus beginning to be a parasitic landlord, and used other part to make loans, acting as a money-lender. The amount of loan at the end of 1877 was about 330,000 yen. After 1871 they actively purchased both residential and cultivated lands. By the end of 1877 the sum total spent to purchase residential sites amounted to more than 70,O0O yen, and the total area of cultivated lands owned by them was about 330 hectares, the value of which was 80,000 yen on the basis of assessment. In 1877 karoku and shohtenroku were capitalized into government bonds, which were used to subscribe for shares of the Fifteenth National Bank. The total face value of the stock held by them amounted to 420,000 yen. In the end of 1877 the total value of their assets consisting of these stocks, cash, lands, and loans amounted to some 960,000 yen, which means that their assets grew 6.5 times as much as what they owned at the time of their returning their fief to the Emperor. Thus it is made clear that Owari house became a parasitic landlord ten years after the Meiji Restoration. Moreover, while they were engaged in business as a premodern commercial capitalist, they became a modern banking capitalist and establised an economic basis sufficient to enable them to cope with the new age.
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  • SHIN-ICHI TAMURA
    Article type: Article
    1976 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 489-508,540-53
    Published: March 05, 1976
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    The failure of socialization in 1918-1919 revolution in Germany had a great influence on the course of the revolution. But, with the exception of reports and activites of the committee on socialization, problems of socialization have not been made clear thorouglhy as a whole. The term 'socialization' means, in general, not only to place the private enterprises under public management, but also to realize a socialist economy. Socialization, therefore, includes the problem of the confiscation of enterprises on the one hand, and the problem of the planned economy on the other. It was with the latter aspect of socialization that Wissen-Moellendorff's 'planned economy' (Planwirtschaft) and Otto Neurath's 'full socialization' (Vollsozialisierung) were concerned. The idea of Wissen-Moellendorff's 'planned economy' intended to put an economic plan into practice, on the basis of the joint-determination system between management and labour, by means of economic selfgovernment organizations under the control of a national economic council, and to achieve the postwar economic revival and industrial rationalization. O. Neurath, however, had already published his scheme for socialization in Bavaria and Saxony before the program of the central government was presented by Wissen-Moellendorff, and he tried his best to carry out the socialization in Bavaria until the Bavarian Soviet Republic collapsed early in May 1919. Neurath's opinion was at first sharply opposed by L. Brentano who had taken a position as the chairman of Bavarian Socialization Commission under the Eisner Regime. It was under the Hoffmann administration and the Soviet Republic that Neurath was entrusted with the problem of socialization. Neurath presented a detailed outline of his scheme 'full socialization', and urged that in order to control a planned economy it was necessary to create the Central Bureau of Economics, to form the compulsory syndicates of enterprises, and to establish the cooperative associations for middle and small enterprises and farmers. It is interesting that he expressed his hope, in a political upheaval in Bavaria, for an economic union of agricultural Bavaria with industrial Saxony. Neurath criticized the SPD which had no clear program of the future socialist economy, and he was actively engaged in socialization in Bavaria. He also believed that the socialist economy was not be realized at once but that it was to work on for the time being within the framework of capitalism. Since his scheme was not very radical in this sense, he was attacked by the leftwings, above all, by the KPD. But SPD also had an anxiety about his 'full socialization', because Neurath intended to abolish money and to introduce the natural economy in the coming socialistic planned economy. Although his idea of a planned economy which had derived from the experience of the war-economy had a common origin with Wissen-Moellendorff's 'planned economy', the abolishion of the money economy is the most remarkable character of his plan.
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  • KUNIHIKO ARAKAWA
    Article type: Article
    1976 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 509-525,539-53
    Published: March 05, 1976
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Most of the works studying the establishment of the Board of Trade have referred to John Cary and his fellow merchants of Bristol, for Cary's papers (BM. Add. MS., 5540) contain some correspondence of his about the matter with the M.P.s returned for Bristol. This article is an attempt to throw light on these letters against the constitutional and commercial background. In the late seventeenth century Bristol was the most prosperous seaport next to London. After the Revolution of 1688, however, their trade had suffered great losses by sttacks of the French privateers, the establishment of the Scottish East India Company and growing illegal plantation trade. Those losses caused them to request a new council of trade replacing the Lords of Trade, and Cary himself proposed a new one in his Essay on Trade. They wrote at once, therefore, to their M.P.s, when the Committee of Whole House of Commons voted a new council of December 12, 1695. In a series of letters they proposed such a council as consisted of no courtiers, the gentlemen nor Londoners but of members sent from an over the country speaking for their own local interests. As the proposal was very similar to the resolution of the C.W.H., the M.P.s should be expected to have introduced it to the House. Yet, in the replies from London there were no sign that thy took any positive action in the House. Both they and the merchants were, it should be noted, members of the Society of the Society of the Merchant Venturers and Whigs of Bristol. We must then make the causes clear that made the M.P.s inattentive to the proposal of the merchants at home. According to Prof. J.H. Plumb, the year 1694 is one of the great watersheds. From this time the Whigs became more conservative in constitutional principles, which brought about corruption, high cost of election and taxation against which the Tories and those uncommitted to any party had serious resentment. They also insisted on local interests against those of London, in which we can recognize the similarity to the proposal of merchants of Bristol. It meant compliance with the interests of the electorate for the M.P.s returned for Bristol to vote for the proposal of the C.W.H.,but at the same time it meant commitment to policies against the Whigs and the Crown. In a light of this political situation then prevailing, we can appreciate the inactiveness of the M.P.s about a new council.
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  • Mataji Umemura
    Article type: Article
    1976 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 526-528
    Published: March 05, 1976
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Ikuo Sato
    Article type: Article
    1976 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 528-531
    Published: March 05, 1976
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Terusuke Hiraki
    Article type: Article
    1976 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 531-533
    Published: March 05, 1976
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Yohko Nagazumi
    Article type: Article
    1976 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 533-536
    Published: March 05, 1976
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
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  • Article type: Bibliography
    1976 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 538-542
    Published: March 05, 1976
    Released on J-STAGE: July 22, 2017
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
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