sc94597 said:
Maybe in the early 1800's (note this starts at 1820), but at least in Britain and the U.S most people worked in industry midway into the century. I wouldn't really consider being a farmer luxury living either, even if food was on the table at the end of day (sometimes not if there was a drought or bad winter - you'd die.) It is also wrong to consider the economy at the time mostly a barter economy. There was still need for division of labor and the purchase of goods. The U.S. economy was primarily agricultural in the early 19th century.Westward expansion plus the building of canals and the introduction of steamboats opened up new areas for agriculture. Most farming was designed to produce food for the family, and service small local market. In times of rapid economic growth, a farmer could still improve the land for far more than he paid for it, and then move further west to repeat the process. In the South, the poor lands were held by poor white farmers, who generally owned no slaves. The best lands were held by rich plantation owners, were operated primarily with slave labor. They grew their own food, and concentrated on a few crops that could be exported to meet the growing demand in Europe, especially cotton, tobacco, and sugar. The main export crop was cotton. But after a few years, the fertility of the soil was depleted and the plantation was moved to the new land further west. Much land was cleared and put into growing cotton in the Mississippi valley and in Alabama, and new grain growing areas were brought into production in the Mid West. Eventually this put severe downward pressure on prices, particularly of cotton, first from 1820–23 and again from 1840-43. Sugar cane was being grown in Louisiana, where it was refined into granular sugar. Growing and refining sugar required a large amount of capital. Some of the nation's wealthiest men owned sugar plantations, which often had their own sugar mills. In New England, subsistence agriculture gave way after 1810 to production to provide food supplies for the rapidly growing industrial towns and cities. |
Those are the leading countries at the time that were industralizing. The source of that data/graph was trying to measure povertry levels for the world for the last 2 centuries based on currency. Depending on the time period and location, looking at currency would be wrong way to determine poverty levels.
