Political Economy and Popular Education: Thomas Hodgskin and the London Mechanics’ Institute, 1823–8

  • Gregory Claeys
Chapter

Abstract

Mechanics’ institutes were developed in the first half of the nineteenth century to further technical and adult education in Britain. Beginning in the early 1820s in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds and London, there were about 700 mechanics’ institutes and similar associations in Britain by 1850, with a membership of some 120,000. Such figures are misleading, however, for while many of these institutions have not yet been carefully studied, they have often been accounted a failure, since they never taught factory operatives skills directly related to their work, nor even attracted an audience composed primarily of mechanics. The reasons for this are varied, but some historians have detected a relationship between efforts to teach political economy in the institutes and their inability to fulfil their original intentions. For while they did develop teaching on a larger scale than similar organizations in this period, the teaching of political economy in particular remained controversial, and often contested by working-class radicals.

Keywords

Political Economy British Library Upward Social Mobility Mental Labour Moral World 
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Notes

  1. 2.
    See David Stack, Nature and Artifice: the Life and Thought of Thomas Hodgskin, 1787–1869 (London, 1998), pp. 62–88.Google Scholar
  2. 3.
    See J.W. Hudson, A History of Adult Education, in Which is Comprised a Full and Complete History of the Mechanics’ and Literary Institutions (London, 1851). The Midlands is well covered in Mabel Tylecote, The Mechanics’ Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire Before 1851 (Manchester, 1957). Also see Ian Inkster, ‘The Social Conext of an Educational Movement: A Revisionist Approach to the English Mechanics’ Institutes, 1820–1850’,Oxford Review of Education, 2 (1976), pp. 277–302; Steven Shapin and Barry Barnes, ‘Science, Nature and Control: Interpreting Mechanics’ Institutes’,Social Studies of Science, 7 (1977), pp. 31–74; and Edward Royle, ‘Mechanics’ Institutes and the Working Classes, 1840–1860’,Historical Journal, 14 (1971), pp. 305–21. The general educational background is outlined in Victor Neuberg, Popular Education in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1971); and Michael Sanderson, Education, Economic Change and Society in England, 1780–1870 (London, 1983).Google Scholar
  3. 4.
    See Richard Johnson, ‘Educational Policy and Social Control in Early Victorian England’,Past and Present, no. 49 (1970), pp. 96–119.Google Scholar
  4. 5.
    Thomas Kelly, George Birkbeck, Pioneer of Adult Education (Liverpool, 1957), pp. 74, 77; The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright, ed. F.D. Cartwright, 2 vols. (London, 1826), II: 252.Google Scholar
  5. 6.
    Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900 (Chicago, 1957), p. 191; Royle, ‘Mechanics’ Institutes’,p. 306.Google Scholar
  6. 7.
    Cited in Alexander Tyrrell, ‘Political Economy, Whiggism and the Education of Working-Class Adults in Scotland, 1817–40’,Scottish Historical Review, 48 (1969), p. 158; Quarterly Review, 32 (1825), pp. 420–1.Google Scholar
  7. 11.
    See Kelly, George Birkbeck, pp. 76–98; C. DeLisle Burns, A Short History of Birkbeck College (London, 1924); and, on Hodgskin, Elie Haievy, Thomas Hodgskin (London, 1956).Google Scholar
  8. 16.
    On Hodgskin’s economic ideas, see Werner Stark, The Ideal Foundations of Economic Thought (London, 1948), pp. 52–103; and E.K. Hunt, ‘Value Theory in the Writings of the Classical Economists, Thomas Hodgskin and Karl Marx’,History ofPolitical Economy, 9 (1977), pp. 322–45.Google Scholar
  9. 17.
    Thomas Hodgskin, Travels in the North of Germany, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1820), I: 73, 467; II: 97. On Lockean and Smithian socialism, see Noel Thompson, The People’s Science: The Popular Political Economy ofExploitation and Crisis 1816–34 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 82–110; and my Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism, 1815–60 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. xxii-xxvi.Google Scholar
  10. 18.
    Thomas Hodgskin, Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital (London, 1922), pp. 19, 27–8, 70–1, 85–6, 90, 103.Google Scholar
  11. 19.
    Thomas Hodgskin, Popular Political Economy (London, 1827), pp. xix-xx.Google Scholar
  12. 20.
  13. 21.
    Ibid., p. xxii.Google Scholar
  14. 22.
    Ibid., pp. viii; 266; xi; 84–5; 38–9; 3.Google Scholar
  15. 23.
    Ibid., pp. 19; 46; 49–50.Google Scholar
  16. 24.
    Ibid., pp. 245–6.Google Scholar
  17. 25.
    Ibid., pp. 145–52; 173; 176–7.Google Scholar
  18. 26.
    Ibid., pp. 178–235.Google Scholar
  19. 28.
    Thomas Hodgskin, The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (London, 1832), pp. 16–17, 25–9, 148, 161; Spirit of the Age, 3 March 1849, pp. 212–13. On Hodgskin’s later career, see Halévy, Hodgskin, pp. 127–66.Google Scholar
  20. 29.
    British Library, Add. MSS 27791, fo. 263; Add. MSS 35149, fo. 120; Alexander Bain, James Mill, A Biography (London, 1882), pp. 364–5.Google Scholar
  21. 31.
    [Charles Knight], The Rights of Industry, 2nd edn (London, 1831), pp. 56–8; Poor Man’s Guardian, 1 (1831), p. 220; Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 23 June 1832, p. 119. On the SDUK, see F.A. Cavenagh, ‘Lord Brougham and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge’,Journal of Adult Education, 4 (1929), pp. 3–37; T.L. Jarman, ‘Charles Knight, an Educational Pioneer’,Journal of Adult Education, 6 (1932–4), pp. 176–85; William Kennedy, ‘Lord Brougham, Charles Knight and the Rights of Industry’,Economica, 19 (1962), pp. 58–71; and J.N. Hays, ‘Science and Brougham’s Society’,Annals of Science, 20 (1964), pp. 227–41.Google Scholar
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  23. 37.
    R.G. Kirby, ‘An Early Experiment in Workers’ Self-Education: The Manchester New Mechanics’ Institute, 1829–35’,in From Artisan to Graduate, ed. D.S.L. Cardwell (Manchester, 1974), p. 92; Hudson, A History of Adult Education, pp. 79–80.Google Scholar
  24. 38.
    J.F.C. Harrison, “‘The Steam Engine of the New Moral World”: Owenism and Education, 1817–1829’,Journal of British Studies, 6 (1967), pp. 80–4; A.D. Garner and E.W. Jenkins, ‘The English Mechanics’ Institutes: The Case of Leeds, 1824–42’,History of Education, 13 (1984), pp. 139–52.Google Scholar
  25. 41.
    James Hole, An Essay on the History and Management of Literary,Scientific and Mechanics’ Institutions (London, 1843), p. 66. On Owenism’s educational efforts, see A. Black, ‘Education before Rochdale: the Owenites and the Halls of Science’,Co-operative Review, 29 (1955), pp. 42–4; and Brian Simon, Studies in the History of Education 1780–1870 (London, 1960), pp. 235–53. There is a part-Owenite, part-radical critique of mechanics’ institutes in W.H. Smith, ‘On the Tendency and Progress of Mechanics’ Institutes’,The Analyst, 2 (1835), pp. 333–8.Google Scholar
  26. 42.
    New Moral World, 30 January 1841, p. 70; ibid., 25 May 1844, p. 384; Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern British Society, 1780–1880 (London, 1969), p. 305; Royle, ‘Mechanics’ Institutes and the Working Classes’,p. 305; Inkster, ‘The Social Context of an Educational Movement’,pp. 298–9.Google Scholar

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© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2000

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  • Gregory Claeys

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